LV EMP. CHAP. rescue their saviour: his ignorance of art and language was compensated by sighs, and tears, and ejaculations; and Peter supplied the deficiency of reason by loud and frequent appeals to Christ and his mother, to the saints and angels of paradise, with whom he had personally conversed. The most perfect orator of Athens might have envied the success of his eloquence. The rustic enthusiast inspired the passions which he felt, and Christendom expected with impatience the counsels and decrees of the supreme Pontiff. Urban II. in the council of A. D. 1095, March. The magnanimous spirit of Gregory the Seventh had already embraced the design of arming Eu-Placentia, rope against Asia; the ardour of his zeal and ambition still breathes in his epistles. From either side of the Alps, fifty thousand Catholics had enlisted under the banner of St Peter; and his successor reveals his intention of marching at their head against the impious sectaries of Mahomet.. But the glory or reproach of executing, though not in person, this holy enterprise, was reserved for Urban the Second †, the most faithful of his difciples.. He undertook the conquest of the East, whilst the larger portion of Rome was possessed and fortified by his rival, Guibert of Ravenna, who contended with Urban for the name and honours of the pontificate.. He at tempted * Ultra quinquaginta millia, si me possunt in expeditione pro duce et pontifice habere, armata manu volunt in inimicos Dei insurgere, et ad sepulchrum Domini ipso ducente pervenire. (Gregor. vii. epist. ii. 31. in tom. xii. p. 322. concil.). See the original' lives of Urban JI. by Pandulphus Pisanus and Bernardus Guido, in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. tom. iii. pars i. p. 352, 353. LVILL tempted to unite the powers of the West, at a CHAP. time when the princes were separated from the church, and the people from their princes, by the excommunication which himself and his predecessors had thundered against the emperor and the king of France. Philip the First, of France, supported with patience the censures which he had provoked by his scandalous life and adulterous marriage. Henry the Fourth, of Germany, asserted the right of investitures, the prerogative of confirming his 'bishops by the delivery of the ring and crosier. But the emperor's party was crushed in Italy by the arms of the Normans, and the Countess Mathilda; and the long quarrel had been recently envenomed by the revolt of his son Conrad, and the shame of his wife *, who, in the synods of Constance and Placentia, confessed the manifold prostitutions to which she had been exposed by an husband, regardless of her honour and his own t. So popular was the cause of Urban, B 3 *She is known by the different names of Praxes, Eupræcia, Eufrasia, and Adelais; and was the daughter of a Russian prince, and the widow of a Margrave of Brandenburgh. Struv. Corpus Hist. Germanicæ, p. 340. + Henricus odio eam cœpit habere: ideo incarceravit eam, et concessit ut plerique vim ei inferrent; imo filium hortans ut eam subagitaret. (Dodechin, Continuat. Marian. Scot. apud Baron. A. D. 1093. No 4.). In the synod of Constance, she is described by Bertholdus, rerum inspector: quæ se tantas et tam in inauditas fornicationum spurcitias, et a tantis passani fuisse conquesta est, &c. And again at Placentia: satis misericorditer suscepit, eo quod ipsam tantas spurcitias non tam commississe quam invitam pertulisse pro certo cognoverit Papa cum sancta synodo. Apud Baron. A. D. 1093. No. 4. 1094. No. 3. A rare subject for the infallible decision of a Pope and council! These abominations are repugnant to every prin ciple LVIII. was CHAP. Urban, so weighty was his influence, that the. council which he summoned at Placentia * composed of two hundred bishops of Italy, France, Burgundy, Swabia, and Bavaria. Four thousand of the clergy, and thirty thousand of the laity, attended this important meeting; and as the most spacious cathedral would have been inadequate to the multitude, the session of seven days was held in a plain adjacent to the city. The ambassadors of the Greek emperor, Alexius Comnenus, were introduced to plead the distress of their sovereign, and the danger of Constantinople, which was divided only by a narrow sea from the victorious Turks, the common enemy of the Christian name. In their suppliant address, they flattered the pride of the Latin princes; and, appealing at once to their policy and religion, exhorted them to repel the Barbarians on the confines of Asia, rather than to expect them in the heart of Europe. At the sad tale of the misery and perils of their Eastern brethren, the assembly burst into tears; the most eager champions declared their readiness to march; and the Greek ambassadors were dismissed with the assurance of a speedy and powerful succour. The relief of Constantinople was included in the larger and most distant prospect of the deliverance of Jerusalem; but the prudent Urban adjourned ciple of human nature, which is not altered by a dispute about rings and crosiers. Yet it should seem, that the wretched woman was tempted by the priests to relate or subscribe some infamous stories of herself and her husband. * See the narrative and acts of the synod of Placentia, Con cil. tom. ij. p. 821. &c. LVIII. journed the final decision to a second synod, which CHAP. he proposed to celebrate in some city of France in the autumn of the same year. The short delay would propagate the flame of enthusiasm; and his firmest hope was in a nation of soldiers, still proud of the pre-eminence of their name, and ambitious to emulate their hero Charlemagnet, who, in the popular romance of Turpin †, had atchieved the conquest of the Holy Land. A latent motive of affection or vanity might influence the choice of Urban. He was himself a native of France, a monk of Clugny, and the first of his countrymen who ascended the throne of St Peter. The Pope had illustrated his family and province. Nor is there perhaps a more exquisite gratification than to revisit, in a conspicuous dignity, the humble and laborious scenes of our youth. *Guibert himself, a Frenchman, praises the piety and valour of the French nation, the author and example of the crusades: Gens nobilis, prudens, bellicosa, dapsilis, et nitida. -Quos enim Britones, Anglos, Ligures, si bonis eos moribus videamus, non illico Francos homines appellemus? (p. 478.) He owns, however, that the vivacity of the French degenerates into petulance among foreigners, (p. 483.), and vain loquacioufnefs, (p. 502.). + Per viam quam jamdudum Carolus Magnus, mirificus rex Francorum, aptari fecit ufque C. P. (Gesta Francorum, p. 1. Robert. Monach. Hist, Hieros. 1. i. p. 33. &c.). John Tilpinus, or Turpinus, was Archbishop of Rheims, A. D. 773. After the year 1000, this romance was composed in his name, by a monk of the borders of France and Spain; and such was the idea of ecclesiastical merit, that he describes himself as a fighting and drinking priest! Yet the book of lies was pronounced authentic by Pope Calixtus II. (A. D. 1122), and is respectfully quoted by the abbot Suger, in the great Chronicles of St Denys. (Fabric. Bibliot. Latin. medii vi, edit. Mansi, tom. iv. p. 151.) CHAP. It may occasion some surprise, that the Roman LVIII. Pontiff should erect, in the heart of France, the Council of Clermont, 1095, ber. tribunal from whence he hurled his anathemas against the king; but our surprise will vanish, so soon as we form a just estimate of the king of France, of the eleventh century. Philip the First was the great grandson of Hugh Capet, the founder of the present race, who, in the decline of Charlemagne's posterity, added the regal title. to his patrimonial estates of Paris and Orleans. In this narrow compass he was possessed of wealth and jurisdiction; but in the rest of France, Hugh and his first descendants, were no more than the feudal lords of about sixty dukes and counts, of independent and hereditary power t, who disdained the controul of laws and legal assemblies, and whose disregard of their sovereign was revenged by the disobedience of their inferior vassals. At Clermont, in the territories of the Count of Auvergne, the Pope might brave with impunity the resentment of Philip; and the council which he convened in that city was not less numerous or * See Etat de la France, by the Count de Boulainvilliers, tom. i. p. 180-182. and the second volume of the Observations sur l'Histoire de France, by the Abbé de Mably. ་་ In the provinces to the south of the Loire, the first Cape- These counts, a younger branch of the dukes of Aquitain, were at length despoiled of the greatest part of their country by Philip Augustus. The bishops of Clermont gradually became princes of the city. Melanges, tirés d'une grande Bib liotheque, tom. xxxvi. p. 298. &c. |
