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property and influence of the factious and tyrannic nobles, and enlarged the authority of monarchs. The degree of intercourse that prevailed between Europe and Asia, during the period of the crusades, was far beyond what we usually conceive. It has not become adequately known until very recently.

The Mongols -Chingis Khan.

In the ancient country of this race, a great khan who had ruled over 30,000 families on the banks of the Selinga had died, leaving his son Temujin a child. The horde separated, and Temujin, when he grew up, found only thirteen families adhering to him. He distinguished himself by valour, talent, and generosity. In an assembly of the nation on the Selinga, one of their wise men arose and said, he had had a vision, in which he saw the great God of heaven sitting on his throne in A.D. council, and heard sentence given that Temujin should be Chingis Khan, i. e. Greatest Khan. The Mongols raised their hands, and swore to follow their Chingis Khan whithersoever he went.

1206.

He first invaded China, overthrew the dynasty of Song, and took Yen King, their capital. He conquered Corea, then turned westward, subdued Tibet, penetrated to Cashmeer, and to the borders of Khowaresm, whose sultan had vanquished the dynasty of Ghaur, and ruled over nearly all Persia, and a great portion of Hindostan. The sultan Ala-ed-deen Mohammed took the field at the head of 400,000 men, was defeated, and his country subdued. His son, Jellel-ed-deen Mohammed, heroically, but in vain, resisted the conquerors. The shores of the

Caspian were conquered. The tsar of Russia advanced with a large army to the Calca, was defeated and put to 1227. flight. Chingis Khan gave laws and regulations to the Mongols, and died in the 64th year of his age.

1241.

The sons of Chingis, Octai, Joojee or Tooshee, Toolee, and Jagatai, and their sons, Gooyookh, Batoo, Hoolagoo, and Kublai, followed up his conquests. Resistance was every where overborne. Alexander Nevski, the great duke

of Russia and conqueror of Livonia, was overthrown ; his successor was forced to fly to Poland, and the house of Ruric reduced to such dependence, that for two hundred years it paid tribute to the khan of the golden horde.

This conquest was achieved by Batoo, son of Joojee, who then led his army to the confines of Europe. Poland offered no resistance. Batoo took and burned Cracow. Bela IV., king of Hungary, gave him battle, but was utterly defeated. The Mongols advanced and burned Breslau. The emperor Frederic II. and the pope called on all Europe to aid. Crowds of volunteers joined the standard of Henry duke of Lower Silesia. A.D. The battle, one of the bloodiest ever fought against the 1242. orientals, was given at Wollstadt, near Lignitz, and lost. The whole country was deserted; but the Mongols could not form sieges, and they retired.

Kublai, son of Toolee, completed the conquest of China.

End of the Khalifat at Bagdad.

Hoolegoo, the grandson of Chingis, undertook the conquest of Bagdad. The Mongols advanced, treachery aided, and the City of Peace was taken. In the 656th year of the Hegira the 56th successor of the prophet was trodden beneath the feet of the horses of the Mongols. Bagdad was plundered during forty days, and 200,000 persons slaughtered. The strong holds of the Assassins were taken, and that sect destroyed. The Mongols took Aleppo and Damascus, and entered the Holy Land. Seifed-deen, the Mameluke sultan of Egypt, defeated them 1260. there, and his successor, Bibers, drove them out of Syria.

Hakem bi-emr-illah Ahmed Mostaser of the house 1262. of Abbas fled to Bibers, who received him kindly, and gave him an establishment at Cairo ; and for two centuries and a half the successors of the prophet lived on the bounty of the Mameluke sultans.

CHAP. VII.

DECLINE OF THE PAPAL POWER, AND FORMATION OF
GREAT MONARCHIES.

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THE high assumptions, the intolerable rapacity, and the extreme corruption of the court of Rome, were gradually alienating from it all orders of men. The clergy were incensed at the heavy taxes imposed on them, the invasion of the rights of patronage, and the favour shown to the mendicant orders; and even some of the latter began to declaim against its corruption and vices. In this state of affairs Boniface VIII. obtained the triple crown, and, not attending to the signs of the times, endeavoured to raise the papal power to a higher point than it had yet attained, but thereby only showed its real weakness.

Edward I. and Philip the Fair began to attack the revenues of the church. The pope left the former and his clergy to themselves; but when Philip taxed those of France without their consent, Boniface issued a bull, forbidding the clergy of every kingdom to pay any thing without his permission. But the French clergy adhered to their king, and he and the pope became reconciled. 1301. Some years afterwards the bishop of Pamiers, as legate of the pope, behaved with great disrespect to the king, and,as he was his subject, Philip put him under arrest. Boniface, in a rage, issued several bulls, in one of which he asserted that the king was subject to him in temporal as well as in spiritual matters. Philip had the bulls publicly burnt at Paris, and summoned the states-general of his kingdom, who disclaimed, in the fullest manner, the temporal authority of the pope.

Boniface held a council at Rome, in which he promulgated his constitution of Unam sanctam, by which he

declares the church to be one body under one head, possessing two swords; one spiritual, to be wielded by the pope himself; the other temporal, to be used by kings and knights at his will, and with his permission. But the latter must be subject to the former, for every human being is in subjection to the see of Rome. He concludes another bull thus: "Since such is our pleasure, who, by divine permission, rule the world." Finding Philip still refractory, he excommunicated him, giving his kingdom to the emperor Albert I., and was then about to absolve his subjects from their allegiance. Philip now asserted that Boniface was not legally elected, and appealed to a general council and a lawful pope. But he at the same time ventured on an act of fortunate temerity: he secretly sent into Italy a gentleman named Nogaret, who, with the aid of Sciarra Colonna, who was persecuted by the pope, seized him in the town of Anagni, whither he was gone without guards. On the third day the neighbouring gentry came to his rescue ; but the haughty pontiff was so mortified at what had befallen him, that his rage brought on a fever, which A.D. terminated his days. His successor, Benedict XI., re- 1302. scinded the bulls against Philip, and thereby showed the real decline of the papacy since the days of Innocent.

Clement V., who had been archbishop of Bordeaux, 1305. removed, at the desire of the king of France, the papal chair to Avignon, where it continued under his six successors, all of whom were French, for a space of seventy years.

The Avignon pontiffs were engaged in a long contest with the emperor Louis of Bavaria, in which they asserted, that though the power of choosing an emperor had been transferred to certain electors, the popes still retained the right of approving the choice, and of receiving an oath of fealty from the emperor on his coronation. This quarrel originated in the attempts of the emperors to regain their imperial rights in Italy. In the course of the contest Louis was excommunicated, 1323. and his subjects released from their allegiance; but they

A.D.

remained firm to him, and if Louis himself had acted with more vigour, he would have come off victor in the contest.

1338. But though thus apparently triumphant over the emperor, the papal power was gradually losing ground. The diet of Frankfort positively denied all right of the pope to interfere in imperial elections. Scholastic science had inured men to thought, and they began to employ their mother-tongues as its organ: men of learning and patriotism assailed the foundations of the papal edifice, and the ballad and the tale exposed the proffigacy and corruption of the church. A portion of the Franciscan friars, whom John XXII. persecuted for some follies, loudly proclaimed the pope to be Antichrist, and supported the emperor Louis. The rapacity of the papal court now passed all bounds. John XXII. imposed the tax of annates, or first-fruits, on all benefices, to be paid into the papal chancery: the same pontiff reserved to himself all the bishoprics in Christendom. Benedict XII. assumed the right of disposing of all benefices vacant by cession, translation, or deprivation. Empire had been the object of the former popes: money that of these more low-minded pontiffs.

1376.

The wishes of Italy and of Europe, joined with the evils arising from absence from Rome, induced Gregory XI. to remove the papal chair back to that city. Soon 1378. after occurred the famous schism. On the death of Gregory, the cardinals, who were mostly French, assembling to elect a successor, the populace collected and insisted on his being an Italian. The archbishop of Bari, a Neapolitan, was elected, and he took the name of Urban VI. For some weeks the cardinals obeyed him; but, disgusted with the harshness of his temper, they conspired against him, and he threw several of them into prison: the rest fled to Fondi, and, with the opinion of Niccolo Spinelli, the great Neapolitan lawyer, they proceeded to a new election, under the pretext of the last having been effected by intimidation. They chose the cardinal Robert, who took the name of Cle

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