[Illustration: Fig. 403.--The Adoration of the Lamb by the Elders and
Virgins of the Apocalypse.--Centre Panel of the Triptych painted on
wood by Jean Van Eyck, and preserved in the Church of St. Bavon, at
Ghent (Fifteenth Century).]




                        MILITARY AND RELIGIOUS

                                LIFE IN

                            THE MIDDLE AGES

                         AND AT THE PERIOD OF

                            THE RENAISSANCE


                            BY PAUL LACROIX
                          (Bibliophile Jacob)
         CURATOR OF THE IMPERIAL LIBRARY OF THE ARSENAL, PARIS


                           Illustrated with

             _UPWARDS OF FOUR HUNDRED ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD_


                                LONDON
                    BICKERS & SON, LEICESTER SQUARE

  [Illustration]




                               PREFACE.


Lately we published the “Manners, Customs, and Dress during the
Middle Ages,” a necessary sequel to “The Arts of the Middle Ages.”
To understand this important period of our history, we must, as was
pointed out at the time, go back to the very source of art, and study
society itself--the life of our forefathers. The volume of “Manners
and Customs” initiated our readers into all the secrets of Civil Life;
the present work treats of the Military and Religious Life of the same
period.

The subject is not wanting in grandeur, and we shall endeavour to throw
into relief the two parallel forces--namely, the military and the
religious life--which shaped the habits of the nation in the epoch of
which our work treats.

The influence of these forces was immense. Society was made up of
barbarous nations and of the corrupt remnants of the heathen world.
Conquerors and conquered had nothing to put in common, with a view to
forming a new society, beyond their ruins and their vices. How was a
state of things, higher and better than that which had gone before, to
be created out of this shapeless mass? What principle of life was there
powerful enough to evoke from amid this chaos modern Europe, with
all its variety of forces and of glory, its influence and authority
over the rest of the world? Religious life, aided by military power,
has brought about such a creation, after all the misery and suffering
preceding its birth. Gradually gaining a hold upon society, and
elevating its ideas as the tie became closer, religious life endowed
it with new manners, a new social life, a set of institutions of which
it before knew nothing, and a character which raised it to a degree of
moral grandeur which humanity had never as yet attained.

Christianity civilised the barbarians; by unity of faith, it
established political unity amongst peoples who were split up into
hostile races--a result which would only have been arrived at in
former days by the annihilation of nationalities, the dominion of the
sword, and the force of oppression. History presents no spectacle more
worthy of our attention than the steady and deep operation of this
new principle of life infused into a society in a state of decay.
This principle could only succeed in remoulding and directing the
world by first assimilating men as individuals, and that amidst the
excesses, the violence, and the disorders of a barbarism which, even
after the lapse of centuries, would not allow itself to be crushed.
But it was endowed with a persevering and indomitable energy. Consider
how it affected everything, how it enlisted into its service all the
forces which society from time to time placed at its disposal, or,
to speak more correctly, permitted it to create! By means of the
monastic orders, how many necessary works did it not accomplish? The
soil was transformed by cultivation; bridges, dykes, and aqueducts
were constructed in every direction; manuscripts were preserved in
the monasteries; education was given in numberless schools, where the
poor were taught gratuitously; the universities were made learned
and prosperous; architecture was raised into a science; beneficent
institutions were established and liberally endowed.

“Christianity was the greatest benefactor of the Middle Ages,” said
M. Benjamin Guérard; “and what is most striking in the revolutions
which took place in these semi-barbarous times, is the action of the
Church and of religion. The dogma of a common origin and destiny for
all men alike, was an unceasing argument for the emancipation of the
people; it brought together men of all stations, and opened the way
for modern civilisation. Men, though they did not cease to oppress one
another, began to recognise the fact that they were all members of the
same family, and were led, through religious equality, up to civil and
political equality; being brothers in the sight of God, they became
equal before the law, the Christian became the citizen.

“This transformation took place gradually and slowly, as being
necessary and inevitable, by the continued and simultaneous
enfranchisement of men and of land. The slave whom paganism, as it
disappeared, handed over to the Christian religion, passed first from
a state of servitude to a state of bondage, from bondage he rose to
mortmain, and from mortmain to liberty.”

Under the influence of the bishops, legislation was formed upon the
principles of Christian morality. In the great councils of the nation,
and in the royal councils, they gave a Christian direction to the
government of the country, and more than once preserved national unity
from being broken up. “The bishops,” says Gibbon, “constructed the
French monarchy just as the bees construct the hive.”

At the same time the popes were incessant in their efforts to convert
all the Christian peoples into one vast republic; and they attained
their purpose in a great measure. The idea was a sublime one, springing
so naturally from the unity of the doctrines which all were required to
profess. As early as the twelfth century the idea was thus enunciated
by Tertullian in his “Apologetica”--“We remain strangers to your
factions and to your parties.... The republic of the human race is what
we demand.”

Such was the work of Christianity in that society of the Middle Ages
of which it was the life and soul. It is necessary to follow it in
the accomplishment of this varied task, and, if we would thoroughly
understand it, we must consider it in itself, in its inward life, in
its form of worship and liturgy, in its monasteries, in its clergy, and
in its different institutions, for herein lay its means of action.

The military power placed itself, as a general rule, at the service
of the Church, and it was thus that Christianity was enabled to
complete its work. Clovis, the conqueror of the Romans, the Germans,
the Burgundians, and the Visigoths, was baptized at Rheims, and brought
France within the fold of the Church, just when a great number of
the barbarians, the new masters of the Roman empire, were embracing
Arianism. In after-days the Church, represented by the sword of Joan of
Arc, was instrumental in saving France and restoring her to herself.
Between these two extreme points of the history of the Middle Ages,
Charlemagne, Godefroi de Bouillon, St. Louis, the age of chivalry and
the Crusades, prove to us that this combined action of military and
religious life is a true exponent of the character of France. But when
we come to consider the ordinary condition of things as they absolutely
existed, we find it to be full of evils. Military life amongst the
German people had produced feudalism, and with it a terrible anarchy.
Royalty was powerless. Authority had not, so to speak, any centre;
it was cut up and subdivided throughout the nation. Private or civil
warfare became, by the mere force of things, legal for several
centuries; and disorder, violence, oppression, and tyranny followed
as a natural consequence. Military life, in all its manifestations,
hampered and counteracted the beneficent influence of Christianity, and
served as the last refuge of barbarism. The Church, however, managed to
make the principle of feudalism exercise a moderating influence upon
its very excesses, by the creation of chivalry, the noblest military
institution which the world has ever known. Chivalry represented the
Christian form of the profession of arms. The first duty was “to defend
in this world the weakness of all, but especially the weakness of the
Church, of justice, and of right.”

    “Fais ce que dois, adviegne que peut,
    C’hest commandé au chevalier.”
                               _Ordinances of Chivalry._

It was, in fact, an armed force in the service of truth and justice,
themselves defenceless. It was at the same time a bright example, the
influence of which extended beyond the most brilliant of its exploits.
Even this, however, was not sufficient to check the evil and insatiable
desire for fighting. Under the powerful impulse of the popes, the
Crusaders served to utilise this warlike spirit, and acted as a
diversion which saved Europe from the fury of its own inhabitants and
from the dominion of the Koran. Internal discords were brought to an
end, the Communes were enfranchised, feudal power decreased, and the
royal influence gained in strength, diminishing again during the long
crisis of the hundred years’ war, and being once more reinstated by
Joan of Arc. Such was the part played by “Military Life in the Middle
Ages.”

The development of modern habits, however, is gradually to be traced.
The feudal army was replaced by mercenary troops. As military power
became concentrated within the hands of the sovereign, monarchy, in the
true sense of the term, succeeded to feudalism.

At the same time another and deeper movement was taking place in the
moral and religious order of things. A new spirit was convulsing the
world. The ideas and manners established in society by Christianity
were destined to undergo a change. After the capture of Constantinople,
the Grecian savants who had found a refuge in the courts of Italy
inspired their Western _confrères_ with such an affection for
ancient literature, that everything which was old came to be regarded
with enthusiasm, while, as a natural consequence, every--thing which
Christianity had produced was looked upon with contempt. The faith in
and the influence of the Church diminished, and individual reason was
tempted to throw off the yoke of all teaching authority. Printing,
then just invented, served to accelerate this mental revolution. The
principle of free examination was proclaimed by Luther, and one-half
of Western Europe became Protestant. The tie, at once religious and
political, which held Christian nationalities together, was thus
broken, and unity amongst people who were divided in their religious
doctrine became impossible. At the same period the discovery of America
and of a new route to the Indies lent immense force to the development
of material interests.

Thus we had the commencement of a complete revolution. The world
entered upon new paths, along which it has continued to advance without
interruption to our own day.

This work derives a special interest from the circumstances amidst
which it is published. Ancient Europe has reached one of those solemn
epochs of its history when, divided within itself and uncertain of
the turn which events may take, it finds itself face to face with the
problem of its future destiny, demanding an immediate solution. What
will that solution be? The emotions of the present may incline us to
look back regretfully upon that past which reminds us of so much that
is great and noble, in spite of its many and inevitable drawbacks, and
which, by showing us the origin of modern society, by revealing to
us the manner of its birth and its onward progress, may give us the
key to its present critical condition when a profound and universal
transformation seems about to take place.

It is superfluous to say anything about the engravings contained in
this volume. They have been selected with the same view that dictated
the publication of those appearing in the two previous volumes--a
desire to produce a living image of the past. Each volume forms a
collection of archæological treasures got together after the most
laborious research; they are attractive to the eye, full of interest
and instruction, and we feel that our readers will have in them a
complete museum such as has not hitherto been within their reach.

                                                     PAUL LACROIX.

  [Illustration]


  [Illustration]




                          TABLE OF CONTENTS.


                                                                   Page

    FEUDALISM                                                         1

    Origin.--Barbaric Laws.--Enfeoffment.--Charlemagne and
    the Church.--First Construction of Strongholds.--Vassal
    and Suzerain.--Feudal Eights.--The Truce of God.--Feudal
    Churches and Abbeys.--Communal Principles.--New
    Townships.--Origin of the French Bourgeoisie.--The
    English Magna Charta.--Alienation of Fiefs.--Liberation
    of the Serfs.--Imperial Cities.--Feudal Rights of the
    Bishops.--St. Louis.--Wars between France and England.--_La
    Bulle d’Or._--The States-General.--Origin of the Third
    Estate.


    WAR AND ARMIES                                                   38

    The Invasions of the Barbarians.--Attila.--Theodoric
    seizes Italy.--Organizations of Military Fiefs.--Defences
    of Towns.--Totila and his Tactics.--The Military
    Genius of Charlemagne.--Military Vassalage.--Communal
    Militia.--Earliest Standing Armies.--Loss of Technical
    Tradition.--The Condottieri.--The Gendarmerie.--The
    _Lances Fournies_.--Weakening of Feudal Military
    Obligations.--The French Army in the Time of Louis
    XI. and his Successors.--Absence of Administrative
    Arrangement.--Reforms.--Mercenary Troops.--Siege Operations
    and Engines.


    NAVAL MATTERS                                                    74

    Old Traditions: Long Vessels and Broad Vessels.--The
    Dromon.--The Galéasse.--The Coque.--Caracks and
    Galleons.--Francis I.’s Great Carack.--Caravelles.--The
    Importance of a Fleet.--Hired Fleets.--Poop Guards.--Naval
    Laws.--Seaport Tribunals.--Navigation in the open
    Seas.--The Boussole.--Armament of Men-of-war.--Towers
    and Ballistic Engines.--Artillery.--Naval
    Strategy.--Decorations and Magnificent Appointments
    of Vessels.--Sails and Flags.--The Galley of Don Juan
    of Austria.--Sailors’ Superstitions.--Discipline and
    Punishments.


    THE CRUSADES                                                    104

    Arab Conquest of the Holy Land.--Swarm of Pilgrims in
    the Year 1000.--Turkish Invasion of Judea.--Persecution
    of the Christians.--Pope Silvester II.--Expedition of
    the Pisans and the Genoese.--Peter the Hermit.--Letter
    from Simeon the Patriarch to Pope Urban II.--First
    Crusade.--Expedition of “Gautier sans Avoir.”--Godefroi
    de Bouillon.--The Kingdom of Jerusalem.--Second
    Crusade.--St. Bernard.--Third Crusade: Philip Augustus and
    Richard Cœur-de-Lion.--Fourth Crusade.--Fifth and Sixth
    Crusades.--Louis IX. turns Crusader.--Seventh Crusade.--St.
    Louis taken Prisoner.--Eighth and last Crusade.--Death of
    St. Louis.--Results of the Crusades.


    CHIVALRY (DUELS AND TOURNAMENTS)                                136

    Origin of Chivalry.--Its different
    Characteristics.--Chivalric Gallantry.--Chivalry and
    Nobility.--Its Relations with the Church.--Education
    of the Children of the Nobility.--Squires.--Chivalric
    Exercises.--Pursuivants at Arms.--Courts and Tribunals
    of Love.--Creation of Knights.--Degradation of
    Knights.--Judicial Duels.--Trials by Ordeal.--Feudal
    Champions.--Gages of Battle.--The Church forbids
    Duels.--Tournaments invented by the Sire de
    Preuilly in the Tenth Century.--Arms used in a
    Tournament.--Tilt.--Lists.--The part taken by Ladies.--King
    René’s Book.


    MILITARY ORDERS                                                 172

    Pierre Gérard founds the Order of St. John of Jerusalem;
    History of that Order.--The Siege of Rhodes.--History of
    the Order of the Knights Templars.--Order of the Knights
    of Calatrava.--Order of the Teuton Knights.--Order of the
    Knights of the Golden Fleece.--Order of St. Maurice and St.
    Lazarus.--Orders of the Star, of the Cosse de Geneste, of
    the Ship, of St. Michael, and of the Holy Ghost.


    LITURGY AND CEREMONIES                                          203

    Prayer.--Liturgy of St. James, of St. Basil, and of
    St. John Chrysostom.--Apostolical Constitutions.--The
    Sacrifice of the Mass.--Administration of
    Baptism.--Canonical Penances.--Plan and Arrangement
    of Churches.--Ecclesiastical Hierarchy.--The
    Ceremony of Ordination.--Church Bells.--The
    Tocsin.--The Poetry of Gothic Churches.--Breviary
    and Missal of Pius V.--Ceremonies used at the Seven
    Sacraments.--Excommunication.--The Bull _In Cœnâ
    Domini_.--Processions and Mystery Plays at the Easter
    Solemnities.--Instrument of Peace.--Consecrated Bread.--The
    Pyx.--The Dove.


    THE POPES                                                       245

    Influence of the Papacy in the Reformation of Early
    Society.--St. Leo the Great.--Origin of the Temporal
    Power of the Popes.--Gregory the Great.--The Iconoclastic
    Emperors.--Stephen III. delivered by France.--Charlemagne
    crowned Emperor of the West.--Photius.--The Diet
    of Worms.--Gregory VII.; his Plan for a Christian
    Republic.--Urban II.--The Crusades.--Calixtus II.;
    Termination of the Dispute as to Investiture.--Innocent
    III.--Struggle of Boniface VIII. against Philippe
    le Bel.--The Great Western Schism.--Council of
    Florence.--Battle of Lepanto.--Council of Trent.


    THE SECULAR CLERGY                                              274

    The Minor and the Major Orders in the Early Centuries
    of the Church.--Establishment of Tithes originally
    voluntary, and afterwards obligatory.--Influence of
    the Bishops.--Supremacy of the See of Rome.--Form of
    Episcopal Oath in the Early Centuries.--Reform of Abuses
    by the Councils.--Remarkable sayings of Charlemagne and
    Hincmar.--Public Education created by the Church.--The
    Establishment of the Communes favoured by the Bishops.--The
    Beaumont Law.--Struggle with the Bourgeoisie in the
    Fifteenth Century.--The Council of Trent.--Institution of
    Seminaries.


    THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS                                            299

    The First Monks.--St. Anthony and his Disciples.--St.
    Pachomius and St. Athanasius.--St. Eusebius and St.
    Basilius.--Cenobitism in the East and in the West.--St.
    Benedict and the Benedictine Code.--Monkish Dress.--St.
    Columba.--List of the Monasteries in Charlemagne’s
    Time.--Services rendered by the Monks to Civilisation,
    Arts, and Letters.--Reform of the Religious Orders in
    the Twelfth Century.--St. Norbert.--St. Bernard.--St.
    Dominic.--St. Francis of Assisi.--The Carmelites.--The
    Bernardines.--The Barnabites.--The Jesuits.


    CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS                                         339

    Christian Charity in the First Centuries of the
    Church.--The Eastern Empresses.--The Holy Roman
    Ladies.--Olympiade, Melanie, Marcella, and Paula.--Charity
    at the Court of the Franks.--St. Margaret of Scotland
    and Matilda of England.--Hedwige of Poland.--Origin
    of the Lazar-houses.--The Lazarists in France and in
    England.--Progress and Vicissitudes of the Order of St.
    Lazarus.--The Foundations of St. Louis.--The Order of Mercy
    founded by St. Nolasque.--St. Catherine of Sienna and St.
    Francis.--Bernardin Obrégon.--Jean de Dieu.--Philippe de
    Néri.--Antoine Yvan.


    PILGRIMAGES                                                     362

    The first Pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome.--The
    Worship of the Martyrs.--Pilgrims’ Hospitals.--Images of
    the Virgin Mary.--Relics brought from the East by the
    Crusaders.--Celebrated Pilgrimages of Early Days.--The
    Roman Basilicas.--St. Nicholas de Bari.--Notre-Dame de
    Tersatz.--St. Jacques de Compostella.--Notre-Dame du Puy,
    de Liesse, de Chartres, de Rocamadour.--Pilgrimages in
    France, Germany, Poland, Russia, and Switzerland.


    HERESIES                                                        394

    The real Meaning of the word _Heresy_.--The
    Heretics of the Apostolic Days.--Simon the
    Magician.--Cerinthus.--The Nicolaitans.--The Gnostics.--The
    Schools of Philosophy of Byzantium, Antioch, and
    Alexandria.--Julian the Apostate.--The Pelagians
    and the semi-Pelagians.--Nestorius.--Eutyches.--The
    Iconoclasts.--Amaury.--Gilbert de la
    Porrée.--Abelard.--Arnold of Brescia.--The Albigenses.--The
    Waldenses.--The Flagellants.--Wickliff.--John Huss.--Jerome
    of Prague.--Luther.--Henry VIII. and the Anglican
    Church.--Calvin.


    THE INQUISITION                                                 423

    General Principles of the Inquisition; its Existence
    amongst the Greeks and Romans.--The Papal Inquisition.--The
    Inquisition in France.--The Albigenses.--The Royal Spanish
    Inquisition; its Political Purposes; it is opposed by
    the Popes.--Inquisitors of Toledo excommunicated by Leo
    X.--The Holy Hermandad.--The Spies of the Inquisition.--The
    Holy Office and the Supreme.--The Prisons of the
    Inquisition.--The _Auto-da-fé_.--The Inquisition in the
    Netherlands.--The Protestant Inquisition in Holland,
    Germany, France, England, and Switzerland.


    BURIALS AND FUNERAL CEREMONIES                                  447

    Embalming and Incineration of Bodies amongst the
    Ancients.--Interment brought into practice by
    Christianity.--The Wrapping of the Dead in Shrouds.--The
    Direction in which the Bodies were laid.--Absolution
    Crosses.--Funeral Furniture.--Coffins and Sarcophagi in
    the Middle Ages.--Funereal Sculpture and Architecture,
    from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century.--The Catacombs
    at Rome.--Charnel-houses in the Churches.--Public
    Cemeteries.--The Cemetery of the Innocents,
    Paris.--Lanterns for the Dead.--Funerals of the Kings
    and Queens of France.--The Rolls of the Dead.--Consoling
    Thought of the Resurrection and of Eternal Life.

  [Illustration]


  [Illustration]




                        TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

    Abbatial Ring and Cross of St. Waudru, 312

    Abbey of Saint-Germain des Prés, View of the, in 1361, 13

    Abbey of Saint-Germain des Prés, North View of the, Seventeenth
      Century, 320

    Abbey of St. Riquier, The, near Abbeville, 311

    Abbey-Church of the Magdalen, at Vézelai, 120

    Absolution Crosses of the Eleventh Century, 453

    Act of Faith and Homage, Thirteenth Century, 8

    Adoration of the Lamb, The, Frontispiece

        „        „   Magi, The, 241

    Altar of the Cathedral of Arras, Thirteenth Century, 243

    Altar-piece at Mareuil-en-Brie, 218, 219

    Amaury’s Disciples burnt by order of Philip Augustus, 404

    Angels praying over a Skull, Fourteenth Century, 298

    Anne of Brittany, Funeral Service of, 495

    Antilles, Discovery of the, by Columbus, 92

    Antioch, Plan of, in the Thirteenth Century, 130

    Antwerp, View of the Port of, 87

    Arming a Knight, 143

    Armogenes, the Magician, 383

    Arquebusier of the Sixteenth Century, 61

    Artois, The Count of, presenting himself at the Castle of the Count
      of Boulogne, 149

    Artus, King, fighting a Giant, 137

    Assault on a Fortified Place, 135

    “Au juste poids véritable balance”, 391

    Auto-da-fé Procession, in Spain, 436


    Babylon the Great, 396

    Ballista, 73

    Banner of St. Denis, Representations of the, 60

    Banner of the City of Strasburg, Thirteenth Century, 386

    Banner of a Flemish Lazaretto, 353

    Baptism of the Saxons conquered by Charlemagne, 213

    Barbarian (Mounted) in the Roman Service, 4

    Basilius the Great, Dream of, 400

    Battering-ram, 71

    Battle of Auray, The, 54

        „     Dreux, The, 62

        „     Lepanto, Plan of the, 96

        „     Tolbiac, The, 2

    Beacon in the Cemetery of Antigny, Fifteenth Century, 486

    Beacon in the Cemetery of Ciron, Twelfth Century, 486

    Beacon in the Cemetery of Fèniou, Eleventh Century, 486

    Beatrix Cornel, Tomb of, 182

    Beguin, 329

       „   Convent at Ghent, the Great, 328

    Beheaded Knight holding his Head in his Hands, 467

    Bucentaure, The, 77

    Bull with which Boniface VIII. sealed his Letters, 273

    Burial among the Franks, Mode of, 451


    Caltrop, or Crow’s-foot, 66

    Calvin, John, 419

    Caricature of the Third Century, 206

    Castle of Angoulême, Thirteenth Century, 6

        „     Loches, Doorways of the Old, 37

        „     Pierrefonds, View overlooking the, 11

    Catapult, 72

    Celebration of Mass, The, in an Oratory, Ninth Century, 277

    Celtic Burial, 451

    Champion of the Tournament, The, 166

    Chandelier of the Virgin, 217

    Chanter or Psalmist, The, Minor Order, 274

    Chapel of Pilgrimage, Thanksgiving in a, 384

    Chaplet of Beads in Carved Ivory, and Girdle, Sixteenth Century,
      330

    Charlemagne, Statue of, Eleventh Century, 5

    Charles the Bold, Great Seal of, Fifteenth Century, 55

    Charles VI. fulfilling his Vow to Our Lady of Hope, 388

    Charter of William the White-handed, Commencement of the, 295

    Chasuble, Mitre, and Stole of St. Thomas à Becket, Cloth and
      Embroidery of the Twelfth Century, 225

    Château de la Panouze (Aveyron), Feudal Castle of the Twelfth
      Century, 10

    Chivalry, Allegorical Figures representing, 140

    Choir Candelabrum, Foot of a large, Thirteenth Century, 216

    Christ descending into Hell, 498

       „   risen from the Dead, 504

       „   victorious after Death, Eighth or Ninth Century, 449

    Christian Professor on his Death-bed, The, 497

        „     Religion, The, assisting at the Death of Christ, 247

    Church of St. Antony, Padua, 216

        „     the Holy Sepulchre, Façade of the, 106

    Clergy going in Procession before the Emperor, Fourth Century, 318

    Cloister of the Chartreuse, at Pavia, 322

    Clovis, Baptism of, 2

    Coffer containing the Hair-cloths of St. Louis, Thirteenth Century,
      371

    Concordat of Cambrio, Title of the (1466), 296

    Conferring Knighthood on the Field of Battle, 141

    Consecration of St. Remigius, Bishop of Rheims, 283

    Constantinople, Second taking of, in 1204, 123

    Coque, The, 79

    Coronation of an Emperor by the Pope, Sixteenth Century, 256

    Cosmas and Damianus relieving a Sick Man,  343

    Council held to commemorate the Second Council of Nice, Tenth
      Century, 249

    Council of Vienne, 190

    Cross of the Bureau Family, 476

    Crown of Thorns, The, brought into France, 375

       „     „      „     worn by Jesus Christ, 393

    Cruelties committed by the Gueux, 440

    Cruet, silver-gilt, First or Second Century, 208

    Crusaders at Damietta, Disembarkation of the, 126

    Crypt of the Chapel of St. Agnes, in the Catacombs at Rome, 474


    Daggers with Moorish Blades and Flemish Handles, 45

    Dalmatic said to have belonged to Leo III., 255

    Dance of Death, The, 478–483

    Death of St. Benedict, 496

       „     Mahomet II., 178

    Dedication of the Church of the Monastery of St. Martin des Champs,
      Paris, 321

    Degradation of a Knight, 154

    Designs of Armour, 170

    Distribution of Banners and Helmets, 164

    Diver, The, 91

    Don Juan of Austria, 133

    Doorkeeper, The, Minor Order, 275

    Doria, Andrew, 88

    Dove suspended above the Altar, Thirteenth Century, 244

    Dresses worn by Prisoners of the Inquisition, 437

    Duel concerning the Honour of Ladies, 157


    Earthen Vases found at Florence in 1863, 187

    Ecclesiastical Tonsure, The, 279

    Edward the Confessor, Funeral of, 490

    Entry of Louis VIII. and the Pope’s Legate into Avignon, 406

    Eudes, Bishop, from the Bayeux Tapestry, 47

    Excesses committed by the Huguenots, Allegorical Picture of the,
      415

    Exorcism of a Catechumen, Fourth or Fifth Century, 212

    Exorcism of a Person possessed with a Demon, 414

    Exorcist, The, Minor Order, 275


    Farel, William, 420

    Ferrand of Portugal, Count of Flanders, being taken to Paris, 22

    Fight between Raymbault de Morueil and Gruyon de Losenne, 156

    Flemish Warrior, from the Ruins of St. Bavon, Ghent, 26

    Fortified Bridge of Lemantano, near Rome, Twelfth Century, 33

    Fortified Bridge from Valentré to Cahors, 18

    Fortified City of Carcassonne, Plan of the, Thirteenth Century, 18

    Fortress of the Knights Hospitallers, in Syria, 174

    French Caravel, Sixteenth Century, 84

       „   Priory at Rhodes, Fifteenth Century, 181

    Fresco in the Cemetery of St. Pretextat, 475

    Funeral Service, Fourteenth Century, 453

    Funereal Lamps found in the Catacombs, Third Century, 276, 424


    Galley of the Sixteenth Century, 78

       „   Slave, 90

       „   Soldier, 90

    Gallic or Gallo-Roman Pottery, 455

    Gallo-Roman Lords of the Fourth Century, 3

    Gate of the Town of Aigues-Mortes, 17

    Gautier-sans-Avoir, Reception of, by the King of Hungary, 115

    German Foot-soldiers fighting, Sixteenth Century, 57

    German and Gallic Auxiliaries, Second Century, 40

    German Knight, Fifteenth Century, 147

    Godefroy de Bouillon, crowned with the Instruments of our Lord’s
      Passion, 117

    Godefroy de Bouillon, Tomb of, 118

    Golden Fleece, Chapter of the Order of the, 197

    Great Hospital at Milan, 357

    Greek Panagia, 370

    Gregory IX. handing the Decretals to an Advocate of the Consistory
      (1227–1241), 266


    Handbell, Romanesque perforated, Twelfth Century, 227

    Harold, King, Finding the Body of, 48

    Harvest of Souls, The, Twelfth Century, 450

    Henry of Anjou, Coronation of, as King of Poland, 291

    Henry I., Emperor of Germany, and one of his Generals, 368

    Henry II. wounded by Montgomery in a Tournament, 169

    Herald holding the Banners of the Referees, 164

    Heresy of the Flagellants, 407

    Hincmar, Bas-relief on the Tomb of, 289

    Holy Bit of Carpentras, 376

    Hospitality, Fifteenth Century, 340

    Huguenots against the Catholics, Violence of the, 421

    Huss, John, 412


    Italian Warriors of the Fifteenth Century, 58


    Judgement, The Day of, 502

    Jerome of Prague, 412

    Jewish Religion, The, assisting at the Death of Christ, 246


    King-at-arms proclaiming a Tournament, 163

    Knife for cutting Consecrated Bread, 242

    Knight, in Complete Armour, Sixteenth Century, 61

    Knight setting out for the War, 150

    Knight of Death, The, 476

        „     Malta, 185

        „     the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, 173

        „     Rhodes, 173

    Knights of the Order of the Holy Ghost from Pure Intent, 358

    Knights awaiting from the Marshal the Signal to commence the Fight,
      159

    Knights of Rhodes, Barracks of the, 180

    Knox, John, 416


    Last Supper, The, Eleventh Century, 209

    Legend of Christmas, Fifteenth Century, 221

       „      St. Martin, The, Tapestry of the Thirteenth Century, 281

    Legend of the Passage of the Viaticum across a Bridge at Utrecht,
      235

    Luther, Martin, 418


    Machine to break the Ranks of the Enemy 70

       „       shoot Arrows, 70

    Man-at-arms, The, 51, 91

    Man-of-War, Henry VIII.’s time, 80

        „       of the Sixteenth Century, 101

    Margaret of York, wife of Charles the Bold, 359

    Maria de Molina, Queen of Castille, handing to the Cistercian Nuns
      the Charter of Foundation for their Convent, 332

    Mary Magdalene, Removal of the Body of, to the Church of St.
      Vézelay (Yonne), Fifteenth Century, 387

    Massacre of St. Bartholomew, The, 416

    Maximilian of Austria, with his Wife and Son, 36

    Members of the Dominican Order, The most famous, 331

    Messenger bringing a Letter to the King’s Army, 52

    Messengers of the Sultan discussing with Christian Prisoners, 129

    Military Costumes from the Sixth to the Tenth Centuries, 42

    Miraculous Mass of St. Gregory the Great, Sixth Century, 210

    Monograms of Christ, 205

    Mons, Mauberge, and Nivelles, Foundation of the Abbeys of, 316

    Montefrio, Surrender of the Town of, 193

    Moorish Arms (Armeria Real, Madrid), 44

    Mortars or Movable Carriages, 65

    Mortuary Cloth from the Church of Folleville (Somme), 491

    Mortuary Roll of Vital, Founder of the Abbey of Savigny, 499

    Mosque of Cordova, Interior of the, Eighth Century, 434

    Mourning Costumes, 493

    Mystic Fountain, The, Eighth Century, 223


    Nail used in the Crucifixion of Our Lord, 376

    Nangasaki, The Great Martyrdom of (1622), 336

    Nicæa, Taking of, by the Crusaders, 116

    Norman Vessel, Eleventh Century, 76


    Offering a Child to an Abbot, Thirteenth Century, 313

    Orphan of the Venice Hospitals, Sixteenth Century, 356

    Orthodoxy surrounded by the Snares of Heresy, 398

    Our Lady of Boulogne, 390

          „     Grace, Miraculous Image of, at Cambria, 389

    Our Lady of Grace sheltering the Grand Masters of the Order of
      Montessa, 192

    Our Lady of Mountserrat, Sixteenth Century, 381

          „     Vladimir, Miraculous Image of, 370


    Painting symbolical of the Catacombs of Rome, First or Second
      Century, 207

    Pentecost, 240

    Peter the Hermit delivering a Message to Pope Urban II., 112

    Philip Augustus, Consecration of, 290

    Philip the Bold in Royal Costume, 24

    Philip II., King of Spain, 439

         „       „        „   Mausoleum of, 470

    Pilgrims of Emmaus, The, 374

    Plaintiff and Defendant taking Oath before the Judge, Fifteenth
      Century, 158

    Pontifical Galley, 98

    Poop of an Ancient Galley, 75

    Portrait of Countess Matilda, 260

    Prester-John and his Page, 109

    Priory of the Benedictines, Canterbury, Twelfth Century, 314

    Prize of the Tournament, The, 168

    Procession of the Host, 238

             „        Knights of the Order of the Holy Ghost, 200

    Prows of Galleys armed with the Spur, 95

    Punishments decreed by Henry VIII. against the Catholics, 443


    Quintain, The Game of, 145


    Raised Stone, near Poitiers, 459

    Reapers of Death, The, 62

    Reception of a Knight of the Order of St. Michael, 199

    Refectory in the Priory of St. Martin des Champs, Thirteenth
      Century, 326

    Relics of St. Philip, Touching the, 378

    Reliquary in chased Copper, Thirteenth Century, 372

    Reliquary of the Holy Thorn, Thirteenth Century, 325

    Remier, Count, bearing the Body of St. Veronica to the Church of
      St. Waudru, in Mons, 366

    Rhodes, Plan of, Fifteenth Century, 176

    Richard Cœur-de-Lion mortally wounded while besieging the Castle of
      Chalus, 50

    Robert I., Duke of Normandy, on his Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, 373

    Robing a Bishop, The Ceremony of, Fourteenth Century, 285

    Rodolph of Hapsburg, Emperor of Germany, Equestrian Statue of, 35

    Rolling Tower for scaling the walls of towns, 66


    Sabbat, The, 410

    Sacrament of the Eucharist, The, 234

    Sacramental Cup, Twelfth Century, 233

    Sancha de Roxas, 195

    Seal of the Abbey of St. Denis, 317

       „    „   Commune of Soissons, 15

       „    Conon de Béthune, Twelfth Century, 7

       „    Edward, Count of Rutland, 99

       „    Gérard de Saint-Amand, Twelfth Century, 9

    Seal of an Imaginary Bull of Lucifer, Fifteenth Century, 422

    Seal of John, Bishop of Puy and Count of Velay (1305), 28

    Seal of John sans Peur, Duke of Burgundy 31

       „    the Knights of Christ, Thirteenth Century, 189

    Seal of La Rochelle, 103

       „    the Lord of Corbeil (1196), 20

       „    the Monastery of St. Louis of Poissy, 338

       „    the Town of Boston, 94

       „          „     Dover, 85

       „          „     Poole, 93

       „          „     Sandwich, 89

       „          „     Yarmouth, 86

    Servetus, Michael, 445

    Seven Christian Virtues, The, with their Symbols, 355

    Shield presented to Don Juan of Austria by Pius V., 271

    Ship of Baptism, The, Sixteenth Century, 232

    Siege of Toulouse, Episode in the, 404

       „    a Town: Summons to surrender, 67

    Single Combat to be decided by the Judgment of God, 161

    Sitting of the Council of Trent, 1555, 270

    Sixtus II. handing to St. Laurentius the Treasures of the Church to
      be distributed among the Poor, 341

    Soldier of the Time of Philippe le Bel, 51

    Soldiers of the German Bands, 64

    Solemn Entry of the Emperor Charles V. and Pope Clement VII. into
      Bologna, in 1529, 268, 269

    Solemn Procession for the Relief of the Town of Dijon, 239

    Solemn Reception of a Bishop, Fifteenth Century, 286

    Sovereign Pontiff, Public and Solemn Functions of the, Seventeenth
      Century, 264

    Spanish Caravel in which Columbus discovered America, 83

    Spanish Ship, Fifteenth Century, 81

    Spiritual and Temporal Powers, The, dependent upon Christ, 248

    St. Anthony of Padua commanding a Mule to adore the Eucharist, 334

    St. Anthony, a Statuette of the Third Century, 301

    St. Barbara, 364

    St. Benedict, History of, 305, 307

          „       reproaching Totila, Fresco of the Thirteenth Century,
      43

    St. Bernard taking possession of the Abbey of Clairvaux, 327

    St. Cecilia, and Valerian, her Spouse, 425

    St. Cesarius, Obsequies of, 489

    St. Denis carrying his head to the place of burial, 362

    St. Dominic and the Albigenses, 429

    St. Elizabeth of Hungary, Fifteenth Century, 348

    St. George and the Dragon, 202

    St. Jean des Vignes, Abbey of Regular Canons at Soissons (1076),
      323

    St. Jerome in the Desert, 302

    St. John of Capistran, 132

    St. Louis and his Brothers made Prisoners by the Saracens, 128

    St. Louis at Carthage, Disembarkation of, 131

        „     serving a Repast to the Poor, 351

    St. Michael the Archangel offering the Symbol of the Imperial Power
      to a Byzantine Emperor, 251

    St. Peter, 248

    St. Radegonde receiving the Religious Garb from the Bishop of
      Noyon, 309

    St. Savin and St. Cyprian before Maximus, 426

          „           „       Martyrdom of, 427

    St. Theresa, 336

    St. Thomas defending the Monastic Orders, Fourteenth Century, 332

    St. Vincent de Paul, 360

    St. Wulfram, Bishop of Sens, 287

    State Gloves formerly in the possession of Louis XIII., 201

    Stone Coffins, 457

    Sufferers from St. Vitus’ Dance going on a Pilgrimage, 392

    Superscription upon Our Lord’s Cross, 377

    Surrender of the Garrison of a Town, 68

    Sword of Isabella the Catholic, 139

    Symbols of the Trinity, 204

    Synagogue of Toledo, the Great, Third Century, 432


    Templar in Travelling Dress, 185

    Teutonic Knight, 196

    Thomas of Savoy granting a Charter to the Town of Cambrai, 16

    Three-masted Galley, Sixteenth Century, 82

    Three Sacraments: Baptism, Confirmation, and Penance, 231

    Three Sacraments: Marriage, Orders, and Extreme Unction, 236

    Tomb, Gallo-Roman, 452

      „   of Adelaide or Alice, Countess of Hainault, 462

    Tomb of Alexander de Berneval, Architect of the Church of St. Ouen,
      at Rouen, 472

    Tomb of Du Guesclin, 464

      „     St. Elizabeth of Hungary, 461

      „     Louis, Duke of Orleans, and Valentine of Milan, his Wife,
      468

    Tomb of Philip Pot, Grand Seneschal of Burgundy, 466

    Tomb of St. Remigius, 469

      „     Sibylle, Wife of Guy de Lusignan, 471

    Torments of Hell, The, 485

    Tortures inflicted by the Catholics upon the Huguenots in the South
      of France, 442

    Tour du Télégraphe, Narbonne, Fourteenth Century, 6

    Tower of Beaucaire, Thirteenth Century, 6

       „     the Castle of Fougères, Twelfth Century, 6

    Tower of the Castle of Loches, Twelfth Century, 6

    Tower of Notre-Dame des Bois, Eleventh Century, 487

    Tower of the Wall of Provins, Twelfth Century, 6

    Treaty of Arras, Conclusion of the, in 1191, 293

    Tree of Battles, The, 29

    Triumph of Christ, The, Seventeenth Century, 272

        „      the Lamb, The, Twelfth Century, 229

    Triumphal Vessel drawn in a Car at the Funeral Ceremony of the
      Emperor Charles V., 492

    Turreted Vessel that protected the Port of Venice, 77

    Tympan in the Portico of the Church of Sémur, Eleventh Century, 346


    Urban II. presiding over the Council of Clermont, in 1095, 262


    Virgin of St. Luke, The so-called, 369


    War Trophy of Barbarian Prisoners, Second Century, 39

    Watch-tower, Fifteenth Century, 69

    Wickliff, John, 409

    Works of Charity, Fifteenth Century, 346


    Zizim transferred to Charles VIII., 178

    Zwingle, Ulrich, 416

  [Illustration]




                      MILITARY AND RELIGIOUS LIFE

                                  IN

                           THE MIDDLE AGES,

                              AND AT THE

                      PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE.




                              FEUDALISM.

   Origin.--Barbaric Laws.--Enfeoffment.--Charlemagne and the
   Church.--First Construction of Strongholds.--Vassal and
   Suzerain.--Feudal Rights.--The Truce of God.--Feudal Churches
   and Abbeys.--Communal Principles.--New Townships.--Origin of
   the French Bourgeoisie.--The English Magna Charta.--Alienation
   of Fiefs.--Liberation of the Serfs.--Imperial Cities.--Feudal
   Rights of the Bishops.--St. Louis.--Wars between France and
   England.--The _Bulle d’Or_.--The States-General.--Origin of
   the Third Estate.


Before presenting any manifestation of its existence, feudalism had
long been gradually developing, and seemed to be moving forward
invisibly at the head of the barbarian conquerors of Roman Gaul.
From the day that their great leader, Clovis, shared amongst his
_leudes_, or companions-in-arms, the lands that they had won at
the price of their blood while fighting under his orders--from the day
when, by his miraculous baptism after the victory of Tolbiac (Fig.
1), he himself a proud Sicamber, submitted himself to and became a
vassal of the Christian Church, simultaneously sprang into existence
a theocratic and a martial aristocracy. In this simultaneous double
origin might have already been perceived the hidden cause of the future
inevitable antagonism between the modern influence of the cross and the
material power of the sword. Conspiracies, bloodthirsty executions,
continual revolts, divers plots, in which were concerned at one time
the king’s leudes, at another the principal clergy; ecclesiastical
censures, ceaselessly threatening these blind and savage tyrants, who,
while bending to the reproof, at the same time panted for revenge;
curbless ambitions, terrible hatreds, the continued strife of opposing
races; on one side the Gallo-Romanic (Figs. 2 and 3) and its heir the
Gothic, on the other the barbarous Germanic and Slavonian, more or less
christianized; all these were the endless signs by which the coming
reign of feudalism, at each successive stage of modern civilisation,
marked its advent. The political system which a barbarous legal code
had inaugurated for the benefit of the leudes, was entirely opposed to
the system sanctioned by the Roman law. It was the desire of the leudes
that a seignior, the owner of the land and of the men who cultivated
it, should possess the right of infeudalising, that is to say, of
ceding, as an inferior freehold, a certain portion of his own estate,
abandoning in so doing to the concessionary or vassal not only the
rights of the soil, but the sovereignty over those who occupied it. For
a vassal to forfeit his rights, he must first have failed to fulfil the
engagements he undertook when he received the investiture of the fief.
The cession of lands and the rights attached to it, which were the
foundation of dawning feudalism, remained for more than a century in
that state of oscillation which precedes a stable equilibrium.

  [Illustration: Fig. 1.--Battle of Tolbiac and Baptism of King
  Clovis.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Mirouer Historial de
  France,” in folio, printed in Paris by Galliot du Pré in 1516.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 2.--Gallo-Roman Lords of the Fourth
  Century.--Sculpture from the Tomb of the Gallic Consul Jovinus,
  General under the Emperor Julian, at Rheims.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 3.--Mounted Barbarian in the Roman
  Service.--From an Antique Monument.]

Master of France, of Germany, and of Italy, and protector of the
Church, Charlemagne (Fig. 4) enjoyed all the prerogatives of the
Western emperors. On two occasions he delivered the Holy Seat from its
enemies, and in Germany as well as in Italy he placed his sword at the
service of the Christian faith. One of the popes, Adrian, bestowed
upon him the dignity of patron; another, Adrian’s successor, Leo
III., placed, in the year 800, the imperial crown upon his head. Then
might have been seen, better than in the days of the Roman and Greek
Emperors, the spectacle of the Church protected by the head of the
State, to whom the seignorial aristocracy paid feudal obedience, and
who controlled with an iron hand their tendencies to schism. Feudalism,
which was gathering strength, and which already knew its own power,
never retrograded; it sometimes halted and was at rest, but it was only
waiting a more propitious season to continue its path. Charlemagne’s
successors were, in fact, neither the kings of France nor the emperors
of Germany, but the feudal lords, the great landowners; and their power
waxed all the greater from the fact that, in 853, an edict of Charles
the Bald ordered the reconstruction of the ancient manors, the repair
of their fortifications, and the construction of new ones, so as to
arrest the devastating invasions of the Normans, of the Saracens,
of the Hungarians, and of the Danes. Thus Europe became dotted with
fortresses, behind which both nobles and villains found a refuge
against the new flood of barbarians. There was soon scarcely a stream,
a mountain pass, or an important road which was left undefended either
by military posts or by strong walls (Figs. 5 to 10). The invaders,
formerly rendered so bold and indomitable by the fear they had
succeeded in inspiring, now ceased their raids, or at most ventured no
farther than the shores on which they had disembarked. Little by little
a sense of security returned to the inhabitants, and the welfare of the
civilised world was assured. A service of this importance, rendered
by the nobles and seigniors to society at large, naturally gave them
legitimate claims to the exclusive guardianship of the frontiers which
they protected from the common enemy.

  [Illustration: Fig. 4.--Statue of Charlemagne (formerly in the
  Church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, Paris).--Eleventh to Twelfth
  Century.]

Towards the tenth century, every noble who desired to obtain from
another noble, richer or more powerful than himself, a portion of land
to be held as a fief, and who consented thus to become his vassal,
personally declared in the chief’s presence that for the future he
wished to be his faithful, devoted servant and his defender until
death; with his sword girded to his side and his spurs on his heels,
he solemnly swore this on the Holy Writ. In the subsequent ceremony
of _hommage-lige_ the vassal, bareheaded, knelt on one knee,
and, placing his hands within those of his seignior, swore fealty to
him, and undertook to follow him to the wars (Figs. 11 and 12), an
obligation not entailed by the first act of homage, namely, that of
_hommage-simple_. Thenceforward the seignior ceded to him the
land or the feudal domain, by _investiture_ or by _seizin_,
a ceremony often accompanied by the giving of a symbolical sign, such
as a clod of earth, a little stick, or a stone, according to the custom
of the soil. The investiture of kingdoms was conferred with the sword,
that of provinces with a standard.

  [Illustration: Fig. 5.--Tower of the Walls of Provins, Twelfth
  Century.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 6.--Tower of the Castle of Fougères, Twelfth
  Century.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 7.--Tower of the Castle of Loches, Twelfth
  Century.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 8.--Tower of Beaucaire, Thirteenth Century.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 9.--Tour du Télégraphe, Narbonne, Fourteenth
  Century.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 10.--Old Castle of Angoulême, Thirteenth
  Century.]

The reciprocal obligations of the vassal and his suzerain were
numerous, some moral, some material. The vassal was bound to loyally
preserve the secrets confided to him by his suzerain (Fig. 13), to
prevent and frustrate any treachery on the part of his enemies, to
defend him at the risk of his own life, to resign his own horse on
the battle-field should his lord have lost his, to go as a prisoner
in his stead, to cause his honour to be respected, and to assist him
with his advice. At the simple request of the suzerain, the vassal was
bound to follow him to the field, either alone or accompanied with a
specified number of armed men, according to the importance of the
fief. The duration of this military service varied, in like manner, in
proportion to the fief, from twenty to sixty days--a period that did
not admit of very distant expeditions. The feudal seignior stood in
place of the sovereign, and being invested with executive authority,
had necessarily, in order to exercise it, recourse to the latent force
distributed amongst his vassals, and he naturally did so in accordance
with his own convenience. Justice, administered in this manner, was
termed _fiance_, that is to say, public security. The seignior was
wont to summon the men of his fief or fiefs to his _plaids_, or
assizes, either for the purpose of assisting him with their advice, to
act with him as judges, or to carry out the sentences he pronounced.
He had a right to two kinds of assistance--obligatory, or _legal
aids_, and voluntary, or _gracious aids_. Legal aids were due
from the vassal under three sets of circumstances: when the seignior
was taken prisoner and had to pay a ransom, when his eldest son was
about to be made a knight, and when he gave away his eldest daughter in
marriage. In feudal society these aids stood in the place of the public
taxes, which in ancient times, as in our own days, were collected by
the State alone; they differed, however, in this respect, that they
were not due at any stated periods, nor perhaps could they ever be
absolutely enforced, they were a kind of voluntary gift--from the
bestowal of which, however, few vassals dared to free themselves.

  [Illustration: Fig. 11.--Act of Faith and Homage, Twelfth
  Century.--Seal of Conon de Béthune, preserved in the National
  Archives of France.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 12.--Act of Faith and Homage, Thirteenth
  Century.--Seal representing Raimond de Mont-Dragon kneeling
  before the Archbishop of Arles, his Suzerain, in the National
  Archives of France.]

The seignior, who never abdicated his sovereignty over his vassal,
sometimes interfered in certain essential modifications necessary to
the fief--modifications that the vassal was incompetent to undertake.
These gave rise to new rights, and became a fresh source of revenue
to the seignior. For instance, the seignior was entitled--first, to
the right of _relief_, a sum of money payable by every person of
full age who succeeded to the possession of a fief, which sum became
larger as the line of succession became less direct; secondly, to the
right of _alienation_, payable by those who sold or alienated
the fief in any way; thirdly, to the rights of _escheat_ and of
_confiscation_, in accordance with which the fief reverted to the
suzerain when the vassal died without leaving an heir, or when, from
some act of his own, he had incurred the penalty of being deprived of
his feudatory rights; fourthly, to the right of _guardianship_, in
virtue of which the seignior, during the minority of his vassals, held
the ward and administration of the fief besides enjoying its revenues;
fifthly, to the right of _marriage_, which consisted in finding
a husband for the female inheritor of a fief; this right gave the
seignior the privilege of forcing her to select one of the suitors that
he chose to present to her.

As long as a vassal scrupulously fulfilled his numerous and delicate
obligations he might consider himself as the absolute master of his
fief, he might partially or entirely sub-feudalise it, and become
in his own turn the suzerain of vassals of an inferior order termed
_vavasseurs_, who were bound to render to him the same obligations
that he himself paid to his own seignior. On the other hand, the
suzerain was bound to respect his contract, not to dispossess his
vassal without a legitimate motive, but to protect him, and to render
him on all occasions substantial justice. It was, moreover, to his
interest to do this, for the prosperity of the fief depended upon the
security and welfare of the vassal.

  [Illustration: Fig. 13.--Act of Faith and Homage, with
  the Legend, _Secretum meum mici_ (“My Secret is to
  myself”).--Seal of Gérard de Saint-Amand, 1199, National Archives
  of France.]

Vassals of the same suzerain, residing in the same territory, and
possessing fiefs of a similar value, were termed _pairs_
(_pares_), or equals. Suzerains of every rank, the king included,
had their _pairs_, and all could claim the privilege of being
tried by these _pairs_ in the presence of his immediate seignior.
If the seignior refused to act justly, and the vassal considered
himself unrighteously condemned, he had the right of making an appeal
in _default of justice_ to the suzerain of his own seignior.
Another right of appeal, that of arms, prevailed also in feudal
society. The nobles, as a rule, preferred to carry out their own
justice rather than await from others a slow and uncertain decision.
This was the cause of there being so many little wars and so many
desperate and bloody struggles between different seigniorships. Might
made right; but custom, nevertheless, to some extent regulated the
formalities that preceded these internecine conflicts, so that the
seignior or the vassal who was to be attacked might be forearmed,
and might put himself upon his guard (Figs. 14 and 15). Further, to
remedy as much as possible the calamities ensuing from these perpetual
contentions, the Church had the power of suspending and preventing
them, under pain of excommunication, from sunset on Wednesday to
sunrise on Monday during the festivals of Lent and Advent, and at all
periods of high religious solemnity. This was the _Peace_ or the
_Truce_ of God.

  [Illustration: Fig. 14.--Château de la Panouze (Aveyron), type
  of a French Feudal Castle of the Fourteenth Century, of which
  remains still exist.--From a Miniature in a Manuscript in the
  National Library of Paris.]

The seigniors possessed no right of uniform justice. In France, a
superior, a middle, and an inferior judicial court were recognised.
The first alone possessed the power of life and death. The more
considerable fiefs had usually attached to them the right to exercise
the highest justice, but there were exceptions to this rule. A
_vavasseur_, for instance, might sometimes appeal against this
highest justice, while a seignior, who was only entitled to exercise
the inferior justiciary rights, might inflict death on all robbers
caught _in flagrante delicto_ on his lands.

  [Illustration: Fig. 15.--View overlooking the Castle of
  Pierrefonds (beginning of the Fifteenth Century), as restored by
  M. Viollet-le-Duc, in his “Dictionnaire d’Architecture.”]

The privilege of coining money, always a sure index of sovereignty,
together with the exclusion of all foreign jurisdiction and of all
external authority from the area of each fief, also constituted two
important prerogatives. Finally, the fief, with its privileges, always
remained intact; it passed invariably to the eldest of the family, on
the sole condition of his paying homage to the suzerain.

Most of the churches and abbeys, such as those of Saint-Denis, of
Saint-Martin des Champs, and of Saint-Germain des Prés (Fig. 16), which
proudly reared their towers and spires opposite the Louvre of the kings
of France, exercised on their own account all the feudal rights which
they had acquired by reason of the territorial possessions as well as
by the concessions lavishly ceded to them by their sovereigns. The
archbishops, the bishops, and the abbots thus became temporal lords,
and were consequently forced to have vassals for military service, to
keep up a court of justice, and to support a mint, thus uniting--in the
case of bishops who enjoyed the temporal rank of count--spiritual with
political authority.

  [Illustration: Fig. 16.--View of the Abbey of Saint-Germain des
  Prés, from the East, as it stood in 1361.--Fac-simile of an
  Engraving in the “Histoire de Saint-Germain des Prés,” by Dom
  Bouillard: in folio.

  A, Road leading to the River Seine; B, St. Peter’s Chapel; C, the
  Close; D, Road leading to the Pré-aux Clercs; E, Place of the
  Breach; F, Ditch; G, the Pope’s Gate; H, Cloister; I, Refectory;
  K, Dormitory; L, the Church; M, Chapel of the Virgin; N, Road
  between the Ditch and the Pré-aux-Clercs; O, space between the
  Barrier to the Rue des Ciseaux; P, Great Gate of the Monastery;
  Q, Road to the River; R, Barrier close to the Ditch; S, the Inn
  called the Chapeau Rouge; T, the Pillory.]


This twofold power made the prelate the suzerain of all the seigniors
in his diocese. Towards the end of the tenth century the feudal
ecclesiastics, by reason of the permission granted to laymen to
bequeath their property to the Church, as well as of the strictness
of the laws which forbade the alienation of ecclesiastical property,
possessed a fifth part of all French and English soil, and nearly a
third of Germany; whilst the last surviving Carlovingian could only
claim the town of Laon, where he resided, to such an extent had his
predecessors despoiled themselves of their lands in favour of their
great vassals, who still, however, recognised him as their suzerain.
In the eleventh century Europe was divided into a multitude of fiefs,
each having its own mode of life, its own laws, its own customs, and
its ecclesiastical or lay head, who was as independent as he well
could be. Around these, but under certain conditions of dependence
and of subordination, was developed the much more numerous class
of freedmen. Gradually manual labour and the efforts of a growing
intelligence led to the political existence of the bourgeois, those
worthy representatives of the labouring portion of society. The part
which was taken by the latter was not always of a passive character.
As early as the year 987 the villains of Normandy rebelled and leagued
themselves against their feudal lords, claiming the right of fishing
and of the chase, and the privilege of having an administration and
a magistracy of their own; it was thus that the innate power of the
people revealed itself: the towns and the boroughs were peopled with
inhabitants who held their homes in tenure from the seigniors--who
were the proprietors of the soil--under certain servile obligations as
to the payment of taxes. As soon as the establishment of the hierarchy
of fiefs had put an end to discord and anarchy, the germs of the Great
Revolution--destined to restore civil liberty to the heirs of the
countless inhabitants whom the misfortunes of Gaul and the tyranny of
the emperors had reduced to servitude--began to show themselves. It
was in this wise that the communal movement originated, and the town
of Mans is generally credited with having been the first to set the
example of having, through the agency of the working classes, conspired
against the seignior. We find in the annals of Metz, about the year
1098, record of the election for life of a _maître-échevin_
(high-sheriff), named Millon, in place of one, by name Hennolu-Bertin,
who had been elected for one year, but who, doubtless, was not the
first in his office. And we find an echevinal council, termed the
council of the twelve, enjoying functions at once magisterial,
administrative, and military. Metz possessed at the same time, by the
side of their communal organization, a count of the name of Gerald,
who was succeeded in 1063 by another count named Folmar. It had also
a bishop, rich, powerful, firm, full of learning, named Adalbéron, a
favourite both with the Pope and with the Emperor, influential enough
to obtain anything, but never asking anything but what was just. It
was, therefore, under the protection of the sword of the count and of
the crozier of the bishop that the municipal liberties of Metz began
to grow--liberties that became within a single century so developed
and powerful that Bertram, another bishop of Saxon origin, undertook
the task of restricting them, and endeavoured to regulate them by
a charter which restored to the Church its electoral but not its
governmental influence. This first communal organization, a type of
many other municipalities in France and in Germany, was inaugurated
without bloodshed. But this was not everywhere the case; at Cambrai,
for instance, the commune was only established after a century of open
warfare between the inhabitants and the bishop, their suzerain. At
Laon--that ancient feudal city where the nobility and the burgesses
engaged in all kinds of brigandage, where the bishop, who was a famous
warrior and huntsman, was in the habit of sharing with the dignitaries
of his cathedral and with the aristocracy of the town the fruit of
his exactions--the commune inaugurated itself with the blood of their
bishop, who was assassinated in the midst of a terrible insurrection.
The towns of Amiens, of Beauvais, of Noyon, of Saint-Quentin, of
Sens, of Soissons (Fig. 17), and of Vézelay, underwent nearly the
same vicissitudes that Cambrai and Laon had experienced, and finally
attained, after similar trials, a similar position. Perhaps Cambrai,
of all the French communes, was the most exacting towards the feudal
power that it was trampling under foot. “Ni l’évêque, ni l’Empereur, ne
peuvent mia asseoir ne taxe, ne tribut, et n’en peult issir la malice,
fors que pour la bonne garde et défense de la ville, et ce depuis coq
chantant jusques à la nuit.”[1] No vassal had ever claimed or obtained
more in the exercise of his feudal rights (Fig. 18).

  [Illustration: Fig. 17.--Seal of the Commune of Soissons,
  representing the Mayor of Soissons, armed at all points, in the
  midst of the Sheriffs of the Town (1228).--National Archives of
  France.]

The inauguration of the communal system had taken place without a
struggle, and almost without opposition, as a useful and necessary
reform at Metz, at Rheims, in a few midland towns, such as Bourges,
Moulins, Lyons, Périgeux, and in most of the southern cities, such
as Arles, Aigues-Mortes (Fig. 19), Marseilles, Narbonne, Cahors (Fig.
20), Carcassonne (Fig. 21), Nîmes, and Bordeaux. This was explained by
the fact that this independent action of the people had been prepared
by the system adopted by the Franks, who allowed no difference to
exist between the condition of the conquered and of the conquerors.
The rights they might enjoy and the duties they were to perform had
been equally shared amongst all the freedmen of the monarchy without
any distinction as to nationality; the Franks would have feared, had
they acted differently, that they were reserving for the sovereign the
possibility of using the oppressed nations as a weapon to overcome the
conquerors themselves, and that in this way they might be leaving a
loophole through which the monarchy might degenerate into despotism.

  [Illustration: Fig. 18.--Thomas of Savoy, Count of Flanders, and
  Joan his Wife, grant to the Town of Cambrai the Charter of Peace
  made between the Counts of Hainaut and the Chapter of Cambrai in
  1240.--Miniature from the “Chroniques de Hainaut,” Manuscript of
  the Fifteenth Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).]

Beyond the Alps, particularly in Lombardy, under the fostering
action of liberal institutions, commerce and manufactures developed
themselves, particularly at Milan, Pavia, Verona, and Florence; and in
a still higher degree, owing to their position on the sea-board, at
Venice and Genoa. In these rich and prosperous cities the seignorial
nobility and the Church reigned side by side, enjoying a nearly equal
and parallel influence, and when feudalism attempted to absorb them by
its inflexible despotism, the manufacturing and the commercial classes,
selecting as their leaders a few more prominent of the artisans and
some of the most respected of the clergy, allied themselves with the
lesser rural nobles, and, with the assistance of the latter’s vassals,
succeeded in repulsing its crushing yoke. This, however, was not
accomplished without tremendous struggles, nor without painful trials
and heavy sacrifices.

  [Illustration: Fig. 19.--Fortified Gate of the Town of
  Aigues-Mortes, which Town obtained in 1246 a Communal Charter
  (Military Architecture of the Thirteenth Century).]

In the Low Countries, which had always so highly exalted the sentiment
of local patriotism, the struggle of the villains against the nobles,
whether lay or ecclesiastic, differed but little from the struggle
of the towns in the north of France against the seigniors, but it
assumed larger proportions in accordance with the immense resources
of every kind which they had at their disposal. The feudal lord
had his drawbridge, his battlements, and his men-at-arms cased in
iron; but his rebellious vassal could boast on his side, besides the
narrow and winding streets of his stronghold and the number of his
fellow-combatants, many warlike engines and well-made weapons which he
himself had manufactured. When feudalism, in order to crush what it
then termed the populace, summoned to its banner hordes of adventurers
recruited from all parts of the world, it was encountered by
undisciplined levies of armed mechanics and artisans, who issued forth
from Ghent, from Bruges, and from Liége, and not unfrequently returned
victorious.

  [Illustration: Fig. 20.--Fortified Bridge, from Valentré to
  Cahors (1308).]

  [Illustration: Fig. 21.--Plan of the Fortified City of
  Carcassonne (Thirteenth Century).]

Beyond the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Rhine, feudalism flourished.
Lofty fortresses, surrounded with a triple moat, everywhere cast
their shadows athwart the land, though the towns enjoyed a full share
of municipal liberty, and were not unfrequently the disinterested
spectators of the terrible struggles that the feudal nobility carried
on between themselves. Nowhere did feudalism display more arrogance or
more barbarity than in Germany, which resembled some vast camp to which
the nobles flocked to meet face to face in desperate combat.

When it came to pass that the industrial and populous towns of Germany
cried out for municipal liberties similar to those enjoyed by the
towns of France, Italy, and the Low Countries, the emperor hastened to
grant and confirm their desires. He did more, he gave them the right
of _immediate appeal_ against the princes of the empire--that
is to say, any towns situated in the territory of any prince were
responsible, not to the latter, but directly and immediately to the
emperor himself, who thus laid for himself the foundations of strong
natural supports in the very heart of the larger fiefs. The towns of
Germany, already rich and flourishing, increased their commerce and
their wealth, thanks to the new position they thus acquired.

The Emperor Henry V. greatly assisted this pacific revolution by
granting privileges to the lower class of citizens and to the artisans,
who up to that time had, according to the spirit of the Roman law,
lived apart from the freedmen and remained at the lowest degree of the
social scale. He relieved them, in particular, from the bondage of a
custom by virtue of which the seignior at their deaths became entitled
to all their personal property, or, at least, enjoyed the power of
claiming everything worth having which they had left behind them.

In many towns Henry V. deprived the bishop of his temporal authority,
and formed the burgesses into companies or guilds according to the
nature of their manual occupation, a custom that was immediately
imitated and adopted in other commercial countries. The bourgeoisie,
organized in this manner into distinct groups, soon elected councils
among themselves, the members of which, under the rule of _senators_,
_prud’hommes_, _bonshommes_, _echevins_, and _jurymen_, began by
assisting the representative of the imperial authority, whether
duke, count, judge, or bishop, and ended by exercising a special and
independent authority of their own, not over the vassals, but over
citizens and commoners.

It will be asked, what then was the commune which had established
itself with more or less effort and sacrifice in the principal parts of
Europe? and further, as the commune had succeeded in one way or another
in establishing itself, what privileges or immunities remained to the
feudal lord, whether clerical or lay? Guilbert de Nogent, the open
adversary of communal institutions, will perhaps give the best answer
to these inquiries: “Those who pay taxes now pay only once a year the
rent they owe to their seignior. If they commit some misdemeanour they
have at the most to pay a fine, the amount of which is legally fixed;
as for the moneys that were wont to be levied from the serfs, they are
now quite exempt from them.” Guilbert de Nogent might have indicated
other victories obtained by the bourgeois, victories that were still
more important in their moral influence, and which sooner or later were
destined to change the face of society. As for the more intelligent
seigniors who better understood their own personal interest, as well
as the logical results of a paternal administration, they attempted
to favour the instinctive movement of the rural populations, who,
to shield themselves from the tyranny, the exactions, and the bad
treatment of their feudal masters, were in the habit of seeking shelter
and protection from some lord more humane or more politic than the
rest, and who used, on the faith of a communal charter, to settle
beside the ramparts of some seignorial manor (Fig. 22), around some
loopholed church, or in the shade of some fortified monastery.

  [Illustration: Fig. 22.--Seal of the Lord of Corbeil
  (1196).--National Archives of France.]

The seignior in these cases was the gainer of so many able-bodied men,
either artisans or agriculturists, but soldiers in case of need; and he
was the gainer, moreover, in matters of revenue and influence.

It can easily be understood that in those times many charters were
drawn up similar to the following, which is worth quoting as a type:
“I, Henry, Count of Troyes, make known to all present and to come,
that I have established the undermentioned rules for the inhabitants
of my new town (in the neighbourhood of Pont-sur-Seine) between the
bridges of Pugny. Every man inhabiting the said town shall pay every
year twelve deniers and a measure of oats as the price of his dwelling,
and if he desires to hold a portion of land or meadow, he must pay
four deniers yearly for every acre. The houses, vines, and fields
may be sold or alienated at the pleasure of the holder. The men who
reside in the said town shall go neither to the _ost_ (an army
in the field), nor shall they join any expedition unless I myself am
at their head. I hereby allow them, moreover, to have six aldermen to
administer the ordinary business of the town and to assist my provost
in his duties. I have decreed that no seignior, be he knight or other,
shall be allowed to withdraw from the town any of the men inhabitants
for any reason whatsoever, unless such be his own men, or unless he
owe the seignior any arrears of taxes.--Given at Provins, in the year
of the Incarnation, 1175.” This name of _Ville-neuve_, which
is so often found repeated in the charters and deeds of the Middle
Ages, as, for example, Ville-neuve-l’Etang, Ville-neuve-Saint-George,
Ville-neuve-le-Roi, Ville-neuve-lez-Avignon, &c., is evidence of what
was an ordinary event in the twelfth century, namely, the creation of
a free town, enfranchised from its birth, and subject to some small
and insignificant payments to the seignior, and whose inhabitants,
but yesterday serfs or villains, were now proprietors of portions of
the soil, which they might dispose of or bequeath, either by gift or
by testamentary disposition, under the immediate protection of their
nominal seignior.

  [Illustration: Fig. 23.--Ferrand of Portugal, Count of Flanders,
  made Prisoner at the Battle of Bouvines, and taken to Paris:
  “The Clergy and Laity singing Hymns and Songs.”--Fac-simile of
  a Miniature in the “Chroniques de Hainaut,” Manuscript of the
  Fifteenth Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).]

Some ancient towns of the royal domains of France, such as Paris,
Orleans, Meaux, Senlis, and others, which do not seem to have preserved
the least trace of Roman institutions, always excepting the company
of the _Nautes Parisiennes_, who were the true founders of the
ancient municipality of Paris, were each governed by a provost, who
was the officer and lieutenant of the king, their seignior, and they
further enjoyed certain special liberties and privileges. In 1137,
Louis VII., at the suggestion of his minister, Suger, forbade his
provost and officers to annoy the burgesses in any manner whatsoever,
and fixed the amount of their taxation himself. Ten years later,
the same sovereign abolished the right of mortmain, repressed the
abuses of the fiscal taxes, instituted a judicial system, and greatly
encouraged commerce. It was not as king, but as seignior suzerain,
that Louis VII. acted in this manner. The French, bourgeoisie was
at this time of but recent origin; it had sprung from a triumphant
villanage, and was beginning to form a new branch, from which was to
issue, a few centuries later, the third estate. Legal jurisdiction and
the right of coinage, feudal privileges of which the royal suzerain
had always been very jealous, were favours it then but seldom enjoyed.
Philip-Augustus understood better than his predecessors the interests
of the royal power, for he graciously granted seventy-eight communal
charters; he was rewarded by the effectual assistance the communal
levies afforded him at the battle of Bouvines (1214), when he was
fortunate enough to overthrow the coalition that foreign feudalism
had formed with his rebellious great vassals. He forced the latter to
return to their duty, and one of them, the Count of Flanders, remained
twelve years a prisoner in the principal tower of the Louvre (Fig. 23).
Philip-Augustus had not shrunk from granting a legal constitution to
the bourgeoisie of Paris and the principal towns, in opposition to the
feudal nobility.

The communal movement, a natural development of the legal rights
introduced by the Franks, was scarcely felt in England. Already, long
before the Norman Conquest, under the Anglo-Saxon rule, many busy
towns, wealthy and populous, such as Canterbury, London, Oxford, and
York, took a share in public affairs, a limited share, it is true,
but one sufficient for their wellbeing and prosperity. The victorious
invasion of William of Normandy, so fatal to the whole country, was
still more so to the large towns, which were compelled to behold
their own material ruin, the sequestration and confiscation of their
property, the dispersion and infeudation of their inhabitants, their
agriculturists and their farmers. Unable any longer to invoke the
protection of an easy-natured sovereign, they were forced to bow
their heads beneath the sway of strangers, lucky adventurers, bold,
exacting, despotic, and cruel men, believing in no faith and obeying
no law, the very dregs of French feudalism. King Henry I., the third
son of William the Conqueror, after many sanguinary struggles, in
which his barons were not found wanting in fealty to him, granted
them the celebrated charter called Magna Charta--usually, though,
erroneously, considered the fundamental origin of English liberties,
which, however, really dated from a prior period; at the same time
(1132) he released the burgesses of London from the lamentable state
of degradation in which they had existed since the Conquest. In the
reign of Henry II.--an administrative and judicial reformer--not in
England alone, but in those parts of Scotland and Ireland which he
had conquered (1154–1182), the inhabitants of many towns acquired the
right to purchase the freehold of the soil they occupied, and to free
themselves from several special taxes by paying a fixed sum to the
feudal lord. Thenceforward arose that haughty bourgeoisie, with which
the barons had soon to reckon, a class which John Lackland favoured
proportionately as he dreaded the continual rebellions of the feudal
seigniors. Twice was Prince Louis, the son of Philip-Augustus, summoned
by the Anglo-Norman barons to cross the channel with an army to force
the English king to fulfil the clauses of the charters he had granted
to his great vassals (1215–1216); on the other hand, the towns and
communes, grown rich and powerful, thanks to the privileges which had
been granted to them as well as to the intelligent activity of their
manufactures, forced the nobles to respect them. The latter no longer
attempted to compel assistance, but solicited it, often even humbly,
so that the communes and the landed aristocracy held an equal position
in the feudal hierarchy. The title of _noble_ and _baron_,
bestowed on the leading citizens of London and the Cinque Ports, raised
the middle-class to a higher position. Indeed, to enable it, already
powerful by its wealth and by its alliances, to become a political
body, it only needed the privilege of sending representatives to
parliament, a privilege which was granted in 1264 to the principal
towns of the kingdom.

  [Illustration: Fig. 24.--Philip III., called “the Bold,” in Royal
  Costume.--From a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Fourteenth
  Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).]

In France, about the same period, the industrial and trading
bourgeoisie had seats in the privy council of St. Louis, and, advancing
in letters and science, it gradually obtained possession of all the
chairs at the university. As early as the reign of Philip the Bold
(Fig. 24), it occupied all the higher positions in the judicature, and
hence it assumed a place in the great bailiwicks and parliaments, from
which the feudal nobility did not condescend to oust it, and which,
after a time, enabled it to offer a successful resistance to the abuse
of power on the part of this same nobility, whose authority steadily
diminished. Admitted by Philippe-le-Bel to the general assemblies of
the nation and to the sessions of the states-general, the bourgeoisie
became one of the states, an order of the kingdom, that is, the
_tiers-état_. It absorbed the offices pertaining to the general
administration and to finance, it furnished the lower orders of the
clergy with most of their distinguished representatives, and the
municipalities with the most gifted of their magistrates; it acquired
the right of purchasing offices which carried nobility with them, of
possessing seignorial domains with high and petty justice, and thus
it forced its way like ivy into the crevices of the feudal edifice,
which stone by stone crumbled to pieces. Philippe-le-Bel, surnamed the
_King of the Lawyers_--who helped him in a material degree to
carry out his designs--showed himself, as a natural consequence, the
King of the Commons (_tiers-état_), and the secret enemy of the
Church and the nobility. The latter, valiant and chivalrous, but devoid
of forethought, rushing headlong into every kind of adventure, and
caring only for deeds of daring and warlike achievements, regardless of
their material interests, gradually allowed themselves to be divested
of a considerable part of their domains by the bourgeoisie, who lent
them money upon mortgage, and by the _voués_ or _procureurs_,
who ruined them. The decadence of their wealth dated from the First
Crusade, when they encumbered their estates to pay the expenses of
distant expeditions, which they undertook almost entirely at their own
cost; and when they wished to recover possession of the properties
which they had handed over to some third party, they found them loaded
with fresh debts, which had been contracted during their absence,
and producing but nominal revenues for want of hands to cultivate
the soil. They then were obliged to sell a portion of the property,
and that at a great loss. The only resource remaining was the
concession of their feudal privileges, and in this way the nobility
lost the right of coining money and of exercising justice, while the
sovereigns--Philippe-le-Bel in particular--seconded by the bourgeoisie,
increased their absolute power.

The massacre of more than six thousand chevaliers at Courtray (1302),
by the Flemish militia (Fig. 25), was a heavy blow to the pride of
the generous but reckless nobility of France. It was humiliating to
these lords to find that the villains knew how to wield the arms
which they had been in the habit of making for others; they saw that
they possessed the courage and skill needed to win battles, and that
henceforward they must be reckoned upon as a force able to take the
field as well as formidable when engaged in street riots.

  [Illustration: Fig. 25.--Flemish Warrior in the Uniform of the
  Van Artevelde Militia: Stone Statue formerly in one of the niches
  in the Belfry at Ghent, now in the Ruins of St. Bavon of Ghent
  (Fourteenth Century).]

In Germany, the fall of the Hohenstaufen family, formerly Dukes of
Swabia and Franconia, favoured the enfranchisement of towns; all the
cities in these two principalities, hitherto subject to the mediatised
lords, reverted to the emperor, who, without any real power over them,
left them free to establish the franchise and immunities of a republic.
In order to increase their populations, they followed the example of
the sovereigns and feudal lords of France and Lombardy in regard to
the formation of _new towns_, establishing around their walls,
as feudalism had done outside its donjons, fields of refuge. These
were occupied by a host of strangers, who received the designation
of _Pfahlbürger_--citizens of the palisades, or faubourgians,
originally sheltered and protected by a wooden barrier. These receded
in proportion as the number of inhabitants increased, and according
as their trade developed. Many serfs deserted the neighbouring fiefs
to seek in these free towns the independence, position, success, and
all the advantages which they could not enjoy under the feudal régime.
Their lords demanded their extradition by virtue of their feudal
rights, accompanying the demand with threats, which were sometimes
effectual; but the free towns, not less interested in keeping the
fugitive than the latter was in remaining with them, endeavoured to
gain time and to favour his retreat until after the expiration of three
hundred and sixty-five days, when the right of the lord to his liegeman
or vassal ceased.

The imperial towns--which, from the twelfth to the fourteenth century,
after having freed themselves from the fetters of feudalism, had risen
to such a height of independence that the emperor himself had but a
nominal supremacy over them--were Ratisbon, in Bavaria; Augsburg and
Ulm, in Swabia; Nuremberg, Spiers, Worms, and Frankfort-on-the-Main,
in Franconia; Magdeburg, in Saxony; Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck, in the
Hanseatic League; Aix-la-Chapelle, Bonn, Cologne, Coblentz, Mayence,
Strasburg, and Metz, in the Rhenish and Lotharingian provinces.
These towns, essentially industrial and commercial, in which the
middle-classes were for the most part supreme, formed vast emporiums,
teeming with the products of the north, the south, and the east. They
were looked upon as the store-houses and arsenals of Europe. Feudalism,
unable to produce anything for itself, was always replenishing from
these depôts the resources necessary for equipping and revictualling
its armies. From them came the arms and the engines of warfare, as
well as the special workmen, the cross-bowmen, the carpenters, the
founders, and the artillerymen, who composed the _personnel_
of the artillery at this period. If the free towns had arrived at a
common understanding, and formed a pacific league between themselves,
they would have presented a serious obstacle to the struggles of
the suzerain lords; but their distance from each other, especially
those in the centre of Germany, prevented them from coming to such
an arrangement. Nor could they, as in England, form an alliance with
the feudal nobility, nor, as in France, make common cause with the
suzerain. As the emperor left them to act independently, they were
obliged to organize their own defence, to contract alliances with some
powerful neighbour, and weaken, by dividing them, those enemies whom
they deemed stronger than themselves. Thus these free towns never
constituted a homogeneous body; they were isolated and spread over
a vast extent of territory, being only brought together by feelings
of interest and sympathy, but without any mutual tie or political
cohesion. The lord with whom they were at war to-day, would enter
their service and pay the next, with the title of _soldarien_;
and at times a single town would have as many as two or three hundred
of these allies, who were always followed by a swarm of marauders, and
who spread desolation throughout the land. The lords who were without
fortune, who represented the petty feudalism of the country districts,
finding in the service of these towns a means for keeping up their
state and paying their followers, passed from one to the other, and
only enlisted under the standard of a sovereign prince for want of
better employment, for the latter did not as a rule pay so well as
these free towns.

From the eleventh to the fourteenth century, the position of the
bishop, in point of political influence, did not improve in these free
or republican towns, either in England, France, or Germany. Suzerain
lord by moral authority, he was only so to a very limited degree
(Fig. 26) in respect to his temporal power. He only exercised justice
over his vassals, or at most over the members of the secular and
inferior clergy, for the canons, the incumbents, and even the deacons,
enjoying as they did special immunities, would have appealed, in the
event of a dispute or of censure, to their metropolitan archbishop,
or even to Rome. It is true that the lay depositaries of municipal
authority did not, on their side, take any judicial steps against
the ecclesiastics, except in case of conspiracy against the State,
which alone rendered them answerable to secular justice. Outside the
subordinates of the bishop and the chapter, the episcopal court or
tribunal took cognizance of the crimes, the offences, and misdemeanours
against religion of which any citizen might be guilty, and also of
the heresies, blasphemies, breaking of images, glaring infractions of
the commandments of God and of the Church, insults and assaults of
the priests, &c. And even in these cases, where the delinquent could
plead nobility, and especially when he belonged to the higher classes
of feudalism, the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical tribunals could
not reach him. As the nobility could always claim to be judged by
their peers, there was rarely any infraction of this feudal principle,
and then only where some diocesan bishop or metropolitan was powerful
enough to substitute his own will for the customary right.

  [Illustration: Fig. 26.--Seal of John, Bishop of Puy and Count of
  Velay (1305), holding in his right hand a naked sword as a token
  of secular jurisdiction.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 27.--The Tree of Battles: Allegorical Figures
  representing the discord which exists between the various classes
  of society.--Reproduced from a Miniature of “The Tree of Battles”
  of Honoré Bouet, Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Burgundian
  Library, Brussels).]

In nearly all the episcopal towns, the judgment of the prelate or
of his delegates was delivered from the square in front of the
cathedral, or from the doorway of some exterior and adjacent chapel.
This practice, maintained during the first centuries of the Church’s
existence, ceased when another form of justice, namely, civil justice,
took its place. In order to avoid the conflicts which must have ensued,
and to furnish no pretext for popular disturbance, the ecclesiastical
justice took refuge in some special place, generally called the
_Cour l’éresque_, till at last the diocesan power, deprived of
its temporal prerogatives within the boundary of the free towns, found
itself obliged to transfer somewhere else the seat of its jurisdiction
and of those feudal rights which it still retained. The mint of the
prelate was established there; but so wide was the disagreement between
the ecclesiastical and the civil authorities, and so sustained the
struggle between the feudal and the middle-class interests, that it
often happened that the episcopal money was not accepted as current
coin, even in the town where the bishop was spiritually supreme, nor in
the territory annexed to the free town and enjoying equal prerogatives.

In Germany and in Italy the emperor, in France and England the king,
as the highest representatives of feudalism, possessed in every large
city--notably in the cities termed imperial or royal--an official
delegate, called burgrave, count, or viscount, who, originally at the
head of the army, the magistracy, and the finances, gradually lost his
prerogatives till, in the thirteenth century, he was scarcely more
than a mere dignitary, without either power or credit. Many bishops,
authorised by the lay sovereign, took the title of _count_,
without, however, adding in any material degree to their influence.
Besides, whatever may have been the nature and extent of the functions
of a count, it does not appear that the free towns paid any more heed
to them than to the pre-eminence of the bishop in all that appertained
to the administration and government of the commune. In many places,
especially in Italy and upon the banks of the Moselle and the Rhine,
the bourgeoisie possessed councils invested both with the judicial and
executive power, also a senate and a parliament, which was summoned by
the ringing of a bell, and to which the lords inhabiting the adjacent
castles were admitted, but only as ordinary citizens; without, however,
losing any of their domainial privileges.

Though feudalism possessed nearly the same generic type in all European
countries, it presented here and there varying shades of nationality,
due to the dissimilarity of race, to the habits of the people, to the
different modes in which it had been introduced, and to the diverse
phases of its struggle and growth.

  [Illustration: Fig. 28.--Seal of John, Duke of Burgundy, Count
  of Nevers and Baron of Donzy, surnamed _Jean sans Peur_
  (1371–1419).--National Archives of Paris.]

The illustrious house of Franconia, alarmed at the incessant progress
of high German feudalism, and anxious to check it, created, in
the midst of the duchies by which it was threatened, a number of
_immediate_ lordships, owing fealty only to the emperor, and
having an hereditary right over the _fiefs of chivalry_. This step
met with an obstinate resistance from the great vassals who possessed
this hereditary right, which the elected monarch did not enjoy of
himself. On the other hand, the palatine lords, agents of the emperor,
and empowered to represent him in the great fiefs or in his domains,
and the burgraves of the towns, impatient to free themselves from the
imperial suzerainty, displayed at the same time the insubordination
which the leudes had practised in the Carlovingian epoch, and
endeavoured to establish for themselves an independence transmissible
to their heirs. While this movement was going on, the Pope was lowering
the status of the empire; Innocent II. compelled the Emperor Lothair
II. to receive in fee from him Tuscany, the Duchy of Spoleta, the
Marches of Ancona, Bologna, Parma, Placenza, &c., forming part of the
legacy bequeathed to the Holy See by the Countess Matilda. From this
flagrant humiliation, submitted to by Conrad of Hohenstaufen, the
successor of Lothair, and haughtily rejected by Henry the Haughty when
he refused to render feudal homage to the Pope, arose the celebrated
quarrel of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, which, from the banks of
the Rhine, spread beyond the Alps, and implanted itself in the very
heart of Italy. Henry the Haughty, chief of the Guelphs, independent
and royal, was proscribed and stripped of his duchies, while Conrad,
chief of the Ghibellines, inaugurated the brilliant dynasty of the
Hohenstaufens. Thirty years of bitter warfare, during which the
alliance of the papacy with the national party was cemented, seconded
by the efforts of petty feudalism, led up to the treaty of Constance,
which brought to a definite close the struggle of the feudal empire
against the popular independence of the cities of Italy. The Pope had
recovered the freeholds left him by the Countess Matilda; the towns
preserved their regal prerogatives, entire liberty to raise armies,
to surround themselves with walls (Fig. 29), to exercise criminal and
civil jurisdiction, and to form confederations with other towns, &c.
The emperor was left with no other privileges than those of confirming,
through his ambassadors, the consular elections, and of appointing
in each town a judge of appeal in his name. It was in vain that the
Emperor Henry VI. endeavoured to re-establish high feudalism; he died
in the attempt (1199), and Innocent III., who considered himself to be
the natural defender of all the rights and the supreme judge in all the
monarchies in Europe, resisted every effort made by Henry VI. Several
Crusades, moreover, which occurred at about this period, created a
modification in the warlike sentiments of the feudal nobility, until,
thanks to the policy of the illustrious pontiffs who had occupied the
chair of St. Peter, and to the efforts of the Italian free towns,
backed up by the petty feudal nobility, the independence of Italy rose
triumphant from the tomb which opened for the Emperor Frederick II. on
December 13th, 1250.

In England, John Lackland had, by the Magna Charta of 1215–1216,
promised the clergy to respect the liberties of the Church, and notably
the freedom of election; to the feudal lords he had promised to observe
the feudal conditions of release, of ward, and of marriage; to the
bourgeois, that no new tax should be levied without the consent of the
common council; and to all his subjects he accorded the _habeas
corpus_--that is to say, the liberty of the person, with trial by
jury, by constituting the court of common pleas at a certain fixed
place. A second charter, called the _Forest Charter_, mitigated
the extreme severity of the penalties for infraction of the laws
appertaining to the chase, and guaranteed the whole of the liberties
which had been extracted from him by creating a tribunal of twenty-five
barons, entrusted with the function of seeing that this charter
was carried out, and, further, of keeping watch over the action of
the crown. This was submitting the Government to a regular course
of discipline. Just as the feudal nobility had been kept under and
oppressed by the sovereign power, so was the latter now hedged in,
thwarted, and hampered in its despotic tendencies.

  [Illustration: Fig. 29.--The fortified Bridge of Lamentano,
  near Rome, theatre of the wars between the Guelphs and the
  Ghibellines, in the Twelfth Century.]

St. Louis, following in the footsteps of Philip Augustus, laboured
to suppress the abuses of the feudal régime; he compelled his barons
to choose between the fiefs which they held from him and those which
they had received from the kings of England; he rooted out the old
feudal stocks, created a new feudalism, not less valiant but more moral
than the old, and never lost sight of the formidable opposition which
the old nobility had ventured to set up against the Queen-Regent,
Blanche of Castile, when it declared that the young King Louis should
not be consecrated until the suzerain aristocracy was restored to
the plenitude of its privileges. After Louis IX., French feudalism,
transformed by the saint-king, was neither less haughty, less trivial,
nor less insolent than before, but it was more favourable to the
crown and less hostile to the Church. It formed a brilliant array of
chivalry, full of enthusiasm and impetuosity, commencing a battle
well, always winning it at the very beginning of the action, but
losing it afterwards for want of being supported by a national body
of infantry, whose help it despised; it made up a body of cavalry
admirably adapted for tournaments and feats of arms, but incapable
of carrying on a regular warfare, or even of ensuring success in a
great battle. The victories of Mons-en-Puelle, under Philip IV., and
of Cassel, under Philip of Valois (1328), increased to the utmost
the blind confidence of the French nobility, and brought about, by
absolutely identical means, the disasters of Crecy, Poitiers, and
Agincourt (1346, 1356, 1415).

From the events which took place during the space of a century, from
the accession to the imperial throne of the Emperor Louis V. (1313) to
the Peace of Brétigny (1360), it was made manifest that the destinies
of the feudal world rested henceforth upon France and England, those
two rival powers, both of which were acquisitive and inflexible; that
the Emperor and the Pope occupied but the second place in this latest
evolution of feudalism; that Rome, compelled to bend towards France,
gave the latter a considerable preponderance, and that the force of
equilibrium must inevitably bring together the King of England and the
Emperor of Germany. The French royalty, despite the vicissitudes caused
by an incessant struggle against the English, despite the ravages of
the plague, which had depopulated two-thirds of the kingdom, despite
its financial burdens and the precarious position of the monarchy,
continued its work of assimilation and feudal incorporation; the
suzerainty attaching to the great fiefs gradually fell under the
jurisdiction of the sovereign, while, upon the right bank of the Rhine,
the great barons remained almost as omnipotent as ever they had been.

There existed in Germany at that time two kinds of leagues between
the nobility, the one offensive and the other defensive; that of the
_Gauerbinate_ or _Gauerbschaften_, by virtue of which the
petty nobility formed family pacts for transmitting their fiefs by
indirect line when the direct line should fail, and for reconstructing
or repairing their castles out of a common fund; and that of the
_Teutonic Hanse_, the league of the prince-archbishops and
electors with sixty towns upon the Rhine. Rodolph of Hapsburg (Fig.
30), a monarch as resolute as he was able, put a stop to proceedings
which were full of danger to the imperial authority, compelled his
vassals to do him homage, and razed to the ground seventy fortresses
whose feudal brigandage had scattered desolation and ruin; but, after
his death, the usurpation of the suzerain lords began afresh, and the
_Bulle d’Or_, which was the basis of public right in Germany,
confirmed the downfall of the imperial suzerainty (1378).

  [Illustration: Fig. 30.--Equestrian Stone Statue of Rodolph of
  Hapsburg, Emperor of Germany, by Erwin de Steinbach, placed above
  the Grand Portal of Strasburg Cathedral (Thirteenth Century).]

  [Illustration: Fig. 31.--Maximilian of Austria, with Mary of
  Burgundy, his wife, only daughter of Charles the Bold, and
  their young son Philip, afterwards King of Castile.--“Abridged
  Chronicles of Burgundy,” Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in
  the Library of M. Ambroise-Firmin Didot.]

In France, on the other hand, as each convocation of the States-General
was attended with the creation or levying of some new tax, the third
estate attempted to exact all the more from royalty in proportion as
it gratified the latter’s pecuniary demands, claiming to have a voice
in the question of peace or war, to direct the financial affairs of
the kingdom, to be convoked every year, and to share, with the two
other orders, the weight of the charges the profit of which ought to be
shared by all. The feudal nobility resisted the exorbitant pretensions
of the third estate, but when they saw this class forming a secret
alliance with the clergy, and setting on foot a formidable league,
the password of which was the destruction of the castles and the
annihilation of the nobles, they hesitated, and did nothing until the
horrible excesses committed by the league in the country districts
had given the feudal reaction a character of legality. In 1383, after
the battle of Rosebecque, which inflicted a heavy blow upon the
communal cause in Flanders and in France, it seemed as if the power of
suzerainty was about to revive once more. Froissart, in his Chronicles,
rejoiced at this fact, because he believed that social order was
threatened with utter ruin (see his Chronicles, year 1383); but French
chivalry succumbed in its turn at Agincourt beneath the onslaught of
the English archers. This was the final condemnation of feudal armies,
as well as of the system which these armies represented, and which
they had failed in sustaining. French feudalism had already ceased to
be anything more than a storehouse of traditions which were still held
in respect, and of old customs which had fallen into disuse among the
ancient nobility.

In England, Scotland, and Ireland, high feudalism was rapidly in course
of decay, before Henry VIII. dealt it its death-blow; in Germany it
struggled for existence during the reign of Maximilian (Fig. 31); in
France it was crushed by Louis XI. with the help of the third estate.
Beyond the Alps, in Italy, its existence was prolonged for a short
period, partly under a clerical disguise, partly by the hired help of
the _condottieri_, and in some places by the support of the urban
democracy, that is the industrial and trading part of the population.
Everywhere, however, it disappeared with the Middle Ages, of which,
both in its acts and in its first principles, it bore the ineffaceable
imprint (Fig. 32).

  [Illustration: Fig. 32.--Doorways of the Old Castle of Loches, in
  Touraine, a favourite Manor of Louis XI. (Fifteenth Century).]




                            WAR AND ARMIES.

   The Invasions of the Barbarians.--Attila.--Theodoric
   seizes Italy.--Organization of Military Fiefs.--Defences
   of Towns.--Totila and his Tactics.--The Military
   Genius of Charlemagne.--Military Vassalage.--Communal
   Militia.--Earliest Standing Armies.--Loss of Technical
   Tradition.--The Condottieri.--The Gendarmerie.--The
   _Lances Fournies_.--Weakening of Feudal Military
   Obligations.--The French Army in the Time of Louis
   XI. and his Successors.--Absence of Administrative
   Arrangement.--Reforms.--Mercenary Troops.--Siege Operations and
   Engines.


The art of war had attained its highest degree of perfection among
the Romans, when the successive invasions of the barbarians began to
burst like an overflowing river over the richest of the Roman colonies.
These barbarians, most of whom were natives of the Caucasian mountains,
were the Iberians, who never halted till they had reached Spain; the
Celts or Cimbrians, who installed themselves among the Gauls; and the
Sarmatians and the Scythians, who inhabited the vast forests of Germany
before the great wars of Julius Cæsar (Fig. 33). Suddenly, in the
fourth century of the Christian era, a movement which commenced in the
centre of Asia caused an irruption of a race hitherto unknown upon the
Caucasian races. These were the Huns, before whom the terrified Goths
retreated, but who at first made but a brief apparition in Europe;
for if Rome at that time was wanting in seasoned legions, she could
rely, at least in the provinces of her empire, upon many numerous and
powerful auxiliaries who were accustomed to fight under her standard
(Fig. 34), some for the sake of pay, others to defend their own hearths.

  [Illustration: Fig. 33.--War Trophy and Barbarian
  Prisoners.--From Sculptures on the Triumphal Arch of Orange
  (Second Century).]

In 451, in the reign of the Emperor Valentinian III., who had bribed
the barbarians instead of repulsing them with the sword, Attila, the
King of the Huns, bore down upon Europe at the head of seven hundred
thousand fighting men of various races. In less than three months he
had overrun and laid waste Moravia, Bohemia, Hesse, and Wurtemburg,
crossed the Rhine below Strasburg, the Moselle at Trèves and at Metz,
the Meuse at Tongres, the Scheldt at Tournay; and after two sanguinary
raids into Burgundy and the country around Orleans, pitched his tents
in the plains of Champagne. The tactics of Attila were to avoid pitched
battles, to give a wide berth to the fortresses, contenting himself
with sacking and plundering their outskirts. He laid waste the open
country, burnt villages, put their inoffensive inhabitants to the
sword, and making it his chief object to divide and isolate the Roman
legions, finally crushed them by the weight of numbers.

  [Illustration: Fig. 34.--German and Gallic Auxiliaries, one
  wearing Trousers (_Braccæ_), and the other a Tunic.--From a
  Roman Monument of the Second Century.]

The whole West was stirred up at the tidings of this terrible invasion.
Ætius, the Roman leader among the Gauls, had called to his aid the
confederates of Amorica, the Frank-Salians, whose leader was Merovius,
the Burgundians, the Saxons, and the southern Visigoths, whose king
was Theodoric. This numerous army, composed of excellent troops under
the orders of Ætius, marched to meet the barbarians, and encountered
them in the neighbourhood of Châlons-sur-Marne. The battle lasted three
days, and the defeat of the Huns was complete.

The ferocious Attila, who had called himself the Scourge of God, and
who had run his course like some fatal meteor, leaving in his track
nothing but conflagrations and ruins, expired in the midst of an
orgie in 455. A truceless, unceasing war was still being waged all
over Europe, a sanguinary and implacable war of race and of party.
Political chaos, a chaos that Christianity alone was destined to
regenerate, was at its height in the old world, when, towards the close
of the sixth century, Theodoric, King of the Eastern Goths, who had
protected Byzantium when threatened by the Bulgarians, and who had
remained in the pay of the Emperor Zeno, determined to find occupation
for his warlike and restless subjects by leading them against Odoacer,
the sovereign of the Herulians, who at that time united under his sway
Sicily and the Italian peninsula, but whose subjects were at best but
a ferocious and turbulent mob. The young King of the Goths (he was
only thirty-four years of age) started from the depths of Mœsia (now
Servia), with the consent of the chief of the empire, at the head
of an entire warlike population, to whom he promised the conquest
of Italy. He easily overcame the King of the Herulians; and, having
conquered Italy, he posted his soldiers in the various provinces of
the peninsula, in such a manner that their pay and their rations might
continue to be supplied to them as regularly in peace as in war.

The system of government and administration established by Theodoric
had the advantage of distributing two hundred thousand excellent troops
in the midst of a population which, glad to find itself uncalled
upon for military service, and but little taxed, allowed the work of
the conquest to be consolidated. The _millénaires_ (soldiers of
a battalion numbering a thousand men) occupied with their families
distinct portions of territory, and were bound to hold themselves
under arms, and ready to march, whenever the defence of the country
required it (Fig. 35). Theodoric had already recognised the utility
of urban garrisons. The flower of the country’s youth, organized in
a military manner, flocked to the gymnasium of Ravenna, and the king
himself presided over their exercises. His levies, as regards their
discipline, their instruction, and their equipment, resembled the
ancient legions of Rome. The iron cap, the shield, the broadsword, and
the arrow of the Goths had been replaced by the spear, the javelin,
the helmet, and the cuirass of the Romans. The old soldiers received
from the royal treasury for their services as instructors a particular
grant, which was annually paid to them till they retired altogether
from the profession of arms. When the troops were about to take the
field, the intendants, under the orders of the counts, superintended
the commissariat and the gathering and the march of the different army
corps. The provincial officers had to distribute arms, food, and hay
on the different points of the road that the troops were expected to
follow, and the inhabitants had to provide lodgings--this was the only
military service expected of them, but none could escape it.

  [Illustration: Fig. 35.--Military Costume from the Sixth to the
  Tenth Centuries.--From a Miniature in the “Dialogues de Saint
  Grégoire,” Manuscript of the Eleventh Century (National Library
  of Paris).]

The towns were at this time almost always fortified, and entrenched
camps covered nearly the whole of Italy. The castles in the rural
districts, constructed to protect the frontiers, were usually full of
troops, whose support was part of the duty of the pretorial prefect,
and whose insubordination often necessitated severe measures of
repression. “Keep up a spirit of military discipline; it is often
difficult to enforce it under civil rule,” said Theodoric to Servatus,
one of his generals.

If it is a matter of surprise to meet with such a right moral feeling
in the sovereign of reputed barbarians, barbarians half civilised,
however, by their contact with the Latin race, it is not the less so
to find, in the wars which occurred in the years 507, 508, and 509,
other barbarian kings, namely, Alaric, Clovis, Gondebaud, and Thierry,
make use of and apply with skill the rules of Greco-Roman strategy,
either in executing long military manœuvres, or in displaying all the
strategic science that sieges then required, in attacking or defending
the fortified towns of Avignon, of Carcassonne, and of Arles.

  [Illustration: Fig. 36.--St. Benedict reproaches Totila with
  having deceived him, and predicts his death.--Fresco in the
  Church of San Miniato, Florence, painted by Spinelli of Arezzo
  (Thirteenth Century).]

  [Illustration: Fig. 37.--Moorish Arms from the Eleventh to the
  Fourteenth Century: Armlet.--From the Armeria Real, Madrid.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 38.--Moorish Arms: Daggers.--Armeria Real,
  Madrid.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 39.--Moorish Arms: Trident.--Armeria Real,
  Madrid.]

In proportion as the preponderance of the Goths (Fig. 36), of the
Ostrogoths, and of the Visigoths diminished in Europe, that of the
Franks and of the Lombards increased. The latter were the first to
institute in Italy the feudal system, founded on the possession of
conquered territory. The conquerors established their camp in the
midst of the vanquished country, seized half the land, reduced into
servitude a portion of the colons, and imposed heavy taxes on those
whom they had not despoiled. The king having at first distributed the
great fiefs among his principal officers, these great vassals then made
a subdivision of the land granted them by their suzerains in favour of
their own men-at-arms and satellites, and these latter, in their turn,
ceded a portion of their lands to the common soldiers. The obligation
of personal service, the hierarchic subordination of vassalage, were
the necessary consequence of feudal institutions.

  [Illustration: Fig. 40.--Dagger with Moorish Blade and Flemish
  Handle (Fourteenth Century).--Collection of M. Onghena, Ghent.]

In all probability the establishment of the _arrière-ban_, or
the _ban-fieffe_, dates from the sixth century. It was a call to
arms of the vassals that the suzerain alone had a right to command. A
century later, feudalism, which was beginning to establish itself in
Gaul as in Italy, as a consequence of the successful invasion of the
Franks, was nearly stamped out by the Mahometan invasion of the Spanish
Moors, who had been led by their chief, Abderamus, as far as the banks
of the Loire, where they were stopped by Charles Martel, who routed
them with great slaughter.

After the brilliant victory of Poitiers (732), where the repulse of
Arab civilisation left the field open to the defenders of the Christian
faith, and to the originators of the feudal régime, the victorious
army underwent a sudden change. The Frankish knights adopted as an
inheritance of conquest the rich Saracen armour (Figs. 37, 38, 39,
40); the feudal troopers donned a coat of mail, and, henceforward, a
full suit of armour became a necessary accessory to a warrior of high
rank. The bow, which had long been thrown aside, was once more taken
into favour, and became the special arm of the footmen. But we have
exhaustively treated of the armament and equipment of the soldiery of
the period (see the chapter on Armoury in “Art in the Middle Ages”),
and we can only here deal with military tactics and organization; in a
word, with the theoretical part of the art of war.

The reign of Charlemagne, which was one long series of expeditions and
conquests, was naturally favourable to the progress and development of
this art. The Emperor of the Franks, like a man of genius, understood
how to profit by the inventions and creations of his predecessors.
To the warlike traditions of Greece and Rome he added, step by step,
the improvements that were rendered necessary by the nature of the
enemies with whom he had to contend, namely, the Lombards, the Saxons,
&c. He kept up the feudal service of the _ban_; he established
permanent orders of militia, composed of his own serfs and vassals;
but, as soon as he undertook a distant expedition, his auxiliaries,
ten times as numerous as his vassals, rendered his army rather a
German than a French one. He caused a number of fortresses to be
constructed everywhere throughout his vast empire, but he never allowed
his subjects to build any on their own account. Yet he never seems
to have attached any importance, as a protection to his territory,
to the larger enclosed towns, in which he might have held in reserve
considerable depôts of troops. He himself usually resided in rural
residences and in open and unprotected villages, barely guarded by a
few military pickets. At the slightest signal, it is true, a whole
army of _fidèles_ and servitors would have arisen as one man to
defend him; but under no circumstances would he have consented to
await his enemy under the shelter of fortifications; he was always the
true primeval German, seeking for his field of battle the open plain
rather than the hillside, preferring cavalry to infantry, and a direct
struggle, a hand-to-hand fight, to encounters at a distance, waged
and won by the missiles of the slinger and the shafts of the bowmen.
His principal victories were gained in the open country, where he was
enabled to deploy his masses of mailed horsemen; he never willingly
sat down before a stronghold, a circumstance which shows that he was
aware of his want of skill in the conduct of a siege; and he was never
fortunate in mountain warfare, as was evidenced in the disastrous day
of Roncevaux (778), which cast a shadow over the last years of his life.

Thirty years after the death of the great emperor, the treaty of
Mersen (847) freed the great vassals from the obligation of answering
the summonses of the sovereign, and of rushing to arms at his appeal,
unless for the purpose of defending the State, and substituted the
practice of furnishing armed contingents, whose services were to
be rendered for a fixed period, settled beforehand. Infeudation--a
kind of political and pecuniary contract, in virtue of which a fief
was subdivided into several smaller ones--perpetuated the feudal
_régime_, each man becoming _the man_ of another man, bound
to place himself at his disposal in time of war, and to be ready to
start on any expedition at his command, and according to the wishes of
his immediate seignior.

  [Illustration: Fig. 41.--Bishop Eudes, holding his baton of
  office, encouraging the young soldiers of the Duke of Normandy
  at the Battle of Hastings.--Military Costumes of the Eleventh
  Century, from the Bayeux Tapestry.]

During the tenth century this régime grew stronger and stronger. The
oath of infeudation, or the act of homage, remained a sacred tie
between the seignior and the vassal. This homage involved the rendering
of numerous feudal services, such as those of the _ban_, and of
the _arrière-ban_, those rendered by the servitors of different
ranks, known as bachelors, clients, esquires, bannerets, men-at-arms,
barons, &c., names already ancient, but whose rank and place in battle
were only determined on the day when they were all grouped and posted,
each under his special banner or _gonfanon_, a distinction that
implied a separate kind of equipment for each.

Thus the vassals were in the power of the seignior, who, having the
right to dispose of their military services, enjoyed the right of
_reize_--a right that gave him the power of assembling and leading
to battle a certain number of feudal groups. “Obey my summons, or I
will burn you!”[2] were the words of the seignior in the _ban_
published by the crier, and, at the second summons, the sound of the
trumpet rang out in the cross roads, in the streets, and in the country
places, calling the men to arms. To fail to answer the call of the
_ban_ was to commit a crime of the worst character.

  [Illustration: Fig. 42.--After the Battle of Hastings (14th
  October, 1066), the relatives of the vanquished came to carry
  away their dead. The body of the Saxon King, Harold, is taken
  to Waltham by the monks of that monastery. In the background
  is seen Battle Abbey, founded by Duke William on the site of
  the battle.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the “Chroniques
  de Normandie.” Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the
  possession of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.]

In the great expedition of William, Duke of Normandy, against the
Anglo-Saxons (1066), he had no other auxiliaries than his Norman
vassals and subjects. He conquered Harold and took possession of
England with a numerous and trained army, furnished with terrible
warlike machines and engines (Figs. 41 and 42). The Norman Conquest
was, to a certain extent, a prelude to the Crusades, for those
raids across the seas, repeated from time to time for more than two
centuries, bore no resemblance to the barbarian invasions, either
Saracen or Norman, which had been previously recorded in history.
New measures, inspired by the circumstances of the times, were the
consequence of the general crumbling to pieces of all the Eastern
nations; among these may be mentioned the establishment of the communal
militia, which set out for a campaign accompanied by its spiritual
pastors, and received the last offices of religion at their hands
on the field of battle; the regular pay allowed to those who were
destitute of private resources (a knight received at first ten sous a
day--equivalent to ten francs of modern money--and a squire received
five); the chartering of ships intended for the transport of troops;
the system of commissariat for armies in the field; and the supply of
military equipments, arms, &c.

This communal militia, sprung from the freeing of the communes, and
detachments of _soudoyers_, or paid troops, soon grew into a standing
army, which was formally incorporated for the first time by Louis le
Jeune about 1140, and increased by Philip Augustus, who added to it
the affiliated knights. Under the latter sovereign, an army in the
field presented three ranks of combatants--_bannerets_, _knights_,
and _squires_, to whom were added the _men-at-arms_. A motley crew of
_varlets_ on foot, without officers or discipline, followed the troops,
and hovered about them during an engagement, picking up the spoil of
the conquered, and killing the wounded with clubs or battle-axes,
called _glaives de mercy_.

The disasters of the Crusaders in the East, after two centuries of
useless heroism and tremendous efforts, were principally due to the
defects in their military administration, which foresaw nothing, and
was incapable of adjusting itself to the difficulties inherent to a
war in a distant and almost unknown land whither the enthusiastic
crowds who wore the cross bent their adventurous steps. Famine, plague,
leprosy, and fever destroyed the Christian armies on their journey to
Palestine, and during their stay there; and these evils would have
been greater still had it not been for the creation of the different
military orders which sprang into existence under the pressure of these
almost inevitable calamities, and which supplied hospital attendants,
chaplains, and soldiers. The continuation of the feudal wars (Fig. 43)
in Europe gave the last blow to the disorganization of the armies of
Christ.

  [Illustration: Fig. 43.--Richard Cœur-de-Lion, King of England
  and Duke of Normandy, mortally wounded by an arrow shot by
  Bertrand de Gourdon, at the Siege of the Castle of Chalus, in
  Limousin (1199).--“Chroniques de Normandie,” Manuscript of the
  Fifteenth Century (Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot).]

  [Illustration: Fig. 44.--Soldier of the Time of Philippe le
  Bel.--Miniature in a Manuscript of the Period (National Library
  of Paris).]

  [Illustration: Fig. 45.--Man-at-arms with a _pot de fer_
  with nose-piece, a coat of mail over his leather tunic, and armed
  with a short broadsword.--From a Miniature in the “Dialogues de
  Saint Grégoire,” a Manuscript of the Eleventh Century, in the
  National Library of Paris.]

While Philippe le Bel was destroying the Knights Templars, whom he
held to be obstacles to his political plans, he was at the same time
seeking in every way the means of restraining a haughty aristocracy,
always under arms, whose systematic want of discipline was a danger
both to the throne and to the country. As soon as he had obtained
from the representatives of the nation, assembled together in
States-General, the right to impose taxes according to the requirements
of the sovereign, he set to work on the definitive organization of a
permanent paid army (Fig. 44). He fixed the age of military service at
eighteen, and decreed that none of his subjects, except the old and
the sick, should be exempt from it, unless they paid a certain sum to
the royal treasury, and supplied, according to their rank and means,
one or more substitutes (decree of 1302, 1303, 1306) to serve under
the flag of the _ost_ of the king (Fig. 46). Till that time,
military service had only been obligatory for forty consecutive days,
or, at the most, for three months. This service was, indeed, often of
less duration, according to the different degree of infeudation of any
particular fief, and was hedged about, besides, with so many privileges
and with so many exemptions, that if a feudal army did not succeed in
bringing a short campaign to a prosperous issue, it generally met with
a fatal collapse. In accordance with this design, Philippe le Bel, at
the opening of the Flemish campaign, summoned “for four months to his
standards, archbishops, bishops, abbots, dukes, counts, barons, and
other nobles, all liable to the ban,” each of whom could claim pay at
the rate of twelve deniers (about four francs) a day, besides a sum of
thirty sous (about thirty francs) for their equipment.

Philippe le Long (1314) and Philippe de Valois 1337–1340) continued and
improved the work of Philippe le Bel. Thenceforward, the _ost_ or
army of the king was regularly established; the cross-bowmen and the
men-at-arms were the first corps who received a permanent organization
and a fixed rate of pay.

  [Illustration: Fig. 46.--Messenger bringing a Letter to the
  King’s Army.--From a Manuscript in the National Library of Paris
  (Thirteenth Century).]

In the fourteenth century, the French infantry, composed merely of
more or less badly-armed archers, inspired its leaders with no great
confidence. Its want of skill and its cowardice too often compromised
the issue of an engagement. It was necessary, in order to support
those combatants always ready to take to flight, to employ foreign
mercenaries, English, Italian, or German, who fought well when they
were liberally paid. These mercenaries, more practised in war and
more courageous than the soldiers of the ban, were entrusted with the
management of the cannon, which at this time were first employed, and
which were carried by the camp followers. We may here repeat what we
have spoken of elsewhere, viz., that the imperfections of the earliest
cannons, the difficulty which attended their use, and the danger
incurred by those who discharged them, caused the old arms to be long
preferred to these new ones. In fact, long after the new artillery
had made considerable progress, it was employed simultaneously with
the ancient style of projectiles. The long period during which this
important transition in projectile weapons was slowly taking place,
was one of the most wretched in the annals of military art. All the
great battles of the fourteenth century present us with striking
examples of an entire absence of skill in tactics. Mons-en-Puelle
(1304), where King Philippe le Bel was all but surprised in his camp;
Cassel (1328), where Philippe de Valois escaped half naked from his
enemies’ hands; Crecy (1346), where the English used cannon for the
first time; Poitiers (1356), where King John was taken prisoner on
the battle-field; Nicopolis (1393), where knighthood covered itself
with disgrace; Agincourt, where the flower of the French nobility
perished--are all examples of the most shameful confusion during the
struggle, of the most disgraceful butchery after the defeat. It is not
too much to say, that during the whole of this long epoch of bloody
contests, true knights and staunch soldiers were very rare, and that
good leaders were even rarer still.

In Italy, the _condottieri_, whose principal commander was
the Englishman, John Hawkwood, and in France, the free companies,
commanded by the renowned Armand de Cervoles, and even those bands of
_routiers_, _Brabançons_, and _tard-venus_, who pillaged
and plundered the realm to such an extent, says an old chronicler,
“that not even a cock was heard to crow in it,” were the only troops
who showed any acquaintance with the resources of military warfare
or the slightest knowledge of strategic science. It was amongst the
ranks of these indefatigable soldiers that the celebrated Bertrand du
Guesclin made his first campaign (Fig. 47).

  [Illustration: Fig. 47.--Battle of Auray (Sept. 29, 1364),
  between John de Montfort and Charles de Blois, in which Bertrand
  du Guesclin was made prisoner by Chandos.--Fac-simile of a
  Woodcut in the “Chroniques de Bretagne,” by Alain Bouchard: 4to,
  Galliot du Pré, 1514.]

The paid gendarmery, a mixture of heavy and light cavalry, committed,
in the reign of Charles VI., many breaches of discipline, without
atoning for them by lending any really efficacious aid to French
chivalry, which was almost entirely cut to pieces in the bloody
disaster of Agincourt (October 25th, 1415). Charles VII., replaced on
the throne of his ancestors by his nobles after he had driven out the
English, “by the help of God and Joan the Virgin,” determined therefore
to disband the gendarmery. From the picked men of the body he formed
the framework of fifteen new companies of artillery, numbering nine
thousand combatants, amongst whom were incorporated all the regular
cavalry of the kingdom. Each gendarme, thoroughly equipped, was
attended by two archers and two followers on horseback; this group of
five mounted men was called _a lance fully equipped_. In 1447, a
sixth man and horse were added to it. A little later, Charles VII.
raised several paid bands, recruited by voluntary enlistment and
commanded by responsible captains, who were paid by the war treasurers,
according to the number of men on the monthly muster-roll. This
creation of mercenary troops diminished still further the importance
of the ban, which was no longer anything but a badly-equipped secondary
militia, though still armed with bows and pikes, and still obliged
to wear a uniform. On the actual field of battle the pikemen were
always posted in the van; behind them came the foot archers, wearing
_salades_, or helmets without vizors, the brigandine or short coat
of mail, and armed with cross-bows. But this reorganization of the
troops had no invigorating effect on the infantry of the communes, and
the _franc-archer_ remained the type of the cowardly soldier.

  [Illustration: Fig. 48.--Great Seal of Charles the Bold, Duke of
  Burgundy. The Legend, in Latin, enumerates his titles and feudal
  possessions.--National Archives of France (Fifteenth Century).]

The death of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, slain in the battle
of Nancy (1477), completed the downfall of the feudal chivalry, whose
last and most martial representative he was (Fig. 48). Louis XI., who
had gathered around him a devoted army, composed of mercenaries from
all countries, and who could entirely rely upon the fidelity of his
Scottish guard, began attacking the great fiefs, which were in reality
the rivals of his throne, and succeeded in destroying them, having no
further need of them and their haughty vassalage. Little by little
the seigniorial standards disappeared, and their war-cries ceased
to resound; a _fief held under the obligation to carry arms_ no
longer forced the vassal, its occupier, under the pain of felony and
bodily _confiscation_, to equip and arm himself at the first
appeal of his suzerain, and to follow the royal _ost_ with a
definite number of fighting men. The principle of purchasing exemption
from military service being henceforward admitted, all, whether nobles
or villains, were at liberty either to serve or to purchase their
exemption. Some few feudal _gendarmes_ still remained, but most
were free. Of the _squires-at-arms_, some were feudal, others
free or even plain _varlets_. Canons, abbots, and prelates whom
feudal laws had forced to contribute their personal military service,
had long since found substitutes in the persons of the attorneys or
bailiffs, who superintended the _ban_ and _arrière-ban_ of
the land-owning nobles. Some of the clergy, however, preferred to
be individually present with the armies of their sovereign; many a
prelate or abbot was delighted to add to his coat-of-arms a cuirass,
a sword, a helmet, or some other warlike emblem. In 1356, the bishops
of Châlons, of Sens, and of Melun distinguished themselves by feats of
personal bravery at the bloody engagement of Poitiers; in 1359, the
Bishop of Rheims, by a few vigorous sorties, was the means of saving
that city when the English were besieging it; the Archbishop of Sens,
William of Montaigu, fell sword in hand on the field of Agincourt;
in 1455, a simple monk successfully defended Belgrade; while at the
siege of Plaisance, Philip of Savoy, Bishop of Valence, was knighted
for his prowess in the breach itself. It is true that many of these
ecclesiastical dignitaries had never been solemnly invested; but
the example they followed was a lofty one, for several popes, John
X., Leo IX., Urban II., Innocent II., and Julius II. (who had first
distinguished himself as an able leader under the name of Julien de la
Rovère) had personally commanded the troops of the Holy See.

The _fire-stick_, that is to say the arquebuse, which was then
called _hequebutte_, with difficulty took the place of the bow,
and with still greater difficulty that of the cross-bow. In 1481,
Louis XI. deprived his sergeants-at-arms of both the latter weapons,
not to arm them with fire-sticks, but in order to give them the pike,
the halbert, and the broadsword, of which the Swiss in the recent wars
had made such formidable use. Louis XI., however, increased the number
of his mounted archers, and placed them later under the orders of
the colonel of a company of free-lances known as Albanais or Scouts.
These combined bodies formed the French national light cavalry till
Francis I. replaced them by the light horse, a body chiefly composed of
mercenaries of different nations. In England, ever since the thirteenth
century, the mounted archers formed a considerable portion of the
national forces. An army of fifteen hundred _complete lances_,
which represented a total of six or seven thousand horsemen, required
a complement of at least five thousand mounted archers, who were all
skilful marksmen. In the time of Henry VIII., an English bowman could
discharge as many as twelve arrows in a minute, and he would have
considered himself disgraced if he had let fly a single shaft which
failed to kill, wound, or at least strike an enemy.

  [Illustration: Fig. 49.--German Foot-soldiers fighting.--From a
  Drawing by Holbein preserved in the Museum at Basle (Sixteenth
  Century).]

  [Illustration: Fig. 50.--Italian Warriors of the Fifteenth
  Century.--From a Bas-relief on the Triumphal Arch of Castel
  Nuovo, Naples, erected in 1470 by Ferdinand of Aragon, to
  celebrate his Victories over John of Calabria, Son of René
  d’Anjou.]

The desperate mêlée of Fornoue (July 6th, 1495), which forced Charles
VIII. to retrace his steps after his successful Italian expedition,
was nearly the last of the confused and sanguinary struggles of the
Middle Ages. The sword and the bow contributed more than the cannon and
the fire-stick to the terrible result of the day. From that time the
infantry regained its old pre-eminence over the cavalry, and cannon
were employed preferably to all other projectile weapons. A complete
revolution was also about to ensue, as well in the tactics of an army
in the field as in the attack and defence of fortresses. Louis XII.
and Francis I., in their Italian campaigns, in which, they wasted so
much of the resources and treasures of France, had to contend with
German and Spanish mercenaries, at that time the best soldiers in the
world; they opposed to them bodies of foreign infantry, sometimes
lansquenets (Fig. 49), sometimes Swiss, who made a trade of war, and
who, to earn their pay, did not hesitate to fight against their own
countrymen. There was one drawback, however, to the acceptance of their
services, and that was that they frequently changed sides on the eve of
an engagement, or refused to fight on the slightest pretext. More than
once the knights of France saw themselves suddenly abandoned by the
infantry whose duty it was to support them, and who allowed them to be
cut to pieces before their eyes without stirring to assist them (Fig.
50). This happened at the fatal battle of Pavia, when the king and his
nobles struggled on foot in hand-to-hand desperation till they fell or
were taken prisoners.

In the ordinary arrangement, at this period, of any army giving battle
in the open field, the free archers, the men-at-arms, and the knights
were posted either in the centre or at the wings, while the infantry,
properly so called, divided into little groups of five, termed
_cinquains_, was either thrown forward to skirmish, or sent behind
to cover the rearguard, or detached at intervals on the flanks in order
to harass the enemy and to protect the baggage. During the engagement,
all the knights, clad entirely in armour, dismounted in order to fight,
and left their horses to the care of the infantry. In these days horses
were only used to carry their riders on the march, which the weight of
their armour would not have allowed them to perform on foot.

A horseman, when disabled by long service or by age, was no longer
employed in the cavalry, but retired into the infantry, where he
enjoyed, under the title of _anspessade_ (from the Italian
_spezzate_, broken), the privileges that were at a later period
granted to veterans.

No troops, until the time of the Crusades, had any distinguishing mark
among themselves, except the difference of their arms, and the idea of
a military uniform had not then arisen. But with the emblazoned arms,
the standards, and the pennants, there came into use scarves, worn as
baldricks or sashes, over the cuirass, and of which the colour, which
generally matched that of the standard of the feudal seignior of the
wearer, became as much a rallying signal as the standards themselves
(Fig. 51). The necessity of distinguishing friends from foes at a
distance naturally also brought about more or less marked distinctions
of dress.

  [Illustration: Fig. 51.--Representations of the Banner of St.
  Denis: No. 1, the oldest, is from a window in the Cathedral of
  Chartres; No. 3, the latest, is from a Manuscript of Froissart,
  No. 2644, in the National Library (the original which it
  represents was carried at the defeat of Artevelde at Rosebecque);
  No. 2, Drawing from the Library of the Célestins, preserved by
  Montfaucon.--From “Paris and its Historians,” by MM. Leroux de
  Lincy and L. Tisserand.]

The administration and inner regulation of an army, which had been
one of the principal cares of the Gothic and earlier Frankish kings,
were entirely neglected, like everything pertaining to the art of war,
for many centuries. For instance, at the beginning of the fourteenth
century, the captains of the different companies were allowed to
distribute the pay to their men as they pleased after each muster,
and were solely and entirely entrusted with the administration of
their companies. They were thus entirely irresponsible, and did
not concern themselves to see that the regulations, prescribed by
superior authority, concerning the general discipline of the army,
were carried into effect. In 1355, daring the captivity of King John
in England, special commissioners were appointed, with the title of
controllers, whose duty it was to superintend the internal economy of
the army generally, with a view to put a stop to the numerous abuses
that existed; but the disturbed and unfortunate period at which this
attempt was made rendered it almost necessarily a barren one. When the
dauphin came to the throne as Charles V., he returned to this project,
which he had indeed himself originated, but at his death anarchy again
reigned for more than a century. Civil and foreign wars laid waste and
exhausted France, without bringing to the surface one single creative
mind, with the exception perhaps of Jean Bureau, the grand master of
artillery under Charles VIII. It is by no means going beyond the mark
to state that the reverses sustained in Italy, in the reigns of Charles
VIII. and Louis XII., were owing less to the chivalrous recklessness
of the nobility and their ignorance of the first principles of
warfare, than to the gross faults of the military administration of
the country. Even in Francis I.’s time, the public service was in such
a miserable condition that he was never really properly informed of
the actual effective strength of his army, for his captains, whose
interest it was to exaggerate the number of the rank and file under
their standards (Figs. 52 and 53), habitually deceived the generals and
their superiors. To such a degree was this carried that, on the eve of
the battle of Pavia, Francis I. was led to believe that his army was
a third stronger than it really was. At last, however, in 1517, there
issued from this chaotic confusion the first germ of a proper system of
supervision and control of all matters relating to war.

  [Illustration:
    Fig. 52.--Knight in complete Armour.
    Fig. 53.--Arquebusier of the Sixteenth Century.

  After Cesare Vecellio, “Degli Habiti Antichi e Moderni:” 8vo,
  1590.]

If the tacticians of Italy were the first to fathom theoretically
the science of war, it was the Swiss, under Marshal Trivulce, the
Spaniards, under Gonzalvez of Cordova, and finally the Flemish, under
the Duke of Alba, who successfully restored the military combinations
of ancient Greece. They were the first to manœuvre in dense masses
and in battalions, and they were the first to successfully employ
the column formation of troops. The pikemen of France followed their
example, while the troops armed with projectile weapons fought as
skirmishers in the van, or in lines two or three deep. It was not,
however, till Henry IV.’s time that any considerable body of troops
was seen capable of advancing in close column without breaking its
formation, and it was not till Louis XIII.’s time that the regiment,
first introduced in the preceding reign, became a recognised permanent
military unit.

  [Illustration: Fig. 54.--The Reapers of Death, an Allegory
  of War, from an Engraving of Hans-Sebald Beham (Sixteenth
  Century).--Collection of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 55.--Battle of Dreux, December 19, 1562, won
  by François de Guise over the Protestants. In the foreground is
  Marshal Saint-André being shot by a soldier.--Fac-simile of an
  Engraving of the period by Tortorel and Périssin (Collection of
  M. Guénebaut).]

Towards the close of the fifteenth century the French native cavalry
still consisted entirely of heavy troopers. The Albanians, the
mercenaries of whom the French light cavalry were composed, sold their
services, _man and horse_, as the Swiss sold theirs, _man and
halbert_. Charles VIII. enrolled eight thousand Albanians for his
Italian expedition; but, fifty years later, this foreign element had
disappeared from the French army, which had by that time, in addition
to its heavy cavalry, a body of light cavalry of its own (Fig. 55).

Until the reign of Henry IV., who was the first monarch to dispense
with their dangerous and immoral assistance, free lances were
universally employed even by those sovereigns who had promulgated the
severest decrees against them, but who, for want of regular soldiers,
found themselves forced to accept their doubtful services. Brantôme
has thus portrayed them: “Vestus à la pendarde, un haut de chausses
bouffant; monstrant la jambe nue, une ou deux, portant leurs bas
déchaussés pendant à la ceinture; chantant en cheminant pour soulager
le travail de leur chemin.”[3] These scouts, who served on foot, were
only allowed _l’étape_--that is to say, a daily allowance of food
and forage; but they enjoyed in war time the right of pillage in all
towns and fortresses taken by assault (Fig. 56).

This system of paying auxiliary troops _à l’étape_ was first
adopted in France in the fourteenth century, and had continued in use
in a desultory manner till the reign of Henry II., under whose order a
ration scale was drawn up, as well as a scale of provisions, cartage,
and billeting due to the king’s troops from the churches, monasteries,
communes, nobles, and burgesses, through the possessions of which and
in whose neighbourhood their road lay.

The legal age at which the enlistment of soldiers could be made,
the manner in which it was effected, and the length of service,
varied considerably throughout the Middle Ages and the period of the
Renaissance. In Henry II.’s time it was a custom to hire the soldier
for three months; Henry IV. increased this period, but not without
difficulty, for, to quote, the words of Sully, “Our soldiers can now
only be enlisted by force, and can only be persuaded to march by the
use of the stick and the threat of the gibbet.” To this picture we
must add the significant fact that the system of drill was a very
insufficient one, and that it was by no means unusual to find soldiers,
whose stay with the standards was after all but a very temporary one,
entirely incapable of handling the arms they were entrusted with. The
urban militia were, however, far superior to these recruits, for, since
the reign of Charles V., it was customary to drill the citizen every
Sunday with pike, bow, and cross-bow, particularly in the frontier
towns. It is not till Coligny’s time, in the middle of the sixteenth
century, that traces can be found of any regulations imposing on
commanding officers the duties of teaching and drilling their soldiers.

  [Illustration: Fig. 56.--Soldiers of the German Bands.--From an
  Oil Painting by Joachim Bueckelaer (Frankfort, 1548–1596), in the
  possession of M. Paul de Saint-Victor.]

We have attempted to outline the general military physiognomy of the
Middle Ages; we will now rapidly examine the weapons and warlike
engines that were invented for the attack and defence of fortified
places.

Until the invention of gunpowder, or rather till that of artillery
(Fig. 57) the whole art of fortification, says the learned Prosper
Mérimée, consisted in following more or less exactly the traditions
handed down by the Romans. The stronghold of the Middle Ages had
precisely the same characteristic as the ancient _castellum_. The
methods of attack against which the engineers had to guard were the
assault by escalade, either by surprise or by force of numbers, and
the breach, caused either by sapping, mining, or by the battering-rams
of the besiegers. The employment of machines or _engines_ of this
description was much less frequent after than before the fall of the
Roman empire, when the art of war knew no higher flight than to lay
siege to a place or sustain a siege.

  [Illustration: Fig. 57.--Mortars on Movable Carriages.--From
  an Engraving in the “Kriegsbuch” of Fronsperger: in folio,
  Frankfort, 1575.]

The first operation of the besiegers was to destroy the outworks of the
besieged place, such as the posterns, the barbicans, the barriers, &c.
As most of these outworks were built of wood, attempts were generally
made to cut them to pieces with hatchets, or to set them on fire
with arrows to which were fastened pieces of burning tow steeped in
sulphur, or some other incendiary composition.

  [Illustration: Fig. 58.--Caltrop, or Crow’s-foot (Fourteenth
  Century).]

If the main body of the place were not so strongly fortified as to
render a successful assault by force impossible, it was usual to
attempt an escalade. With this end in view, the moat, which was
generally literally strewn with caltrops (Fig. 58), was filled up with
fascines, on which ladders were reared against the ramparts, while
archers on the brink of the ditch, protected by mantlets stuck in the
ground, drove away with their arrows any of the defenders who attempted
to show themselves above the parapets or at the loopholes.

  [Illustration: Fig. 59.--Rolling Tower for scaling the Walls of
  Towns.--Miniature from the “Histoire du Monde,” Manuscript of the
  Fourteenth Century (Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot).]

If the siege, in spite of the efforts of the besiegers, promised to
be a long one, a blockade was the sole remaining means of reduction,
though this was a thing difficult to carry out with forces which were
not permanent, and which were generally far from numerous. It therefore
became necessary for the besieger to protect his approaches by wooden,
earthen, or even stone works, constructed under cover of the night,
and solid and lofty enough to enable his archers to aim right on to
the battlements of the besieged place. Wooden towers, several stories
high, were also frequently resorted to, put together piece by piece at
the edge of the moat, or constructed out of bow-shot, and subsequently
rolled on wheels to the foot of the walls (Fig. 59). At the siege of
Toulouse, in 1218, a machine of this kind was built by the order of
Simon de Montfort, capable of accommodating, according to the ballad of
the “Albigeois,” five hundred men.

  [Illustration: Fig. 60.--Siege of a Town: Summons to lay down the
  arms and open the gates.--From a Copper-plate in the “Kreigsbuch”
  of Fronsperger.]

When the missiles hurled from the higher stories of these
towers--termed _chattes_ in the south, _chats_, _châteaux_,
_bretesches_, in the north--had driven the besieged from their ramparts
and battlements, a movable bridge was lowered across the moat, and
a hand-to-hand struggle then took place (Fig. 59). The besieged,
to prevent or retard the approach of these dreaded towers, were
accustomed to hurl immense stones and lighted darts against them, or to
undermine or inundate the ground on which they stood, so that their own
weight might cause them to topple over.

  [Illustration: Fig. 61.--Capture of a Town: The Garrison
  surrendering and throwing themselves on the mercy of the
  captors.--Miniature from the “Histoire du Monde,” Manuscript of
  the Fourteenth Century (Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot).]

Besides the means we have just described, there still remained the sap
and the mine. Miners, equipped with pickaxes, were sent into the ditch
under the protection of a body of archers. A sloping roof, covered
with mantlets, sheltered them from the missiles of the besieged. They
then pierced the wall, stone by stone, till they had made a hole
large enough to allow the passage of several soldiers at once, while
the sappers put the finishing stroke to the aperture. The besieged,
observing in what direction the enemy was pursuing his operations,
strove to concentrate all his means of defence at this point. Sometimes
he attempted to crush the miners with immense stones or pieces of wood,
sometimes he poured molten lead or boiling oil over them, sometimes, by
hastily constructing a fresh wall in rear of the one the miners were
breaking through, he gave the latter the trouble of beginning their
work all over again just as they thought it was complete.

The mine had this advantage over the sap--that the besieger, being out
of sight while engaged in the former method of subterranean work, had
every chance of surprising the besieged. In order to effect this, an
underground gallery was dug as noiselessly as possible, and carried
beneath the foundations of the ramparts. When the mine had reached the
walls, these were propped up with pieces of timber, and the earth was
dug away until they were supported entirely by this artificial method.
Dry vine wood and other inflammable materials were then piled round
the props and set on fire, so that when the timber was consumed the
walls crumbled down and opened a large breach to the besiegers. Nothing
then was left to the garrison but to surrender, in order to avoid the
horrors of an assault and the sack of the town (Figs. 60 and 61).

  [Illustration: Fig. 62.--Watch-tower, lighted up with beacons and
  protected by dogs.--Fac-simile of a Miniature of the Fifteenth
  Century, from a drawing by M. Prosper Mérimée.]

The only remedy possessed by a garrison against this last method of
attack was to keep a good watch and to endeavour to discover the
whereabouts of the mine, and neutralise it by a countermine. At the
siege of Rennes, in 1356, the governor of the town ordered basins of
copper, each containing several globes of the same metal, to be placed
all about the ramparts; when these globes were seen to vibrate and
tremble at each stroke of the hidden pickaxe, it was easy to guess that
the mine was not far off. There was also a body of night watchmen, who
carefully noted the enemy’s movements, and who rang the alarm-bell at
the slightest noise. These watchmen were often replaced by dogs, whose
barks, in case of a surprise, gave notice to the garrison (Fig. 62).

  [Illustration: Fig. 63.--Machine intended to break the ranks of
  the enemy and to crush his soldiers.--Végèce, “L’Art Militaire:”
  1532.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 64.--Machine to shoot arrows, and to assist
  in approaching a besieged town.--Robert Valturin, “La Discipline
  Militaire:” 1555.]

The slow and laborious work of the miner was often advantageously
replaced by the more powerful action of certain machines, which may
be divided into two distinct classes. The first, intended to be used
at close quarters and to make a breach in the wall, comprised several
varieties of the ancient battering-ram; the second, employed at a
distance, were termed _pierriers_, _mangonneaux_, _espringales_, &c.
(Figs. 63 and 64).

The battering-ram, which was probably well known from the remotest
periods, is described, in the documents of the Middle Ages, pretty much
as we see it figured on the monuments of Nineveh. “On Easter day,”
says the anonymous author of the chronicle of the “Albigeois,” “the
_bosson_ (the southern name of the battering-ram) was placed in
position; it is long, iron-headed, straight, and pointed, and it so
hammered, and pierced, and smashed, that the wall was broken through
(Fig. 65); but they (the besieged) lowered a loop of rope suspended
from a machine, and in this noose the _bosson_ was caught and
retained.”

  [Illustration: Fig. 65.--Battering-ram.--From a Miniature in
  Manuscript 17,339 in the National Library of Paris.]

Generally speaking, the battering-ram was a long, heavy beam, suspended
in the centre from a kind of massive trestle. The end which battered
the wall was either covered with an iron hood or pointed with brass.
The beam was swung backward and forward by the besiegers, and by
dint of striking a wall always in the same spot it often succeeded
in shattering or overthrowing it. At other times the ram, instead of
being suspended in an oscillating manner, was mounted on wheels, and
ran forward with great rapidity against the wall to be battered. The
chronicle of the “Albigeois,” just quoted, alludes to the head of the
ram being caught in a noose; besides this manœuvre, the garrison would
hurl stones and pieces of timber upon it, in order to break it or to
put it out of trim; or else they would strive to deaden its blows by
interposing a thick mattress of wool covered with leather between it
and the stonework of their stronghold.

  [Illustration: Fig. 66.--Catapult.--When the lever revolves
  rapidly on its axis, the centrifugal power causes the loop C to
  slip off the hook D, when the barrel held on the fork E E is
  liberated and projected to a distance. F represents the end of
  the lever when held down by the windlass A, and loaded with a
  barrel of combustible matter or iron. B, rings of stone, iron, or
  lead.]

The machines which they employed to hurl their projectiles seem to
have corresponded in nearly every respect with the catapults of the
ancients. It was often merely a species of gigantic sling, worked by
several men, and throwing pieces of rock and round masses of stone.
The _mangonneau_, _bricole_, or _trabuch_, was a kind of square wooden
platform, made of thick planks laid crosswise; a long beam, fastened
at its lower end by a revolving axis to the platform, was supported
at an angle of about 45° by an elevated crosspiece resting on two
uprights. The distance between the revolving axis and the point of
support was about one-half of the length of the beam. The latter was
then secured in this position by long cords fastened to the front of
the platform. The men who managed the _bricole_ then lowered the beam
backwards by a windlass fixed in the rear, till it (the beam) formed
an obtuse instead of an acute angle with the platform, and till the
cord securing it in front was stretched to its utmost tension. While it
was in this position the projectile they wished to cast was placed in
the spoonshaped extremity of the beam. A spring, termed _déclic_, then
released the tension of the windlass and the beam, obeying that of
the cord fastened to the front of the platform, swung rapidly forward,
and hurled the projectile to great distances and to some considerable
height (Fig. 66). These _bricoles_ were sometimes employed to throw
into besieged strongholds the dead bodies of horses and other animals,
fire-balls, and cases of inflammable matter; but they were generally
used to shatter the roofs of the buildings inside the walls, and to
crush the protecting wooden sheds constructed on the ramparts.

Their use was still continued long after the invention of gunpowder.
In the wars of the fourteenth century, particularly in the sieges of
Tarazonia, Barcelona, and Burgos, bricoles were made use of side by
side with cannons discharged with gunpowder. It was not until the close
of the fifteenth century that the rapid progress of the new artillery,
which enabled besiegers to breach a wall from a considerable distance,
and with a smaller expenditure both of time and men, caused the whole
paraphernalia of the old-fashioned ballistic machines to fall into
disuse. Thenceforward a new era commenced in the science of attack and
defence--an era of which the immense results do not belong only to the
period of the Renaissance.

  [Illustration: Fig. 67.--Ballísta.--From a Miniature in
  Manuscript 17,339, in the National Library of Paris.]




                            NAVAL MATTERS.

   Old Traditions: Long Vessels and Broad Vessels.--The
   Dromon.--The Galéasse.--The Coque.--Caracks and
   Galleons.--Francis I.’s Great Carack.--Caravelles.--The
   Importance of a Fleet.--Hired Fleets.--Poop Guards.--Naval
   Laws.--Seaport Tribunals.--Navigation in the open Seas.--The
   Boussole.--Armament of Men-of-War.--Towers and Ballistic
   Engines.--Artillery.--Naval Strategy.--Decorations
   and Magnificent Appointments of Vessels.--Sails and
   Flags.--The Galley of Don Juan of Austria.--Sailors’
   Superstitions.--Discipline and Punishments.


Ships from the most remote ages have been divided into two classes,
namely, long vessels, those propelled by the oar, or by the wind,
sometimes by the two combined, and vessels of greater beam, which
trusted to their sails alone. The Middle Ages conformed to these
traditions; they possessed galleys which answered to the long vessels
of antiquity, and ships which corresponded to the larger class.

The galleys of the Middle Ages, like the long vessels of antiquity,
may be divided into several varieties. The large galley (Fig. 68),
strong in build and swift in sailing, had received from the Greeks the
significant name of _dromon_ (runner). In the fifth century Theodoric
had a thousand dromons constructed for the defence of the Italian
coasts and for the transport of corn; in the ninth, the Emperor Leo the
Philosopher, in the military precepts he gave to his son, recommended
the construction of dromons with two tiers of oars, five-and-twenty in
each tier on each side. For the flag-ship (if we may use the term) of
the commander of the fleet, he recommended the construction of a much
larger dromon with a hundred oars in each tier, similar to those that
used to be built in Pamphylia, and which, for that reason, were known
as _pamphiles_. The fleet was to be accompanied by smaller dromons,
with a single tier of oars, for the purpose of carrying despatches, and
to act as scouts. These bore more particularly the name of _galleys_.
For more than three hundred years the construction and rigging of ships
underwent no change (Fig. 69); in the twelfth century the dromon was
still the principal type of the class of ships propelled by oars. Next
came the galley, smaller than the dromon, but fitted, like it, with two
tiers of oars, and lastly, the _galion_ or _galéide_ (termed later the
_galiot_), a much smaller vessel than the galley.

  [Illustration: Fig. 68.--Poop of an Ancient Galley.--From
  Pompeian Paintings collected in the Bourbon Museum, Naples.]

The largest and the best-armed galley which at that period ploughed
the Mediterranean was the one encountered by Richard Cœur de Lion,
according to the historian Matthew Paris, on the 3rd of June, 1191,
near the coast of Syria, and which was carrying large reinforcements
to the camp of the unbelievers, who were besieging at that time the
town of Acre. When the sailors of the English fleet first perceived
this gigantic vessel, whose vast hull was painted with the most
brilliant colours, whose poop was surmounted with a castellated tower,
whose three masts unfurled to the wind an immense expanse of canvas,
and whose long oars beat the waves with majestic rhythm, they were
surprised, and undecided how to act. Richard, however, ordered his
men to attack the floating fortress. His lighter galleys surrounded
it on all sides, in spite of the arrows and glass vases showered on
them by the dromon. These vases broke when they came in contact with
the galleys, and enveloped them in Greek fire. The captain of the Arab
craft attempted to sail away from his swarm of assailants, but the
wind fell, and half his rowers having been slain by the English arrows,
he was forced to accept battle. The galleys skirmished around the
dromon, striking it repeated blows with their brazen prows, and making
large holes in its sides. At last, after a desperate resistance, the
giant was engulfed in the waters with all its defenders.

  [Illustration: Fig. 69.--A Norman Vessel (Eleventh
  Century).--Restoration from the Bayeux Tapestry.]

A companion craft to the dromon, as before mentioned, was the
_pamphile_, which, before disappearing in the fifteenth century,
frequently changed its shape and character. Nor must we forget the
_chelande_ (Fig. 70), or _sélandre_, which a writer of the
eleventh century represents as a ship of extraordinary length, of
great speed, possessing two tiers of oars, and a crew of a hundred
and fifty men, and which, three centuries later, became a large flat
sailing vessel, and was termed _chaland_. The _taride_, a
kind of merchant galley with oars, and the _huissier_, the name of
which was derived from a _huis_, or large door, which opened in
its side in front of the poop to allow of the embarkation of horses,
were contemporaneous with the pamphile and with the sélandre; as also
was the _chat_ or _chatte_, which William of Tyre mentions
in connection with a maritime war which took place in 1121. According
to him it was a ram-armed vessel larger than a galley, and carried a
hundred oars, each of which was handled by two men.

Besides all these there were the _bucentaures_ (Fig. 71), large
Venetian galleys, and the _sagettes_, or _saïties_ (arrows),
whose names denote their slender shape and speed, and which, with
their twelve or fifteen oars on each side, played the same part in
the twelfth century as the _baliner_, or _barineal_, and the
_brigantin_ played from the fourteenth to the seventeenth.

  [Illustration: Fig. 70.--Turreted Vessel which protected the Port
  of Venice.--From a Medal struck in honour of the Doge P. Candiano
  I., who died in 887 (Venetian Museum).]

There were two sorts of vessels used in the fifteenth and the sixteenth
centuries also belonging to the numerous and varied family of the
galley--the _fuste_ and the _frégate_, both smaller examples
of the _galéasse_. A galley was termed _galéasse_ (Fig. 72)
when it was of large size, powerfully armed, and propelled by such long
and heavy oars that it took six or seven men to work one of them.

  [Illustration: Fig. 71.--The _Bucentaure_, State Barge used
  for the Marriage of the Doge of Venice with the Sea.--From the
  Model preserved in the Arsenal of Venice.]

We have not by any means exhausted the number of long vessels propelled
by oars, but we will now turn to those which only used sails, and which
were termed _nefs_, or round vessels.

In the tenth century the Venetians employed these large heavy vessels,
which they had adopted from the Saracens, and which were termed
_cumbaries_ (from the Latin _cymba_), or _gombaries_. To
the same class belonged the _coque_ (Fig. 73), which, according
to an old chronicler, had a round stem and stern, a high freeboard,
and drew very little water. This style of vessel, which from its shape
was considered insubmersable, was largely used both for warlike and
commercial purposes, from the twelfth to the close of the fifteenth
century.

The _coque_, so frequently employed in the Middle Ages, doubtless
suggested the construction of another large vessel of the same sort,
called by the Venetians _buzo_, by the Genoese _panzono_,
and _busse_ by the Provençaux, three words having a similar
signification.[4] These various names plainly indicate the character of
this kind of vessel, namely, that it was a broad-beamed, slow-sailing
craft, but one capable of carrying large and heavy cargoes.

  [Illustration: Fig. 72.--Sketch of a Galley of the Sixteenth
  Century, painted in distemper on the door of a cupboard preserved
  in the Doria Palace, Genoa.]

Such names, however, as _gombaries_, _coques_, and _busses_, are
nowadays as completely forgotten as the ships to which they were
applied, while such terms as _carraque_ and _galliot_ still convey a
meaning understood by everybody. Indeed, they immediately call up in
the mind the memory of the numerous Spanish galleons which, according
to popular tradition, were constantly returning home laden with
Peruvian gold, and of those gigantic caracks which, hailing from the
French ports on the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, invested the navy
of France, in the reigns of Louis XII. and Francis I., with such a
splendid and imposing renown.

  [Illustration: Fig. 73.--The Coque.--From a Miniature in a
  Manuscript Virgil of the Fifteenth Century (Riccardi Library,
  Florence).]

In 1545, Francis I. had a magnificent carack constructed in Normandy,
so richly decorated, with such lofty decks and towers, and so capitally
appointed, that it was called the Great Carack. It was anchored in the
roadstead of Havre-de-Grâce. Henry VIII. ordered one equally splendid
(Fig. 74), in which he intended to embark when he started to meet
his brother sovereign at the famous Field of the Cloth of Gold. The
French vessel was about to set sail at the head of a powerful fleet
dispatched to meet the English. The King, desirous of inspecting it,
boarded it on the eve of its departure, accompanied by a numerous and
brilliant court. A collation had been prepared for him and his suite,
the band was playing, salutes were thundering out in his honour, and
he himself was in the midst of his inspection of the floating citadel,
when suddenly cries of alarm were heard. A fire had broken out between
decks; it burnt with astonishing rapidity, and, before help could be
efficiently rendered, the whole of the rigging was in flames. In a few
hours all that remained of the Great Carack was an immense hull, half
consumed, aground on the beach, upon which the sea was casting up the
corpses of those of the crew who were killed by the discharge of its
cannons during the progress of the conflagration.

  [Illustration: Fig. 74.--Man-of-War in which Henry VIII., King
  of England, embarked in 1520 at Dover to come to France.--From a
  Drawing by Holbein.]

The galliot occupied an intermediate place between the ship properly
so called and the large galley. It was, in fact, a slighter vessel,
longer and narrower in the beam than all other kinds of ships. Galliots
were sometimes, but not often, propelled by oars (Fig. 76). The
ordinary build of galliot, whose poop consisted of two rounded quarter
circles, separated by the rudder-post, had two decks; the largest of
all had three. Two remarkable galliots are mentioned in history, one
of which was an exact model of the celebrated Great Carack. It was
built at Venice to carry three hundred guns and five hundred soldiers,
besides its own crew of sailors, but while still in the lagoons it was
caught in a tremendous hurricane. Being severely tossed by the wind
and the waves, its rolls threw the whole of its heavy ordnance to the
port-side, and, being unable to right itself, it turned over, and went
down in sight of the town.

  [Illustration: Fig. 75.--Spanish Ship of the End of the Fifteenth
  Century.--From an Engraving in the “Arte del Navegar,” by Peter
  of Medina.]

Merely mentioning the _palandres_, the _hourques_, the _pataches_,
and the _mahones_, which were smaller than the galliot, but which had
certain advantages of their own, we come to a craft whose diminutive
dimensions have not prevented it from acquiring a kind of historical
renown, in consequence of the important events at the close of the
fifteenth century in which it played a part. The craft we refer to is
the _caravel_ (Fig. 77), which had the honour of carrying Columbus to
the New World. The design of the caravel was taken from the _caravo_, a
small barque used by the Spaniards. The grace, the lightness, the fine
outlines, and the speed of the caravel, recommended it to the hardy
mariners who sailed, in search of new continents, across the Atlantic
Ocean. Narrow at the poop, wide at the prow, carrying a double tower
at its stern, and a single one at its bows, the caravel carried four
vertical masts and one inclined one. Two square sails were bent from
the foremast, while the three others each bore a single triangular one
(Fig. 78). The caravel sailed as well against the wind as before it,
and tacked as easily as a row boat; so, at least, we are told in the
log of the first voyage of Columbus.

  [Illustration: Fig. 76.--Three-masted Galley, with Square Sails,
  of the Sixteenth Century.--From a Picture by Raphael in the
  Cathedral of Sienna.]

It is, therefore, an undeniable fact that the sailors of the Middle
Ages did not lack large and handsome ships, though the boldest mariner
did not care to put too much salt water between his craft and the
shore, and, as a rule, the longest voyages were made by following the
outline of the coast. The Middle Ages, moreover, could often boast
the possession of considerable fleets. In 1242 the Genoese put to sea
with ninety-three galleys, thirty traders, and three large ships,
to struggle for the supremacy of the seas with a hundred and ten
Pisan and Imperial galleys. At the beginning of the same century the
Crusaders, when they set sail to attack Constantinople, had a fleet of
three hundred vessels according to one writer, and of four hundred and
eighty according to another. Amongst them there was one called _The
World_, of such large size and so beautifully finished that it was
the admiration of all the ports along the coasts of the Mediterranean.
Joinville, the ingenuous historian of the crusades of Louis IX., tells
us that that sainted king sailed from the port of Aigues-Mortes with a
fleet of “eighteen hundred vessels, large and small,” some of which
carried as many as a thousand passengers, and some a hundred horses.

  [Illustration: Fig. 77.--Spanish Caravel in which Columbus
  discovered America.--From a Drawing attributed to Columbus, and
  placed in the “Epistola Christofori Columbi:” undated edition
  (1494?), 8vo.]

In 1295, the combined French and Norwegian fleets, intended to act
against the English (Figs. 79 and 80) in the wars of Philippe le
Bel and Edward I., amounted to upwards of five hundred vessels,
two hundred and sixty of which were galleys, and three hundred and
thirty ships of different sizes. Three centuries later fleets were
not a whit more numerous or more powerful, though better equipped and
organized. In 1570, Sultan Selim sent from Constantinople, against the
island of Rhodes, a fleet of a hundred and sixteen galleys, thirty
galliots, thirteen _fustes_, six large ships, one galleon, eight
_mahones_, forty _passe-chevaux_ (horse transports), and
a great number of _caramoussats_, laden with provisions, with
artillery, and with stores of all kinds. The Christians, under
Marco-Antonio Colonna, could only oppose to this formidable flotilla
one hundred and four galleys, twelve _galéasses_, one large
galleon, and fourteen large ships.

  [Illustration: Fig. 78.--French Caravel.--From “Premières Œuvres
  de J. Devaux, Pilot du Havre,” Manuscript of the Sixteenth
  Century, in the National Library of Paris.]

But in point of fact, and it was one of the consequences of feudalism,
large fleets were never constructed and kept up by the governments
under whose authority they put to sea. Kings and republics possessed,
it is true, a small number of vessels of their own that carried
their flag, but, generally speaking, too few to allow them to attack
a formidable enemy, or to enable them to defend themselves against
one. Here, again, a complete analogy existed between feudal rights at
sea and those on land. Feudalism possessed its ships as well as its
castles. The barons who possessed estates near the sea-coast were bound
to keep up at their own cost one or more vessels, fitted either for war
or commerce. The rich merchants of Venice, of Genoa, of Marseilles,
and, in later times, of Havre, of Dieppe, and of Antwerp (Fig. 81),
by means of their vast wealth, either individually or by combining
together, maintained flotillas of galleys and ships.

When war was imminent, and it became necessary to prepare a fleet
to carry the Crusaders, the sovereign, directed the nobles who held
fiefs and were ship-owners to prepare their vessels for sea, and to
equip and arm them--an order which did not require any long time or
especial pains to carry into effect, for at that period every sea being
infested with pirates, merchant vessels were always forced to keep
themselves armed in self-defence. Each sailor of the crew could, at a
pinch, be turned into a soldier; and, besides these, there were always
cross-bowmen and regular soldiers, whose duty it was to be the first to
board an enemy’s ship, or to beat back his boarders with handspikes and
cross-bow shafts. To embark, therefore, a few catapults and a few extra
soldiers was all that was ordinarily required to transform a peaceable
merchant vessel into a ship or galley of war.

  [Illustration: Fig. 79.--Seal of the Town of Dover (1281).]

The admiral appointed to the command of the fleet published the order
to arm in every port under his master’s rule. In virtue of this order,
the first proceeding was to exhibit the _cartel_--a scroll
fastened to the top of a post or the end of a lance--announcing that so
many vessels of such and such a kind were to be ready equipped within
a given time, to take the seas against such and such an enemy, or to
proceed in such and such a direction. Besides the cartel, which was
displayed on the shore or in the gateway of the town, surrounded with
garlands and pennants, floated the standard of the prince, which had
previously been blessed at a solemn mass celebrated to pray for the
success of the undertaking. The sea trumpets rang out their fanfares,
and a herald at arms repeated in a loud voice the purport of the
cartel. A clerk stood by, pen in hand, for the purpose of registering
the names of the sailors and marines, who, as they gave them, settled
the conditions of their engagement. A formal contract binding both
sides was then signed and sealed before a notary, and as soon as
sufficient hands had volunteered, the cartel was taken down and the
trumpets ceased to sound.

  [Illustration: Fig. 80.--Seal of the Town of Yarmouth (Thirteenth
  Century).]

When the ships of the sovereign, and of the nobles and burgesses his
feudal vassals, were insufficient in number to form the fleet with
which it was desirable to put to sea, recourse was had to allies
and to foreign navies in general. Vessels were bought, hired, and
chartered, but in the latter case they were usually only employed as
transports. The merchants of Genoa and Venice were in this manner the
principal charterers for the Crusaders. In 1246, Saint Louis addressed
a demand to them for ships, at the same time making a similar request
to the merchants of Marseilles. Emissaries from the king were sent
into Provence and Italy to make contracts for the construction and
chartering of vessels for the transport of the armed pilgrims who
were to accompany him to the Holy Land. These envoys, amongst whom
was Brother Andrew, “the prior of the holy house of Jerusalem,” made
the necessary arrangements with the podestate of Genoa, with the Duke
of Venice, and with the syndicate of the commune of Marseilles, and
settled the size of the ships, the number of their crew, the space
reserved for each passenger and each horse, and the different tariffs
for the berths in the fore and aft towers, for those in the main
saloons (termed _paradis_), for those between decks, and for those
under the lower deck.

  [Illustration: Fig. 81.--View of the Port of Antwerp in
  1520.--Fac-simile of a Drawing by Albert Dürer, in the Gallery of
  the Archduke Albert, at Vienna.]

In 1263 the arrangements for St. Louis’s second crusade were carried
out in a similar manner.

Genoese vessels reappear in the “army of the sea prepared in the year
of grace 1295” by Philippe le Bel against Edward I. of England; in the
fleet equipped in 1337 by Philippe de Valois against Edward III.; and
in the splendid flotilla lost by Nicholas Behuchet, a French admiral,
at l’Ecluse in 1340. Two centuries later the Genoese again contributed
ten caracks to the armada prepared by the order of Francis I. on the
coast of Normandy, though most of them unfortunately foundered at the
mouth of the Seine through the ignorance of their pilots. History also
informs us that Andrew Doria (Fig. 82), a Genoese, was one of Francis’
admirals, having commanded that sovereign’s Mediterranean fleet for
several months.

  [Illustration: Fig. 82.--Andrew Doria (1468–1560).--From a
  Portrait of the Period in the Collection of the Doges of
  Genoa.--National Library of Paris.]

The adventurers who served on board vessels chartered by a sovereign or
a foreign State were usually the sons, brothers, relations, friends,
or dependents of the captains who commanded them. Moreover, the chosen
band which, under the name of _retenue de poupe_[5] (Fig. 83), was
entrusted with the duty of defending the captain’s flag, was solely
recruited from among these adventurers. Their principal duty being the
defence of this flag, which floated on the starboard side close to the
entrance to the poop, they were expected never to leave their post,
except at the captain’s express order. Even when a galley was boarded
at the stern, and its deck, up to the mainmast, was swarming with the
enemy, all was by no means lost, for the poop still remained in the
hands of its brave defenders, who died at their post rather than yield.
Among the splendid feats of arms which have adorned naval history,
many instances could be cited when a ship’s safety was secured by the
desperate resistance of its poop guard. The warriors of the sea (Figs.
84 and 85) were always distinguished for their extreme intrepidity
and boldness, and it is easy to believe that from them emanated the
system of submarine warfare (Figs. 86 and 87), which, in the fifteenth
century, gave birth to a series of extraordinary inventions in nautical
weapons.

  [Illustration: Fig. 83.--Seal of the Town of Sandwich,
  representing the Poop Guard (Thirteenth Century).]

It is to the credit of these benighted ages, too often accused of
barbarism and social anarchy, that in most of the Mediterranean ports
overseers were appointed, whose duty it was to inspect and survey
everything connected with _voyages beyond the sea_--that is to
say, voyages to the Holy Land. This friendly tribunal settled all
differences between the passengers or pilgrims and the ship-owners or
captains, according to the terms of their reciprocal contracts. One
part of their duties was to carefully measure the space assigned to
each passenger, to see that every individual had his proper allotment,
so as to secure that all were made as comfortable as possible for the
voyage, which usually lasted for twenty-five or thirty days.

  [Illustration:
    Fig. 84.--Galley Soldier (Sixteenth Century).
    Fig. 85.--Galley Slave (Sixteenth Century).

  From Cesare Vecellio, “Degli Habiti Antichi:” 8vo, 1590.]

In point of fact, a perfect maritime code was drawn up to regulate
during the passage the mutual relations of the different inmates of
the same vessel, and to establish a reciprocity between the ships
of friendly nations. The merchant, for instance, who spent a great
portion of his life at sea, was treated on board ship with greater
deference than the soldier who was there for a short time only. When
several merchants chartered a vessel in common for the transport of
their merchandise, and proceeded to sea in it themselves, the captain
was bound to consult them and to follow their advice in all perils,
whenever storms threatened, or when from a dread of pirates it seemed
advisable to put into the nearest port. Before setting sail, the
captain and the crew swore upon the Gospel to defend the ship and its
passengers against the elements and against man. In the latter case,
however, the merchants themselves became soldiers for the nonce, and
were prepared to assist in the defence of their floating home.

  [Illustration:
        Fig. 86.--The Diver.
        Fig. 87.--Man-at-Arms.

  From Woodcuts by Végèce, “L’Art Militaire:” Paris, Christian
  Wechel, 1532, small 4to.]

It was usual, in order to give both vessels and merchants the best
possible chance, for ships, not strong enough separately to resist
pirates, to sail together in twos and threes, or, if possible, in still
larger numbers. When a large powerful ship fell in with a smaller
vessel which claimed its protection, it was bound to throw it a hawser
so as to fasten the two vessels together, and enable them to assist
one another in case of need. A ship’s captain who refused to render
this service to a smaller craft than his own, would have run the risk
of a very heavy punishment. The maritime code, whose regulations were
decided by the overseers, laid down that all merchandise entrusted
to a ship’s captain should be properly stored away in the hold, and
not left on the deck, on which the rigging, the carpenter’s and
caulker’s tools, the weapon cases, and the water casks were alone to
be placed. Similarly, any damage done to the cargo during the voyage,
owing to bad stowage or bad ballasting, was liable to be made good by
the ship-owner, who was bound to have his ship in the best possible
condition, and who was held responsible for the proper preservation of
the cargo.

  [Illustration: Fig. 88.--Discovery of the Antilles by
  Columbus.--From a Drawing attributed to him in the “Epistola
  Christofori Columbi:” undated (1494?), 8vo.]

Longer voyages began to be undertaken in the fifteenth century,
navigation having been rendered less dangerous by the improvements
in the mariner’s compass, in the quadrant, and in other nautical
instruments. Ships went as far as to the Azores, and to the Canary
Islands, to the coast of Guinea, and to the East Indies; and one even
touched at the new continent discovered by Columbus (Fig. 88), and
named by Americus Vespazius. Certain seasons of the year, however,
were considered dangerous, during which all navigation was absolutely
forbidden by law. Already, in the fourth century, the magistrates
entrusted with naval matters _closed_ the sea from the third
day of the Ides of November to the sixteenth of the Ides of March;
in the thirteenth century, the season opened in April and closed in
October. In the sixteenth, no vessel could legally return to Venice
from Constantinople, Alexandria, or the coast of Syria, from the 15th
of November to the 20th of January. Although this regulation, which
had for its object the protection of seafaring men, was often broken,
there were others emanating from the same source, and issued in the
same spirit, that were more binding. For instance, galleys (galleys
were frequently used in commercial ventures), as soon as they were
launched, underwent a minute inspection by the overseers, who, after
satisfying themselves on the solidity of their construction, gauged
their capacity, and marked the water line on their side, beyond which
it was illegal to submerge them.

  [Illustration: Fig. 89.--Seal of the Town of Poole (Thirteenth
  Century).]

But we will leave a subject whose complicated details would lead us
too far, and return to the equipment proper of vessels. As far back as
the tenth century, the Emperor Leo originated the practice of building
towers for attack and defence on the deck of the dromons; these towers,
from the centre of which sprang the mainmast, reached half-way up the
mast. This custom was still observed in the thirteenth century, and
was no doubt handed down from very ancient times when it was usual to
build towers and citadels on the decks of triremes. The round class of
vessels were also provided with towers, one fore and another aft. In
the smaller vessels these towers were simply platforms surrounded with
a crenulated parapet and raised upon pillars (Fig. 89); in the larger
ones, the towers were constructed of several stories added to the
normal elevation of the poop and prow. Mangonels, catapults, and other
projectile machines were placed on these towers and platforms. The big
ships especially carried terrible engines of destruction, sometimes
a heavy beam which worked horizontally like an ancient battering-ram
against the sides of a hostile vessel, sometimes an immense bulk
of timber, which was worked vertically from the top of the mast in
order to shatter and sink a smaller craft. Around the masts, too, and
nearly at their tops, _châtelets_ or platforms were suspended,
in which were hidden, behind a low parapet, slingers, archers, and
stone-throwers. In the sixteenth century, these châtelets on board the
vessels of the Mediterranean were called _cages_ or _gabies_,
while in the North sailors designated them by the Icelandic term of
_hunes_ (Fig. 90).

  [Illustration: Fig. 90.--Seal of the Town of Boston (1575), on
  which the _hune_ is depicted at the extremity of the mast.]

The introduction of gunpowder on board ship was long subsequent to the
invention of fire-arms, and was very slowly adopted by most navies.
From the fact that, in the middle of the fifteenth century, a vessel
of seven hundred and fifty tons burden had only a single piece of
artillery, and one of fifteen hundred only eight guns, and as for a
commission of four months--the usual length of a ship’s commission
in the Middle Ages--each piece of artillery was only provided with
five-and-twenty to thirty rounds, we see with what difficulty and how
slowly the new style of weapons replaced the old one. In the ships’
inventories of 1441, side by side with _bombardes_, we find
invariably figuring large cross-bows, _viretons_, darts, long
lances, and complete sets of armour for the sailors. Things were not
much more advanced than they were in 1379 at the celebrated naval
battle of Chioggia, in which the Venetians made use, against the
Genoese, of cannon constructed of pieces of metal, welded together and
covered with a casing of wooden staves, bound round with stout iron
bands and ropes. Some of these primitive guns exploded at their first
discharge; one alone survives, and is now to be seen in the arsenal at
Venice, the solitary specimen of the first attempt at projecting iron
and stone shot from a tube by the ignition of saltpetre, sulphur, and
charcoal.

  [Illustration: Fig. 91.--Prows of Galleys armed with the
  Spur.--From Drawings by Breugel the Elder, engraved by Fr. Huys
  (1550).]

More than a hundred years passed away before marine artillery attained
any importance; it was not till the close of the sixteenth century
that Brantôme was able to put on record that he had seen in the
Mediterranean a galliot armed with two hundred pieces of artillery,
belonging to Cosmo I. of Medici, the Grand-Duke of Tuscany.

The galleys of the Middle Ages and of the sixteenth century, armed
at first with an iron spur and afterwards with four or five cannon
placed in the bows, always engaged the enemy prow first, and bore down
in order of battle, side by side, in a straight or curved line. The
half-moon formation practised by the ancients was reserved for the
largest fleets. At Lepanto (Fig. 92), for instance, the Christian fleet
was drawn up in the form of a half-moon, and was divided into four
squadrons: one in the centre, two at the wings, and one in reserve.
In front of each division six _galéasses_ were posted in couples
to open the engagement; they were all one hundred and sixty feet in
length, twenty-seven in breadth, and fifteen above the water-line,
and they did a great deal of damage to the Turkish fleet with their
powerful artillery. Previous to the construction of these gigantic
galleys, a line of round vessels used to be placed in the van to
receive the first brunt of the battle. Sometimes, besides this vanguard
of sailing vessels, ships were placed at the wings, the most powerful
in the quarter where it was imagined that the struggle would become the
hottest. The smaller craft formed a line in reserve, always prepared to
row to the assistance of a hard-pressed galley.

  [Illustration: Fig. 92.--Plan of the Naval Battle of
  Lepanto.--From a Drawing by Don Juan, preserved in the Archives
  of Simancas, Spain.]

In the eleventh century, at the battle of Durazzo, the Venetian ships,
being hard pressed by the Italo-Norman fleet of Robert Guiscard,
Duke of Puglia and Calabria, and unable to make for the land owing
to the dropping of the wind, ranged themselves in a line, and bound
themselves together, leaving but a small interval between each ship,
just sufficient to allow their smaller vessels to row out, harass the
enemy, and hasten back again. This style of battle was not a new one,
being the reproduction of a manœuvre invented or employed for the first
time by Scipio in the days of ancient Rome. When time had developed
the progress of marine artillery, a fleet composed of large ships, in
giving battle to one consisting of galleys, always presented their
broadsides to their antagonists, since, in this position, the fire from
their double row of cannon could do the galleys the most harm. This
order of battle, however, was not always observed, particularly when
the guns, owing to their great weight, were placed in the prow (Fig.
93).

At first, merely to preserve the wood, the ship-builders covered every
part of the vessel exposed to the action of the air or water with a
coating of pitch, but this sombre and uniform tint soon wearied the
eye. A more brilliant colour, prepared with wax, was painted over the
pitch; the costlier class of ships glistened in all the splendour of
white, ultramarine, and vermilion, while pirates, and occasionally
men-of-war, were covered with a coat of green paint, which, blending
with the colour of the sea, prevented them from being distinguished at
any distance. Gilding glistened on the vessels of the rich, and the
sculptor’s chisel added busts and figures to the decoration of their
bows and sterns. Even in this respect the Middle Ages still followed
the traditions of antiquity.

The decorations of ships varied according to the caprice of owners
and the fashion of the times. The Saracen dromon boarded and taken by
Richard Cœur-de-Lion had one side coloured green and the other yellow.
The Genoese at first painted their ships green; but in 1242, when they
were at war with the Pisans, they coloured them white spotted with
vermilion crosses, that is, “red crosses on a silver ground,” which
resembled the arms of “Monsieur Saint-Georges.” Red was the colour
generally adopted for ships’ hulls in the sixteenth century, though
a pattern in black and white was sometimes added, and sometimes the
ground was painted black and the pattern only vermilion.

  [Illustration: Fig. 93.--Pontifical Galley with Sails and Oars,
  and provided with heavy Artillery.--Drawn by Breugel the Elder,
  and engraved by Fr. Huys (1550).]

In 1525, when Francis I., made prisoner at the battle of Pavia,
was taken to Barcelona, the six galleys which carried the captive
sovereign and his suite were painted entirely black from the top of the
masts to the water-line. This was not, however, the first time that
ships had been known to put on mourning: for instance, the Knights of
St. Stephen, in the fifteenth century, hid the brilliant hues of their
_Capitane_,[6] and painted its sails, pennants, awnings, oars, and
hull with black, and swore never to alter the sombre hue till their
order had recaptured from the Turks a galley lost by the Pisans in an
engagement which, however, had not been altogether inglorious for the
vanquished.

  [Illustration: Fig. 94.--Seal of Edward, Count of Rutland (1395).]

Vessels in the Middle Ages, as in ancient times, had frequently
gold-coloured and purple sails. The sails of seigniorial ships were
generally brilliantly emblazoned with the coat-of-arms of the seignior
(Fig. 94); the sails of merchant vessels and of fishing boats with
the image of a saint, the patron figure of the Virgin, a pious
legend, a sacramental word, or a sacred sign, intended to exorcise
evil spirits, who played no inconsiderable part in the superstitions
of the toilers of the deep. Different kinds of sails were originally
employed to make signals at sea, but flags soon began to be used for
this purpose. A single flag, having a different meaning according to
its position, ordinarily sufficed to transmit all necessary orders in
the daytime. At night its place was taken by lighted beacons. These
flags, banners, standards, and pennants, most of them embroidered with
the arms of a town, a sovereign, or an admiral, were made of some
light stuff, taffeta or satin. Sometimes square, sometimes triangular,
sometimes forked, each had its own use and signification, either for
the embellishment of the vessel’s appearance or to assist in its
manœuvring. The galleys were provided with a smaller kind of pennant,
which was put up at the prow or fastened to the handle of each oar:
these were purely for ornamental purposes, and were often trimmed with
golden or silken fringes.

Amongst the most celebrated flags and standards of the French navy we
must not omit to mention the _baucents_, a name that recalls the
_Bauséant_, the banner of the Knights Templars. These flags, made
of red taffeta, and sometimes “sprinkled with gold,” were only employed
in the most merciless wars, for, says a document of 1292, “they
signified certain death and mortal strife to all sailors everywhere.”
In 1570, Marco-Antonio Colonna hoisted on his flag galley a pennant of
crimson damask, which bore on both sides a Christ on the Cross between
St. Peter and St. Paul, with the Emperor Constantine’s motto, _In
hoc signo vinces_. The banner which Don Juan of Austria received at
Naples, on the 14th of April, 1571, with the staff of supreme command
over the Christian league, was made of crimson damask fringed with
gold, on which were embroidered, besides the arms of the prince, a
crucifix with the arms of the Pope, of the Catholic king, and of the
republic of Venice, united by a chain, symbolical of the union of the
three powers “against the Turk.”

The _Normans_, or the men of the north, were as fond of these
brilliant standards as the nations of the Mediterranean. When they
sailed on a warlike expedition, or when they celebrated a victory over
pirates, they covered their vessels with flags. The poet Benoît de
Sainte-More tells us that it was in this fashion, covered with seven
hundred banners of different colours, that Rollo brought his fleet
back up the Seine to Meulan. The Middle Ages made use of all kinds
of fanciful decorations for their vessels; during the Renaissance,
this taste was renewed and was an improvement both upon the customs
of antiquity, whence it drew its inspirations, and on those of the
thirteenth century, which it seemed anxious to forget (Fig. 95). “A
galley,” says the learned M. Jal, “was in those days a species of
jewel, and was handed over for embellishment to the hands of genius as
a piece of metal was given to Benvenuto Cellini.” Sculptors, painters,
and poets combined their talents to adorn a ship’s stern. No more
striking example of this artistic refinement in naval ornamentation
could be well quoted than that of the Spanish galley which was
constructed in 1568 by order of Philip II. for his brother, Don Juan
of Austria, to whom he had confided the command of the fleet intended
to fight the barbarous Moorish States of Africa. The vessel’s cutwater
was painted white and emblazoned with the royal arms of Spain, and with
the personal ones of Don Juan. The prince being a Knight of the Golden
Fleece, and the adventurous expedition on which he was bound being
likely to be attended with as many perils as that of the Argonauts,
the history of Jason and of the good ship Argo was represented in
coloured sculpture on the stern above the rudder. This pictured poem
was accompanied with four symbolical statues--Prudence, Temperance,
Power, and Justice, above which floated angels carrying the symbols of
the theological virtues. On one side of the poop might be seen Mars the
Avenger, Mercury the Eloquent, and Ulysses stopping his ears against
the seductions of the Sirens; on the other, Pallas, Alexander the
Great, Argus, and Diana. Between these were inserted pictures, which
conveyed either a moral lesson for the benefit of the young admiral, or
a delicate eulogium on Charles V., his father, or on Philip II., his
brother. All these emblems were _chefs-d’œuvre_ of drawing and
sculpture, which the brilliancy of their gold, azure, and vermilion
settings tended to enhance.

  [Illustration: Fig. 95.--Man-of-War of the Sixteenth
  Century.--Drawn by William Barendsz and engraved by Visscher,
  from the Collection of Engravings in the National Library of
  Paris.]

A noticeable incident in the above description is its incongruous
mixture of Christian and Pagan allegories. It bears witness to the
anti-religious tendency of the school of thought of the Renaissance,
and is a faithful reflection of the alteration in custom and belief.
In the Middle Ages, sailors, and indeed all classes of society,
were imbued with a strong spirit of faith, tinged, however, with
a great deal of superstition. As in our day, they had a sincere
belief in Providence, and professed great devotion to the Virgin;
in seasons of peril they invoked those saints who were supposed
to take special interests in ships and sailors; but, in spite of
their natural reverence for religion, they allowed themselves to be
influenced by childish superstition, and confused the promptings of
their orthodox faith with all kinds of vain imaginings. Sailors have
ever been superstitious; their credulous brains are the parents of
all the fantastic beings and animals that they persuade themselves
they have seen in their wanderings, and with which they have peopled
the mysterious depths of the ocean. The sirens of antiquity, the
monsters of Scylla and Charybdis, have been far surpassed by modern
legendary creations, such as the _kraken_, a gigantic mass of
pulp, which attacked and dragged down the largest ships; the _bishop
fish_, which, mitre on head, blessed and then devoured shipwrecked
mariners; the _black hand_, which, even in the days of Columbus,
was depicted on the map as marking the entrance to the _sunless
ocean_; and the numerous troops of hideous demons, one of whom,
in the sight of the whole French fleet of Crusaders on their way to
attack the island of Mitylene, in the reign of Louis XII., clutched and
swallowed up a profligate sailor, who, over his dice, had “blasphemed
and defied the Holy Virgin.”

Blasphemy was by no means uncommon among seamen; in spite of the laws
of the Church and the regulations of the Admiralty, they insisted on
using the most frightful oaths; they swore continually by bread, by
wine, and by salt, meaning thereby the very principles of life itself,
and by their soul--an oath which was forbidden on pain of the severest
punishment. Yet the mariners of the Middle Ages had strong reasons
for avoiding open blasphemy, for, an offence against Heaven being
considered far more criminal than any injury to mankind, a blasphemer
was liable to fine, to the cat, and to death itself. Even in the
thirteenth century the Danish code inflicted a comparatively moderate
punishment on a thief; it shaved his head, tarred and feathered him,
and made him run the gauntlet of the whole crew, after which it
contented itself with dismissing him from his ship.

  [Illustration: Fig. 96.--Seal of La Rochelle (1437).]




                             THE CRUSADES.

   Arab Conquest of the Holy Land.--Swarm of Pilgrims in the
   Year 1000.--Turkish Invasion of Judea.--Persecution of the
   Christians.--Pope Silvester II.--Expedition of the Pisans
   and the Genoese.--Peter the Hermit.--Letter from Simeon the
   Patriarch to Pope Urban II.--First Crusade.--Expedition of
   “Gautier sans Avoir.”--Godefroy de Bouillon.--The Kingdom of
   Jerusalem.--Second Crusade.--St. Bernard.--Third Crusade: Philip
   Augustus and Richard Cœur de Lion.--Fourth Crusade.--Fifth
   and Sixth Crusades.--Louis IX. turns Crusader.--Seventh
   Crusade.--St. Louis taken Prisoner.--Eighth and last
   Crusade.--Death of St. Louis.--Results of the Crusades.


“Jerusalem,” says Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Ptolemais in the
thirteenth century, and one of the most eloquent historians of the
Crusades, “Jerusalem is the city of cities, the saint of saints, the
queen of nations, and the princess of provinces. She is situated in the
centre of the world, in the middle of the earth, so that all men may
turn their steps towards her; she is the patrimony of the patriarchs,
the muse of the prophets, the mistress of the apostles, the cradle of
our salvation, the home of our Lord, and the mother of the faith, as
Rome is the mother of the faithful. She is chosen and hallowed by the
Almighty, who placed his feet upon her, honoured by the angels, and
visited by all the nations of the earth.” A poet of the same period
declares, in a burst of fervent inspiration: “She attracts the faithful
as the magnet attracts the steel, as the sheep attracts the lamb with
the milk of its teats, as the sea attracts the river to which it has
given birth.”

Under the influence of this belief it is easy to understand the
powerful interest which, in the eyes of the whole Christian world, was
attached to a corner of the globe so marked with the impress of the
Almighty, and the object of so much veneration.

Since the conversion of Constantine I., which so gloriously signalized
the triumph of the cross, and while the ostentatious but feeble
successors of that great emperor were preparing the decline of the
empire of Byzantium, Jerusalem had frequently been forced to submit to
infidel profanations, and the Western Christians, in their visits to
the holy places, had, in consequence, many times encountered painful
and almost insurmountable obstacles.

In the seventh century, the conquest of Palestine by the Arabs or
Saracens, attracted by fanaticism to the banner of Mahomet’s immediate
successors, had occasioned the most painful, if not the first of these
terrible trials to Christendom. Already pilgrims, on their return from
the Holy Land, had related to the dismayed West the sacrileges of
which they had been the witnesses, and the annoyances of which they
themselves had been the victims. Their dismal recitals represented
the Christian population of Judea as reduced to a species of slavery,
groaning under heavy tribute, clad in a degrading livery, forbidden
to use the language of their conquerors, banished from their temples,
now transformed into mosques, and obliged to conceal every external
emblem of their religion, which they were no longer allowed publicly to
practise.

But a gentler rule succeeded these hardships, thanks to the internal
dissensions of the Mussulmans, who, in the midst of their fratricidal
struggles, forgot to persecute the Christians; thanks also to the
policy of the famous Haroun-al-Raschid and his children, who, being
constantly at war with the emperors of Constantinople, dreaded lest the
Eastern Christians should summon the Western to their assistance, and,
consequently, were always showering on the latter every possible mark
of deference, of kindness, and of consideration.

Later, when the empire of Haroun-al-Raschid had fallen into decay,
one of Constantine’s successors, John I., surnamed Zimisces (970),
attempted to accomplish the freedom of the Holy Land, and had nearly
succeeded, when death struck down the leader of the Christian army in a
battle with the Arabs, and with him was destroyed the last hope of the
faithful, who soon found themselves delivered over to the horrors of a
terrible persecution. “It is impossible to put on record all the evils
they suffered,” says William of Tyre, in his great history of the holy
war.

  [Illustration: Fig. 97.--Façade of the Church of the Holy
  Sepulchre, Jerusalem, founded in 326 by the Emperor Constantine,
  and restored by the Crusaders in 1099 (present condition, from a
  Photograph).]

Towards the close of the tenth century, a false interpretation of a
passage in the Gospels, according to which the end of the world and the
second coming of Jesus Christ in Judea had been fixed for the year one
thousand, had struck all Christendom with stupor and affright. “The
end of the world being at hand,” were the opening words of all deeds
and contracts; and the vanities of the world being forgotten in the
near approach of the “supreme and inevitable catastrophe,” every one
was anxious to start for the Holy Land, in the hope of being present
at the coming of the Saviour, and of finding there pardon for their
sins, a peaceful death, and the salvation of his soul. The immense
crowd of pilgrims, according to another historian of the Crusades,
Glaber the monk, was far greater than religious devotion alone could
possibly account for. The first to come were the poor and the working
classes, and then counts, barons, and princes, who no longer attached
any value to the possessions of this world. And further, as if the
miraculous influence of this grand religious manifestation had inspired
the infidels themselves with admiration and awe, the cruelties and
the persecutions inflicted upon the Christians in Palestine suddenly
ceased. When the dreaded epoch had passed away, and no perceptible
disturbance had occurred in the laws of the universe, when each
successive day had lessened the fears and increased the courage of the
Western Church, the Holy Land remained open to pilgrims, who came in
swarms to thank the Lord Jesus Christ for having a second time saved
the world.

But all this was merely a kind of tacit truce granted to the children
of Christ by the unbelievers, who had sworn to destroy the religion
of the cross, and to establish in its place the creed of Mohamet. The
East, moreover, was about to change masters. The Turks, an Asiatic
nomadic people, sprung from the countries beyond the Oxus, had
conquered Persia, and had thence borne their triumphant arms towards
Syria and the banks of the Nile. This rapid conquest included Judea,
and was signalized by horrible excesses. No quarter was given either to
the followers of Moses, to those of Jesus, or to the disciples of the
Prophet. The same blow fell upon the Jewish synagogues, the Mussulman
mosques, and the Catholic churches. Jerusalem was steeped in blood.
Deprived of their property, groaning under a bitter and humiliating
yoke, says a contemporary historian, the Christians suffered as they
had never suffered before.

Asia Minor, the land generally crossed by the pilgrims on their way to
Jerusalem, was also in the power of the Turks. In the principal towns,
Nicea, Tarsus, Antioch, Edessa, &c., whose names are inseparable from
the glorious memories of the first centuries of the Church, neither the
Greek nor the Roman Catholic ritual could be publicly celebrated. The
precepts of the Koran were the only ones that were rigorously observed;
and Christians everywhere experienced from the Mohammedans the same
injustice, the same annoyances, and the same hardships.

The accounts of these persecutions, which seemed intended to utterly
annihilate the faith of the cross, filled the hearts of the faithful
with gloom and anger. The day was already fast approaching when the
groans and complaints that reached them from the Holy Land were to
rouse and arm the nations of the West for the deliverance of Christ’s
tomb, and the formidable struggle, soon to take place between the
Christian and the Moslem--a struggle fated to last for two hundred
years with alternate successes and reverses on either side--was
destined to decide the future of European civilisation.

So far back as the commencement of the eleventh century, Gerbert,
a French monk, one of the most remarkable men of his time, who had
succeeded to the papacy as Silvester II., attempted, under the
influence of the impressions he had brought back from a pilgrimage
to Jerusalem, to make a fresh appeal to Christendom against the
persecutions he had witnessed in the East. Roused by his summons, an
expedition of Pisans, of Genoese, and of the subjects of the King of
Arles, had put to sea and disembarked on the coasts of Syria, where it
inflicted a certain amount of injury on the cruel votaries of Islamism;
without, however, being able to penetrate very far inland, but not
without influencing to some extent the fate of the inhabitants of
Palestine.

In fact, persecution for the time ceased, or at any rate was sensibly
diminished, and it was not until half a century later that a fresh
crusading appeal rang through Christendom. This time the cry of sorrow
and indignation was uttered by Pope Gregory VII., that illustrious
pontiff whose ardent and resolute nature, in the midst of the universal
disorder and disorganization of government and society, seemed to have
a divine mission to fulfil in settling upon an indestructible basis the
supreme authority of the Church. “The miseries suffered by the Eastern
Christians,” he wrote, “have so stirred up my heart that I almost long
for death, and I would rather expose my life in delivering the holy
places than reign over the universe. Come, sons of Christ, and you will
find me at your head!”

Such words as these at such an epoch necessarily rekindled faith and
hope in every heart that received them. Fifty thousand Christians
bound themselves by an oath to follow the successor of St. Peter to
Constantinople, when the Emperor Michael Ducas promised to put an end
to the dissensions that had so long separated the Greek from the Latin
Church, and to Jerusalem, where the standard of Christ, supported by
heroic hands and hearts, could not fail soon to replace the standard
of the Prophet. Rumours were rife in Europe that a part of Asia was
already christianised, and that Prester-John, a powerful sovereign
of Tartary (Figs. 98 and 99), had forced his subjects to adopt the
precepts of the Gospel.

  [Illustration:
    Fig 98.--Prester-John, Chief of a Christian Tribe in Tartary.
    Fig. 99.--Prester-John’s Page.

  From Cesare Vecelli’s “Degli Habiti Antichi e Moderni:” 8vo,
  Venice, 1560.]

But the political struggles which Gregory VII. had to sustain against
the princes of the West, and the refusal of the King of Germany,
Henry IV., to grant him the assistance he had demanded, prevented him
from undertaking the sacred expedition which was to have crowned his
apostolic work. Victor III., his successor, inspired by his example,
continued to preach the Holy War against the infidels. The latter not
only manifested throughout the entire East their implacable hatred
to the Christian race, but, having founded large settlements on the
shores of Africa, they infested the seas, endangered the security
of all maritime trading, ceaselessly pillaged the coasts of Italy,
ravaged the greater part of Spain, and seemed to be within very little
of making Europe a tributary of Islam. But if Victor III. was unable
to give birth to a real crusade, he at least succeeded in persuading
the Italians to take up arms. An army of Pisans and Genoese landed
in Africa (1087), gave battle to the Saracens, killed more than a
hundred thousand of them, took and sacked two of their towns, and
returned victorious with an immense booty, which they devoted to the
embellishment of the churches of Genoa and of Pisa. But this daring
enterprise, in spite of its important results, is not mentioned by
any of the historians of the Crusades, although in every respect it
had the characteristics of a holy war. This appears to prove that its
guiding principle was by no means entirely a religious one, but was one
bound up with many more material interests, particularly with that of
Italian commerce, which had suffered so much from African piracy that
it naturally wished at any price to punish the accursed race from which
it sprung.

The successor of Victor III. was Urban II., a pontiff of French
extraction, who, following up the policy of his predecessors,
endeavoured with all his influence to stir up the Christians against
the infidels. But the Almighty often confides the execution of his
most important designs to the hands of the humblest, and the honour
of initiating the Crusades was not reserved for the occupant of the
chair of St. Peter. It was destined to fall to the lot of a humble
pilgrim, who, as the learned historian of these events tells us, was
inspired only by his zeal, and whose only influence was the force of
his character and his genius. This humble pilgrim was Peter of Acheris,
better known as Peter the Hermit. Descended from a noble family of
Picardy, but ungainly in body and short of stature, he had vainly
sought happiness and peace in the most opposite conditions of society.
At first he embraced the profession of arms, then he gave himself
up to literature, then he married, and being soon left a widower, he
entered into holy orders. Everywhere, however, he met with nothing but
bitterness and deception. Having become at last, to use the expression
of William of Tyre, “hermit both in deed and in name,” he sought in
solitude, in fasting, and in prayer to forget the empty vanities of the
world, and it was no doubt with a last hope of giving some practical
effect to his fervent but barren devotion that he undertook his pious
pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

His habits of meditation and prayer had infused a burning ardour and
an enlightenment into his soul. When he found himself on the very
soil that had been pressed by the Saviour’s feet, when he witnessed
the hardships and the humiliations inflicted on the worshippers of
Christ by the infidels, when, above all, he heard the lamentations
of the venerable Simeon, the patriarch of Jerusalem, and had wept
with him over the terrible trials of the Eastern Church, indignation,
grief, piety, and faith awoke in his heart the feeling that he must
at all hazards devote his life to a special vocation. He resolved to
devote himself to the protection of his brethren in Christ, and to the
deliverance of the holy places.

One day, as he was secretly praying in front of the Holy Sepulchre,
he heard a voice saying, “Peter, arise! go forth and announce the
tribulation of my people; it is time that my servants be succoured
and my holy places delivered.” Under the influence of this heavenly
command, the poor pilgrim, convinced that he was henceforward chosen
by the divine will, determined to allow himself no rest till the holy
mission, with which Christ himself had entrusted him, had been fully
and faithfully accomplished. He left Palestine with letters from the
patriarch Simeon to the Pope; he crossed the sea, hurried to Rome,
and threw himself at the feet of Urban II., who, listening to the
pathetic and eloquent language of the poor pilgrim, fancied that he was
addressed by some inspired prophet, and entrusted him with the mission
of summoning the nations to the holy war (Fig. 100).

Peter the Hermit, says the historian whose account we are following,
left Italy, crossed the Alps, and wandered over France and a great
part of Europe, infusing into all the burning zeal with which he was
filled. He journeyed on a mule, a crucifix in his hand, his feet bare,
his head uncovered, his body girdled with a thick cord, and clad in a
long frock and mantle of the commonest, coarsest stuff. His peculiar
garments excited the curiosity of the people, while the austerity
of his life, his charity, and the morality he inculcated, made them
reverence him as a saint. He wandered in this guise from town to town,
from province to province, stirring up the courage of some and the
piety of others; sometimes he addressed them from church pulpits,
sometimes in the highways and public places. His eloquence was keen and
vigorous, full of vehement appeals that carried away the multitudes who
listened to him. He recalled to their memories the profanation of the
holy places, and the Christian blood that had poured in rivers down the
streets of Jerusalem; he called on Heaven, the saints, and the angels,
whose testimony he invoked as to the truth of his statements; he
appealed to them by the holy hill of Sion, by the heights of Calvary,
and by the mount of Olives, whose slopes he declared were ringing with
groans and lamentations. When words failed him to further depict the
miseries of the faithful in the far East, he showed them the crucifix
which he always carried about him, and, beating his breast, burst into
passionate tears.

  [Illustration: Fig. 100.--Peter the Hermit delivering the Message
  of Simeon, Patriarch of Jerusalem, to Pope Urban II.--From
  a Coloured Drawing by Germain Picavet in the “Histoire des
  Croisades,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Burgundian
  Library, Brussels).]

The populace everywhere crowded around him. The preacher of the holy
war was received as the special envoy of the Almighty. To be allowed
to touch his clothes was considered an inestimable privilege, the hair
even of the mule he bestrode was prized and preserved as a relic. The
tones of his voice hushed domestic strife, forced the rich to succour
the needy, and the profligate to slink ashamed away. His austerities
and his miracles, his discourses and his exhortations, were repeated
to those who had not been fortunate enough to witness the former or
to hear the latter. As his hearers realised the fact that Jerusalem,
Holy Jerusalem, was in the power of the infidel, the emotions of pity
and the desire for vengeance were kindled within them. Every voice was
lifted up to beseech God to restore to his keeping his once-beloved
city. Some proffered their wealth, others their prayers, and all their
life, to deliver the holy places.

Everything in Europe was ready for the great expedition; every heart
beat high and every voice re-echoed the solemn hope so ardently and so
persistently instilled by Peter the Hermit. Nothing now was wanted but
to crown the work so far accomplished, and some watchword that would
strike home to every heart, and raise, amidst the pious and countless
hosts of the Crusaders, some one central banner around which they could
all unite and rally. To this end Urban convoked a council on the very
spot in that land of the Franks in which he had been born, a land which
had always been foremost to set a noble example to surrounding nations.

The council assembled in Clermont, a town in Auvergne, scarcely large
enough to contain the crowd of illustrious personages that soon flocked
thither, “in such numbers,” says the French chronicler, William
Aubert, “that, towards the middle of November, in the year 1096, the
neighbouring towns and villages were so full of strangers that many
were obliged to pitch their tents in the midst of the fields and
meadows, although the season was extremely cold.”

The first sittings of this council, about to proclaim war against
the enemies of the cross, were employed in decreeing the truce of
God between all Christians. Then came the question of the hour. The
apostle of the Crusade, Peter the Hermit, spoke first; with that
tearful voice, with that burning emotion which had won him so many
adherents, he depicted the miseries of the Eastern Church. After him
the Pope addressed the assembly, and with such a distinguished and
aristocratic audience, it may easily be understood that his skilful and
learned eloquence had at least as much influence as the simple and
rough speech of the poor hermit who had such sway over the minds of the
masses.

The council rose as one man, and one cry burst simultaneously from
every breast--“_Dieu le veut! Dieu le veut! (Diex li volt)_.”[7]
The pontiff repeated in a stentorian voice these words, _Diex li
volt_, words which for two centuries were destined to be the war-cry
of the Crusaders, and showed to the excited crowd the emblem of the
Redemption. “Let the cross,” he said, “glitter on your arms and on
your standards! Bear it on your shoulders and on your breasts, it
will become for you the emblem of victory or the palm of martyrdom;
it will ever remind you that Jesus Christ died for you, and that
it is your part to die for Him.” At these words, all the princes,
barons, knights, prelates and clergy, artisans and labourers, swore to
dedicate their lives to avenge the outrages inflicted on Christ and
on His followers. The oath was cemented by a declaration of oblivion
of all private animosities and quarrels, and every one of the immense
audience fastened a red cross to his dress. From this the appellation
of _Crusaders_ was derived, a title which was bestowed on the
faithful who then enrolled themselves under Christ’s banner, and also
that of _Crusade_, the name given to the holy war. The council,
before separating, confirmed and allotted the temporal and spiritual
privileges which were to be bestowed upon the Crusaders.

It is impossible to paint in sufficiently vivid colours the universal
and spontaneous movement which took place in Western Christendom, when
the faithful who had taken part in the council of Clermont went forth
everywhere, as formerly did Christ’s apostles, repeating what had
taken place, and proclaiming the decrees which had been promulgated
there. Thenceforward all, in spite of age, sex, or social position,
were carried away by the same enthusiasm. Family ties were broken,
riches were no longer held of any account. The question was not who had
taken up the cross, but who had hesitated to do so. A poet of the time
says, “I hold no man a true knight who refuses to go willingly, with
his whole heart and with all the means in his power, to the assistance
of God, who so greatly needs it.” Women of every rank sewed the cross
to their clothing, children of every age marked it on their innocent
bodies. Monks left the retreat where they had hoped to peacefully end
their existence, hermits came out of their caves and forests, and even
the very robbers of the highway came forward, confessed their crimes,
and swore to expiate them in the ranks of the holy army. The train was
laid, the match was lighted, and for two centuries the Crusades were
waged continually, with a few intervals of rest, caused by the enormous
sacrifice of men and money entailed by this gigantic undertaking,
which, inspired and controlled by an ardent faith, was persisted in, in
spite of every reverse and every disaster.

  [Illustration: Fig. 101.--Reception of Gautier-sans-Avoir by the
  King of Hungary, who permits him to pass through his territory
  with the Crusaders.--From a Miniature in the “Histoire des
  Empereurs,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Library of the
  Arsenal, Paris).]

The spring of the year 1096 witnessed the first departure of the
Crusaders, in two numerous bodies, under the orders of Peter the Hermit
himself, and of a poor but valiant warrior, Gautier-sans-Avoir (Fig.
101). But these undisciplined masses, forced to support themselves
on their road by pillage, were dispersed and nearly destroyed by the
nations through whose countries they had to pass, and who were ruined
by their advent as they might have been by an army of locusts. Only
a few thousand ever reached Constantinople, when the Emperor Alexis
I., who had summoned the Western Christians to his aid against the
Turks, succoured them, and enabled them to await the arrival of the
more regular expeditions, which had started three months later under
Godefroy de Bouillon.

  [Illustration: Fig. 102.--Taking of Nicæa by the Crusaders, in
  1097; from a Window ordered by the Abbé Suger for the Church of
  the Abbey of St. Denis, and now destroyed.--From the “Monuments
  de la Monarchic Française,” by Montfaucon (Twelfth Century).]

It was then only that the real Crusade, that is to say, the actual war
against the unbelievers, commenced. In March, 1097, the Christian army
crossed the Bosphorus from Thrace, seized Nicæa (Fig. 102), penetrated
into Syria, and laid siege to the important town of Antioch, which
by an act of treachery was forced to surrender in June, 1098. In the
spring of the following year the soldiers of Christ entered Palestine,
but it was not till the 15th of July, 1099, that the holy city fell
into their hands, and that Godefroy de Bouillon (Figs. 103 and 104),
elected king by the principal leaders of the victorious army, under
the modest title of Baron of the Holy Sepulchre, founded the Christian
kingdom of Jerusalem.

  [Illustration: Fig. 103.--Godefroy de Bouillon, crowned with the
  Instruments of our Lord’s Passion.--From a Woodcut of the end of
  the Fifteenth Century, in the Burgundian Library, Brussels.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 104.--Tomb of Godefroy de Bouillon, as it
  existed in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem, with
  the inscription:--“Hic jacet inclitus Godfridus de Bulion, qui
  totam istam terram acquisivit cultui Christiano, cujus anima cum
  Christo requiescat. Amen.” (“Here lies the illustrious Godefroy
  de Bouillon, who won all this Holy Land to the worship of Christ.
  May his soul rest with Jesus.”)--Monument of the early part of
  the Twelfth Century, now destroyed, from a Drawing taken on the
  spot in 1828, now in the possession of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.]

Half a century passed away, during which Christendom sent forth
expedition after expedition to defend the Holy Land and to consolidate
its conquest; but with little success, for the Saracens never desisted
from their attacks on the Crusaders, and persistently disputed with
them the possession of Palestine. Moreover, the ardour of the pilgrims
gradually diminished, the zeal for the Crusades commenced to slacken
in Europe, and indifference and apathy began to take its place. When
the throne of Godefroy de Bouillon began to totter upon its insecure
foundations, the road to Jerusalem became deserted, and the civilised
world, absorbed and distracted by the nearer and keener struggles
continually waging between its popes and its sovereigns, soon,
preserved but a vague remembrance of the glorious enterprises of its
fathers.

Suddenly, however, it was rumoured in the West that the city of
Edessa, the capital of the first Christian principality founded by the
Crusaders in the East, and considered as the bulwark of the kingdom
of Jerusalem, had been retaken by the Saracens, who had deluged
the streets in blood. The painful tidings were received with deep
indignation; but a man of genius was at hand to strike the keynote of
distress and vengeance, and the voice of St. Bernard, the Abbot of
Clairvaux, rekindled the waning torch of crusading enthusiasm.

It was at Vézelai (Fig. 105), where Louis VII. held his court, that
the illustrious abbot, “fortified with the apostolical authority and
his own sanctity,” first addressed the nobles and the populace (1146).
“As there was no room in the castle,” says an eye-witness, Eudes de
Deuil, in his Latin chronicles, “a pulpit had been constructed in the
open air upon the plains which lay at the foot of the hill of Vézelai,
into which Bernard ascended, accompanied by the king, wearing the cross
sent him by the pope.” When the heaven-born orator had aroused his
hearers with the divine fire of his eloquence, there arose a universal
shout of “Crosses! crosses!” The crosses which the abbot had prepared
beforehand were soon exhausted, and, tearing his clothes into strips,
he distributed them amongst the assembly, who fastened them crosswise
on their garments. He continued his exhortations during the whole of
his stay at Vézelai, giving proof of the sanctity of his mission by the
numerous miracles which he performed.

The pious and touching appeals of St. Bernard attained the success
he desired. King Louis, his wife Eleanor, his principal nobility and
clergy, many thousand knights, and a vast number of the lower classes,
enrolled themselves under the banner of the cross. “As soon as it was
agreed that they should set out at the expiration of a year,” says
another chronicler, “all joyfully returned home. But the Abbot of
Clairvaux went about preaching from place to place, and it soon became
impossible to reckon the number of the Crusaders.” From France, Bernard
crossed over to Germany, where the influence of his inspired words
fully revealed itself, for whole populations, unable even to understand
the language he addressed them in, carried away by the marvellous charm
of his manner, smote their breasts, and cried out, “God be merciful to
us! The saints be with us!”

  [Illustration: Fig. 105.--Façade of the Abbey Church of the
  Magdalen, as it now stands at Vézelai, where, in 1146, St.
  Bernard preached the Second Crusade (Twelfth Century).]

The Emperor Conrad, whom the Abbot endeavoured to persuade to join
the King of France in the new crusade, at first gave the enterprise
considerable opposition; but at last, at a meeting held at Spires, the
28th of December, 1146, Bernard’s extraordinary eloquence produced
such an effect upon him that he vowed on the spot to assume the
cross. His example was immediately followed by several German princes,
amongst whom was his own nephew, the youthful Frederick of Suabia, who
afterwards became so celebrated under the name of Frederick Barbarossa.

A few months later, the French and German armies, each of which
contained more than a hundred thousand fighting men, without reckoning
the swarm of pilgrims who accompanied them, set out, well armed,
well equipped, and full of confidence, for the East. The two armies
contained the _élite_ of the chivalry of both countries. “Europe,”
said St. Bernard in one of his letters, “contained nothing but desert
towns and castles, nothing but widows and orphans, whose husbands and
fathers were still alive.”

But, alas! this enthusiasm, this zeal, this heroism, displayed by
all classes of European society, were destined to end in miserable
disaster. The insubordination of the troops, the want of foresight and
co-operation of their leaders, and the treachery of the Greek emperor
Manuel, prepared a fatal ending for this ill-omened undertaking, which
saw its host melt away long before their arrival in the Holy Land.
After more than a year of tremendous efforts and sanguinary reverses,
its remnants struggled painfully back to the West, leaving the kingdom
of Jerusalem in a far more precarious position than before the arrival
of the combined forces. “And on all sides,” relates a chronicler, “were
heard complaints and reproaches against the Abbot of Clairvaux, whose
promises of victory had been so little realised, who, it was said, had
sent so many brave men to a useless death, and who had plunged so many
noble families into mourning. The holy man was mortified to the very
depths of his soul, but rather than doubt the beneficent wisdom of the
Almighty, he exclaimed, ‘If they must murmur, it is better that they
should murmur against me than against God. I am rejoiced that the Lord
has condescended to use me as a shield. I am willing to be humiliated,
provided always that His glory be unassailed.’”

Forty years later, after the terrible battle of Tiberias (1187), where
so much generous blood was spilt around Guy de Lusignan, the last King
of Jerusalem, the Sultan Saladin, one of the most remarkable characters
in Mussulman history, seized the holy city, which henceforth was only
destined once, and then but for a short time, to fall again into the
hands of the Christians.

In 1181 the Third Crusade was undertaken, and Philip Augustus, the
King of France, and Richard, the King of England, whose great deeds in
this holy war obtained for him the surname of Cœur de Lion, forgetting
their own personal quarrels, put themselves at its head. Subsequently,
Frederick Barbarossa, the Emperor of Germany, who had previously taken
part in the Second Crusade, joined the undertaking, in which he was
destined to meet his death.

After having shed more blood and displayed more bravery than would have
sufficed to conquer the whole of Asia, after the long and memorable
siege of the city of Ptolemais, after many signal successes, the
Christian armies, discouraged and diminished by more than one half,
returned to Europe, bringing with them “moult de gloire,”[8] says a
chronicler, but without having in reality obtained any material or
lasting advantage over the unbelievers, who it was true had lost St.
Jean d’Acre, but who still retained possession of Jerusalem.

The Fourth Crusade (1198–1204), which some historians call the fifth,
was authorised by Pope Innocent III., and preached in France by the
celebrated Foulques de Neuilly. This crusade was remarkable in one
respect. Its efforts at first were directed against the persecutors of
Christianity, but events, as they developed themselves, modified its
aim, and the question of the holy places having become abandoned, it
ended, after the taking of Constantinople (Fig. 106), in the overthrow
of the dynasty of the successors of Constantine, and its being replaced
by a French dynasty, the founders of the Latin Empire of Byzantium.
Following the example of Baudouin, Count of Flanders, the principal
nobles of the crusading army divided among themselves the spoils of the
Greek Empire, and ceased to think of the holy war.

In 1217, Andrew, King of Hungary, in company with several nobles of
Germany and France, assumed the cross. This expedition sailed for
Egypt, and laid siege to Damietta, which only capitulated after losing
eighty thousand of its inhabitants. From thence it moved on to Cairo,
but, being decimated by the plague, it was forced to retreat and return
to Europe. This was really the fifth crusade.

  [Illustration: Fig. 106.--Second taking of Constantinople, in
  1204.--From a Fresco by Tintoretto, in the Palace of the Doges,
  Venice (Sixteenth Century).]

In 1228, Frederick II., King of Naples and Sicily, having been elected
Emperor of Germany, conceived the idea, more from political than
religious motives, of reconquering, in the name of Christendom, the
Holy City. He embarked, accompanied only by a few hundred soldiers,
and, landing in Egypt, had an interview with the Sultan, who was
persuaded, under some unknown influence, to sign a treaty, by virtue
of which Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem were to be restored to the
Christians, under the express condition that the Mussulmans should
be allowed to retain the Temple and to erect a mosque in the city of
Jesus Christ. This was at best a sacrilegious compact. It was neither
approved nor kept by the Christians or by the Saracens, and was soon
considered by Frederick himself a worthless compromise, although he had
entered Jerusalem in person, and had there crowned himself with his own
hands. This singular expedition was termed the Sixth Crusade.

But the hour was now fast approaching when the vigorous and sincere
faith which had inspired the apostles of the First Crusade was once
more to revive and to shine forth in all its pristine brilliancy; and
it was again in France that the flame of Christian devotion was to be
rekindled at the cry which still found its echo in every heart, the cry
of “_Dieu le veut!_” The French nation, the eldest daughter of
the Church, had then at its head one of those pure and simple-minded
men whom Providence too rarely raises up for the honour and welfare of
mankind. Louis IX., the son of Blanche of Castile, and the grandson of
King Philip Augustus, united in his pure and magnanimous soul all the
gentle virtues of his mother to the generous and chivalrous sentiments
of his grandfather.

Whilst bestowing an assiduous and intelligent care on the government,
and, it may be said, on the regeneration of his kingdom, whilst
devoting the influence of his moral authority to appease the political
discord which was agitating and devastating Europe, the sainted king
could not forget that his Eastern brethren were groaning under slavery
and persecution. The object of his dreams, at some future day when his
kingly task should be nearing its accomplishment, when peace should
reign in his dominions and in those of his neighbours, was to deliver
Jerusalem and to drive the Saracen from the Holy Land. He was forced
to postpone this noble undertaking, but it was only to await a more
propitious opportunity of carrying it out in a thoroughly efficacious
manner.

“Or advint,” says the Sire de Joinville in his Memoirs, “que le roi
cheut en une grande maladie, et tellement fut au bas, qu’une des dames
qui le gardoient, cuidant qu’il fût oultre, lui voulut couvrir le
visage d’un linceul, et de l’autre part du lit y eut une autre dame qui
ne le voulut souffrir. Or Notre-Seigneur ouvra en lui et lui redonna
la parole; et demanda le bon roi qu’on lui apportât la croix; ce qui
fut fait. Et quand la bonne dame, sa mère, sut qu’il eut recouvré la
parole, elle en eut une si grande joie qui plus ne se pouvoit, mais
quand elle le vit croisé, elle fut aussi transie que si elle l’eût vu
mort (1244).”[9]

Notwithstanding, however, the grief of the queen-mother, who, in spite
of her devotion to the holy cause, feared lest the absence of the king
might prove disadvantageous to France, Louis IX., having once taken
the vow, was determined faithfully to perform it. Moreover, he was
encouraged by seeing that his example alone had more influence than the
warmest exhortations of his preachers, for, as soon as it was known
that their revered sovereign had assumed the cross, zeal revived among
all classes, faith regained its sway, and an impatience to set forth on
the crusade manifested itself on all sides.

But the king, sagacious and prudent in spite of his ardour, and
forewarned by the errors of his predecessors, was unwilling to give the
signal until he had taken all proper precautions and made all necessary
arrangements. Three years elapsed, during which Louis IX. continued
his preparations, and collected provisions of every kind, which were
conveyed to Cyprus, the spot chosen for the general rendezvous of the
Crusaders; in the meantime, he busied himself in preparing, in the
interests of his kingdom, for the events that might take place in his
absence. At length, having appointed his mother regent, he embarked
from the port of Aigues-Mortes on the 15th of August, 1248, with his
wife, his brother, and his principal adherents. At Cyprus he was joined
in turn by all the nobles of France, with their men-at-arms and their
vassals. He passed the winter in organizing the expedition, which was
first destined for Egypt; for, of all the Mahometan chiefs who were at
that time contending for the possession of Palestine, the Sultan of
Cairo, who had already made himself master of Syria, was considered the
most powerful, and it was the opinion of the most competent soldiers
that the conquest of the Holy Land must commence on the shores of the
Nile.

Everything seemed to promise a happy result. A considerable fleet, a
numerous and well-disciplined army, an abundant supply of provisions,
arms, and military stores, the supreme command concentrated in one
hand, and, above all, a real feeling of devotion to the sacred cause--a
feeling inspired by the exhortations and the example of the king--such
were the elements from which the Seventh Crusade might have hoped to
attain success.

In the spring, eighteen hundred vessels sailed from Cyprus, where they
had been fitted out, and conveyed the crusading army to Damietta. The
king, armed from head to foot, was one of the first to spring ashore.
Several of his knights and men-at-arms followed him, and, in the midst
of a shower of darts, dispersed the Saracens, with whom the shore was
covered, and drove them back in disorder into the town (Fig. 107). The
attack was so bold and so unforeseen, that the infidels, struck with
terror, no longer believed themselves secure behind the walls which
thirty years before had sustained a siege of eighteen months, and
abandoned Damietta without striking a blow in its defence.

The possession of this stronghold, situated on the sea-coast at the
mouth of the Nile, would have been of but little importance to the
Crusaders, but its conquest had been so rapid and easy that they were
led by the intoxication of success to neglect the first elements of
prudence and discipline. Their entry into the town was the signal for
its pillage, in spite of the orders and entreaties of the king, whose
humane and generous character was repugnant to this act of barbarism.

The Christian host should have profited by the enemy’s discomfiture,
and immediately have penetrated into the interior of the country,
instead of remaining, as it did, stationary for five months, either on
account of the periodic inundations of the river, or in expectation
of the reinforcements which were due from Europe. This long delay,
which fostered idleness, dissipation, and insubordination, was fatal
to the expedition. When the king at last gave the order to advance, he
had under his orders none but effeminate, enervated troops, without
obedience and without discipline; and the Saracens, who had had plenty
of time to forget their panic and overcome their discouragement, found,
in the demoralization of their enemies, a still further ground for
comfort, and a fresh motive for confidence.

  [Illustration: Fig. 107.--Disembarkation of the Crusaders at
  Damietta.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Grand Voyage de
  Hiérusalem,” printed in Paris in 1522 by François Regnault, in
  the Library of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.]

Thenceforward the Christian cause proceeded from bad to worse. After
several engagements in which they were worsted, after several battles,
the effect of which was merely to sacrifice life--particularly after
the battle of Mansourah, in which Robert of Artois, the king’s brother,
was killed, with the flower of the nobility--the Crusaders found
themselves surrounded in their camp, a prey to a pestilential epidemic
produced by want, which daily made considerable ravages in their
ranks. French valour, however, was not to be daunted, and over and
over again the soldiers, though exhausted by fatigue and disease and
dying of hunger, put forth fresh efforts, and defeated the Saracens; at
a cost to themselves, however, that each victory made them less able
to endure. At last they were forced to retreat on Damietta, where the
Queen with some reserve troops was awaiting them, and where they hoped
to reorganize themselves.

After they had been three or four days on the march, during which this
weary host of sick and wounded had been ceaselessly harassed by the
enemy, the king--who was seriously ill himself, but who always rode
and fought in the rear to protect the remnant of his _ost_, whose
safety, he said, he valued far more than his own life--was forced to
halt in a village, which the Saracens surrounded and attacked on all
sides, while the bravest and most devoted of Louis’s knights allowed
themselves to be cut to pieces to prevent their _good sire_ from
falling into the hands of the infidels.

Louis was lying on the field in a dying condition, quite incapable of
giving any command, when some traitor cried out in the midst of the
fight, “Yield, sir knights, yield all of you, the king orders it; do
not cause him to be slain.” The fight immediately ceased, the knights
threw down their arms and asked for quarter. The Saracens pitilessly
massacred not only the sick, from whom they feared the effects of
contagion, but every Christian beneath the rank of knight. The king
was taken prisoner, together with his two brothers (Fig. 108), his
principal barons, and the officers of his household. This occurred on
the 6th of April, 1250.

History records the most touching incidents of the captivity of the
pious monarch. Never was Louis IX. so noble, so heroic, as during
these thirty days of trial, of suffering, and of danger. Though a
captive in the hands of the unbelievers, subjected to the grossest
outrages, loaded with chains, and threatened with death, he still
displayed in the gentleness of his disposition and the serenity of
his soul the high virtues of the Christian faith and the nobility
pertaining to his kingly dignity. The Saracens greatly admired this
magnanimity in misfortune, and their principal leader, the terrible
Sultan of Damascus, entered into negotiations with his august
prisoner, who was prepared to die rather than submit to some of the
demands of his conquerors. A million of golden _besants_ (about
half a million of French livres) for the ransom of the Franks, the
restitution of Damietta for that of their king, and ten years’ truce
between the Christians and the Mussulmans of Egypt and of Syria, were
the conditions that Louis was obliged to accept. Joinville tells
us that the emirs of the sultan were content to accept, as their
only guarantee, the bare word of this Frankish prince, the noblest
Christian, they said, they had ever seen in the East. Some of the
Saracens, indeed, according to the same chronicler, had conceived the
intention of offering the throne of Egypt to King Louis (Fig. 109), so
much respect and esteem had he inspired them with.

  [Illustration: Fig. 108.--St. Louis and his two brothers,
  Alphonse, Count of Poitiers, and Charles, Count of Anjou, made
  prisoners by the Saracens.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Grand
  Voyage de Hiérusalem,” printed in Paris by François Regnault in
  1522; folio. Library of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.]

Louis having recovered his liberty, would not return to France without
having tried every means in his power to alleviate the miseries of
Palestine, or at least to deliver the Christian prisoners whom the
infidels still detained. He went, with seven hundred knights who
still remained under his orders, to the Holy Land, and then, rather
by conciliation than by force, and by the exercise of a marvellous
sagacity, he was enabled to a certain extent to re-establish the
prestige of the defenders of the cross. He devoted four years to this
good work, and only consented to return to France on hearing of the
death of his beloved mother. He re-entered Paris, after an absence of
six years (1254), with a wounded and broken spirit, “because,” says the
English chronicler, Matthew Paris, “through him disorder had overspread
Christendom.”

  [Illustration: Fig. 109.--The Messengers of the Sultan, having
  at their head a little old man walking with crutches, come to
  discuss terms of ransom with the Christian prisoners.--From a
  miniature in the “Credo de Joinville,” Manuscript of the end
  of the Thirteenth Century, formerly in the National Library of
  Paris, but now in England.]

Palestine in 1268 had fallen into the deepest misery and desolation;
the few towns and strongholds which remained in the hands of the
Eastern Christians had been pillaged and sacked by the Mamelukes,
who at last took Antioch, where they slew seventeen thousand of the
inhabitants, and sold a hundred thousand more into slavery (Fig. 110).
These dreadful tidings, which two centuries earlier would have caused a
general indignation in Christendom, reached the West without creating
much excitement, in the midst of the political troubles which were
agitating most of the states of Europe. But since his return to France,
St. Louis had worn the cross, if not on his garments, at least in his
heart, and had always cherished the hope of realising the dream of
his youth. “The cries of the miserable Eastern Christians,” says an
old chronicle, “deprived him of rest; and he felt within him a deep
anguish of soul and a passionate desire for martyrdom.”

  [Illustration: Fig. 110.--Plan of Antioch in the Thirteenth
  Century, with its five gates--of St. Paul, of the Dog, of the
  Duke, of the Bridge, and of St. George. To the right is Mount
  Oronte; in the foreground is the sea.--From a Manuscript of the
  Thirteenth Century, No. 4,939, in the National Library of Paris.]

Accordingly he convened a solemn parliament, when he announced to
his assembled nobles his intention of undertaking a new crusade. At
first many were greatly surprised and afflicted, thinking, writes the
Sire de Joinville, “that those who had counselled the undertaking had
committed an evil deed and a mortal sin.” Some, indeed, of the king’s
most faithful servants openly refused to join his crusade, not through
fear, but from wisdom, and with the intention perhaps of persuading him
to abandon his fatal project; but the majority of the barons and feudal
lords found it impossible to gainsay the will of their sovereign, and
the example of the king was of still greater power than his orders.
His three sons, the Counts of Toulouse, of Champagne, and of Flanders,
took up the cross, as well as his brother, Charles of Anjou, who had
recently been raised to the throne of Sicily, and many other princes of
the royal house of France.

The preparations for the crusade required three years, during which
St. Louis, in the hope of persuading every Christian state to send
its troops against the infidels, did his best, but without success,
to put an end to the political quarrels that divided kings from their
subjects. He embarked, in 1270, with his sons and his principal nobles,
for Sardinia, which had been fixed upon as the rendezvous of the
Crusaders. On his arrival there it was decided that Tunis should be
attacked first. A French chronicler mentions that the king had been
given to understand that “Tunis afforded great assistance to the Sultan
of Cairo, which was very injurious to the Holy Land, and the barons
believed that if that root of evil, the city of Tunis, were destroyed,
it would be of much advantage to Christendom.” Other chroniclers, on
the contrary, and amongst them Matthew Paris, give a more plausible
motive for the expedition, viz., that the king had heard that the
Moorish sovereign of that part of the coast had shown a disposition to
embrace Christianity and join the western powers in their attempt to
conquer Egypt.

  [Illustration: Fig. 111.--Disembarkation of St. Louis
  at Carthage.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Passaiges
  d’oultremer:” small folio, Paris, 1518.]

However that may have been, the crusading fleet sailed for Tunis,
carrying an army sadly tried by sickness, and whose ardour had already
strangely begun to cool. The Moors permitted the Christians, almost
unopposed, to disembark and take possession of Carthage (Fig. 111),
which had dwindled down to a mere village. Some of the Crusaders
housed themselves in the ruins of the ancient Carthaginian city, the
remainder bivouacked under the burning sun of Africa, surrounded
and harassed by the infidels, whose light cavalry kept continuously
skirmishing around them. It was not long before the plague broke out
in the Christian army, whilst it was still awaiting the arrival of the
King of Sicily and his troops, and Louis IX., already in feeble health,
bowed down by premature old age, and heartbroken in consequence of the
death of one of his sons, was attacked by it.

  [Illustration: Fig. 112.--St. John of Capistran, Franciscan Monk,
  who defended Belgrade against the Turks.--From a Painting by
  Bartolommeo Vivarini, in the Louvre. Fifteenth Century.]

As soon as this culminating misfortune was known in the camp there
was unusual consternation and despondency, for every one knew that
the king was the life and soul of the expedition. From his sickbed,
where he was undergoing the most cruel sufferings, he still continued
to issue his orders with that composure and gentleness which were
habitual to him; but every hour increased his feebleness, every moment
brought him nearer to his end. As soon as he perceived that his death
was at hand, he tranquilly dictated his last instructions to his son
Philip--instructions which have rightly been termed celestial;--then
kneeling at the bedside he received extreme unction, after which,
stretching himself upon a bed of ashes as a sign of repentance and
humility, his eyes turned beseechingly towards heaven, and the words of
the psalmist on his lips, “O Lord, I will enter thy temple and glorify
thy name,” he quietly breathed his last (August 25th, 1270).

  [Illustration: Fig. 113.--Don Juan of Austria, holding a
  boarding-axe in remembrance of the Battle of Lepanto.--From
  a painting attributed to Alonso Sanchez Coello, Portuguese
  painter, in the possession of M. Carderera, of Madrid. End of the
  Sixteenth Century.]

And with the last beat of this grand and noble heart terminated the
eighth crusade, the last on the heroic list of these adventurous
expeditions in which the power and the influence of the Christian
faith had been so signally manifested. It had indeed required all the
personal influence of the revered monarch to re-awaken the religious
enthusiasm, to quicken into life the zeal and faith of a state of
society which had become more sceptical, if not more corrupt, as it
had become more civilised, and which occupied itself less with the
spiritual consolations of the soul than with the material pleasures
of the body. Never again was the sceptre of France to pass into such
sainted hands, never again was the martyr’s halo of glory to illuminate
its crown. It is true that more than once since the death of St. Louis
a call to the crusade has resounded from the pontifical chair and from
the dais of the council hall, but it never found an echo in the heart
of either prince or peasant. Nevertheless on two subsequent occasions
have voices as persuasive as those of Peter the Hermit and the Monk of
Clairvaux attempted to re-awaken popular enthusiasm. In the middle of
the fifteenth century, while Mahomet II., master of Constantinople,
was advancing full of confidence to conquer the West, John Corvin,
vayvode of Transylvania, better known under the name of Huniades, put
himself at the head of the Crusaders who had been assembled by the
eloquent appeals of St. John of Capistran (Fig. 112). Carried away with
the enthusiasm of this man of God, who, crucifix in hand, was wont to
penetrate the ranks in the hottest part of an engagement, the Crusaders
showed themselves worthy of their heroic leader, Huniades. At the
close of a tremendous struggle, the Turks were put to flight; Belgrade
remained in the hands of the Christians, and the haughty Mahomet II.
was wounded and hurried off the field by his followers.

Towards the close of the sixteenth century, the King of Spain and
the Italian princes concluded arrangements with Pope Pius V. and the
Venetians for a crusade to defend Christian Europe against the Turks.
Don Juan of Austria (Fig. 113), who was appointed commander-in-chief
of the troops by Pius V., obtained, on the 7th of October, 1571, that
tremendous victory in which the Turks lost thirty thousand men and two
hundred and twenty-four vessels, a loss that destroyed their naval
supremacy and saved Europe. But in the meantime the Holy Land had
again fallen beneath the yoke of the infidel, and there was soon no
trace left of those principalities beyond the seas which the crusading
nobles had founded in the Archipelago and in Asia Minor, and which
for a brief, a very brief, space had seemed so flourishing; there was
soon, indeed, no trace left of even the name of the ephemeral kingdom
of Jerusalem, for the creation of which the nations of Europe had
lavished, for nearly two centuries, so much blood, so much wealth, and
so much heroism.

The effect of the Crusades was nevertheless a complete revolution in
the manners and customs of the Western nations; the suppression of
servitude, the founding of the free towns, the alienation and the
division of the feudal lands, and the development of the communal
system, were the immediate consequences of the tremendous emigration of
men who went forth to fight and die in Palestine. The nobles ceased
to wage their perpetual private quarrels, knighthood assumed a regular
and solemn character, judiciary duels diminished, religious orders
multiplied, and charitable institutions were established on every side.
Men’s minds became more enlightened and their manners softened under
the influence of the growing expansion of science, art, and literature.
Law, natural history, philosophy, and mathematics came to them in
direct descent from the Greeks and the Arabians; a new literature,
abounding in poetic gems, sprang forth all at once from the imagination
of troubadours, minstrels, and minnesingers; art, the fine arts
particularly, architecture, painting, sculpture, and embroidery, began
to unfold their thousand wonders; industry and commerce multiplied a
hundredfold the public wealth, which at one time had seemed nearly
swallowed up in ruinous expeditions; and the art of war, as well as the
art of navigation, made immense strides in the direction of progress.

  [Illustration: Fig. 114.--Assault on a Fortified Place.--From a
  Miniature in the “Histoire des Croisades” of Guillaume de Tyr,
  Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century, in the Library of M. Ambr.
  Firmin-Didot.]




                               CHIVALRY.

                        DUELS AND TOURNAMENTS.

   Origin of Chivalry.--Its different Characteristics.--Chivalric
   Gallantry.--Chivalry and Nobility.--Its Relations
   with the Church.--Education of the Children of the
   Nobility.--Squires.--Chivalric Exercises.--Pursuivants
   at Arms.--Courts and Tribunals of Love.--Creation of
   Knights.--Degradation of Knights.--Judicial Duels.--Trials by
   Ordeal.--Feudal Champions.--Gages of Battle.--The Church forbids
   Duels.--Tournaments invented by the Sire de Preuilly in the
   Tenth Century.--Arms need in a Tournament.--Tilt.--Lists.--The
   part taken by Ladies.--King René’s Book.


The word Chivalry, according to M. Philarète Chasles, whose ingenious
opinions we often borrow, expresses a mixture of manners, of ideas,
and of customs peculiar to the Middle Ages of Europe, and to which no
analogy is to be traced in the annals of the human race.

Illustration: Fig. 115.--King Artus, protected by the Virgin, is
fighting a Giant.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Chroniques de
Bretagne,” of Alain Bouchard; 4to, Paris, Galliot du Pré, 1514.]

The Eddas, Tacitus, and the Dano-Anglo-Saxon poems of Béowulf contain
the only positive documents concerning the origin of chivalry. It
reached its apogee rapidly after its birth, and gradually declined
towards the close of the thirteenth century. At that period ladies
took a very prominent position; they armed the knights, conferred the
order of knighthood, and bestowed the prizes of honour. It was under
the influence of the ideas peculiar to this epoch that Dante wrote his
great poem, “for the sole purpose,” he said, “of glorifying Beatrice
Portinari,” a child of eleven years of age whom he had accidentally
seen in a church. It was at this time that the Suabian knights,
invaded by the barbarous Hungarians, who were in the habit of slaying
their enemies with their enormous bows and arrows, implored them,
“in the name of the ladies,” to take sword in hand, in order to fight
in “a more civilised manner.” But chivalry soon began to decline,
both as an institution and as a doctrine. Froissart characterizes and
describes with picturesque liveliness this tendency to decay, which,
as time advanced, gradually resulted in a complete transformation,
so that the chivalric ideal became lost, and the independence of the
soldier, once the slave only of his God and of his lady, gave way to
the obsequiousness of the courtier, and finally became a selfish and
pitiful servility.

At these different epochs of organic transformation, chivalry was
constantly modifying itself according to each nation’s particular
tendency. In Thuringia and Saxony, in Ireland and in Norway, it
resisted longer than elsewhere the growing influence of Christianity.
It exhibits its semi-paganism in certain passages of the “Niebelungen,”
a German epic poem of the thirteenth century, in which the rude impress
of ancient Teutonism is still clear and distinct. Between the seventh
and the eleventh centuries the traces of this rudeness of origin still
strongly showed themselves among the Franks, whose bravery consisted
in spilling their blood, in fearing nothing, and in sparing nobody.
This thirst for blood was unknown in the south of Europe; there men’s
dispositions were amiable and gentle, and as far back as the eleventh
century chivalric gallantry was regulated by fixed laws, and gave birth
to a learned and refined school of poetry. From Provence this spirit
of gallantry and poetry made its way into Italy and Sicily, where the
barbarous Teutonic knights had been so frequently turned into ridicule.
Little by little, however, German chivalry was affected by these
southern influences. The minnesingers softened to the best of their
ability the Teutonic language to permit of its repeating the softer
songs of the Provençal muse, and the light but lively imaginations of
the troubadours assumed a gentle melancholy and often a metaphysical
grace in their German verses. In Great Britain, where the actual has
always overshadowed the ideal, chivalry remained cold, feudal, and
aristocratic, whilst it was passionately worshipped by the Spaniards,
those noble and knightly descendants of the Goths and Iberians, whose
struggle with the Arabs was one long tournament that lasted for more
than seven centuries (Fig. 116). In religious countries chivalry
assumed monastic characteristics; among nations of a gay and lively
disposition it verged on the voluptuous and licentious. Alphonso X.,
King of Leon and Castile, forced his subjects to submit to monkish
regulations, and prescribed the shape of their clothes as well as the
manner in which they were to spend their time. In Provence, chivalry
regarded unlawful love with an indulgent eye, and made a jest of
marriage.

Chivalry was in fact a fraternal association, or rather an enthusiastic
compact between men of feeling and courage, of delicacy and devotion;
such at least was the noble aim it had in view, and which it constantly
strove to attain (Fig. 117).

  [Illustration: Fig. 116.--Sword of Isabella the Catholic.
  Upon the hilt is the following inscription, partly in Spanish
  and partly in Latin:--“I am always desiring honour; now I am
  watching, peace be with me” (“Deseo sienpre onera; nunc caveo,
  pax con migo”).--From the “Armeria Real of Madrid,” a publication
  of M. Ach. Jubinal’s.]

However praiseworthy its motives and intentions, chivalry was not
favourably regarded by everybody. In its feudal aspect it was
displeasing to sovereigns, who constantly endeavoured to create beside
it, and sometimes above it, a nobility of the sword, an individual
and personal rank that could not be handed down from father to
son (Fig. 118). Thus Philippe le Bel, being in want of soldiers
after the Flemings had destroyed his chivalry--that is to say, his
nobility--attempted immediately to replace it by ordering that the
elder of two sons of a villain, and the two elder of three sons,
should be admitted into the order of knighthood. In this way Frederick
Barbarossa knighted peasants who had displayed personal bravery on the
field of battle.

  [Illustration: Fig. 117.--Chivalry represented by Allegorical
  Figures.--Fac-simile of a Copper-plate in the Spanish translation
  of the “Chevalier délibéré” of Olivier de la Marche: 4to,
  Salamanca, 1573.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 118.--Conferring Knighthood on the Field
  of Battle.--Romance of “Lancelot du Lac,” a Manuscript in the
  National Library of Paris (Thirteenth Century).]

As for the Church, it contented itself with warning the knights
against too bellicose a spirit, and with imbuing them as far as
possible with the sentiments of Christian charity; in fact, knights
were frequently considered to be a species of Levite. “There was,”
says the “Ordène de Chevalerie”[10] “a great resemblance between the
duties of a knight and those of a priest.” Thence the reason that the
priest was “the hero of the faith,” and the knight “the pontiff of true
honour.” Thence the name of _ordène_, or _ordination_, given
to the investiture of knighthood. In the sixteenth century, the Spanish
knight Don Ignatio de Loyola, who became so famous as the founder of
the Order of the Jesuits, made himself a knight of the Virgin, and
solemnised his entrance into God’s service, according to ancient
custom, by keeping the _veillée des armes_[11] before the sacred
image of the mother of Christ.

The Church, although it seeks to maintain peace and has a horror of
bloodshed, has never forbidden legitimate wars, and thus good King St.
Louis never shrank on the field of battle from driving his sword up to
the very hilt into his enemy’s heart. And the Church, whilst approving
of the noble character as well as of the enthusiasm of chivalry, always
endeavoured to restrain its more romantic and warlike tendencies. Its
pacific and charitable spirit is expressed in the solemn blessing on
the sword of a knight, which we take from the “pontifical:”--“Most
holy Lord,” said the officiating prelate, “omnipotent Father, eternal
God, who alone ordainest and disposest all things; who, to restrain
the malice of the wicked and to protect justice, hast, by a wise
arrangement, permitted the use of the sword to men upon this earth,
and willed the institution of the military order for the protection
of thy people; O thou who, by the mouth of the thrice-blessed John,
didst tell the soldiers who came to seek him in the desert to oppress
no one, but to rest content with their wages,--we humbly implore thy
mercy, Lord. It is thou who gavest to thy servant David to overcome
Goliath, and to Judas Maccabeus to triumph over the nations who did not
worship thee; in like manner now to this thy servant here, who has come
to bend his head beneath the military yoke, grant strength and courage
for the defence of the faith and justice; grant him an increase of
faith, hope, and charity; inspire him with thy fear and love; give him
humility, perseverance, obedience, and patience; make his disposition
in everything such that he may wound no person unjustly either with
this sword or with any other, but that he may use it to defend all that
is just and all that is right.”

The bishop gave the naked sword to the new knight, saying, “Receive
this blade in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost, and use it for your own defence and for that of God’s Holy
Church, and for the confusion of the enemies of the cross of Christ and
of the Christian faith; and as far as human frailty permits it, wound
no one unjustly with it.” The new-made knight then rose, brandished the
sword, wiped it on his left arm, and replaced it in its scabbard. The
prelate then gave him the kiss of peace, saying, “Peace be with thee.”
Then with the naked sword in his right hand, he struck the knight
gently thrice across the shoulders, saying, “Be thou a peaceable,
brave, and faithful warrior.” After which the other knights present put
on his spurs (Fig. 119), whilst the bishop said, “Valiant warrior, thou
who surpassest in beauty the children of men, gird thyself with thy
sword upon thy thigh.”

  [Illustration: Fig. 119.--Arming a Knight; whilst his spurs are
  being put on, the prince girds the sword to his side.--From a
  Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century in the British Museum.]

The son of a noble, or even of a commoner, intended for the ranks
of knighthood, was at the age of seven taken away from the care of
the women; who, however, never allowed him to reach that age without
instilling into him such sentiments of right and valour as should
govern his conduct during the rest of his life. He was then entrusted
to the men, of whom he became not only the pupil, but the servitor;
for, says the “Ordène de Chevalerie,” “it is proper that he should
learn to obey before he governs; for otherwise he would not appreciate
the nobility of his rank when he became a knight.” Moreover, the
chivalric code, which distrusted the prejudices and weaknesses of
paternal affection, required “every knight to place his son in the
service of some other knight.” These youthful novices, particularly if
they belonged to a noble and honourable family, always found plenty
of princely courts, seignorial households, manors, and castles to
receive them, which were, so to speak, the public schools of chivalry.
There existed, besides, hospitals founded and maintained by wealthy
and generous nobles, in the same manner as are the colleges of the
University of Paris; and these hospitals were governed by old knights
without family or fortune, who considered it no shame to accept, not a
salary in money, but a retiring pension in the shape of a house with
board, in which to hold a kind of school of chivalry for the benefit of
the youths, who promised at some future time to prove a credit to the
institution.

These youths were termed pages, varlets, and damoiseaux, and they
performed under their masters and mistresses the most humble and the
most domestic functions: they followed them in their travels and to the
chase; they formed part of their suites on occasions of ceremony; they
wrote their letters and carried their messages; they waited on them at
meals, carved their dishes, and poured out their drinks.

In the eyes even of those nobles who were most jealous of their birth
and of their name, this temporary and casual servitude had nothing
in it either of a humiliating or degrading character, and its only
effect was to knit still closer the ties of respect, obedience, and
sympathy which bound the youth to his adopted parents, the aspirant for
knighthood to his master and teacher. The latter by no means neglected
the moral and religious education of the neophyte; the first lessons
which were given him taught him not only to love God, but to respect
women.

As soon as the young page had acquired sufficient experience and
discernment to direct his own movements in the intricacies of chivalric
life, he was bidden to choose an ideal sovereign from among the noble
and beautiful ladies of the aristocratic world that he frequented, a
sort of terrestrial divinity whom he was to swear to serve, and to whom
he was henceforth to recount all his thoughts and actions, treating her
at the same time with all the delicacy and devotion which the example
of those around him had shown him to be her due.

He was taught, above all, to revere the august character of chivalry,
and to respect, in the persons of the knights who composed this
institution, the dignity to which he himself aspired. It was thus that,
led by the instinct of imitation peculiar to the young, the pages
habitually played at doing everything they saw done by the knights.
They practised wielding the lance and the sword; they played at
combats, attacks, and duels between themselves. Excited by emulation,
they coveted the honour of being considered brave, hoping if they
attained their wish, that it would lead to their being attached to the
service of some person of mark, or to their being promoted to the rank
of esquire.

When the young men abandoned the position of pages in order to be
made esquires, an event that never took place before their fourteenth
year, their change of social condition was celebrated by a religious
ceremony, which the Church appointed for the purpose of consecrating
their knightly vocation, and of hallowing the use of the arms they were
henceforward destined to carry. Standing at the altar and surrounded
by his nearest relations, the youthful novice received the consecrated
sword from the hands of the priest, promising always to wield it in the
interests of religion and honour. A higher position in the household of
his lord or lady was then assigned to the new esquire. He was admitted
to their private gatherings, he took part in all assemblies and state
ceremonies, and it was now his duty to superintend the reception, that
is to say, to regulate the laws of etiquette relating to the foreign
nobles who visited his master’s court.

  [Illustration: Fig. 120.--The Game of Quintain: tilting at
  a quintain (revolving effigy of a knight).--Fac-simile of a
  Miniature in the “Chroniques de Charlemagne” (Fifteenth Century).
  Burgundian Library, Brussels.]

A passage from the history of Boucicaut, a marshal of France in the
reign of Charles VI., will give an idea of the laborious and arduous
existence of the young esquire who aspired to become a worthy knight:
“Now cased in armour, he would practise leaping on to the back of a
horse; anon, to accustom himself to become long-winded and enduring,
he would walk and run long distances on foot, or he would practise
striking numerous and forcible blows with a battle-axe or mallet. In
order to accustom himself to the weight of his armour, he would turn
somersaults whilst clad in a complete suit of mail, with the exception
of his helmet, or would dance vigorously in a shirt of steel; he would
place one hand on the saddle-bow of a tall charger, and the other
on his neck, and vault over him.... He would climb up between two
perpendicular walls that stood four or five feet asunder by the mere
pressure of his arms and legs, and would thus reach the top, even if
it were as high as a tower, without resting either in the ascent or
descent.... When he was at home, he would practise with the other
young esquires at lance-throwing and other warlike exercises, and this
continually.”

Besides all this, it was necessary for an esquire who wished to fulfil
his duties properly to possess a number of physical qualities, great
versatility of talent and capability, and a zeal that never flagged.
At court, as in the larger seignorial households, there were various
classes or categories of esquires who performed totally distinct
duties, which in less important households were all entrusted to the
same individual. The first in importance was the body esquire, or
the esquire of honour; then the chamber esquire, or chamberlain; the
carving esquire, the stable esquire, the cup-bearing esquire, &c., all
separate personages, whose names sufficiently indicate their duties.

It is scarcely necessary to remark that esquires, besides the domestic
services expected from them within their master’s house, had especially
to give proofs of their vigilance and skill in the duties of the
stable--duties which, as an historian aptly observes, were of necessity
noble, since the military aristocracy never fought but on horseback.
It was the duty of all first esquires to break in their master’s
chargers, and to teach the younger esquires the routine of the stable.
The duty of attending to the arms and armour devolved upon another
class of esquires. We may add that, as each seignorial castle was also
a species of fortress, most of the esquires, in addition to their other
tasks, were required to perform certain military duties analogous to
those practised in a regular stronghold, such as rounds, sentry duty,
watches, &c. (Fig. 121).

When their lord mounted his horse, his esquires shared amongst them
the honour of assisting him; some held his stirrup, others carried
various parts of his armour, such as the armlets, the helmet, the
shield, the gauntlets, &c. When a knight was merely going for a ride or
on a journey, he usually bestrode a sober kind of hack that was called
a palfrey, but when he was going to take the field, one of his esquires
led at his right hand (whence the name of _destrier_ given to this
sort of steed) a charger or high horse, which the knight only mounted
at the last moment. Hence the expression, “to ride the high horse,”
which has become proverbial.

  [Illustration: Fig. 121.--German Knight, engraved by Burgmayer
  from designs by Albert Dürer, taken from a collection entitled
  “Vita Imperatoris Maximiliani” (Fifteenth Century).]

As soon as the knight had decided to mount his charger, his squires
proceeded to arm him, that is to say, they firmly fastened together all
the different pieces of his armour on his body with straps attached
to metal buckles for the purpose; and it may be well conceived that
no slight care was required to properly adjust such a cumbrous and
complicated steel or iron casing; an esquire’s neglect, indeed,
frequently caused his master’s death.

When a single combat took place, the esquires, drawn up behind their
lord, remained for a few moments inactive spectators of the struggle,
but as soon as it had once fairly begun their share in the affray
commenced. Watching the slightest movement, the smallest signals
of their master, they stood ready to assist him in an indirect but
efficacious manner if he attained any advantage, without actually
becoming aggressors themselves, in order to assure his victory; if
the knight were hurled from his steed, they helped him to remount,
they brought him a fresh horse, they warded off the blows that were
aimed at him; if he were wounded and placed _hors de combat_,
they did their utmost, at the risk of their own life, to carry him off
before he was slain outright. Again, it was to his esquires that a
successful knight confided the care of the prisoners he had taken on
the battle-field. In fine, the esquires, short of actually fighting
themselves, a thing forbidden by the code of chivalry, were expected
to display the greatest zeal, the greatest skill, and the greatest
courage, and consequently had it very materially in their power to
contribute to their master’s success.

A long novitiate and the consciousness of an aptitude for a military
career were not always, however, sufficient to enable an esquire
to obtain the rank of knight. He was frequently obliged, in the
intermediate rank of _pursuivant-at-arms_, to travel through
foreign countries, either as the acknowledged envoy of some prince or
noble, or merely in the character of an ordinary traveller, and be
present at chivalric games and tournaments, without actually taking
part in them himself; he thus acquired, by constant intercourse with
distinguished soldiers and high-born ladies, a thorough technical
knowledge of the military calling, and an intimate acquaintance with
all the elegant refinements of courtesy.

In this way pursuivants-at-arms went about everywhere, one day being
ceremoniously received at the court of a powerful noble, the next being
simply entertained in the lowly manor of a poor gentleman; acting,
wherever they might be, honourably both in word and in deed, observing
scrupulously the precepts both of honour and virtue, showing themselves
to be noble, brave, and devoted, and seeking every opportunity of
proving themselves worthy of ranking with the noble knights whose deeds
and whose names were the theme of constant and universal praise.

Chance alone was not allowed to direct their wandering and adventurous
steps, they eagerly sought the most renowned princely and seignorial
courts, at which they were certain to meet with chivalry’s loftiest
traditions; they thought themselves fortunate indeed when they were
able to make their obeisance to some hero famous for his deeds in arms,
or to elicit a smile from some lady celebrated for her beauty and her
worth.

  [Illustration: Fig. 122.--The Count of Artois, who has come
  from Arras to take part in the tournament at Boulogne, presents
  himself at the Castle of the Count of Boulogne, and is received
  by the Countess and her daughter.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in
  the “Livre du très-chevalereux Comte d’Artois et de sa Femme,”
  Barrois Manuscript (Fifteenth Century).]

  [Illustration: Fig. 123.--Knight setting out for the War.--“Il
  prist le dur congié de sa bonne et belle femme, en si grans
  pleurs et gemissemens qu’elle demoura toute pasmée” (“He said
  farewell to his good and beautiful wife with such tears and
  groans that she was ready to swoon”).--Fac-simile of a Miniature
  in the “Livre du très-chevalereux Comte d’Artois et de sa Femme,”
  Barrois Manuscript (Fifteenth Century).]

And while the most perfect respect and courtesy to ladies were the
first duties instilled into each youthful aspirant, it must be owned
that the education received by the former was one calculated to make
them in every way worthy of such homage. To fit ladies for the queenly
part they were destined to play in the world of chivalry, they were
taught from their childhood to practise every virtue, to cherish every
noble feeling, and generally to emulate the dignity demanded by the
social privileges of their rank. They were profuse in their acts of
kindness and civility to the knights, whether friends or strangers, who
entered the gates of their castles (Figs. 122 and 123); on a knight’s
return from tournament or battle, they unbuckled his armour with their
own hands, they prepared perfumes and spotless linen for his wear, they
clothed him in gala dress, in mantle and scarf that they had themselves
embroidered, they prepared his bath, and waited on him at table.
Destined to become the wives of these same knights who frequented
their homes, they did their utmost to bring themselves under their
notice by their modest demeanour, and to make themselves beloved by
the courtesy and the attentions which they lavished upon them. It was
theirs to respond, with admiration and tenderness, to the boldness and
to the bravery of the knights, who sought glory only to lay it at their
mistresses’ feet, and who asked for nothing better than to be subject
to the gentle sway of beauty, grace, and virtue.

It was thus, for instance, that in Provence, from the eleventh to
the fourteenth century, the most powerful nobles humbly obeyed,
in everything that concerned the heart, the decrees issued by the
_courts_ or _tribunals of love_, a kind of feminine areopagus
which was held with great ceremony on certain days, and at which
the ladies most distinguished by birth, beauty, intelligence, and
knowledge, met to deliberate, publicly or with closed doors, with
proper gravity and solemnity, on delicate questions of gallantry,
which in those days were considered highly important. These courts of
love, which appear to have been regular and permanent institutions in
the twelfth century, had a special code, in accordance with which the
sentences pronounced were more or less rigorously in conformity; but
this code has not been handed down to our day, and we only possess
its outline conveyed in the commentaries of the legal writers of the
fifteenth century. Causes in these courts were sometimes decided on
written evidence, sometimes the parties themselves were allowed to
appear in person. Among the celebrated women who at different epochs
and in different places presided over these romantic assizes, may
be cited the beautiful Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen of France, and
afterwards of England; Sibyl of Anjou, who married Thierry, Count of
Flanders; the Countess of Die, surnamed the Sappho of France; and the
famous Laura or Lauretta of Sade, whom Petrarch, who chose her for the
lady of his love, has immortalised in his verse.

But to return to the esquire, who was left undergoing his laborious
novitiate. When he had at last performed all its numerous requirements,
the investiture of knighthood was conferred upon him, a symbolical
ceremony, as indeed were all that went to make up a chivalric
ordination, but one of a more serious and solemn character than the
rest.

We have already said that this word ordination (_ordène_) implies
that the arming of a knight was a kind of sacred ceremony. A very
curious poem entitled “L’Ordène de Chevalerie” is still in existence.
Its author, Hugues de Tabarie or de Tibériade, undertook the task
of explaining all the forms of the investiture. In order to make his
explanations more intelligible, Hugues de Tibériade supposes himself
before an aspirant entirely ignorant of all the usages of chivalry: he
pretends that the Sultan Saladin, whose prisoner he is, has forced him
to confer upon him the order of knighthood. The first thing Hugues does
is to order him to comb his hair and beard, and to carefully wash his
face:--

                 TEXT.                            TRANSLATION.

 Caviaus et barbe, et li viaire        His hair, his beard, and his face
 Li fist appareiller moult bel;        He made him carefully arrange;
 Ch’est droit à chevalier nouvel.      It is the duty of a new knight.
 Puis le fist en un baing entrer.      Then he made him enter a bath.
 Lors li commenche à demander          Then the sultan began to ask
 Le soudan, que che senifie.           What all this signified.

“Sire,” answers Hugues, “like the babe that leaves the font cleansed
from original sin,--

 “Sire, tout ensement devez            “Sire, it is thus that you must
 Issir, sanz nule vilounie             Emerge without any stain
 De ce baing, car chevalerie           From this bath; for knighthood
 Si doit baingnier en honesté,         Must be clothed with honesty,
 En courtoisie et en bonté             With courtesy, and with goodness,
 Et fere amer à toutes gens.”          And make itself beloved by all.”

“By the great God,” says Saladin, “this is a wonderful beginning!”
“Now,” answers Hugues, “leave the bath and recline on this great bed.
It is an emblem of the one you will obtain in paradise, the bed of rest
that God grants to his followers, the brave knights.” Shortly after,
whilst dressing him from head to foot, he says: “The snow-white linen
shirt with which I am clothing you, and which touches your skin, is to
teach you that you must keep your flesh from every stain if you wish to
reach heaven. This crimson robe indicates--

 “Que votre sanc devez épandre         “That you must pour out your blood
 Pour Dieu servir et hounorer;         To serve and honour God;
 Et pour défendre Sainte Eglise;       And to defend the holy Church;
 Car tout chou doit chevalier faire,   For all this must a knight do
 S’il veust à Dieu de noient plaire;   If he wishes entirely to please God;
 Ch’est entendu par le vermeil.        Such is the meaning of the crimson.

“These trunk-hose of brown silk by their sombre hue are meant to remind
you of--

              (TEXT.)                                (TRANSLATION.)

 “La mort, et la terre où gisrez,   “Death, and the earth where you will rest,
 Dont venistes, et où irez.         Whence you came and whither you will return;
 A chou doivent garder votre œil;   This is what you must keep before your eyes;
 Si n’enkerret pas en orguel,       Thus you will not fall into pride,
 Car orgueus ne doit pas régner     For pride should never govern
 En chevalier, ni demorer.          A knight nor reign within him.
 A simpleche doit toujours tendre.  Humility should always be his aim.

“This white girdle which I place around your loins is to teach you to
keep your body pure and to avoid luxury. These two golden spurs are
to urge on your horse; imitate its ardour and its docility, and as it
obeys you, so be you obedient to the Lord. Now I fasten your sword to
your side; strike your enemies with its double edge, prevent the poor
from being crushed by the rich, the weak from being oppressed by the
strong. I put upon your head a pure white _coif_ to indicate that
your soul similarly should be stainless.”

Every pursuivant was perfectly well acquainted with the meaning of the
ordination of knighthood. The vigil of arms, the strict fasts, the
three nights spent in prayer in a lonely chapel, the white garments
of the neophyte, the consecration of his sword in front of the altar,
were sufficient to prove to the novice the gravity of the engagement
he was contracting under the auspices of religion. At last a day was
fixed for the great ceremony, and the neophyte--after hearing mass on
his bended knees, and with his sword, which he had not yet acquired
the right to gird to his side, suspended from his neck--received from
the hands of some noble or of some noble lady his spurs, his helmet,
his cuirass, his gauntlets, and his sword. The ceremony was completed
by the _colée_; that is to say, the investing knight, before
presenting him with the sword, struck him across the shoulder with its
flat side, and then gave him the _accolade_ as a sign of brotherly
adoption. His shield, his lance, and his charger, were then brought to
the new-made knight, and he was thenceforward at liberty to commence
the career of glory, of devotion, and of combat, to which for so many
years he had aspired.

  [Illustration: Fig. 124.--Degradation of a Knight.--Fragment of a
  Woodcut attributed to Jost Amman, bearing the date 1565 and the
  monogram A. J. (Collection of M. Guénebault of Paris).]

The Christian symbolism, which had accompanied the first steps of the
novice, followed and surrounded him in some way or other during the
whole

of his knightly career. Indeed, it took part in his punishment and
degradation if he broke his plighted faith or if he forfeited his
honour. Exposed on a scaffold in nothing but his shirt, he was stripped
of his armour, which was broken to pieces before his eyes and thrown at
his feet, while his spurs were thrown upon a dunghill. His shield was
fastened to the croup of a cart-horse and dragged through the dust, and
his charger’s tail was cut off. A herald-at-arms asked thrice, “Who is
there?” Three times an answer was given naming the knight about to be
degraded, and three times the herald rejoined, “No, it is not so; I see
no knight here, I see only a coward who has been false to his plighted
faith.” Carried thence to the church on a litter like a dead body, the
culprit was forced to listen while the burial service was read over
him, for he had lost his honour, and was now only looked upon as a
corpse (Fig. 124).

Although the Church was the protectress of chivalry, and even invested
it with an almost sacred dignity, she always refused to extend her
protection to tournaments, tilts, and assaults of arms, brilliant,
but often dangerous manifestations of the chivalric spirit, and
particularly to judicial duels, which were of German origin, and
which dated from a period long prior to the institution of Christian
chivalry. When the Church found itself obliged to show indulgence to
these ancient traditions, which custom had interwoven with the habits
of the Middle Ages, she did so in as reserved a manner as possible. She
was always indignantly protesting against the barbarous custom which
compelled or allowed women, children, churches, and convents, to choose
from among the knights a special champion (_campeador_) who should
be always ready to sustain against all the patron’s cause. The Church,
while approving the generous protection which chivalry extended to the
weak and to the oppressed, always endeavoured to destroy the savage
doctrine of paganism which confounded might with right; but it was in
vain that she opposed all her influence and authority to the custom of
duelling; she was obliged to restrict herself to lessening the evil
effects of the opinions that generally prevailed, without hoping to
destroy the opinions themselves.

The _point of honour_ had no existence in the breasts of the
warriors of antiquity. They sacrificed themselves to their country
and to the commonwealth, and they loved glory--a sentiment which with
them was collective and not individual, for with them society, as a
whole, was everything, its unit, nothing. The modern duel, whether it
be considered a brutal and speedy method of settling private quarrels,
or a proper act of submission to the divine will which cannot fail
to crown right with success, springs from the strong individuality
of barbarism, and from the personal tendency of savage dignity and
independence.

  [Illustration: Fig. 125.--Fight between Raymbault de Morueil
  and Guyon de Losenne. The Abbot of St. Denis at the feet of
  the Archbishop of Paris, taking oath that his cause, defended
  by Raymbault, is a just one.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the
  “Romance of Charles Martel,” enlarged by David Aubert. Manuscript
  of the Fifteenth Century, in the Burgundian Library, Brussels.]

This strange confusion of ideas relative to victory and innocence,
to might and right, first gave rise to _trial by ordeal_,
or the _judgment of God_, which included ordeal by fire, by
boiling water, by the cross, and by the sword, to which women, and
even princesses, were subjected. Mankind, in the simplicity of its
belief, appealed to God, the sovereign judge, and implored Him to
grant strength and victory to the just cause. _Trial by ordeal_
fell into discredit about the time of Charlemagne, and was superseded,
towards the latter half of the twelfth century, by the judicial duel.
The institution of chivalry favoured this hasty method of decision,
which was in accordance with the manners and ideas of the period.
Questions which otherwise would have been difficult to solve were
thus abruptly settled, and from these bloody decisions there was no
appeal. In some countries, indeed, the judge who had decided between
two antagonists had himself to submit to the judgment of God, as
represented by the judicial duel, and was forced to come down from his
judgment-seat and contend in arms against the criminal he had just
condemned. On the other hand, however, it must be said that the judge,
in his turn, possessed the privilege of challenging a prisoner who
refused to bow to his decision.

  [Illustration: Fig. 126.--Duel concerning the Honour of
  Ladies.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the “Histoire de Gérard de
  Nevers,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the National
  Library of Paris.]

If the principle of this rough combatant justice be once admitted, it
must be acknowledged that a spirit of wisdom dictated every possible
precaution to render its inconveniences as few as possible. The duel,
in fact, only took place when a crime punishable by death had been
committed, and then only when there were no witnesses to the crime,
but merely grave suspicions against the supposed criminal. All persons
less than twenty-one or more than sixty years of age, priests (Fig.
125), invalids, and women (Fig. 126), were dispensed from taking part
in these combats, and were allowed to be represented by champions. If
the two parties to a dispute were of a different rank in life, certain
regulations were drawn up in favour of the plaintiff. A knight who
challenged a serf was forced to fight with a serf’s weapons, that is to
say, with a shield and a staff, and to wear a leathern jerkin; if, on
the contrary, the challenge came from the serf, the knight was allowed
to fight as a knight, that is to say, on horseback and in armour. It
was customary for the two parties to a judicial duel to appear before
their count or lord; after reciting his wrongs, the plaintiff threw
down his gage--generally a glove or gauntlet--which his adversary then
exchanged for his own as a sign that he accepted the challenge. Both
were then led to the seignorial prison, where they were detained till
the day fixed for the combat, unless they could obtain substantial
sureties who would make themselves responsible for their safe custody,
and bind themselves, in case their bailee failed to appear at the
appointed time, to undergo the penalties attached to the committal of
the act that had necessitated the appeal to arms. This was termed the
_vice prison_.

  [Illustration: Fig. 127.--“How the plaintiff and the defendant
  take the final oath before the judge.”--Fac-simile of a Miniature
  in “Cérémonies des Gages de Bataille,” a Manuscript of the
  Fifteenth Century in the National Library of Paris.]

On the day fixed for the combat, the two adversaries, accompanied
by their seconds and by a priest, appeared in the lists mounted and
armed at all points, their weapons in their hands, their swords and
daggers girded on. They knelt down opposite to one another with their
hands clasped, each in his turn solemnly swearing upon the cross and
upon Holy Writ (Fig. 127) that he alone was in the right, and that
his antagonist was false and disloyal; and he added, moreover, that
he carried no charm or talisman about his person. A herald-at-arms
then gave public notice at each of the four corners of the lists to
the spectators of the combat to remain perfectly passive, to make no
movement, and to utter no cry that could either encourage or annoy
the combatants, under pain of losing a limb, or even life itself. The
seconds then withdrew, and the camp-marshal, after seeing that both
antagonists were fairly placed, and had their proper share of the wind
and the sun, called out three times, “_Laissez-les aller!_” and
the fight began (Fig. 128).

  [Illustration: Fig. 128.--“How both parties are out of their
  tents, armed and ready to do their duty at the signal from the
  marshal, who has thrown the glove.”--From a Miniature in the
  “Cérémonies des Gages de Bataille,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth
  Century, in the National Library of Paris.]

The judicial duel never commenced before noon, and was only allowed
to last till the stars appeared in the sky. If the defendant held out
till then he was considered to have gained his cause. The knight who
was beaten, whether killed or merely wounded, was dragged off the
ground by his feet, the fastenings of his cuirass were cut, his armour
was thrown piece by piece into the lists, and his steed and his weapons
were divided between the marshal and the judges of the duel. Indeed
sometimes, as, for instance, in Normandy and in Scandinavia, according
to ancient usage, the vanquished champion was hung or burnt alive,
according to the nature of the crime; while if he had fought as the
champion of another person, that person was usually put to death with
him.

The Church, although she allowed a priest to be present in the lists,
never even granted a tacit approval to these judicial duels; she
excommunicated the successful duellist, and refused the rites of
burial to his victim; nor was she alone in condemning this barbarous
custom; the lay authorities did all in their power, but without very
much success, to restrict the number of these sanguinary appeals. St.
Louis, in a celebrated decree of 1260, substituted trial by evidence in
place of the judicial duel, but he found himself only able to enforce
this reform within the area of his own dominions, and imperfectly even
there, for long after his reign it is on record that the Parliament of
Paris ordered certain criminal cases to be decided by personal combat.

When at last, in the fifteenth century, the custom of the judicial duel
fell into disuse, the nobility still retained and practised single
combat (Fig. 129). A personal affront, often an extremely slight one, a
quarrel, a slight to be avenged, were enough to bring two rivals or two
enemies to blows. This combative custom, which made a man’s strength
and personal skill the guardians of his honour, was sustained and
encouraged by the spirit of chivalry and by that of German feudalism.
Sometimes, however, the practice was considered justifiable on other
grounds. History, for instance, has honourably recorded the “Battle
of the Thirty,” which took place in 1351, between thirty knights of
Brittany, under the Sire de Beaumanoir, and thirty English knights; and
another equally bloody struggle of the same kind between Bayard and ten
other French knights, and eleven Spaniards, before the walls of Tranni.
The national honour alone was the motive of these two celebrated duels;
but they were only the exceptions to the rule. It almost seems as if
the nobility, in their efforts to cling to the shadow and the memory of
the rapidly-expiring traditions of chivalry, became more inveterate
in their adherence to the cruel system of duelling. In the sixteenth
century, under the last monarchs of the house of Valois, the Place
Royale and the Pré aux Clercs were often watered with the blood of the
best families of France. In vain did Henry IV. and Louis XIII. issue
the most stringent edicts against this barbarous custom; in vain did
the decree, called the decree of Blois, render nugatory all letters
of pardon granted to duellists, “even if they were signed by the king
himself.” In spite of everything, the nobles, upon whose privileges the
monarchy daily made fresh encroachments, had recourse to duelling as if
to assert their connection with a chivalric and adventurous past, and
the most trivial, ridiculous, and shameful motives served as pretexts
for a renewal of the sanguinary struggles, which had been originally
inspired by a generous courage and a loyal sympathy with justice.

  [Illustration: Fig. 129.--Single Combat to be decided by
  the judgment of God.--From a Miniature in the “Conquêtes de
  Charlemagne,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the
  National Library of Paris.]

But we must go back to the time of the zenith of the Middle Ages to see
its tournaments, its tilts, and its passages of arms. In the halcyon
period of chivalry, its sham fights, its courteous tournaments, and its
warlike exhibitions, occasioned many an accident, and brought about
many a fatal result. History mentions a tournament in Germany where
sixty persons perished in a struggle waged with weapons deprived of
edge and point. No question of mere gallantry, no point of honour,
was involved in the oldest tournaments on record (the tournament was
first alluded to in the chronicles of the reign of Charles the Bald);
no pomp of drapery, no brilliancy of banner, adorned them then. No
princesses, no noble ladies, showed themselves in all their pride of
beauty and of dress around those ancient lists. The tournament (in
old French _tournoiement_) of those days was merely a violent
athletic pastime, in which the iron men of that period measured their
strength one against the other with sword strokes, with lance thrusts,
and with mace blows. But as the customs of chivalry gradually softened
the manners of the nobility, so the primitive coarseness and roughness
of these trials of strength became modified and regulated. Tradition
declares that the tournament properly so called was first inaugurated
in Brittany in the tenth century by Geoffrey, the Sire de Preuilli.

  [Illustration: Fig. 130.--“Here is shown how the king-at-arms,
  having on his shoulder the gold cloth with the two leaders
  painted on parchment, and in the four corners the arms of the
  said judges, proclaims the tournament, and how the heralds
  offer the arms of the said judges to whoever will take
  them.”--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the “Tournaments of King
  René,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century in the National
  Library at Paris.]

As a rule, tournaments were proclaimed, that is to say published, _à
cor et à cri_ (Figs. 130 and 131), either when a promotion of knights,
or a royal marriage, or a solemn entry of a sovereign into a town
took place; and the character of these chivalrous festivals changed
according to the time and place at and in which they occurred. The
arms used on these occasions varied in a similar manner. In France,
the tournament lance was made of the lightest and straightest wood,
either fir, aspen, or sycamore, pointed with steel, and with a pennant
floating from the end; whilst in Germany and in Scotland they were made
of the heaviest and toughest wood, with a long iron pear-shaped point.
The tournament must not be confounded with the _tilt_ or _joust_ (from
the Latin _juxta_), which was a single hand-to-hand combat, nor with
the _passage of arms_, in which several combatants, both on foot and on
horseback, were engaged, and imitated the attack and defence of some
military position, some pass, or some narrow mountainous defile. Tilts
usually formed part of a tournament, and marked its close; but there
were also more complicated tilts, open to all comers, which lasted for
several days, and were termed _joutes plénières_. As the ladies were
the life and soul of these tilts, the knights always terminated the
proceedings by a special passage of arms which was termed the _lance
des dames_; they were always ready to pay this homage to the charms
of the fair sex, and frequently fought for them with sword, axe, and
dagger.

  [Illustration: Fig. 131.--Here is portrayed a herald holding the
  banners of the four referees.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the
  “Tournaments of King René” (Fifteenth Century).]

  [Illustration: Fig. 132.--The Banners and Helmets are ranged
  round a cloister, and are then distributed by the judges,
  in the presence of the ladies and those taking part in the
  tournament.--Miniature from the “Tournois du Roi René,” MS. of
  the Fifteenth Century, in the National Library, Paris.]

The preparations for a tournament afforded an animated and interesting
picture. The lists, which at first were of a round shape like the
amphitheatres of antiquity, were later constructed in a square, and
later still in an oblong form; they were gilded, painted with emblems
and heraldic devices, and ornamented with rich hangings and historical
tapestries. While the lists were being prepared, the knights who were
to take part in the tournament, as well as those who were to be only
its spectators, had their armorial banners hung up from the windows of
the houses in which they were putting up, and affixed their coats of
arms to the outer walls of the neighbouring castles, monasteries, and
cloisters. When this was done, the nobles and the ladies went round
and inspected them (Fig. 132); a herald or a pursuivant-at-arms named
their owners, and if a lady recognised any knight against whom she
had any ground of complaint, she touched his banner or his shield, in
order to bring him under the notice of the camp judges, and if, after
an inquiry, he was found guilty, he was forbidden to appear in the
tournament.

Coats of arms, which were striking characteristics of chivalry,
and which were adopted by the nobility as one of its most striking
attributes, had no doubt a contemporaneous origin with the institution
whose emblem it became. It is supposed to have been in the eleventh
century, at the time of the First Crusade, that the necessity of
distinguishing between the multitude of nobles and knights who flocked
to the Holy Land led to the invention of the different heraldic colours
and devices. Each Crusader chose and kept his own particular emblem;
these emblems became the external marks of nobility, and were to be
seen everywhere--on the war tents, on the banners, on the liveries, on
the clothes, and on every object belonging to a noble family. Hence
the language of heraldry, that figurative and hieroglyphic jargon,
incomprehensible to everybody at that period except to professional
heralds-at-arms.

  [Illustration: Fig. 133.--The Champion of the Tournament, from
  the Collection entitled “Vita Imperatoris Maximiliani,” engraved
  by Burgmayer from drawings by Albert Dürer (Fifteenth Century).]

On the eve of the tournament the youthful esquires practised among
themselves in the lists with less weighty and less dangerous weapons
than those wielded by the knights. These preludes, which were often
graced by the presence of the ladies, were termed _éprouves_ (trials),
_vêpres du tournoi_ (tournament vespers), or _escremie_ (fencing
bouts). The esquires who distinguished themselves the most in these
trials were frequently immediately admitted to the rank of knighthood,
and allowed to take part in the ensuing feats. Like the Olympic games
of Greece, tournaments, which were real popular solemnities, excited
the ambition and quickened the pulses of all. Stands, usually roofed
and closed in, were erected at the ends of the lists to afford shelter
to persons of distinction in the event of bad weather. These stands,
sometimes built tower-shape, were divided into boxes, and more or less
magnificently decorated with tapestry, hangings, pennants, shields of
arms, and banners. Kings, queens, princes, dames, damoiselles, and the
older knights, the natural judges of the combats in which they could
no longer take a personal share, stationed themselves there. The camp
marshals and the seconds or counsellors of the knights, whose duty it
was to enforce the laws of Christian chivalry, and to give their advice
and assistance to all who might require it, had also their respective
posts. The kings-at-arms, the heralds, and pursuivants-at-arms, stood
within the arena or just without it, and were expected to narrowly
observe the combatants, and to draw up a faithful and minute report
of the different incidents of the combat, without forgetting a single
blow. Every now and then they lifted up their voices to encourage the
younger knights who were making their first appearance in the lists:
“Recollect whose son you are! be worthy of your ancestry!” they cried,
in loud tones. Besides these, varlets and sergeants, who were specially
entrusted with the duty of keeping order, of picking up and replacing
broken weapons, and of raising unhorsed knights, were posted everywhere
in and about the lists; while musicians on separate stands held
themselves ready to celebrate with noisy flourishes every great feat
of arms and every fortunate and brilliant stroke. The sound of their
clarions announced the entry of the knights into the lists, stepping
with slow and solemn cadence, magnificently armed and equipped, and
followed by their esquires on horseback. Sometimes the ladies were
the first to enter the lists, leading in by golden or silver chains
the knights, their slaves, whom they only set at liberty when the
signal was given for the combat to commence. The ladies almost always
bestowed a _favour_ on their favourite knight or servitor, generally a
scarf, a veil, a head-dress, a mantle, a bracelet, or even a plain bow
of ribbon, which had formed part of their own dress. This was termed
an _enseigne_ or _nobloy_ (distinguishing mark), and was placed on
a knight’s shield, lance, or helmet, so that his lady might be able
to recognise him in the _mêlée_, particularly when his weapons were
broken, or when he had lost some essential portion of his armour. While
the combat lasted the heralds uttered loud cries of encouragement, and
the musicians sounded loud flourishes, at each decisive blow of lance
or sword; and between each tilt the nobles and the ladies distributed
a quantity of small coins amongst the crowd, who received it with loud
and joyous cries of _largesse!_ and _noël!_

  [Illustration: Fig. 134.--The Prize of the Tournament.--From a
  Looking-glass Lid in Carved Ivory. End of the Thirteenth Century.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 135.--King Henri II. wounded by Montgomery in
  a Tournament (1559).--From an Engraving of the Sixteenth Century
  in the possession of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.]

The combat being over, and the victor being declared according to the
reports of the heralds and pursuivants, the prize was given away with
all proper solemnity by the elder knights and sometimes by the ladies
(Fig. 134). The latter conducted the conqueror with great pomp and
triumph to the splendid banquet which followed the tournament. The
place of honour occupied by the successful knight, the resplendent
clothes in which he was dressed, the kiss that he had the privilege
of giving to the most beautiful ladies, the poems and the songs in
which his prowess was celebrated, were the last items in this knightly
pageant, which was generally accompanied by bloodshed, and frequently
by the death of some of its actors. As we have already stated, the
usages of the tournament often varied; nothing, for example, could be
more unlike the warlike sports of Germany in the thirteenth century,
as related in the “Niebelungen,” nothing could be more unlike those
sanguinary and ferocious struggles, than the Provençal and Sicilian
tournaments of the fifteenth century, described in such glowing
language by good King René in the magnificent manuscript which he spent
his leisure in illuminating with miniatures. This poet-king, refined
in manners, generous in disposition, and cultivated in his tastes,
attempted, under the influence of the romantic and religious charm
which, still pervaded the chivalric sports of this epoch, to perpetuate
with pen and pencil, in prose and in verse, the memory of a magnificent
festival over which he presided, and which may be considered an
unsurpassed example of the ceremonies of the time. All who take an
interest in the subject should read this curious manuscript, which
describes among other things the famous struggle between the Duke of
Brittany and the Duke of Bourbon. In this may be found related to its
smallest details the whole ceremony of a grand tournament, its forms,
its progress, and its incidents; in it appear careful comments upon
every trifle that increased the brilliancy or added to the effect of
this courtly festival, as well as everything that threw a light upon
the spirit in which it was carried out, or the usages that regulated
every detail, from the armour of the knights to the smallest incidents
of the ceremonial. In its pages illustrations reproduce with exact
truthfulness the helmets of the knights with barred vizors and leathern
shields, their maces, their swords, and their _hourts_, intended
to protect the croup and the hind legs of their chargers (Fig. 136).
Its text, written with great care and in an elegant hand, records
the rules to be observed, in accordance with knighthood’s truest
spirit, at the different stages of the combat and the tournament,
and minutely describes all their preliminaries and accessories, the
giving and the accepting of a challenge, the mutual exchange of gages,
the presentation of warrants of nobility by the kings-at-arms, the
distribution of the coats-of-arms or insignia of the two parties to the
strife, the entry of the nobles, and the bestowal of the prizes upon
the conquerors by the queen of the tournament.

  [Illustration: Fig. 136.--“Designs of armour for the head, the
  body, and the arms, helmets and streamers (called in Flanders and
  Brabant _hacheures_ or _hachements_), coats-of-arms,
  and swords for tournaments.”--From Miniatures in the “Tournaments
  of King René” (Fifteenth Century).]

King René’s book is a document all the more valuable to an historian of
the customs of chivalry, in that it was written at an epoch when they
still existed in all their splendour; although signs of their decadence
had already showed themselves. That punctilious sovereign, Philippe le
Bel, with his court of lawyers and usurers, had already dealt chivalry
a crushing blow by the regulations be drew up for the better government
of single combats and gages of battle. Between his reign and that of
Charles VII. this decadence became more marked. Commerce had made much
progress, the wealth of the middle classes had much increased, and the
monarchy had acquired a preponderating influence, to the detriment both
of feudalism and chivalry, which began simultaneously to decline; the
reign of Louis XI., a reign of espionage and of cunning, was fatal to
them--thenceforward their little remaining prestige rapidly waned and
soon entirely expired. François I. made several fruitless attempts to
rekindle the dying embers of chivalry, and, at a later period, Henri
IV. and Louis XIV. vainly essayed, with many brilliant pageantries
and passages of arms, to quicken once more the phantom of the noble
institution which came into existence with the Middle Ages, and with
them passed away.

  [Illustration]




                           MILITARY ORDERS.

   Pierre Gérard founds the Order of St. John of
   Jerusalem.--History of that Order.--The Siege of
   Rhodes.--History of the Order of the Knights Templars.--Order of
   the Knights of Calatrava.--Order of the Teuton Knights.--Order
   of the Knights of the Golden Fleece.--Order of St. Maurice and
   St. Lazarus.--Orders of the Star, of the Cosse de Geneste, of
   the Ship, of St. Michael, and of the Holy Ghost.


One of our great modern historians remarks:--“The association of the
Church and chivalry, of war and religion, culminated in the foundation
of an institution hitherto entirely unknown, and owing its origin
principally to the Crusades, namely, the institution of religious
military orders....

“In nothing does chivalry show itself more worthy of admiration than in
its religious military aspect; in that phase it accepted the sacrifice
of all the affections, it abandoned the renown of the soldier and the
repose of the cloister, and it exposed its votary to the hardships
of both, by devoting him in turn to the perils of the battle-field,
and to the labours attendant upon the succouring of the distressed.
Other knights courted adventure for the sake of their honour and the
lady of their love; these incurred it in order to help the unfortunate
and to assist the poor. The Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers
was proud of the title of _Guardian of the Redeemer’s poor_; he
of the order of St. Lazarus was of necessity always a leper; while
the knight-companions termed the poor ‘our masters.’ Such were the
admirable effects of religion, which, at a period when the sword
decided every question, knew how to chasten the failings of valour,
and make it forget the pride that generally accompanies it.”

As early as the middle of the eleventh century some merchants of Amalfi
had obtained from the Caliph of Egypt permission to build a hospital at
Jerusalem, which they dedicated to St. John, and in which were received
and sheltered the poor pilgrims who visited the Holy Land. Godefroy de
Bouillon and his successors encouraged this charitable institution,
and bestowed upon it several large donations. Pierre Gérard, a native
of the Island of Martigues, in Provence, proposed to the brothers who
managed the hospital to renounce the world, to don a regular dress,
and to form an uncloistered monastic order under the name of the
_Hospitallers_. Pope Pascal II. appointed Gérard director of the
new institution, which he formally authorised, took the Hospitallers
under his protection, and granted them many privileges.

  [Illustration: Fig. 137.--Knight of the Order of the Holy
  Sepulchre, afterwards called the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

  Fig. 138.--Knight of the Order of Rhodes.

  Fac-similes of Woodcuts by Jost Amman, in a work entitled “Cleri
  totius Romanæ ecclesiæ ... habitus:” 4to., Frankfort, 1585.]

The regulations of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem not only
imposed upon the brethren the triple vow of chastity, poverty, and
obedience; they enjoined upon them, besides the duties of hospitality,
the exercise of arms, in order that they might defend the kingdom of
Jerusalem against the attacks of the unbelievers. The opportunity was
soon afforded them of putting aside their purely charitable character,
and of becoming men of war (Fig. 139).

  [Illustration: Fig. 139.--Fortress of the Knights Hospitallers,
  in Syria, taken from the Kurds by the Franks about the
  year 1125, and rebuilt in 1202. A representation of it as
  restored.--Engraving from “Monuments of the Architecture of the
  Crusaders in Syria,” by M. G. Rey.]

Driven out of Jerusalem by the victorious Saladin, who retook that
city on the 19th of October, 1191, the Hospitallers were the last to
leave the Holy Land, and transferred their hospital to Margat, after
ransoming from the Saracens more than a thousand captive Crusaders;
they remained there until the end of the siege of Acre by the
Christians, in which they took an active and glorious share, and they
then established themselves in the reconquered city and took the name
of Knights of St. John of Acre. Again driven from their new residence
by the infidels, the Hospitallers asked the King of Cyprus to allow
them to settle in his dominion, and to re-establish the central house
of their order in the town of Limisso, at which they arrived in small
knots, as fast as they were able to escape from the cruisers of the
Mussulman fleet. As they, disembarked, exhausted with war’s fatigues,
covered with wounds, and unable to console themselves for having
survived the loss of Palestine, they presented a really touching
spectacle.

The grand master of the knights of St. John of Acre, Jean de Villiers,
assembled a chapter general in Cyprus to deliberate upon the best
policy to adopt after the last disasters of the crusade, and to take
measures to prevent the complete extinction of the order, which had
been decimated in the war against the infidels. The Hospitallers of
all nations answered the appeal of Jean de Villiers. Never had a
meeting been so numerously attended since the foundation of the order;
the knights present, carried away by the eloquent appeal of their
grand master, swore that they would shed their last blood to recover
possession of the Holy Sepulchre.

In spite of the wise measures recommended by Jean de Villiers, the
Hospitallers were no longer in safety at Limisso. They had to defend
themselves from two equally formidable enemies; from the Saracens, who
were ceaselessly threatening their naval and military organization, and
from the King of Cyprus, who seemed to desire the ruin of the order,
upon which he had just imposed a heavy tax. Indeed, Villaret, the new
grand master, proposed to his brothers in arms that they should retire
to the island of Rhodes, entrench themselves there, and wait until a
more propitious moment should arrive for their return to Palestine.
Unfortunately the forces of the order of St. John were not sufficient
for such a daring enterprise, and the grand master invited the Western
Christians to undertake a new crusade, keeping the real motive of the
expedition a secret. The Crusaders assembled in great numbers at the
port of Brindisi, in Italy, and the grand master, selecting the noblest
and the best equipped, set sail for Rhodes. There he successfully
disembarked his little army, with provisions and warlike materials,
and laid siege to the capital, which was well fortified and thronged
with defenders. After an investment of four years the town was taken by
assault; the other strongholds met with a similar fate, and the whole
island passed under the sway of the Hospitallers in 1310. But for more
than two centuries they had to defend it against the constant attacks
of the infidels.

Under the leadership of Joubert or Jacques de Milly, the grand prior
of Auvergne, the Knights of Rhodes (the Hospitallers had assumed this
name in memory of a victory that so redounded to the fame of the Order
of St. John) inflicted a first repulse upon the Ottomans in 1455. All
danger, however, was not banished. A rupture seemed imminent with the
Sultan of Egypt, quite as formidable an adversary as Mahomet II., the
Sultan of Constantinople; and the knights were also obliged to bestir
themselves against the Venetians, who had effected a landing on the
island, and had been guilty of greater cruelty and violence than the
Saracens and the Turks. Raymond Zacosta, the successor of Jacques de
Milly in the grand mastership, took advantage of an interval of truce
to build a new fort intended to defend the town and port of Rhodes.
This impregnable fortress, constructed upon a rocky promontory,
received the name of St. Nicholas, from a chapel dedicated to that
saint standing within its walls (Fig. 140).

As, in spite of the truce, the Turkish corsairs made continual descents
upon the island, the grand master dispatched his galleys to the Ottoman
shores, and inflicted a series of reprisals. These so aroused the anger
of Mahomet II., that he swore to drive the knights of Rhodes right
out of the island. With this purpose he organized an expedition, and
entrusted its command to Misach Paleologus, a Greek renegade of the
imperial household, who had been appointed grand vizier by the sultan,
and who was continually urging his master to take possession of Rhodes.

A hundred and sixty vessels of war and an army of a hundred thousand
men arrived off Rhodes on the 23rd of May, 1480. The Turkish fleet
endeavoured, under cover of the fire of their artillery, to effect
the disembarcation of their troops, while the knights of the order,
supported by the guns of the town and its forts, waded up to their
waists in the sea and attacked the Ottoman boats sword in hand.

  [Illustration: Fig. 140.--Plan of the Island of Rhodes.--Reduced
  Fac-simile of one of the large Topographical Plans in the
  “Saintes Pérégrinations de Hiérusalem,” by Breydenhach; in folio,
  with copperplate figures: Lyons, 1488. (Library of M. Ambr.
  Firmin-Didot.)]

The infidels at last succeeded in making good their landing, and
entrenched themselves on Mount St. Stephen. After the knights had been
vainly summoned to surrender, a German engineer who had accompanied
Paleologus, and who was the superintendent of the siege operations,
advised the latter to concentrate his attack on the tower of St.
Nicholas, the capture of which would be certain to make him master of
the place. After more than three hundred discharges of cannon a breach
was effected, and the Turks rushed to the assault. Pierre d’Aubusson,
grand prior of Auvergne, recently elected grand master, stood aloft in
the breach and set an example of the highest courage to his knights:
“Here,” said he, “is the only post of honour worthy of your grand
master.”

Exasperated by such an energetic resistance, the vizier determined to
rid himself by foul means of Pierre d’Aubusson; but an engineer who had
undertaken the treacherous commission was detected, and torn in pieces
by the inhabitants of Rhodes on his way to the scaffold.

Misach Paleologus proposed to hold a conference to discuss terms
of capitulation. To this the grand master gave his consent, his
real object being to gain time to construct new defences in place
of those the enemy had destroyed; and the interview, between one
of the principal officers of the Turkish army and the castellan of
Rhodes, took place at the edge of the moat. The vizier’s envoy urged
that in the extremity to which the town was reduced, with its walls
levelled, its towers shattered, and its ditches filled up, it would
be perfectly possible to take it by assault in a couple of hours; and
that it behoved the knights companions to prevent, by an honourable
capitulation, a general massacre of the inhabitants. D’Aubusson,
concealed hard by, overheard these specious proposals: in pursuance
of his orders the castellan made answer to the Ottoman officer that
his spies had misinformed him; that, behind the moat, defences had
been constructed, the capture of which would cost many lives; that the
town was defended by Christians all animated with the same spirit and
perfectly resigned to sacrifice their lives for their religion; and
that the order would entertain no proposal inimical to its honour or to
the interests of its faith.

The haughty vizier, irritated by this noble reply, swore to put every
knight to the sword; he even ordered a large number of stakes to be
sharpened on which to impale the inhabitants, and, under cover of a
still hotter fire from his guns, gave the signal for the assault.

The Turks succeeded for a moment in planting their standard on the
ramparts, but they were soon beaten off by the defenders, led by their
grand master in person: five times wounded, and covered with blood,
Pierre d’Aubusson refused to leave the scene of the struggle, which
he animated by his example. His lofty heroism infused new energy into
his knights, who rushed on the Turks with the courage of despair and
put them completely to the rout. But victory as it was, it was not
sufficiently definitive or decisive to secure to the order the tranquil
possession of the island, and leave them for the future free from
Turkish aggression. Ever since the death of Mahomet II., they had had
in their power a precious hostage, Zizim, a brother of Sultan Bajazet,
and his most formidable competitor for the throne (Figs. 141 and 142).

  [Illustration: Fig. 141.--Death of Mahomet II. (1481): the devil
  flying away with his soul.--His two sons, Bajazet and Zizim,
  disputed the throne, and the latter was defeated.

  Fig. 142.--Zizim, who had been kept a prisoner at Rhodes, to
  which he had fled after his defeat, and had afterwards been
  transferred to Rome, is handed over to Charles VIII., King of
  France.

  “Description of the Siege of the Island of Rhodes,” by G.
  Caoursin (Ulm, 1496: Gothic folio).--Library of M. Ambr.
  Firmin-Didot.]

In 1522, Sultan Soliman II., surnamed the Magnificent, discovered
amidst his father’s archives an exact account of the island of Rhodes,
and resolved to attack it. He put forward, as a pretext, a desire
to punish the knights of the order for the losses they were daily
inflicting on the Turkish navy, and the hope of paralyzing their
efforts in favour of the Holy Land. The treachery of André Amaral, the
chancellor of the order and the grand prior of Castile, who wished
to revenge himself on his brother knights for having preferred to
himself as their grand master, Philippe de Villiers de l’Ile-Adam,
made Soliman aware of the scanty material resources of the island,
and persuaded him to undertake the fatal siege, in which treachery
and deceit were his most powerful allies. In vain did he collect a
fleet of four hundred sail, an army of one hundred and forty thousand
men and sixty thousand pioneers; in vain he swept the ramparts with
the fire of his guns, in vain he dug ditch after ditch, mine upon
mine, and endeavoured to wear out the besieged by his harassing and
ceaseless attacks. His want of success would have certainly exhausted
his patience, and he would probably have raised the siege had not the
traitor Amaral revealed to him the weak condition of both the town and
its garrison. At last, however, on the 30th of November, the Turks made
what was supposed to be their final effort. They penetrated as far as
the inner defences, and the struggle was a terrible one. Roused by the
tocsin, the grand master, the knights, and the inhabitants poured on to
the ramparts and threw themselves on the enemy, who had already deemed
themselves successful, and forced them to retreat.

Grieved and discouraged by this final check, Soliman proposed a
capitulation. He threw letters into the town exhorting the inhabitants
to yield, and threatening them with the utmost severities if they
persisted in a useless resistance. At first Villiers de l’Ile-Adam made
answer that he only treated with infidels sword in hand; but he had
to give way to the urgent remonstrances of the principal inhabitants,
who showed a determination to take at all hazards measures to ensure
the honour and the lives of their wives and their children. The
sultan having hung out a white flag, the grand master did the same,
and demanded a truce of three days to draw up the capitulation. But
Soliman, fearing lest assistance might arrive in the interval, rejected
this proposal, and ordered a fresh assault. The knights of Rhodes,
reduced to a mere handful, and having only the barbican of the Spanish
bastion left to protect them, obliged the enemy once more to retire. On
the morrow, however, another attack of the Turks drove the defenders
of the bastion back into the town, and the terror-stricken inhabitants
implored the grand master to resume negotiations. Achmet, Soliman’s
minister, who knew how impatiently his master desired the end of the
war, obtained at last the surrender of Rhodes on terms so honourable
and so advantageous to its defenders, that they spoke volumes for the
esteem with which the conquered had inspired their conquerors. The
knights, to the number of four thousand, abandoned the island under the
guidance of their grand master, Villiers; after touching at Candia
and Sicily, they finally settled at Malta, which was ceded to them by
Charles V., and which became the definitive residence of the order.
This was in 1530.

  [Illustration: Fig. 143.--Barracks of the Knights of Rhodes.
  State of the Ruins in 1828.--From “Monuments of Rhodes.”]

Thirty-five years later, at the end of Soliman II.’s reign, the Turks
once more attacked the order under the pretext of avenging the capture
of a galliot laden with costly merchandise, the property of the
sultana; and Mustapha, Pasha of Buda, a brave officer, the general of
the Ottoman army, landed on the island on the 18th of May, 1565. After
a few skirmishes the Turks made a fierce attack on Fort St. Elmo, and
captured it in spite of the brave defence of the Knights of Malta (the
new title of the members of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem)--a
defence which lasted twenty-four days, and cost the lives of four
thousand of the assailants, amongst them that of the famous pirate
Dragut, the vice-sultan of Tripoli. The fort of St. Michael, and the
suburb of that name, were reduced to ashes by the fire of the enemy;
and it was only the invincible courage of the grand master, Jean de
la Valette, and of a small number of his knights, all to the last man
prepared to die for their faith--even after more than two thousand of
them had already perished--that still enabled Malta to hold out.

Fortunately, Don Garcias de Toledo, the viceroy of Sicily, came with
sixty galleys to their assistance. During the four months of the siege
the Turkish forces fired seventy-eight thousand rounds of artillery,
and lost fifteen thousand soldiers and eight thousand sailors.

  [Illustration: Fig. 144.--The French Priory at Rhodes (Fifteenth
  Century).--State of the Ruins in 1828.]

The knights of the order had on their side to deplore the loss of more
than three thousand of their brethren. Their grand master decreed that
annually, on the eve of the festival of Our Lady of September, prayers
should be offered up in all the churches of the order, thanking God for
the providential succours which had delivered the besieged, and that
on the preceding day a commemorative service should be celebrated in
honour of those who had fallen in defence of the faith.

Henceforward neither the town nor the island, which remained the head
quarters of the order, was again disturbed by the Turks, and Jean de la
Valette built a new city in Malta, which was called Valetta, after him.

The members of the Order of Malta were divided into three classes: the
knights, the chaplains, and the serving brothers. The first comprised
those whose noble birth and previous rank in other armies marked
them out for military service. The second consisted of priests, and
ecclesiastics who performed all the ordinary religious duties, and
who acted as almoners in time of war. The last were neither nobles
nor ecclesiastics; and all that was necessary to admit an individual
to this class, was for him to prove that he was born of respectable
parents, who had never exercised any handicraft. The serving brothers
were distinguished at a later period by a coat-of-arms of a different
colour to that of the knights. The aspirants were termed _douats_
or _demi-croix_. The Order of St. John of Jerusalem had merely
a nominal existence in the statutes of the Order of Malta, although
the knights of the latter, on their reception into the order, were
still termed “servants of the sick and needy.” For a long time
there existed in Spain, Lady Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem,
who devoted themselves to hospital work and deeds of charity (Fig.
145). Every country in Europe furnished its quota to the Order of
Malta, which had entirely replaced that of St. John, and was divided
into eight different tongues or nations, each under the direction
of a grand prior, viz., Provence, Auvergne, France, Italy, Aragon,
Germany, Castile, and England. These national grand priors were termed
_piliers_, or _monastic bailiffs_. Each nation was subdivided
into a number of lesser commands, to hold one of which was equivalent
to holding an ecclesiastical benefice, and which were subordinate to
their grand prior alone.

  [Illustration: Fig. 145.--Tomb of Beatrix Cornel, Prioress of
  the Lady Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, in the Convent
  of Sigena, in Aragon (Fifteenth Century).--From the “Iconografia
  Española” of M. Carderera.]

The regular dress of the order consisted, in each nation, of a black
robe, with a pointed cape of the same colour; on the left sleeve of
each robe was a cross of white linen having eight points, typical of
the eight beatitudes they were always supposed to possess, and which,
according to a MS. preserved in the library of the Arsenal, were:--1,
spiritual contentment; 2, a life free from malice; 3, repentance for
sins; 4, meekness under suffering; 5, a love of justice; 6, a merciful
disposition; 7, sincerity and frankness of heart; and 8, a capability
of enduring persecution. At a later period the regulations became less
austere, and permitted the knights to wear an octagonal golden cross
inlaid with white enamel, and suspended from the breast with black
ribbon.

A candidate for the robe of St. John of Jerusalem was obliged to
present himself at the high altar, clad in a long gown without girdle,
in order to denote that he was free from all other vows, and with a
taper in his hand. The knight assessor then handed him a gilt sword,
saying, “In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,”
to remind him that henceforth it would be his duty to devote his life
to the defence of religion. A girdle was then fastened round his waist,
to signify that he was bound for the future by the vows of the order.
The professing knight then brandished the sword round his head, in
token of defiance of the unbelievers, and returned it to its scabbard,
first passing it under his arm as if to wipe it, as a symbol that he
intended to preserve it free from stain. The knight who received his
vows then placed his hand on his shoulder, exhorted him to succour the
poor of Jesus Christ, to undertake works of charity, and to devote
himself to the welfare of the faith. The new knight having promised to
observe these exhortations, golden spurs were placed on his heels as
emblems that he was bound to fly wherever honour called him, and to
trample under his feet the riches of this world. His taper was then
lighted and he continued to hold it during the celebration of a mass,
and while a preacher passed in review the rules which should bind, and
the duties which should sway a true knight. He was then asked if he was
in debt, if he was married or betrothed, if he already belonged to any
other religious order, and, finally, if he really and sincerely desired
to belong to the Order of St. John. If he answered these questions in
a satisfactory manner, he was admitted into the brotherhood, and led
up to the high altar. There he pronounced the oath upon the missal,
and was declared formally invested with the privileges granted to the
order by the pontificate. He was told that henceforward he must daily
recite fifty paters, fifty aves, the service of the Virgin, the burial
service, and several prayers for the repose of the souls of departed
knights companions. Whilst he was donning the dress of the order he
was further instructed in his duties. As he put his arms through his
sleeves he was reminded of the obedience he owed to his superiors; as
the white cross was being adjusted next his heart, he was told that
he must be always ready to shed his blood for Christ, who by his own
death had redeemed mankind. All the insignia of the Order of Malta were
symbols. The pointed black mantle with its peaked cape, worn only on
occasions of solemn ceremony, was typical of the robe of camel’s hair
worn by John the Baptist, the patron of the order. The cords which
fastened the mantle about the neck, and fell over the shoulder, were
significant of the passion our Saviour suffered with such calmness and
resignation. In time of battle the members of the order wore a red
doublet embroidered with the eight-pointed cross.

About twenty years after the first establishment of the Hospitallers,
Hugues de Payens, and Geoffrey de Saint-Aldemar, having crossed the
seas with nine other nobles, all of French birth, obtained from
the patriarch Guarimond, and from Baldwin II., King of Jerusalem,
permission to form an association, the objects of which were to act
in concert with the Hospitallers against the infidels, to protect
pilgrims, and to defend Solomon’s Temple. Baldwin granted them a
dwelling within the Temple walls, a circumstance which gave them the
name of _Templars_, or _Knights of the Temple_. At first they
led a simple and regular life, contenting themselves with the humble
title of _poor soldiers of Jesus Christ_. Their charity and their
devotion obtained for them the sympathy of the kings of Jerusalem
and the Eastern Christians, who made them frequent and considerable
donations.

In the first nine years of their existence, from 1118 to 1127, the
Templars admitted no strangers into their ranks; but their number
having nevertheless considerably increased, they soon preferred a
request to the Holy See to ratify the institution of their order. At
the Council of Troyes, in 1228, Hugues de Payens, accompanied with
five of his companions, presented the letters that the brotherhood
had received from the pope and the patriarch of Jerusalem, together
with the certificate of the founding of their order. Cardinal Matthew,
Bishop of Alba, who presided over the council as the pope’s legate,
granted them an authentic confirmation of their order, and a special
code was drawn up for them under the guidance of St. Bernard.

The Templars were bound to go to mass three times a week, and to
communicate thrice a year; they wore a white robe symbolical of purity,
to which Pope Eugenius III. added a red cross, to remind them of their
oath to be always ready to shed their blood in defence of the Christian
religion. Their rules were of great austerity; they prescribed
perpetual exile, and war for the holy places to the death. The knights
were to accept every combat, however outnumbered they might be, to ask
no quarter, and to give no ransom. However irksome might prove the
observance of these regulations, they were not allowed to escape them
by entering the ranks of a less austere order.

  [Illustration:
    Fig. 146.--Knight of Malta.
    Fig. 147.--Templar in Travelling Dress.

  Fac-similes of Woodcuts by Jost Amman, in his work entitled
  “Cleri totius Romanæ ecclesiæ ... habitus;” 4to., Frankfort,
  1585.]

The unbelievers dreaded no enemy so much as these poor soldiers of
Christ, of whom it was said that they possessed the gentleness of the
lamb and the patience of the hermit, united to the courage of the hero
and the strength of the lion. Their standard, termed _Beaucéant_,
was half black and half white, and inscribed with these words: _Non
nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam_.[12]

According to the rules of St. Bernard, the Order of the Temple was
composed of _milites_, or knights commanders, of serving brothers,
called _armigeri_, or men bearing arms, and of _clientes_,
or clients, whose duty it was to attend to domestic matters. Their
oaths were similar to those of St. John of Jerusalem. They swore to
live in chastity, poverty, and obedience. Some of their number obtained
permission to marry, but on condition of their no longer wearing the
white dress, and of their bequeathing a portion of their property to
the order. The distinctive mark of the Templars was, according to some,
a broad red patriarchal cross; according to others, a red Maltese cross
embroidered with gold. As they all made public profession of extreme
poverty, they were forbidden to use valuable articles of furniture, or
gold or silver utensils; to wear velvet trappings in the field, helmets
with armorial bearings, silken sashes, or other superfluous articles
of clothing; and they were only permitted to wear an under doublet of
white wool.

The Order of the Temple had only been established fifty years when its
knights held at Jerusalem its first general chapter, attended by three
hundred gentlemen, and as many serving brothers, most of whom were
French. The chapter elected a grand master, Gérard de Rederfort, and
in so doing freed themselves from the jurisdiction of the patriarch
of Jerusalem. The new grand master transferred the seat of the order
to St. Jean d’Acre, and manifested the prowess of his knights on
several occasions against the troops of Saladin, who attempted shortly
afterwards to capture the town, but who was obliged to abandon the task.

The resources of the Knights Templars increased, in a very short
space, in such a remarkable manner, by donations and legacies, that
some historians declare that the revenue of the order amounted to
four and a half millions sterling; others merely observe that the
Templars possessed enormous wealth in Christendom, one item being nine
thousand houses. In 1129 they already had several establishments in
the Low Countries; six years later the King of Navarre and of Aragon,
Alphonso I., bequeathed his states to the order; but it was with great
difficulty that the knights obtained possession of even a few of his
towns. At that time, however, they possessed seventeen strongholds in
the kingdom of Valencia. In their quarters in London were deposited
most of the treasures of the English crown, and King Philip Augustus,
on the eve of his departure for the Holy Land, entrusted them with the
care of his jewels and archives.

  [Illustration: Fig. 148.--The Earthern Vase, on one side of which
  is seen, between two fleurs-de-lis, the figure of St. Paul bitten
  by a serpent, bears a Latin inscription signifying, “In the name
  of St. Paul, and by this stone, thou shalt drive out poison.” On
  the other side is engraved in relief the cross of the Temple,
  between a sword and a serpent. Another Vase bears the head of
  a saint and a sword, and is surrounded by venomous animals and
  herbs. On the Medal is represented a dragon with an Italian
  legend signifying, “The grace of St. Paul is proof against
  any poison.” These objects were found in 1863 at Florence, on
  the site of the old Church of the Templars, dedicated to St.
  Paul.--Collection of M. Gancia.]

The Templars were magnificent soldiers, and the annals of the Crusades
are full of their feats of arms. Few knights acquired the fame they did
in their expeditions across the seas; though always inferior in number
to the infidel, who held them in greater fear than the Crusaders,
they almost always defeated them. The defence of Gaza, the battle of
Tiberias, the capture of Damietta, and the Egyptian Crusade, are all
splendid attestations of their courage and prowess.

The Templars in time reached the summit of their fortunes, the height
of their prosperity and their fame, and nothing was left to them but
to decay. Inflated with wealth, laden with privileges which gave them
almost sovereign power, the only judges they recognised were the pope
and themselves. The order at last became so demoralised by luxury and
idleness that it forgot the aim for which it was founded, disdained to
obey its own rules, and gave itself up to the love of gain and thirst
for pleasure. Its covetousness and pride soon became boundless. The
knights pretended that they were above the reach of even crowned heads:
they seized and pillaged without concern the property of both infidels
and Christians.

Their jealousy of the Knights Hospitallers induced them to interfere
with a man of position, a vassal of the Order of St. John, and to
drive him from a castle he possessed in the neighbourhood of their
establishment at Margat. This caused a violent quarrel between the
two orders, which soon became a permanent struggle for supremacy.
The pope wrote to the grand masters of both orders to exhort them to
re-establish peace and good-will, and to forget their mutual rancour,
so dangerous for Christendom and so fatal to the interests of the Holy
Land. An apparent truce took place between them; but the Templars had
not forgotten their hatred, and they lost no opportunity of showing it
to the knights of St. John. Moreover, they no longer cared to support
the holy cause that had led to the birth of their order. They signed a
treaty of alliance with the Old Man of the Mountain, the leader of the
sect of the Assassins or Ishmaelites, the most implacable enemies of
the cross; they allowed him, on condition of paying tribute, to fortify
himself in Lebanon; they made war against the king of Cyprus and the
prince of Antioch; ravaged Thrace and Greece, where the Christian
nobles had founded principalities, marquisates, and baronies; took
Athens by storm, and massacred Robert de Brienne, its duke.

In short, the consciousness of their strength, of their wealth, and of
their power, inspired the Templars with an audacity that nothing could
restrain. Their pride, which had become proverbial, was particularly
offensive. Their belief and their morals were very far from orthodox,
and even in 1273, Pope Gregory X. had thought of fusing their order in
that of the Hospitallers. In the beginning of the following century,
Philippe le Bel, King of France, received weighty accusations against
them of most serious offences, accusations that were generally believed
to be true, and consulted Pope Clement V. on the subject. Clement at
first declared the crimes with which they were accused to be altogether
improbable, but the grand master having insisted on a rigorous inquiry,
the pope wrote to the king for the details of his information. Philippe
le Bel wished to decide the matter himself, and proceeded to arrest all
the Templars within his jurisdiction, amongst them their grand master,
Jacques de Molai, who had just returned from Cyprus.

  [Illustration: Fig. 149.--Seal of the Knights of Christ
  (Thirteenth Century).--Early Device of the Order of Templars,
  representing two knights on one horse.]

One hundred and forty knights were examined in Paris, and all but three
confessed that the order practised a secret initiation, in which the
aspirants were bound to deny Christ, and spit upon the cross; and that,
moreover, immoral customs were practised amongst them. Many of them
also confessed that they had committed acts of idolatry. A learned
contemporary writer, De Wilcke, a German protestant clergyman, has
epitomized the researches of two of his co-religionists--Moldenhawer,
who discovered in the National Library in Paris the original records of
the examination, and Munster, who found in the library of the Vatican
the original notes of the proceedings that took place in England. This
is De Wilcke’s conclusion: “The two facts of the denial of Christ and
the spitting on the cross are attested by all the witnesses who were
examined, with one or two exceptions.”

In spite of the scandal caused by these confessions, Pope Clement V.
urgently protested against Philippe’s course of action, and represented
to him that the Templars were a religious body, under the control
of the Holy See alone, that the king was consequently wrong to make
himself their judge, and that he had no authority over either their
possessions or their persons.

Philippe unwillingly yielded to the pope’s remonstrances, and the
pontiff himself examined seventy-two Templars, whose confessions
tallied with the avowals made in the first instance at Paris.

An inquiry was instituted in England, in Italy, in Spain, and in
Germany. The answers extracted in the course of the different
examinations were not exactly coincident, but the confessions of
impiety and immorality were very numerous, except in Spain. The
Aragonese Templars took up arms and held themselves on the defensive in
their fortresses; they were however, conquered by King James II., and
thrown into prison as rebels. The Templars of Castile were arrested,
tried before an ecclesiastical tribunal, and declared innocent.

  [Illustration: Fig. 150.--Council of Vienne.--Fresco executed in
  the Vatican Library by order of Pope Pius V. (Sixteenth Century).]

The pope acknowledged the existence of serious irregularities amongst
the knights of the order, but persisted in reserving to himself the
right to pronounce a final decision. He, however, instructed every
bishop in the Christian world to investigate the cases within his own
diocese, and to absolve the innocent, and condemn the guilty Templars
according to the utmost rigour of the law.

The provincial council of Paris handed over the contumacious to the
secular authorities; fifty-nine of the guilty knights were burnt in
that city at the back of the abbey of St. Antoine. A second council, at
Senlis, in a similar manner delivered nine Templars to the mercies of
the secular judge, who sentenced them to be burnt at the stake. It is
said that the culprits retracted their confession on the scaffold, and
died protesting their innocence. As soon as the commissioners appointed
by the pope were informed of these executions they suspended their
sittings, declaring that the terror inspired by these capital penalties
deprived the prisoners of the tranquillity of mind necessary to their
defence. They further requested the council of Paris to act with more
deliberation.

When Pope Clement V. had obtained all the necessary information he
convoked the council of Vienne (Fig. 150), and there, on the 22nd
of March, 1312, pronounced his decision, which rather absolved than
condemned the order, and placed their persons and their property at
his disposal and at that of the Church. In Spain and in Portugal, this
property was applied to the defence of the Christians against the
constant attacks of the Saracens and the Moors (Fig. 151); but the
greater portion of the possessions of the Templars, and particularly
those they held in France, was transferred to the keeping of the
Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, who continued to devote
themselves to the cause of the holy places, and kept up the good works
to perform which the Templars had received so many and such costly
donations.

The serious abuses and crimes which caused the suppression of the order
had not fortunately vitiated the whole of its members: most of the
Templars were set at liberty, many of them, preserving their former
rank, enrolled themselves in the Order of St. John. In this wise, as
is pointed out by Wilcke, Albert de Blacas, prior of Aix, obtained
the commandership of Saint-Maurice, as prior of the Hospitallers; and
Frederick, grand prior of Lower Germany, retained the title in the
Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

  [Illustration: Fig. 151.--Our Lady of Grace sheltering under
  the folds of her mantle the first Grand Masters of the Military
  Order of Montessa. This order was established in Spain in 1317 by
  James II., King of Aragon, with the approval of John XXII., as a
  substitute for the Order of the Temple, with whose possessions it
  was endowed.--From a Painting on Wood of the Fifteenth Century,
  held in veneration in the Church of the Temple, at Valencia; and
  from the “Iconografia Española” of M. Carderera.]

The pope had specially reserved his judgment in the case of the
grand master, Jacques de Molai, in that of the Visitor of France,
and in those of the commanders of Guyenne and of Normandy. Several
cardinals-legate, with some French bishops and doctors of the
University of Paris, constituted the tribunal which was to pass the
sentence in the name of the pontiff. After satisfying themselves that
these four eminent knights had repeated their avowals before a second
commission, the members of the tribunal, convinced of their guilt,
caused a scaffold to be erected in front of Notre-Dame, and there, on
Monday, March 18th, 1314, the four Templars were publicly condemned
to imprisonment for life. On the scaffold the grand master and one
of the others recanted their confession of guilt and protested their
innocence. The cardinals, surprised at this recantation, committed
the prisoners to the care of the provost of Paris, with orders to
bring them before them the next day, when the tribunal had had time to
deliberate on this fresh incident. But Philippe le Bel, learning what
was taking place, hurriedly assembled his council, and had the grand
master, and the other Templar who had similarly persisted in denying
his twice-avowed guilt, burnt alive the same night. They underwent
this horrible torture protesting their innocence to the last. The two
remaining knights who had acknowledged their guilt were kept for some
time in prison, but were afterwards set at liberty.

  [Illustration: Fig. 152.--Surrender of the Town of Montefrio,
  near Granada, in 1486. The alcids and Moorish chiefs, after the
  siege, delivering the keys of the town to Ferdinand the Catholic
  and Queen Isabella.--Bas-relief on the stalls of the choir of
  the high altar of the cathedral, carved in wood in the Sixteenth
  Century.]

Other orders of knighthood, having more or less of a religious
character, were founded in the Middle Ages, or during the Renaissance
period: the principal were, in Spain, the Order of the Knights of
Calatrava; in Germany, the Order of the Teuton Knights; the Order of
the Golden Fleece in the Low Countries, in Spain, and in Austria;
that of St. Maurice and St. Lazarus in Savoy; that of St. Stephen in
Tuscany; and in France, those of St. Michael and of the Holy Ghost,
which were merely honorary orders, although the first Order of the Holy
Ghost, founded in 1352 by Louis d’Anjou, King of Jerusalem and Sicily,
had for its object the re-establishment of an essentially military
knighthood, as a means for bringing about a new crusade.

The Knights of Calatrava, on whom their founder, Don Raymond, Abbot of
Citeaux, imposed the regulations of his own monastery, distinguished
themselves by many brilliant feats of arms, particularly against the
Moors of Spain and Africa (Fig. 152); and the princes in whose cause
they had fought in these wars--termed, like the Crusades in the East,
holy--granted them large possessions and considerable privileges. They
were bound by a triple vow of poverty, obedience, and chastity, and,
like the Templars, wore a red cross embroidered on a white mantle. From
the days of Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella, the sovereigns of
Spain have always been the grand masters of this order, which acquired
and long retained a considerable amount of importance, even when it had
ceased to signify anything but an indication of nobility. The order of
Alcantara, which had a similar origin to that of Calatrava, ran a like
career and was in like manner doomed to decay. Spain, too, was the only
country that possessed a military order for ladies. After the heroic
defence of Placentia against the English by the women of that city in
1390, John I., the sovereign of Castile, created in their honour the
order of the Ladies of the Sash, which was united at a later period to
the Order of the Belt, founded in the fourteenth century to do battle
against the Moors.

The Teutonic Knights, whose order had been founded in 1128, at
Jerusalem, by the German Crusaders, obeyed the rules of St. Augustin.
They were subject beside to special statutes somewhat similar to those
of the Knights of St. John and of the Temple, whose privileges they
also enjoyed. Their first grand master, Henri Walpot, established his
residence near St. Jean d’Acre.

This order was divided, like that of St. John, into knights, chaplains,
and serving brethren. Its members wore a white mantle with a rather
broad black cross, picked out with silver, on the left sleeve. To gain
admission into the order it was necessary for the candidate to be over
fifteen years of age, and to be of a strong, robust build, in order to
resist the fatigues of war. Its knights, bound by a vow of chastity,
were expected to avoid all intercourse with women; they were not even
allowed to give their own mothers a filial kiss when they saluted them.
They possessed no individual property; they always left their cell
doors open, so that everybody might see what they were doing. Their
arms were free from both gold and silver ornaments, and for a long
period they spent their lives in great humility. Their most celebrated
grand master, Hermann de Salza, received in 1210, from Pope Honorius
III. and the Emperor Frederick II., whom he had reconciled, large
possessions and high honours.

The Teutonic Knights conquered Prussia, Livonia, and Courland, and in
1283 became masters of the whole territory between the Vistula and the
Niemen. In 1309 they abandoned Venice, where, twenty years earlier,
their grand master had fixed his ordinary residence, and selected
Marienburg as their head-quarters. At that date the order had reached
the culminating point of its prosperity, and its sway in Germany had
the most fortunate results for Prussia. But luxury soon began to
undermine the religious faith of the knights; and internal struggles,
caused by the elections of their grand masters, introduced fresh
elements of decay into their organization.

  [Illustration: Fig. 153.--Sancha de Roxas, who died in 1437,
  wearing the scarf which was the insignia of the military order
  bearing his name (Fifteenth Century).--From the “Iconografia
  Española” of M. Carderera.]

Dragged into endless conflicts with Lithuania and Poland, the order
lost its banners, its treasure, and its principal defenders in the
disastrous battle of Grümwald, in the year 1410, and would have been
utterly ruined but for Henry von Plauen. After the death of this
illustrious grand master, the knights, to whom the treaty of Thorn had
restored their territorial possessions, lost them one after the other
in the few years that elapsed between 1422 and 1436. For thirteen years
Casimir IV., King of Poland, summoned into Prussia by the inhabitants,
who had rebelled against the despotic sway of the knights, laid waste
the country that he had undertaken to protect. The order, driven out of
Marienburg and Konitz, only retained possession of Eastern Prussia, and
held even that under Polish rule; its grand master, whose head-quarters
were now at Königsberg, was, in fact, a prince and a councillor of
Poland. As Prussia was a fief of the Church, the grand master of the
Teutonic Order was bound by vow to preserve it to the Church and to
his own order. Albert of Brandenburg, its last grand master, was
bound by this oath, and by the triple vow of poverty, obedience, and
chastity, which he had taken on entering the order. To rid himself of
the fetters of these oaths he joined the Lutheran Church, and divided
the possessions of his order with his uncle, the aged Sigismund, King
of Poland, who for these considerations bestowed on him the title of
hereditary Duke of Prussia. This was the origin of the royal family of
Prussia. After this easy acquisition of title and territory, Albert of
Brandenburg married the daughter of the King of Denmark. As a matter of
course, the Order of the Teutonic Knights became extinct.

  [Illustration: Fig. 154.--Teutonic Knight.--Fac-simile of a
  Woodcut by Jost Amman, in his work entitled “Cleri totius Romanæ
  ecclesiæ ... habitus:” 4to, Frankfort, 1585.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 155.--Chapter of the Golden Fleece, held by
  Charles the Bold.--Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the
  Burgundian Library, Brussels.]

The Order of the Knights of the Golden Fleece was not founded till
1449. It was then instituted by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy and
Count of Flanders, in order to induce the nobles of his court to join
him in making war against the Turks, and to attach his subjects by
closer ties to the service of the state. The crusade never took place,
but the order survived, and still exists as an heraldic distinction.

This order, which was placed under the protection of St. Andrew, was
originally composed of twenty-four knights of high rank and stainless
character; their number was increased by the Duke of Burgundy to
thirty-one, and afterwards by Charles V. to fifty-one. The election of
the knights took place in the chapters of the order, and were decided
by a majority of votes. The distinguishing sign of the order was a
necklet of gold, enamelled with the duke’s device, which was composed
of two steels and two flints interlaced, with the motto, _Ante ferit
quam micat_ (It strikes before it lights). From the collar was
suspended a golden sheep, or sheep’s fleece, with the inscription,
_Pretium non vile laborum_ (Labour’s just reward) (Fig. 155).
Since the marriage of Philippe le Beau, son of the Emperor Maximilian
and Mary of Burgundy, with Jane of Aragon, in 1496, the King of Spain
and the Emperor of Austria are, in their own countries, the sovereign
chiefs of the order of the Golden Fleece.

Savoy also possessed an order of military knighthood which has survived
till our time. When Amadeus VIII., in whose person Savoy had been
raised to the rank of a duchy by the Emperor Sigismund, determined to
live as a recluse, he desired to create an order of secular knighthood,
with himself as its chief. He accordingly built a retreat at Ripailles,
near the Lake of Geneva, as a residence for the new order, and placed
it under the protection of St. Maurice, the patron saint of Savoy. The
first knights, only six in number, were distinguished by a cross of
white taffeta sewn on their dress. The successors of Amadeus VIII.,
however, so neglected the order that it was on the point of becoming
extinct, when Duke Emanuel Philibert, in 1572, obtained from Gregory
XIII. a bull to reconstitute it; and shortly afterwards, by a second
bull, the knights of St. Lazarus and those of St. Maurice were united.

The knights took the same triple vow as the Templars; they swore
fidelity to the Dukes of Savoy, and undertook to wage war against the
heretics who from Geneva were continually threatening the frontiers
of the duchy. The order possessed considerable property, and its
head-quarters were at Nice and Turin.

The sign of the order was a white cross with flowered points, beneath
which was a second cross surrounded with green, with the image of the
two patron saints.

The Knights of St. Stephen, an order founded in 1562 by Cosmo de
Medicis, Grand Duke of Tuscany, played an active part in the sea-fights
of the Mediterranean, where they were constantly chasing the Ottoman
galleys or effecting landings on the shores of the surrounding
barbarian states. In the middle of the seventeenth century they boasted
that they had released, since the creation of the order, upwards of
five thousand six hundred Christian captives and fifteen thousand
slaves.

This order, in its customs and ceremonies, was strikingly like
the order of Malta; and, like it, was divided into military and
ecclesiastical knights.

  [Illustration: Fig. 156.--Reception of a Knight of the Order
  of St. Michael, which was created on August 1, 1469, by Louis
  XI., at the Castle of Amboise.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in the
  “Statuts de l’Ordre,” dated from Plessis-les-Tours. Manuscript of
  the Sixteenth Century, in the Library of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.]

Several orders of military knighthood existed in France, created by its
sovereigns; but their honorary character caused them to be looked upon
as rewards bestowed for good service rendered to the monarchy, rather
than as solemn engagements to take up arms in any definite cause. It
is hardly worth while to mention the Order of the Star, which it has
been attempted to trace back to King Robert and to the year 1022, but
the real origin of which only dates from King John. The oldest royal
military orders of knighthood are those that Louis IX. founded to
encourage his nobles to join him in his expeditions beyond the seas,
and to take part in the Crusades. The Order of the Cosse de Geneste,
instituted in 1254, was bestowed at a later period on the sergeants of
the king, a body-guard of a hundred gentlemen specially entrusted with
the duty of protecting the sovereign’s person against the assassins
sent by the Old Man of the Mountains. The Order of the Ship, instituted
in 1269, became extinct shortly after the second crusade of St. Louis,
who had conferred it, before his departure, on some of his most
illustrious followers.

The Order of St. Michael was founded in 1469 by Louis XI. to fulfil a
vow made by his father, who had a particular veneration for that saint,
the tutelar angel and patron of France (Fig. 156). The image of St.
Michael was already embroidered in gold upon the banner of the king,
who created a new order of military knighthood “in honour,” say the
statutes, “of the first knight who in God’s quarrel fought the ancient
enemy of the human race and made him fall from heaven.” The order was
composed of thirty-six knights of stainless name and arms, with the
sovereign who had appointed them at their head. The collar of the order
was composed of golden shells inlaid with the figure of St. Michael
overthrowing Satan. The knights, besides this collar, wore on occasions
of ceremony a white mantle with a hood of crimson velvet.

  [Illustration:

   A, the door from which the knights issued, and then went along
   the terrace marked B, out at the door marked C, and so to the
   place where the new knights were initiated.

   D, trumpets.

   E, drums.

   F, fifes and hautboys.

   G, four heralds, walking two and two.

   H, king-at-arms of France, walking by himself.

   I, the Sieur de Bourgneuf, usher of the order, walking by
   himself.

   K, the Sieur du Pont, herald of the order, walking by himself.

   L, three officers of the order walking abreast--viz., MM.
   d’Achères, provost and master of the ceremonies; Bouthillier,
   grand treasurer; and Duret-Chevry, secretary.

   M, M. de Bullion, keeper of the seals of the order, walking by
   himself.

   N, the knights novices, walking two and two, each according to
   his rank.

   O, the commanders, walking also two and two, each according to
   his rank.

   P, the king, walking by himself, his train carried by M. le
   Marquis de Gesvres; behind his majesty walks M. le Cardinal Duc
   de Richelieu, by himself, an almoner carrying his train.

  Fig. 157. Procession of the Knights of the Order of the Holy
  Ghost crossing the courtyard of the Palace of Fontainebleau on
  their way to the chapel, for the ceremony of the initiation of
  new knights.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 158.--State Gloves of embroidered silk, gold,
  and silver, with the Monogram of Christ, formerly belonging to
  Louis XIII.--From the originals in the Collection of M. Jubinal.]

The Order of the Holy Ghost was the last military order that the
sovereigns of France themselves conferred towards the close of the
sixteenth century. Both this and the Order of St. Michael were termed
orders of the king. Henry III., in 1579, created the order in honour
of God, and particularly in that of the Holy Ghost, under whose
inspiration he had accomplished “his best and most fortunate exploits,”
to use the exact words of the statutes of the order. From the day of
his ascending the throne he had always intended to found this order,
which had been suggested to him in his childhood by the perusal of the
statutes of the first Order of the Holy Ghost, instituted at Naples,
in 1352, by one of his ancestors, Louis of Anjou, King of Jerusalem
and Sicily. These statutes were carefully preserved in a precious
manuscript, the miniature of which represented with marvellous art
all the ceremonies of the order. The manuscript was a present from
the nobility of Venice to Henry III. on his return from Poland. This
prince, however, borrowed but little from these ancient statutes, which
had been drawn up in view of the military services which the knights of
the order, three hundred in number, might be able to render towards
the Crusades in Palestine. The new order of the Holy Ghost, although
a military one, was destined to gather round the king, who was its
supreme head, a body of a hundred knights, selected from among the most
eminent and the most illustrious personages of the court, the Church,
and the nobility. The insignia of the order were a collar composed of
golden fleurs-de-lis, surmounted with enamelled flames, forming the
initials of the king and his wife Louise of Lorraine, with a cross
bearing a silver dove, emblem of the Holy Ghost. At the meetings of
their order, the knights were clad in costly round-caped mantles of
blue velvet spangled with fleurs-de-lis in gold (Fig. 157). These
meetings, which at first were held in the Church of the Augustines at
Paris, where the solemn receptions of the new members took place, were
afterwards transferred to the Louvre, where they were celebrated with
extraordinary pomp. It is true that the statutes enjoined on each lay
knight the duty of taking arms for his sovereign whenever the latter
was preparing to go to war for the defence of his dominions, or in the
interest of his crown; but they were never scrupulously obeyed on this
point, and the Order of the Holy Ghost, while preserving its military
and religious character on all ceremonial occasions, never played any
other part than one of display and heraldic pretension. The sovereigns,
however, at all times showed themselves extremely jealous of the
privilege of appointing its knights, and the latter for more than three
centuries composed the actual guard of honour of the royal house of
France.

  [Illustration: Fig. 159.--St. George, the patron of warriors,
  vanquishing the Dragon.--From the Tomb of Cardinal Georges
  d’Amboise, at Rouen (Sixteenth Century).]




LITURGY AND CEREMONIES.

   Prayer.--Liturgy of St. James, of St. Basil, and of St.
   John-Chrysostom.--Apostolical Constitutions.--The Sacrifice of
   the Mass.--Administration of Baptism.--Canonical Penances.--Plan
   and Arrangement of Churches.--Ecclesiastical Hierarchy.--The
   Ceremony of Ordination.--Church Bells.--The Tocsin.--The Poetry
   of Gothic Churches.--Breviary and Missal of Pius V.--Ceremonies
   used at the Seven Sacraments.--Excommunication.--The Bull _In
   Cœnâ Domini_.--Processions and Mystery Plays at the Easter
   Solemnities.--Instrument of Peace.--Consecrated Bread.--The
   Pyx.--The Dove.


It was the first Council of Nice, in the year 325, that gave the
dignity of canonical law to the custom of prayer on bended knees, and
it is a surprising fact that none of the paintings of the Catacombs
represent a devotee in the act of kneeling. We, however, know from the
Acts of the Apostles that from the very first days of Christianity it
was sometimes customary to kneel at prayer. As for the public prayers
of the early Christians, the text of the principal ones has survived
unaltered to our own days. As early as the close of the first century,
the younger Pliny, writing to Trajan, told him that the Christians were
accustomed to assemble at daybreak to sing a hymn in honour of Christ,
whom they worshipped as God. This is a valuable piece of evidence, and
it is moreover corroborated by the known custom that prevailed at the
same epoch in the Church of Antioch, of celebrating the Holy Trinity
(Figs. 160 and 161) by singing anthems, and of glorifying Christ, the
Word of God, by the intoning of canticles and psalms. St. Irenæus,
who wrote in the middle of the second century, also mentions in his
work against heresy, a kind of _Gloria in excelsis_, which was
chanted in Greek in Christian assemblies at the consecration of the
host, and which may be translated thus: “To thee all glory, veneration,
and thanksgiving; honour and worship to the Father, to the Son, and to
the Holy Ghost, now and ever, and for century upon century of infinite
eternity!” The people responded, “Amen!” In the dogmatic treatises
written by Tertullian, at the end of the second century, that great
pagan philosopher, who had become a convert to Christianity, alludes
more than once to the first attempts at a liturgy which the Church
used in the administration of the sacraments. He speaks of secret
meetings where the psalms were sung, the Scriptures read, and edifying
discourses were delivered; he mentions public prayers on behalf of the
reigning sovereign, of his ministers, and of the great functionaries
of the State; he describes ceremonies, forms of prayer, and religious
chants which were used according to certain rites authorised in the
Latin Church, amongst which may be distinguished the _Pater_ of
the New Testament, that simple and yet sublime and touching invocation
of feeble humanity prostrated before the Almighty.

  [Illustration: Fig. 160.--Symbol of the Trinity, arranged
  vertically--the Son at the bottom, the Father at the top, and the
  Holy Ghost in the centre. The Holy Ghost descends from the mouth
  of the Father and settles on the head of the Son, and proceeds
  from both. Copied from a French Miniature by Count Horace de
  Vielcastel (Fourteenth Century).]

  [Illustration: Fig. 161.--The three faces of the Trinity on one
  head and body. At first sight is read--“The Father is not the
  Son; the Father is not the Holy Ghost; the Holy Ghost is not the
  Son.” But, from the angles to the centre, is also read--“The
  Father is God; the Son is God; the Holy Ghost is God.” Printed by
  Simon Vostre in 1524.]

The Church of Neo-Cesarea used from the first the liturgy of St. James,
the earliest of the Eastern liturgies, until St. Basil, justly surnamed
the great, for he was one of the most illustrious Fathers of the Greek
Church in the fourth century, modified and shortened it. A little later
it came to be known as the liturgy of St. Chrysostom, on account of the
important changes introduced into it by that Father of the Church.

  [Illustration: Fig. 162 to 171.--Monograms of Christ, belonging
  to the first centuries of the Church, except the last two. They
  are mostly composed of the letters X and P interlaced, letters
  which begin the word Christ (ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ); one is accompanied by an
  N [_Nazarenus_); several have on either side the letters
  α and ω, in allusion to the text, “I am the beginning and the
  end.” Two of these monograms, from the Catacombs, recall the
  _labarum_ of Constantine, especially the one bearing the
  famous inscription, “In hoc signo vinces;” but it is not certain
  whether they are rightly attributed. The last two are from the
  Churches of St. Martin de Lescas (Gironde) and of St. Exupère
  d’Arreau (Upper Pyrenees), edifices of the Eleventh and Twelfth
  Centuries.]

The canons of the Council of Laodicea, held in 364, contain many
regulations for the recitation of the psalms and lessons, which, as
early as the second century, according to Tertullian, were recited at
_Tierce_, at _Sexte_, and at _None_, that is, at the third, sixth, and
ninth hour of the day--at vespers or evening prayer, and at the prayers
offered up by the bishops, whether at the ceremonies of baptism and
the eucharist, or over catechumens and penitents. It was not until
after the conversion of Constantine that public prayers became general
in Constantinople even amongst the troops. Constantine built an
oratory in his palace, where his whole court worshipped with him. He
desired that his soldiers, whether Christians or pagans, should every
Sunday repeat aloud certain prayers belonging to the religion of Jesus
Christ. Eusebius is the historian who relates this fact. A record has
been handed down of a prayer that the Emperor Maximinius declared he
had received from the hands of an angel, and which he read out to his
soldiers in 313, before he gave battle to Licinius, his rival for the
imperial throne.

  [Illustration: Fig. 172.--Heathen Caricature drawn on the wall
  of the Palatinate, in the Third Century, and preserved in the
  Kircher Museum, at Rome.--The object of veneration of the
  Christians is represented by a crucified figure with a donkey’s
  head, looking down on a small figure of a man: it is accompanied
  by a Greek inscription signifying, “Alexamenus worshipping his
  God.” Reduced to a quarter the size of the original.]

In the fourth century, it was customary nearly everywhere, in the
West as well as in the East, after having sung the praises of God, to
put up prayers for the reigning sovereign and the leading potentates
of the civilised world. For instance, when St. Athanasius cried out
in the presence of the faithful, assembled in the splendid basilica
of the Cæsars, “Let us pray for the safety of the very pious Emperor
Constantine,” the whole assembly answered with one resounding voice,
“Christe, auxiliare Constantio!” (“Help Constantine, O Christ!”) The
preceding examples, and many others that it would be easy to gather
from the history of early Christianity, prove that in the fourth
century, in France, in Italy, in Spain, as well as in the churches of
the East and of Africa, Christian worshippers were accustomed to recite
either aloud or in a low tone, a set form of prayers, to chant, or
rather slowly to intone psalms, and to sing hymns. Did not St. Pacôme
order his monks to recite twice a day a psalmody which was composed of
psalms interspersed with prayers? Did not St. Hilary of Poictiers lay
the foundations of the Gallican liturgy, as St. Ambrose did those of
the Lombard liturgy, at the time that St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine
revised the liturgies of the Eastern and African Churches?

  [Illustration: Fig. 173.--Painting symbolical of the Catacombs
  of Rome: Jesus Christ, represented as Orpheus, fascinating with
  the sound of his lyre the wild and domestic animals, as also the
  trees, which are bending towards him to listen.--Fresco of the
  First or Second Century, from the Cemetery of Domitilla.]

It was generally the custom to follow the precepts of the so-called
“Apostolical Constitutions,” a primitive work that was supposed to date
from the second century. These Constitutions ordered the psalms to be
recited to the congregation in the morning, at the third, the sixth,
and the ninth hours of the day, at vespers, and at cockcrow, that is to
say, at dawn. But the faithful, who were long prevented by persecution
from openly assembling in sacred buildings, at first offered up their
prayers in private, or perhaps surrounded only by their families and a
few intimate friends. Tertullian tells us that each strove to show the
greatest zeal in singing the praises of God. In the fourth century, the
Christians both of the East and of the West were so zealously attached
to their psalmody, that none would have willingly missed saying it at
its appointed hour, no matter where he might happen to be. “Instead of
the love songs formerly heard at all hours, and in all places,” says
St. Jerome in a letter to his friend Marcellinus, “the labourer at the
plough hums an _Alleluia_, the reaper, bathed in perspiration,
repeats his psalmody as he rests from his toil, and the worker in the
vineyard carols David’s grateful verse as he plies his curved sickle.”

  [Illustration: Fig. 174.--Silver-gilt Cruet, showing its
  different sides; on one side is depicted the head of Christ, with
  a nimbus, and on the other that of St. Peter. (First or Second
  Century.)--Museum of the Vatican.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 175.--The Last Supper, symbolically
  represented as the first eucharistic sacrifice. Jesus, surrounded
  by his disciples, and with John, his favourite disciple, leaning
  on his bosom, is administering his body and blood under the
  form of bread and wine, to another disciple kneeling in front
  of the table.--From a Miniature of the Eleventh Century in the
  Burgundian Library, Brussels.]

Long before any churches were open to the public, the apostles “broke
bread with, the faithful” in the guest chamber of private dwellings;
their disciples followed their example in the subterranean cemeteries,
termed Catacombs, where the early Christians used to assemble to
celebrate the Lord’s Supper (Fig. 175). This sacrament, the primitive
form of which is unknown to us, was not termed a _mass_ (_missa_)
till the middle of the fourth century. “It was on a Sunday,” says St.
Ambrose, who was the originator of the Ambrosian rite, “that I first
held a mass.” The name of mass, about the meaning and origin of which
the most learned Christian archæologists are by no means agreed,
appears to have been derived from a Hebrew word denoting an offering or
sacrifice; or perhaps rather from the Latin _missa_, from _mittere_, to
send away, or to take leave of. Apostolical discipline required that
the sacrament should be preceded by a discourse, and that before it was
celebrated the catechumens, those who had not yet been baptized, should
leave the sanctuary. “After the sermon,” says St. Augustine, “the
catechumens are sent out” (_fit missa_).

  [Illustration: Fig. 176.--Miraculous Mass of St. Gregory the
  Great (Sixth Century), depicting the real presence of Jesus
  Christ in the eucharist.--Miniature from a Missal of the
  Fifteenth Century, in the Collection of M. Ambr. Firmin-Didot.]

There was, however, a mass for the catechumens which comprised the
introductory prayers, lessons from the Old and New Testaments, and the
bishop’s homily. The true mass, celebrated for the faithful alone,
was specially called the eucharist. “Those are masses,” says St.
Cesarius of Arles, “when the body and blood of Christ are offered up in
sacrifice” (Fig. 176).

At first, mass was celebrated once a week, and always on the Sunday. In
the second century, the sacrament or eucharistic offering took place
three times a week, on Sunday, on Wednesday, and on Friday. In the
following century, the Eastern Church decreed that it should also be
celebrated on Saturday. In the West, mass was held only on Sundays,
unless in exceptional cases; while in the days of St. Augustine, in
the dioceses of Africa, Spain, and Constantinople, it was celebrated
generally every day. It was not till the sixth century that it became
usual in the Latin Church to celebrate mass every day.

As time passed on, and as the number of worshippers increased, the
number of masses was considerably augmented, particularly on great
festivals and during Holy Week. The same priest was at liberty to
perform several, but after each he was bound to purify his fingers
in a chalice, the contents of which were afterwards poured into a
fitting vessel and consumed at the final mass, either by the priests
themselves, by the deacons and clerks, or by those of the laity who
were in a state of grace. At first all masses were sung, or rather
chanted; they were all public, and could only be celebrated in diocesan
or parish churches. Necessity, however, soon instituted inferior or
_private_ masses, thus named because they were held in one of
the lesser shrines or chapels, on an ordinary day, or before a small
congregation.

The bishops, the apostles’ successors, were alone entitled,
during the first two centuries, to administer the solemn rites of
baptism. The priests, under the authority of the bishop, were the
assistant-ministers of this sacrament. The deacons could only confer
it when authorised by special episcopal sanction. In cases of urgent
necessity, laymen were permitted to baptize, provided they were of
irreproachable morals and had been confirmed. In the Latin Church as
well as in the East, public baptism was only solemnised during the
vigils of Easter and Pentecost; in the Gallican Church, at Christmas,
as in the case of King Clovis. Private baptism might be administered at
any period whenever it was deemed necessary.

On the day set apart for baptism, the chosen catechumens met in the
church at noon to undergo a final examination (Fig. 177); at midnight
they again assembled there, the paschal taper and the water were
consecrated, and the officiating priest asked the catechumens if they
renounced the _devil_, the _world_, and its _pomps_. They made answer,
Yes. The priest then required of them a profession of Christian faith,
carefully prepared beforehand, after which they underwent a short
examination on the articles of the Creed. When these preliminaries
were completed the deacon presented to the priest the catechumens
stripped of their clothing, but covered with a veil. Each then stepped
into a large vessel of water and was dipped thrice (Fig. 178); at each
immersion the bishop invoked one of the persons of the Holy Trinity, a
custom that prevailed till the sixth century in the Western Church, and
till the eighth in that of the East. After the immersion the assisting
deacon anointed the catechumen’s forehead with holy oil, and the priest
put on him the _chrismal_, a flowing white robe which he wore for eight
days. Thus clad, and holding lighted tapers, the new Christians went in
procession from the place of baptism to the basilica. Before mass they
received the sacrament of confirmation; they were then given a mixture
of honey and milk, a symbol of their entrance into the promised land,
that is to say, into the highway of Gospel privileges. Whatever the age
of the newly baptized might be, they were termed children (_pueri_,
_infantes_).

  [Illustration: Fig. 177.--Exorcism of a catechumen by four of
  the clergy, who are applying the cross to him to drive the devil
  out of his body, prior to his baptism.--From a bas-relief of the
  Fourth or Fifth Century, found at Pérouse. Paciaudi, “De Sacris
  Christianorum Balneis:” Venitiis, 1750, 4to.]

Baptism by sprinkling, as practised now, was not unknown to the
primitive church, but it was only adopted in urgent cases, when
immersion might be dangerous to the catechumen, or when it was
expedient to baptize many at one time. In the ninth century baptism by
sprinkling had become customary, and it soon became the only method in
use.

  [Illustration: Fig. 178.--Baptism of the Saxons conquered by
  Charlemagne.--Miniature in Manuscript No. 9,066 in the Burgundian
  Library, Brussels (Fifteenth Century).]

The dogmas of Christianity would have been a dead letter for most of
the neophytes, unless they had been accompanied by a rigorous and
constant discipline. The Church foresaw this, and showed its sternness,
though at the same time it held out indulgences to the penitent.
It established a kind of scale of punishments, whose severity were
proportionate to the gravity of the crimes committed. The privilege of
oblation was taken from the lesser culprits--that is to say, they were
neither allowed to place offerings on the altars nor to receive the
eucharist; the more hardened and rebellious sinners were excluded from
the communion of the faithful, and were not permitted to take part in
public worship; those who had been guilty of actual crime, or who had
shown themselves to be incorrigible, were expelled from the sanctuary,
and their names were expunged from the list of Christians.

These more rigorous measures, however, might be modified according to
the repentance of the offender or at the discretion of the bishop,
the sole and sovereign judge in all such matters. _Canonical
penance_ was usually only inflicted for great public crimes, such
as idolatry, adultery, and homicide; and, moreover, certain classes of
individuals--children, young girls, married women, old men, priests,
clerks, and monarchs--were only subject to it under the most careful
restrictions; while in every case it was necessary to give legal and
accurate proof of the alleged offence. When the period of canonical
penance was over, if the criminal showed signs of repentance, the
bishop, or even an ordinary priest in case of absolute necessity, was
empowered to reconcile him with the Church.

As public worship in the early Church was slow to exhibit itself as a
settled institution, so the more solemn and the more imposing it became
from the moment that it took its lofty position under the protectorate
of Constantine the Great. Then suddenly sprung up a number of Christian
places of worship and imposing churches, amongst which we may mention
the basilica of Tyre, restored and inaugurated in 315; that of St. John
of Lateran, constructed in Rome in 324, with the remains of the temples
once raised to the false gods of paganism; and other sanctuaries in the
same city, which were consecrated by the Pope St. Damasius. The rites
used at the consecrations of the early churches are unknown to us, but
each inauguration had its solemn anniversary.

The position, the form, and the arrangement of the early churches were
not left to the whims of their founders and architects, even when these
churches were small and hidden for the most part in the catacombs, in
forests, and in deserts. In the second book of the “Constitutions” of
Pope Clement (chaps. 55 and 61), we read the following directions: “Let
the church be of a long shape, like a ship, and facing the east.” Here,
therefore, in the first century of the church, is an authentic proof of
the orientation of the early Christian sacred edifices.

The method of construction of the primitive churches, however,
according to the liturgical regulations of the period, is still an
obscure question, and one surrounded with uncertainty. It has been
surmised, with much probability, that the subterranean chapels of the
catacombs of Rome were the models of the first churches; and such is
the opinion of the most learned archæologists. It was from the very
depths of these sepulchral caverns that Christian art, bursting forth
into open day after the long series of persecutions, built its crypts
and its churches after the types of its hidden shrines, at first in
the transmural cemeteries, and afterwards, towards the end of the
third century, in the midst of the Christianized populations and in
the very centre of their cities. In 303, the date of the decree of
Diocletian closing the Christian places of worship, there were already
forty churches and chapels in Rome. The shape of these primitive
sanctuaries is not well known; they were probably in general of one
uniform pattern, specially adapted to the liturgical ceremonies of the
day, though considerations of safety, the capabilities of the site,
and other imperious necessities, no doubt frequently obliged their
architects to depart from precedent and to vary the character of their
construction. It was not until the reign of Constantine that Christian
edifices began to assume the attributes of size, magnificence, and
majestic boldness of outline. It was then that the emperor erected
basilicas in the interior of his Lateran and Vatican palaces for the
first time, and consecrated to the worship of the true God those
immense edifices in which art was the humble handmaid of religion and
bathed itself in the ineffable splendours of the faith.

The crypts or chambers (_cubicula_) of the Catacombs were
reproduced in the full light of day in the early churches; they were
of a quadrilateral shape, with three arched naves, and three vaulted
recesses (_arcosolia_) which served at once as tombs for the holy
confessors and shrines for the celebration of the eucharist. These
sanctuaries were generally of greater length than breadth, after the
analogy of the ship or vessel (_navis_), this mysterious symbolism
finding favour with the early Christians.

  [Illustration: Fig. 179.--Church of St. Antony, Padua, completed
  in 1307; the seven cupolas were added in the Fifteenth Century.
  The bronze equestrian statue which stands in front of the church
  was executed in 1453 by Donatello, and represents the famous
  captain, Gattemalata.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 180.--Foot of a large Choir Candelabrum
  in gilt bronze, with seven branches, nineteen feet high, and
  known as the “Tree of the Virgin,” because one of its ornaments
  represents the Infant Jesus adored by the Magi, in the arms of
  the Virgin.--Work of the Thirteenth Century, in Milan Cathedral.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 181.--Chandelier, called _Chandelier of
  the Virgin_; the branches are of bronze, and the figure is of
  carved wood. (Church in Kempen, Rhenish Prussia).--From Weerth’s
  “Monuments of Christian Art.”]

_Crucial_ churches, that is to say, churches in the shape of a
cross, were, however, not uncommon, as well as round, pentagonal,
hexagonal, and octagonal buildings. But whatever their shape, they
differed essentially from the pagan temples, as much in their general
internal arrangement as in their size, which continued to increase
in proportion as Christianity waxed in magnitude and influence. The
basilicas were divided into three principal parts: the vestibule, or
portico (in Greek, _pronaon_), the central area (in Greek, _naos_--in
Latin, _navis_, whence the term nave), and the apse or choir (in Greek,
_ieratrion_), reserved for the officiating priests. The portico was
supported by two, five, or seven columns, and projected from the front
wall. An iron rod furnished with rings ran across the columns, and
from it were suspended curtains of cloth or hanging tapestries which
could be drawn or closed at will. Beneath this portico the penitents,
termed _strati_ (prostrated), were accustomed to kneel, and from that
position they could hear the psalmody and the sermon without actually
witnessing the ceremony. The larger basilicas had frequently three
porticos instead of one (Fig. 179), the central one facing the west,
and the two side ones the north and south. A large vessel (_malluvium_)
full of water was placed in the centre of the portico, in which each
member of the congregation before entering the church purified his face
and hands. The clergy alone entered by the middle entrance (_aula_);
the worshippers entered by the two side portals, the men by that to
the right and the women by that to the left; this division of the
sexes was maintained within the building also. The internal main area
was subdivided into three or five naves. The central nave was always
left open and free, but in the others, partitions six feet high
completely divided off the catechumens, the penitents, the virgins
consecrated to God, the monks, and the mass of the congregation. At
the end of the nave was the choir (in Greek _bêma_), in front of which
stood the _solea_ (the cellar or wine-press, in allusion to what was
called the vineyard of the Lord), surrounded by a chancel, an open-work
partition, in the centre of which one or more gates opened into the
interior. One or sometimes two stands (called _pulpitum_, pulpit),
intended for the public reading of the epistles, the Scriptures, and
the holy books, were erected in front of the gates of the choir. In
Rome, and probably in Constantinople, Milan, Trèves, and in all the
larger imperial cities, there was in front of the choir, between the
stalls of the secular clergy and those of the holy virgins and monks,
a space (_senatorium_) reserved for the dignitaries and the noble
families of the place. The _solea_ was occupied by the sub-deacons and
the minor clerks, whose duty it was to intone the psalmody. One or two
sacristies (_secretaria_) were placed at the sides of the _solea_. The
sanctuary (Figs. 180 and 181), in which the holy sacrifice took place,
was surrounded with iron or wooden railings, and communicated through
one or three doors with the naves. The farther end of the choir was
semicircular in shape, and is now called the apse (in Greek, _kongche_,
a muscle or cockle-shell; in Latin, _absida_; in French, _chevet_);
around it were placed seats, amongst them that of the bishop, which
was raised above the altar, and was visible to the whole congregation.
The altar, which was draped and surmounted with the _ciborium_ (a
canopy of a cupola shape--Italian, _baldacchino_), was always placed
in the centre of the apse (Figs. 182 and 183). Such, was the material
framework, the normal arrangement of the Greek and Latin liturgy
towards the end of the sixth century.

  [Illustration: Fig. 182.--Altar-piece at Mareuil-en-Brie.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 183.--Altar-piece of the Church of
  Mareuil-en-Brie (Marne).--Latter half of the Thirteenth Century.]

No pope was more capable than Gregory the Great (590–604) of uniting
the different and scattered elements of which the liturgy was
composed. To him is due the merit of having been the first to put
forth a revised issue of the books of religious service, and who
impressed the stamp of his genius on the Roman Catholic ceremonial.
Before him, however, Pope Gelasius had collected the prayers used
in the administration of the sacraments, and had prepared the first
missal or book of masses. The latter was remodelled and corrected by
Gregory. The same pope gave a more orthodox and popular form to the
Antiphonary (_Antiphonarium_), sometimes called _Cantatorium_
and _Graduale_, a collection of anthems for every mass in the
year; he amended and remodelled in the most skilful and learned manner
the anthems that were badly selected and ill scored--endeavouring,
after the example set by Solomon, to impart a harmonious and dignified
character to sacred music which it did not previously possess. It is
tolerably certain that the church chant dates from this period, and
that notation by _neumes_, a method the present age does not
understand, of marking the rhythm and the modulations of the voice,
cannot be traced farther back than the pontificate of Gregory the
Great. John Diacre, who has written the life of this illustrious pope,
says that he has seen the school of choristers, founded at Rome by St.
Gregory, officiating in full splendour. The founder of this famous
school continued to give lessons to the pupils in spite of his old
age, his attacks of gout, and his other infirmities, even when he was
no longer able to stand or sit upright. Reclining on a narrow and very
hard bed, he infused emulation into the minds of the idle and reproved
the disobedient.

Since the fifth century, the holy duties and the canonical prayers to
which the liturgy consecrated the different hours of the day have been
known under the name of _offices_, or _canonical hours_ (Fig. 184),
and of _breviaries_. In Tertullian we already meet with the words
_Tierce_, _Sexte_, and _None_. St. Cyprian, St. Clement of Alexandria,
St. Jerome, and many other fathers of the Church, assigned certain
hours at which to recite the different offices, in such a manner that
before the close of the fourth century psalmody seems to have been
already regulated in the principal churches of the East. The practice
of the Western churches differed, it is true, from that of the churches
of the East; many differences even were to be found in the dioceses of
the same country. But, during the earlier centuries, it was everywhere
customary to perform the principal offices at night, which was divided
into four watches of three hours each: these hours were measured by a
water-clock, termed clepsydra. The first watch commenced at sunset
(_ad vesperas_), the second at midnight, the third at cockcrow, the
fourth at dawn. Towards the fifth century the piety of the early
Christians having somewhat abated, it soon became customary not to go
to church till the fourth watch, when the whole psalmody, that is to
say, the twelve psalms, as there were three psalms in each watch, was
got through at one repetition. Hence the name of matins (_matutinæ_).
It would seem that the monks themselves, who were more conservative of
ancient rites than the secular priests, commenced about this period to
chant the _Nocturn_ and the _Laud_ at the morning hours. Rome alone
rigorously preserved the distinction between the offices of the day and
those of night.

  [Illustration: Fig. 184.--Ancient Legend of Christmas, with the
  words of the old French plaint. The engravings represent the
  Sibyl prophesying the Birth of Christ; Jesus in the Stable at
  Bethlehem; one of the Magi; and John the Baptist announcing that
  Christ was born.--Fac-simile from a book of _hours_, printed
  with illuminations at Paris by Anthoine Vérard, towards the close
  of the Fifteenth Century.]

The _Petites Heures_ were known as _Tierce_, _Sexte_, and _None_;
_Prime_, the first of the canonical hours, was not instituted till
the twelfth century, but the other three appear to date from the
earliest institution of Christianity. St. Cyprian, who lived in the
third century, says that prayers were said at _Tierce_ in honour of the
descent of the Holy Ghost, at _Sexte_ in memory of the Crucifixion,
and at _None_ to commemorate the death of Christ. Half a century
earlier Tertullian wrote that, independently of the mystic traditions
consecrated by prayer, the Church, in establishing the canonical hours,
wished to conform to the secular division of the day.

Vespers (_Vespera_), so called from the star _Vesper_, which
rises as the sun is setting, also dates from the origin of the liturgy.
The hour of vespers was called _lucernarium_, because it was
necessary to light the lamps at the performance of that service. A hymn
exists entitled “_Ad incensum lucernæ_,” that is, “To the lighting
of the lamp.” The Latins as well as the Greeks, until the eighth
century, celebrated vespers after sunset; but since that period the
usage of Rome, where vespers were said immediately after _Nones_,
prevailed and became universal. Milan, however, still adhered to the
primitive form of the rite; vespers were commenced as soon as the
evening star appeared above the horizon, and terminated by torchlight.
Until the fifth century vespers were the last prayers of the day,
and included the psalms, which were said separately in the following
century, as a last service, termed _Compline_, and which at first
only contained three psalms--it was not till the ninth century that the
thirtieth psalm was added.

The principal libraries of Europe possess several large manuscript
volumes written on vellum, as remarkable for their illuminations (Fig.
185) as for the beauty of their calligraphy; they are termed the
_Evangeliarium_, the _Lectionarium_, and the _Liber Benedictionis_,
and were frequently bound with great magnificence. They belonged to
different churches and dioceses which, while generally following the
rules of the dogmatic liturgy established by the councils, used several
modifications of their own invention. Some of these modifications
were important ones, and were due either to local feeling and the
peculiarities of the congregation, or arose during the anniversaries,
the commemorative festivals of the diocesan ritual. The use of the
_Evangeliarium_ dates from St. Jerome. Before him each of the four
Gospels formed a separate book, and the four were of different
liturgical importance. St. Jerome collected them, arranged them in
their proper order, and added marginal notes of the daily offices.

  [Illustration: Fig. 185.--The Mystic Fountain, from an
  _Evangeliarium_ of Charlemagne (Eighth Century), in the
  National Library of Paris. The jet of water represents the
  Church, the source of truth; the inner birds the souls of the
  elect; while those outside seem to personify souls attracted
  to baptism by divine grace.--From the large work of Count de
  Bastard.]

A hierarchical order with defined powers and privileges existed from
the date of the first establishment of Christianity. In his sixth
epistle to the Magnesians, St. Ignatius, who had been a disciple of
St. Peter, says, “I exhort you to behave, in all things, with that
spirit of concord which comes from God; and to look upon the bishop
as the representative of God himself in your midst, upon the priests
as forming the august senate of the apostles, and upon the deacons as
those to whom is intrusted the ministry of Jesus Christ.” The faithful
bowed the head to none but the bishop, to ask his blessing; and in the
church the bishop occupied a seat raised above that of the priests. The
bishops wore a tunic and _pallium_, or long mantle, a chasuble or
dalmatic, and a circlet of gold or polished metal upon the head. The
latter was subsequently replaced by the mitre, which for some time was
made of cloth, and was a circular pointed cap split at the top (Fig.
186). The primitive insignia of office worn by the bishops were the
episcopal ring and the pastoral staff, made of wood, ivory, or metal.
They are mentioned as wearing sandals for the first time in the ninth
century, and gloves in the twelfth. The bishop of Rome, the first among
his brethren (_primus inter pares_), wielded over the whole Church
a supremacy formally enunciated by St. Irenæus, a disciple of St.
Polycarp, a contemporary of the apostles. Originally, however, he wore
no distinguishing mark of his pre-eminent rank; but towards the fifth
century, the term “pope” began to be exclusively applied to him.

After the reformation of his clerks (_clerici_) by the famous
Bishop of Hippona, the former were called _canonici_, whence the
term chanoines, because they led a life in conformity with the canons
of the Church. In Africa, in Spain, and in Gaul these canonical clerks
lived together and boarded with the bishop, and devoted themselves
to science, literature, art, music, and especially to calligraphy.
They thus formed a sort of religious school, whence their title of
scholastics (_scholastici_)--a title which they well deserved
during the reign of Charlemagne, but which they had ceased to merit
at the time of Charles the Bold. The priests attached to each
church constituted what was termed the assembly of the presbytery
(_presbyterium_), or the ecclesiastical senate of the bishop of
the diocese (_senatus ecclesiæ episcopi_). It was permissible for
the clerks at an early age to enter the minor degrees of their calling,
such as those of porter, exorcist, reader, and acolyte; but they were
not allowed to assume the higher grades until they had reached a ripe
age. The minimum age for the diaconate was thirty years; for the
priesthood, thirty-five; ordination, from the fourth century upwards,
took place four times a year. We learn from St. Cyprian, who lived
in the third century, that from that date it was decreed that this
ceremony should only take place in the churches, publicly, at mass.

[Illustration: Fig. 186.--Chasuble, Mitre, and Stole of St. Thomas
à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury (1117–1170); preserved in the
Cathedral of Sens.--Cloth and Embroidery of the Twelfth Century.]

Before choristers were regularly introduced many churches had
_psalmists_, who constituted a distinct minor order. These
psalmists were succeeded by chanting clerks. In the reign of the
Emperor Justinian, the metropolitan church of Constantinople possessed
twenty-six choristers and a hundred and ten readers. In the fifteenth
canon of the Council of Laodicea we read that “none but the canonical
choristers are allowed to sing in the church.” The congregation,
however, still kept to the custom of joining their voices to those of
the choristers.

At first there no doubt existed a special dress worn during the hours
of service, but it is supposed that it was only in its colour, which
was white, that this dress differed from that worn by the deacons and
the priests in everyday life. The maniple (_manipulum_) and the
stole (_stola_), accessories to the alb, which was the original
vestment worn by the priest, were not adopted and consecrated by the
liturgy till the third or fourth centuries. The deacons only wore the
stole during the sacrament, but the priests wore it continuously,
as a mark of their sacerdotal dignity. The use of the chasuble was
subsequent to that of the stole, the alb, and the dalmatic. The
chasuble is first mentioned in the twenty-seventh canon of the Fourth
Council of Toledo (in 527 A.D.).

Prior to the fifth century, the clergy were obliged to wear no
distinctive dress in private life. As in the days of the Apostles,
the bishops, the priests, the clerks, the deacons, and the choristers
wore tunics and sandals, as prescribed by the Saviour in the Gospel
of St. Mark (vi. 9). They covered themselves with a square piece of
black or brown cloth, which was draped around the figure, and was
fastened by neither hook nor tie; beneath it was a plain tunic of a
dark colour. In the fifth century Pope Celestinus disapproved of this
costume, which caused the followers of Christ to be confounded with
the Stoic philosophers. In the sixth century the laity had abandoned
the Roman style of costume, and wore short dresses, copied from
those of the barbarians who had become the rulers of Gaul; but the
Church, careful of the dignity of its ministers, refused to adopt this
expensive alteration. Henceforward a broad distinction was established
between the dress of the clergy and that of the laity. The Council of
Agde (506 A.D.) ordered all clerks to wear clothes and shoes
of a peculiar cut, in conformity with their religious profession.
Two later councils forbade them the use of the Roman military cloak
(_sagum_) and of purple-coloured stuffs. Gregory the Great
forbade his household to wear any dress but the long toga, as the one
essentially appropriate to the people of the Church. This costume, with
scarcely any modification, was worn by all orthodox ecclesiastics,
through all the changes of the Middle Ages, until the seventeenth
century.

The priest, when in the exercise of his holy functions, was not
expected to make any change in his dress. Still, from the fourth to
the ninth century everything seems to show that his proper costume was
always white, or at least that it was so during the celebration of the
highest ceremonies. St. Chrysostom, feeling the approach of death, and
being anxious to partake of the holy sacrament, called for his white
vestments, and distributed those he was wearing, even to his shoes,
among his assistants. The customs and traditions of the West conformed
in this to those of the East. The neophyte was stripped of his worldly
garments, he was clad in a white or religious robe (_habitus
religionis_), and was then considered fit to perform his duties.
Sometimes, however, the white robes of the sovereign pontiff were
adorned with bands of gold or purple. White was not mixed with other
tints in the dress of the clergy till towards the ninth century; the
five hues admitted by religious symbolism date only from the twelfth
century.

  [Illustration: Fig. 187.--Romanesque perforated Handbell,
  representing the symbols of the Four Evangelists (Twelfth
  Century).--From the Archæological Museum at Rheims.]

Charlemagne, who was proud of his thorough acquaintance with the
liturgy, who esteemed it an honour to wear, on high occasions, the
green chasuble embroidered with gold, and to chant the epistles before
the assembled congregations, took the greatest pains with all the
ceremonies of the Church; and it is an undoubted fact that the pomp
with which they were afterwards celebrated was inaugurated by him.

Charlemagne and his successors, Louis the Affable and Charles the
Bald, did not, however, content themselves with merely attending to
ceremonial pomp; they did their best to introduce a principle of
unity in conformity with the Roman liturgy. At the commencement of
the eighth century Pope Adrian I., having sent to Charlemagne an
antiphonary scored by St. Gregory himself, the Emperor ordered all the
churches in his dominions to adopt the Gregorian chant. Thenceforward
the ancient Gallican liturgy almost disappeared, and when Charles
the Bald was desirous of comparing together the Greek, Roman, and
Gallican liturgies, he was obliged to summon ecclesiastics from Toledo
to officiate in his presence according to the Gallican rite. Charles
preferred the Roman ritual; but notwithstanding this, each diocesan
cathedral, each separate abbey, introduced into the Gallo-Roman liturgy
various accessory forms differing more or less from one another.

It is possible to trace back to the sixth century the first use of
church bells, but their general introduction into the Western church
dates from the eighth century. They were termed _seings_ (in Latin
_signa_); they were not rung, but were simply struck with wooden
or metal hammers (Fig. 187), as is still done south of the Pyrenees.
From this practice comes the word _toc-seing_ or _tocsin_,
applied to the municipal peals of the Middle Ages and of still later
times. The organ (_organum_) also dates from the eighth century.
Imperfect as this instrument originally was, it caused tremendous
enthusiasm among its hearers. Indeed, it may be said that organs
and church bells had an equal share in raising the prestige of the
ceremonial liturgy, which charmed and captivated both the senses and
the souls of its hearers, by the display of its numerous officiating
clergy, by the solemn gravity of its chants, by the noble simplicity of
the vestments, and by the chaste and majestic arrangement of its ritual.

  [Illustration: Fig. 188.--The Triumph of the Lamb.--Christ,
  typified as the spotless lamb, with a glory round his head and
  holding the cross, is at the feet of God the Father; around
  him are the Four Evangelists, represented by their typical
  attributes, and resting upon wheels of fire. The archangels are
  bringing him their offerings. The firmament is supported by
  four angels. Beneath is St. John explaining the Apocalypse to
  his commentator.--From a Miniature in the “Commentary upon the
  Apocalypse,” by Beatus; a Manuscript of the Twelfth Century, in
  the Collection of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.]

Under the last Carlovingians the liturgy gradually deteriorated;
less in the East perhaps than in the West, less at Rome and Milan
perhaps than elsewhere, but everywhere the signs of deplorable
relaxation and falling away were manifest. The choristers attempted
to assume the privileges of the clerks; the deacons arrogated to
themselves impossible rights of independence; the priests despised the
bishops, and too frequently the bishops, presuming on their power,
had the audacity to disobey the pontifical decrees. This change and
deterioration principally showed itself in the psalmody, in the
chants, in the adornment of the sanctuary, and in the dress of the
ecclesiastics. The Byzantine methods of treatment, as applied to
architectural monuments and to the various forms of Christian art,
did something to preserve the traditions of the liturgy, but from the
close of the tenth century till the twelfth much confusion prevailed
in the Latin Church. It was reserved for the Crusades, after a century
and a half of adventurous expeditions, to bring back from countries
beyond the sea, from Antioch, from Constantinople, and from Jerusalem,
the elements and the principles of a Neo-Greek liturgy, in which
the degenerate Gallo-Roman was as it were saturated, and its whole
character remodelled.

The Catholic liturgy thus underwent a touching and marvellous
transformation; this transformation was inaugurated by the construction
of new churches, in which the Romanesque style gave place to that of
the Ogive or Gothic; by the erection of slender belfries, recalling the
minarets of the Mahometan mosques; by the introduction of transparent
pictures on painted glass; by the chaste but splendid appointments of
the chapels; by the dazzling decorations of the altars; by the melody
of the church bells, the sonorous messengers of religion calling the
faithful to prayer; and by the harmony of the human voice with the
organ and other musical instruments. A complete and ingenious symbolism
was contained in this comprehensive allegorical ritual, and rendered
the liturgy a veritable sanctuary of Christian instruction and sacred
tradition, each mystery (Fig. 188), each precept of which penetrated
into the soul, as it were, through the medium of the senses.

In the thirteenth century, when the celebrated William Durand,
Bishop of Mende, wrote his “Rationale of Divine Service,” a complete
collection of the liturgy of the day, this sort of canonical
legislation became settled as much as a matter could be which the
bishops and even the mere priests were continually modifying. William
Durand, following the example of his predecessors, included many
innovations which were to be lamented, many eccentric rites foreign to
the traditions of the primitive church, and lowering to the dignity
of divine worship. Enlightened minds felt the truth of this, and the
Council of Trent found it necessary to demand a liturgical reform. In
consequence of this demand Pope Pius V., in 1568, issued the corrected
form of the _Roman Breviary_, and, in 1570, the new _Missal_.
As the principal object was to reform the errors which had crept in
in later times, the dioceses which possessed rituals of at least two
hundred years old could either preserve their own customs or adopt the
Breviary and the Missal of Pius V.

The Church has deviated as little as possible from its ancient
ceremonial, particularly in what concerns the administration of the
sacraments. Nevertheless, seven sacraments, which we will rapidly
notice in the order in which they are enumerated by the Council of
Trent, were formerly accompanied by certain ceremonies which the change
of manners and customs has caused to fall into disuse, and which we
shall mention merely as a proof of their antiquity.

  [Illustration: Fig 189.--Three Sacraments: _Baptism_,
  which inaugurates life; _Confirmation_, which strengthens
  childhood; and _Penance_, which reconciles manhood.

  Left portion of the triptych painted on panel by Roger Van der
  Weyden (Rogier del Pasturle).--From the Antwerp Museum (Fifteenth
  Century).]

1. _Baptism_, which St. Peter had given by _aspersion_ to the
three thousand persons whom he converted by his first sermon, was also
given in primitive times by _immersion_; finally _infusion_
(from the Latin verb _infundere_, to sprinkle) was adopted in the
manner in which it is practised in our own day (Figs. 189 and 190).

2. _Confirmation_ was administered immediately after baptism,
when only adults were admitted to the latter sacrament; but when
baptism was administered to new-born infants, confirmation had to be
postponed till the receivers of the rite were old enough to answer for
themselves--that is to say, until they were capable of distinguishing
between good and evil (Fig. 189).

3. The _Eucharist_ from the earliest times was administered under
the name of _communion_ to those in sound health, and under the
name of _viaticum_ to those at the point of death (Figs. 192 and
193).

  [Illustration: Fig. 190.--The Ship of Baptism, a Flemish work of
  the Sixteenth Century, in chiselled gold and silver; from the
  Collection of M. Onghena, at Ghent.--When a child was baptized,
  it was the custom in the Low Countries to drink the infant’s
  health in a cup of spiced wine. The cup, shaped like a boat, is
  typical of the voyage of life: an aged knight is at the helm, two
  others are fencing together, a sailor adjusts the rigging, the
  wind fills the sail, and at the mast-head the look-out scans the
  horizon. The Flemish device runs thus: “A fortunate voyage to the
  new-born.”]

The communion, that is to say the host, was received in the hand,
and was administered by the communicant himself. After the sixth
century women were enjoined to receive it in a white veil, termed
_dominical_, with which they lifted it to their mouths without
touching it with their hands. In 880 the Council of Rouen decreed that
in future the sacrament was only to be received at the hand of the
officiating priest. Until the thirteenth century the communion was
always preceded by the kiss of love; the men embraced the men, and
the women the women. After the distribution of bread the deacons came
forward with two-handled cups of large dimensions, containing wine for
the communicants, which each tasted through a golden pipe (Fig. 191).

  [Illustration: Fig. 191.--Sacramental Cup; a work of the Twelfth
  Century, in silver gilt, from the Abbey of the Benedictines of
  Witten, near Inspruck.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 192.--The Sacrament of the Eucharist, which
  keeps youth holy.--Central portion of the triptych, by Roger Van
  der Weyden, in the Antwerp Museum (Fifteenth Century).]

4. _Penance_, the obligatory practice of which was reduced to
once a year by the fourth Lateran Council, had always for its aim the
absolution from sin consequent upon confession.

Excommunication, the extreme punishment inflicted upon great sinners,
was pronounced by the faint light of a wax taper, which the priest
afterwards extinguished and trampled under foot. In some countries
the populace used to carry a bier to the door of the excommunicated
person; stones were hurled against his dwelling, and all kinds of
foul abuse were heaped upon him. Of a still more solemn nature was
the excommunication pronounced by the pope himself on Holy Thursday,
in virtue of the bull termed _In Cœna Domini_, against all who
appealed to the general council against the decrees and the ordinances
of the pontiffs; against the princes who exacted unfair tribute from
ecclesiastics; and against heretics, pirates, &c. A deacon read the
bull from the balcony (_loggia_, an open tribunal) of St. Peter’s
in the presence of the pope, who, as a symbol of anathema, dashed a
lighted torch of yellow wax into the open court of the Vatican, which
the assistants hastened to extinguish by trampling upon it. It was also
on Holy Thursday that the _reconciliation_ of the penitents took
place, that is to say, their general absolution, to enable them to take
part in the mysteries of Easter.

  [Illustration: Fig. 193.--Legend of the passage of the viaticum
  across a wooden bridge, at Utrecht, in 1277. Some dancers having
  allowed the host to pass without discontinuing their dances, the
  bridge suddenly gave way and two hundred persons were drowned in
  the river.--Fac-simile of an Engraving upon Wood by P. Wolgemuth,
  in the “Liber Chronicarum Mundi:” Nuremberg, 1493, in folio.]

5. _Extreme unction_ has always been given to sick people in
danger of death, according to the recommendation of the Apostle St.
James. The material of which this sacrament is composed is the _oil
of the infirm_, but we can see from old rituals that the place
and number of the unctions have varied at different times in the
administration of this sacrament (Fig. 194).

6. _Orders_. Besides the higher orders, which were conferred as
they are in our own day, the Church included from the earliest times
the four minor orders, which were bestowed, as now, upon the tonsured
clerks; that is to say, the orders of _porter_, _reader_,
_exorcist_, and _acolyte_.

  [Illustration: Fig. 194.--Three Sacraments: _Marriage_,
  at full manhood; _Orders_, at old age; and _Extreme
  Unction_, at death. Right portion of the triptych painted
  on panel by Roger Van der Weyden.--Antwerp Museum. Fifteenth
  Century.]

The consecration of abbots and abbesses, although made with a great
deal of ceremony, was not considered as an ordination, but only as a
benediction. The bishop, after giving the abbot the communion under the
form of bread, blessed him, placed a mitre on his head, and gave him
his gloves, the symbols of his rank, with the customary prayers. The
abbot’s crosier and ring were bestowed upon him before the offertory.
Alexander II., elected pope in 1061, was the first to confer upon
abbots the privilege of wearing the mitre. Abbesses also enjoyed the
right of carrying the crosier; they received it from the hands of the
bishop, together with the pastoral cross and ring. In the synods and
councils the abbots were only allowed to wear a mitre ornamented with
_orfroi_ (a golden fringe), but devoid of pearls and precious
stones; the bishops wore the precious mitre, that is to say, one
ornamented with pearls and jewels.

7. The ceremony of _marriage_ has altered but little. In old days,
however, it was celebrated at the door and not in the interior of the
church. In the ninth century the priest placed jewelled crowns upon the
heads of husband and wife; these crowns were made in the shape of a
tower, and were afterwards kept near the altar.

Most religious ceremonies were accompanied with processions; but
besides these there were great public processions varying according
to the country and the diocese in which they took place. They were
regulated by special liturgies, which formed a separate ritual termed
_processional_. The procession of palms or of branches, which
takes place the Sunday before Easter, in remembrance of the entry of
Christ into Jerusalem, had for a long time been customary in the East,
when towards the sixth or seventh century it was adopted by the Latin
church, which frequently added scenic accessories, intended to make a
still deeper impression on the minds of the spectators. This ancient
festival was distinguished by many names; by some it was termed the
_Hosanna_, in memory of the acclamations with which Jesus was
received in Jerusalem; by others the _Sunday of Indulgences_,
on account of the indulgences distributed by the Church on that holy
day. In old times verses from the Gospels, inscribed upon a richly
ornamented banner surrounded with palm-leaves, were carried in this
procession, and it was frequently also accompanied by the chalice
containing the host, in the midst of consecrated branches. It was,
as a rule, customary that the ashes employed for the ceremony of Ash
Wednesday should be those of the branches carried in the procession of
the preceding year, and which were carefully preserved from year to
year, and burnt when thoroughly desiccated.

In 1262 Pope Urban IV. confirmed and extended to the whole of
Christendom the statute of Robert, Bishop of Liége; who, being of
opinion that the ceremony of the eucharist ought to be celebrated in
a more solemn manner than it was possible to do upon Holy Thursday,
the day set aside for the reconciliation of penitents, had decreed that
every year, on the first Thursday after Pentecost, the festival of
Corpus Christi, or the _Fête-Dieu_ should take place (Fig. 195);
the office for which, the same as is used in our own day, was composed
by St. Thomas d’Aquinas.

  [Illustration: Fig. 195.--Procession of the Host, in Paris: “The
  procession proceeds from the Maison aux Piliers, the ancient
  Hôtel de Ville, to the Place de Grève. To the left may be seen
  Jean Juvénal des Ursins, on his knees before the host, which
  is carried on a species of litter by a couple of monks of the
  Sainte-Chapelle, and surrounded by the clerks of the brotherhood
  crowned with wreaths of roses and carrying large lighted
  tapers.... To the right, and towards the banks of the Seine, and
  in front of the floating piles of wood, is the great Croix de
  Grève. On the other side of the Seine may be seen the Cathedral
  of Notre-Dame.”--From a Miniature in the Manuscript of the “Hours
  of Juvénal des Ursins,” presented by M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot to
  the town of Paris, and burnt in 1871 in the conflagration of the
  Hôtel de Ville.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 196.--Solemn Procession made on the 7th
  September, 1513, by the clergy and inhabitants of Dijon, to
  obtain from Our Lady the relief of the town, at that time
  besieged by the Swiss. The ceremony was afterwards renewed every
  year at the same epoch; it was termed the “Festival of Our Lady
  of the Swiss.”--Tapestry of the Sixteenth Century, in the Dijon
  Museum.--From a copy in the possession of M. Ach. Jubinal.]

The procession termed _Litanies majeures_, first instituted in 589
by Pope Pelagius II., owed its origin to a plague that desolated Rome
after an inundation of the Tiber.

In 474 St. Mamert, Archbishop of Vienne, in Dauphiny, in order to thank
God for having delivered his diocese from the scourges which desolated
it, and from the wild beasts which ravaged it, founded the procession
of _Rogations_, which took place during the three days which
precede the feast of the Ascension. This procession was ordered for the
whole of France by the Council of Orleans in 511; but it only came into
use at Rome towards the close of the eighth century, under Pope Leo III.

  [Illustration: Fig. 197.--Pentecost.--Fac-simile of a Miniature
  from the “Psalmody of St. Louis.”--Manuscript of the Thirteenth
  Century, in the National Library, Paris.]

The procession which precedes the mass of Ascension Thursday is of
the highest antiquity; but nowhere was it carried out with greater
ceremony, or attended by a larger number of pilgrims, than at the
church built in Palestine by St. Helen, mother of Constantine, on the
very spot where the ascension took place, and where still might be seen
on the stone the last footprints of our Saviour, as He left this earth
and ascended to heaven.

  [Illustration: Fig. 198.--The Adoration of the Magi.--From a pax
  attributed to Maso Finiguerra (Fifteenth Century), preserved at
  Florence. One of the kings is on his knees, and has taken off
  his crown to present incense and myrrh to the Infant Jesus; the
  others are riding towards the manger, escorted by their varlets
  and pages, and followed by a long caravan; there are angels on
  the roof playing the viol and the lute.]

In fact, in the Middle Ages there were an immense number of festivals
which gave rise to processions (Fig. 196) and to other religious
ceremonies. It must not be forgotten that all great festivals were
indifferently termed Easters. The anniversary of the resurrection of
Jesus Christ was the great Easter, and in order to prepare worthily
for it, the body was purified by baths, and the hair and the beard
were cut, as tokens of the care with which the Christian ought to
preserve the purity of his soul, and to remove the vices that infect
the unregenerated man. The Nativity, Epiphany, Ascension, and Pentecost
were also called Easter. In some churches, at Great Easter, dramatic
representations were given of the mysteries the festival celebrated. A
procession was undertaken to a tomb cut in a rock. Three women and two
men in Israelitish dress represented the three Marys and the disciples
John and Peter, and others dressed in white, with crowns on their
heads and wings on their shoulders, played the part of the angels who
communed with them.

_Pentecost_ (Fig. 197), or the _Easter of Roses_, was accompanied
with the same dramatic and religious accessories. In many churches
during mass, at the words _Veni, Sancte Spiritus_, a sudden blast of
the trumpet was given to recall the great noise in the midst of which
the Holy Ghost descended upon the apostles. Sometimes, indeed, to add
to the scenic imitation of the mystery, tongues of fire fell from the
roof, or a shower of red rose-leaves took place; and doves, emblems of
the Holy Ghost, were allowed to flutter about the church.

  [Illustration: Fig. 199.--Knife with which the consecrated bread
  was cut; on the blade may be read on one side a prayer for a
  blessing on the food, on the other a thanksgiving, both with
  music (Sixteenth Century).--Collection of M. Ach. Jubinal, Paris.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 200.--Altar of the ancient Cathedral of
  Arras (Thirteenth Century), now destroyed; from a picture of the
  Sixteenth Century preserved in the sacristy of the Cathedral of
  Arras.--The angels on the top of the columns bear the instruments
  of the Passion. Along the summit of the screen are placed six
  reliquaries containing the relics of different saints; they form
  a retinue for Jesus, the chief of all martyrs. The tabernacle
  is not a heavy square case, but a suspended casket borne by an
  angel, who appears to descend from heaven. Higher up three angels
  collect in the mysterious cup of the Grail the blood which flows
  from the feet and hands of the crucified Jesus.]

At high festivals the mass was followed by the ceremony of the
offering, at which all present were expected to deposit a coin in a
plate, and kiss the emblem of good-will presented to them (Fig. 198).
This offering was in memory of an ancient custom. The offerings, which
in the primitive Church the faithful were accustomed to make every
day, consisted of bread and wine. They were placed before the altar
at the commencement of the second part of the mass, after the reading
of the Gospel and of the Apostles’ Creed. The capitularies of the
early Frankish kings prescribed that neophytes were to offer bread and
wine at least every Sunday. Until the eighth or ninth century, some
authors assert that for the sacrifice of the mass, either leavened or
unleavened bread was used indifferently; but since that period leavened
bread has only been in use in the Eastern Church. From this epoch,
also, the offered bread was no longer used except for distribution to
the people, as a symbol of the communion, and it then took the name
of _eulogy_ or _consecrated bread_ (Fig. 199). These pieces of bread,
which the assisting priests and deacons offered successively at the
altar upon white napkins, were of a round shape. They were termed
_hoops_, _crowns_, and _wheels_. The custom of offering bread and wine
whilst holding a lighted taper in the hand has been handed down, and
still exists at burials in many dioceses.

The altar where the offerings were made was surmounted by a cupola
(called _ciborium_) sustained by four columns, between which were
curtains, which were closed during part of the service to hide the
sacred mysteries about to take place (Fig. 200). In the middle of the
cupola, above the altar, a hollow dove, made of gold or silver, was
suspended (Fig. 201); in this the eucharist for the sick was kept. This
silver dove was replaced at a later period by the tabernacle.

  [Illustration: Fig. 201.--Dove suspended above the altar,
  containing the eucharistic box (Thirteenth Century).--“Studies
  upon the Archæology of the Altar,” by Laib and Schwarz.]

We have thus seen that time has only brought about slight modifications
in the liturgy of the Church; on the other hand, we can satisfy
ourselves that nothing is left to conjecture or hypothesis; the most
searching criticism only affirms the truths of tradition. M. Paul
Allard, a distinguished writer, has expressed this in a very happy
manner in his work, “Subterranean Rome.” “For two centuries,” he says,
“the soil of Rome has been searched and dug up with indefatigable
ardour, in the hope of discovering the source of the first Christian
institutions, the very origin of the Church, catacombs have been thrown
open to the day, thousands of inscriptions have been laid bare, and
rare and precious paintings have been copied, or are still to be seen.
From these subterranean labours, which have left nothing to conjecture,
the history of the origin of Christianity has emerged, complete and
renovated, but differing in nothing from that which tradition has
handed down to us, and which, confirmed as to a great number of points,
has been shaken in none.”




THE POPES.

   Influence of the Papacy in the Reformation of Early
   Society.--St. Leo the Great.--Origin of the Temporal
   Power of the Popes.--Gregory the Great.--The Iconoclastic
   Emperors.--Stephen III. delivered by France.--Charlemagne
   crowned Emperor of the West.--Photius.--The Diet of
   Worms.--Gregory VII.; his Plan for a Christian Republic.--Urban
   II.--The Crusades.--Calixtus II.; Termination of the Dispute
   as to Investiture.--Innocent III.--Struggle of Boniface VIII.
   against Philippe le Bel.--The great Western Schism.--Council of
   Florence.--Battle of Lepanto.--Council of Trent.


During the Middle Ages the popes exercised an appreciable influence
upon society, personifying as they did the Christian element which was
destined to regenerate the old world. “A doctrine emanating from Asia
was not to subjugate, but to convert Europe, to associate political and
religious truth, and, by the force of conscience against idolatry, and
of resignation against tyranny, to restore the human race in all its
dignity under the one true God. With the power of the sword sprung up
that of opinion, which, independent of its rival, sustained the cause
of progress in its struggle against this same power of the sword, and
prevented it from being overthrown. The Church, representing the people
and opening the way to the emancipation of all who were weighed down
by conquest and by force, was unable to destroy servitude, legalised
violence, and rapine at one blow, but it encountered them with a
reproving doctrine and a condemning God.

“Nero and Domitian soon found themselves face to face with Peter and
Linus;--the first, armed masters of the world, having upon their side
legality, which is so different from justice, representatives of
the old world which cried out in the circus, ‘To the lions with the
Christians!’--the latter, poor, weak, misunderstood, and calumniated,
propagating the kingdom of God by authority, education, ceremonies, and
example; declaring that unto Cæsar should be rendered the things which
are Cæsar’s, but nothing more, neither worship nor the sacrifice of
one’s sentiments and convictions.”--(Cantù.)

  [Illustration: Fig. 202.--The Jewish Religion assisting at
  the death of Jesus Christ. The figure has a bandage over the
  eyes, the Decalogue is falling from its hands, and its spear is
  broken to pieces.--Sculpture in Strasburg Cathedral (Thirteenth
  Century).--From a Photograph by Charles de Winter, of Strasburg.]

This struggle, begun by St. Peter, the first Bishop of Rome, and first
pope, and continued by his successor St. Linus, went on for three
centuries. Nevertheless the popes, unchecked by persecutions, had
effected the moral conquest of the Roman world,--even the palace of
the Cæsars was full of Christians when their legal existence became
recognised by Constantine. The seat of the empire was transferred
to Byzantium; the luxury and effeminacy of the East enervated the
degenerated race of the Cæsars, while under the influence of the
Bishops of Rome, officially recognised at that date as the sovereign
pontiffs of the Christians, the West continued to advance rapidly in
the path of modern civilisation.

  [Illustration: Fig. 203.--The Christian Religion assisting at
  the death of Jesus Christ. Crowned and triumphant, the figure
  holds in one hand the standard of the cross, and in the other
  the chalice of the eucharist.--Sculpture in Strasburg Cathedral
  (Thirteenth Century).--From a Photograph by Charles de Winter, of
  Strasburg.]

The emperors, converted to Christianity, ere long became the opponents
of the popes; “laying aside the sword of defence for disputations on
theology.” Their weakness handed the West over to the Germanic races;
primitive society, whose organization still remained heathen, despite
the change in religious belief, was swallowed up by the invasion of
these Northerners, whose institutions facilitated the triumph of
the ideas of political liberty and equality, the germ of which was
deposited in the Gospel.

  [Illustration: Fig. 204.--The spiritual and the temporal powers
  dependent upon Jesus Christ, who is handing to St. Peter the keys
  and to Constantine the standard surmounted by the cross.--Mosaic
  of the Tenth Century in the Basilica of St. John of Lateran, at
  Rome.]

The papacy of the Middle Ages was first made illustrious by Leo I.,
surnamed the Great. Called to be Bishop of Rome by the people and the
clergy in 440, when twenty years of age, he rendered the greatest
possible services to civilisation during the twenty-two years of his
reign. His preachings, his writings, his decrees, aimed chiefly at
the education of his clergy and his flock, at the maintenance of the
Nicene Creed (Fig. 206), the moral improvement of the clergy, and the
upholding of discipline. He fought the heretics with equal energy and
authority; he continued the struggle of orthodoxy against the errors
which attacked the dogma of the Incarnation, which is the basis of
Christianity, and upheld with vigilant perseverance the primitive
doctrine of the Church, so clearly defined and proclaimed during the
reign of one of his predecessors at the Council of Ephesus in 431. He
was, above all things, a skilful diplomatist and a great politician.
He firmly maintained the apostolic pre-eminence of Rome over
Constantinople--a pre-eminence which was, moreover, recognised by the
Council of Chalcedon.

  [Illustration: Fig. 205.--St. Peter.--Fac-simile of a Wood
  Engraving of the Old Masters, by Hans Baldung, otherwise Grum
  (1470–1550), in the National Library, Paris.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 206.--A Council held in the ninth or tenth
  century to commemorate the second Council of Nice.--From
  a Miniature of a _menologium_ in the Vatican Library
  (Manuscript of the Tenth Century).]

The empire, like the Church, needed such a man as St. Leo in its days
of adversity. The invasion of the barbarians was triumphant in the
West, and nearly all of the conquerors were either Arians, who denied
the divinity of Christ, or idolaters. Leo triumphed over all these
calamities. Rome had already been ravished by Alaric in 410, but even
he respected the churches in which the population had fled for refuge.
Attila, at the head of seven hundred thousand men, marched on Rome for
the purpose of devastating it with fire and sword; resistance seemed
out of the question, and the Emperor was preparing to escape. Amidst
the universal panic, Pope Leo, accompanied by a consul, went out to
meet the dreaded chieftain, and induced him to turn back.

Some years later, Genseric poured his vandals into Italy, and again
Leo boldly presented himself before his fierce assailant, and made him
renounce his intention of burning the city and slaying the inhabitants.
Thus did circumstances lead the way for the temporal power of the
popes in Rome, of which they eventually became the sole guardians and
defenders.

But the genius of Leo served only to defer the downfall of the Western
Empire, which was doomed to disappear fifteen years after his death.
His successors continued to protect Italy, so far as in them lay,
against the horrors of war; and Pope Agapetus, though weighed down
by years, undertook the perilous mission of going to Constantinople
to make peace between the Emperor of the East and the King of the
Visigoths. A few years afterwards, Pope Pelagius I. had the courage to
seek an interview with Totila, and so preserve Rome from massacre and
dishonour. Pelagius II., who kept within bounds the Lombards, at that
time masters of Italy, was succeeded by Gregory I., surnamed Gregory
the Great, one of the most illustrious of the Roman pontiffs.

Gregory, whose father was a Roman senator, and whose mother
was canonised, was prætor or chief magistrate of Rome, and his
administration had gained for him great popularity when, by his
father’s death, he inherited a large fortune. This enabled him to found
seven monasteries, and, having distributed the remainder of his money
amongst the poor, he became a monk in the Abbey of St. Andrew, which
he had founded previous to his entering the priesthood. Chosen as pope
on September 3, 590, he, in spite of his resistance to the clergy, the
senators, and the people, immediately made his profession of faith in
the customary manner. He converted the Lombards, who were professed
Arians, and even idolaters. This was no small triumph, for it meant the
peaceful subjection, or rather the alliance of a warlike people, whose
close neighbourhood to Rome had been a constant cause of alarm. It
was especially in his relations with the court of Constantinople that
Gregory displayed all the loftiness of his character. While he bridled
the ambition of the Lombards, so as to preserve for the emperors of
the East their Italian possessions (Fig. 207), he defended with equal
energy and tact the independence of the Church and the interests of
the Italians against the unjust pretensions of the Byzantine Court.
He rendered more distinct the rôle of the papacy in the Middle Ages,
which was to uphold the purity of dogma as opposed to heresy against
the theological pretensions of emperors, to protect also the Catholic
population, vanquished and often persecuted by new masters, whether
pagan or heretic; and, lastly, to convey the tidings of the Gospel to
the most remote nations of the earth.

  [Illustration: Fig. 207.--St Michael the Archangel, Minister
  of God, offering to a Byzantine Emperor the globe surmounted
  by the cross, the symbol of the imperial power.--A leaf of an
  ivory dyptic or tablet of the Sixth Century, preserved in the
  British Museum.--From a copy by M. J. Labarte. The second leaf of
  this dyptic being lost, the Greek inscription, which signifies,
  “Receive this object, and learning the cause,” is incomplete, and
  its meaning enigmatical.]

To this great pope appertains the glory of having converted England
by means of the missionaries whom he sent thither. “There is nothing
grander in the history of Europe,” said Bossuet, “than the entry of
St. Augustine into Kent with forty of his companions, who, preceded by
the cross and image of the Great King our Lord Jesus Christ, prayed
fervently for the conversion of England. St. Gregory, who had sent
them forth, edified them by truly apostolic letters, and constrained
St. Augustine to tremble with amazement at the numerous miracles
which God wrought through him. Bertha, a French princess, brought her
husband, King Ethelbert, over to Christianity. The kings of France
and Queen Brunehild supported this new mission. The French bishops
entered cordially into this good work, and, by order of the pope,
they consecrated St. Augustine. The support which St. Gregory gave to
the new bishop bore abundant fruit, and the Anglican Church was thus
formed.”[13]

Amidst these important engagements, the activity of Gregory found time
to superintend the relief of the poor and the education of the young.
He built schools and hospitals in Rome, and increased the splendour
of the church services by a judicious and well-conceived reform of
sacred music. M. F. Clement, in his history of religious music, says,
“St. Gregory, not content with regulating the antiphon for every
service throughout the year, also founded a school of singing at Rome,
and personally superintended the teaching there. While other masters
were entrusted with the task of giving lessons in one division of the
school, at St. Peter’s in the Vatican, he directed another section of
St. John of Lateran. We read in the life of this pontiff, written by
John the Deacon, that, compelled by his infirmities to lie at full
length upon a couch, he still taught the children singing, and that the
staff which he used for beating time is still preserved.”

A century after his death, two popes of the same name who succeeded
each other, Gregory II. and Gregory III., recalled to mind the virtues,
and above all the firmness of their glorious predecessor. They had
to struggle against the extraordinary pretensions of the emperors
of the East, who declared themselves iconoclasts--that is, breakers
of images. Alleging certain abuses, brought about by the ignorance
of some unenlightened Christians, Leo the Isaurian published in 726
an edict commanding the destruction of the images--the crucifixes
and the statues--throughout the whole empire. Neither the clergy nor
their flocks had ever seen any sign of idolatry in the worship of
these images, which were venerated as sacred symbols and respected
like family portraits. The Patriarch of Constantinople, refusing to
obey this edict, was banished. This new heresy was severely rebuked
by Gregory II., and after him by Gregory III. The latter replied to
the emperor, who had requested him to convoke a council, in these
noble words, “You have written asking us to assemble an œcumenical
council; it would be futile, as you alone persecute the images; cease
these evil deeds, and the world will be at peace, and scandals will
come to an end. Do you not see that your crusade against the images is
an act of revolt against the Church and of presumption? The churches
were enjoying a period of profound tranquillity when you excited this
tempest of disputes; put an end to the schism, and then there will be
no need of a council.” This apostolic firmness excited the wrath of
Leo, who dispatched against Rome a fleet of vessels carrying a large
body of troops, but they were lost in the Adriatic.

Trasmund, Duke of Spoleto, and the Duke of Benevento, having risen in
revolt against Luitprand, King of the Lombards, took refuge in Rome.
Gregory received them very cordially, and refused to deliver them up
to their redoubtable suzerain. Luitprand at once marched upon Rome,
and Gregory demanded help from Charles Martel--which, however, he
declined to give; and the good pope died just in time to be saved from
witnessing the sack of the Eternal City (741).

Zachariah, a Greek by birth, accepted the succession left vacant by
Gregory III. under such critical circumstances; but he negotiated so
skilfully with Luitprand, that the king not only gave back to the
pontifical domain four towns which he had already seized, but further
added, as an irrevocable gift, the territories of the Sabines, Narnia,
Ossimo, and Ancona, and consented to evacuate the exarchy of Ravenna,
occupied by his troops. Zacharias enjoyed an equal amount of credit
with the Emperor Constantinus Copronymus, who granted him, in the
interest of the Roman Church, concessions which were more than could
have been expected from an irritated suzerain. All the sovereigns of
his time seemed anxious to have recourse to his advice. Charlemagne,
son of Charles Martel, and Rachis, King of the Lombards, went to Rome
for the purpose of seeing him, and he invited both of them to enter the
monastery of Monte-Cassino.

Stephen III., elected by acclamation to succeed Zachariah (752), was
carried from the public square to the Lateran Church upon the shoulders
of his supporters; and this custom has since been adhered to in cases
where the election has been unanimous.

He had concluded peace for forty years with Astolfo, King of the
Lombards, but that ambitious monarch failed to keep his engagements,
as, a short time afterwards, he drove the exarch Eutychius out of
Ravenna, and then, claiming for himself all the rights of the emperor,
he aspired to become master of Rome (753). This unjust warfare was
fortunately carried on so slowly that the sovereign-pontiff had time to
go to France and intercede with King Pepin for help against Astolfo.
The French army was sent over the Alps, and Astolfo had to submit,
and to hand over Ravenna to the people, and surrender the hostages.
Stephen returned to Rome, accompanied by Prince Jérôme, the brother
of Pepin; but in the following year Astolfo again took up arms, and
Pepin, who had again crossed the Alps, this time compelled him to
abandon definitely the exarchate of twenty-two towns, together with the
territories attached to them, which he made over absolutely to St.
Peter and his successors. This, with the Duchy of Rome, constituted the
temporal dominion of the Church.

A few years later Adrian I., who had avoided falling into the political
snares laid for him by Didier, appealed to Charlemagne for his
intervention, and the latter, crossing the Alps, laid siege to Pavia,
the capital of the Lombard kings, took Didier prisoner, and sent him to
the monastery of Corbie. Not content with delivering Rome, Charlemagne,
during the two visits which he paid to that city, during and after the
war, confirmed the gift solemnly made by his father of the territories
which were to be inalienably annexed to the Holy See; and, at the same
time, he added the coast of Genoa, Corsica, Mantua, Venetia, Istria,
the duchies of Spoleto, Benevento, and the entire exarchate over its
thirty towns.

Adrian had the consolation of seeing the heresies of the iconoclasts
condemned by the second Nicene Council; and the Empress Irene and her
son Constantine submitted to the decision.

Adrian died in 795. His successor, Leo III., sent to the great Emperor
of the Franks the standard of the city of Rome, and the keys of the
Confession of St. Peter, as to the protector of the Eternal City. The
emperor responded to this homage by the gift of immense treasure which
he had taken from the enemy, and the pope devoted the greater part of
it to the decorating of the Lateran Palace, and various churches.

  [Illustration: Fig. 208.--Byzantine Dalmatic, said to have
  belonged to Leo III., but probably dating from the Twelfth
  Century, preserved in the Treasury of St. Peter’s at Rome. Upon
  this garment, which is of dark-blue silk, are several designs
  embroidered in gold and colours. The most remarkable is one
  upon the front representing Christ in his glory. Seated upon a
  rainbow, with his feet upon two circles of fire and the right
  hand stretched out, he holds in his left the New Testament, which
  is open at the following passage: “Come unto me, ye chosen of
  my Father.” Above his head is seen the cross with the crowns of
  thorns. Around him is a choir of angels, the Virgin, the saints,
  David and Solomon, the bishops and the religious orders; below,
  to the right and to the left, St. John the Baptist, and Abraham
  receiving the souls of the just; above, on the two shoulders,
  Jesus is giving the Holy Communion to the Apostles, the wine
  being administered on one side and the bread on the other.]

A conspiracy, which Leo III. only escaped by climbing the walls of
Rome and by taking refuge with the Duke of Spoleto, who had marched
to his succour, gave him an opportunity for going to see Charlemagne
at Paderborn, who promised to come himself into Italy to confound
the enemies of the holy father; in the meanwhile he dispatched
commissioners to Rome, who reinstated the pope in his pontifical
city (November 30, 799). Charlemagne came to Rome in the following
year, when, convoking an assembly of the people, he declared the
object of his visit and summoned the accusers of the pope to appear
before his tribunal. As they did not dare to put in an appearance, he
declared that the holy father should be allowed to justify himself
on oath. Then in the great cathedral of St. Peter, in the presence
of a vast concourse of people, Leo, with his hand upon the books of
the Evangelists, cried out, “I know nothing of the crimes with which
the Romans have charged me.” His declaration was received with shouts
of applause that rung through, the vaults of the sacred edifice.
Charlemagne, who had returned to St. Peter’s on Christmas Day, for
the service, knelt before the altar. The pope, upstanding before
him, placed upon his forehead a golden crown studded with jewels and
proclaimed him emperor, thus giving him a real supremacy over all the
Christian princes and people of the West. (Figs. 208 and 209.)

  [Illustration: Fig. 209.--The Coronation of an Emperor by the
  Pope, the Sovereign being represented by Maximilian I.--From “Des
  Sainctes Ceremonies,” a Manuscript of the Sixteenth Century, in
  M. Ruggieri’s Collection.]

The popes who were contemporary with the successors of Charlemagne,
though not of special note, governed the Church with wise moderation;
and as they were all patrons of the Fine Arts, Rome is indebted to them
for some of her chief embellishments. Leo IV., in 847, was compelled
to make Rome secure from an attack by the Saracens, who were always
making incursions up to its very walls. For this purpose he constructed
around the church of St. Peter a regular town--the Leonine city--which
he fortified with high towers. He also fortified the places near Rome,
and founded a new city, called Leopolis, which he surrounded with
ramparts. Rome thus being out of danger, he imitated the example of his
predecessors by ornamenting the churches, to which he gave paintings
and other works of art of the value of 5,971 silver marks. The fabulous
story of Pope Joan--who was said to have been elected pope, and to have
concealed her sex, though she was shortly after expelled, after some
great scandal--is placed by historians between Leo IV. and Benedict
III.; but the falsity of the story is manifest, for there was no
interregnum between the death of Leo, upon July 17th, 855, and the
election of Benedict.

Nicholas I. (858–867), anathematized Photius, the usurping Patriarch
of Constantinople. The empire having fallen to Michael III., a child
of three years old, his mother Theodora, assisted by his uncle Bardas,
carried on the government in his name. When this prince grew up,
Bardas ousted Theodora, and, in order to maintain himself in power,
pandered to the passions of his nephew. Michael gave himself up to
such scandalous excesses that the Patriarch Ignatius excluded him from
the church, and excommunicated Bardas. In six days, Photius, a layman
who could be depended upon to do as he was told, was made patriarch in
the room of Ignatius. This was the prelude to the separation of the
Greek Church. Photius added heresy to his revolt against the pope, by
asserting that the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father only, and not
from the Son. Nicholas’ successor, Adrian II., appointed his legates
to preside at the council which deposed the Patriarch Photius. He
also upheld the sentence of his predecessor against Lothair, whom he
compelled to renounce his adulterous union with Valdrade. When that
prince came before him to partake of the sacrament, the pope said in a
loud tone of voice, as he presented the host, “If thou hast given up
thy adultery, if thou hast broken off all connection with Valdrade, may
this sacrament comfort thee! But if thy heart is still perverse, it
will be for thy punishment.” This lofty firmness of speech was all the
more praiseworthy because the pope, in thus maintaining the rights of
morality, had to defy and admonish a prince who had delivered Rome from
the Saracens. No one can tell whether the doubt expressed by Adrian, as
to the sincerity of Lothair’s conversion, was well grounded or not; but
it is at least certain that the latter died forty days afterwards, and
that his death appeared to be a judgment from Heaven.

The legates of John VIII., the successor of Adrian, allowed themselves
to be intimidated and corrupted by Photius. Deceived by their false
representations, John VIII. at first approved of what they had done;
but when he learnt the truth he publicly excommunicated at Rome both
Photius and the cowardly legates who had betrayed their trust in order
to curry favour with this impostor (880). John VIII. was the first
pope, since the fall of the Roman Empire, who had to decide between two
competitors for the Imperial crown. He declared, that as the empire had
been conferred upon Charlemagne by the grace of God and the authority
of the pope, he transferred it to the King of the Franks, Charles the
Bald.

For a century and a half the factions of powerful Italian families and
the arbitrary will of the emperors interfered with the free election
of the popes, whence arose great scandals, and many unworthy persons
were elevated to the pontificate. On several occasions the rivalry
of parties led to the creation of anti-popes, and at one time there
were as many as three claimants to the Holy See. It is little short of
miraculous that the papacy should have kept its place against so many
causes tending to its ruin. At last, in 1049, the Romans having sent to
the Emperor Henry III., asking him to appoint a successor to the pope
who had just died, that monarch assembled the bishops and grandees of
the empire at Worms, and upon their advice selected Bruno, Bishop of
Toul.

  [Illustration: Fig. 210.--Portrait of the great Countess
  Matilda.--From a Miniature in a contemporary poem of which she
  was the heroine (Manuscript No. 4,922 in the Vatican Library).]

Before repairing to Rome, Bruno went to consult Hildebrand, the monk
of Cluny, whose reputation for virtue and ability stood very high.
The latter received him very cordially, but pointed out to him the
impropriety of a lay election, and persuaded him to exchange the
pontifical gown for that of the pilgrim, until the people and clergy of
Rome should have freely elected him.

Bruno entered Rome barefooted, and thus replied to the applause of
those who had gone to meet him: “The choice of the people and the
clergy, supported as they are by the authority of the canons, overrides
all other nominations; I am therefore ready to return to my country if
my election is not approved by all your suffrages.” By Hildebrand’s
advice, the ancient customs were observed. Bruno took the name of Leo
IX.; he was consecrated on the 2nd of February, and enthroned ten days
later. Thus did the Roman Court proclaim that the emperors and princes
did not possess absolute power over the election of the pontiffs, and
the right of election, after having been thus restored to the people
and the clergy, was subsequently vested in the cardinals.

With a view to reforming the morals of the ecclesiastics, to
re-establishing discipline and the liturgy, and to combat false
doctrines and heresies, Leo IX. held a vast number of councils, some at
Rome, some at Vercelli, and others at Paris; he travelled all through
France, Germany, and Italy, taking note of all the abuses which he
discovered, and showing himself determined to correct them. Thanks to
imperial munificence, he had increased very considerably the pontifical
power. Carried away by his zeal, he accompanied the troops sent him
by the emperor against the Normans who were devastating Italy. His
soldiers were defeated, and he himself was taken prisoner; but the
Normans did homage to their captive, and begged him to accept the
homage of all their possessions in Italy, so that Leo IX. actually
obtained advantages greater than ever he could have expected. The
nomination of his successor no longer came within the province of the
emperor, and the illustrious Hildebrand, who was at that time almost
supreme in the Roman Church, directed the election under the canonical
form of four successive popes, who required neither the approbation
nor the support of the holy empire. The last of them, Alexander II.,
died in 1072, after having reigned nine years, and the bishops were
deliberating on the choice of a new pontiff, when a voice was suddenly
raised from amongst the people, “Hildebrand for pope, St. Peter has
chosen him.” This was as the voice of God, and Hildebrand, who had
been pope _de facto_ for so many years, was enthroned under the
title of Gregory VII. His first care was to arrange at a council the
affairs of Italy and of France, and to contract alliances with Spain,
Hungary, and various German principalities. He judged himself strong
enough to undertake this severe and unwearied struggle, which he kept
up throughout the whole of his reign, in the interests of the Church,
against the sovereigns of Europe. He wished to obtain recognition of
the independence of the Holy See, to dispossess the abbots and prelates
who had been guilty of simony, reprimanding at the same time the
emperors and kings who had trafficked in ecclesiastical dignities. He
desired also to reform the loose morality of the clerks, at the same
time that he condemned the careless indifference of the episcopate. He
first attacked the Emperor Henry IV., he then threatened Philip I. with
excommunication if he did not mend his ways; he launched an anathema
against five of the principal members of the imperial household, and
afterwards summoned the monarch himself to appear in person before a
synod, to render account of what he had done. Henry IV., victorious
over the Saxons, and irritated at the pope’s audacity, convoked a diet
at Worms for the purpose of deposing him, and dismissed the legates
whom he had sent. During this time a conspiracy was being hatched at
Rome against the pope, the promoters of which were Cencius, prefect of
the city, and Guibert, Archbishop of Ravenna. It was brought to issue
upon the night of Christmas, 1075. Gregory, wounded in the forehead
while he was celebrating mass in the basilica of St. Peter, was carried
prisoner from the altar into one of the towers; from which he was
almost at once delivered by the people, and brought back to the altar
to terminate the service. The pope showed great clemency towards the
conspirators. Six weeks afterwards the Diet of Worms pronounced his
deposition, and the bishops gave in their solemn adherence to the
decree. Gregory VII., nowise cast down or discouraged, anathematized
the emperor at a council held in Rome; and, then addressing himself to
the whole Christian world, he entreated it to join him in the defence
of their outraged religion. The most distinguished women of Europe--at
the head of whom was Matilda, princess of Tuscany (Fig. 210), widow of
Godfrey the Humpbacked--declared themselves openly for the pope, in
whose favour a sudden reaction took place. Feudal Germany deserted the
cause of the emperor, who was compelled to withdraw to Spires until a
diet, convoked to meet at Augsburg, should decide as to the respective
complaints of the two sovereigns. But the emperor, impatient to get
rid of the sentence of excommunication which had been passed against
him, went to meet the pope on his way to Augsburg with the Countess
Matilda. This illustrious lady interposed to effect a reconciliation
between the two rivals, who had an interview in the fortress of
Canossa, near Reggio, when the emperor, in order to obtain his pardon,
submitted to the humiliation of going on his knees to the pope to ask
for it (1077). It was then that the Countess Matilda bequeathed all her
patrimonial domains and all her personal property to the Church and
to the Court of Rome. The unhappy Henry, ashamed of the penance which
he had been made to undergo, peremptorily separated himself from the
papal communion. Council after council was convoked, and in the space
of two years Gregory had convoked no less than seven for discussing the
general affairs of the Church. He had not omitted to secure for himself
allies, while the emperor was confronted in Germany by enemies who were
attempting to wrest from him the imperial crown. Henry IV. succeeded in
defeating them, and then turned to encounter Gregory, against whom he
had set up an anti-pope. After the victories of Fladeheim and Marburg
he crossed the Alps, crushed the papal army, and threatened Rome, where
Gregory, inflexible as ever, had assembled an eighth council, which
excommunicated the emperor afresh. The investment of the city had
lasted three years when the emperor, by the sacrifice of a vast sum of
money, caused the gates of the town to be opened to him; and though
Gregory attempted a last effort to assemble a fresh council, Henry
was already inside with his anti-pope, whom he had crowned under the
title of Clement III. The intrepid Gregory, immured in the Castle of
St. Angelo, held out until the old Norman knight Robert Guiscard, Duke
of Apulia, came to his deliverance. He then convoked a tenth council,
which once more excommunicated the emperor, the anti-pope, and their
numerous adherents. Before the emperor could return to Rome for the
fifth time, Duke Robert Guiscard deemed it prudent to return to Apulia
with the pope, whose death occurred at Salerno shortly afterwards (May
25th, 1085).

Gregory possessed too much foresight not to have thought of naming
an heir capable of pursuing his vast designs. Amongst those whom he
had named, Danfier, Abbot of Monte-Cassino, was ultimately selected,
and, though it was not without hesitation that he accepted so heavy a
burden, he was made pope with the title of Victor III. The new pontiff
came to Rome, and occupied with his troops the Faubourg of Transtevere
and the Castle of St. Angelo, while the anti-pope Clement III. held
the other bank of the Tiber. This state of things could not, however,
be of long duration. Victor, overcome with grief, died soon after at
Monte-Cassino, and was succeeded by Eudes de Châtillon, who took the
name of Urban II. (1087). Of French origin, and brought up in the
Metropolitan Cathedral of Rheims, he had for twenty-eight years been
prior of the famous abbey of Cluny. It was there that Gregory, whose
unbounded confidence he had enjoyed, first knew him, and, under these
circumstances, he naturally wished to continue the policy of that
pontiff. But the Emperor Henry IV. frustrated this project by suddenly
invading Italy, capturing Rome, and setting up a new anti-pope,
Guibert, to rule in the Holy City, under the protection of the German
soldiery. Urban, forced to abandon the Castle of St. Angelo, which was
besieged by the imperial troops, transported his seat of government to
Benevento, where he displayed more resolution than before, crowning
Conrad, son of the emperor, King of the Romans, after getting him to
abjure the schism, and excommunicated Philip I., who had sent away his
wife in order to marry his concubine. After this, he returned to Rome
in time to celebrate the Christmas services. He expelled the anti-pope,
Guibert, and his followers, recovered the independence of the tiara,
and assembled at Placentia, amidst the schismatical Lombards, a council
which was attended by two hundred prelates, four thousand clerks,
and thirty thousand laymen. This was an imposing protest on behalf
of the peace of the Church, to which the presence of delegates from
the Empires of Germany and the East, and from the Kings of France and
England, lent additional significance. Urban went, in the course of
the same year, to Clermont, in Auvergne (Fig. 211), to preside, under
the auspices of Philip I., over another council, at which the first
crusade (1095), preached by him throughout France, was decided upon;
he afterwards returned in triumph to Rome (1096), happy in the thought
that he had realised the wishes of Gregory, who first conceived the
idea of the Holy War.

  [Illustration: Fig. 211.--Pope Urban II. presiding over the
  Council of Clermont, in 1095, and calling the Christian
  peoples to the First Crusade for the deliverance of the Holy
  Land.--Fac-simile of a Wood Engraving from the “Grand Voyage de
  Hiérusalem,” printed by François Regnault in 1522 (in the Library
  of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot).]

The Council of Rome, at which the sovereign right of the Church to
confer the investiture of ecclesiastical dignities was proclaimed,
marked the close of his reign. He died in 1099, upon the eve of that
century of strife and confusion over which his spirit and that of
Gregory VII., as well as of several other popes and learned doctors
who had come from Cluny, were destined, as it were, to hover, for the
investiture quarrel was far from being settled. Pascal II. imitated the
firmness of his predecessors, and the King of France gave way; but the
Emperor Henry V., in spite of the formal engagements entered into by
his father, revived his claim to appoint the bishops and the abbots,
and to induct them into their charge. After entering Rome with his
troops, and after having given the pope the kiss of peace, he had him
arrested, together with several of his cardinals, and, by means of a
long captivity, by threats, and by violence, he induced him to issue a
bull, in which the pontiff acknowledged the emperor’s right to annul
the canonical elections of bishops and abbots, and likewise promised
not to excommunicate him for the future. Pascal II. had no sooner
regained his liberty than he convoked a council at Rome, at which he
confessed that he had failed in his duty, whereupon the council, with
his consent, condemned afresh the ecclesiastical investitures conferred
by the civil power. Another council, held in France, excommunicated the
emperor, who succeeded in taking Rome. Pascal being dead, Gelasius II.
had to take refuge at Cluny, and Henry V. appointed an anti-pope, who
assumed the title of Gregory VIII.

At the death of Gelasius II., the cardinals who had followed him
into France elected as his successor a Frenchman--Calixtus II., to
whom belongs the renown of having put an end to the quarrel as to
investiture. The emperor, finding that the irritation of the Germans,
weary of his despotism, was growing perilous to his throne, convoked a
diet at Würtzburg, when it was decided by him and the princes of the
empire that ambassadors should be sent to negotiate with the pope, who
had returned to Rome amidst the acclamations of the inhabitants.

  [Illustration: Fig. 212.--Public and Solemn Functions of the
  Sovereign-Pontiff.--From a Roman Engraving of the Seventeenth
  Century.

  1. Solemn mass celebrated in St. Peter’s by the Pope.--2.
  Celebration of the sacred services in which the Pope takes
  part, especially those of the Sundays in Advent and Lent.--3.
  Coronation of the Sovereign-Pontiff at St. John of Lateran.--4.
  The newly-elected Pope seated upon the altar of the Clementine
  Chapel and receiving the homage of the cardinals.--5. Solemn
  benediction which the Pope gives to the people.--6. Tribute of
  the white horse, formerly paid to the Pope each year, on St.
  Peter’s day by the King of Naples in token of his vassalship.--7.
  Solemn cavalcade of the Pope upon his first journey from St.
  Peter’s to the Lateran Church.--8. Public consistory for the
  reception of the ambassadors.--9. The Pope carrying the Holy
  Sacrament in the procession of the Fête-Dieu.--10. Opening of the
  holy gate by the Pope, for the twenty-five years’ jubilee.--11.
  Solemn procession on the days when the Pope, clad in the sacred
  decorations, goes to the Basilica of St. Peter to celebrate mass.]

According to the Concordat drawn up and adopted by Henry V. at the
Diet of Worms, the emperor finally renounced his claim to investiture
by the ring and the crozier, which were symbols of ecclesiastical
dignity; he acknowledged the right of the dioceses and abbeys to
elect their bishops and abbots, and the investiture of the elected
dignitaries into their domains was to be conferred by the emperor,
in Germany, _before_ their consecration, and in the kingdoms of
Italy and Burgundy _after_ it. This Concordat was confirmed at the
œcumenical council which Calixtus II. assembled at Rome in 1125.

We have dwelt at some length upon these matters, but it was necessary
in order to show what was the action of the popes in the Middle Ages,
and it was at this point that their influence reached its apogee. The
two conceptions of Gregory VII. had been realised: in accordance with
the idea generally received at that time, the kings or emperors, in
the eyes of the people, only possessed authority as long as they were
orthodox, and obstinacy, under the ban of excommunication, amounted
to heresy; hence the pope was regarded as the supreme chief of the
Christian republic, and was entrusted with the duty of making princes
respect morality, the faith, the rights of the Church, and the rights
of the people. The election of the head of the Church had, therefore,
to be free from the influence of the temporal power, since that
head would be called upon to be its judge. This was the point which
Hildebrand caused to be recognised in respect to the election of the
popes, beginning with Leo IX.; and the perseverance of his successors
got the principle extended to that of the bishops, during the reign of
Calixtus II.

The second object which Gregory VII. had in view, was the preservation
of Christian civilisation from the Mussulman yoke, by carrying the war
into the East; and the Crusades realised this great design. We may now
sketch in a few lines the part played by the popes during the last
centuries of the Middle Ages.

  [Illustration: Fig. 213.--Gregory IX. (1227–1241) handing the
  _Decretals_, which he had embodied in one work, to an
  advocate of the Consistory.--Fresco by Raphael (1515), in the
  _Stanzas_ at the Vatican.]

The great Roman families, anxious to obtain power, elected an
anti-pope. By means of these agitations, Arnold of Brescia, under
the pretext of creating a Roman republic, established a kind of
dictatorship in the city. The emperor overthrew this usurper, who
was burnt alive; but he set up anti-popes, and Alexander III., when
besieged in Rome, declared himself the ally of the Lombard cities,
the chief of the Guelfs against the Ghibelins, and the champion of
Italian liberty. Under his pontificate, it was ordained (at the third
Council of the Lateran, in 1179, that for the future, the cardinals
alone should take part in the election for the pontiff, without the
intervention of the clergy or the people. The Crusades occupied
men’s minds during the last twenty years of the twelfth century.
The thirteenth began with one of the most celebrated of the popes,
Innocent III., who, following in the footsteps of Gregory VII., made
emperors and kings to tremble by his threats of excommunication, and
preached the crusade against the infidels and the Albigenses. His
two successors, Honorius III. and Gregory IX., imitated his zeal and
resolution. Gregory IX., amidst the multifarious cares of his holy
office, found time to draw up a new collection of his own letters
and constitutions, and those of his predecessors. He confided this
heavy task, which was carried out with remarkable skill and order,
to Raymundus de Pennaforti, his chaplain. This collection, which
was received with respectful gratitude, has since been called the
_Decretals_ (Fig. 213).

After these three eminent popes, sedition broke out afresh inside Rome.
The Holy See was vacant for a long period more than once during the
latter part of this century, as the cardinals could not agree in their
choice; and in consequence it was decided that the election should take
place in conclave. After a numerous series of popes, who occupied the
chair for only a short time, Boniface VIII. (Fig. 218) endeavoured to
march in the footsteps of Gregory VII. and Innocent III. Philippe le
Bel, anxious to destroy all traces of the feudal régime in order to
obtain absolute power, would not submit to the reprimands and menaces
of the pope, and it is well known how he caused the pontiff to be
seized at Anagni by Nogaret. The aged pontiff, whom nothing could move,
was set free by the people, who expelled Nogaret and his soldiers; but
the rough treatment he had received hastened his death.

Philippe le Bel, who saw how seriously he had compromised himself,
profited by the dissensions which arose between the Guelfs and the
Ghibelins at the conclave to ensure the election of a Frenchman,
Bertrand de Got, Archbishop of Bordeaux, who took the title of Clement
V., and immediately came to reside in France. The prestige of the
papacy was diminished by this selection of Avignon as a place of
residence, for the Italians came to look upon themselves as being
enfeoffed to the French kingdom. Rome and the Pontifical States fell
into a condition of complete anarchy, and a man of enterprise, Rienzi,
endeavoured to re-establish the ancient republic. The cardinals,
nearly all of whom were Frenchmen, always nominated popes of their own
nationality. One of them--Gregory XI.--who had come to Rome for a short
visit, died there in 1377. The people then induced the cardinals by
threats to select a pope of Italian birth, and their choice fell upon
the Archbishop of Bari, who took the title of Urban VI. The cardinals
who were at Avignon when the election took place, at first recognised
it as valid, but when he manifested his intention of remaining at
Rome, they declared it to be irregular, and chose Cardinal Robert of
Geneva, formerly bishop of Cambrai, who took the title of Clement VII.,
and the Christian world was divided between the two popes. Each had
several successors, and this long schism proved the termination of the
Christian republic which had been the work of the Middle Ages. At last,
the General Council of Constance, convoked by one of the anti-popes,
but confirmed by Gregory XII., received that pontiff’s resignation,
and Cardinal Otho Colonna, a man of great piety and zeal, elected by a
unanimous vote, assumed the government of the Church under the name of
Martin V. He shortly afterwards repaired to Rome, where he was received
with enthusiasm; and his presence brought back the prosperity and
prestige of the Holy City. Notwithstanding, one of the anti-popes, with
a following of two cardinals, still had a successor who was recognised
by the kingdoms of Aragon, Valentia, and Sicily; but he finally
complied with the wishes of Christendom, and his abdication in 1429 put
an end to the schism which had lasted for half a century.

  [Illustration: Fig. 214.--Solemn entry of the Emperor Charles
  V. and Pope Clement VII. into Bologna, November 5th, 1529. The
  persons at the head of the cortége are the great dignitaries of
  the Church, the first bearing the pastoral staff, the second
  the pontifical tiara, and the two others golden candelabra. The
  taper-bearers precede the Holy Sacrament. (See next engraving.)]

  [Illustration: (Remainder of Fig. 214.)--The Holy Sacrament,
  borne upon the back of a white horse, is escorted by the
  patricians and doctors of Bologna. The Pope’s sacristan marches
  alone in the rear of the dais, and this part of the cortége is
  brought up by a group of princes, dukes, and counts.--Drawn and
  engraved on brass by John Hogenberg: in the Collection of M.
  Ruggieri, Paris.]

Ten years after this, during the reign of the same pontiff (Martin
V.), another and an older schism seemed to all appearance extinguished
at the Council of Florence, in which the Emperor of the East and the
patriarchs of his Church were present. After grave deliberation, the
Greeks drew up an orthodox profession of faith, and, by the complete
submission of the Eastern Church to her Roman sister, union was
restored in 1439. But the emperor and his patriarchs found upon their
return that this was so deeply resented by the Greek people, that they
gave way to popular clamour and withdrew from their formal engagements,
the schism thus becoming wider than ever. The ruin of the Eastern
empire followed very closely upon this decision.

The fall of Constantinople into the hands of the Turks indicated only
too plainly the danger with which Europe was menaced, and the popes
endeavoured to impress it upon the kings and their subjects. Pius II.,
who had distinguished himself by his erudition and his writings, was
considered to be the most talented man of his day, and in a council
held at Mantua in 1459 did his utmost to hurry on the preparations
for the crusade. After five years’ hard work, he collected a fleet at
Ancona, and was about to set sail, when he was struck down by a mortal
illness. His successors continued the work which he had begun; but,
though the Christians obtained successes over the Turks which promised
well for the undertaking, their compatriots failed to respond to the
appeals of the pope, who saw that Italy was seriously threatened with
invasion. It was under these critical circumstances that the choice of
the cardinals fell upon a man of extraordinary energy, Roderick Borgia,
who took the name of Alexander VI. He was charged with crimes which
ought to have been laid at the door of members of his family, and he
struggled against the oppressive spoliation to which the great Roman
families had subjected the city, setting courageously to work in order
to reconstitute the temporal power of the Holy See. Pius III., chosen
as his successor, died a month after he was elected.

The Cardinal of Rovero was then nominated unanimously, and took the
title of Julius II. In pursuance of the idea of Italian independence,
this warlike pontiff carried on an obstinate struggle against Louis
XII., with the view of retaking several towns of Italy which had once
belonged to the States of the Church. Unintimidated either by the
armies of Louis XII., or by the threats of the councils convoked under
the protectorate of the King of France and the Emperor of Germany,
he himself assembled a council at Rome, and this inflexible old man,
after having brought about wise measures of reform which all Europe
applauded, cited the king and the members of his parliament to come
and answer for their revolt against the Holy See. But Julius II., worn
out by his exertions, died in 1513. His successor, Leo X., who had
effected a reconciliation with Louis XII., was obliged to head the
Italian league against Francis I. An understanding had been brought
about after the battle of Marignano, and the Pragmatic Sanction, which
had been the pretext of so many disputes since the days of Philippe le
Bel, was given up and replaced by a concordat concluded in 1516 between
France and the Holy See. Leo X., continuing the Italian policy of his
predecessor, also kept in view the idea of a crusade against the Turks;
but this great work of the papacy was only realised half-a-century
later under the pontificate of Pius V. The faithful were aroused by
his voice; Cyprus had fallen into the hands of the Mussulmans, and the
whole of Europe was in imminent peril. The cost of the expedition was
divided between the King of Spain, Venice, and the pope; fifty thousand
infantry and four thousand cavalry were got together, and the command
of the fleet was given to Don John of Austria. It encountered
the Turkish fleet, which consisted of two hundred and twenty-four
vessels, in the Gulf of Lepanto, on October 7th, 1571. The infidels
were annihilated, losing twenty-five thousand men and ten thousand
prisoners, while fifteen thousand Christians whom they had chained to
their galleys were set at liberty (Fig. 215). Catholic Europe breathed
once more, and in its gratitude attributed this prodigious victory to
the protection of the Virgin, to whom the faithful told their beads at
the hour at which the battle took place, and the memory of this event
was perpetuated by a yearly fête on the first Sunday in October.

  [Illustration: Fig. 216.--A Sitting of the Council of Trent
  in 1555.--From a Painting by Titian, in the Louvre (Sixteenth
  Century).]

  [Illustration: Fig. 215.--Iron shield presented to Don John
  of Austria by Pius V., in recognition of his services to
  Christendom by the victory at Lepanto (1571), with an inscription
  signifying, “Christ has won the victory; it is He who reigns and
  governs.”--From the “Armeria Real” (Madrid), published by M. Ach.
  Jubinal.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 217.--The Triumph of Christ.--From an
  engraving of the early part of the Seventeenth Century,
  reproduced from a composition attributed to Titian.]

Led away from our subject in order to relate an account of the struggle
against the then indomitable Islam power, we omitted to mention
another event which was the second greatest achievement of the popes
in the sixteenth century, namely, the Council of Trent (Fig. 216). The
progress made by Protestantism led to the convocation of a general
council, which was to pronounce as to all the disputed points of
doctrine, and to effect the indispensable and long-looked-for reforms
in ecclesiastical discipline. The town of Trent was selected as the
place of meeting, because its situation between Italy and Germany made
it so easy of access for those who were expected to attend. Although
the holding of this council was mutually agreed on by Pope Paul III.
and the Emperor Charles V., in concert with the other Christian
princes, the opening was deferred until 1545, and it lasted with
frequent adjournments until 1563, when Pius IV. was pope. No council
ever dealt with so many topics, both of dogma and of discipline.
The abuses which had been pointed out by many Catholic divines were
abolished even before the Protestants could draw attention to them. The
catalogue of holy books which were received as canonical was inserted
in one of the first decrees of the council; and it was there declared,
that the interpretation of these sacred works should be given by the
Church, to whom alone it belonged to decide what was the true meaning
of Scripture. The questions at issue were then gone into minutely;
original sin, the justification of the sinner, the seven sacraments,
the mass, purgatory, indulgences, the worship of saints, &c. The
twenty-fifth and last session was held on the 3rd of December, 1563.
But the hopes of conciliation to which this assembly gave rise were
not realised, and the Protestant Churches rejected the decisions of
the Fathers of the Council of Trent, whose authority they refused to
recognise. The unity of the Christian republic, which had been the work
of the Middle Ages, was destroyed, and a new era brought with it new
duties for the head of the Catholic Church.

  [Illustration: Fig. 218.--Leaden Bull with which Pope Boniface
  VIII. sealed his letters; on it are seen the names of Boniface
  VIII., and of St. Peter and St. Paul, with their effigies
  (Thirteenth Century).--French National Archives.]




                          THE SECULAR CLERGY.

   The Minor and the Major Orders in the Early Centuries of the
   Church.--Establishment of Tithes originally voluntary, and
   afterwards obligatory.--Influence of the Bishops.--Supremacy
   of the See of Rome.--Form of Episcopal Oath in the Early
   Centuries.--Reform of Abuses by the Councils.--Remarkable
   sayings of Charlemagne and Hincmar.--Public Education created by
   the Church.--The Establishment of the Communes favoured by the
   Bishops.--The Beaumont Law.--Struggle with the Bourgeoisie in
   the Fifteenth Century.--The Council of Trent.--Institution of
   Seminaries.


  [Illustration: Fig. 219.--The Chanter or Psalmist, Minor
  Order.--G. Durand’s “Rationale.”]

Near the close of the ninth century, Anastasius the Librarian wrote,
at Rome, an Ecclesiastical History, from which we learn that the
hierarchical order of the functionaries in the primitive Church was
composed as follows: the doorkeeper (Fig. 220), the reader, the
exorcist (Fig. 221), the acolyte, the sub-deacon, the keeper of the
confessions of the martyrs, the deacon, the priest, the bishop. To
these were afterwards added the chanters or psalmists, entitled
_confessors_, because their function was to confess the name
of God by celebrating His praises. The interpreter-linguists, the
copyists, and the notaries, who figure in the Greek as well as in the
Roman Church down to the fourth or fifth century, ranked with the order
of confessors and that of clerks.

In the early days of Christianity the bishop in each diocese
consecrated to the service of religion, after the manner of St. Paul,
those who were represented to him as being the most worthy, or whom he
himself deemed fitting. The aspirant to the major orders sometimes rose
very slowly, however meritorious he might be; thus Latinus, Bishop of
Brescia, who died towards the close of the third century, had been,
as his epitaph recorded, simple exorcist for twelve years, priest for
fifteen, and bishop for three years and seven months. There were,
however, some rapid and almost immediate promotions, called _per
saltum_, because they jumped, as it were, from one grade to another;
but these were made under exceptional circumstances.

  [Illustration: Fig. 220.--The Doorkeeper, Minor Order. Fig.
  221.--The Exorcist, Minor Order.

  Miniature from the “Rationale Divinorum Officiorum” of William
  Durand (Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century), in the Library of
  M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.]

At first the Christians had not any clergymen, properly so called;
priests, however, ministered in each locality, for we read that St.
Paul appointed Titus “to ordain elders in every city” (Titus i. 5). But
in most cases, during the first centuries, the bishop alone ministered
in his episcopal city, particularly in the East (Fig. 222).

  [Illustration: Fig. 222.--The Good Shepherd, whose head appears
  as if crowned with seven stars, carrying the lost sheep upon his
  shoulders; around him are collected the seven faithful sheep.
  On one side Jonah is being vomited out by the great fish; on
  the other he is lying beneath the gourd; above him are the dove
  and Noah’s Ark. The old man with a crown, with his hand raised
  above the clouds, and the woman with a crescent on the forehead,
  personify the sun and the moon.--Funereal lamp in baked clay
  of the Third Century, found in the Catacombs. In the Christian
  Museum of the Vatican.]

After the fourth century we find that, in the East as at Rome, there
were other churches in the large towns besides the cathedral; the
functions of the clergymen, or _cardinals_, who ministered in them
were confined to giving the people religious instruction, and to keep
the bishop informed of everything relating to the government of the
church. Down to the fifth century, the administration of the sacraments
and the celebration of the holy communion took place in the cathedral
only. Pope St. Marcellus founded, in the fourth century, twenty-five
_titles_ or parishes in Rome, in order to afford greater
facilities for the preparatory instruction by which the sacraments
of baptism and penance were preceded. But in the fifth century, when
the cathedrals were found too small to hold all the congregation, it
became the custom to distribute, in the _titles_ or parishes of
the city, the holy eucharist which the bishop sent by the hands of
deacons to the titulary clergy. The bishops also delegated to their
clergy the power of receiving the reconciliation of the penitents in
cases of necessity, of admitting heretics in danger of death (but
only in the bishop’s absence), and of pronouncing excommunications in
their parishes, by virtue of a sentence delivered by the bishop. The
clergyman also visited the sick, administered the sacrament of extreme
unction, blessed the private dwelling-places, and himself selected
the staff for his church. At last, in the sixth century, clergymen
celebrated, in the quarters or _titles_ wherein they ministered,
the entire liturgy of the holy communion, and from the seventh century
they were empowered to diminish or to increase, as they thought proper,
in accordance with the revenues of the parish, the number of the
clerks, choristers, and the various subordinate officers. In compliance
with the wishes of the faithful, the bishop would often authorise the
clergy to celebrate two masses upon the same day, one to take place
of necessity in the parish church, the other perhaps in some oratory
attached to the parish (Fig. 223).

  [Illustration: Fig. 223.--The celebration of Mass in an
  Oratory.--Fac-simile of a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Ninth
  Century, from an Engraving belonging to M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.]

Independently of the offerings made by the faithful, the churches,
which already possessed landed property, after the conversion of
Constantine found their domains increasing in value. The barbarian
chiefs who became converts to Christianity outrivalled each other in
their liberality towards the clergy. Tithes, the regular payment of
which was only proposed towards the close of the fifth century, were
soon made compulsory, more especially in the countries subject to the
Franks. It is incorrect that tithes were not made obligatory until the
time of Charlemagne; all he did was to ensure their collection, and to
impose them upon the newly-converted under threat of excommunication.
In conformity with a decree issued by Pope Gelasius, he ordained that
the produce of the tithe should be equally divided amongst the bishop,
the priests, the fabrics in each diocese, and the poor--that is to say,
the hospitals. These establishments were administered and provided with
religious services by the charity of the clergy; thus the increase of
ecclesiastical wealth turned to the profit of the needy.

By the name of _presbyters_ (from a Greek word equivalent to the
Latin words _seniores_, sages, and _sacerdotes_, sacred men)
were designated the functionaries who stood in the second rank of the
ecclesiastical hierarchy. From this term was afterwards derived that
of _priest_. At first there was no fixed age for admission to the
priesthood; but at the end of the fourth century Pope St. Syricius
decided that a clerk, promoted to be a deacon at thirty, should not
become a priest for at least five years.

The Emperor Justinian prohibited a deacon from being promoted to
the priesthood until he had attained the age of thirty-five; but in
Gaul, Spain, and Germany the minimum age was thirty, and as soon as
the people had given their sanction to the ordination of a deacon,
the election took place. The functions of deacons are from the first
clearly indicated by what they did, for in the first century Philip,
one of the seven deacon-cardinals chosen by the Apostles, preached the
Gospel and baptized. At the end of the third century we find in Spain
that St. Vincent, only a deacon, took Bishop Valerian’s place when
he felt himself unable to minister the word. Moreover, St. Stephen,
the first of the deacons and martyrs, was also preaching, within a
few months of the death of Jesus Christ, when he was dragged from the
sanctuary to be stoned. The deacons, therefore, performed liturgical
functions, but their ordinary duty was to preside at the tables of the
Christian communion.

The tumular epigraph on the catacombs of Rome exhibits a curious
list of the various special duties allotted to the priests, as well
as to the deacons, besides the service of the altar: here we find
a priest doctor; a priest guardian, overseer, possibly our inn
or lodging-keeper (_mansionarius_); again, we find a deacon
archivist, or keeper of the archives (_scrinarius_), a priest
schoolmaster (_magister ludi_), &c.

In the first three centuries of the Church, holy orders were conferred
not only in the basilicas and in the catacombs, but also in private
oratories; some few recluses were even ordained in their own cells.
From the reign of Constantine, it was decided by the councils that the
laying on of hands upon the clerks to raise them to deacons, or upon
deacons to raise them to the priesthood, should always take place in
public (_coram populo_) and at fixed periods. The epoch chosen was
at first the calends of December, afterwards extended to each of the
four seasons.

  [Illustration: Fig. 224.--The Ecclesiastical Tonsure.--Miniature
  from the “Rationale Divinorum Officiorum” of William Durand
  (Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century), Library of M. Ambroise
  Firmin-Didot.]

The iconography of the officers of the sanctuary nearly always
represents the bishop as seated upon an elevated chair, laying hands
upon clerks of a gradually descending order; the priest raising his
arms and spreading them out to give the benediction; the deacon,
bearing a cross or a book of the Gospels, or perhaps both, as he is
portrayed in an ancient mosaic in St. Lawrence-without-the-walls, at
Rome. It must also be noted that the deacons and the priests, as well
as the clerks of a lower order, are represented as beardless and with
short-cut hair.

In the sixth century, the tonsure or _clerical crown_, was
universally adopted by the Church. It was a mark of dignity which
distinguished the clerks from the monks and the rest of the faithful;
laymen wore their hair more or less long with a proportionate amount
of beard, and the monks cut their hair almost as close as if shorn.

The primitive Church had created the office of acolyte, whose duty
consisted in accompanying the bishops, the priests, and even the
deacons. Under the pontificate of Cornelius (251), there were forty-two
of these assistants. The Eastern Church also had its acolytes, but
did not accord them the importance which they had in the city of the
popes, where they formed three classes: the _palatines_, who
assisted the sovereign pontiff in the basilica of the Lateran; the
_stationaries_, who aided him in the churches where the stations
took place; the _regionaries_, who assisted the deacons in each of
the regions or parishes.

The political power of the bishops was founded in Gaul at the beginning
of the sixth century (Fig. 225), and down to the end of the first
dynasty they were the real organizers of the French monarchy. Converted
to Christianity after the battle of Tolbiac, and baptized by St.
Remigius, Clovis became the protector of the Gallo-Roman Church. The
Clergy then enjoyed a legitimate influence, as is justly remarked by a
grave historian: “The barbarians, accustomed to carry all before them
by the weight of arms, could not be subdued by a force or civilised
by a literature which they despised or failed to understand; but
the clergy, surrounded by that pomp which has so great an influence
over uncultivated imaginations, combated them with simple and plain
doctrines, with a vigorous and united hierarchy, and with a faith
which, needing no subtle reasonings, imposes only the duty of belief,
and leans for support upon a morality the sanctity of which they could
not but feel, even while violating it. Was it not most fortunate that
there should have been an order capable of arresting the universal
disorder? Unarmed priests mingled with these savage hordes and inspired
them, by means of baptism, with some notions of humanity; they taught
them to hold their hands, showing them that they whom they were about
to strike was a brother.

  [Illustration: Fig. 225.--The Legend of St. Martin.--From a
  piece of tapestry of the Thirteenth Century, in the Louvre (No.
  1117).--1. St. Martin sharing his cloak with a poor man.--2.
  He sees in a dream Jesus Christ clad with this half of his
  cloak.--3. The saint’s baptism, the priest sprinkling him with
  water, and God blessing him.--4. He brings to life a catechumen,
  who had died without being baptized, in his monastery at Ligugé,
  near Poitiers.--5. At the same place he recalls to life a slave,
  who is first represented as hung from a gibbet, and afterwards
  standing on the ground and giving him thanks.--6. St. Martin
  consecrated Bishop of Tours in 371.--7. He evokes the spectre of
  a pretended martyr, held in veneration about Tours, and when it
  appears and avows that it had been executed for its crimes, the
  chapel is demolished.--8. He gives his tunic to a poor man.--9.
  He brings to life the son of a peasant in a heathen village near
  Chartres.--10. He drives out the evil spirit from the body of a
  mad cow.--11. Seeing on the banks of a river some birds watching
  to catch fish, he bids them fly away, saying, “Here we see the
  type of the enemies of our salvation, always on the watch to
  seize our souls.”--12. Death of St. Martin. His soul, in the form
  of a child, is being borne off to heaven by two angels.]

“The bishops carried out, with as much dignity as benevolence, their
sublime mission of sympathizing with the people and those who were
oppressed; having a paternal solicitude for their flock, they placed
themselves face to face with conquerors, whom they knew how to pacify
and to conciliate. The veneration with which they were surrounded and
the holiness of their lives earned them the respect even of Attila and
Genseric.

They were entrusted with the embassies, and they administered in the
room of magistrates, whose power had been crushed. Epiphanius, Bishop
of Pavia, was sent to the Burgundian kings Gundibald and Godegesil, to
procure the release of a number of Italian prisoners, whom he brought
back with him in triumph. When the Ligurians were ravaged by the
incursions of the Transalpines, the king remitted, at the prayer of the
bishop, one-third of the indemnity. St. Cæsarius, Bishop of Arles, sold
the patens and chalices to ransom the prisoners. Euspicius, Bishop
of Sergiopolis, upon the Euphrates, paid Chosroës for the ransom of
twelve thousand prisoners. St. Germain, Bishop of Paris, gave away even
his own tunic by way of charity; ‘so that,’ to use the language of an
artless chronicler, ‘he was often shivering with cold, while those upon
whom he had bestowed his favours were warm.’”

The bishops were sometimes obliged to exercise the duties of royalty.
Honorius, of Novara, when Theodoric and Odoacer were at war, fortified,
in order to give shelter to his flock, a certain number of places
similar to those in which the military were garrisoned. Nicetius,
Bishop of Trèves, “an apostolic man, in his progress through the
country, constructed, like a good shepherd that he was, a fold to
protect his flock; he surrounded the hill with thirty towers, which
shut it in on all sides, and an edifice rose where hitherto a forest
had cast its shadow.”

During the reigns of the last of the Merovingians and the first of the
Carlovingians, the jurisconsults and the magistrates were generally
bishops or plain priests, whose venerable character, in addition to
their knowledge and wisdom, had caused them to be designated to fulfil
these high functions. Dagobert, when about to draw up the Capitularies
which were to govern the Germans, the Thuringians, the Burgundians,
the Neustrians, the Ripuairians, and the Romans, entrusted the work to
four ecclesiastical doctors, and consequently the disposition of this
new code was remarkably tolerant,--“for,” said these pious legislators,
“there is no sin so grave, but that the culprit’s life may be spared,
if he will but hold God in fear and the saints in respect, seeing
that the Lord hath said, ‘He who pardons shall himself be forgiven,
but he who pardoneth not shall obtain no mercy.’” In cases where the
crime seemed of a nature to deserve no clemency, the law remitted the
culprit to be judged by the bishop or a priest delegated by him, whose
tribunal, standing in the midst of a church, was from that very fact
inviolable, and placed under the tutelary protection of religion. The
royal decree added, “When the culprit shall take refuge in a church,
let no one dare to drag him out with violence; if he has already
crossed the threshold of the sanctuary, let the bishop or curate of
that church be sent for, and if they refuse to deliver him up, it is to
them that the pursuers shall look for his punishment.”

  [Illustration: Fig. 226.--Consecration of St. Remigius, Bishop
  of Rheims.--Fac-simile of an Engraving of the “Rheims Tapestry,”
  in the cathedral of that city, published by M. Ach. Jubinal.
  (Sixteenth Century.)]

For more than a century before, the spiritual and temporal
constitution of the Church was regularly organized throughout
France. The diocese comprised the territorial boundaries which
the Roman administration had established in the provinces for the
civil government of the vicars and the counts, and most of these
dioceses were kept, within about the same limits, down to 1789. The
ecclesiastical province, of which the metropolitan or the archbishop
was head, was made up of several dioceses or suffragan bishoprics, and
when a provincial council took place, it assembled in the metropolis
under the presidency of the archbishop. Above the metropolitans there
were the patriarchs and the primates, dignitaries occupying the
principal apostolic sees, such as Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch,
Jerusalem, Cesarea, and Heraclea in the East, and in the West, Milan,
Lyons, Rheims, Trèves, and Mayence--which latter city became, under
Pope Zacharias (741–752), the metropolis of all Germany. The supremacy
of Rome was acknowledged by the universal Church from the days of the
Apostles, as is attested by all the Fathers, and especially by St.
Irenæus, whose spiritual father was Polycarp, a disciple of St. John.

  [Illustration: Fig. 227.--Ceremony of robing a Bishop for his
  consecration.--From the “Rationale Divinorum Officiorum” of
  William Durand (Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century), Library of
  M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.]

History has handed down to us the form of oath of allegiance to the
pope taken by the apostle of Germany in the eighth century, Wilfred,
better known by the name of Boniface, who, in the course of a few
years, made more than a hundred thousand converts. So far from being
exalted with pride at the success of his mission, he continued to go
for advice to Pope Gregory II., and to submit to his decision any
intricate matters which might occur in the course of his ministry.
The following translation of the form which he signed when raised to
the dignity of bishop, will give an idea of his deference and spirit
of submissiveness; it forcibly exhibits the power of the hierarchy at
this epoch:--“In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who has saved us,
Leo the Great being Emperor, the seventh year of his consulate, and
the fourth of his son Constantine the Great, Emperor,--I, Boniface, by
the grace of God bishop, promise to thee, blessed St. Peter, Prince
of the Apostles, and to thy vicar, the blessed Gregory, as well as to
his successors, in the name of the indivisible Trinity, the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and by his most holy body here present,
to observe in purity and fidelity the Catholic Faith, and, with God’s
assistance, to persevere in the unity of this same Faith upon which
indubitably depends the salvation of all Christians. I also promise
never to yield to any instigation contrary to the unity of the common
and universal Church, but faithfully and sincerely to devote all my
strength to thee and to the interests of thy Church, which has received
from the Lord the power of binding and loosing, and also to thy Vicar
and his successors. If I find any prelate living in disobedience to
the ordinances of the holy Fathers, I undertake not to hold any kind
of communion with him, but to win him back if I can; if not, to send a
faithful report of his conduct to my lord the successor of the Apostle.
And if (which may God forfend!) I should attempt to infringe the
terms of this declaration, at any time or in any manner whatsoever, I
acknowledge myself guilty of eternal punishment, and deserving the fate
of Ananias and Sapphira, who were guilty of fraud in the declaration
of their goods. I, Boniface, a humble bishop, have written with my own
hand the text of this oath, which I lay upon the most holy body of
St. Peter, in the presence of God who is my witness and judge; I have
taken, as is herein stated, the oath which I undertake to observe.” It
is worthy of notice that this formula was already in use in the time of
Pope Gelasius, in the fifth century.

  [Illustration: Fig. 228.--Solemn Reception of a Bishop. Arrival
  of St. Gêry at Cambrai, where he was appointed bishop, in 589.
  View of the city, the ramparts, and the church dedicated to
  St. Médard, and founded by St. Gêry.--Miniature
  from the “Chroniques du Hainaut” (Manuscript of the Fifteenth
  Century), Burgundian Library, Brussels.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 229.--St. Wulfram, Bishop of Sens, clad in
  his pallium; died in 720 at the Abbey of St. Wandrille.--From a
  Miniature in the “Chronicon Fontinellense” (Manuscript of the
  Ninth Century), Havre Library.]

From the sixth century, the influence which the bishops enjoyed
under the Roman empire went on increasing. Chilperic I. was alarmed
at its progress, declaring that “the bishops alone were supreme in
the cities.” Each one administered the affairs of his diocese with
sovereign authority (Fig. 228), and, by means of the councils convoked
by the kings, they governed the whole of the kingdom. In Gaul, there
were twenty-five councils during the fifth century, fifty-four in
the sixth, and twenty in the seventh, all of which were composed of
bishops, supplemented by a few abbots and priests who were either
well-known masters of ecclesiastical law, or eligible upon other
grounds. From the diminution in the number of councils dates the
decline of the authoritative influence of the French episcopacy;
during the eighth century, in the first half of which there were only
two councils, it declined still further, because the intrusion of the
_leudes_ in several bishoprics had brought about a great change
in the austere morals of the ancient Church, replacing the cultivated
spirit, the orderly conduct, and the charitable habits of the first
prelates (Fig. 229) by a display of gross ignorance and unbridled
barbarism. Three successive councils, held respectively in Germany,
Belgium, and at Soissons (742, 743, 744), aimed at a reformation of
the morals of the clergy, which were thoroughly perverted, as is
evident from the decrees of these councils, forbidding the priests
to follow the chase with hounds, falcons, and sparrowhawks. Other
provincial councils of the same epoch condemned simony, the traffic
in the immunities and privileges of the Church, and the plurality of
benefices. This last abuse went beyond all bounds; the same prelate
would hold three or four bishoprics at once, several abbeys, and the
revenues of numerous parishes left without a pastor. On the other
hand, many lay lords, who had usurped the property of the Church,
and appropriated to themselves benefices, monasteries, and episcopal
revenues, especially since the days of Charles Martel, created great
confusion in the temporal economy of each diocese.

Charlemagne applied himself to the reformation of these abuses.
That illustrious monarch at all times displayed the most respectful
deference for the clergy, from amongst whom he selected his principal
ministers and most trusted councillors. Two-thirds of his Palatine
Academy were ecclesiastics; the _missi dominici_, the official
inspectors appointed to visit the provinces, the churches, the
presbyteries, and the hospitals, to render justice upon appeal, to
suspend or dismiss the fiscal agents, were all, or nearly all, bishops
and priests. Royalty was looked upon by Charlemagne as a kind of
priesthood, and his mission was to give the people greater facility
for practising the Gospel, and to bring it within the reach of the
idolatrous nations. The capitulars say, “The king must walk uprightly,
as his name signifies (‘Rex a _recte_ agendo vocatur’). If he
acts with piety, justice, and clemency, he deserves the name of king;
otherwise he is not a king, but a tyrant. The special duty of royalty
is to govern the people of God, but to govern them with equity and
justice; for _the king is above all_ the defender of the churches,
of the servants of God, of the widows, the other poor, and all who
are in distress.” These rules, laid down in the time of Charlemagne,
were adopted by all Europe. The king who did not observe them was to
be deposed; his judges were the bishops, the councils, and the pope,
as head of the Church (Charlemagne, in a capitular from Thionville,
in 805, submitted his own sons to be judged by the bishops). If they
refused obedience, they were condemned to be driven from their palaces,
deprived of their dignities and goods, declared infamous, and sent into
exile. This is why, during the unhappy dissensions that broke out
between the sons of Louis the Good-natured, each one endeavoured to
procure the deposition of his rival by sentence of the council.

  [Illustration: Fig. 230.--Bas-relief on the Tomb of Hincmar,
  Archbishop of Rheims, in the Church of St. Remigius in that city.
  Monument of the Tenth or Eleventh Century.--Hincmar, upon his
  knees, and followed by the Abbot of St. Remigius, is thanking
  Charles the Bald for his pious donations; the king holds in his
  hand a model of the church on which he bestowed his largesses.]

Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, the noblest representative of the
Western Church at this epoch, constituted himself the defender of the
throne (Fig. 230). He endeavoured to arrive at an equitable settlement
as to the respective limits of the two great powers--the Church and the
Crown. Commenting upon, but not receding from, the ideas expressed by
Charlemagne, he declared, “When it is said that the king is not subject
to the laws or judgment of any man, but only of God, the statement is
true if he be a king indeed, as his name indicates. He is called king
because he reigns and governs; if he governs himself according to the
will of God, if he directs the good in the right path, and corrects
the wicked to draw them from their evil way, then he is king, not
subject to the judgment of any man (Fig. 231 and 232); but if he be
an adulterer, a homicide, an iniquitous person, a ravisher, then he
must be judged, in secret or in public, by the bishops, who are God’s
representatives.” It is necessary to bear well in mind these ideas,
inculcated in the Middle Ages, if we would understand the important
functions of the secular clergy.

  [Illustration: Fig. 231.--Consecration of Philip Augustus at
  Rheims, November 1st, 1179, by his uncle, William, Archbishop of
  Rheims.--Manuscript 9232 of the Fourteenth Century, Burgundian
  Library, Brussels.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 232.--Coronation of Henry of Anjou as King
  of Poland, February 22nd, 1573, in the Church of St. Stanislaus
  at Cracow. At the termination of the consecrating ceremony the
  Archbishop of Gnesen, Primate of Poland, places the crown upon
  the prince’s forehead.--Bas-relief on a French coffer of the
  Sixteenth Century belonging to M. Achille Jubinal (fac-simile of
  its present condition).]

At this early period of society, civilisation was, beyond all doubt, in
the hands of the ecclesiastics. Public education, which the Church had
established, and which was given in one or several episcopal schools
in each diocese, under the direction of the archdeacon, was subject,
like judicial proceedings, to hierarchical regulations. Although the
bishop was free to extend or to limit certain branches of instruction,
all the clerks admitted to follow the courses of these schools had
to go through the series of studies prescribed and specified in the
capitulars of Charlemagne. Thus, at Metz and Soissons, for instance,
the school of singing was an imperial institution, and the bishop, no
matter what authority he might have in other matters, had no power
to suppress it. The same was the case with the courses on law and
medicine, which had been founded, since the days of Charlemagne, in
various episcopal cloisters at Paris, Rheims, Lyons, Metz, Trèves,
Canterbury, Milan, &c. Roman chanting, grammar, Holy Scripture, the
Liturgy, and calligraphy, formed the classical basis of clerical
education. Other studies were looked upon as accessories, without being
absolutely prohibited. At the same time, to the superficial study of
Latin, was added that of Greek or of German, or of the vulgar idiom of
the Latin, Teutonic, or Sclavic tongues, when deemed useful for the
purposes of popular preaching. In certain cases, and for the exclusive
service of the Church, the clerks were taught the rudiments of
architecture, painting, mechanics, agriculture, and hygiene, but it was
more especially at the Palatine school, which was always open, and in
the large abbeys, that this literary and scientific course of education
prevailed.

Clerical discipline, though continually being reformed, was incessantly
needing fresh changes. The usurpation of the Church’s domains by the
monarchs, the princes, and the great lay lords, contributed to the
disorder which prevailed in many abbeys. In some churches an intruder
would thrust himself into a canonry, usurp the abbatial seat, or live
at the expense of the community. The bishops were often powerless to
get rid of these false abbots, canons, and monks, who set them at
defiance. Ecclesiastical cures and prebends were formed, like many
public bakehouses and mills, sometimes as dowers for daughters about
to marry, and even for new-born infants. Severe measures were adopted
at several provincial councils (in 860, 863, 888, 895) against the
disorderly acts committed, to the detriment of the Church.

A diploma issued by the Emperor Henry III. (May 12th 1052), confirmed
the doctrine of the Roman Church, declaring that the episcopal
jurisdiction was entirely independent of the civil jurisdiction. By
this diploma, all judges and officers of justice were prohibited from
exercising their authority in the churches, castles, villages, and
parishes which formed the temporal domain of the diocesan chapter.

  [Illustration: Fig. 233.--Treaty of Arras, concluded in 1191,
  by the interposition of William of Champagne, Archbishop of
  Rheims, between Baldwin V., Count of Hainault, and Matilda of
  Portugal, Widow of Philip, Count of Flanders.--Miniature from the
  “Chroniques de Hainaut” (Fifteenth Century), Burgundian Library,
  Brussels.]

When the Crusades brought about the concord, or rather the calm, of
which the Church had so long been deprived, its progress became more
regular, more marked, and more easy; it also suffered less from the
encroachment of laymen upon its rights and privileges (Fig. 233), but
the enormous expenses of these distant expeditions had ruined it.
There was not, indeed, a single diocese where the property was not
loaded with mortgages, nor where the services were not crippled by
the reduction of the diocesan revenues. This penury, coupled with the
absence of a great number of the most esteemed ecclesiastics, who
had taken up the cross, left many important churches almost without
resources or guidance; hence arose a general relaxation of morals on
the part of the clerks, whose misconduct was in some cases so flagrant
that it became necessary to expel them from the religious houses and
parishes which had been committed to their charge. The abuses of
authority, the uncertainty in point of faith, and the Vaudois heresy,
which shot through Western Europe like a poisoned barb, gave rise to
frequent dissensions amongst the faithful, the disputes being carried
on even amongst members of the same family, whilst in many localities
the people, attracted by a form of worship where the chanting and
the prayers were recited in the vulgar tongue, deserted their parish
church for the heretic priest; this was the origin of an infinity
of disturbances and tumults in the large towns, especially in those
governed by a municipality.

And yet the bishops had contributed in a material degree to the
establishment of the communes; for, if history tells us of some towns
being at war with their ecclesiastical lord, in order to declare
themselves independent, we find, on the other hand, that a great number
of the charters of enfranchisement were due to the initiative of the
bishops. The two most interesting of these documents which have been
preserved to us in their integrity, are the charter and the law of
Beaumont-en-Argonne, formerly a fortified place, but almost forgotten
in the present day, until brought into prominence by the war of 1870.
This town had the satisfaction, not of imposing its law, but of seeing
it adopted by numerous communes, amongst which may be cited Nancy,
Lunéville, Verdun, Luxemburg, and Longwy, together with all the Duchy
of Bar, Montmédy, &c. A lord-bishop, William, whose love of equity
earned him the appellation of William the White-handed, was the author
both of this law and of this charter, in the twelfth century (Fig.
234). By the charter, the lord-bishop made all the inhabitants of
the commune of Beaumont proprietors of a sufficient quantity of land
to give them the means of subsistence, with the use of the woods and
water-courses; every precaution was taken to prevent fraud in commerce
and trade, especially in regard to the millers, the bakers, and the
butchers; and the administration of the commune was entrusted to so
many burghers elected by the most notable citizens; while intrigue was
powerless in its attempts to bias the free and independent suffrages
of the burgher-electors. The time that the Beaumont law has lasted is
a proof of its merits, for, notwithstanding the vicissitudes of time,
five hundred communes were being governed by it in the eighteenth
century.

  [Illustration: Fig. 234.--Reduced fac-simile from the
  commencement of the Charter of William the White-handed,
  Archbishop of Rheims (Twelfth Century).--From the work of M.
  Defourny.]

In the communes which adopted the Beaumont law, the burghers, exempt
from all military burdens, were only compelled to take arms in the
event of a sudden invasion of their territory, and this forced service
was only of twenty-four hours’ duration. After that, the lord had to
provide for the ordinary protection of the inhabitants in return for
the trifling taxes which they paid him. In the commune of Escombes,
for instance, which, being a frontier village, was very exposed
to attack, the right of safe-guard (_le droit de sauvement_)
consisted of two measures of oats, a hen, and a French denier for
each burgher. A charter of an archbishop of Rheims, successor of
William the White-handed, recounts how a good chevalier, in return
for the gift of a piece of land belonging to the bishopric, undertook
to bring together, train, and maintain a body of armed men for the
protection of the burghers of Beaumont, who were thus enabled safely
to carry on the tillage of the land and their commercial operations.
Towards the close of the fourteenth century, the Archbishop of Rheims
exchanged with the King of France the sovereignty over the towns of
Mouzon and Beaumont-en-Argonne against the lordship of Vailly and its
dependencies; but the law of Beaumont was respected, and by letters
patent, “given at Montargis in the month of September, the year of
grace one thousand three hundred and seventy-nine,” King Charles V.
solemnly recognised and sanctioned all the advantages which the law
of Beaumont assured to the inhabitants. “By these presents,” said
the king, “we approve and confirm all their charters and liberties,
franchises, usages, privileges, and customs which they have been
granted by our above-mentioned Archbishops of Rheims in times past, to
enjoy and use without deducting, innovating, or diminishing anything,
and in the same manner and fashion as they have formerly enjoyed and
used them before our acquisition.”

Throughout nearly all France, justice, which had been for eight
centuries episcopal, became almost entirely civil; but the bishop still
levied a part of the fines imposed, and when the citizens of a town or
district were brought together to settle some grave dispute, it was the
prelate of the diocese, or the dean of the chapter, or the precentor,
who had the right of naming the day and the place of the meeting,
which they had no power to prevent. Louis IX., great as was his piety,
undertook the task of forming a lay magistracy capable of rendering
justice. To avoid a conflict with the national clergy, he obtained
from Innocent IV. a dispensation from the ordinary jurisdiction
for the person of the King of France, for his consort, and his
heir-presumptive. He solicited the intervention of the Pope to reform
numerous abuses that had crept into the Church in France, especially in
respect of the right of asylum, and the excessive immunities accorded
to the ecclesiastical tribunals. Towards the end of the thirteenth
century the jurisdiction of the clergy was, with the exception of the
episcopal court, confined to the vassals of the bishops’ temporalities.

Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the episcopal power
was engaged in a ceaseless struggle with a turbulent bourgeoisie
(Fig. 235), whose spirit of opposition drove it into open and armed
rebellion. In order to obviate this, and to order an effective
resistance to the civil authority, itself overpowered by the populace,
several diocesan chapters formed a league with the clergy and with the
monks; but this did not bring them any increase of strength to combat
the lay magistrates, because the bishop often deserted their cause
or showed himself indifferent to it. Hence arose excommunications,
imprisonments, proscriptions, and acts of seizure which only led to
increased scandal. The schism which desolated the Christian world since
the death of Gregory IX. (1378), the struggle for influence between the
anti-pope Urban VI. and Pope Clement VII., were not calculated to allay
the internal troubles of the Church.

  [Illustration: Fig. 235.--Title of the Concordat of Cambrai,
  agreed upon in 1466 by the bishop, the chapter, and the commune
  of the town, for the maintenance of peace. This charter commences
  with the word _NOUS_ in illuminated letters. The first
  letter (N) encircles an angel holding the escutcheon of Bishop
  John of Burgundy; the Latin inscription signifies, “Glory to
  God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
  The letter O represents the arms of the chapter, surmounted
  by Notre-Dame des Flammes, with the words in Latin, “Peace I
  leave with you, my peace I give unto you.” The third letter (U)
  is symbolic of the commune of Cambrai, and also expresses a
  peaceful idea in the motto, “His abode is an abode of peace.”
  Amongst the witnesses, numbering more than a hundred, who signed
  this Concordat, was the Chronicler of Cambrai, Enguerrand de
  Monstrelet.--Fac-simile of the original, preserved in the
  Archives du Nord, at Lille, and the text of which was published
  by M. L. Dancoisne, at Hénin-Liétard. (The illuminated letters in
  this engraving are one-fourth the size of the original.)]

The desire to remedy this general disorder was at that time uppermost
in every Christian mind, for the question as to the territorial
possessions of the two Churches had long been settled. Rome possessed
nearly all Italy, except the manufacturing and maritime States of
the peninsula; she also had Germany, a part of Switzerland, Bohemia,
Hungary, England, and Holland. The other Church was recognised by
France, French or Vaudois Switzerland, Savoy, Lorraine, Luxemburg,
the Metz district, Scotland, and Spain. The most respected of the
Christians, alarmed at a state of things which was so fatal to
religion, in vain attempted to stem the torrent. The only remedy lay
in the reformation of the clergy, and the Church’s independence of the
civil power. In the year 1469, a noble and pious woman, the Countess
Vio di Thiene, gave birth at Gaeta to a son, afterwards known as
Cajetan, who became cardinal-bishop, and was one of the greatest men
of the age. The Countess Vio di Thiene had resolved that the heir of
her noble house should be born, as was the Saviour of mankind, in a
stable. It was thus that in an actual manger this blessed infant first
obtained his indifference to the world, his love of simplicity, his
spirit of prayer and charity, his angelic modesty, which made him a
martyr of penitence, a hero of self-denial, and a model of humility.
When in 1505 Luther received the minor orders at the monastery of
the Augustines at Erfurt, and when, upon the occasion of a granting
of indulgences by Leo X. to the Dominicans (1517), he published the
programme of his anti-papal and anti-canonical propositions, he at
once found himself face to face with Cajetan, who was the leader and
promoter of the Catholic movement in opposition to the German pervert.
Cajetan conceived the happy idea of instituting a vast confraternity
of the regular clergy, with the view of re-establishing ecclesiastical
discipline. He was the ideal of the praying and working priest, without
family ties, with no close or continuous relations with the outside
world, and yet so brought up that while mixing with it he could
forward the interests of the Church. The Somasques, regular clergy
for the education of orphans (1528); the Barnabites, regular clergy
of St. Paul (1532); the Jesuits, regular clergy of the Company of
Jesus; the Crucifers, regular clergy ministering to the sick (1592);
the Scholopians, regular clergy for the poor of the Mother of God;
the Minorites, regular clergy of the minor order, and many other
institutions of the same kind, are the offspring of Cajetan’s creation,
and thus he has been called the patriarch of the clergy. The project
of the Council of Trent was the conception, and its preliminary
elaboration was the work, of Cajetan, and this famous council, which
was to have so much influence over the Christian world, raised the
moral dignity of the clergy, while it prepared the way for a general
reform of the Church.

  [Illustration: Fig. 236.--Angels praying over a Skull.--Fragment
  of a Bas-relief in the Cloister of the Chartreuse, at Pavia
  (close of the Fourteenth Century).]

The instruction of the young men who were destined for the priesthood
also dates from the same epoch. It is true that there existed in Italy,
France, and Spain, schools of theology frequented by the clergy,
but the latter prepared themselves for holy orders without rule or
guidance, without any of those intellectual and moral resources which
a community can offer. Many of the pupils wore no tonsure nor even a
uniform ecclesiastical dress, they mixed in society, sometimes led a
dissipated life, and reached the solemn period of ordination without
having received any proper teaching. The Council of Trent, at the
instance of Cajetan, decided that each diocese should have a school
of ecclesiastics termed a _seminary_. St. Charles Borromeo,
Archbishop of Milan, the good Paul d’Arezzo, Archbishop of Naples, and
several Italian bishops, set Europe the example by establishing these
pious retreats in their dioceses; the Cardinal of Lorraine imitated
them by founding the seminary of Rheims, and two French bishops also
created seminaries at Carpentras and Bordeaux. These were the only
seminaries in France for more than eighty years, and they were so badly
managed, so little in harmony with the importance of their design, that
they were looked upon as attempts that had miscarried. The seminary of
Paris, the most famous of all those in France, was not created until
the middle of the seventeenth century, when it was founded by the
active and generous co-operation of two pious women, with the help of
St. Vincent de Paul and the Abbé Ollier, for ecclesiastical retreats
and for the establishment of the _Congregation de Saint-Sulpice_.




                         THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS.

   The First Monks.--St. Anthony and his Disciples.--St. Pachomius
   and St. Athanasius.--St. Eusebius and St. Basilius.--Cenobitism
   in the East and in the West.--St. Benedict and the Benedictine
   Code.--Monkish Dress.--St. Columba.--List of the Monasteries
   in Charlemagne’s Time.--Services rendered by the Monks to
   Civilisation, Arts, and Letters.--Reform of the Religious
   Orders in the Twelfth Century.--St. Norbert.--St. Bernard.--St.
   Dominic.--St. Francis of Assisi.--The Carmelites.--The
   Bernardines.--The Barnabites.--The Jesuits.


During the early days of the Church, monastic life began in the
vast solitudes of the Thebais, in Upper Egypt. It soon extended to
Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and even beyond the limits
of the Roman Empire. St. Jerome, just before the Middle Ages, wrote,
“We daily receive troops of monks from India, Persia, and Ethiopia.”

The fearful austerities of the first ascetics in the East seem, at
first sight, excessive, but they are justified by their results,
and may be explained by the state of society at that epoch. A gross
sensualism was generally prevalent, and people lived only for pleasure.
The slaves, after having accomplished the work necessary for the
existence of the free men, further assisted in satiating the disordered
appetites of this society, which had exhausted all the refinements of
sensuality and luxury.

The old world, absorbed in the worship of material things, had no
taste for the culture of the mind, and in order to arouse it from its
intellectual torpor, it became necessary to impress the senses and the
imagination by excessive austerities. Greedy of novelty and anything
emotional, the people flocked to visit those wonderful anchorites,
who made a study of martyrdom, some shutting themselves up in a den
where they could neither stand upright nor lie down; others lying
motionless day and night upon a narrow plank, upon the top of a
column, exposed to all weathers; all of them refusing meat, drink,
and sleep, or only taking just enough to keep body and soul together.
These men, who only thought of their body as a target for torture, in
order to give themselves up exclusively to penitentiary practices and
the contemplation of a future life, attracted general attention. As
tender-hearted for others as they were pitiless for themselves, they
took an interest in all suffering, they consoled the sorrowful, they
prayed for the recovery of the sick at the request of the relatives.
Their goodness found them a way to many hearts, and, with the eloquent
force of example, they inculcated upon the crowds the vanity of sensual
pleasures, they taught them to look to heaven rather than to earth;
and they reminded their audience of the immortality of the soul, of
its destinies in a better world, and of the duty of earning eternal
happiness by the exercise of Christian virtues; in their discourses,
as in their lives, they preached the Gospel. They were first listened
to, then contemplated with curiosity, and afterwards believed in.
People soon came to admire them, and from that moment imitating them
was a natural consequence--in a few years the deserts were peopled with
thousands of their disciples, who gave themselves up entirely to prayer
and to manual labour.

St. Anthony was the first of these Fathers of the desert who consented
to tear himself away from the austere charms of this solitude, and come
with a retinue of monks to reside in Alexandria, for the purpose of
combating the Arians, and inducing them to recognise the decisions of
the Council of Nice. After having won the admiration and respect of his
adversaries by his brilliant arguments against the philosophers of the
school of Alexandria, after holding his ground even against emperors,
he retired to the desert, upon Mount Colzin, with his disciples
Macarius and Amathas, and only left it to inspect the monasteries
which he had founded, and which contained more than fifteen thousand
cenobites.

St. Athanasius, one of the most illustrious pupils of St. Anthony,
continued to spread, by his discourses and his writings, the doctrines
of his master. He went to reside at Rome in 340, with several eminent
anchorites, and he then preached by example as well as by precept, and
became the indefatigable promoter of monastic institutions in Western
Europe.

At the same period, St. Pachomius, who had founded in the Thebais the
monastery of Tabennæ, compiled the first complete regulations that have
been handed down to us for the use of the cenobites, in which manual
labour as well as prayer was prescribed. Several celebrated doctors and
fathers of the Church, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. John Chrysostom,
St. Jerome (Fig. 237), and St. Cyril, practised asceticism.

  [Illustration: Fig. 236*].--St. Anthony, a statuette in stone
  of the Third Century, belonging to a gentleman of Cambrai. This
  engraving, never before published, shows us what the holy doctors
  thought of the great anchorite of Egypt. He is treading underfoot
  the devil, who is represented by the unclean animal in the
  flames. The closed book signifies that, without any study, solely
  by hearing them read, he learnt the Holy Scriptures by heart;
  and St. Jerome testifies that he expounded them with wisdom. The
  triangular _tau_ is the Egyptian shape of the cross; the
  bell signifies the power of driving away the evil spirit.]

St. Eusebius, Bishop of Vercelli, was the first Western prelate
who associated monastic and clerical life. His clergy passed their
existence in fasting, praying, reading, and labour. St. Ambrosius
says, “These clergy only changed their condition for a bishopric or
martyrdom.” At about the same period (352–360) St. Martin founded, in
the neighbourhood of Poitiers, the most ancient of the monasteries in
Gaul (_Monasterium Locociagense_), and twelve years afterwards,
the famous Abbey of Marmoutiers, which was so rich a nursery of holy
prelates and learned doctors. The sermons of St. Basilius, in the
kingdom of Pontus, his numerous monastic foundations, the rules which
he laid down, and which were forthwith adopted by all the Eastern
monks, bear witness to the strength of the Christian movement in Asia
towards the close of the fourth century.

  [Illustration: Fig. 237.--St. Jerome in the desert: the saint
  is holding in his hand a stone with which he is about to beat
  his beast.--From a picture of the School of Andrea del Sarto
  (Sixteenth Century), in the Louvre.]

The great monastery of Tabennæ, which at that time served as the
type for all conventual foundations, comprised a vast network of
small houses, built one after the other, and united under the supreme
control of one head. The religious administration of the monastery was,
moreover, entrusted to a prior or abbot, who was assisted by a deputy,
while the steward who was entrusted with the secular duties--the daily
expenditure, and the incidents connected with material life--also had
an assistant, who took his place when he was absent. The monastery
was thus divided into _houses_, each managed by a prior; each
house contained a certain number of chambers, or cells, and each cell
was always shared by three monks. It required three or four houses to
constitute the _tribe_, or monastery.

The great monasteries had from thirty to forty houses, with about
forty monks in each, making in all seven or eight hundred persons.
At the death of St. Pachomius, the order of Tabennæ numbered seven
thousand monks. Palladius says that catechumens preparing for baptism,
children, youths, and men of all ages were received there. All were
obliged to study the New Testament and the Psalter; three times a day
wholesome instruction was given to those who required it, and three
times a week the prior of each house assembled the monks who were
placed under his control to hold conversation with them, called a
_catechizing_, or argument, after which they discussed amongst
each other the questions that had been dealt with. The teaching of
the monks was not limited to this, it extended from beyond the walls
of the monastery to the faithful in the neighbouring district. Once
on Saturdays, and twice on Sundays, the prior explained to them the
mysteries of the faith, to say nothing of the catechisms and lessons,
of which the chief or general of the order himself took charge every
week. St. Pachomius and St. Orsevius did not confine themselves to the
mere development of the moral principles taken from Holy Scripture;
they entered upon an exegesis of them, giving their audience the
right of questioning, replying, and discussing their statements, and
afterwards answering all objections so made by writing. The study of
the Fathers of the Church was added to that of the holy books. The
prior sometimes authorised plain monks, who were learned or eloquent,
as was a certain Theodorus, to defend the truths of the Christian
religion against the profane and to establish a series of public
lectures.

The monastic discipline set up by St. Basilius was almost identical
with that of St. Pachomius; his monks discussed nearly every topic
amongst themselves. He merely instructed them not to try and override
each other in these debating tournaments, urging them to avoid
ostentation, empty words, and the inspirations of vanity; he even
directed them as to the intonation of voice, and the gestures most
becoming. In the monasteries founded by St. Basilius, many children
were taken as pupils, and sent back into the world when they were old
enough to select a profession and make their own way in life.

The convents for women are contemporaneous with the monasteries. The
virgins devoted to the Church, the young widows, and the deaconesses,
led a kind of life calculated to prepare them for habits of reclusion,
of contemplation, and asceticism. The sisters of St. Anthony and St.
Pachomius were placed by their venerable brothers at the head of
two communities of virgins, in Egypt and in Palestine. In Pontus and
Cappadocia St. Basilius founded several convents, and their number
increased so largely, that in the beginning of the fifth century,
one single convent (_cœnobium_) contained two hundred and fifty
virgins.

In Europe the convents for virgins increased no less rapidly. Two
religious houses for young women were opened at Rome in the days of
St. Anthony, and, no doubt, at his instigation. Eusebius, bishop of
Vercelli, founded an establishment of the same kind close to his
church; but the most remarkable of all these convents was that founded
at Milan by St. Ambrose, a religious asylum in which his sister,
Marcellina, and her faithful companion, Candida, took refuge.

Towards the end of the fourth century, a Roman lady, St. Paula, built
three convents and a monastery in Africa, the management of them being
undertaken by St. Jerome. St. Augustine also founded two religious
houses in his diocese of Hippona, one for cenobites, the other for
virgins, imposing on them the regulations of St. Anthony and St.
Pachomius, as to life in common and poverty. “There were at this time,”
says this illustrious father, “monks all over the world.” They were
called _monks_, from the Greek μóνος (alone), because of their
solitary life; and _cenobites_, from the Greek words κοινóς and
βíος (life in common). They abstained from meat and wine, living upon
bread and fruits, and being only allowed to eat cooked vegetables
on the Sunday. They were obliged to prepare their own food, and to
make their own clothing. Upon Sunday they took the communion with
the general congregation, and went back after the service into their
monastery.

  [Illustration: Fig. 238.--History of St. Benedict.--On the left
  are the monks of a neighbouring monastery, who have come to
  seduce him from his hermitage in order to place him at their
  head; but the austerity of his rule soon dissatisfies them, and
  they resolve to rid themselves of him. On the right the monks
  are offering him a cup of poison, but, on his making the sign of
  the cross on the vase, it is shattered to pieces.--From a Fresco
  by Spinello d’Arezzo (1390) in the Church of San Miniato, near
  Florence.]

Before the monkish order had been in existence a century, in the
East as in the West, the monastic regulations underwent considerable
relaxation. The monks having become part of the clerical hierarchy
(by force of circumstances, for there was often a deficiency of
clergy), took precedence of the latter; their abbots, called
_archimandrites_ in the Eastern Church, were raised to the
priesthood and to the episcopate; they even took part in councils,
though these functions and duties interfered with their cenobitic life.
This manifest infraction of the primitive discipline, while it lowered
the moral position of the monks, rather increased than otherwise their
social influence, and gave them greater weight in the world. Their
piety, too, was only temporarily distracted from its original purpose,
for men of note like St. Honoratus, St. Maximus, St. Hilary, St.
Dalmatius, the two brothers Romanus and Lupicius, maintained the true
tradition of monkish life; and the famous abbeys of Lérins and Mount
Jura were built. The ascetics of Constantinople, too, were spoken of in
high terms, as keeping up a perpetual psalmody (401–405). In Palestine,
not far from Jerusalem, a multitude of hermits, under the guidance of
St. Euthymius, practised the most rigorous abstinence.

In Africa, St. Fulgentius, exiled by the Arians, was the promoter of
regular observances--that is, he preached strict obedience to monastic
rule (501–523); while in the West there were founded, in the midst of
the Romagnol Alps, in the towns of Arles and St. Maurice d’Agaune,
three model monasteries, the first superintendents of which were St.
Hilary, St. Cæsarius, and St. Severinus; and its principal benefactors,
Theodoric, King of the Goths, Theodoric the Great, and Sigismund,
King of Burgundy (504–522). In the monastery of Kildare, governed by
St. Bridget, and in the monastery founded by St. Colomba, in Ireland,
which was afterwards so justly called the _Isle of Saints_, the
teaching of Christian art, of the liturgy, of ecclesiastical lore and
profane literature, was unequalled in its perfection, and the fame of
it reached even to Gaul.

  [Illustration: Fig. 239.--History of St. Benedict.--As his
  disciples were attempting to put a stone in place for the
  construction of their chapel, the devil placed himself upon it,
  and the united efforts of several persons failed to dislodge
  him; but St. Benedict having blessed the stone, the devil took
  flight.--From a Fresco by Spinello d’Arezzo (1390), in the Church
  of San Miniato, near Florence.]

Such was the general position of cenobitism when St. Benedict (Fig.
238), the future patriarch of the monks of the West, the supreme
legislator of the monastic order, abandoned his humble cell at Subiaco
(528) to found the immense abbey of Monte-Cassino (Fig. 239), which
was the glory of the age. The Benedictine rule, the result of profound
physiological and philosophical studies, a work of moral science,
of wisdom, and of piety, divided the monks’ time between prayer and
manual labour, to be succeeded by the cultivation or exercise of the
intellect whenever the glory of God, the interests of the monastery,
and the education of the people might require it. St. Benedict soon
had under his control an army of monks who spread throughout the whole
Christian world the rules of their illustrious chief. Amongst them
were St. Maurus and Cassiodorus, the former minister of Theodoric the
Great: one of them founded the monastery of St. Maur-sur-Loire, in
France; the other, that of Vivieri, in Calabria. Cassiodorus took great
pains to collect books of the Old and the New Testament, with their
commentaries. He went to great expense in collecting all the writings
of the Greek and Latin Fathers, of the Jewish historians as well as of
those of the Church, and the principal works on geography, grammar, and
rhetoric, and even the best treatises on medicine, so that the monks
attached to the infirmary might be fully capable of tending the sick.
The monastery of Vivieri contained one of the richest libraries of the
period. We find in the collection of the Institutions of Cassiodorus
the following remarkable homage paid to the calligraphist monks, who
were the greatest men of letters in that day: “I confess, my brethren,
that of all your physical labours, that of copying books has always
been the avocation most to my taste; the more so, as by this exercise
of the mind upon the Holy Scriptures, you convey to those who will read
what you have written a kind of oral instruction. You preach with the
hand, converting the fingers into organs of speech, announcing silently
to men a theme of salvation; it is as it were fighting the evil one
with pen and ink. For every word written by the antiquary, the demon
receives a severe wound. At rest in his seat, as he copies his books,
the recluse travels through many lands without quitting his room, and
the work of his hands has its influence in places where he has never
been.”

Those whom Cassiodorus calls _antiquaries_ were simply scribes--that
is to say, clerks or monks who deciphered the old manuscripts and
transcribed the books. In the monastery of St. Martin, at Tours,
calligraphy was the sole art practised. St. Fulgentius, a prelate
distinguished both for his learning and eloquence; St. Gregory, Bishop
of Agrigentum, no less celebrated; Mamertus Claudius, who was a regular
walking library, themselves copied manuscripts which they gave to the
Church. Calligraphy and illuminating were also favourite occupations
with many nuns, amongst whom may be cited St. Melanie the younger,
St. Cesarie, St. Harnilde, and St. Renilde, all Frenchwomen (Fig.
240), who, to use the language of the Christian annalist, wrote with
elegance, rapidity, and correctness.

From the time that the monks were raised to the clerical rank, after
first undergoing an examination, the clerks and monks studied together
just as they had before prayed and lived in common, a monastery being
a complete school of ecclesiastical research and administration.
At Monte-Cassino, at St. Ferréol, at St. Calais, at Tours, and in
many other flourishing abbeys in the sixth century, the monks, and
especially the novices, were instructed in religious and secular
subjects as well as in the duties of the priesthood.

The monastic dress was not in every case the same, for, though always
simple and coarse, it varied in shape and appearance with the statutes
of each order, and according to the necessities of climate. The
cenobites in Egypt wore the _lebitus_ or the _colobium_, the _pera_
or _melote_, and the _cuculla_. The _lebitus_ was a linen garment
with long sleeves open at the hands, and sometimes up to the wrist.
The _pera_, a jacket of goatskin, is spoken of in one of the epistles
of St. Paul, who alludes to it as especially worn by holy men and
prophets, when they were driven by threats of persecution into the
desert. The _cuculla_ covered the head, and came half-way over the
shoulders. St. Benedict, who borrowed it from the early monks, had
it so much lengthened as to envelop the whole body; but as in this
shape it would have embarrassed the monks in their manual labour, he
made it a garment only to be worn at ceremonials, and replaced it for
ordinary wear by the scapulary (_scapulum_), which covered the head
and the back. The Western monks also wore a short mantle--a sort of
cape, called a _maforte_, according to Sulpicius Severus. The Greeks
and Orientals adopted the pallium, which led to their being designated
_agmina palliata_ (an army in robes), when they assembled in large
numbers. Every Greek who devoted himself to the cenobitic life was
compelled to wear a black pallium.

  [Illustration: Fig. 240.--St. Radegonde, Wife of King Clotaire
  (Sixth Century), receiving the religious garb from the hands of
  St. Médard, Bishop of Noyon.--“Histoire et Cronicque de Clotaire”
  (16mo, Paris, Jean Mesnage, 1513).]

Pope Gregory the Great, who had been a Benedictine, was most ardent in
the establishment of monasteries, of which he himself founded a large
number. He was the chief promoter of two important missions which took
place in 585 and 596; the first in Gaul, consisting of missionaries
from Ireland, headed by St. Columba and St. Gall; the second in
Great Britain, with monks from the Abbey of St. Andrew, headed by
another monk, St. Augustine. This latter, who converted the Anglians
and their king, Ethelbert, was the first Archbishop of Canterbury.
Colomba founded the Abbey of Luxeuil, upon the southern side of the
Vosgian forests; while Gall, his disciple, much younger than himself,
penetrated into the country of the Helvetians, who were as deeply
sunk in barbarism as the Anglians, where he founded a monastery which
afterwards became famous under the name of its founder, and which owed
its celebrity to the variety of subjects which were taught there.

St. Colomba was the first to draw up a complete set of monastic rules,
which were generally adopted in France, just as the rules of St.
Isidore, Bishop of Seville, and those of St. Augustine of Ireland,
were followed in the British Isles. These three codes, very similar in
their general principles, varied from each other in many particulars,
for they were applicable to monks living in different countries. In
the communities which adhered to the rules of St. Colomba, as in all
the great Benedictine monasteries, prayer, mental culture, and manual
labour were the invariable occupations of cloister life (Fig. 241). The
rules drawn up by St. Colomba and his imitators, St. Isidore and St.
Augustine, thus remained in force down to the eighth century, in spite
of the new system of education and religious teaching inaugurated so
zealously throughout Gaul by the Anglo-Saxon monk, St. Boniface; in
spite, too, of the industrial and artistic, rather than scientific and
contemplative, turn which St. Eloi gave to the studies of the monks
in his abbey of St. Martin at Limoges, and in the other monasteries
founded or reorganized by him. That illustrious Bishop of Noyon, Master
of the Mint to King Clotaire II., afterwards treasurer, goldsmith,
and minister to Dagobert I. (568–659), was at great pains to make the
cultivation of art an important feature in monastic life.

It would be incorrect to suppose that the interior of a monastery in
the seventh century presented the same appearance of asceticism and
penance that were afterwards characteristic of certain communities
subject to the most austere regulations. In the country districts the
monasteries possessed vast domains which yielded wheat, rye, oats, hay,
vegetables, and fruits; and on which were produced wine, beer, cider,
and hydromel; they were tilled by numerous labourers in bands of tens
and hundreds, who while at work sang hymns and prayers--a veritable
religious militia, grouped beneath the banner of faith in the populous
centres and in the neighbourhood of the towns. These monasteries
were generally schools in which the monks gave gratuitous education,
vast workshops in which they followed and taught every branch of
trade--carving in wood, ivory, bronze, silver, and gold; painting on
vellum, glass, wood, and metal; weaving tapestry, embroidering church
ornaments and vestments; damask work, and enamelling of shrines,
tabernacles, diptychs and triptychs, church furniture, and book-covers;
the cutting of precious stones to prepare them for setting; the making
of arms and instruments of music, illuminating, copying of manuscripts,
&c. The whole life of a monk or nun was passed in the exercise of one
description of art, or perhaps even in executing a single work which
required miraculous patience.

  [Illustration: Fig. 241.--The Abbey of St. Riquier, near
  Abbeville, founded in 799 by St. Angilbert, who gave it its
  triangular shape in honour of the Trinity.--From a Drawing in a
  very old Manuscript engraved in the Dissertation of Paul Petau,
  “De Nithardo” (4to, 1612).]

As the regular associations became permanently settled in the towns,
they began to construct for their use dormitories, cells, workshops,
granaries or sheds for their provisions, and built handsome churches
with long cloisters and vast chapter-rooms. Each community made a point
of having within its own boundary a library, a study, a lecture-room,
schools, a cemetery, some shady walks for meditation, as well as a
fruit and kitchen garden, the cultivation of which was a healthy and
agreeable recreation. In this vast aggregation of monastic buildings
and appurtenances (Fig. 244), we have a holy city in the heart of
the secular town, a retreat for the peaceful, the devout, and the
abstinent, amidst the troubles and vanities of the world.

  [Illustration: Fig. 242.--Abbatial Ring and Cross (front and
  back) of St. Waudru, patroness of Mons, who died in 670. The
  cross is in silver, with gold relief, and studded with precious
  stones.--Relics preserved in the Church of St. Waudru, at Mons.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 243.--The Offering of a Child to an
  Abbot.--From a Miniature in a Manuscript published at the Close
  of the Thirteenth Century (Burgundian Library, Brussels).]

  [Illustration: Fig. 244.--Priory of the Benedictines at
  Canterbury (Twelfth Century), plan in relief drawn by Edwin, a
  monk, about the year 1530.--A, belfry; B, fountain; C, cemetery;
  D, reservoir, with conduit pipes; E, Canterbury Cathedral;
  F, vestry; G, crypt; H, chapter-house; I, prior’s house; J,
  infirmary and annexes; K, kitchen-garden, with well, pumps, and
  water-pipes; L, cloister; M, cellar; N, dormitory; O, refectory;
  P, kitchens; Q, parlour; R, house for the guests and the poor; S,
  water-closets; T, baths; U, granary; V, bakehouse and brewery;
  X, the chief entrance; Y, Z, fortified wall of the abbey and
  the city.--From an Engraving in vol. i. of the “Architecture
  Monastique,” by M. Albert Lenoir.]

The endowment of each monastery was generally made up of the property
belonging to the monks who had fixed their abode there. If the novice
was an adult, he was obliged to distribute all his goods to the poor,
or to make a solemn grant of them to the abbey, before he could be
admitted to the minor orders. If he was a child whose parents devoted
him to the service of God (Fig. 243), the parents either made no
gift to the community which received the young novice, or they ceded
the income of the lands and the property by deed of transfer to the
monastery. Enriched by these successive donations, the monasteries,
especially those which had acquired a wide renown for learning or
piety, acquired still more wealth through the largesses of princes,
great nobles, and bishops, through the economical management of the
abbots, and the annual produce of the agricultural and commercial
labour of the monks. To the various arts and trades which were at first
carried on by the monks with a view to do honour to the cause of
religion, those of the West afterwards added others of a more lucrative
and worldly character. In the sixth century we find that they spun
and wove their own silk; that they possessed numerous receipts for
preparing liqueurs and drugs; that they practised medicine, surgery,
and the veterinary art. Pepin the Short, suffering from incurable
dropsy, went first to the monastery of St. Martin at Tours, and
afterwards to the abbey of St. Denis, that “the servants of God” might
give him relief by means of their skill as well as by their prayers.

The Church was very sorely tried during the reign of Charles Martel,
and monastic institutions were also exposed to many difficulties. In
order to win back the secular clergy to the habits of communal life,
the wisest of the bishops grouped around them the clergy who had
remained faithful to their cause, and laid down a code of regulations
for their guidance.

Charlemagne, in the Capitularies, added the following excellent
amendments to the rules of monastic institutions:--“Young men destined
to monastic life must first pass their novitiate, and then remain in
the monastery to learn the rules, before they are sent forth to fulfil
their duties outside. Those who give up the world in order to avoid the
king’s service shall be compelled to serve God in good faith, or else
to resume their former occupation. All clerks shall be required to make
their choice between clerical life in conformity with the canons, and
monastic life in conformity with the regulations. The abbeys shall not
receive too large a number of serfs, so that the villages may not be
depopulated; no community shall have more members than can be properly
looked after by one superior. Young women shall not take the veil until
they are of an age to choose their own career in life. Laymen are to be
disqualified for governing the interior of a monastery, nor shall they
fill the post of archdeacon.” Charlemagne and Louis the Good-natured
became members of the royal monastery of St. Denis under the title of
“conscript brothers” (_fratres conscripti_)--an academical rather
than a religious title, but one which nevertheless admitted them to
certain liturgical privileges. The Emperor Lothair, in imitation of his
father and ancestor, also got himself invested with this title by the
monastery of St. Martin-lez-Metz.

The Norman invasion, the feudal wars, the encroachment of the great
vassals, and even of the kings, upon ecclesiastical domains and rights,
impoverished the monastic orders, whose lands remained untilled for
want of hands, and their schoolrooms often empty for want of teachers
and scholars. While the Normans burnt and pillaged the monasteries,
fortified though many of them were, in the country districts, the
urban abbeys, nearly always protected by the diocesan power, preserved
some remnants of their former splendour.

  [Illustration: Fig. 245.--Foundation of the secular abbeys of
  Mons, Maubeuge, and Nivelles. The canonesses meeting at Nivelles,
  where Walcand, Bishop of Liége (810 to 832 or 836), promises to
  give them a code of rules.--From the “Chroniques de Hainaut,”
  Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Burgundian Library,
  Brussels.]

There existed between the principal abbeys of the same order a
spirit of unity, a brotherly zeal to render help and service, and a
reciprocal interchange of learned and skilful clerks, who went from
one community to another to give it the benefit of their learning or
manual ability. It was in this way that the conventual churches and
buildings were erected and kept in repair; that they became rich in
paintings, statues, and mosaics; that the treasury was filled, and the
library founded and maintained. Rupert, a monk of the Abbey of St.
Gall (Switzerland), before his elevation to the bishopric of Metz, a
learned linguist, poet, and man of letters; Tutilo, his contemporary at
St. Gall, a carver, painter, and sculptor; Regino, Abbot of Prüm, an
excellent musician, author of a Treatise on Harmony, are of themselves
a proof that arts and letters were hidden in the cloisters. At this
epoch of barbarism and ignorance, the Church organized what was
good, strengthened the shattered foundations of the social edifice,
established new monastic institutions and reformed the old, grouped
around her the irresolute, lawless, and undisciplined minds (Fig. 245),
selling the principles of order and peace in opposition to those of
violence and disorder engendered by war.

  [Illustration: Fig. 246.--Seal of the Abbey of St. Denis, in the
  Twelfth Century, in the National Archives, Paris.--The saint is
  clad in his episcopal garb. It is, no doubt, as the apostle of
  Gaul that the motto gives him the title of archbishop.]

Never was the monastic order more numerous or better organized, and at
no period, perhaps, were works of mental intelligence cultivated more
ardently or successfully in certain privileged monasteries, than at
this time.

Canterbury, Monte-Cassino, St. Maur, St. Denis (Fig. 246), St. Martin
of Tours, St. Gall, Remiremont, Aix-la-Chapelle, Cologne, Trèves, St.
Trudon, St. Arnulph, St. Clement, and St. Martin of Metz, the Messinà
and the Gorza basilica, were cited as so many foci of light whence
radiated in every direction the good doctrines set forth in certain
remarkable works of art, as well as in learned literary compositions.

  [Illustration: Fig. 247.--The Clergy, with the Cross and the Holy
  Images, going in procession before the Emperor.--From a Miniature
  taken from a Manuscript of the Fourth Century (Library of M.
  Ambroise Firmin-Didot).]

In the libraries, which composed the principal wealth of the religious
houses, the _cartularies_ of the diocese were preserved with
great care. The charters of institution, and the patrimonial titles of
the chief abbeys, are both the proof and the reward for the services
rendered to civilisation by the monastic establishments: one abbey
was given a domain on the condition that it put the waste lands into
cultivation; another received its lands with the understanding that it
opened asylums and places of hospitality for the poor and sick, for
pilgrims and for strangers; while a host of documents taken from the
cartularies relate to the instruction of the clerks, the education
of the novices, the splendour of public worship, and the duty of the
ecclesiastical vassals when the suzerain raised the _ban_ and the
_arrière-ban_, &c., together with all the details of monastic
life which are connected with the various social movements of each
territorial district (Fig. 247).

Outside the abbeys there lived a population whose manual labour was
necessary to their inmates, and profitable to the material interests of
the house. Women, even when doing penance, and under religious vows,
were strictly forbidden to enter the monasteries. The aged mother of an
eminent monk, John of Gorze, unwilling to separate herself altogether
from her son, took up her abode just outside the walls of his abbey,
where she spent her time in making cloaks for the monks.

It was around the abbatial close, perhaps beneath the shelter of a
second walled enclosure, not so strong nor so high as the first, but
still capable of resisting the attacks of the marauders which were so
frequent in those days of feudal disorder, that were built the shops,
the stalls, and the sheds which served for the sale of the crops, the
cattle, and the agricultural and other produce of the abbatial domain
(Fig. 248). On the anniversary of the festival of the saint to whom
the monastery was dedicated there was a fair--sometimes several--which
attracted large crowds.

St. Romuald, the founder of the Camaldolite order; St. Mayeul, Abbot
of Cluny, and the reformer of the Abbey of St. Denis; St. Dunstan,
the resolute Archbishop of Canterbury, who reformed the clergy of
the British Isles; Adalbert, son of a Duke of Lorraine and nephew of
Hugh Capet, who was elected Bishop of Metz, after having been monk
at Gorze; St. Cadroé, descended from the Kings of Scotland, Abbot of
Vaussey and contemporary of Adalbert, with whom he was associated
in the reformation of the abbeys in the north-east of France, were
among the leading figures who, in the tenth century, represented the
reformed monachism. Unfortunately, their wholesome influence could not
make itself everywhere felt; it was a period of disorder, of pitiless
and bitter wars, of usurpations of every kind. Upon every side misery
reigned supreme; the serfs attached to the domains of the canonical
churches and to the monasteries left them to find some more certain
means of livelihood. The Cathedral of Metz was in this way deprived of
eight hundred serfs, who were heads of families. The only independent
voices raised on behalf of these victims of oppression came from the
great abbeys, such as Stavelo, St. Arnulph, Cluny, &c., to which
monarchs and popes, under the pretext of dedicating churches (Fig.
249) which had been recently built or restored, repaired in secret to
consult, with many members of the higher clergy, as to the political
affairs of Christendom.

  [Illustration: Fig. 248.--North View of the Abbey of St.
  Germain-des-Prés, as it still existed in the Seventeenth
  Century.--A, outer gates; B, houses in the enclosure; C, church
  square; D, church; E, Lady chapel; F, sacristy; G, small
  cloister; H, great cloister; I, library; K, dormitory; L,
  refectory; M, kitchen; N, dormitory of the Superior; O, offices;
  P, inner courtyard; Q, houses for the wine-presses; R, bakehouse;
  S, stables; T, garden; V, infirmary; X, infirmary garden; Y,
  lavatory; Z, dormitory for the guests. 1, abbey palace; 2,
  abbey garden; 3, courtyard; 4, outer courtyard; 5, officers’
  apartments; 6, stables; 7, barns; 8, houses in the abbatial
  enclosure; 9, bailiff’s house; 10, outer gates; 11, bailiwick
  prisons.--Fac-simile of an Engraving in the “Histoire de St.
  Germain-des-Prés,” by Dom Bouillart, in folio: 1724.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 249.--Dedication of the Church belonging
  to the Monastery of St. Martin-des-Champs, Paris, destroyed
  by the Normans and rebuilt by King Henry I. The artist has
  represented--1st, the ancient Church of St. Samson dedicated to
  St. Martin; 2nd, the counts and barons who signed the charter
  for the re-establishment of the monastery; 3rd, the archbishops
  and bishops who were present at the dedication of the new
  church.--Fac-simile of an Engraving from Don Meurier’s work,
  “Historia Monasterii regalis Sancti Martini” (4to, Paris, 1636).]

  [Illustration: Fig. 250.--The Small Cloister of the Chartreuse at
  Pavia, with the cupola of the church in the background (close of
  the Fourteenth Century).]

The two Councils of Rheims and of Mayence (1049), devoted exclusively
to disciplinarian reforms, are characteristic of the state of
monastic institutions at this period, just as the journey of Pope Leo
IX. through France and Germany indicates the exact condition, the
resources, the manners, and the habits of the religious houses. The
illustrious pontiff, when visiting these houses, made them splendid
presents, promised them important privileges, and instituted minute
inquiries into the studies pursued within their walls. At the Abbey of
Gorze, in 1149, he even went so far as to note with his own hand the
nocturn responses in the “Office de Saint-Gorgon.”

  [Illustration: Fig. 251.--Saint-Jean des Vignes, an Abbey of
  Regular Canons at Soissons (1076), the entrance-gate guarded
  by a barbican and bastilles.--From an Engraving in vol. i. of
  “Architecture Monastique,” by M. Albert Lenoir.]

At about the same period, William, Abbot of St. Bénigne de Dijon,
re-established in several dioceses the monastic rules and studies;
Sigebert, a monk in the monastery of Gemblours, came to Metz to teach
the Holy Scriptures, philosophy, and the dead languages; St. William of
Hirsange reformed the cloister discipline in Germany; St. Robert, Abbot
of Molême, founded the Cistercian order; St. Gualbert, the order of
Vallombrosa, in the Apennines; St. Bruno, the Carthusian order, which
he established both in the neighbourhood of Grenoble and in Calabria.

It is impossible to depict the profound disorder which reigned in the
religious houses during the eleventh century, owing to the social
disturbance which had followed the terrors of the year 1000. There were
but a few solitary monasteries, remote from the troubles and vanities
of the world, which still adhered to the rules (Fig. 251), and the
monastic schools were nearly everywhere closed, and the notes of song
had ceased to be heard in the churches, when, in the year 1095, the
inspired voice of a monk, Peter the Hermit, summoned the Christian
peoples to the Holy War. At this voice, which seemed to come down from
heaven, the whole world was stirred up to deeds of energy; the young
were inspired with a current of warlike and adventurous ideas which
converged upon one single object--the deliverance of the holy places.

The difficulty of managing both the spiritual and temporal affairs of
a monastery or cathedral church had led to the appointment of a sort
of steward or lay administrator, termed an _avowee_, who was paid
out of the dues which he received from the vassals of the community.
He generally levied on each household a loaf of bread, a denier, a
measure of oats, wheat, or barley, if the land grew cereals; a measure
of wine, beer, or cider if the produce of the domains was grapes,
hops, or apples. The avowee was arbiter in all disputed cases, and
himself fixed the remuneration, before and after giving his decision,
which the two parties to the suit had to pay him. He presided over
judicial duels, and ordeal by boiling water or fire. He had a right
to one head of stock at all cattle fairs, and he also received a
draught or a saddle-horse, according as the district bred the one kind
or the other. The avowee of a cathedral or a monastery always held a
distinguished position in society; barons, dukes, and counts did not
disdain to accept these functions--which they often abused, it must be
added, by keeping for their own use the sums which they had received
for the monastery. The usurpations of every kind which the avowees
committed had been flagrant enough during the investiture dispute, but
they increased enormously during the Crusades, owing to the absence of
so many bishops, archdeacons, abbots, and priors, who had started for
Palestine after loading their domains with mortgages, and even raising
money upon the sacred vessels of their church.

The Crusades, notwithstanding, had the unquestionable advantage of
sifting the clergy, and of removing from the cloisters a large number
of clerks who were less fitted for study and seclusion than for the
hardships of the battle-field. The monks who remained in Europe shut up
in their cloisters were nearly all acting in obedience to some special
aptitude, and they formed that band of artists, architects, painters,
sculptors, and musicians, calligraphists, savants, translators,
philosophers, rhetoricians, and preachers, which shed so much lustre
upon the monasteries during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
By their direct action, as well as by their example, ecclesiastical
architecture made vast progress, and the wonderful wealth of decoration
which accompanied it, suddenly burst forth in the erection of those
holy-chapels which seem like shrines of chiselled stone, in which the
relics brought back from the Crusades were deposited (Fig. 252). It
was under these influences that most of the great abbeys (Fig. 253)
were restored, that painting upon glass attained its full perfection,
that the Roman tongue reached the solitude of the cloister, and the
beautiful literature of the ancient classics, which had for centuries
been relegated to the dust of the monastic libraries, once more saw the
light, and lent the aid of all its charms to combat the invasion of
the vulgar idiom which the inhabitants of the communes had everywhere
substituted for the Latin language.

  [Illustration: Fig. 252.--Reliquary of the Holy Thorn, preserved
  in the Convent of the Augustine Sisters at Arras.--Carved
  brasswork of the Thirteenth Century.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 253.--Refectory in the Priory of St. Martin
  des Champs, Paris (now part of the Conservatoire des Arts et
  Métiers), the work of Pierre de Montereau, architect to St. Louis
  (Thirteenth Century).--Archæological Restoration by M. Alfred
  Lenoir.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 254.--St. Bernard taking possession, with
  the Cistercian Monks, of the Abbey of Clairvaux. At the foot of
  the engraving is inscribed: “St. Bernard, Chaplain of the Virgin
  Mary, was descended from the house of the Kings of Burgundy.”
  He was, as a matter of fact, related through his mother, Aleth
  (diminutive for Elizabeth), to the first house of the Dukes of
  Burgundy.--“Chroniques abrégées de Bourgogne,” a Manuscript
  of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library of M. Ambroise
  Firmin-Didot.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 255.--The Great Beguin Convent at Ghent,
  called the Convent of St. Elizabeth, founded in the Twelfth
  Century, and which now occupies the same site as in 1234, when
  the Countess Jane gave a code of rules to the community.--General
  View taken from the “Ghent Churches,” by Baron Kervyn de
  Volkaersbeke, reproducing the Engraving of P. J. Goetghebuer.]

Contemporaneously with the foundation in Palestine of the order of the
Templars--a hospitaller and military order, which had no connection
with the monastic orders, and which for a long time devoted all its
energies to defending the holy places by prayer and force of arms--St.
Norbert, the reformer of the regular canons of the St. Augustine
order, founded the Premonstrants in Picardy; Stephen of Muret, a
contemplative cenobite of Limoges, founded the order of Grandmont
in his province; another Frenchman, Aimeric Malefaye, Patriarch
of Antioch, being alarmed at the relaxation of discipline in the
monasteries of Asia Minor, introduced some useful reforms into the
establishment upon Mount Carmel; while Stephen Harding, third abbot
of the Cistercians, an active propagator of the rules which Robert de
Molême drew up under the title of “Charte de Charité,” entrusted to
his pupil, St. Bernard, the destinies of the new communities which
sprang from this glorious cradle. It was in the middle of the twelfth
century that there appeared upon the scene one of the brightest lights
of the Church, namely, St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux (Fig. 254),
which he founded, and which was called _the third_ daughter of the
Cistercians. He was an admirable orator, a savant of the first rank, a
brilliant writer, and an eminent statesman; he had under his control
all the interests and secrets of Christendom and of the sovereign
papacy, and he never used them for purposes of worldly ambition. He
sent forth vast armies of Crusaders to the East, but he adhered to his
character of monk and apostle, by devoting his energies to combating
the Oriental heretics by verbal arguments; to preventing schisms;
to appeasing the scholastic quarrels, in which the famous Abelard
was one of the disputants; to aiding with his counsels the popes and
the monarchs; and to pouring forth, from diocese to diocese, from
council to council, and from synod to synod, that fervid and powerful
eloquence which won him all hearts. The death of the illustrious
abbot of Clairvaux, in 1153, was a terrible blow to the Church, and
an irreparable loss for monastic institutions; for there was no one
to take his place or to continue his work of reformation in the
monasteries of the Benedictine order.

  [Illustration: Fig. 256.--A Beguin.--From an Engraving in the
  “Histoire de l’Origine des Béguines Belges,” by Hallman.]

Amongst the contemporary monks, who were founders or reformers of
abbeys, we need only mention the Danish Archbishop Eckel, Felix of
Valois, John of Matha, the Englishman Gilbert of Sempringham, the Liége
priest Lambert Begh or Lebègue, who created the Beguin convents (Figs.
255 and 256), of which there are so many in the Netherlands, and which
were pious retreats where the Beguins lived in common without taking
the vows. But the eminent reputation of these austere personages sinks
into comparative insignificance before the touching legend of Heloisa,
the unfortunate wife of Abelard, who quitted the convent of Argenteuil,
near Paris, to immure herself in “the Paraclete,” a house which she had
founded in Champagne, to await and receive there the mortal remains of
her beloved lord.

  [Illustration: Fig. 257.--Carved Ivory Chaplet of Beads and
  Girdle of an Abbess (Sixteenth Century). Collection of M. Achille
  Jubinal.]

Following her example, many women of equal endowments sought in mental
labour and in devotional exercises an aliment for their moral activity;
and, when the great St. Dominic commenced his apostleship (1170–1221),
he found them ready to receive his teaching. He accordingly created,
under the St. Augustine rule, in unison with the preaching brothers,
afterwards called Dominicans (Fig. 258), a congregation of preaching
sisters known by the same title, namely, Dominicaines.

  [Illustration: Fig. 258.--The most famous Members of the
  Dominican Order.--1. Hugh de St. Cher, Cardinal of St. Sabine,
  the most learned theologian of his time, who died March 19,
  1263. 2. St. Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, 1389–1459. 3.
  John Dominicus (the blessed), Cardinal of Ragusa, 1360–1419.
  4. Pope Innocent V., born in Savoy, died June 22, 1276. 5. St.
  Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers (1170–1221). 6. Pope
  St. Benedict XI., born at Treviso (1240–1304).--From a Fresco of
  the Crucifixion, by Fra Angelico, in the Convent of St. Mark at
  Florence (Fifteenth Century).--From a copy belonging to M. H.
  Delaborde.]

The vulgar tongue was absolutely prohibited in the Dominican houses,
Latin alone being used for conversation. The principal European
languages were, however, taught for preaching purposes: including
the southern idioms, familiar to St. Dominic and St. Raymond, whose
eloquence had so deep an effect in Languedoc and Provence, as well
as in a part of Spain (1175–1275); and the northern idioms of the
Sclaves and the Tartars, which a preaching brother of Breslau, St.
Hyacinthus (1183–1257), used to some purpose in a successful mission
that ended in the establishment of two monasteries, at Cracow and
at Kiew. In these still barbarous regions, St. Hedwige, the wife of
a duke of Poland, who died in 1243, founded at Trebnitz a convent
of the Cistercian order, and at about the same period a queen of
Castille created one at Valladolid (Fig. 259). At this epoch, also,
the Sisterhood of St. Clare, founded in 1218 by St. Clare, at the
suggestion of St. Francis of Assisi, failed in its attempts to extend
the order beyond Italy.

  [Illustration: Fig. 259.--Maria de Molina, Queen of Castille
  (1284–1321), handing to the Cistercian Nuns the Charter of
  Foundation for their convent.--Bas-relief from her Tomb at
  Valladolid.--From an Engraving in the “Iconografia Española” of
  M. Carderera.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 260.--St. Thomas in a Council of Prelates
  and Doctors held at Anagni in 1256, and presided over by Pope
  Alexander IV., defending the attack made upon the monastic
  orders by the University of Paris, and successfully refuting the
  assertions of William of St. Amour. The saint, of whom the back
  only is seen, is in the foreground, with St. Bonaventura at his
  right. Near the Pope are seated the Cardinals Hugh de Saint-Cher
  and Jean des Ursins, and next to them the Bishop of Messina, the
  famous Albert the Great, the heads of orders, the deputies of
  King Louis IX., &c.--From a Painting in the Louvre, by Benozzo
  Gozzoli (Fourteenth Century), termed the “Triumph of St. Thomas
  of Aquinas.”]

The poor and docile religious militia organized by St. Francis of
Assisi under the name of Minors or Franciscans (1208), at that time set
the world an edifying example of Christian humility and self-denial.
The chief characteristic of the Franciscans was their complete
renunciation of all worldly goods. This mendicant order increased
so rapidly that their saintly founder was able to gather round him,
in his monastery of Assisi, five thousand delegates from religious
houses which had been built in nine years from the founding of the
order. There were occasionally some unfortunate quarrels between the
secular clergy and the monastic orders. One of the most notorious
was that which broke out between the University of Paris and the
mendicant orders. The university was in the habit of suspending its
lectures when it had any dispute with the government. The Dominicans
and the Franciscans having refused to submit to this practice, their
priests were deprived of their professorial chairs, and all their monks
excluded from the university. A doctor, William of St. Amour, published
a violent diatribe against the mendicant orders. The quarrel lasted a
long time, and Popes Innocent IV. and Alexander IV. supported the cause
of the monks in several bulls issued upon this subject (Fig. 260). The
university, in the end, consented to reopen its doors to them, but only
on the condition that they should always occupy the lowest rank, and in
the public disputations not urge their views until the other doctors
had had their say. It may be imagined how this petty restriction was
put up with by these humble monks, when we remember that among those
whom the doctors treated with so much contumely were such men as Roger
Bauer, Duns Scotus, and St. Bonaventura among the Franciscans; and
Albert the Great, Vincent of Beauvais, and St. Thomas of Aquinas among
the Dominicans. It was the last-mentioned of these who defended the
mendicant orders from the attacks of William of St. Amour.

Towards the close of the thirteenth century, and during two-thirds
of the fourteenth, many reforms took place in the monastic orders,
especially in that of the minor brothers (Fig. 261), who changed their
name with each change of rules. The new orders, however, obtained but a
slight celebrity, and lasted only a short time, with the exception of
that of Mercy, for the ransom of the captives--an eminently charitable
work, instituted by St. Nolasque, a Languedoc crusader, who died in
1256. We must not, however, forget to mention St. Bridget, the inspired
Scandinavian (1302–1372), who, during a journey to Jerusalem, conceived
the idea of founding the order of St. Saviour, which she established in
Sweden; nor Gerhard Groot, surnamed the Great (1340–1384), founder, in
Holland, of the Brethren of the Common Life, who devoted their time to
the teaching of the poor, and whose chief occupation was to copy the
books of the Fathers and of other ecclesiastical writers.

  [Illustration: Fig. 261.--St. Anthony of Padua, a Franciscan
  Friar, anxious to demonstrate to a heretic, who asked him to
  perform a miracle, the truth of the Holy Sacrament of the
  Altar, commands a mule to adore the Eucharist. The mule, though
  ravenously hungry, refuses the oats that his master is sifting,
  and kneels down at the bidding of the saint.--Miniature from
  the “Heures” of Anne of Brittany (Manuscript of the Fifteenth
  Century), National Library, Paris.]

The disorder prevalent in that century extended unfortunately
to the Church; the priests--notably the monks and the regular
canons--gradually laid on one side the spirit of holy meditation, the
habits of prayer, seclusion, and pious works. Young men were admitted
into the abbeys without having gone through the period of novitiate;
the monks were not compelled to be resident, and many members of
a chapter or of a congregation were never or rarely present at the
services. An increase of the penalties for breach of discipline failed
to suppress these abuses, and in some churches and communities, those
monks who attended the services were provided with counters, each of
which, when given up in the chapel, entitled the holder to a small sum
of money. Leave of absence was also granted quarterly and half-yearly,
on condition that the rest of the year should be passed in residence.
Different abbeys formed mutual communities for prayer and good works,
which bound them closely together; while, at the end of the thirteenth
century, several diocesan chapters had drawn up new constitutional
codes, which were to be read each year, and adopted for guidance; but
the external troubles were always reacting upon the internal quiet of
the religious houses. The abuses which had crept into many of them,
in reference to the distribution of the property belonging to the
monks in each monastery, also added fresh elements of discord; for the
laymen often retained possession of these portions and diminished by so
much the resources of the community, which none the less continued to
shelter the needy, to feed the hungry, and to bestow alms.

Whilst Battista Spagnuolo, of Mantua, General of the Carmelite
Order, and one of the most celebrated Latin poets of the fifteenth
century, vainly endeavoured to reform his ill-disciplined monks, St.
Bernardine of Sienna (1380–1446), more fortunate if not more gifted,
set a practical example by joining the order of St. Francis, with
the intention of introducing the needed reforms. He founded three
hundred houses of the Brethren of the Stricter Observance, which
were urgently needed at a period when Europe was being devastated by
three scourges--the plague, famine, and the sword. At about the same
epoch, St. Colette of Corbie succeeded, by the exercise of an angelic
sweetness, in correcting the abuses which had found their way into
the convent of the St. Clare and many other female congregations,
more recently formed under the Franciscan rules; St. Francis, of
Romagna, instituted the Collatine order (1425), and St. Jeanne de
Valois, daughter of Louis XI. (1464–1505), founded the community of the
Sisterhood of the Annunciation, at Bourges, where her husband, the Duke
of Orleans, had banished her, previous to repudiating the marriage.
This virtuous princess was guided by the counsels of the Calabrian, St.
Francis of Paula, the celebrated founder of the order of the Minimi
(1416–1507), who, when summoned to France by Louis XI., and resident
in Touraine under the eye of that most suspicious and mistrustful
of monarchs, had so far won his confidence as to induce the king to
prepare for death like a Christian.

The Barnabites, and other religious institutions of more or less
importance, which had principally in view the conversion of heretics by
preaching, date from the close of the fifteenth century, and the origin
of many of them was due to the spirit of morality and philanthropy
then in vogue. Thus the first house of the Penitents, founded at Paris
in 1496 by a Gray Friar under the name of Tisseran, afterwards became
celebrated for its wholesome example amid the dissolute morals of the
sixteenth century.

  [Illustration: Fig. 262.--St. Theresa, the Reformer of the
  Carmelites, who died in 1582.--From a Portrait of the period
  engraved in the “Iconografia Española” of M. Carderera.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 263.--The Great Martyrdom of Nangasaki (Sept.
  10, 1622), in which twenty-two missionaries and native Christians
  were burnt to death, and thirty others, including several women
  and children, beheaded, in presence of a vast crowd.--From a
  Japanese water-colour Drawing of the period, preserved in the
  Gésu Convent at Rome.--Pope Pius IX. commemorated this event by
  the beatification of two hundred and five martyrs, which was
  decreed at Rome on the 7th of July, 1867.]

A great literary event, though only indirectly connected with the
history of the monastic orders, nevertheless enables us to form an
accurate judgment as to the intellectual character of the religious
houses during the last thirty-five years of the fifteenth century,
and the first years of the sixteenth: we refer to the invention of
printing. Whatever may have been the causes that induced these houses
to encourage the extension of printing, the action of each community
is made manifest by its achievements in that vast laboratory which
typographical art had founded, in the stead of a few cells and studies
where the human hand had been wearily transcribing manuscript after
manuscript.

In an obscure monastery at Subiaco, near Rome, two printers from
Mayence, Sweynheym and Pannartz, guests of the monks, published the
first edition of Lactantius, followed by several other valuable
works of ecclesiastical authors (1465–1467); in the monastery of
St. Eusebius, within the walls of Rome, George Laver, of Würzburg,
printed many publications, about 1470. Several clerks brought up in
the episcopal schools of Metz, Liége, Mayence, and Tuscany--Adam Rot,
Paul Leenen, Ulric Zell, and Jacob Caroli--superintended in person
printing-offices at Rome, Cologne, and Florence, which were worthy
rivals of those which were being established in every direction by
ordinary traders. Colard Mansion, a clerk belonging to a community at
Bruges, who was specially entrusted with the copying of manuscripts
(1414–1473) conceived the idea of substituting for the tedious process
of the pen and the engraving pencil the rapidity of movable types
and screw printing-presses. The Brethren of the Common Life, his
colleagues, who were settled at Rhingau, near Mayence, at Val St.
Marie, Nuremberg, at Cologne, and at Rostock, imitated the example of
Colard Mansion, and from mere calligraphists became master-printers
(1474–1479). Two theological doctors of the Sorbonne, William Fichet
and Jehan de la Pierre, also induced three skilful German workmen,
Ulric Gering, Martin Crantz, and Michael Friburger, to come to Paris,
where they provided them with a place to set up their presses and to
establish a workshop (1470). This was the origin of printing in Paris.
Two years later, William Caxton obtained leave to print in England,
beneath the roof of Westminster Abbey; while in Switzerland, a canon
of Munster (in Argovia), Hélias Hélye (1472, 1473), had some small
presses at work. Soon after this, the Dominicans, the Carthusians, and
the Carmelites established large printing workshops at Pisa, Parma,
Genoa, and Metz (1476–1482); the Franciscans, surnamed _Frères
Conférenciers_, who had a settlement near Gaude, in Holland, also
opened a printing-office; and lastly, such celebrated orders as those
of Cluny and Cîteaux, branches of the Benedictines, sent for workmen to
their houses in Burgundy, at Clervaux, in Champagne, and Montserrat in
Catalonia, to print the principal liturgical books, which were termed
the books of common prayer.

The members of the Order of Jesus, founded in Paris by the Spanish
nobleman St. Ignatius Loyola, on his return from a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land (1534), from this period devoted themselves closely to the
work of social regeneration--an undertaking which, looked at in all
its different phases, seemed as if it could only be brought about by
means of religious reform. While St. Francis Xavier, the friend and
companion of St. Ignatius, made use of the influence of the Order of
Jesus to convert the idolatrous peoples in the Indian Ocean (Fig.
263), the Jesuit clerks, a learned and highly intellectual body, in a
short time obtained a hold over the whole world, forming one vast army
which answered as one man to the commands of the Holy See, and whose
representatives were everywhere to be met with, in the professorial
chairs, in the schools, in the affairs of State, and more especially in
the various domains of literature, science, and art. Thus the sixteenth
century, during which Luther and Calvin made such an onslaught upon
the Catholic Church and the monastic orders, gave birth to a new
religious order, which, though the most recent, was the most powerful
and invincible of them all. Luther, who had worn the cowl in the
monastery of the Augustines at Erfurt, and Calvin, who had been canon
in the chapter of Noyon, urged the Huguenots to make away with the
monasteries; but their number only seemed to increase whenever one of
them was destroyed by the sacrilegious hands of the heretics.

  [Illustration: Fig. 264.--Seal of the Monastery of St. Louis of
  Poissy, belonging to the Order of Preaching Brothers of the St.
  Dominic rule.--St. Louis, with a halo round his head, is covering
  with the folds of his cloak the people who are imploring him for
  protection.]




                       CHARITABLE INSTITUTIONS.

   Christian Charity in the First Centuries of the Church.--The
   Eastern Empresses.--The Holy Roman Ladies.--Olympiade, Melanie,
   Marcella, and Paula.--Charity at the Court of the Franks.--St.
   Margaret of Scotland and Matilda of England.--Hedwige of
   Poland.--Origin of the Lazar-houses.--The Lazarists in France
   and in England.--Progress and Vicissitudes of the Order of
   St. Lazarus.--The Foundations of St. Louis.--The Order of
   Mercy founded by St. Nolasque.--St. Catherine of Sienna and
   St. Francis.--Bernardin Obrégon.--Jean de Dieu.--Philippe de
   Néri.--Antoine Yvan.


At Christ’s coming, the Greco-Roman civilisation had reached the
last stages of corruption, and the slavery of the vast majority of
men failed to satisfy the thirst for supremacy which devoured the
small section of privileged leaders in ancient society. The barbarian
peoples, on their part, recognised no other power than that of brute
force, nor any other pleasures than those of sanguinary orgies. To
transform this condition of society, which toiled only for money
and sensual enjoyment, Christ gave forth these touching and sublime
words, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: blessed are the pure in heart”
(_Beati pauperes spiritu: beati mundo corde_). To the savage
spirit of the barbarian who deified brute force Christ opposed the
reverence for all that is weak and feeble by clothing himself with all
manner of infirmities: “Come, ye blessed of my Father; I was poor, I
was sick, I was in prison, and ye comforted me; inasmuch as ye have
done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it
unto me.”

In these powerful words was contained the germ of modern civilisation;
wherever the Gospel reaches a feeling of tenderness and respect for the
poor and the weak must go hand in hand with the spirit of chastity,
self-denial, and devotion. Two words unknown to the old world sum up
this transformation--humility and charity. The rich, the high-born,
and even the offspring of royalty, from the moment they believe in the
divine word, are found tending the sick in hospitals, and the proof
of true belief in the Messiah is ever the same as that which He gave
to attest his divine mission to John’s disciples: “Unto the poor the
Gospel is preached.”

  [Illustration: Fig. 265.--Hospitality.--Jesus Christ, represented
  as a Pilgrim, being received by two Preaching Brothers of the
  Order of St. Dominic.--Fresco-painting by Fra Angelico in St.
  Mark’s Convent at Florence (Fifteenth Century).]

From the first days of Christianity we find the great apostle of
the Gentiles recommending the giving of alms, and stimulating the
generosity of the faithful. “If the amount collected,” he says, “makes
it worth while, I will come myself and take it to our brethren.” The
apostles appointed deacons to distribute the alms. One of those who
reflected the greatest honour on this appointment was St. Laurentius,
the noble martyr. He had seen his bishop, his spiritual father, led out
to execution, and he became entrusted with the care of the property of
his church (Fig. 266). The prefect of the prætorium said to him, “I
know that you have gold and silver vessels for your sacrifices; let me
have these treasures, which the prince requires for maintaining his
troops.” The holy deacon replied, “I know that our church is rich; I
will let you have all its most valuable contents, but you must give me
three days to put everything in order.” He made use of this delay to
bring together the poor whom he maintained, and divided the silver and
gold amongst them. The prefect came upon the appointed day, and St.
Laurentius, pointing to the crowd of halt and poor, said with a saintly
pride, which he afterwards expiated by his martyrdom, “Here are the
treasures which I promised you; the real gold is the divine light which
illuminates these poor men, the disciples and brethren of Jesus Christ.”

  [Illustration: Fig. 266.--Pope Sixtus II. handing to St.
  Laurentius, in 258, the Treasures of the Church, to be
  distributed amongst the Poor.--Fresco, painted by Fra Angelico,
  in the Chapel of Nicholas V. in the Vatican (Fifteenth Century).]

Thus Christian charity began in the days of the apostles, and went
on increasing even amidst persecution; but it did not reach its full
expansion until the conversion of the Emperor Constantine at length
obtained for the Church peace and liberty.

Helen, the wife of Constantius Chlorus, and mother of Constantine
(247–328), may be regarded as having most brilliantly inaugurated the
era of Christian charity in the Middle Ages. Simple and modest, kind
to the suffering and to the needy, she tended and consoled the poor
with maternal solicitude; her fortune was exclusively devoted to their
relief. When, in her extreme old age, this pious lady went to visit the
Holy Places in Palestine, she made most munificent gifts to the sick
soldiers, whom the imperial government left without relief; also to the
places where the inhabitants were poor; and to the religious houses
and churches, whose mission it was “to succour the suffering members
of Jesus Christ” (Fig. 265), according to the figurative expression
which the new faith used to characterize human misery. She recalled the
exiles, ransomed the captives, released from the mines the unfortunate
men who had been condemned to labour underground, and obtained for them
the means of living in open daylight, thus causing them to bless her
name and that of her God. Her daughter Constance also devoted herself
to works of charity; she was accompanied by a band of maidens whom she
animated with her example--and this was, in fact, the first school of
Sisters of Charity.

Despite the religious disputes of this century, Christian charity
did not stop here; it received a further impulse during the reign of
Theodosius, thanks to Placilla his wife, and to Pulcheria his daughter,
both of whom were canonised after death. Placilla and Pulcheria were
the guardian angels of the imperial palace, Placilla especially
being full of compassion for all those who were in distress. She
would go, without attendant, to visit the poor in their hovels; she
passed whole days with the sick in the infirmaries attached to the
canonical churches and convents, never shrinking from any charitable
service, however repugnant it might be. Pulcheria, a worthy rival of
her mother, was associated with her in all these good works by their
eloquent panegyrist, St. Gregory of Nyssa. She was, nevertheless,
outdone by another Pulcheria, grand-daughter of the great Theodosius,
who was called _augusta_, and who already, at the death of her
father the Emperor Arcadius, though at that time only sixteen, was a
model of piety and wisdom; she established so severe a rule of life
and such complete asceticism around her, that her palace was commonly
“the convent” (_asceterium vulgo diceretur_). For forty years she
reigned like a saint and a great empress, and this period was for the
Church a golden age.

  [Illustration: Fig. 267.--The Holy Brothers, Cosmas and Damianus
  (end of the Third Century), visiting a sick man and relieving
  him.--Picture on wood, by Francesco Peselli, in the Louvre
  (Fifteenth Century).]

Many other heroines of Christian charity descended from an illustrious
family at that time exiled in the forests of Pontus, were also
distinguished by the same virtues; to wit, Emmelia, mother of St.
Basilius, Macrina his aunt, and Macrina his sister, who were true
servants of the poor, undertaking as they did long journeys to
discover unknown suffering, with a view to its relief. Anthusa,
mother of St. John Chrysostom, suffered great privations in order to
give away as much as possible, whilst Olympiade, widow of a prefect
of Constantinople, and heiress of an immense fortune, distributed
her money with ungrudging freedom. The emperor, who was anxious to
marry Olympiade to a member of his own family, deprived her of the
management of her property, but afterwards restored it to her, knowing
what a noble use she would make of it. Olympiade visited the sick, the
orphans, the widows, and the aged, gave alms to the prisoners and the
exiles, and ransomed the captives, for her liberality knew no bounds;
she was, moreover, seconded in her works of charity by ecclesiastical
virgins (_vierges ecclésiastiques_), devoted to the service of
God. Never was woman’s apostolic mission more effective, nor had
charity more zealous servants.

The wonderful influence which Olympiade and her companions exercised
in the Christian world, towards the close of the fourth century, was
derived from their ardent charity, which radiated from Constantinople
throughout the whole empire, and awoke a sympathetic response at Rome,
Milan, Lyons, Trèves, Rheims, &c. Thus Melanie, the elder daughter of
the Consul Marcellinus, Proba, Falconia, St. Juliana, St. Demetriada,
St. Paula, mother of St. Ambrose, and her daughter St. Marcellina,
Roman ladies of the highest rank, were endowed with the heroism of
the Roman character purified by the Christian religion. St. Ambrose,
who has given us so touching an account of their good works, calls
them “the august brides of Jesus Christ.” They dwelt with their own
families, but passed nearly all their time in workshops, where they
laboured together for the benefit of the poor, leaving off their
occupations only to sing hymns, recite psalms, attend church for the
hearing of God’s word, sharing with each other the task of instructing
the people, distributing alms to the poor, and giving succour to the
weak. Thus was prepared the way for the first charitable institutions
which were called into existence at the bidding of Melanie the Younger,
Fabiola, St. Paulina, and St. Pammachius, thanks to the help given by
a great number of Roman ladies whose lives set an example of all the
Christian virtues.

Whilst St. Melanie the Younger was exciting the enthusiasm of
the Catholic world by her ardent charity, St. Marcella, the most
illustrious of the gifted daughters of St. Jerome, was the pride and
admiration of the Roman aristocracy. Gifted in the very highest degree
both in respect to birth, wealth, grace, and beauty, at a time, too,
when these rare endowments were rendered such a source of peril, owing
to the capture of the Eternal City by Alaric (410), she had withdrawn
to a modest dwelling on the Aventine Hill, with Principia, a young
maiden recommended to her by St. Jerome. Here she had to submit to
every kind of outrage, without permitting her zeal to be lessened by
this cruel trial. She afterwards opened a fresh centre of charity,
having founded not far from Rome the Convent of the Relieving Virgins
(_Vierges Secourables_), which was taken as a model for many
similar institutions throughout Italy.

  [Illustration: Fig. 268.--Robert I., Duke of Burgundy, having
  slain his father-in-law, builds the Church of Sémur to
  expiate the crime, and has the parricide represented on the
  building.--Tympan in the portico of the Church of Sémur (Eleventh
  Century).]

Her friend St. Paula, who was Roman by birth, and a descendant of the
Scipios, whose daughters were saints, whose theatre of action was in
the East, whose tomb was at Bethlehem, and whose panegyrist was St.
Jerome, followed in her footsteps. A widow at thirty, she effected a
sweeping change in her own household and property, set all her slaves
at liberty, and devoted herself to doing good; then shrouding herself
in an incomparable modesty, and breaking off all her social ties, she
emigrated to Palestine, where she worked miracles of charity. Long
before her death, in 404, she had distributed all her worldly wealth
to the poor. She had herself become so needy that it was necessary to
borrow money to pay for her funeral, and her beloved daughter, who
closed her eyes, inherited nothing but her faith and charity.

The marvels of charity wrought by the Christian ladies for two
centuries were imitated in the fifth by many bishops, who had in
turn become missionaries and dispensers of alms. St. Paulinus, the
illustrious Bishop of Nolo, who died in 431 at the age of eighty,
after having for forty years fed, clothed, and comforted the poor of
his diocese, after having released the insolvent debtors from prison,
ransomed the captives, and allowed himself to be sold as a slave to
the barbarians in order to rescue from their hands the son of an
unfortunate widow, is the most perfect type of the prelates of this
remarkable epoch. Amongst his many other remarkable contributions to
literature, must be cited his “Discourse on Almsgiving,” which is an
eloquent exposition of his doctrine. St. Paulinus, by his teaching and
his example, had formed an eminent school of disciples, amongst them
Sulpicius Severus (363–420), who, in concert with some pious ladies of
the Roman aristocracy, seems to have been desirous of inaugurating a
new era of things in the reign of Gregory the Great.

The ransom of the captives was the most urgent of the works of charity
in the sixth century, for the wars and invasions of the barbarians had
reduced whole populations to slavery; and so the Church devoted all its
resources and efforts to this work of redemption, Pope Gregory deeming
no sacrifice too great for furthering it. He was, moreover, powerfully
seconded by the earnest efforts of women who constituted themselves
the humble handmaids of Jesus Christ. The Empress Constantina, her
sister-in-law Theodissa, St. Sopatra, and St. Damienna, all of whom
were imperial princesses, sent him enormous sums from Constantinople;
the Empress Leontia, Theodelinda, Queen of the Lombards, and her
son Theodoaldus acted in a similar manner. As Christianity extended
westward, the bright light of charity radiated in the same direction.
St. Adelberga, wife of the first Christian King of England, and her
daughter Bertha, wife of Ethelbert, King of Kent, were zealous in the
cause of benevolence upon their conversion to the faith.

This impulse given to the Christian spirit did not slacken: St.
Clotilda, Queen of the Franks, who was guided by the counsels of the
Archbishop of Rheims, the eminent doctor St. Remigius; St. Albofleda,
sister of Clovis; St. Radegonda of Thuringia, wife of King Clotaire,
who founded a hospital at Athies, and a monastery at Poitiers; and St.
Bathilda, of noble birth, who, after degrading herself to the humble
condition of slavery, shared the throne of Neustria as the wife of
Clovis II., were so many heroines of charity. Bathilda, in the course
of a long and wise administration of affairs (645–680), was the good
angel of the unfortunate. The abbot St. Gènes was her almoner, and
her privy councillors were St. Eloi, St. Owen, St. Leger--venerable
prelates whose active and pious co-operation was in perfect harmony
with the prompting of her own heart. She founded abbeys, and, what was
even more useful, increased the number of hospitals which were built
in every direction. The royal abbey of Chelles, near Paris, founded by
Queen Clotilda and rebuilt by Bathilda, and another monastery which
she constructed after the same plan, were establishments of religious
education, literary instruction, and benevolence.

  [Illustration: Fig. 269.--Works of Charity.--Reduced Fac-simile
  of a Drawing of the Fifteenth Century, attributed to Savonarola,
  in the National Collection of Drawings. The artist shows the
  practice of works of mercy being carried on in each of the
  detached cottages, the mottoes recalling the texts in which
  Christ intimates that at the Last Judgment the exercise of
  Charity will weigh heaviest in the scale. In No. 1, the sick are
  being tended in their beds or picked up in the streets; in No.
  2, the people are being clothed; No. 3 represents travellers who
  are being given to drink; No. 4, the hungry receiving bread; No.
  5, pilgrims being sheltered; No. 6, a dead body being prepared
  for burial; No. 7, the visiting of prisoners. The last scene is
  a sanctuary in which the divine sacrifice--the true source of
  Christian charity--is being celebrated, whilst a penitent is
  obtaining the remission of his sins because he has practised
  charity. In the foreground rich men are throwing their money into
  a heap, and the poor are receiving their share of it. The monk
  whose bust is seen to the left is perhaps Bernardin de Feltri,
  preaching in encouragement of this good work.]

During the eighth and ninth centuries, a great number of hospitable
houses were built upon the high-roads leading from France to Italy,
from France to Spain, and also from Spain to the confines of civilised
Germany. The Carlovingian kings, beginning with Charlemagne and ending
with Charles the Bald, with the view of facilitating international
commerce throughout the vast extent of their empire, ordered the
establishment of a number of free houses of which travellers might
make halting-places, and in which they could count upon finding not
only security, but any assistance which they might require. The
establishment of lazar-houses or lazarettos, the origin of which dates
from the fifth century, seems to have been less a work of charity
than a sanitary measure of precaution against leprosy, a terrible and
incurable malady which was generally looked upon as a punishment from
heaven. These lazar-houses increased in the West, as the relations of
Europe with the East became more general. It is from this period also
that may be dated the foundation of many _Hôtels-Dieu_, religious
asylums, most of which were constructed in close proximity to the porch
of the cathedral churches, taking the place of the ancient canonical
infirmaries. Such was the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris, the origin of which is
lost in the obscurities of the Middle Ages.

After an interval of dejection and selfishness which must be attributed
to the misfortunes that overwhelmed the peoples and ruined the Church,
Christian charity, though permanent and persistent in each diocese,
though too often ineffectual, was the distinguishing characteristic of
several contemporary sovereigns. Edward the Elder, son of Alfred the
Great (900–925), surnamed in the Roman breviary “the father of the poor
and of the orphan,” must be mentioned as the first of them, for the
various benevolent institutions which he created were never a burden
upon his subjects, the whole cost coming out of his private revenues.

Canute I., leader of the Danes, converted to Christianity by a French
princess to whom he was married, did as much good at the close of his
reign as he had done evil in the early part of it by his persecution
of the Christians (1016–1036). Olaus or Olaf of Sweden, and Olaus of
Norway, King of the Scandinavians, founders of two Christian monarchies
in the North, intermixed works of charity with dogmatic principles,
and rendered the religion of Christ popular by making it contribute
to the welfare of their subjects. But the two noblest types of the
Christian Church in Northern Europe during the eleventh century were
Queen Margaret, wife of Malcolm, King of Scotland (1070–1095), and St.
Matilda their daughter, wife of Henry I. of England.

Margaret, the mother of the poor, the consoler of the afflicted,
looking upon her subjects as a large family committed to her charge
by providence, underwent constant privations that she might have more
to distribute in alms; she relieved sufferers before they had time to
ask for help; inquired into hidden distress; sought out the insolvent
debtors in order to free them from their liabilities; ransomed the
prisoners of war, and visited constantly the hospitals which she had
endowed or founded. Before sitting down to table, she washed the
feet and dressed the wounds of the sick poor, while nine orphans and
twenty-four widows or aged persons were always partakers of her meals.
During Advent and Lent she had as many as three hundred at her table.

Her daughter Matilda, who was also canonised, survived her more than
twenty-six years (1118). She founded two hospitals in London, and took
great pleasure in visiting them, and tending the inmates with her own
hands.

  [Illustration: Fig. 270.--St. Elizabeth of Hungary, going to
  relieve the poor, suddenly sees the folds of her cloak covered
  with roses in full bloom.--From a Painting by Fra Angelico in the
  Academy of Fine Arts at Perugia (Fifteenth Century).]

Before her day there was another St. Matilda, who was early instructed
in the exercise of charity, first by her august mother, and afterwards
by her grandmother, abbess of a convent at Erfurt, where she spent
several years: she was a woman of true piety. She married the Emperor
Henry, surnamed the Fowler, and owing to the wars in which her husband
was constantly engaged, the regency was often entrusted to her. When
she had resigned these high functions, which were very burdensome to
her, she again became the influential adviser of the emperor, the
counsellor of justice, the minister of clemency, and the friend of
the unfortunate. Left a widow, she retired, when her son succeeded his
father on the throne, to her favourite convent of Northausen, a vast
charitable foundation in which three thousand maidens belonging to the
first families of Germany passed their lives in holy meditation, and in
the relief of human suffering. Her three children, the Emperor Otho I.,
the Archbishop Bruno, the apostle of Germany, and Queen Gerberga, wife
of Louis d’Outremer, King of France, reflected the virtues of their
mother; but the memory of St. Matilda of Germany was still more vividly
awakened in the person of her grand-daughter St. Adelaide, and of her
great-grand-daughter Emma, wife of King Lothair.

Under the Emperor Henry II., surnamed the Pious, and the Empress
Cunegunda, charitable establishments, hospitals, houses of relief, and
places of refuge increased very largely, and when Conrad came to the
throne at the death of Henry II., the empress-regent retired to the
convent of Kaffung, which she had founded in the diocese of Paderborn,
and devoted herself to the service of the poor and the sick who were
under the special care of this institution.

Dambrooka, daughter of the despotic Boleslav, Duke of Bohemia, and
wife of a duke of Poland whose hardness of heart she succeeded in
softening, afterwards mother of Boleslav the Great, together with the
Princess Adelaide of Poland, mother of St. Stephen I., the most famous
of the Hungarian kings, were both celebrated for their charity and
self-devotion, and, with St. Margaret of Scotland, Matilda of England,
Matilda of Germany, and Adelaide of Germany, they prepared the way
for St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207–1231), who reflected so faithfully
the angelic disposition of her aunt Hedwiga, the patron-saint of the
kingdom of Poland. It would seem, indeed, as if they all followed the
same programme of benevolence. St. Hedwiga, daughter of the Duke of
Carinthia, who by her marriage with Boleslav the Modest became Duchess
of Poland and Silesia, created a new kind of charitable institution
which was calculated to bring about the best results. She founded a
convent of the Carthusian order at Trebnitz, of which her daughter
Gertrude became an inmate, with the view of devoting it specially
to the education, the marriage, and the dowry of girls who had been
left unprovided for. She enriched it with very large donations, and
a thousand needy persons were fed there every day, exclusive of the
abundant alms and relief in kind which the community distributed
without its walls.

At this epoch, the Abbey of Longchamps, near Paris, began its
existence with the modest and touching title of “the Humility of our
Lady.” Isabella, the only sister of Louis IX., whom the saintly monarch
made the minister of his bounty and kindness to the suffering, was the
foundress of this institution. The nuns at Longchamps educated and
maintained poor girls, and distributed the rest of their revenues in
alms. Their rules, a model of good sense, wisdom, and charity, approved
of by St. Bonaventura, were copied by several similar establishments.
Isabella, who had consecrated herself to the service of God by taking
the veil, besides instructing, caring for, and feeding the poor, also
worked for them with her own hands. She established in the abbey a kind
of workshop in which ladies of the highest rank, while singing hymns
and reciting prayers, spun wool and made garments for the poor.

The Crusades, what with the additional calls which they made on public
charity, and the epidemic diseases which they brought, had rendered
greater development of works of mercy absolutely indispensable. Works
of charity are, in fact, the most marked characteristics of the reigns
of Louis VII., Philip Augustus, and Louis IX. (1179–1270); most notably
of the last, in which the saint-king set all his contemporaries such
an example of Christian self-denial. We possess, under the title
_Etablissements de Saint Louis_, a collection of the laws and
ordinances framed by this great monarch, and forming an administrative
code which displays wonderful sagacity, firmness, and forethought. His
saintly mother, Blanche of Castille, to whose counsels he perhaps paid
too little heed, seems to have taken a prominent part in the drawing up
of this admirable code, which seems to breathe the true spirit of the
Gospel. In St. Louis’s numerous and important charitable foundations,
such as the Quinze-vingts, the Maison-Dieu, enlarged and endowed in
Paris, the Hostelleries des Postes, in the chief towns of the kingdom,
we recognise the collective work of this great king and his mother, who
threw their love for humanity into the scale of politics (Fig. 271).

The angel of charity spread its wings over the West and the East, and
whatever might be the final result of so many distant wars which were
on that account the more perilous, they could not fail to bring about
an infinite increase of benevolent institutions. The most important,
in point of utility, was the extension of the hospitaller order of St.
Lazarus.

  [Illustration: Fig. 271.--St. Louis serving a Repast to the
  Poor.--Miniature from the “Petites Heures” of Anne of Brittany,
  which belonged to Catherine de Medicis (beginning of the
  Sixteenth Century), in the Library of M. Ambroise Firmin-Didot.]

The Lazarists had two hospitals in Jerusalem, when Godfroi de Bouillon
entered the holy city with the Crusaders (1099). Subsequently Louis
VIII., having induced these monks to send some of their brethren to
France, settled them outside Paris at the extreme end of the Faubourg
St. Denis, in the lazaretto originally founded by Queen Adelaide, wife
of Louis le Gros. These monks were also endowed with a rich domain at
Boigny, near Orleans (1154), which afterwards became the head-quarters
of their order. Louis VII., who had seen female communities in the
East devoted to the tending of lepers, and who wished to create similar
ones in France, founded a house at La Saussaie, near Villejuif, where
nuns had charge of leprous women, and he assigned them, as a revenue,
the tithe on the wine brought into Paris, which belonged by right to
the king and queen. This establishment rapidly became rich: Philip
Augustus bequeathed to it at his death all his gold and silver seals,
on condition that prayers should be said on behalf of himself and
the members of his family; other sovereigns gave it the privilege of
claiming, at the death of a king or a prince of the house of France,
his linen, his mules, the state-horses, and all the other horses used
at his funeral, together with all the mourning harness and drapery.
These privileges were so fully recognised, and the rights of the nuns
so completely understood, that, a century and a half later, after
the death of King John in England, eight hundred pounds (800 livres
parisis) were paid to this convent as an indemnity for the horses
which, owing to the death of the insolvent monarch in captivity, had
not been bequeathed. Charles VI. paid the convent 2,500 livres to buy
back the horses belonging to his father, Charles V.

A lazar-house had also been established by Louis VII. at Etampes, in
an ancient hospital for indigent lepers, and the monks of this house,
being entitled to call themselves _maîtres_ and _frères_,
were authorised to hold chapters and to sign their own capitulary
documents. Their founder assigned them valuable property, with right of
petty and ordinary justice, with right of toll, of market, &c. Several
institutions of a similar kind were also set up in different parts of
France, for the public health required that persons afflicted with
leprosy should be provided with asylums where they could not come in
contact with any one. Henry II., King of England and Duke of Normandy
(1133–1189), founded one house at Rouen for lepers and for the monks
in charge of them, and another in the forest of Rouvrai, not far from
Rouen, for leprous women, with the condition that their nurses should
be ladies of noble birth. Henry II., moreover, in founding a number of
lazarettos in England, did for his kingdom what Louis VII. had done for
France upon a much smaller scale. Both were seconded by the aristocracy
of their respective countries, as the progressive development of a
disease which science deemed incurable was beginning to cause great
alarm.

  [Illustration: Fig. 272.--The Banner of a Flemish Lazaretto
  with the Arms of the Gruthuyse Family, dating from 1502.--From
  a painted Curtain preserved among the Collection of Engravings
  in the National Library. The picture refers to the life of St.
  Lazarus. In the middle are the Virgin and St. Lazarus, the latter
  with traces of the sores which the dogs licked. In the top
  medallion to the left is the rich man driving Lazarus from his
  door. Opposite, Lazarus is standing at the rich man’s door, while
  a dog licks his sores. Below, the rich man is upon his death-bed,
  with an evil spirit waiting to carry off his soul. Upon the
  opposite side, Lazarus is lying dead upon the bare ground, but a
  dove is bearing his soul to heaven. The donors of the banner are
  kneeling before the Virgin and St. Lazarus. The clapper (which
  was used to announce the approach of the lepers) is depicted
  eight times in the border.]

Richard Cœur-de-Lion, King of England, also supported the Order of St.
Lazarus, which he had seen doing good service during the Crusades.
The Lazarists, both men and women, who had taken up their abode at
Jerusalem, Acre, Jericho, and Bethany, were looked upon with admiration
even by Saladin, who permitted them to remain in the first-named
city a year after its capture. They were also favourably treated by
the Emperor Frederick II., who, in his fierce disputes with Rome,
had occasion to notice their pacific and conciliatory spirit. His
contemporary and friend, Andrew II., King of Hungary, and father of St.
Elizabeth, combined with his daughter and with his son-in-law, Louis
VI., Landgrave of Thuringia, to increase the lazarettos throughout
Germany. The hospital of St. Mary Magdalene at Gotha, which was founded
by St. Elizabeth, and richly endowed by her family, was administered
by the Lazarists, who “received travellers and needy wayfarers.”
Detachments of the same order gave succour in Saxony, Poland, the
banks of the Elbe, the Danube, and the Maine. Wherever the brethren
were established they recognised the authority of the grand-master,
who resided at Boigny, in France, and the sovereignty of the King of
France. They all followed the rules of St. Augustine, and lived in
conformity with the statutes which commanded them to visit the sick
with pious zeal, to tend, feed, and clothe persons afflicted with
incurable diseases, and to receive charitably the pilgrims, the poor,
the desolate, and those who were unable to earn their livelihood. The
order, though at times a warlike one in the Holy Land, was never any
but a hospitallers’ order in Europe.

During the latter half of the thirteenth century, various papal bulls,
decisions of councils, and official sentences testify very clearly to
the eminently hospitable character of the Lazarists; and these good
brethren, far from confining themselves to the care of the lepers whose
numbers diminished daily, relieved every variety of infirmity and
sickness, and succoured all kinds of misery and suffering.

The downfall of the Knights Templars, who had been rivals of the
Knights of St. Lazarus, in respect both of fortune and influence,
proved advantageous to the latter. The greater the severity shown
towards the Templars, the greater was the protection accorded to the
Lazarists, the Knights of St. John, and all the orders designated in
the papal bulls as _hospitalarii milites_, that is, warriors or
knights of hospitality and charity.

In the time of St. Louis, a Languedoc knight called Nolasque,
touched with pity for the fate of the unhappy captives, men, women,
and children, who were daily falling into the hands of the Barbary
corsairs, and sold like cattle in the Eastern slave-markets, conceived
the philanthropic idea of instituting an order of “Mercy,” or Ransom.
He died in 1236, after having had the satisfaction of seeing this
charitable undertaking make great progress. The Brethren of Mercy
preached and collected arms for the ransoming of the captives; they
then crossed the seas with the produce of their appeals to buy them
back, and, if the sum was insufficient, they gave themselves to slavery
in exchange for the unhappy prisoners. The Christian religion was alone
capable of inspiring such feelings of self-devotion.

  [Illustration: Fig. 273.--The Seven Christian Virtues, with
  their Symbols.--From a Miniature in the “Ethics of Aristotle”
  (Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century), Rouen Library.

  On the left are the Theological Virtues: _Faith_, dressed
  as a nun, is holding a church, a New Testament, and a wax taper;
  _Hope_, in the garb of a peasant girl, has a ship upon her
  head, a cage beneath her feet, a beehive and a spade in her
  hands; _Charity_ is a young woman standing on a hot oven,
  with a pelican upon her head, and her hair falling loose upon
  her shoulders; she has in her hands a bleeding heart and the
  monogram of Christ surrounded with flames of fire. Then come
  the Cardinal Virtues: _Temperance_, balancing upon the
  sails of a windmill, a bridle in her mouth, a clock upon her
  forehead, and a telescope in her hand; _Justice_, standing
  on the seat of justice, with scales at her girdle, and balancing
  swords; _Prudence_ is in the garb of a nun, and is weighed
  down under her symbols, viz. a coffin, a mirror, a sieve, and
  the shield of faith; lastly, _Strength_, mounted on a
  screw-press, and with an anvil on her head, is holding a donjon
  in one hand, while she strangles a dragon with the other.]

Leprosy, however, still prevailed, and was, moreover, complicated
with strange and unknown epidemics which spread terror everywhere and
depopulated the cities of the West. It was then that Providence raised
up a few saintly women and holy confessors who, amidst sickness and
death, pursued their charitable mission--such as St. Catherine of
Sienna (1347–1380); St. Bernardin of Sienna, who was born in the same
year that Catherine died (1380–1446); St. Frances, a Roman matron; St.
Juliana of Florence, and many others, who taught men that God only sent
them trials in order to render them more worthy of Him. St. Catherine,
from her youth, was a member of the Order of St. Dominic; she
distributed amongst the poor the patrimony which her father had left
her, and devoted herself to teaching and preaching to the salvation of
souls. When she took upon herself the further task of tending the sick,
she selected the most painful cases, those in which the sores were so
contagious and so fearful to behold that no one had the courage to come
near them. During the great plague at Florence (1374), her heroism was
something sublime; divine inspiration made up for a want of medical
skill, and she cured a great number of the plague-stricken; she saved,
perhaps, even more of those who were hardened in sin--a double miracle
of nature and of grace.

  [Illustration: Fig. 274.--Orphan of the Venice Hospitals in the
  Sixteenth Century.--From the work of Cesare Vecellio: octavo,
  1590.]

In spite of the terrible vicissitudes to which Europe and Asia were
exposed for two centuries, the Order of St. Lazarus never lost,
either in the West or in the East, its essentially _hospitable_
character. This it preserved, notwithstanding the impediments placed in
its way by the rivalry of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, and the
avowed preference of the Court of Rome for the latter--a preference
which was due to the fact that the Popes, who had never given up all
hope of recovering the Holy Land, were vexed to see the Lazarists
renouncing altogether their military functions to devote themselves
exclusively to the poor, the infirm, the sick, and the pilgrims. It
was, however, their purely charitable mission which obtained for them
the security, the protection, and the privileges which were everywhere
accorded them.

  [Illustration: Fig. 275.--The Great Hospital at Milan, founded in
  1456 by Duke Francis Sforza and his Wife.]

The chief authorities at Boigny, who had remained intact amidst the
ruin of the Order of the Templars, acted with extreme prudence; the
chapters were held very quietly, but always at fixed periods, and
the nature of their decisions, their choice of persons to direct the
branch establishments, their general administration of the property
of the poor, were such as to give no handle to hostile criticism and
malevolence. Moreover, it was the sole hospitable institution which was
in proper and continuous working order. The spirit which animated King
Louis and Queen Blanche had communicated itself to many of the lords
and ladies of their Court, who, as volunteer or auxiliary Lazarists,
devoted themselves to the service of the lepers and the sick. Such
were Elzéar de Sabran, Count of Arian, and his wife. Not only did
they assiduously frequent the lazarettos and do work as menial as it
was revolting, but they collected alms in concert with the Lazarist
brethren, and assisted them in the most painful of their duties.

  [Illustration: Fig. 276.--Knights of the Order of the Holy Ghost
  from pure intent.--“Ytem doyvent jeuner chascun jeudi de l’an si
  veullent ou ont le povoir, et se n’ont le povoir ou la volonté
  doyvent donner à mengier à trois poures en lonor du Pere, du Fils
  et du Saint-Esprit ou leur donner tant qu’il puissent avoir leur
  sustenance pour le jour” (old French).--From the Statutes of
  the Order of the Holy Ghost from pure intent, or of the Union,
  instituted at Naples in 1352, by Louis of Anjou, the first of
  that name, King of Jerusalem, Naples, and Sicily.--Manuscript
  of the Fourteenth Century, preserved in the Louvre (Musée des
  Souverains), now in the National Library, Paris.]

St. Cajetan the Dominican, so celebrated in the fifteenth century
for his controversy with Luther, his clerical institutions, and the
energy of his proceedings with regard to teaching and benevolence,
sowed the germs of the charitable congregations which, under various
names, afterwards constituted a splendid body of religious and
hospitable establishments. At Naples he founded the immense Hospital
for Incurables, the Mount of Mercy for the poor belonging to the better
classes, asylums for orphans, and houses of refuge for penitent women.
Nor was this all,--with a view to suppressing usury, which had ruined
so many families and prevented the unfortunate debtors from recovering
themselves, he conceived the idea of founding pawn establishments, and
a lady, the Contessa di Porto, procured him the sum of four million
pounds (Italian) to establish the first house which lent money at the
legal rate of interest (1469–1534).

  [Illustration: Fig. 277.--Margaret of York, third wife of Charles
  the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, one of the most charitable princesses
  of her time, who died at Mechlin in 1503.--She is represented on
  her knees between the four Doctors of the Church, St. Gregory,
  St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Ambrose. In the background is
  the Church of St. Gudule, at Brussels.--From a Miniature in a
  “Traité sur la Miséricorde,” translated from Latin into French
  by Nicholas Finet, Canon of Cambrai and Almoner to Margaret.
  (Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Burgundian Library,
  Brussels.)]

The saddening spectacle of human misery excited the sympathy of Jean de
Dieu, a Portuguese gentleman, who had successively fought against the
French, the Turks, and the Hungarians; after having led a licentious
life as a soldier, he devoted himself to healing the wounded and to the
care of the sick (1540). The wounds inflicted by fire-arms required
much more careful treatment than those caused by steel weapons, for
they were followed by suppuration of a contagious character, and other
dangerous consequences; they, moreover, entailed terrible operations,
which made an increase in the number of surgeons a matter of absolute
necessity. Jean de Dieu determined to make good this deficiency, and he
was the originator of the corps of hospital attendants and sick-nurses.
But the institution which he founded was not properly organized and
put in working order until after his death (1550), in the midst of the
Italian wars and the great struggles of France and Spain.

  [Illustration: Fig. 278.--St. Vincent de Paul.--Reduced
  Fac-simile of a Drawing by Edelmet (Seventeenth Century).]

Obregon and Jean de Dieu were both contemporaries of Philippe de Néri,
founder of the Order of the Oratory, a learned Florentine, animated
as much by the spirit of charity as by his fondness for religious
teaching. The beneficent institutions of St. Philip were perhaps but
the intelligent application upon a larger scale of the schemes of moral
reform so wisely conceived by St. Catherine of Sienna, St. Francis
the Roman, and St. Juliana. At about the same period, a Frenchman,
less celebrated than Philippe de Néri, but whose memory is cherished
by his compatriots in Provence, Antoine Yvan, inspired by the example
of the Somasques, the Crucifers, and the Scholopians (regular clerks
whose office it was to care for the orphans, the sick, and the poor),
endeavoured to collect in one institution, under the title of “Order
of the Religious Clerks of Mercy,” a staff entrusted with the task
of relieving these three classes of misery (1576–1653). And, lastly,
there appeared in France that great benefactor of suffering humanity,
St. Vincent de Paul, who, having taken orders in 1600, commenced his
apostleship just at the close of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
period, bequeathing to modern generations the admirable practice of
Christian charity, organized, regulated, and disseminated with wondrous
forethought amongst all grades of society in the Catholic world.

  [Illustration]




                             PILGRIMAGES.

   The first Pilgrimages to Jerusalem and Rome.--The
   Worship of the Martyrs.--Pilgrims’ Hospitals.--Images of
   the Virgin Mary.--Relics brought from the East by the
   Crusaders.--Celebrated Pilgrimages of Early Days.--The Roman
   Basilicas.--St. Nicholas de Bari.--Notre-Dame de Tersatz.--St.
   Jacques de Compostella.--Notre-Dame du Puy, de Liesse, de
   Chartres, de Rocamadour.--Pilgrimages in France, Germany,
   Poland, Russia, and Switzerland.


The first of the Christian pilgrimages were those made to the tomb
of Christ, when the apostles, the disciples, the mother of sorrow
(_mater dolorosa_), a few saintly women, and soon, no doubt,
many of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, paid their pious visits to the
sepulchre which the resurrection had robbed of its prey. Afterwards,
when the Gospel became known throughout the countries near Judæa, St.
Paul set the example of making a pilgrimage to the holy places--an
example which was followed by millions of the faithful in later ages.

  [Illustration: Fig. 279.--St. Denis carrying his Head to his
  place of burial: according to the old legend, he is supported by
  two angels, and followed by a Christian lady, St. Catulla, who
  is going to put him in his shroud. In the scene above, the body
  of the martyr is being prepared for burial.--After a Miniature
  in the “Vie de Monseigneur Sainct Denis,” Manuscript of the
  Fourteenth Century (National Library, Paris).]

In the third century, but even more so in the fourth, Christian men
and women of all nations visited the places mentioned in the Gospel as
having been the scenes of some episode in the life of Jesus Christ,
from the stable at Bethlehem to the Calvary of Golgotha. Amongst this
host of pilgrims, history has handed down to us the names of St.
Hilarius, St. Basilius the Great, and his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa,
who wrote a discourse concerning the visitors to Jerusalem; St. Jerome
also, with the Scriptures in his hand, made the solemn pilgrimage,
accompanied by learned theologians such as the Bishop of Gaza,
Porphyrius, and Rufinus of Aquileia, and by several saintly women,
Melanie, Paula, Fabiola, Eustochia, who were scarcely less erudite than
the doctors.

We find the proofs of these early pilgrimages in the inscriptions
traced with the point of the stylus, or merely with charcoal, upon
the plaster of the walls of the Catacombs at Rome. There are many in
the cemetery of St. Calixtus which give expression to pious thoughts,
touching prayers, and some interesting events. In the crypt of the
old church at Montmartre, where, as there is reason to believe, the
martyrdom of St. Denis (Fig. 279) and his companions took place, there
were found many similar inscriptions, which would seem to indicate that
there, as at Rome, the pilgrims have left traces of their visits.

The Catacombs at Rome are full of images of saints, painted in fresco
on a groundwork of glass or mosaics in coloured stones; and many of
them, some dating from the second and even from the first century of
the Church, seem to mark the stations at which the primitive pilgrims
halted or knelt or prayed.

The memory of any act which has excited admiration, or has impressed
itself vividly, long remains indelible in the heart of the people, to
which fact must be attributed the origin and long duration of a number
of pilgrimages which date from the early ages of Christianity. The
commemorative marks of these pilgrimages remained unknown to posterity,
until recourse was had to consecrated standards (_signa_), to
images, and to amulets which generally bore the monogram of Christ or
the sign of the redemption. The cross was never of the shape which
it assumed in the fourth century, being rather the cross termed
_commissa_ or _patibulata_--in the form of the Greek letter
tau (T), which, as tradition tells us, corresponded exactly to the
shape of the cross upon which our Lord suffered death. This kind of
cross is, in fact, to be seen on amulets or reliquaries of the third
century; it was embroidered on garments and engraved upon tombs. The
cross was thus the symbol of pilgrimage, as it was afterwards the
emblem of the Crusades.

  [Illustration: Fig. 280.--St. Barbara, a Maiden of Nicomedia, who
  suffered Martyrdom in the Third Century.--Drawn with the pen and
  pencil by John Van Eyck, called John of Bruges, in honour of the
  building of a church dedicated to her.--In the Museum at Antwerp
  (Fifteenth Century).]

The worship of relics, whatever be its origin, was a natural adjunct to
the worship of the tombs in which Christ’s confessors were laid, and
of the soil where their martyrdom had taken place; thus the smallest
fragment of a saint’s body, the most trifling piece of raiment, or
most insignificant object (_tantillæ reliquiæ_) that had belonged
to a blessed martyr, and more especially anything which represented a
material reminder of the glorious death which a Christian had won in
confessing the Gospel, was carefully preserved as a relic. Thus the
periods of persecution were the most favourable for the multiplication
of these relics. Almost before the martyr’s sufferings were over,
a crowd of believers invaded the amphitheatres and arenas, carried
off and concealed the mortal remains of the victim, collected his
precious blood in sponges, and almost fought for the very sand upon
which it was shed; and when the new saint had been laid in some sure
resting-place, they vied with each other in sprinkling sweet perfumes
over the body, in wrapping it up in white linen, and even in purple and
gold. His solemn interment afterwards took place in some sanctuary
(_loculum_) of the Catacombs, which was afterwards visited by
numerous and devout pilgrims who came to pay their pious homage to his
memory.

One of the earliest instances of this worship of the martyrs is
furnished us in the hagiography of St. Ignatius, who suffered martyrdom
at Rome in the reign of Trajan. We see therein how, in spite of the
armed attendants and heathen crowds which filled the amphitheatre where
the execution had taken place, some courageous Christians, at the risk
of their own lives, secured the remains of the prelate in order to
convey them to his own church at Antioch. In a letter concerning the
martyrdom of St. Polycarp, quoted by Eusebius, it is stated that the
faithful carried away his bones, more precious in their eyes than gold
and precious stones, and concealed them in a fitting-place (_ubi
decebat_).

The unanimous testimony of St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Leo, St.
Cyprian, St. Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and of all the most
illustrious Fathers of the Greek, African, Eastern, Roman, and Gallican
Churches, proves that the worship of martyrs, of the places of their
nativity (_natalia_), of their burial-places, and of their relics,
was established in the Christian world before the close of the fourth
century (Fig. 280). The various liturgies, sacramentaries, missals, and
rituals confirm this testimony. Moreover, the primitive Church had,
in a measure, joined the worship of relics to the sacrifice of the
eucharist by celebrating the latter upon the tombs of the martyrs. This
ancient usage was raised into a liturgical law under the pontificate
of St. Felix (269), as St. Athanasius affirms in his biography of that
saint. When the persecutions had ceased, basilicas _sub dio_, or
under the open sky, were raised over the crypts which held the bodies
of the martyr-saints.

The enormous sum of five hundred golden sous, representing seven pounds
of gold, the price for the body of an obscure martyr in the third
century, fails to give an idea of the fabulous sums which were expended
at that period to obtain possession of the bodies of the saints. Men
hoped, to use an expression borrowed from the Acts of St. Firmus and
St. Rusticus, that by so doing they were laying up treasures for the
life to come; and this explains why Luitprand, King of the Lombards,
purchased the relics of St. Augustine for their weight in gold.

The flow of pilgrims into Rome, Jerusalem, and other places was so
great towards the close of the fourth century, and still more in the
fifth, that it became necessary to regulate this display of devotion
by some strict rules of discipline. Many ecclesiastical writers, while
deploring the abuses to which it gave rise, were unable to point out
any effectual remedy; it being difficult to separate the wheat from the
chaff, to distinguish the false pilgrims from the true, and to prevent
vagabonds, ever ready to rob any wealthy travellers they might fall in
with, from assuming the garb of piety and religion.

  [Illustration: Fig. 281.--“Count Renier bearing the Body of
  St. Veronica to the Church of St. Waudru, in Mons.”--After a
  Miniature in the “Chroniques de Hainaut” (Manuscript of the
  Fifteenth Century), Burgundian Library, Brussels.]

Every church, abbey, and chapel became at this period a place of
refuge, ever open for pilgrims, who were certain of being hospitably
received there at all hours, for their purse was generally light, and
they lived upon alms, if only for the sake of doing penance. Charity
devoted itself to the task of sheltering and feeding them during their
journeys, whence they often returned ill and weak, and poorer than when
they started, but always rich in indulgences, consolations, and relics.

Rome had, from the earliest times, an inexhaustible stock of relics
in the Catacombs, which served for the use of the whole Christian
world. By one of the canons issued by the fifth Council of Carthage,
it was decreed that no church should be consecrated until some
well-authenticated relics had been placed beneath the altar. In
after-days, it was further required that there should be relics visible
at each entrance to the church, on the diptychs fastened to the chapel
walls, in the sacraria, in a number of the private oratories, and even
on the cover of the books of the mass.

This continual removal of relics from one country to another gave rise
to many imposing and touching ceremonies. St. Chrysostom has related,
in one of his homilies, all the details concerning the translation
of the relics of St. Ignatius, who suffered martyrdom at Rome, to
his episcopal residence at Antioch, amidst a vast assemblage of the
faithful.

From the seventh century the removal of relics became more and more
frequent, and the number of pilgrimages increased accordingly.
Sometimes the relics were those of unknown saints. When Pope Boniface
IV. (606) was about to dedicate to the Holy Virgin, and to all the
martyrs or confessors, the Pantheon of Agrippa, by transforming it into
a church, to be called Sancta Maria Rotunda, he caused to be conveyed
thither thirty-two chariot loads of bones, taken from the Catacombs.
Pope Pascal I. (817) also deposited a vast quantity of saints’ bones
in the Church of St. Praxeas at Rome, previous to consecrating it. The
names of these saints were not known, but the authenticity of their
remains and of their claims to veneration were verified before the
ceremony, by a committee appointed for that purpose.

Illustration: Fig. 282.--Henry I., Emperor of Germany, and one of his
Generals, Gautier Von der Hoye.--Equestrian statues in bronze, cast in
948 by order of the Emperor, and placed in the Church of Our Lady at
Maurkirchen (Austria), in commemoration of his victory over the Huns.
These statues, destroyed in a fire, were re-cast in plaster and placed
on the same spot, where they were visible until June 27th, 1865, when
the church was burnt to the ground.--After a Woodcut from a work called
“Thurnier-Buch,” in gothic folio: printed at Siemern in 1530.]

In the course of three centuries, from the ninth to the eleventh, the
discovery and the disinterment of saints’ bodies, their solemn removal
(Fig. 281), the foundation of monasteries, oratories, and churches in
their honour, the institution of anniversary fêtes, and the setting
apart of a number of private devotions at services, relating not only
to relics, but to holy images, abound in all the annals of the Catholic
world. This is supposed to be the epoch when were introduced into
Europe those ancient images, in sculpture and in painting, of the Holy
Mother of Christ, which were revered in the Middle Ages just as they
are in the present day; among these were black virgins, which were,
no doubt, of Abyssinian origin; tawny or yellowish virgins, from some
country of Africa; and brown and Byzantine virgins, of a stern and
hard-featured type, wanting in expression. These images, all of which
were very coarsely executed--though the last-mentioned seem to be
copied from a picture attributed to St. Luke (Fig. 283)--often peculiar
in their expression and character, but most of them of unquestionable
antiquity, were common in Italy, Spain, the Mediterranean Isles, and
many of the southern provinces of France. They were much rarer in the
west of Europe, in Belgium, Germany, and Ireland, where, however, they
were looked upon with just as much veneration--as, for instance, the
Notre-Dame de Luxembourg, which was tawny. In the North, in Hungary,
Poland, and Russia, but especially in Russia (Figs. 284 and 285), there
were only the dark and Byzantine images of the Virgin.

  [Illustration: Fig. 283.--The Virgin of St. Luke (so called).--An
  image painted on wood, placed in the Church of Sta. Maria
  Maggiore, now San Paolo-fuor-gli-Muri, at Rome, in the Fourth or
  Fifth Century.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 284.--Greek _Panagia_, or Image of
  the Holy Virgin, with a Portrait of Jesus Christ upon her
  bosom.--From the “Antiquities of Russia,” by Sevastianof
  (Thirteenth Century).]

The worship of relics, as well as that of miraculous images, had,
beyond question, sometimes degenerated into superstition; but it is
impossible to deny the services which it rendered to Christianity in
these ages of barbarism. The people, without anything to restrain or
to guide them, were in a state of perpetual commotion, easily tempted
to evil, a prey to the first adventurer who could show them some ready
road to plunder, impatient of all social restraint, moving about from
place to place, and dead to all family ties and love of country.
Amidst all this disorder, preaching unaccompanied by grand religious
spectacles would have been fruitless, and thus the Church revived the
worship of relics. Search was made in every direction for the bodies
of saints; the bishops themselves journeyed to Italy, to Africa, and
to the East to collect the precious remains of those who had sealed
their testimony with their blood. When these relics arrived at the
place for which they were destined, the people went out to meet them
and escort them back. Their transfer to the sanctuary, in which they
were solemnly laid, was made the occasion for ornate ceremonies and
for numerous pilgrimages (Figs. 286 and 287); and so devotion brought
together hostile races which had long been separated by bitter warfare.
The deeds done by the saint, who seemed as if present and visible to
the eyes of the faithful, were read from the pulpit; the miracles
which he had wrought might always be renewed under the influence
of fervent prayer; a few cures were soon worked in proximity to his
shrine, or upon his tomb. The pilgrims continually increased in number,
and the priests gradually regained the moral authority which they had
allowed to slip away from them.

  [Illustration: Fig. 285.--Miraculous Image of Our Lady of
  Vladimir, the goal of one of the most famous pilgrimages in
  Russia.--From the “Antiquities of Russia,” by Sevastianof.
  (Twelfth Century.)]

  [Illustration: Fig. 286.--Coffer containing the Hair-cloths
  of St. Louis, presented by Philippe le Bel, his grandson, to
  the Abbey of Notre-Dame-du-Lis, near Melun.--The chest is in
  beech-wood, covered with metal, and with painted designs of the
  royal insignia of France and Castille, and various allegorical
  subjects.--Work of the Thirteenth Century, in the Louvre, Paris.]

The Crusades were in reality but the general application, upon a larger
scale, of those pilgrimages to the Holy Land which the inhabitants of
Christian Europe had so long been performing. In the rear of the armed
hosts marched with unfurled banners a tribe of infirm pilgrims, women,
children, and old men (Fig. 288), led by priests in their sacerdotal
vestments--undisciplined multitudes, into whose ranks inevitably
crept a number of those miscreants who were the real authors of all
the misdeeds with which history has reproached the Crusaders. As to
the pilgrimages, the immediate result of this great movement of the
European population towards Palestine was the creation, along the road
which they had to travel, of a number of receiving-houses, supported
and managed by certain religious and military orders, who entertained
the wearied and sick pilgrims, and helped them on their journey.

  [Illustration: Fig. 287.--Reliquary in chased copper (front
  and reverse), with movable Panels, and containing round the
  Crucifixion Scene, and in the space between the columns, Relics
  of Apostles, Fathers of the Church, Saints, and Martyrs.--Flemish
  work of the Thirteenth Century, preserved in the Convent of the
  Sisters of the Sacred Heart, at Mons.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 288.--Robert I., Duke of Normandy, father of
  William the Conqueror, seized with illness during his pilgrimage
  to Jerusalem (1035), is carried in his litter by negroes:
  hence his jocular saying, “I am being taken by demons into
  Paradise.”--From a Miniature in the “Chroniques de Normandie,”
  a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library of M.
  Ambroise Firmin Didot.]

That model of pilgrims, the good King Louis IX., collected, in the
course of his unsuccessful expeditions (1248–1270), a number of relics
(Figs. 290 to 293, and 305). These, brought back to France as trophies
of the crusade, were offered as gifts to ancient and venerable churches
already possessing many valuable relics, or deposited in new churches
which were built expressly for their reception, as in the case of
the Sainte Chapelle at Paris. And this brought about the increase of
pilgrimages throughout Europe, in which the worship, not only of relics
but of miraculous images, was ardently pursued. At the end of the
thirteenth century, which was undoubtedly the most brilliant as it was
the most solemn epoch of Christian art, in respect to the processional
and itinerant acts of devotion, there were said to be no less than ten
thousand Catholic sanctuaries, all of more or less celebrity, and each
of which attracted its share of pilgrims, either for its Madonna or
Notre-Dame. This was exclusive of the numberless images of Notre-Dame
which were occasionally honoured by a special worship, and which were
erected at cross-roads, at street-corners, and upon the fronts of
houses, as a protection for the wayfarer and for the inhabitants of
the locality. Many dioceses, such as those of Soissons and Toul, each
contained from sixty to seventy places of pilgrimage.

  [Illustration: Fig. 289.--The Pilgrims of Emmaus.--Pilgrim’s
  dress in the second half of the Thirteenth Century.--Portion of
  the celebrated Altar-piece of Mareuil-en-Brie, reproduced in its
  entirety in the article “Liturgy and Ceremonies.”]

The authentic titles of the principal pilgrimages, apart from those
of Rome and Jerusalem, thus date from the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries. Some, no doubt, were anterior to this period, but their
origin, though attested by tradition, cannot be said to rest upon any
indisputable evidence. Of this nature are the celebrated devotions of
Notre-Dame of Loretto, of our Lord’s robe at Trèves, of the seamless
robe of Jesus Christ in the village of Argenteuil, near Paris, of
St. Larme at Vendôme, of St. Face at Chambéry, of the blood of St.
Januarius at Naples, of the stole of St. Hubert, &c.

  [Illustration: Fig. 290.--The Crown of Thorns brought into
  France.--The three lower compartments represent: 1, the first
  visit of the king to the Sainte-Chapelle, expressly built to
  receive the crown of thorns; 2, the reception of the crown,
  presented by Baldwin II., Emperor of Constantinople, and
  brought to Paris in 1239; 3, the adoration of the crown in the
  Sainte-Chapelle by the king and his mother, Blanche of Castille.
  Above are the Island of Cyprus, the Crusaders’ fleet, and a
  battle with the Saracens, as recalling the crusade of Louis
  IX.--In the Burgundian Library, Brussels. (Fifteenth Century.)]

  [Illustration: Figs. 291 and 292.--1. The Nail used in the
  Crucifixion of our Lord, preserved in the Church of Santa Croce
  di Gerusalemme, at Rome. 2. The Holy Bit of Carpentras, brought
  to that town between 1204 and 1206. This is the bit which St.
  Helena forged for the horse of the Emperor Constantine from nails
  which had been driven into the holy cross.--After the Engraving
  of M. Rohault de Fleury, in his work called “Mémoire sur les
  Instrumens de la Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ.”]

  [Illustration: Fig. 293.--The Title or Superscription upon our
  Lord’s Cross: fragment of the piece of cedar-wood given to the
  Pope by St. Helena, and preserved in the Church of Santa Croce
  di Gerusalemme, at Rome.--The Inscription, which signifies
  “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” was in Hebrew, Greek, and
  Latin, written backwards and in sunken characters; only a third
  remains.--Fac-simile from M. Rohault de Fleury’s Engraving for
  his work called “Mémoires sur les Instrumens de la Passion de
  Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ.”]

  [Illustration: Fig. 294.--Touching the Relics of St.
  Philip.--Fresco Painting by Andrea del Sarto, in the Cloister of
  the Church of the Annunziata, at Florence.]

Christian Rome, bedewed with the martyrs’ blood and enriched with their
relics, has since the first ages of Christianity been the central
object of the great majority of pilgrimages. Her three hundred churches
have one after another been visited by a host of believers drawn
thither by pious recollections, by all kinds of effectual acts of grace
or indulgences, by an abundant hospitality, by a pompous ceremonial,
and, above all, by the ardour of their faith. On great anniversaries,
at jubilees and at the _Inventions_ of the bodies of saints, the
number of pilgrims multiplied indefinitely. As many as twelve hundred
thousand have been known to have arrived in the course of a single day,
from different parts of the world--pious bands which encamped around
the walls of the Eternal City, their ranks being constantly added
to by fresh arrivals during several consecutive months. Besides the
basilica of St. Peter, Rome possessed several privileged sanctuaries
which were at all periods the chief haunts of the pilgrims: these
were the Church of Sta. Maria Maggiore, where the manger in which our
Lord was born was seen; San Praxeas, the basilica which contained two
thousand five hundred martyrs; San Giovanni Laterano, in which are
the _scala santa_, the same steps blessed by the blood of Jesus
Christ when He was wearing the crown of thorns, and which are only
ascended by people upon their knees; San Pietro-in-Montorio, the crypt
of which stands upon the spot where that apostle was crucified; San
Sebastiano-fuor-gli-Muri, famous for its catacombs; San Paolo da Tre
Fontane--miraculous springs which gushed from the ground with three
leaps, just as St. Paul’s head rebounded three times from the ground
when he was executed; San Paolo-fuori-le-Muri, where is preserved the
crucifix which spoke to St. Bridget; San Lorenzo-fuori-le-Muri, where
are interred the bodies of St. Stephen and St. Lawrence; Santa Croce di
Gerusalemme (Fig. 293), a basilica founded by the august mother of St.
Constantine on her return from a pilgrimage to Palestine; St. Cecilia,
a church built upon the site of the house in which that saint lived,
and containing the bath-room in which she suffered martyrdom; as well
as twenty other churches which have been the cradles of the Christian
religion, and which, by their origin, tradition, and relics, command
the pious respect of those who visit them. No matter by what road the
pilgrims travelled, they passed on their way to Rome a vast number of
sanctuaries and stations which were dedicated either to the Virgin
Mary or to illustrious saints (Fig. 294). Upon the sea-coast, the
church of Our Guardian Lady and of Our Lady of Genesta, the tutelary
guardians of the Gulf of Lyons and the Gulf of Genoa; and with them
St. Martha and St. Magdalene; St. George, the legend of whose warlike
exploit is reproduced in so many pictures; at Lucca, Our Lady of the
Rose; in the Neapolitan States, Our Lady of the Commencement, Our Lady
of the Conception, Our Lady of the Assumption, Our Lady of Naples,
Our Lady of Mount St. Januarius; in Sicily, Our Lady of the Crown,
St. Restituta, St. Agatha, but particularly St. Rosalie; towards the
eastern shores of the Ionian Sea, several virgins of Byzantine origin,
who were worshipped conjointly with St. Nicholas and St. Spiridion;
along the Adriatic other Madonnas and other saints, conspicuous among
whom, like a precious pearl, shines the celebrated image known as
Our Lady of Victory. It was in her honour that an Eastern emperor
caused a triumphal car to be constructed, in order that she might be
drawn through the streets of Constantinople whenever the empire was
threatened with danger. Brought to Venice and deposited in the Church
of St. Mark, she was looked upon as the safe-guard of the republic,
and, in place of the triumphal car, a magnificent gondola was specially
reserved for this image. From the days of Godfroy de Bouillon, who,
with a part of the Crusaders, made a pilgrimage to Bari, on the “soil
of Monseigneur St. Nicholas,” before pursuing his journey to Jerusalem,
this august sanctuary became the scene of continuous devotions.
Joinville, Froissart, Philippe Giraud de Vigneulles, and other
chroniclers speak of the number of pilgrims who visited Bari to do
honour to the relics of St. Nicholas. The miracles accomplished there
through the intercession of the blessed Bishop of Myra, form a rich
volume of legends dating from the eleventh century, when forty burghers
of the town of Bari went into Asia Minor to rescue his precious body
from the violence of the Saracens.

We must not be astonished at the profanities committed by the
Mahometans at the places of pilgrimage in Palestine, since the
cessation of the Crusades left these venerable sanctuaries at their
mercy. It was to preserve the chapel of Nazareth from these outrages
that God commanded his angels to carry it into a Christian country.
According to a tradition confirmed by several papal bulls, the angels
who carried off this chapel deposited it, on May 10th, 1291, at
Rauneza, between Fiume and Tersatz, in Dalmatia. On the same night the
Virgin Mary appeared in a dream to a dying priest named Alexander, and
told him of the miracle. The chapel transported to Rauneza was no other
than the house in which the divine mother of God had been born and had
conceived the Redeemer. After her death the apostles had converted
it into a chapel; St. Peter had erected an altar in it, and St. Luke
had with his own hands carved in cedar a statue of the Virgin for
it. The priest who had had the vision rose from his bed cured of his
disease, and went to prostrate himself before the holy image previous
to making a public announcement of the apparition of the Virgin. The
house of Nazareth was there standing to confirm the truth of his
story. Then began the pilgrimages to Tersatz. The Emperor Rudolph, on
being informed of this marvellous occurrence, sent several persons
of distinction into Palestine to see whether the chapel of Nazareth
had really been removed. Their report was of the most satisfactory
character, and very soon the worship of Our Lady of Tersatz had become
very general throughout the Danubian provinces. In order to preserve
the treasure with which Providence had endowed this spot, the _santa
casa_ was surrounded by a wooden framework while the church of which
it was to form the sanctuary was being built. But after standing for
three years in Dalmatia, this holy house disappeared. Contemporary
chroniclers relate that, on the 10th of December, 1291, it was carried
up into the air by angels and borne across the Adriatic.

It appears that the _santa casa_, before taking up its definite
position, halted near Recanati, upon a property belonging to two
brothers who for eight months disputed its possession. In order to
bring about a reconciliation between them, and chiefly, no doubt,
because they were unwilling to leave this sanctuary at the mercy
of these two jealous rivals, the angels bore it off once more, and
finally deposited it in a field belonging to a poor widow of the name
of Loreta--whence the denomination Our Lady of Loreta. Here may still
be seen the _santa casa_, just as it came from Nazareth, but not
as it was decorated, endowed, and enriched by the sumptuous devotion
of the Middle Ages. Its treasures, valued at several million francs,
already much diminished by the religious wars brought about by the
great Western schism, ceased to accumulate in the sixteenth century
during the struggle of the Church against Protestantism, and they were
almost all carried off in 1796 by the pillaging armies of the French
Republic. Nevertheless the fervour of the pilgrims was not in the least
abated, and the splendid church in which the _santa casa_ was as
it were enshrined, was too small to contain all the votive offerings
brought thither from every part of the world. The popes had granted
numerous indulgences to those who made this pilgrimage, which was the
most celebrated as well as the most frequented of any outside Rome.

The legend of the pilgrimages, as marvellous in Spain as it was in
Italy, always associated the worship of St. James with that of the Holy
Virgin. After the ascension of our Lord and the descent of the Holy
Ghost, Santiago the Iberian--St. James, as we call him--bid adieu to
his elder brother St. John the Evangelist, and afterwards went to ask
the Virgin for her blessing. She said to him, “Dear son, since thou
hast chosen Spain, the country which I love best of all European lands,
to preach the Gospel, take care to found there a church dedicated to
me, in the town where you convert the greatest number of heathen.”
Santiago then left Jerusalem, and crossing the Mediterranean, arrived
at Tarragona, where, despite all his efforts, he only succeeded in
converting eight persons.

  [Illustration: Fig. 295.--Our Lady of Mountserrat, with a
  Spanish Inscription signifying “Celestial abode of Our Lady of
  Mountserrat.”--This mountain derives its name from its rocks
  being shaped like the teeth of a saw (_sierra_, saw). This
  symbolical saw is seen in the hands of the Infant Jesus.--Reduced
  Fac-simile of a Woodcut of the Sixteenth Century, belonging to M.
  Bertin, publisher, of Paris.]

But in the night of February 4th, A.D. 36, whilst he and his
eight neophytes were sound asleep in the plain upon which Saragossa
now stands, they were awaked by celestial music, and this music was
the voice of angels celebrating the praises of the Virgin. Santiago
prostrated himself with his face to the ground, and before him he saw
the august mother of Christ, standing on a pillar of jasper, surrounded
with angels, and with the same smile of ineffable sweetness which he
had seen on her features when he left Jerusalem. “James, my son,” she
said to him, “you must build me a church upon this very spot. Take
the pillar upon which I am standing, place it, with my image upon its
summit, in the midst of a sanctuary dedicated to me, and to the end
of time it shall never cease to work miracles.” The apostle at once
commenced the work, aided by his disciples, and the church was soon
constructed. Such, according to the legend, was the origin of the
cathedral and the pilgrimage of Our Lady of the Pillar (_Nuestra
señora del Pilar_).

The Virgin of the Pillar (_Virgo del Pilar_) was not the only
one held in profound veneration by the Spaniards during the Middle
Ages; every petty kingdom, every principality, every important town
of the Iberian peninsula had its Madonna, its _Señora_, which
attracted numerous pilgrims. Amongst them may be mentioned Our Lady
of Mountserrat, in Catalonia (Fig. 295), Our Lady of France (_la
Rena di Francia_), half-way between Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo,
and Our Lady of the Dice (_Señora del Dado_), in the kingdom of
Leon--sanctuaries which stood in the midst of mountainous ranges, and
which could only be reached on foot or with mules.

In a small town called El Padron--the Monument--which is but the
ancient _Iria_, where Santiago, called James the Elder, taught
(Fig. 296), and which was for a long time the guardian of his earthly
remains, there flowed beneath the high altar of the church, which
was dedicated to him, a stream of spring water, the ripple of which,
like heavenly music, mingled with the prayers of the pilgrims, who
were so numerous that their knees have worn holes in the stone slabs
of the sanctuary. The body of the illustrious martyr, when brought
from Compostella to Santiago, was laid upon a granite block which was
miraculously fashioned into a tomb, and it never emerged therefrom save
as a phantom either to appear in vision before kings, prelates, and
other pious persons who had invoked it, or to seize a lance and combat
the enemies of Christianity. Thus, the legend tells us, he was seen
in 946, riding a white horse, holding in his hand a banner emblazoned
with a red cross (such as the knights of Santiago wear on the left side
of their mantles), and marching at the head of the Christian barons
against the Moors or Saracens.

The pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella was famous as early as the
ninth century; people came with votive offerings from all parts of the
Christian world. The road leading to this sanctuary was perpetually
crowded with an army of pilgrims, and such continued to be the case
throughout the Middle Ages. On returning to their own country, the
pilgrims of “Monseigneur St. James” formed a regular order of Catholic
chivalry; they kept up the pious devotions in which they had engaged
during their pilgrimage, and maintained till their lives’ end the
spirit of religious fellowship which had united them under the same
banner.

  [Illustration: Fig. 296.--The Magician Armogenes, in the
  presence of the Compostella pilgrims, orders devils to bring
  him the apostle St. James (the legend of the saint gives the
  contrary version).--After a Miniature from “The Holy Scriptures,”
  a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (Burgundian Library,
  Brussels).]

France, notwithstanding her warlike spirit, did not pay so much honour
to the warlike saints as did Italy and Spain to St. George and St.
James, but she seems to have held in highest esteem the _healing_
saints, as we may term them, such as St. Martin of Tours, St. Roch,
St. Christopher, St. Blaze, St. Lazarus, &c., whose venerated relics
have been the object of so many celebrated pilgrimages (Fig. 297). She
has also rendered touching homage to certain specially holy women, the
worship of whom has become almost national, such as St. Mary Magdalene
and St. Martha, St. Barbara, St. Geneviève, &c. But in no country has
the worship of the Virgin Mary been more general or more sublime than
in France, where the mother of God had so many venerable sanctuaries;
such as that of Our Lady of Puy, Our Lady of Liesse, Our Lady of
Chartres, Our Lady of Rocamadour, Our Lady of the Thorn, Our Lady of
Auray, and Our Lady of Victory, amongst others.

  [Illustration: Fig. 297.--Thanksgivings made in a Chapel of
  Pilgrimage by a family carrying out a vow.--It is believed that
  this is the chapel in which were preserved the relics of the
  saint in the Abbey of Mont St. Claude (Franche-Comté).--French
  Picture of the Fifteenth Century, belonging to M. P. Lacroix.]

One of the first altars erected in France to the Virgin Mary was that
upon the summit of Mount Anicium, a volcanic rock near Velay, called
Le Puy (from the Italian _poggio_, high mountain). St. George,
bishop of the diocese, came to baptize a lady of the district, who
became seriously ill, upon which an unknown voice bid her repair to
Mount Anicium. Having obeyed this command, she fell into a quiet sleep,
during which she saw a celestial female figure, wearing a crown of
precious stones. “Who is this queen, so beautiful, so noble, and so
gracious?” she inquired, addressing herself to one of the angelic host
that surrounded her. The answer came: “This is the mother of the Son
of God. She has selected this mountain for you to come and make your
invocation; she bids you acquaint her faithful servant, Bishop George,
of what has taken place. And now awake; you are cured of your illness.”
The lady, filled with gratitude and faith, went to the bishop, who,
when he had heard her story, prostrated himself to the ground, as if
it were the Virgin herself who was speaking. Followed by his clergy,
he then repaired to the miraculous rock. It was in the month of July;
the sun was very hot, but the snow lay deep upon the table-land of the
mountain. Suddenly a stag bounded forward and traced with his feet
the plan of the sanctuary which was to be built upon that very spot,
and then disappeared. The bishop at once saw that a fresh miracle had
been wrought in confirmation of the first; he had the spot enclosed,
and made a vow to erect a church there. This vow was executed by St.
Evodius, seventh Bishop of Puy, in 223.

The statue of Our Lady of Puy, in cedar wood, blackened with age, was
the work of the first Christians of Libanus, who executed it after the
image of the Egyptian goddess Isis, sitting upright upon a stool, and
holding upon her knee the Infant Jesus, swathed in fine linen as if he
were a little mummy. This image was brought from the East by St. Louis
in 1254.

The origin of the statue of Our Lady of Liesse also dates from the
Crusades, which inundated France and the rest of Europe with so many
images of the Holy Virgin. Thus, in 1131, Foulques d’Anjou, King of
Jerusalem, entrusted the guard of the city of Beersheba to the Knights
Hospitallers of St. John, amongst the most distinguished of whom were
the three brothers of the house of Eppes, near Laon. These knights
having been taken prisoners, the Sultan determined to make them become
Mahometans, and imprudently selected his daughter Ismeria to effect
the work of conversion. But she forgot the object of her mission, and
allowed herself to be converted to Christianity by the arguments of the
three knights. She asked them to carve for her an image of the Holy
Virgin, and though they were utterly ignorant of the art, they began
an image which angels came down from heaven to complete. The Virgin
appeared to the Sultan’s daughter, encouraged her in her project to
set the three captives at liberty, and advised her to follow them in
her flight. At about midnight she went to the prison, the doors of
which opened before her, as did those of the city. Ismeria bore in
her arms the image of the Virgin, and the sovereign virtue of this
talisman overcame all obstacles. The fugitives, who had gone to sleep
upon Egyptian soil, woke up to find themselves in front of the Château
d’Eppes, and the statuette, sparkling with light, selected the place
which it wished to occupy in the middle of a wood. Ismeria caused to
be erected upon this very spot a plain chapel, whilst in the town of
Laon a cathedral was built, dedicated to Our Lady of Liesse. Since
that period the great basilica and the tiny chapel have shared between
them the worship of the crowd of pilgrims which the startling miracles
have attracted thither. Both structures suffered from the fury of the
Huguenots in the sixteenth century, but the miraculous image of the
Virgin has always escaped from sacrilegious outrage.

  [Illustration: Fig. 298.--Ancient Banner of the City of
  Strasburg, on which is represented the Image of Our Lady, to
  whom the city was dedicated about the middle of the Thirteenth
  Century; the lilies running round it are the emblem of the
  Virgin’s purity. A Memorial of the Thirteenth Century, burnt
  during the bombardment of Strasburg in 1870.--From a copy
  published in the “Dictionnaire du Haut et du Bas-Rhin,” by M.
  Ristelhuber.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 299.--Removal, by St. Bodillon and the
  Chevalier Gérard de Roussillon, of the Body of Mary Magdalene
  to the Church of Vézelay (Yonne).--After a Miniature in the
  “Chroniques de Hainaut,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century,
  in the Burgundian Library, Brussels.]

There is much analogy between the worship of the patronal Virgin of
the country round Chartres and that of the Virgin of the Pillar at
Saragossa. The two statues are alike in regard to posture, costume,
and general character, and moreover they date back to the same
epoch--namely, the fourth or fifth century. The Chartres cathedral,
though ancient--for it was in existence during the seventh century--was
nevertheless posterior to the first pilgrimages established in honour
of “the Virgin who has borne a child,” according to the denomination
given to this Notre-Dame by the first apostles who preached
Christianity in this district, which was the centre of the Druidical
religion. During the whole of the Middle Ages, and down even to our
own day, there have been daily arrivals of pilgrims at Chartres, and
their number always increases upon the fête days of the Virgin.

  [Illustration: Fig. 300.--Charles VI. fulfilling his vow to Our
  Lady of Hope (1389).--The king, who was at that time but twenty
  years of age, having lost his way one night in a forest near
  Toulouse, made a vow that if he recovered his road he would offer
  the value of his horse to Our Lady of Hope. In the painting he is
  represented in the act of carrying out his vow, bareheaded and on
  horseback, accompanied by his brother, the Constable of Clisson,
  and other nobles. Above are seen angels with streamers, on which
  are written the word “Hope.”--After an ancient Fresco in the
  Cloister of the Carmelite Monastery at Toulon.]

The worship of Our Lady of Rocamadour is very possibly contemporaneous
with that of Our Lady of Chartres--dating back to the first age of
Christianity in Gaul. Nothing is known as to the origin of this
devotion, which is supposed to have replaced that of some local
divinity. The Virgin of Rocamadour was famous as early as the eighth
century, for, if tradition is to be believed, Charlemagne and his brave
followers came to pay it homage on their return from an expedition
against the Gascons; and the sword of Roland, deposited as an offering
upon the altar of the chapel of St. Michael, is still to be seen.
Around this sanctuary, dedicated to the Virgin, were seventeen chapels
hewn in the rock; they were dedicated to Jesus Christ, to the Twelve
Apostles, to St. John the Baptist, to St. Anne, to St. Michael, and to
St. Amadour, whose hermitage was here, and who had no doubt brought
from the East the black Virgin who has been venerated there for twelve
or fifteen centuries.

  [Illustration: Fig. 301.--Miraculous Image of Our Lady of
  Grace, at Cambrai, brought to that city by Canon Furcy de
  Bruille in 1450: this is one of the painted images attributed
  by a pious tradition to St. Luke.--The inhabitants of Cambrai,
  having fervently prayed for protection to their patroness when
  the English besieged their city, attributed the impotence of
  the enemy’s attack to her interposition. Hence is derived
  the poetical representation of the Virgin gathering up the
  cannon-balls in a lace veil. To the right is the ancient
  metropolitan church of Cambrai, a remarkable monument of
  Gothic architecture, destroyed at the beginning of the present
  century.--Reduced Fac-simile of a Drawing of the Seventeenth
  Century, lent by M. Delattre, of Cambrai.]

The pilgrimage of St. Baume, near Maximin, in Provence, was not in
honour of the Virgin Mary, but of the saintly women Mary Magdalene
(Fig. 299) and her sister Martha, Mary the mother of James, and Salome,
who were witnesses of our Saviour’s life, of his miracles, and of his
resurrection. Whatever may be the truth of the alleged mission of St.
Lazarus and his two sisters Mary Magdalene and Martha, in southern
Gaul, the devotion paid to them amongst a people who believed in the
legend was almost as marked as the worship which was rendered to the
Virgin. The pilgrims never left St. Baume without making a pilgrimage
to the tomb of St. Lazarus at Autun, after having visited the relics
of the Marys in the Island of Camargue, at St. Maximin, Arles, and
at Tarascon. The grotto of St. Baume, in which Mary Magdalene lived
for thirty years in fellowship with the angels who raised her into the
air during her periods of ecstasy, who brought her food and took every
care of her, was, from the fifth or sixth century, a rendezvous for the
faithful who came to visit the dread abode which had been sanctified
by the long penitence of the Magdalene. Popes, emperors, kings, and
the most illustrious personages considered it an honour to be numbered
amongst these pilgrims, and those whose age or infirmities prevented
them from being personally present deputed others to bear thither their
vows and their offerings.

  [Illustration: Fig. 302.--Our Lady of Boulogne.--“One day,”
  so the legend goes, “the Virgin appeared to the burghers and
  inhabitants of the town of Boulogne in a hull floating upon
  the sea, without mast, sail, rigging, or oars, having on board
  neither seaman nor any other living man, only a young virgin,
  full of grace and modesty, eloquent of speech, reserved in her
  manner, gracious of carriage, and more beautiful than all earthly
  women.”--After a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Fifteenth
  Century, in the Library of the Arsenal, Paris.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 303.--“Au juste poids véritable
  balance.”--Picture by Antoine Picquet, Master-Painter in the
  Brotherhood of Our Lady of Amiens, presented to the church of
  that city on the 25th of December, 1518. This painting, now in
  the Cluny Museum, is but the symbolic development of the above
  motto. The Virgin is in a standing posture beneath a canopy;
  the Infant Jesus is drawing towards him one of the scales of
  the balance in which God the Father, surrounded by his angels,
  is about to weigh the crowns of earthly sovereigns. In the
  background, amidst beautiful scenery, on one side peasants are
  gathering in the harvest and the vintage, and on the other is
  seen Queen Claude, mounted, and followed by a brilliant suite.
  In the foreground are two groups: to the right Francis I., with
  Triboulet his jester, and knights; to the left, the emperor, the
  pope, a cardinal, the Bishop of Amiens, and several abbots.--From
  an Engraving in the “Arts au Moyen Age,” by Dusommerard.]

The mere list of the pilgrimages of Our Lady in France, in that kingdom
of the lilies which has always been under the immediate protection of
the Virgin Mary, would fill several pages, and it would take whole
volumes to relate their origin and history. We will therefore only
mention the most famous and the most ancient: Our Lady of Alet, near
Toulouse (Fig. 300); Our Lady of the Fountain of the Ardilliers, near
Saumur; Our Lady of the Virtues, at Aubervilliers, near Paris; Our Lady
of the Haven, at Clermont, in Auvergne; Our Lady of Fourvières, at
Lyons; Our Lady of the Osier, near Grenoble; Our Lady of Bonne-Garde,
at Longpont; Our Lady of Bethlehem, at Ferrières, Gâtinais; Our Lady
of Good Hope, at Valenciennes; Our Lady of Grace, at Cambrai (Fig.
301); Our Lady of Boulogne-sur-Mer (Fig. 302), &c. Most of these are
represented by painted images--some brought from the East at the time
of the Crusades; others, the origin of which is only spoken to by the
miracles which marked them out for the veneration of the faithful.
There are also statuettes in wood and stone, nearly all of which belong
to the Coptic group of black Virgins, which throughout Europe are
associated with miracles of an early age.

  [Illustration: Fig. 304.--Sufferers from St. Vitus’ Dance going
  on a Pilgrimage to the Church of St. Willibrod, Epternacht, near
  Luxemburg.--After a Drawing by P. Breughel (Sixteenth Century),
  in the Gallery of Archduke Albert, at Vienna.]

It would take volumes also to describe the numerous pilgrimages in
Germany, Poland, Russia, and, above all, in Belgium (Fig. 304).
There, as everywhere else, the mother of our Lord always attracted to
herself the most profound homage, and bestowed the greatest amount of
favours upon the zealous host of her worshippers. But it is worthy of
remark that these acts of devotion, so renowned and venerated in the
country itself, scarcely ever extended into neighbouring countries.
Belgians alone went to worship the image of the Virgin known as
Notre-Dame-sous-la-Tour, in the Church of St. Peter, at Louvain,
the image of Our Lady of Alzemberg, and the statue of Our Lady of
Verviers; and yet the crowd of pilgrims was none the less to Our Lady
of Affighem, Our Lady of Chèvremont, Our Lady of Faith, near Dinan, Our
Lady of Wavre, Our Lady of Belle-Fontaine, &c.

But for the most frequented pilgrimages we must look to Hungary, where
a statue of the Virgin, in limewood, found during the twelfth century
on the trunk of an oak, became the famous Our Lady of Maria-Zell,
which worked so many miracles throughout the Middle Ages; to Cologne,
where the three Magi, beatified by the Church, were venerated; and
to Trèves, where, since the fourth century, the jubilee of the Holy
Robe of our Lord has been celebrated--a jubilee in which as many as
a hundred thousand pilgrims a day formerly took part; and, lastly,
we must mention the most renowned of those sanctuaries of Notre-Dame
des Neiges (Our Lady of the Snow) which are to be met with on many
mountains whose summits are covered with snow--namely, the magnificent
Monastery of Einsiedeln, in Switzerland (Canton of Schwitz), which was
only an unpretending oratory when Meinrad, prince of the great house of
Hohenzollern, founded there the worship of Our Lady of the Hermits.

  [Illustration: Fig. 305.--The Crown of Thorns worn by Jesus
  Christ, preserved at Notre-Dame, Paris.--It is composed of a
  ring of small reeds tied into a bundle (diameter, 21 centimetres
  inside); the thorns are no longer visible; it is enshrined
  in gold, and held together by three acanthus leaves, also in
  gold.--Drawn from the original by M. Rohault de Fleury.]




                               HERESIES.

   The real meaning of the word _Heresy_.--The Heretics of
   the Apostolic Days.--Simon the Magician.--Cerinthus.--The
   Nicolaitans.--The Gnostics.--The Schools of Philosophy of
   Byzantium, Antioch, and Alexandria.--Julian the Apostate.--The
   Pelagians and the semi-Pelagians.--Nestorius.--Eutyches.--The
   Iconoclasts.--Amaury.--Gilbert de la Porrée.--Abelard.--Arnold
   of Brescia.--The Albigenses.--The Waldenses.--The
   Flagellants.--Wickliff.--John Huss.--Jerome of
   Prague.--Luther.--Henry VIII. and the Anglican Church.--Calvin.


Probably few persons are aware that the real meaning of the word
_heresy_, after its Greek origin (_hairesis_), means only
_opinion_. Heresy consists in the pretensions to explain Holy
Scripture after one’s own private judgment or personal opinion instead
of receiving the interpretation given to the sacred text by the
authority of the Church. Heretics have existed from the time of the
apostles. St. Paul, speaking in reference to them, recommends a course
which, unfortunately, has not always been followed. “If,” he says, “any
man obey not our word, ... have no company with him; ... nevertheless,
count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.” St. Peter,
with his zealous ardour, exhorts the faithful, in language full of
imagery, to be on their guard against the errors of the Gnostics (that
is, the _savants_ or the _érudits_): he calls them “wells
without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest.” He then sums up
the foundation of their doctrine in a few energetic sentences:--“For
when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through
the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were
clean escaped from them who live in error.” We know that the Gnostics
believed perfection to consist in science; they held that faith and
virtuous living were only meant for the common people. Infatuated by
their own learning, they even rejected the authority of Christ, whom
they refused to recognise as their Lord and their God; for the doctrine
concerning the angels they substituted a theory of divine emanations,
and they recognised the ancient doctrine of the eternal antagonism
between the good and the evil principle.

The Acts of the Apostles, in speaking of the success which attended the
preaching of Philip the deacon to the inhabitants of Samaria, relate
that there was in that city a magician named Simon, who exercised so
great an influence over the people that they all took heed of what he
said and called him “the great power of God.” But the miracles worked
by Philip had greater influence than the sorceries of Simon, and the
people came in crowds to be baptized, Simon himself becoming a disciple
of Philip.

The remainder of the story told us in the Acts of the Apostles
reveals the origin of a word which appears too often in the religious
history of the Middle Ages for us to let slip the opportunity of here
explaining it by a fact which, moreover, helps to show how it happened
that Simon fell from sincere Christianity into heresy. The apostles
at that time residing in Jerusalem, having heard of the conversion
of Samaria, they came to lay hands upon--that is to say confirm--the
newly baptized; and the latter, when they received the Holy Ghost,
were visible partakers of His marvellous gifts, which were general in
the primitive Church. The Scripture says, “And when Simon saw that
through laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Ghost was given, he
offered them money, saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever
I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. But Peter said unto him,
Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift
of God may be purchased with money.... Repent, therefore, of this thy
wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may
be forgiven thee.... Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the
Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon
me.” It is because _Simon_ was the first who attempted to buy for
money a spiritual power that his crime was called _simony_, and
that the epithet of _simonist_ was applied to all who purchased
ecclesiastical cures.

  [Illustration: Fig. 306.--Babylon the Great (_mulier super
  bestiam_), represented as a woman holding a cup, and riding
  the beast spoken of in the Apocalypse.--Miniature from a
  “Commentaire sur quelques Livres de l’Ecriture,” a Manuscript of
  the Eleventh Century, in the National Library, Paris. From Count
  Bastard’s great work.]

The repentance of Simon the heretic did not last long, for an author
of the third century, whose account is confirmed by a passage in
Suetonius, tells us that this neophyte having returned to his practice
of magic, and being jealous of the influence which the apostles had
acquired by their miracles, boasted that he would raise himself into
the air in the presence of the emperor and the people. In order to
humiliate St. Peter, who was in Rome at that time, he insisted that the
apostle should be present to witness this triumph of his magical art.
At first his endeavours seemed as if about to succeed--he was lifted
high into the air amidst the applause of the crowd; but Peter invoked
the aid of his Divine Master to confound the spirit of evil, and at
his prayer the magician, suddenly abandoned by the demon who had been
lending him his aid, fell to the ground and broke his leg so near to
the spot where Nero was sitting, that, to quote Suetonius, the blood
spurted on to the emperor’s mantle.

Amongst the heresiarchs of the first century must also be mentioned
Cerinthus the Jew, who had become a Christian, but who was looked upon
by the apostles as the corrupter of the religion of Jesus Christ. He
taught, in fact, that Jesus was not the Son of God, and that Christ,
coming down from heaven in the form of a dove, was only incorporated
in him after his baptism in the waters of Jordan. Ebion, a disciple
of Cerinthus, also denied the divinity of Christ, and was the founder
of the sect of the Ebionites. Nicholas the deacon, in his attempt to
make the law of the Gospel fit in with heathen customs, gave birth
to the heresy of the Nicolaitans, who were afterwards merged in the
Gnostics. This latter sect, to which we have already alluded, developed
enormously in the second century; and its doctrine, as well as that
of Manichæus, the originator of Manichæism--that redoubtable heresy
which sprung from the admixture of the ancient religions of India with
Christianity--constituted the basis of nearly all the heresies of the
Middle Ages.

  [Illustration: Fig. 307.--Orthodoxy surrounded by the Snares of
  Heresy.--Boniface Simoneta (1470 to 1500), Abbot of San Stefano
  del Corno (diocese of Cremona), “calling God to his aid in order
  that his work may be more efficaciously wrought, ... and desiring
  above all things to speak reason and equity.”--Fac-simile of a
  Wood-Engraving in the “Livre des Persécutions des Crestiens:”
  Paris, Antoine Verard, gothic 4to (no date).]

The schools of philosophy of Byzantium, Antioch, and Alexandria pursued
their career of scepticism and sacrilegious discussion concerning
the divinity of Jesus Christ during the second and third centuries.
After throwing doubt upon the divine essence of the three persons of
the Trinity, others still more daring, such as Sabellius and Praxeas,
attempted to show that these three persons in God were but three
symbolic names given to the same substance. The Council of Alexandria
(261) punished these culpable errors. Soon after, an Egyptian priest
named Arius took them up and propagated them very widely, maintaining
that Jesus Christ was a created being, perfect no doubt and almost
like unto God, but not himself God. His doctrine also contained secret
heresies which were condemned by the Œcumenical Council of Nice (325).
Nevertheless this doctrine, known as Arianism, made great progress; it
was adopted and supported by several emperors, it spread throughout
Europe, and, in spite of the authority of councils, and the efforts
of popes and bishops, it seemed destined to lay the foundation of
a new Christianity in which the divinity of Christ was to find no
place. But the most radical attack upon Christianity was undoubtedly
the conspiracy of divergent sects under the leadership of the Emperor
Julian (331–362), surnamed the Apostate because he abjured the
Christian faith with the view of re-establishing paganism. His plan
for arriving at this result was very skilfully conceived. Perceiving
that it would be necessary to combine all the forces directed against
the Church, he showed favour to the heresies and the schools of
philosophy which, after obtaining a certain notoriety under Plotinus
and Porphyrius, had lapsed into the ridiculous fancies of evocations
and of demonology. But, under the protection of the emperor, matters
assumed a different aspect, as is pointed out by M. Jules Simon in his
“Histoire de l’Ecole d’Alexandrie.” This school, “humiliated by the
triumphs of Christianity, reduced to silence and obscurity, without
any fixed purpose, devoid of credit and influence, all at once took up
a fresh attitude at the accession of Julian, and attempted to employ
the sovereign power, with which one of its followers was clothed, for
extinguishing Christianity.” The struggle was a terrible one, and the
Church seemed to have lost all human means of defence. Her children
implored for help from on high, and the premature death of Julian was
attributed to the divine intervention. Ecclesiastical writers relate
that St. Basilius the Great, while praying God to protect his Church
against the persecutor, was transported in a dream: he saw Christ in
heaven and heard him say to St. Mercurius (the martyr of Cesarea, in
Cappadocia), “Go and smite the enemy of those who believe in me.” The
holy martyr at once sped on his mission, and, returning in a short
space of time, said to his Divine Master, “Your orders are executed,
Julian is no more.” St. Basilius had this vision on the night of the
emperor’s death. Several writers assert that the emperor, knowing
whence came the blow which was to prove fatal to him, collected in the
palm of his hand the blood which issued from the wound, and scattering
it towards the heavens, exclaimed, “Thou hast vanquished, Galilean.”
These stories, popularised by the Byzantine art (Fig. 308), testify to
the importance attached by the Christians to the struggle in which they
were engaged with Julian.

The fathers of the Church endeavoured to oppose to the schools
of philosophy, which had done so much harm to religion, purely
ecclesiastical schools, for the teaching of the faithful and in order
to protect them from the seductions of heretical learning. The school
of Edessa was the most flourishing of these Eastern schools during the
third and fourth centuries.

  [Illustration: Fig. 308.--Dream of St. Basilius the Great.--The
  Martyr of Cesarea, St. Mercurius, sent from heaven by Christ, is
  in the act of stabbing the Emperor Julian the Apostate, whom he
  has thrown to the ground (see the text, p. 399).--After a Greek
  Painting of the Sixteenth Century, though the style is that of
  the Eleventh, in the Library of M. Firmin-Didot. The matters
  relating to this subject will be found collected in the “Mélanges
  d’Archéologie” of P. Cahier, vol. i., p. 39 _et seq._]

The part taken by the emperors themselves in the dogmatic disputes of
the Christians, and the notoriety acquired by the rhetoricians who
attacked or defended the truth, had made a number of vain nonentities
rival each other in extravagance and recklessness in their endeavours
to become celebrated: they tried to attract public notice by an excess
of zeal against the heretics, by the austerity of their habits, by
some eccentric practice, or by the rashness of their attacks against
the discipline of the Church, notably against the worship paid to the
Virgin. Such were Coluthus, Aetius, Bonosus, Helvidius, Jovinian, the
Barefooted Friars, the Messalians, the Priscillianists, &c. Civil
dissensions broke out and blood was shed, and the Court of Byzantium
felt, through the great officers of the empire--and especially through
the women, who took a passionate interest in these abstractions of
dogma--the effect of every religious collision.

During the fourth century Arianism, which only saw in the Word a
superior being created to intervene between God and man, was the
prevailing heresy. The fifth century was agitated by the Pelagians,
disciples of Pelagius, a native of Great Britain. This man, who was
wanting neither in talent nor in ability, endeavoured to promulgate
his doctrine, based upon the negation of original sin; he maintained
that _man_ could observe the commandments of God and work out his
own salvation without the supernatural aid of divine grace--this was
a virtual denial of Christ’s word, “Without me ye can do nothing.”
Celestius, one of his followers, promulgated this heresy in Africa,
where it was eloquently combated by St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippona.
The council of Carthage (415) condemned it, and, upon the demand
of the Fathers there present, Pope Innocent I. issued his anathema
against Pelagius and his adherents. It was then that St. Augustine
pronounced the celebrated sentence, “Rome has spoken, the judgment
of the African bishops is confirmed by letters from the pope, the
cause is at an end--pray God that the error may be also!” (_Roma
locuta est, causa finita est_). But the leader of the sect wrote to
Zosimus, Innocent’s successor, a respectful letter of justification,
and, his envoy Celestius having presented to the new pope an insidious
profession of faith, by which he undertook to condemn anything which
should be reprobated by the Holy See, Zosimus intervened with the
African bishops on behalf of Pelagius, whom he sincerely believed
to be attached to the true faith. Those bishops represented to the
pontiff that his credulity had been imposed upon, and that the heretic,
before receiving absolution, ought to be made to abjure his errors
formally and explicitly. The pope then saw the trickery which had been
attempted, and again condemned Pelagius and his followers. The latter
appealed to the Council, but St. Augustine proved that the heresy
imputed to them had been fully inquired into by the African bishops
and irrevocably condemned by the Holy See, and that all that remained
to be done was to put it down. The Emperor Honorius, considering the
political troubles which were engendered, in the East more especially,
by religious dissensions, decreed that whoever should persist in
upholding the errors of Pelagianism should be punished with exile.

The heresy did not, however, altogether disappear, but underwent a
modification of form, and the semi-Pelagians, whose doctrine was
formally expounded by Cassianus the monk, while admitting original sin,
maintained that God had given to man the innate and natural power of
walking in the way of salvation, of believing and of freeing himself
from the fetters of sin without the help of divine grace. This was
appropriating the religious to the philosophical notion of free-will.
These abstract questions may to us seem very subtle, but in these early
centuries they were the great questions which occupied the attention
of society. A new heretic, Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople,
created a vast sensation throughout Christianity by maintaining that
Jesus Christ embodied two distinct persons. Hitherto all Christians
had believed as the Church taught them, that the divine and the human
nature of Jesus Christ belonged to one person--the Word, the second
person of the Trinity. Nestorius attacked this fundamental dogma
indirectly, declaring that the Virgin should be called the _Mother of
Christ_, but not the _Mother of God_. This doctrine, implying
that in Christ there were two distinct persons, was so repulsive to the
faithful that, when the bishop expounded it to them for the first time,
they immediately left the church for fear of seeming to approve this
new heresy. The Emperor Theodosius the younger, seeing what disturbance
the preaching of Nestorius was giving rise to in Constantinople,
assembled a council at Ephesus, which was presided over by St. Cyril,
Bishop of Alexandria, on behalf of the pope. The heresiarch refused to
appear, and his doctrine was examined, discussed, and condemned.

The people of Ephesus gave marked evidence of their satisfaction
when they found that the title of Mother of God was confirmed to the
Virgin. But the ambassador of Theodosius, a devoted ally of Nestorius,
intercepted the despatch of the proceedings of the Council, and sent
to Constantinople a garbled account. The approaches to the imperial
palace were so well guarded, that there seemed to be little hope of
acquainting the emperor with what had really taken place, until a
deputy of the council resorted to the ruse of disguising himself as
a beggar and conveying the true written report in the hollow of his
staff. Theodosius then shut up Nestorius in a monastery at Antioch,
and, as he continued to promulgate his dogma, exiled him to Egypt.

A zealous monk, Eutyches, superior of a monastery near Constantinople,
while combating the heresy of Nestorius, fell into the opposite error,
alike contrary to orthodox teaching. Instead of respecting the letter
of the dogma, he in his turn became a schismatic, as he maintained
that there was only one nature in Jesus Christ--the divine; that this
had absorbed the human nature as the ocean absorbs a drop of water.
Condemned at Constantinople, he appealed from the sentence to another
council assembled at Ephesus, the decrees of which were confirmed by
Theodosius II. At the accession of Justinian, the orthodox religion
regained all its authority; Eutychianism no longer dared to attack it,
but Arianism extended even into Gaul in the track of the victorious
armies of Theodoric, Egidius, Odoacer, Totila, and the long-haired
kings.

The reign of Leo the Isaurian opened up fresh opportunities for
error. The sacred images, which had been held in veneration from the
earliest ages, became a cause of dispute in the East, where they were
disapproved of by Mahomet and forbidden by the Koran. It was alleged
that the figurative representation of human beings was subjected to
certain astral and diabolical influences, and that it was contrary to
religion, not to say sacrilegious, thus to disturb the quiet repose of
their souls. Leo the Isaurian, who had imbibed this idea, which was,
moreover, taught in oriental magic, issued against all kinds of images
the celebrated edict which was excommunicated by the pope, and which
convulsed the whole Eastern world. Luitprand, King of the Lombards,
the Venetians, Charles Martel and his Franks, were summoned to the
aid of the Eternal City, menaced by the forces of the empire, which
was determined to impose the condemnation of images upon the Western
Church. Charles Martel, by his overthrow of the victorious Saracens on
the plains of Poitiers (732), rendered a service of inestimable value
to the Christian religion as well as to France, for Islamism was upon
the point of subjugating all Christian Europe.

  [Illustration: Fig. 309.--Amaury’s Disciples burnt by order
  of Philip Augustus (1208).--Fac-simile of a Miniature in
  the “Chroniques de St. Denis” (Manuscript of the Fourteenth
  Century).--Burgundian Library, Brussels.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 310.--Episode in the Siege of Toulouse,
  representing, according to tradition, the death of Simon de
  Montfort, who was killed on the 25th of June, 1218.--Bas-relief
  in stone in the Church of St. Nazaire, in Carcassonne (Thirteenth
  Century).]

During the reign of the Empress Irene, the second Council of Nice had
re-established the worship of images (787), but, until the accession
of the Empress Theodora, who enforced the decisions of the Council,
the Iconoclasts upon the one side, and the Manicheans upon the other,
continued to disturb the East as well as the various provinces of
Western and Southern Europe. In this great civil war a hundred thousand
persons perished; and those who succeeded in escaping took refuge in
the solitude of remote valleys and inaccessible mountains, where they
entrenched themselves and incessantly made inroads upon and ravaged the
territory of the empire. The separation of the Greek and the Latin
Churches, prepared if not actually affected under the Emperor Bardas
(854-866), served to further the spread of heresy. No new sect arose in
the eleventh century, but schisms broke out in the Church, some due to
individual pride and ambition, others emanating from the dialectics of
Aristotle, from the strange abuse of syllogism, and the substitution
of reasoning for faith. The mysteries were radically changed by the
endeavours to reconcile them with ordinary ideas, to interpret and
accommodate them to the vulgar understanding. Bérenger (tenth century),
in endeavouring to explain the dogma of the eucharist, himself fell
into heresy, and Roscelin, the chief of the Nominalists (eleventh
century), in his efforts to clear up the mystery of the Trinity, was
led to assert that it was but a name which did not correspond with
any actual fact. The Manicheans had made their way into Europe; they
affected a love of poverty and humble conduct which predisposed people
in their favour and won them adherents. Many of them were burnt at the
stake, but the sect was not crushed out, often reappearing in different
cities of Europe under various names, now in one shape and now in
another.

The civil tribunals also condemned to be burnt the disciples of a
theologian named Amaury of Paris, who promulgated his dogma during
the reign of Philip Augustus (Fig. 309). He taught that God is the
first cause, and that the law of Jesus Christ was to terminate in
the year 1200, and to make way for the law of the Holy Ghost, which
would sanctify men without any external act; by his denial of the
resurrection of the dead and of hell, he destroyed the essential basis
of morality. This doctrine, as convenient as it was dangerous, found
many warm partisans.

Abelard, the most talented dialectician of his day, gifted with
wonderful learning, and armed with a rational theology which he made
intelligible, assigned a different origin and a different mode of
action to each of the three persons of the Trinity. The divines at once
prepared to combat his views, and St. Bernard constituted himself their
champion. Abelard, when condemned, repented, and, on his knees before
his judges, burnt the books which contained his heretical theories; he
showed himself, indeed, even a greater man by this expiatory act than
he had ever done by the brilliancy of his teaching. Bishop Gilbert de
la Porrée, a scholastic heresiarch like Abelard, also met a terrible
antagonist in the gifted Abbot of Clairvaux, and, bowing his head,
he confessed his guilt, leaving his disciples to maintain that the
attributes of God ought to be considered as distinct from his essence.
Arnold of Brescia attacked the temporal power, upon the ground that
the Church should be stripped of her property, that the wallet of St.
Peter should be given back to the pope, and the ancient Roman Republic
proclaimed in the pontifical city. Valdo went still further; he advised
the Christians to renounce all kinds of property, in order to render
their lives more spiritual. The Albigenses (Figs. 310 and 311) and the
Waldenses, who were Manicheans under another name, eventually embodied
in themselves all the heresies which, towards the close of the twelfth
century, had spread over Europe and chiefly throughout the south of
France. In the following chapter (“The Inquisition”), the account of
the crusade preached against them is related at length. From every
quarter of Christendom, but chiefly from Germany, Flanders, and France,
crusaders were enlisted beneath the banner of the faith.

  [Illustration: Fig. 311.--Entry of Louis VIII., King of France,
  and of Cardinal St. Angelo, the Pope’s Legate, upon the 12th of
  September, 1226, into Avignon, which had just capitulated after
  a three months’ siege.--After a Miniature in the “Chroniques de
  Hainaut” (Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Burgundian
  Library, Brussels).]

  [Illustration: Fig. 312.--Heresy of the Flagellants.--The Latin
  inscription upon the streamer borne by the Bishop of Hippona
  signifies, “They sacrifice to Satan, and not to God.”--Fac-simile
  of a Miniature in the “Cité de Dieu,” by St. Augustine
  (Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in St. Geneviève Library,
  Paris).]

This campaign was begun in 1196. The council which condemned the new
Manichean heresy met at Montpellier in December of that year, and the
first effect of the repressive measures which it very promptly employed
was to drive back into the Cevennes, the Alps, and the Vosges, and
towards the Rhône, the Moselle, and the Rhine, a host of heretics who
endeavoured to teach publicly in the free towns of Germany.

An excess of devotion, which had its origin in the wish to avert the
wrath of God, gave birth in Italy quite spontaneously to the sect
known as the Flagellants. This strange infatuation for scourging began
at Perugia, whence it passed to Rome and afterwards to Germany and
Poland. The nobles, the elders, the people of all classes, the poor and
even the children, traversed the streets of the towns and the country
districts with bare shoulders, scourging themselves mercilessly with
whips having leathern thongs (Fig. 312). These fanatics who travelled
through all Europe, firmly believed that an angel had brought a missive
from Jesus Christ, which declared that there was only one way for a
Christian to obtain pardon for his sins, viz. to leave his native
country and scourge himself for thirty-three consecutive days, in
commemoration of the thirty-three years which Christ had passed upon
earth. The Apostolicals, the Dulcinists, the Beghards, the Flagellants,
the Spiritual Brothers, the Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Turlupins,
&c., adopted these superstitious ideas, and constituted distinct sects
which were condemned by the Church as heretical. The sectaries appealed
from the sentence: the civil tribunals backed up the ecclesiastical
ones; the faggots were kindled and a vast number of heretics perished;
many, however, escaped, and, joining the Albigenses, they formed
the sect of the Lollards. The Englishman Wickliff, whose heresy had
pervaded all Britain (1368–1384), openly attacked the Court of Rome,
the upper clergy, the liturgy, and the sacraments, with an audacity
all the greater because he felt that he had the support of the people
at large and of several sovereigns. The University of Oxford made a
critical examination of Wickliff’s books, and found them to contain
two hundred and seventy-eight reprehensible propositions, which it
submitted for censure to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop
of London. After he had declaimed against the Church, its customs and
its institutions, Wickliff attacked the very foundations of civil
society, by his doctrine that, to possess any right or authority
upon earth, it was necessary to be in a state of grace. Consequently
kings, nobles, and the landowners were to lose their political and
domanial rights, since they were in a state of mortal sin, just as
the pope, the bishops, and the priests through sin were to lose their
spiritual powers. He moreover denied the existence of free-will; and
his allegation that everything which man did he was necessarily obliged
to do, implied that all punishment was unjust, for no one is guilty
who acts under compulsion. Lastly, he only recognised the existence
of God to make Him responsible for evil, maintaining that God also
is moved by an invincible necessity, that He looks with approval on
those who sin, that He even constrains men to commit sin; “so that,”
as Bossuet remarks, “the religion of this so-called Reformer was worse
than atheism.” It is true that with Wickliff God counted for little,
for, according to his system, “every creature is God, everything is
God.” It is easy to understand the effect of such doctrines as these
upon the masses; the religious dispute was transformed into a social
question. The followers of Wickliff, when condemned, refused to bow to
the decisions of the ecclesiastical authority. Their books were burnt,
their apostles were sent to the stake, while others were imprisoned or
exiled. But, in spite of this rigorous treatment, Wickliff’s doctrines
made a deep impression in England, obtained shortly afterwards the
protection of the House of Commons, and disposed men’s minds to bend
beneath the despotic will of Henry VIII.

  [Illustration: Fig. 313.--John Wickliff, a theologian Heresiarch,
  the Precursor of Luther, born at Wickliff, in England, about
  1324, died in 1387.--After the “Vrais Pourtraits des Hommes
  Illustres:” 4to, Jean de Laon, Geneva, 1581.]

The staunchest Catholic writers admit that the clergy are themselves
responsible for the triumph of the heretics. Moeller says--“The
relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline amongst the clergy and that
in a great many religious communities, from which the pontifical
court itself was not always exempt, gave the sectaries of the
sixteenth century a pretext for their rebellion against the Church,
its doctrines, its hierarchy, and its institutions. To this moral
decadence of a great part of the clergy must further be added the
profound ignorance of the upper clergy; and even those who cultivated
literature and science confined themselves almost exclusively to the
study of Greek and Latin literature, which directed the whole course of
scientific research from the fifteenth century downwards. Many pagan
ideas had pervaded men’s minds, and had contributed to create a feeling
of contempt both for Christianity and for that beautiful Christian
literature which had shed a lustre on the Church from the very
earliest times. This condition of the clergy had a baneful influence
upon the mass of the people, who lived in utter ignorance of religion,
and who had lost their attachment to the Church and all respect for its
pastors.”

This religious indifference of the clergy and of the people explains
the success, not only of the heresiarchs who presented themselves as
reformers of manners and discipline, but even of the sects held in the
lowest esteem, the sorcerers, for instance. The facts are too numerous
and too well-authenticated to admit of any doubt upon this head. There
existed throughout all Europe, in the Middle Ages, numerous sects
of sorcerers and witches who in all seriousness professed to give
themselves over to the devil in exchange for the gift of magic power.
The Spanish Inquisition was not the only body which sent them to the
stake, after having submitted them to trial and received the confession
of their misdeeds; the French tribunals pronounced sentence of death in
similar cases when the accused, after long and minute interrogatories,
but without being put to the torture, made a confession of their
satanic orgies known by the name of _sabbat_ (Fig. 314). This kind
of heresy eluded all the steps taken by the civil and the religious
powers to put it down. The “Histoire des Procès de Sorcellerie,” by
Soldam, tells us that, even at the close of the sixteenth century, from
1590 to 1594, thirty-five witches were condemned to be burnt, out of
a total population of six thousand, in the small Protestant town of
Nordling, in Germany. The enormities of the sect of sorcerers attest,
no doubt, a profound depravation of morals, but they contained no germ
of social revolution; such, however, was not the case with the theories
expounded by the great heresiarchs.

  [Illustration: Fig. 314.--The “Sabbat,” reprint of the legend
  contained in a sentence of the Arras Tribunal in 1460.--Engraving
  of the Sixteenth Century, preserved in the National Library,
  Paris.]

Wickliff’s doctrine soon made its way into Germany. It was propagated
by John Huss, one of the doctors at the University of Prague. When the
University discovered this, it solemnly condemned Wickliff’s books, and
prohibited them from being read. John Huss did not venture upon any
overt opposition; but, as the doctors of the University were Germans,
he called to his aid the vanity of the Bohemians and the personal
ill-will of King Wenceslaus against the Germans, who had deposed him
from the empire. The situation of the professors became untenable,
and they left with their two thousand pupils for Leipsic, where they
founded the University. John Huss was joined by several ecclesiastics,
who were anxious to acquire liberty of action; but the leading
Bohemian professors, convoked by the archbishop to examine the works
of Wickliff which John Huss had distributed amongst the Bohemian
nobles, decided that the possessors of these books should surrender
them to be burnt. John Huss again endeavoured to temporise, promising
the archbishop to correct in his preaching anything which might have
escaped him contrary to Christian doctrine; for, in his view, this
promise did not prevent him from propagating the doctrine of Wickliff,
which he believed to be quite orthodox. He was supported by Jerome of
Prague, a man of position, who, in addition to his ardour and daring,
was a bachelor in theology, though a layman. The latter was so zealous
in his partisanship, that he upon one occasion stopped three Carmelite
monks who had been combating the theories of Wickliff, and threw one of
them into the Moldau. Denounced to the pope by the clergy of Prague,
John Huss and his adherents were declared heretics and excommunicated.
A rebellion got up in Prague by his partisans, headed by the impetuous
Jerome, cost a great number of them their lives, the senate visiting
their crimes with capital punishment. John Huss appealed from the
sentence of the pope to the next council; and this, which was held
at Rome in 1413, condemned afresh the writings of Wickliff and
excommunicated John Huss, who had not put in an appearance, although he
was cited before the Council. The Chancellor Gerson, the illustrious
Dean of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Paris, which
had just condemned the nineteen errors of John Huss, wrote to the
Archbishop of Prague, exhorting him to take the necessary steps for
repressing this heresy.

That prelate, in conformity with Gerson’s advice, obtained the support
of the King of Bohemia; and it was decreed that all those who still
adhered to the condemned theories of Wickliff should be expelled from
the kingdom. John Huss was thus compelled to leave the city, but he
declaimed as vehemently as ever against the Church, and especially
against the pope.

  [Illustration:

  Fig. 315.--John Huss, the celebrated Heresiarch, born in Bohemia;
  tried, condemned, and burnt at Constance in 1415.

  Fig. 316.--Jerome of Prague, a Disciple of John Huss, born at
  Prague about 1378; burnt alive for heresy at Constance in 1416.

  After the “Vrais Pourtraits des Hommes Illustres:” Jean de Laon,
  Geneva, 1581.]

The Council of Constance, convoked for the 1st of November, 1414, was
ordered to examine his doctrines. John Huss, far from flinching at this
decisive moment, vehemently called upon his adversaries, by public
placards, to come and put him to confusion before the council. “If,”
he stated in these placards, “I can be convicted of any error, or of
having taught anything contrary to the Christian faith, I am ready to
undergo the punishment inflicted upon heretics.” He then solicited and
obtained from the Emperor Sigismund a safe-conduct, in which it was
stated that, “out of respect for the imperial majesty he was to be let
freely and safely pass, sojourn, remain, and return, and be provided,
if necessary, with other fitting passports.” John Huss left Prague on
the 11th of October (Figs. 315 and 316), and on the 20th, in a letter
written from Nuremberg, he expresses his satisfaction at the reception
which he has everywhere met with, especially from the ecclesiastics,
who seemed disposed to accept his doctrine. Upon reaching Constance, on
the 3rd of November, he expounded his ideas very freely, both by word
of mouth and in writing; and, in spite of the excommunication hurled
against him, he said mass every day in a private room, but without
making any secret of it, to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood.
Upon the 28th of November he was arrested and cast into prison. After
many witnesses had been examined, thirty-nine articles taken from his
speeches and writings were read in public, the most important of which
declared “that the elect alone are members of the Catholic Church;
that St. Peter neither is nor ever has been the chief of that Church;
that by the commission of mortal sin the ecclesiastical and civil
authorities lose their rights and privileges; and lastly, that the
condemnation of the forty-five articles of Wickliff was unreasonable
and unjust.” The venerable Peter d’Ailly exhorted John Huss to submit
himself to the judgment of the council; the emperor did the same,
threatening him, if he refused, with the rigour of the law. Upon the
following day he was given a recantation to sign, which he would not
consent to do. A fortnight afterwards, on the 24th of June, his books
were condemned to be burnt. On the 6th of July the council declared him
to be a heretic, and degraded him from his ecclesiastical orders, by
which process he was handed over to the secular arm. The emperor, who
was present, had him immediately seized by the count-palatine, and the
civil law, which condemned stubborn heretics to the stake, was applied
in all its rigour. John Huss submitted to his fate with courage. Jerome
of Prague at first signed the formula of recantation, but he soon
afterwards disavowed it; and, after publicly declaring that he adopted
the whole doctrine of John Huss, he also was sent to the stake.

These pitiless measures failed to intimidate the partisans of John
Huss; on the contrary, they became converted into a horde of fanatics,
in which all the sects hostile to the Church became indiscriminately
merged. Ziska, the chamberlain of King Wenceslaus, placing himself at
their head, ravaged Bohemia, pillaged the monasteries, massacred the
monks, constituted himself absolute master of the country, holding in
check the whole military force of the empire. After his death (1424)
the Hussites, far from giving in their submission and avowing their
errors, continued supreme in Germany, so that Luther had only to cast
seed upon the ground which they had bedewed with blood.

By a strange anomaly, the Hussites remained firmly attached to the
dogma of the eucharist; and the chief inducement of the people to join
their party was, in several cases, the privilege of being able to
receive the communion in both kinds. The Hussites, assembled to the
number of forty thousand in their celebrated camp of Tabor, by the
wayside, without any preliminary confession, received the communion
under the elements of bread and wine. Their leader signed himself
Ziska of the Chalice; and when the moderate section of the party
separated themselves from the more advanced section, he chose the name
of Calixtines to indicate his own followers. The Protestants, on the
contrary, were not long in coming to deny the real and abiding presence
of Christ in the eucharistic elements. The importance attached to this
dogma drew general attention to the extraordinary case of a woman
possessed, who travelled through the dioceses of Laon and Soissons
towards the middle of the sixteenth century. This was a young woman,
recently married, of the name of Nicole, belonging to a humble but very
honest family. There were many public exorcisms, and the paroxysms of
the patient were always allayed by the giving of the sacrament. The
case was much criticised; it was submitted to a scrupulous examination,
and the agitation which it gave rise to was so great that the
authorities intervened. Nicole was handed over to the royal delegates
(Fig. 317), “who ordered that all the experiments should be made by
physicians and surgeons officially appointed, and selected from among
Catholics and Protestants alike, so that there should be no suspicion
attaching to their reports.” The evidence of these doctors did away
with all idea of fraud, which the judicial authorities would have had
no hesitation in punishing had it been practised. The Prince de Condé,
Governor of Picardy, and one of the warmest upholders of the Reformed
Religion, so called, detained for several days at his residence the
possessed woman, together with her parents, who accompanied her
wherever she went; but his interrogatories failed to shake their
conviction that Nicole had been possessed, and that the eucharist had
restored her. At last, a royal order enabled these poor people to
return to their own home at Vervins.

  [Illustration: Fig. 317.--Exorcism of a person possessed with
  a devil in the Church of Notre-Dame, at Laon, by the bishop of
  that city, on the 8th of February, 1566.--Reduced Fac-simile of
  an Engraving in the “Manuel de la Victoire du Corps de Dieu sur
  l’Esprit malin,” by Jean Boulaese: 16mo., Paris, 1575.]

The ecclesiastical authority, seconded as it was by the orthodox
sovereigns, had been nearly always sufficient to suppress the
heretical movements, which were circumscribed within a few provinces
or dioceses; but the violent dissensions of Rome with the Empire, the
two rival camps, formed during two centuries between the popes and
the anti-popes, the independent position acquired by the communes
after reiterated uprisings against their bishops and nobles, rendered
necessary the intervention of a judicial authority in the religious
quarrels and contentions springing out of the heresies and schisms
which were constantly arising. The creation of this authority, half
civil and half ecclesiastical, emanating from the throne, was mainly
with a view to protect the legacy of the past against the encroachments
and the audacious claims of the future. This is how it came to pass
that, from the fourteenth century, the courts styled Cours des Grand
Jours, the presidential tribunals, the parliaments, and even the
bailiwicks, together with the Châtelet of Paris, intervened in matters
of worship, though their rulings were not always in accordance with
canonical law. The Inquisition failed to effect a permanent lodgment in
France, but the ordinary tribunals claimed for themselves the right to
take cognizance of crimes of heresy without having recourse to the aid
of the ecclesiastical authorities.

  [Illustration: Fig. 318.--Allegorical Picture of the Excesses
  committed by the Huguenots.--The lion bound and tamed represents
  France reduced to a deplorable position by the heretics, as
  much by civil war, pillage, violence, and bloodshed, as by the
  impiety of which they left traces everywhere, profaning churches,
  breaking the sacred vessels, and treading under foot the crosses,
  the images, and the relics of the saints.--After a Drawing from
  the Manuscript “De Tristibus Franciæ,” preserved in the Library
  of Lyons. (Sixteenth Century.)]

  [Illustration: Fig. 319.--John Knox, Propagator of the Reformed
  Religion, so-called, in Scotland; born at Gifford in 1504, died
  in 1572.

  Fig. 320.--Ulrich Zwingle, the first champion of religious reform
  in Switzerland; born and died at Wildhaus, in the Canton of St.
  Gall, 1484–1531.

  From the “Vrais Pourtraits des Hommes Illustres:” Jean de Laon,
  Geneva, 1581.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 321.--The Massacre of St. Bartholomew,
  Paris, August 24th, 1572.--The principal subject is the murder
  of Coligny. To the left, the admiral is leaving the Louvre, and
  while reading a memorandum is wounded by an arquebuse fired by
  Maurevert from a window (August 22nd); in the background, one of
  his equerries is communicating this fact to King Charles IX.,
  whom he finds playing at tennis. To the right, Coligny, attacked
  by soldiers in his hotel, Rue Béthisy, is assassinated by Besme,
  and his body, thrown from the window, falls at the Duc de Guise’s
  feet. In the next house Téligny and other Protestants are being
  massacred.--After a German Engraving, a reprint of one of the
  Supplementary Plates of the Collection engraved by Jean Tortorel
  and Jacques Perrissin.]

When Luther’s protests against Rome and Catholicism (1517) first burst
upon the world, the heresy of Reform had long slumbered in a chrysalis
state, so to speak, awaiting only some circumstance to favour its
development. “The egg was laid,” as Erasmus remarked, “Luther had
but to incubate and hatch it.” The corruption of the higher classes,
of the clergy, and of the people, increased his chances of success.
The suppression of celibacy amongst the clergy, and of monastic vows,
was looked upon with secret favour by the depraved among the bishops,
priests, and monks; the prospect of seeing all the property of the
Church fall into their possession excited the cupidity of the princes
and nobles; and the rejection of ecclesiastical teaching flattered
the vanity of the people, who were made supreme judges of the dogmas
through the right which had been given to them, themselves to interpret
the Bible, now translated into the vulgar tongue. For two centuries
Rationalism had been disseminating the leaven of revolt against the
authority of the past, and the advent of printing lent it fresh
force. The apostle of the new doctrine had only to pronounce the word
negation, and an army of disciples rose up to follow him and fight
under his banner--disciples who, at first obedient to his command,
soon became rebellious, and impatient to obtain for themselves the
liberty of inquiry and the independence of principles which Luther
despotically endeavoured to reserve exclusively for himself.
Carlstadt, Œcolampadius, Hutten, Zwingle (Fig. 320), Schwenckfeld,
Munzer, Staupitz, Knox (Fig. 319), and many others, while following
in the footsteps of the famous Wittenberg professor, had their own
school: “The teachings crashed like avalanches, the doctrines rattled
like the tempest; there was a dark abyss of neologies, inconsistencies,
and contradictions, amidst which no ray of the eternal sun of grace
was visible,” to quote the poetic simile of Wieland. The intellectual
movement was none the less gigantic, especially in Germany and in
the countries bordering on the Moselle. A deluge of statements, of
pamphlets, and of stories, some true and others false, issuing, most
of them anonymously, from an infinity of printing-presses, were
rapidly disseminated, and made their way into every district; the
allegorical eucharist of Zwingle, the revolutionary appeal of Munzer
to the Franconian monks, the restoration of the _letter_ by
Schwenckfeld, the _trope_ of Carlstadt against Luther, assumed
a thousand different forms; while the indefatigable Luther himself,
in turn a Demosthenes, a Petronius, a Danubian peasant, a beer-sodden
drunkard, spun out in fifteen thousand folio pages his senseless
Protestant theories--a chaos of eloquence, poesy, impassioned similes,
tangible truths, audacious falsehoods, venom, hatred, jealousy, and
filth. The famous Leipsic dispute, the sessions of Worms and of
Augsburg, the war of extermination of the peasantry, the quarrel about
images, the interview of Mauburg, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in
France (Fig. 321)--in a word, the numerous revolutions of this great
religious drama which Europe was watching with nervous anxiety, are
brought into less marked relief in the large works since published by
learned controversialists, than in these desultory pages, scattered to
the winds, sung at the street-corners, accompanied by denunciations,
threats and sanguinary struggles between the irreconcilable factions of
Catholic and Huguenot.

  [Illustration: Fig. 322.--Martin Luther.--Reduced Fac-simile of
  a Portrait by Lucas de Cranach (1520), published in the fly-leaf
  of a sermon preached by Luther against the authority of the Roman
  Church (in octavo, Wittenberg, 1522), when he threw off his garb
  of an Augustine monk. The Latin distich renders famous both
  the artist and the original in these words:--“If Luther leaves
  imperishable traces of his genius, Lucas (Cranach) perpetuates
  for ever the features which death will efface.”]

Lutheranism, in consequence of a revolt in the cloister, had led to
anarchy in the Church, to the exile of Carlstadt, who was compelled
to beg his bread from village to village, to the persecutions against
Œcolampadius and Schwenckfeld, and to the massacre of a hundred
thousand rebellious peasants in Thuringia and Swabia. A multitude of
sects--the Sacramentarians, the Œcolampadians, the Antinomians, the
Majorists, and the Anabaptists were given birth to by the heresy of
Luther; there were as many popes as there were dissenting churches.
The Lutheran creed was still confined to the countries on the other
side of the Rhine, when the French sectaries, Farel and Froment (Fig.
324), set out to revolutionise Geneva and the neighbouring country.
An unjust hatred for the House of Savoy attracted to their standard a
large body of patriots, who, aspiring after a democratic independence,
hoped to rid themselves of hereditary monarchy and to break with
Catholicism, its main ally.

  [Illustration: Fig. 323.--John Calvin, called the Pope of Geneva,
  chief of the so-called Reformed Church; born at Noyon in 1509,
  died at Geneva in 1564.--Fac-simile of a Wood Engraving from
  the works of Theodore Beza, translated from the Latin by Simon
  Goulart--“Les Vrais Pourtraits des Hommes Illustres” (4to, Jean
  de Laon, Geneva, 1581).--One of the engraved frontispieces of
  this collection bears the monogram of Jean Cousin.]

In England, the king separated himself from the Roman Church. Henry
VIII., unable to obtain from Pope Clement VIII. a bull annulling his
marriage with Catherine of Arragon, and permitting him to espouse Anne
Boleyn, declared himself to be the supreme and only head of the Church
in his own kingdom, but he did not touch upon the dogmas which he had
defended against Luther; thus it was a schism rather than a heresy.
Under his successors, in conformity with a decision of the English
Parliament, a synod assembled in London drew up the Confession of Faith
for the Anglican Church, which differs less than any other, in regard
to dogma and discipline, from the traditions of the Catholic Church.

  [Illustration: Fig. 324.--William Farel, preacher of the
  so-called Reformed faith; born at Gap in 1489, died at Geneva in
  1565.--From the “Vrais Pourtraits des Hommes Illustres:” 4to,
  Jean de Laon, Geneva, 1581.]

Calvin, upon arriving at Geneva, his mind imbued with those evangelical
novelties which constituted a heresy essentially French, found the
Reformation already accomplished there. Its passage was marked only
too plainly by ruins and blood-stains; the stripping of the vanquished
by their conquerors had turned a religious reform into a social
revolution. Calvin, a jealous and inflexible sectary, laid hold upon
reform as an instrument of despotism. In order to become head of the
Church as well as head of the State, he proclaimed the doctrinal
negation of authority, thus beginning where Luther ended. To the
Saxon-like creed of the great Reformer, he adapted a mixed system
concerning the Lord’s Supper borrowed from Zwingle and Œcolampadius;
he was ardent and pitiless, as the sad fate of Servet and of Gruet
too clearly prove; he was determined to reign by terror, for he was
a slave of politics rather than of spiritual ideas. This it is which
constitutes so marked and characteristic a difference between the two
champions of Protestantism, between the rebellious monk of Wittenberg
and the apostate priest of Noyon. Calvin entered upon an overt struggle
with all the renegades of the Catholic school, with Gentilis, Ochino,
Castalion, and Westphalz; his doctrine and his teaching were alike
divergent from those of Zwingle in the mountains of Switzerland, of
Melancthon in the University of Wittenberg, of Œcolampadius at the
foot of the Hauenstein, of Martin Bucer at Strasburg, and of Brentzen
at Tubingen. Amongst the Geneva sectaries, two friends, Farel and
Beza, alone remained faithful to him, more through compatibility of
temperament than from identity of principles. The French Huguenots had,
however, accepted as their supreme chief a theocrat like Calvin, who,
for four-and-twenty years, never stepped without an escort of swords,
of faggots, and of executioners (Fig. 325).

  [Illustration: Fig. 325.--Violence of the French Huguenots
  against the Catholics.--A. Noble lady of Montbrun (Charente)
  being tortured by soldiers whom she had hospitably welcomed.
  They are burning the soles of her feet with red-hot irons, and
  with the sharp edges of the irons cutting the skin from her
  legs in strips.--B. Master Jean Arnould, Procureur-Royal at
  Angoulême, after having had his limbs mutilated, is strangled in
  his own house.--C. The widow of the Procureur at the criminal
  court of that city, seventy years of age, being dragged by the
  hair through the streets.--Fac-simile of a Copper-plate in the
  “Theatrum Crudelitatum nostri Temporis” (4to, Antwerp, 1587).]

  [Illustration: Fig. 326.--Seal of an imaginary Bull of Lucifer,
  taken from the “Roi Modus,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth
  Century, in the Burgundian Library, Brussels. The inscription
  on the seal seems to be cabalistic; at any rate, it is
  unintelligible.]

It is therefore to Calvin and his personal influence that must be
attributed the violent and merciless character which reform took during
the sixteenth century, when the horrors of religious warfare were
excused by the necessity of preaching the word of God to Christians who
were anxious to hear it!




                           THE INQUISITION.

   General Principles of the Inquisition; its Existence amongst
   the Greeks and Romans.--The Papal Inquisition.--The Inquisition
   in France.--The Albigenses.--The Royal Spanish Inquisition; its
   Political Purpose; it is opposed by the Popes.--Inquisitors of
   Toledo excommunicated by Leo X.--The Holy Hermandad.--The Spies
   of the Inquisition.--The Holy Office and the Supreme.--The
   Prisons of the Inquisition.--The _Auto-da-fé_.--The
   Inquisition in the Netherlands.--The Protestant Inquisition in
   Holland, Germany, France, England, and Switzerland.


At all times and in all places religion, which is the basis of society,
has had to be protected and fostered in the public interest. This
is why most men, especially those placed in authority, have always
attached the highest importance to philosophical ideas and opinions,
and still more to religious ideas. In fact, experience has shown only
too plainly since the formation of civilised States, that a change of
religious belief necessarily brings about a social transformation,
and that a political revolution is but the putting into practice
of a theory invented and propounded by a more or less hostile and
mischievous philosophy; hence the established principle which ordains
that human and divine law should alike be respected. It would
therefore be erroneous to regard the Inquisition as an exceptional and
abnormal fact, peculiar to the Middle Ages. The search into religious
creeds--for such is the meaning of the word _inquisition_--was
not only a natural consequence of the existence of forms of religion,
but an imperious function of government. All history--of antiquity as
well as that of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance--bears witness to
this fact. It is consoling to find that, as a general rule, even in
the midst of the fiercest persecutions, there were men of lofty views
and generous sentiments who did not hesitate to protest with undaunted
courage against the tyrannical and sanguinary excesses, by means of
which it was attempted to impose upon nations and upon individuals a
religious conviction which ought to be the offspring of reason, and
which should be the sole result of liberty of conscience.

  [Illustration: Fig. 327.--Funereal Lamp from the Catacombs,
  representing a young Christian woman crowned with the palm leaves
  of martyrdom.--Terra-cotta of the Third Century, in the Vatican
  Museum.]

The Inquisition--that is to say, the research of religious
orthodoxy--existed amongst the Greeks. The accusation of Melitus
against Socrates, compassing his death, says in so many words,
“Socrates is guilty because he does not recognise the gods of the
republic, and puts demoniacal extravagancies in their place.” The
judges, yielding to the influence of the democratic party, condemned
Socrates to drink hemlock, but the breath was scarcely out of his body
before the moderate men of all parties felt what an indignity had been
committed in the name of religion; it was not, however, in the cause
of religious tolerance, but by proving that Socrates had recognised
and worshipped the gods of the republic, that they obtained the
condemnation of Melitus his accuser, by way of reprisal.

At Rome as at Athens, we find the people full of suspicion and
merciless towards those who refused to bow down to the gods of the
republic; this was the cause of the cruel persecutions which, under
the Roman emperors, led to the martyrdom of thousands. It was in vain
that the Christians hid themselves in the recesses of the Catacombs to
pray to the true God and partake of the holy mysteries--it was in vain
that they rendered their lives irreproachable by fulfilling all their
duties as citizens--their religious creeds, contrary to that of the
State, could not be pardoned, and whenever they were discovered, they
either had to offer incense to the gods of the republic or suffer death
(Fig. 327). The mild Trajan replied to Pliny that it was unnecessary to
seek out the Christians, but that if they were denounced and refused
to change their faith, they must be punished. St. Ignatius, Bishop of
Antioch, was one of the many martyrs immolated during the reign of
Trajan, who allowed men of the highest honour and virtue, whose only
crime was their refusal to adore the image of the emperor and the pagan
idols, to be put to death.

  [Illustration: Fig. 328.--St. Cecilia, and Valerian her
  spouse.--At their feet are roses and lilies in bloom, and upon
  each side of them is a palm-tree loaded with fruit, a symbol of
  their victories and of their meritorious martyrdom. Upon one of
  the palm-trees is a phœnix with a gloria around its head, the
  ancient symbol of resurrection.--Mosaic taken from the Cemetery
  of St. Sixtus, and preserved in the Church of St. Cecilia, at
  Rome (Third or Fourth Century).]

Under the reign of Alexander Severus, many illustrious martyrs were
put to death: St. Cecilia, her husband, and her brother-in-law (Fig.
328) among the number. St. Cecilia was descended from a very ancient
family which dated back to the time of Tarquin the Proud; she belonged
to the same house as Metella, many of whose children were raised to
the honours of triumph and of the consulate in the heyday of the Roman
republic. Her parents gave her in marriage to a young Roman patrician,
named Valerian. But Cecilia had dedicated her virginity to God, and
her husband, converted to the faith by her arguments and entreaties,
respected her vow, and himself converted his brother Tiburcius. They
all three relieved their persecuted brethren, and this Christian
charity betrayed them. In spite of their distinguished birth, their
wealth and their connections, they were arrested, and their refusal to
sacrifice to the false gods led to their being condemned to death. We
find a multitude of analogous occurrences in Gaul (Figs. 329 and 330),
and also in the most distant provinces of the East.

  [Illustration: Fig. 329.--St. Savin and St. Cyprian brought
  before the Proconsul Maximus in 458, and confessing that they
  were Christians.--Fresco in the Church of St. Savin (Vienne), the
  oldest extant in France (Eleventh Century).--After the Drawings
  of M. Gérard-Séguin.]

After the conversion of Constantine, when the religion of Christ was
recognised as that of the State, the secular arm at once placed itself
at the service of the Church to uphold the unity of the faith; but the
civil power, instead of limiting itself to seconding the ecclesiastical
authority in the repression of offences against the dogma as laid
down by the councils, sought to obtain a sovereign influence in all
the trials relating to religious matters, and hence arose deplorable
abuses. The Italian Inquisition, under the immediate direction of the
popes, made its appearance in the fifth century: Pope St. Leo, after
having ordered a juridical inquiry to be held concerning the Manicheans
who had taken refuge in Rome, stated, “What has been done is not
enough; the Inquisition must continue not only as an inducement for the
devout to hold fast by their faith, but in order that those who have
been led astray may be converted from their errors.” The primitive and
real object of the Inquisition was to discover errors in doctrine, to
stop them from being propagated, and to endeavour to enlighten and to
win back those who had been perverted by the apostles of error.

  [Illustration: Fig. 330.--Martyrdom of SS. Savin and Cyprian,
  their flesh being torn out with iron hooks.--Fresco in the Church
  of St. Savin, Vienne (Eleventh Century).--After the Drawings of
  M. Gérard-Séguin.]

In the twelfth century Pope Lucius III., with a view of checking
the progress of the Manicheans, who reappeared under the names of
Catharists, Patarenes, the Poor of Lyons, &c., ordered “through the
council of bishops, at the demand of the emperor (of Germany) and the
lords of his court, that every bishop should visit the districts of his
diocese which were suspected of containing heretics once or twice a
year.” They were to be denounced by every one, so that the bishop might
summon them before him, make them renounce their heresies, or inflict
upon them the punishment awarded by canonical law. Thus we see that
religious error was regarded as a breach of public order, and that the
princes looked upon the heretics as rebels or conspirators. This was in
keeping with the ideas of the Middle Ages, when the whole social system
reposed upon the Catholic faith. We must in fairness admit that, if the
Inquisition of Rome was the earliest, and the only one which outlasted
the Middle Ages, it was also the most moderate, for it alone never
ordered capital punishment.

The Inquisition was introduced into France through a heresy of Eastern
origin, which endeavoured to associate the pagan ideas of Armenian
Manicheism with the ceremonies of Christianity. Originally centred
at Toulouse and Albi (whence the name _Albigenses_), the new
heretics, numbering about one thousand and fifty, gradually made their
way into Perigord and the neighbouring provinces. Towards 1160 another
sect, the Waldenses, founded by Peter de Valdo or de Vaux, arose at
Lyons, and gave great trouble to the papacy. The Albigenses were
inferior in morality even to the Waldenses, and professed still more
dangerous opinions. Immediate followers of Manes the Persian, they
had adopted his doctrine of the double nature of man, of fatalism, of
the origin of good and evil, &c.--a monstrous doctrine, the direct
consequence of which was a life of unbridled license. In spite of the
pious efforts of King Robert (1022) and the sentence of condemnation
pronounced at the Council of Toulouse (1118), the Manichean heresy of
the Albigenses continued to spread throughout the southern provinces of
France, and obtained fresh adherents every day even amongst the clergy
and the nobility. Innocent III., elected sovereign pontiff in 1198,
took alarm at the danger to the Christian religion, and determined
to reduce these daring sectaries to obedience, openly protected as
they then were by the Counts of Toulouse, Foix, and Béarn, and by the
Viscount of Béziers. But, before resorting to physical force, he at
first tried persuasion.

  [Illustration: Fig. 331.--St. Dominic handing to an envoy of
  the Albigenses a book containing the profession of faith in the
  Christian truths; to the right, this book having been cast into
  the fire, is leaping out of the flames, whilst the heretic’s book
  is being consumed.--Predella of the “Couronnement de la Vierge”
  by Fra Angelico, in the Louvre (Fifteenth Century).]

Two monks, Guy and Raynier, of the Cistercian order, accordingly
repaired to the south of France to seek out these heretics. They were
the first commissioners of the Holy See to whom might properly belong
the title of _inquisitors_. The failure of their mission decided
Innocent III. to give full powers to Peter de Castelnau, Archdeacon
of Magliano, and to another Cistercian monk named Ralph. These two
monks, accompanied by Amalric, Abbot of Citeaux, preached against the
heresy of the Albigenses at Toulouse, Narbonne, Viviers, Carcassonne,
and Montpellier, but the heretics only displayed greater perseverance.
Peter de Castelnau and Brother Ralph, disheartened at this result,
enlisted in their difficult mission twelve brothers of their own order
and two distinguished Spanish prelates--Diego de Azeles, Bishop of
Osma, and the sub-prior of his cathedral, Dominic Guzman, who, having
witnessed the progress of heresy in Languedoc, went to Italy to obtain
the Holy Father’s permission to preach against it. Dominic had given
proof of a gentleness, zeal, and piety worthy of the apostles, and
the renown of his exemplary life was counted upon to give authority
to his preaching (Fig. 331). Yet he was no less unsuccessful than the
preceding commissioners sent by the pope. Insulted and mocked by an
ignorant and brutal populace, he could not help exclaiming, “O Lord,
let thy hand smite them, that thy punishment at least may open their
eyes!” The legate Peter de Castelnau, in despair at the failure of his
efforts to restore quietude and faith to men’s minds, determined to
address himself directly to the Count of Toulouse, Raymond VI., and to
formally demand of him to lend his aid to the papal legates, or else
to proclaim openly that he sided with the heretics. After an interview
during which bitter language was exchanged, two of the esquires of the
Count of Toulouse believed that they would be complying with their
master’s secret wishes by assassinating the courageous legate upon the
banks of the Rhône (1208). Innocent III., when the news of this murder
reached him, at once determined to set on foot a new crusade against
the Albigenses. He appointed Milon in the room of Peter de Castelnau,
and declared that he took under his immediate protection all the
faithful who should take up arms for the defence of the Church. The
Count of Toulouse did public penance, and his nephew Raymond Viscount
of Béziers was handed over to the papal legates. The town of Béziers,
taken by assault (July 22nd, 1209), was a scene of terrible carnage,
for the crusaders gave no quarter--twenty thousand inhabitants were
massacred without distinction of age or sex, and seven thousand were
burnt in a church in which they had taken refuge.

Simon de Montfort, who was at the head of the expedition, accepted
the effects of the Viscount of Béziers, and continued the war against
the heretics. In 1213, before the walls of Muret, he defeated Peter
II., King of Arragon, an ally of the Albigenses, who was besieging the
town, and he afterwards stripped the Count of Toulouse of his domains,
against the wish of Innocent III., who would have preferred that the
count’s hereditary rights, and still more those of his son, should have
been respected.

Simon was supported by Louis, son of Philip Augustus, who lost no time
in fulfilling the vow which he had made to take up arms against the
Manicheans of Languedoc, and, as the battle of Bouvines (1214) had
led to a five years’ truce between the Kings of France and England,
he joined the Catholic forces in the following year. In 1218 Toulouse
rose in revolt, and Simon de Montfort was mortally wounded by a
stone during the siege. His son Amaury put himself forward as heir to
his father’s domains, and endeavoured to establish his claims to the
countships of Béziers and Toulouse, but he eventually abandoned them in
favour of the French monarch. Very rigorous measures were taken to put
down the heretics. An order issued by the bishop of Toulouse decreed
that “the inhabitants of the districts infected with heresy shall pay
one mark in silver for every Waldensian found within their boundaries;
the house in which he is captured, those in which he has preached,
shall be razed to the ground, and the property belonging to the owner
of these houses confiscated. The goods of the pervert shall also be
confiscated, as well as those appertaining to any person neglecting to
wear or to display the two coloured crosses which should be sewn on to
the breast of the penitent’s garment.” The Holy See, on its part, was
not remaining inactive during this time, as in 1215 the fourth Lateran
Council had excommunicated the Manicheans, the Waldenses, and the
Albigenses. The third canon of that council declared that “the heretics
who are condemned shall be handed over to the secular arm, in order
that they may receive their merited punishment; the clerks shall be
previously unfrocked.”

Just before this council terminated its sittings, Dominic, presented to
Pope Innocent III., obtained, as a recompense for the services which
he had rendered to the Church militant, leave to found the order of
Preaching-Brothers, who from him took the name, by which they are more
generally known, of _Dominicans_.

Their pious founder battled against heresy with purely spiritual
weapons, and it is perhaps scarcely necessary to mention that he it was
who, with a view to obtaining the conversion of heretics, introduced
the custom of reciting the rosary. On his return to Toulouse, which
eventually became the centre of the Inquisition, he delegated to eight
provincials of his order, in France, Provence, Lombardy, Romagna,
Germany, Hungary, England, and Spain the special mission of preaching
against heresy. And, lastly, in 1229 Raymond VII., who had succeeded
to his paternal inheritance after doing public penance, was reconciled
to the Church and reinstated in his countship of Toulouse. His only
daughter married one of the king’s brothers, thus insuring the
transmission of his lands to the French crown.

  [Illustration: Fig. 332.--Great Synagogue of Toledo (Third
  Century), restored at different periods, and consecrated for
  Catholic worship, under the name of Santa Maria Blanca, after
  the expulsion of the Jews in 1405: now used as a military
  storehouse.--After a Drawing by Don Manuel de Assas.]

Louis IX. lost no time in taking measures to consolidate the results
of this pacific arrangement. He addressed to all his subjects, in
the dioceses of Narbonne, Cahors, Rodez, Agen, Arles, and Nîmes, a
decree composed of ten clauses, by which it was sought to effect the
repression of heresy with the help of the secular clergy. Any one who
had been excommunicated for more than a year was to be compelled, by
seizure of his goods, to return to the Church. The tithes, which had
long been kept back, were re-established. The barons, the vassals, the
large towns and royal bailiwicks were sworn to observe and execute
this decree. Even the king’s brother, when he assumed possession of
the country, took the same oath for himself and his subjects. The
Inquisition soon appeared to be unnecessary in France, and, with the
consent of the Holy See, it suspended its action in the countship of
Toulouse in 1237.

In Spain, the Inquisition was royal rather than papal. If we would
understand the part played by this remarkable tribunal, it must be
remembered that Spain took seven centuries to conquer its independence
against the Moors and the Jews. These latter, while feigning a
readiness to be converted, none the less maintained their antipathy for
the Christian religion and their hatred of the Christians. Thus, when
Ferdinand and Isabella had the whole of Spain under their authority,
they considered it necessary to establish religious unity, in order
to preserve national unity, and the Moors and Jews were ordered to
quit the country or abjure their creeds (Figs. 332 and 333). The two
sovereigns, who looked at the question in a political light, had
established in their dominions a special Inquisition placed under their
immediate control. The popes protested at once against the pretension
of the Catholic monarchs to themselves superintend the Inquisition,
and, on the tribunal being formed, Pope Sixtus IV. recalled his
legate from the Spanish Court, which latter in turn withdrew its
ambassador from Rome. A reconciliation, however, was effected, and a
bull legalising the Spanish Inquisition was granted; but Pope Sixtus
IV. soon regretted what he had done when he came to know of its
excesses. The Spanish sovereigns, upon the other hand, did all they
could to prevent the appeals made by condemned heretics from being
heard at the Court of Rome, while the popes were obliged to employ
stratagem in order to protect the penitent heretics from the merciless
severity of the Inquisition. Llorente tells us that on many occasions
a great number of heretics received secret absolution by order of the
pope, but he further adds that these papal amnesties were not always
approved of by the Spanish government. Leo X. actually excommunicated
the Inquisitors of Toledo, and Charles V., when he became emperor,
pretended to lean in favour of the Lutheran reform in order to prevent
Leo from interfering any further with the Spanish Inquisition. This
Inquisition was assisted by three corporate bodies, namely, the Holy
Hermandad, the Cruciata, and the Militia of Christ.

  [Illustration: Fig. 333.--Interior of the Ancient Mosque at
  Cordova, now a Catholic Cathedral; built in the Eighth Century
  by Abderhaman I., and altered for Catholic worship after the
  conversion of the Moors; it is one of the largest and most
  splendid monuments of Moorish architecture.]

The Holy Hermandad (a corruption of the Latin word _germanitas_,
confraternity) was at first an association of police officers employed
in the protection of the streets and highways. Originally established
in the three royal residences of Toledo, Cuidad-Real, and Talavera, it
eventually became a military force, whose chief mission was to put into
execution the orders of the Inquisition.

The Cruciata, a society composed of archbishops, bishops, and other
personages of mark, was entrusted, under various circumstances, with
the task of seeing that the laws of the Church were obeyed and carried
out amongst Catholics.

The Family of the Inquisition, or the Militia of Christ, created during
the pontificate of Honorius III., and analogous to the Order of the
Templars, placed its forces at the service of the Inquisitors, and its
pious zeal earned for it the good opinion of Pope Gregory IX.

As we have already mentioned, it was in 1481, during the reign of
Ferdinand and Isabella, that the Inquisition, provided with a new code
of regulations, acquired a formidable power. Chiefly intended to bring
to trial the Jews and the Moors who had again relapsed into paganism,
it was then that it got the name of _The Holy Office_, and was
superintended by a grand inquisitor-general and a council, termed
_The Supreme_, consisting of forty-five members. When the Holy
Office had a heretic, or any one suspected of being one, arrested, its
agents stripped the accused person of all he had about his person, and
took a detailed inventory of his clothing and furniture, in order that
they might be restored to him intact should he prove to be innocent.
The money so seized, whether in gold or silver, belonged by right
to the tribunal, and went to pay the costs of the procedure. These
formalities over, the accused person was taken to prison.

Of prisons, the Inquisition had several kinds: 1st, the _common_
prison, in which were confined persons accused merely of ordinary
misdemeanour, and who, consequently, were allowed to communicate with
their families and friends; 2nd, the _prison of mercy_ or _of
penitence_, which was set apart for those who were to be detained
only temporarily; 3rd, the _intermediate prison_, reserved for
those who had committed some ordinary delinquency which brought
them within the jurisdiction of the Holy Office; 4th, the _secret
prison_, the inmates of which were kept in solitary confinement.
The dungeons of the Inquisition were like all those constructed in the
Middle Ages.

After an incarceration which varied in length, the prisoner was
conducted, when the day of trial arrived, to the large audience hall,
which was hung with black, and adorned with a figure of Christ upon the
cross, the body being of ivory and the cross of ebony. At the extreme
end, before a circular table, sat the Inquisitor-general in a raised
chair covered with black velvet and surmounted by a canopy of the same
material. To his right and left, seats placed at a lower elevation were
reserved for the Inquisitors, who, with the secretary, composed the
tribunal. Two clerks of the court took down the questions put by the
president and the answers made by the accused; behind them stood the
spies of the Inquisition, and four men wearing long black robes, with
their faces concealed by a mask with openings for the mouth, the nose,
and the eyes.

The prisoner was seated upon a kind of raised stool placed opposite
the Inquisitor; when, after a long interrogatory, he failed to avow
his guilt, he was taken to the _torture-chamber_, preceded by the
Inquisitor and the four mysterious men in black who had been present
at the trial. Here he was again exhorted to abjure his errors, and,
if these fresh entreaties were powerless to move him, he was handed
over to the torturer, who put him to the torture with one of the four
agencies employed by justice--the cord, the scourge, fire, or water
(see the chapter on “Punishments,” in MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE
MIDDLE AGES).

The torture as used by the tribunals of the Inquisition did not
differ from that employed by the civil tribunals, which, using it
as unsparingly, scarcely attained a more satisfactory result, for
the victim steeled himself against the pain and generally refused
to reply to this interrogatory, though accompanied by inconceivable
tortures. The solemn delivery of the judgment of the Inquisition
and the execution of its sentences were preceded by a peculiar
ceremony, designated in Spain and its dependencies by the name of
_Auto-da-fé_, or Act of Faith. In most Auto-da-fés, the dismal
procession was headed by a double file of Dominican brothers, before
whom was carried the banner of the Holy Office (Fig. 334), with the
device, “_Justitia et misericordia_.” Behind them came the
condemned, followed by the spies of the Inquisition and the executioner.

  [Illustration: Fig. 334.--An Auto-da-fé Procession, in Spain,
  according to the ceremonial observed from the Fourteenth
  Century.--Fac-simile of a large Engraving on copper in the work
  of Philip of Limborch, entitled “Historia Inquisitionis:” folio,
  Amsterdam, 1692.]

There were many kinds of _san-benito_ for different classes of
penitents. The first, for heretics who were reconciled to the Church
before sentence had been passed, consisted of a yellow scapulary,
with large reddish-coloured St. Andrew’s cross, and of a round
pyramid-shaped cap called _coroza_, of the same material as the
san-benito and with similar crosses; but no flames were represented
on the garments, as the accused by timely repentance had escaped the
punishment of burning (Fig. 335).

The second, for those who, sentenced to be burnt, had subsequently
recanted, was made up of a san-benito and a coroza of the same
material. The scapulary was covered with tongues of fire pointing
downwards, to indicate that the wearer (Fig. 336) would not be burnt
alive, inasmuch as he was to be strangled before being placed upon the
burning pile.

  [Illustration: Fig. 335.--_San-benito._ Garment worn by
  those who escaped burning by making a confession before being
  sentenced.

  Fig. 336.--_Fuego revolto._ Garment worn by those who
  escaped being burnt alive by making a confession after they had
  been condemned.

  Fig. 337.--_Samarra._ Garment worn by those who, refusing to
  confess, were about to be burnt.

  Fac-simile of Engravings on Copper in the work of Philip of
  Limborch, entitled “Historia Inquisitionis:” in folio, Amsterdam,
  1592.]

The third, worn by those who died impenitent, had at the lower end the
head of a man in the midst of fire and enveloped in flames. The other
parts of the garment were covered with forked flames shooting upwards,
as a token that the heretic would actually be burnt alive. Grotesque
figures of demons were also represented upon the san-benito and upon
the coroza as well.

At the church whither the cortége repaired, chanting prayers on
its way, ten white tapers were alight in silver candlesticks upon
the high altar, which was hung in black; to the right, there was a
kind of raised dais for the Inquisitor and his councillors; to the
left, another such a one for the king and his court. Facing the high
altar was a scaffolding covered with black cloth upon which the
_reconciled_ stood to make their abjurations upon missals which
had been opened and arranged beforehand.

After the reconciliation of these latter, the impenitent heretics were
handed over to the secular power, together with the prisoners who had
been guilty of ordinary misdemeanour. The Auto-da-fé was then over, and
the Inquisitors withdrew. An historian, in giving a detailed account
of a trial before the tribunals of the Inquisition, tells us that the
civil punishment was not inflicted until the day after the Auto-da-fé.
Nor was it always the case that it was followed by execution, for
Llorente cites that of February 12th, 1486, at Toledo, when there were
seven hundred and fifty heretics brought up for punishment, not one of
whom was put to death, though they had to do public penance. At another
great Auto-da-fé, also held at Toledo in April of the same year, out
of nine hundred repentant or condemned persons none underwent the
extreme penalty. A third, on the 1st of May, comprised seven hundred
and fifty persons; and at a fourth, on the 10th of December, there
were nine hundred and fifty, but in both these instances no blood was
shed. Out of a total of three thousand three hundred persons who had
to do penance for transgressing the rules of the Church at this epoch,
Llorente states that only twenty-seven were put to death. It must be
remembered that the Spanish Inquisition, in conformity with the royal
decree, had to try not only heretics, but those accused of unnatural
crimes, brigands, lay or clerical seducers, blasphemers, persons guilty
of sacrilege, usurers, and even murderers and rebels. In addition to
this, those who supplied the enemy with horses and stores in time of
war, together with the then frequent cases of sorcery, magic, and
other similar frauds, were also brought within the jurisdiction of the
tribunals of the Inquisition. Thus the twenty-seven individuals who
were executed in 1486 may have been made up of malefactors of every
class.

The political aim of the kings of Spain was attained, for the
maintenance of religious unity preserved the kingdom from the bloody
catastrophes which at that period spread desolation throughout France
and England. This is admitted even by Voltaire, in his “Essai sur
l’Histoire Générale.” While deploring the horrors of the Inquisition,
he says, “In Spain there were none of those bloody revolutions,
conspiracies, or cruel reprisals which disgraced every other European
nation. Neither Count Olivarès nor the Duke of Lerma sent their enemies
to the scaffold, and sovereigns were never assassinated as in France,
nor did they suffer beneath the headsman’s axe, as in England.”

  [Illustration: Fig. 338.--Philip II., King of Spain.--From the
  work of Cesare Vecellio: 8vo, 1590.]

The Inquisition was less successful in the Netherlands, for the
Protestant cause made great progress in Holland during the reign of
Charles V. The nobility and the upper clergy, indignant at the rigorous
measures adopted by Philip II. (Fig. 338) in his efforts to put down
heresy, countenanced the general uprising against the Spaniards.
Emboldened thereby, the Protestants flew to arms, the churches were
burnt, the priests and monks were massacred, and the Catholic form of
worship suppressed in many localities. Philip dispatched thither the
notorious Duke of Alva, who, on assuming the command, instituted the
_council of troubles_, which the people nicknamed the _council
of blood_. The religious question resolved itself into a struggle
for national independence. A bitter war resulted in the definite
separation of the United Provinces, which afterwards became the kingdom
of Holland. Belgium, created an independent province, was handed over
with hereditary rights to Archduke Albert and his wife Isabella,
daughter of Philip II.

  [Illustration: Fig. 339.--Cruelties committed by the Gueux, in
  Holland. A. Master John Jerome, of Edam, and other Catholics of
  Hoorn, being put to the torture, at Scagen, in Northern Holland.
  Those who survive the first tortures are tied down upon their
  backs, a large cauldron turned upside down is placed upon their
  naked stomachs, with a number of large dormice underneath. A
  fire is lighted upon the top of the cauldron which enrages the
  dormice; and as they are unable to creep under the edges of the
  cauldron, they burrow into the entrails of the victim. B. Ursula
  Talèse, a nun of Haarlem, having refused to renounce her faith
  when made to stand beneath the gibbet upon which her father
  had been hung, is thrown into the water and drowned. C. Her
  sister, bewailing her fate and that of her father, also refuses
  to change her creed, and her skull is beaten in with a large
  stone.--Fac-simile of an Engraving on Copper in the “Theatrum
  Crudelitatum nostri Temporis” (4to, Antwerp, 1587); with a
  translation of the explanations given.]

The United Provinces were no sooner constituted than, notwithstanding
the Protestant principle of the liberty of free inquiry, they obeyed
that instinct which impels all governments to religious unity--Spain
was outdone in the refinement of punishments which they invented to use
against the Catholics who refused to change their faith (Fig. 339).
Nor was it against the Catholics only that the Protestant Inquisition
exercised its rigorous authority. In countries where Calvinists and
Lutherans were brought into juxtaposition, religious persecution broke
out between the various reformed Churches, always, too, under the
instinctive influence that religious unity was necessary to ensure
the stability of the State. A distinguished writer, Menzel, in his
“New History of the Germans since the Reformation,” gives some very
interesting details concerning this internecine struggle. At the end
of the sixteenth century, when, at the death of the Elector of Saxony,
Christian I., on September 25th, 1591, the government of Saxony fell
into the hands of Duke William of Altenburg, who was a rigid Lutheran,
the Calvinist party in Germany thought that the golden age was about
to return. Chancellor Crell, who in Christian’s lifetime had treated
the Lutherans with slight show of mercy, was cast into prison, together
with Gunderman, a Leipsic preacher. After five months’ incarceration,
the latter signed the “Formula of Concord,” in order that he might
be able to visit his wife, whom he had left _enceinte_, but he
had no sooner appended his signature than he was told that she had
hung herself in a fit of despair. The unfortunate man went out of his
mind. Other preachers were treated with almost equal severity; and at
Leipsic, in 1593, the Lutheran party set fire to the houses of the
Calvinists, who had to fly from the city to escape assassination.
Such was also the case in Silesia. Upon the 22nd of September, 1601,
Chancellor Crell was condemned to death, after having been kept ten
years in prison, and he was beheaded on the 10th of October.

At Brunswick, in 1603, the Lutheran preachers excommunicated the
captain of the burghers, one Brabant; in 1604 it was rumoured that
he had made a pact with the devil, and that the latter had been seen
following them in the form of a crow. Brabant tried to escape, but
broke his leg in the attempt. Brought back to Brunswick amidst the
hootings of the populace, who regarded him as a traitor and a magician,
he was three times put to the most cruel torture, to terminate which
he avowed himself guilty of all the crimes laid to his charge. His
companions in misfortune were treated with equal cruelty. While Zachary
Druseman was suspended by the arms in the torture-chamber, his judges
went off to their supper. The victim implored the executioner, by the
wounds of our Lord Jesus Christ, to let him down for a single moment
and loosen the screws which were crushing his feet, but the latter
replied that he must wait until the judges returned. When they came in
an hour afterwards, completely intoxicated, Druseman was dead. Menzel
goes on to tell us that on St. Michael’s Day the Lutheran preachers, at
the request of the town council, undertook to justify from the pulpit
the executions which had been incessantly going on, and that on the 9th
of December a thanksgiving service was held in all the churches, in
front of which the gibbets and scaffolds were still displayed.

  [Illustration: Fig. 340.--Tortures inflicted upon Catholics
  by the Huguenots in the South of France.--Thirty Catholics,
  imprisoned at Augoulême, in the house of a burgher of the name
  of Papin, are tortured in various ways:--A. Some, deprived of
  food, are chained together in pairs, so that, becoming delirious
  through hunger, they may tear each other to pieces. B. Some are
  dragged naked along a tightly-drawn rope, which acts like a saw,
  cutting the body in two. C. Several are attached to stakes, and
  fires lighted a short distance behind them, so that their bodies
  may burn slowly.--Fac-simile of an Engraving on copper in the
  “Theatrum Crudelitatum nostri Temporis” (4to, Antwerp, 1587);
  with a translation of the explanations given.]

In the southern provinces of France, where the party of the Reformation
acquired the upper hand, excesses were committed which were as much
reprobated by the more enlightened of the Protestants as by the
Catholics. The town of Angoulême in particular was the scene of many
such cruelties (Fig. 340).

The dominant party was everywhere guilty of extreme intolerance, but
nowhere was the persecution carried on upon so large a scale as in
unhappy England. Protestant writers cannot find expressions strong
enough to characterize the unheard-of violence to which Henry VIII. had
recourse with a view to establish religious unity in his kingdom.

  [Illustration: Fig. 341.--Punishments decreed by Henry VIII.
  against the Catholics.--A. John Fisher, Cardinal-Bishop of
  Rochester, eighty years of age, condemned to death on the 17th
  of June, 1535, is beheaded on the 22nd of the same month. B.
  Chancellor Thomas More is also beheaded on the 9th of July, 1535.
  C. The Countess of Salisbury, made to answer for the accusations
  brought against her son, who had left the country, after being
  condemned to death, is beheaded.--Fac-simile of a Copper-plate in
  the “Theatrum Crudelitatum nostri Temporis” (Antwerp, 1587); with
  a translation of the explanations given.]

Cobbett, in his “History of the English Reformation,” says, “Previous
to this reign of bloodshed not more than three persons on the average
were tried in each county at the annual assizes, but now there were
as many as sixty thousand persons in prison at a time. In a word, the
Court of Henry was a regular slaughter-house of human flesh.”

Henry VIII., from the very fact of his having broken with the principle
of authority in religious matters, found himself driven to an excess
of severity, feeling that it was by terror alone that he could put
down resistance; and, as the example of those who are placed high
in authority exercises a decisive influence upon the masses, the
king singled out for attack those who stood highest on the roll
of magistrates and bishops--the Chancellor, Thomas More, and his
illustrious friend Fisher, Bishop of Rochester (Fig. 341). They were
both cited to appear before the King’s Council, and the Chancellor
was condemned to die. More was passionately attached to his daughter
Margaret, who, when the trial was over, threw herself upon her father’s
neck, exclaiming, amidst her sobs, “My father, are you who are innocent
to die?” To which, embracing her for the last time, and giving her his
blessing, he replied, “Would you have me die guilty?” When he reached
the foot of the scaffold he called upon the populace to witness that
he died in the faith of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church.
The executioner asked for his forgiveness, and More, embracing him,
rejoined, “You are rendering me the greatest service that can be
done to a Christian!” He met his death with joy, and his head was
exposed for a fortnight upon London Bridge. His friend, the Bishop of
Rochester, had been sent to the block a few weeks before (Fig. 341).

  [Illustration: Fig. 342.--Michael Servetus (born at Villanueva,
  Arragon, in 1509) burnt alive by order of Calvin, at Geneva, in
  1553.--After a Copper-plate in the “Historia Michaelis Serveti:”
  4to, Helmstadii, 1727.]

Switzerland suffered as much as England, for the Inquisition set up
by Calvin at Geneva defied all description. While Calvin, as it is
reported, was allowed to stigmatize those who differed from him as
rogues, dogs, and scoundrels, their emperor vermin, and their fathers
and mothers imps of Satan, the peasants who used rough language to
their cattle were thrown into prison. Three children were publicly
whipped because they had stolen away from the meeting-house to go and
eat cakes. The registers of the town record that in the course of sixty
years one hundred and fifty persons were burnt alive as sorcerers.
Another crime punishable with death was “to speak ill of Calvin,” who
made no secret of his feelings upon this point, as may be gathered from
the following sentence in a letter he sent to one of his partisans:
“Do not fail to purge the country of the fanatic scoundrels who go
about exhorting the people to withstand us, who blacken our conduct,
and who try to depict our creed as an empty dream. Such monsters
ought to be put down.” On these grounds, the poet Gruet was put to
the torture and beheaded “for having spoken ill of Calvin.” Michael
Servetus, who practised medicine, astrology, and theology, ventured
to contradict the teaching of the Reformer, especially in reference
to the doctrine of the Trinity. Calvin wrote to Farel, under date of
February 13th, 1546, the following letter, the original of which may
still be seen in the National Library of Paris: “Servetus wrote to
me the other day, and sent with his letter a large book filled with
his vain and arrogant reveries, saying that I should find it full of
wonderful and hitherto unknown subjects. He promises to come and meet
me here, if I wish, but I do not care to enter into any arrangement,
for, if he comes and I have my own way, I shall not let him escape
with his life.” The unfortunate Servetus was obliged to repair thither
under the following circumstances. He had clandestinely published at
Vienne (Dauphiny) his book entitled “Christianismi Restitutio” (“The
Restoration of Christianity”). Of this book Calvin procured a copy,
which, he forwarded to the Cardinal-Archbishop of Lyons. Servetus,
thanks to Calvin’s denunciations, was arrested and thrown into the
ecclesiastical prison of Vienne, as this book contained many obnoxious
statements tainted with heresy. It happened that the prisoner, a better
doctor than he was theologian, had formerly saved the life of the only
daughter of the bailiff of that town, and the gaoler received orders
to favour his escape, which was effected without difficulty. Servetus
unfortunately took refuge at Geneva. Calvin’s spies discovered him
there; he was imprisoned on the 13th of August, 1553, and on the 26th
of October, after a lengthened examination, during which he defended
himself energetically against the accusations of impiety and atheism,
he was condemned to be burnt alive. The sentence was carried out on
the following day (Fig. 342). Calvin witnessed the execution from
his window, and was soon after congratulated on what he had done by
the Cantons of Zurich, Schaffhausen, Basle, and Berne. The learned
Melancthon wrote to him, “Your magistrates have acted in accordance
with right and justice in having this blasphemer put to death.” These
acts of cruelty and vengeance, nevertheless, have excited the just
indignation of several Protestant historians, who deplore the loss to
Geneva of her ancient liberties and franchises. “For more than eight
hundred years,” says Fazy, “the harmony between the cause of the people
and that of religion had placed Geneva in the van of civilisation. Its
laws were mild, acts of violence were rare, confiscation was unknown,
and nowhere do we find any traces of people being persecuted for their
opinions.”

  [Illustration: Fig. 343.--Ornament from the “Historia Testamenti”
  of Pierre Comestor.--MS. dated 1229. Library of M. Ambroise
  Firmin-Didot.]




                    BURIALS AND FUNERAL CEREMONIES.

   Embalming and Incineration of Bodies amongst the
   Ancients.--Interment brought into practice by Christianity.--The
   Wrapping of the Dead in Shrouds.--The Direction in which
   the Bodies were laid.--Absolution Crosses.--Funeral
   Furniture.--Coffins and Sarcophagi in the Middle Ages.--Funereal
   Sculpture and Architecture, from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth
   Century.--The Catacombs at Rome.--Charnel-houses in the
   Churches.--Public Cemeteries.--The Cemetery of the Innocents,
   Paris.--Lanterns for the Dead.--Funerals of the Kings and Queens
   of France.--The Rolls of the Dead.--Consoling Thought of the
   Resurrection and of Eternal Life.


In the most remote epoch of the world’s history we find that the dead
were treated with respect, not to say worshipped; for a natural,
sentiment leads savage as well as civilised man to pay the last tribute
of affection to the bodies of those for whom he once felt affection,
esteem, or fear. Such is the moral principle of the various modes
of burial which have been successively practised, viz., embalming,
incineration, and interment. Many ancient nations, and especially the
Egyptians, who sought to preserve the human body for an indefinite
length of time, embalmed their dead with extreme care, or rather, we
should say, with wonderful art.

The Greeks generally burnt their dead and collected their ashes in
urns; with the Romans the custom of burning was usual, at least amongst
the rich, and lasted long after the establishment of Christianity,
which dogmatically enjoined the interment of the dead, though this mode
of sepulture had before been confined to slaves, suicides, and the poor.

The Christians introduced at the same time the old Jewish custom of
swathing the dead body in a winding-sheet, which was bound up with
long bands soaked in resinous and perfumed oil, after the fashion of
the Egyptians. Embalming was, moreover, prescribed and authorised by
divine legislation. It is said in Genesis that it took forty days to
embalm the body of Jacob, and in the sixteenth chapter of St. Mark we
read, “And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the
mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might
come and anoint Him.”

All the bas-reliefs of the fifth and sixth centuries, upon which figure
bodies prepared for burial, represent a regular mummy swathed in bands;
and this mode of wrapping the body, which seems to imply that it had
first been embalmed, was still in use at the end of the eighth century.
After this epoch we do not possess sufficiently accurate data to say
what was the general practice. We know, however, that for a certain
length of time the dead were sewn up in leather prepared from the
skins of stags or oxen. The _cervicorium_, or stag-hide, was a
kind of shroud specially used for warriors, if we may believe the war
ballads. Precious tissues were used at that time for the winding-sheets
of ecclesiastical persons; and in a tomb of the tenth century, in the
vault of St. Germain des Prés, in Paris, a skeleton was found which
was enveloped in a piece of cloth, tied at the neck and the feet with
short narrow bands. The dead bodies of the lower classes were buried in
shrouds made of some common material.

Before burial, the hands were always folded across the breast. This was
customary in the East throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, and the
doctors of the Greek Church attached so much importance to it that,
according to an author of the thirteenth century, they made it a great
reproach to the Latins that they neglected to observe this Christian
law.

  [Illustration: Fig. 344.--Christ victorious over Death; with the
  following Inscription:--

    “Hic residens solio Christus jam victor in alto
      Mortem calce premit, colligat atque fodit.
    Dumque salutiferam vult mors extinguere vitam,
      Infelix hamo deperit illa suo.”

  Fac-simile of a Miniature from the “Choir Book” of the Cathedral
  at Worms.--Manuscript of the Eighth or Ninth Century, in the
  Library of the Arsenal, Paris.]

The direction in which the body was to be buried was, moreover,
particularly specified. Thus it was enjoined that it should be laid
upon the back “with the head to the west, the feet towards the east,”
says the ancient writer John Beleth. Another liturgical writer scarcely
less famous, William Durand, Bishop of Mende, adds, in his “Rationale
Divinorum Officiorum,” that the body, when placed in this position,
seems to be engaged in prayer, and ready to rise when the first
rays of the sun shine forth. It must not be supposed, however, that
this particular direction of the body (_capite versus occidentem
et pedibus versus orientem_) was rigorously adhered to by the
Christians alone, for it is found to have been observed during the
second and third centuries, which were assuredly not Christian. The
custom of burying the dead, introduced by Christianity, was adopted in
Italy long before the Roman provinces were converted to the new faith.
Subsequent to the reign of the Antonines, who by edict authorised the
burial of the dead, there are numerous instances of pagan burials
being conducted in conformity with, this edict, especially in Gaul.

[Illustration: Fig. 345.--The Harvest of Souls: God the Father
  receiving the souls in his lap.--Miniature in the “Dialogues
  of St. Gregory,” a Manuscript of the Twelfth Century, in the
  Burgundian Library, Brussels.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 346.--Celtic Burial.--The body, bent double,
  with the head between the knees, and with two vases at the feet,
  is placed in a grotto or natural cave.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 347.--Mode of Burial among the Franks.--The
  body, laid in the grave, is surrounded with arms, implements,
  and various articles for use: the sword or the _scrama sax_
  under the right armpit, the knife or poignard upon the breast,
  the hatchet at the knee, the _framée_ or the lance at the
  feet, comb, bracelet, &c. It is thought that the vase in red or
  black clay, which is often found under the feet of the skeleton,
  had a symbolic meaning. This grave was discovered during
  excavations made in Paris.]

At a much later period the principle relating to the direction in which
bodies were laid fell into disuse at Christian burials. The persons
attached to the ecclesiastical edifices were buried with their feet
towards the west, and sometimes towards the south. There was another
exception: the body was not always laid upon its back, but in certain
cases it was placed upon its side, or even with the face downwards.
Pepin the Short was buried with his face downwards; Hugh Capet,
in accordance with his wishes, was also thus interred beneath the
rain-spout which was above the porch of St. Denis Cathedral, in order
that his sins might be washed out. This was termed _adens_ burial
(upon the teeth, _ad dentes_).

In the sixth and seventh centuries we have many instances of persons
being placed in a sitting position in their tombs, with the legs and
body upright. This exceptional mode of interment was most frequently
adopted, though not exclusively, by the barbarians; and the fact of
Charlemagne having been so interred makes it peculiarly interesting.
“Washed and laid out,” as we read in Legrand d’Aussy’s “Sépultures
Nationales,” “arrayed in his imperial robes, at his side a sword with
a golden pummel, on his head a golden crown, holding in his lap a New
Testament written in letters of gold, he was seated upon a throne of
gold. Before him were placed his golden sceptre and shield, which had
been blessed by Pope Leo. The vault was filled with perfumes and many
treasures (_thesauris multis_); it was closed, and even sealed
down, and over it was erected a golden arcade, upon which was engraved
the epitaph handed down to us by Eginhardt, and is the oldest extant of
all those which tell of our earliest kings.”

When the pagans adopted the custom of interment (Fig. 348), they
laid by the side of the dead the insignia of his profession, and any
objects which had been dear to him during his lifetime; to this they
added various vases containing food and drink, to serve him as a
_viaticum_ during his more or less prolonged journey to a better
world. In the coffins of Christians, on the contrary--even from the
earliest times--the funeral furniture appears to have been next to
nothing: a phial containing some perfume, with one, two, or perhaps
three vases, of wood, glass, or clay, filled with holy water.

  [Illustration: Fig. 348.--Gallo-Roman Tomb, representing the
  deceased laid upon a funeral bed, and surrounded by her weeping
  family and household.--Monument of the First or Second Century,
  found during excavations made in Paris. After a Plate in the
  “Statistique de Paris,” by M. Albert Lenoir.]

The perfume-phials had disappeared so early as the Merovingian period,
but the custom of placing the other vases in the coffin lasted, in
some countries, even down to the eighteenth century. Their presence
in a place of burial is not, therefore, a proof of its antiquity. The
liturgists have endeavoured to explain the origin and the meaning of a
custom so general and so long maintained; and William Durand suggests,
in his “Rationale,” that these funeral vases, of whatever shape they
might be, were intended for containing incense. A miniature of the
fourteenth century would appear to confirm this theory, for we find
that it represents, at the four corners of a coffin covered with the
pall, small pots placed in a row with the tapers (Fig. 349); and there
is reason to believe that the incense in them was burnt during the
funeral service. In fact, the pots represented in this miniature are
white; the reddish colour of the holes with which they are perforated,
and the smoke issuing from them, show that there was fire inside.
Perhaps this was only the fire of red-hot coals, since they have been
found to contain ashes mixed with pieces of coal.

  [Illustration:

   Fig. 349.--Funeral Service, in which are shown, between the
   candelabra, the incense vases which were deposited in the
   coffin.--Drawing of the Fourteenth Century.

   Fig. 350.--Absolution Cross of the Eleventh Century, in lead,
   found in a coffin in the Abbey of Bury St. Edmund’s (1855).

  From “Les Sépultures Gauloises, Romaines, et Franques,” by the
  Abbé Cochet.]

After the ceremony, these vases were placed, while still alight, in
the coffin. And this brings us to another Christian usage, which
has been ascertained to have existed in France and England from the
eleventh to the thirteenth century. During this period, a cross was
placed upon the breast of the deceased person. This cross, in wood or
in lead, sometimes in silver, was called an _absolution cross_
(Fig. 350), because the formula of absolution given to the dead man
was generally engraved upon it--and even his name was stated in the
formula. A fact related by Mabillon, in his “Annals of the Order of St.
Benedict,” sufficiently proves the importance and universal extent of
this custom. In 1142, after the death of Abelard, Eloisa, Abbess of the
Paraclete, asked Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny, for a formula
of absolution to place upon the tomb of the illustrious theologian.
This absolution was placed, as is related by a Benedictine writer,
upon Abelard’s breast. The text is so interesting that it is worth
quoting, though written in Latin. Peter the Venerable, alluding therein
to the unwillingness of the monks of St. Marcel to give up the body of
Abelard, says, “Ego Petrus, Cluniacensis abbas, qui Petrum Abaëlardum,
in monachum Cluniacensem recepi, et corpus ejus furtim delatum Heloïsæ,
abbatissæ et monialibus Paracliti concessi, auctoritate omnipotentis
Dei et omnium sanctorum absolvo eum pro officio ab omnibus peccatis
suis.” Ancient burying-places are sometimes discovered with bodies
which have been bound in chains, or, at all events, are loaded with
iron and brass fetters. Thus at Couvert, near Bayeux, a skeleton was
discovered a few years back laid upon the face (_ad dentes_),
upon a wooden cross, with a small chain round the neck. This is a
peculiarity having its origin in certain rules of penance which were
in force from the eighth to the tenth, and probably to the eleventh,
century.

The pagan rite prescribed that a piece of money should be placed in the
urn or coffin; and many antiquaries have suggested that this must have
been the _obolus_ for Charon. This custom was perpetuated by the
Christians, for, throughout the Middle Ages, a coin was always placed
on the bier; and this practice still prevails in Poitou, Alsace, and
other places.

The interments of the barbarians, even after their conversion to
Christianity, are specially characteristic, because, no matter to what
nation they belonged, they adhered to their own particular manner of
burial. They were interred in their finest clothes, with their weapons,
and, in some cases, with their war-horse. The women and children, whose
burial-place is easily discoverable, wore jewels, necklaces, rings,
fibulæ, girdles, buckles, &c., to which are still found adhering bits
of tissue, the remains of some splendid costume.

Researches and excavations made in France of late years have led to
the discovery of numerous barbarian cemeteries, and have enabled us to
ascertain what were the Merovingian, or, as it would perhaps be more
accurate to say, the Germanic funeral customs. These customs evidently
were replaced by others when the barbarian finally settled in Gaul,
that is, about the middle of the ninth century. The habit of placing in
the coffin various pieces of black, red, or white pottery (Fig. 351),
together with small vases which seem to have been intended for the same
purpose as those used in Christian burials, existed during this period.
These vases, often very numerous, no doubt contained food; they were
frequently accompanied by a small wooden jar, the handle of which was
very richly mounted, and which the _savans_ at one time took to
be a Merovingian diadem. But a chemical analysis of the solid residue
found in one of these jars, led to the discovery that they were filled
with an alimentary substance which gave out a strong odour of fermented
beer.

  [Illustration: Fig. 351.--Gallic or Gallo-Roman Pottery, dug up
  in Paris and in the neighbourhood.]

Subsequently to the period when the barbarians were no longer interred
with their weapons of war, there still remained some traces of this
primitive custom in Christian society, both in France and Germany;
thus, kings were buried in their royal robes, with sceptre and crown.
This continued to be the case throughout the Middle Ages; but, in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the sceptres and crowns deposited
in the coffins were made of brass or tin, in order that thieves might
not be tempted to steal them. Such was also the case with bishops and
abbots, as is shown by Gregory of Tours, when he speaks of Saint Gall,
the Bishop of Clermont, in Auvergne, of the Abbot Mars, of the hermits
Marian, Leobard, and Lupicin, being buried in their robes of ceremony.
They were covered at their death with the most brilliant insignia of
their dignity; but after a certain epoch nothing was placed beside them
in the coffin but a wooden crozier, a chalice, and a tin paten. They
were always dressed, however, in their pontifical vestments, the gold
lace and embroidery of which has, when these tombs have come to be
opened, often been found undecayed, while the vestments themselves have
crumbled into dust.

In the monasteries and communities, the old barbarian rite was observed
after the tenth century, and the monks were buried with all their
clothing on them; but as the woollen material of which they were
made was consumed by age, it is impossible for the archæologist to
reconstruct on opening these coffins the monastic dress as it must have
been when the body contained in it was buried.

At present we have considered only the different modes of burial during
the Middle Ages, but we may now proceed to speak of the coffin and
the tomb. No work of art is more curious, or fuller of historical and
picturesque information, than the funeral monuments of all ages. But
it must be remembered that there is a marked distinction between the
coffin and the tomb, one being the receptacle of the dead, the other
only a monument raised to mark the spot of ground in which the coffin
has been interred.

At all periods Christians have used coffins cut out of stone; and
this custom only ceased in the thirteenth century, to make way for
the use of lead coffins. The stone sarcophagi were only for persons
of a certain rank. Soldiers, townsmen, and country people were buried
in coffins made of wood. The Franks gave the name of _off_ or
_noff_ to these coffins, which are alluded to in the Salic law.
Gregory of Tours, speaking of the plague which desolated Auvergne in
571, says, “The mortality was so great at Clermont that it was found
necessary to inter as many as ten bodies in the same grave, because
there was a dearth of wooden and stone coffins.”

These ancient stone sarcophagi are met with in great numbers in those
localities which were the ordinary places of burial. They have been
found by thousands in certain towns and villages, such as Alichamps,
Drevant, and Grou, in the department of the Cher, as well as at Meunes
and Naveil, in the department of the Loir-et-Cher. The most ancient
coffins are easily to be recognised by their large dimensions, their
thickness, and their regular shape (Figs. 352 and 353). They are, so
to speak, chests with a massive stone cover, two metres and twenty
centimetres (about seven feet two inches) long, and in some cases more.
They are square, and resemble a rectangular trough. The lid, sloping in
the shape of a roof, is quite free of all decoration.

  [Illustration: Fig. 352.--Stone Coffin discovered during
  excavations made in the Rue de la Cossonnerie, Paris. In the
  Cluny Museum.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 353.--Stone Coffin of Gallo-Roman origin, in
  the Cluny Museum.]

In the sixth and seventh centuries the dimensions of the sarcophagi
began to decrease, being rarely more than two metres (six feet seven
inches) in length. Another distinctive mark of that period was that
the coffin, narrower at the foot than at the head, was covered with a
large stone, hewn like that of the antique coffins. Moreover, it was
often a trifle less deep at the foot than at the head; but this is the
special characteristic of the coffins of the eighth century. After this
period, coffins narrower at the foot than at the head, but of the same
elevation on both sides, again came into use.

In the eighth century, many coffins were found to contain a small cell
cut into the stone for holding the head of the corpse. This cell was
generally square, but sometimes round.

The further we get into the Middle Ages the more difficult it becomes
to ascertain the antiquity of a coffin. After the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, if not the tenth, the lids are ornamented with
roughly-executed sculpture work, crosses in bas-relief, triangular
facets, indistinct tracery work which have a distinct resemblance to
the Roman sarcophagi.

The ancient cemeteries of the French provinces also contain coffins
moulded in plaster; and the Cluny Museum has some interesting specimens
of these coffins, which were in use from the ninth to the fourteenth
century. Their sides are roughly decorated with very primitive
ornaments, round, lozenge-shaped, and convoluted, with emblems which
enable us to ascertain approximatively their date of execution. Thus,
when a plaster coffin is decorated with the fleur-de-lis, we may be
sure that it cannot be of earlier origin than the thirteenth century.

In the last few years of the twelfth century was invented a kind of
stone coffin, hewn outside in such a way as to produce the shape of the
head, and to represent the whole body as enveloped in its shroud, just
like a mummy.

In the early part of the fourteenth century personages of rank were
buried in stone coffins lined with lead. In the time of Charles V.
stone was altogether replaced by wood and lead, even in the burials
of the rich. The coffins of that epoch resemble boxes made in a great
hurry by joining together sheets of lead of various thicknesses.

  [Illustration: Fig. 354.--Raised Stone, near Poitiers.--After a
  Plate in the great work of Count de Laborde, “Les Monuments de la
  France:” in folio, 1816.]

Square stone troughs, about twelve or fourteen inches in length by from
eight to ten inches in breadth, are also to be met with in considerable
numbers; and they were employed to receive the bones that had fallen
from disused burial-places, and from the vaults beneath churches when,
in the course of repairs, unknown or forgotten graves were disturbed.
When these repairs led to the disinterment of the coffins appertaining
to some personages of note buried in the church of which they had been
the parishioners and the benefactors, it sometimes happened that in
moving them they were burst open, and, in this case, the remnants of
the broken coffins were placed in these small troughs, which took up
less room. The tombs, that is to say the visible monuments of burial,
were of nearly the same shape as the coffins, from the earliest ages
down to the close of the ninth century, the only distinction being
that they were made of choicer materials and decorated with more or
less magnificence. Thus, all the coffins which contained the bodies of
martyrs, nobles, prelates, or kings, were exposed to the view of the
faithful, and served for tombs, so that these illustrious persons were
not, in the true sense of the term, interred. The stone chest in which
the body was placed being both a coffin and a funeral monument, was not
hidden beneath a tombstone, but remained visible in a church--not in a
sepulchral cave, but above ground, often, indeed, raised upon columns.
The early Christians of Gaul, those at least who were distinguished
for their achievements or their virtues, were interred in this fashion
in sarcophagi ornamented with allegorical subjects, very like those
in which pagans were buried. A case in point is the sarcophagus at
Rheims of Jovinus the patrician, master of the cavalry under Julian,
and, it is said, founder of the Church of St. Agricole, since called
St. Nicaise. This monument, removed from this ancient church to the
cathedral and afterwards to the museum, is of white marble, sculptured
upon three sides. The front represents various hunting scenes, in which
Jovinus is taking part, with a spear in his hand, accompanied by a
spirit which has the attributes of Minerva. It is very probable that
this sarcophagus, which had been previously used for the burial of some
pagan, was used for its fresh occupant without any change being made in
its artistic features. An exactly similar one was made for the King of
Austrasia, Carloman, the brother of Charlemagne; an analogous subject
was also sculptured upon it, and it was elevated upon four columns near
the tomb of St. Remigius.

The sarcophagi were sometimes made of a more costly material than
stone; that of St. Cassianus, at Autun, for instance, was of alabaster.
But these were only exceptional cases; and Maurice, Archbishop of
Rouen, prohibited these funeral extravagances in 1231. It is curious,
however, to note the representation of scenes in profane history upon
Christian coffins. Sauval describes one that was discovered in the
Church of St. Geneviève, Paris, in 1620, which contained a box full
of gold and silver medals representing the boar-hunt of Meleager.
Christian and pagan emblems are sometimes found side by side: upon
the sarcophagus of St. Andoche was represented a wheel, a bird,
vine-foliage and grapes, a hatchet, and, amidst all these ornaments, a
cross.

After the reign of Theodosius, there were in use throughout Gaul
sarcophagi the emblems of which were exclusively borrowed from the
Christian religion. As a general rule, the front surface is divided
by arcades of raised architecture, and between each of them is
represented a subject taken from the Old or the New Testament. Arles,
in fact, appears to have been the centre of a special manufacture which
executed this kind of work for all the south of France, until the
middle of the sixteenth century. There were also manufactories of stone
sarcophagi at St. Pierre l’Etrier, St. Emelion, and, more notably, at
Quarrée-les-Tombes.

During the reigns of the first _rois fainéants_, the successors of
Clovis, the decoration of the sarcophagi was affected by the barbarian
style of art. There were no longer any figures in relief--nothing
but the monogram of Christ, XP, with a circular or oval border. At
that period the sarcophagus took the exact shape of the coffin, being
narrower at the feet than at the head. The lid was a large stone of
the same character as the coffin, generally decorated with concentric
circles or the scales of fish, in memory of Christ’s monogram, ΙΧΘΥΣ
(ὶχθὺς, _fish_).

Funeral sculptures did not flourish during the time of Charlemagne;
the bodies of the kings were placed in ancient tombs, which were
everywhere very plentiful. Thus, the sarcophagus in which the body of
Charlemagne himself was placed represented the abduction of Proserpine.
It is true that upon that of Louis the Pious was represented the
Passage of the Red Sea, but this was manufactured at Arles. The
churches in course of time became so full of tombs that the councils
were obliged to prohibit interment in them, and this order, though only
partially observed, effected a change in the mode of burial. People
preferred to have the coffins placed in the ground, especially as they
were better protected in this way from the robbers who violated the
sanctity of the grave. Thus, from the ninth to the beginning of the
tenth century, sarcophagi gradually fell into disuse.

  [Illustration: Fig. 355.--Tomb of St. Elizabeth of Hungary,
  in the Church of Marburg, Hesse (Thirteenth Century). She is
  represented upon her death-bed, and the angels are offering her
  soul to Jesus, who is blessing it, and to the Virgin. To the
  right are Duke Louis with the cross of the Crusades, St. John
  the Evangelist, the special protector of St. Elizabeth, St.
  Catherine, and St. Peter; to the left, St. John the Baptist, St.
  Mary Magdalene, and a bishop. It was before this bas-relief that
  the pilgrims knelt in prayer, and their knees have worn hollows
  into the pavement around it.]

Burials above ground again came into vogue after the eleventh century,
and from that epoch dates the development of funeral art in the Middle
Ages. At first, the tombs, even of the highest personages, consisted
only of a plain block of stone or marble, varying in shape, placed
upon the ground, or, as was more often the case, raised upon short
columns. In the twelfth century we meet with a new kind of monument:
tombs in the form of square altars, or altar-tables, with the image of
the deceased in relief or cut out on their upper surface. These tombs
were in general use throughout the Middle Ages (Fig. 355), and were
combined, subsequent to the thirteenth century, with another mode
based on quite a different principle. As, in spite of the decrees of
the councils, the churches were still full of graves, it was sought to
make the tombs erected in them as little cumbersome as possible; and
hence arose the custom of placing tablets or sculptures upon the walls,
at a certain elevation above the ground, betokening the presence of a
coffin in the vault beneath. There were, besides, the flat tombs, the
pompous epitaphs on which were effaced by the footsteps of those who
walked over them. These were in vogue from the time of Philip Augustus,
and the use of them did not die out till the reign of Louis XIV.,
especially in the northern provinces of France.

  [Illustration: Fig. 356.--Tomb in the Church of St. Waudru, at
  Mons, of Adelaide or Alice, Countess of Hainault, who died in
  1168. This tomb is of stone, devoid of all decoration, with a
  triangular top in the shape of a cross. (Twelfth Century.)]

Some detailed account may now be given of the square blocks of stone
employed as funeral monuments. These raised tombs (for that is their
proper name) were, in the eleventh century, larger at the top than at
the sides. They were ornamented with mouldings at the top and at the
bottom, and either rested upon a stone slab or upon short columns.
Other tombs, equally massive, were prism-shaped, with three, four, or
five sides, and they too rested in the same manner. The oldest of these
monuments are almost exactly like coffins, and their surface is devoid
of all ornamental work (Fig. 356). The presence of sculpture about
a tomb constitutes one of the distinctive marks of art in the reign
of Philip I. (1059–1108). The sculpture generally consists of simple
circles enfolding busts surrounded with foliage. The solid square tombs
of that date are decorated with arcades in bas-relief, like the altars
of the period.

From this species of vault, is derived the monument in the shape of a
table, the dimensions and decorations of which continued to increase
during the reign of Louis VIII. It was a block of stone surmounted by
a table upon which rested a statue of the deceased, with his hands
crossed upon his breast. Tables of this shape were chiefly used for
the bronze tombs which became very numerous in the early part of the
twelfth century. These bronze tombs, upon which the statue was laid,
had for supporters four or six couched lions. When Suger restored his
Abbey of St. Denis, he removed to the middle of the choir the grave
of Charles the Bald, and erected over it a bronze table with lions
for supports, and a statue designed to represent the features of the
monarch.

The personages thus typified in stone, marble, or bronze, are always
represented with their insignia; kings and sovereign princes with a
crown and a mantle; knights bareheaded, with their armour, sword,
and spurs of knighthood, and, in many cases, their coat of mail and
armorial bearings (Fig. 357); nobles, not knights, with their armorial
shield, one or two hounds couched at their feet, a falcon upon the
wrist or the glove with which the bird was held in their hand,--that is
to say, with emblems signifying their right to take part in the chase,
which was the special privilege of the nobility.

In the same way women, lawyers, and the secular and the regular
clergy, had the dress betokening their condition upon their tombs; but
the sculptors and carvers did not always adhere very closely to the
variations of fashion, and they often represented a personage of their
own day in a costume belonging to a previous generation. Thus, for
several centuries, kings were represented with the primitive mantle
clasped or tied in front; the knights appeared, even down to the
time of Henry II., with the halberd and the helmet worn only by the
ancient order of chivalry. Funeral sculpture had its conventional and
traditional rules, like all other arts in the Middle Ages.

  [Illustration: Fig. 357.--Tomb erected in the Church of the
  Dominicans, at Puy-en-Velay, to the memory of Du Guesclin, by
  Marshal de Sancerre, his friend.--This tomb dates from the close
  of the Fourteenth Century.]

Archæologists have endeavoured to discover the meaning of the recumbent
figures--some in full dress, others without clothing--which were placed
upon the tombs of Christians, and they think that this usage is but
an instinctive return to the customs of the ancient Etruscans, who
represented upon the top of the tomb the body of the deceased, either
bent double or in a sitting position, or stretched at full length or
leaning upon his elbows, according as he had been laid in his grave.
The early funeral sculptors, as unskilful as they were ignorant,
copying only some particular model set before them, fashioned merely
an imperfect and roughly executed figure, with scarcely any approach
to bas-relief. In process of time the statue became better defined,
and, in the reign of Louis VII., was altogether in alto relievo. The
monks of the Abbey of St. Germain des Prés did for their benefactor,
King Childebert, what Suger had done for the illustrious dead who had
for several centuries been interred in the basilica of St. Denis, and
erected a cenotaph with a life-like figure of the monarch, the artist
hollowing out the upper part of the tomb in the shape of a basin, so as
to make the features stand out. The king is represented holding in one
hand a model of the small church which he had founded, and in the other
his sceptre.

With the advent of Gothic architecture, towards the middle of the
twelfth century, the tombs were decorated with vaulted arches in the
shape of quarter-foils, and these arches were afterwards made to
serve as a framework within which the bas-reliefs were placed. Within
the pointed arch of one is represented a monk mourner, one of those
who were hired to assist at the funeral ceremonies. The figure lying
upon the table was called the _gisant_, as is proved by old
account-books containing the following item: “So much to a certain
person for having carved the figure of a gisant.” The essentially
French art of funeral architecture and sculpture reached its apogee in
the fifteenth century, and nothing can be more perfect or beautiful
than the tombs of the dukes of Burgundy at Dijon, and of the dukes of
Berri at Bourges.

After the thirteenth century, one or two lions, or a dog, were placed
at the feet of the gisant; and the war ballads relate that these
symbolic animals were termed _cagnets_ or _cagnons_--the lion
being the emblem of force, and the dog of fidelity (_léauté_).

The tomb of a personage of rank or wealth was often decorated with
secondary figures, carved in relief in marble or stone--sometimes the
Virgin, or some saint, or some scene from the Old or the New Testament;
upon one side the personification of the virtues, upon the other,
mourners, or perhaps the family of the deceased. Thus there are carved
figures of the princes and princesses of the second House of Burgundy
around the tomb of Philip de Marle at Lille; a funeral ceremony was
represented upon that of Philip the Bold at Narbonne.

In the fourteenth century, the sculptors surmounted the tomb with
a bed, upon which a figure of the deceased was carved, with a kind
of stone dais or canopy; two angels with outstretched wings held a
spread-out veil, upon which they were bearing aloft a small naked
figure, standing erect, and meant to represent the soul of the
deceased person. In other monuments, the angels had a censer, with
which they are scattering incense upon the soul of the departed, as
at Neuilly-sur-Marne, upon the tomb of the famous preacher Foulques,
who died about the year 1200. In others, the angels are represented
holding the helmet and shield of the deceased, bearing up his train, or
presenting him on their knees an open prayer-book. The tomb of Philip
Pot (Fig. 358), formerly in the abbey-church of the Cistercians, was
supported by eight statues of women dressed in mourning. Some of the
statues placed upon the tombs were carved out of hard limestone instead
of marble; those of Charles VII. and his consort were of alabaster. In
many cases the hands and the head only were of alabaster or marble,
and the rest of the body of stone. The tomb of the Sire de Barbazan,
who died in 1432, was entirely of bronze; that of Charles VIII. at St.
Denis, constructed of the most valuable marble, had on it the statue
of that prince in bronze, flanked by four angels, each with the royal
shield.

  [Illustration: Fig. 358.--Tomb of Philip Pot, Grand Seneschal of
  Burgundy, who died in 1494; formerly in the Abbey of Citeaux, now
  in the Museum at Dijon. The knight is laid out upon a sepulchral
  stone, which is being borne up by eight mourners, each of whom
  carries on the arm a shield of his family alliances.]

From this period French art had to give place to Italian art, which
Charles VIII. had brought back as a trophy from his expedition to
Naples, and which eventually took root in France, and expanded with
all the splendours of the Renaissance until the close of the sixteenth
century. Foreign artists began to distinguish themselves in the
composition of tombs. Francis I., who had been struck with admiration
by the monuments of this kind at Florence, Rome, and Milan, determined
to have some equally remarkable in his own kingdom. The tomb of Louis
XII., the _chef-d’œuvre_ of a Florentine artist, served as a type
and a model for those of Francis I. and Henry II., which were completed
with still greater magnificence by the French artists Pierre Bontemps
and Germain Pilon, under the superintendence of Philibert de Lorme.
These funeral monuments are the most marvellous of all that have been
produced by French, in imitation of Italian, art (Fig. 361).

  [Illustration: Fig. 359.--The beheaded Knight holding his
  fleshless head in his hands.--A bust in the Namur Museum, dating
  from 1562, with this inscription: “A day will come when my
  account will be squared” (“Une heure viendra qui tout paiera”).
  This sinister cry of vengeance was no doubt addressed by the
  widow or the family of the victim to his murderer.]

  [Illustration: Fig. 360.--Tomb of Louis, Duke of Orleans, and
  Valentine of Milan, his spouse; executed by order of Louis
  XII.--Formerly in the Church of the Celestines, Paris; now in the
  Church of St. Denis. (Sixteenth Century.)]

Having passed in review the various kinds of funeral monuments in vogue
during the successive epochs of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,
we may proceed to consider certain accessory works of art; some of
which we are only acquainted with by written evidence; which is,
however, too detailed to permit of any doubt as to their having
existed. Such are the covers (_coopertoria_, _coopercula_)
under which were hidden the tombs, often plain and humble, of martyrs
and saints in ancient churches. These covers were often lined with
sheets of metal richly chased and enriched with precious stones. None
of them, unfortunately, are now extant, and it is only from the ancient
chroniclers that we learn of the marvels of art produced by St. Eloi
in the reign of Dagobert. Coming down nearer to our own day, tombs
were surmounted by a _ciborium_, or small cupola. This was made
of carved wood, and sometimes of stone, notably in the fourteenth
century. Thus the tomb of Marguerite of Flanders, daughter of Philip
the Long, was ornamented with open carving of the Gothic order. In most
cases a small edifice, with seven or eight supporting columns, was
erected over the tomb, and all the resources of art were employed upon
its decoration. During the period of _architecture rayonnante_,
these light and elegant constructions consisted of arches surmounted
by pointed gable-ends, which themselves served to unite the main
supports of the work, which was vaulted and topped with a roof.
Erections of this kind are still to be seen in the south of France,
above the graves of Innocent VI. (Avignon Cathedral) and of John XXII.
(Bourg-de-Villeneuve). The tombs of Charles VI. and Charles VII., at
St. Denis, were shut in, so to speak, by similar constructions. In
accordance with a usage which dates back to the very earliest times,
the tombs of the Middle Ages were often placed in the hollow of a wall
arched inward, so as not to be in the way of the worshippers, nor to
interfere with the celebration of divine service.

  [Illustration: Fig. 361.--Tomb of St. Remigius, erected (1526 to
  1530) in the church dedicated to him by Robert de Lenoncourt,
  Archbishop of Rheims. Around the monument, which has been
  destroyed, were niches containing marble statues of the twelve
  peers of France; to the right, the lay peers in royal robes and
  with crowns upon their heads, bearing the insignia of royalty; to
  the left, the ecclesiastical peers with the sacred symbols.]

We have already stated that, to prevent the churches from being
overcrowded with tombs, stone or marble tablets--they were of painted
wood sometimes--were fixed upon the wall just above, or not far from,
the grave, with an epitaph and sculptural ornaments. Some of these
tablets were mounted upon two columns attached to the wall, or placed
upon a pillar.

Before the time when statues on tombs were represented in a kneeling
posture, the sculptor often represented the deceased in an attitude of
prayer, and this figure was placed upon a console at a short distance
from the grave, in the chapel belonging to the family or brotherhood.
The figures thus reproduced in relief always wore the costume and
insignia of their profession, as is shown by certain monuments of the
reign of Charles V.

  [Illustration: Fig. 362.--Mausoleum of Philip II., King of Spain,
  near the high altar in the Escurial. This group of gigantic
  statues in bronze gilt is by Leoni. The king, kneeling in front
  of a _prie-dieu_, is arrayed in a mantle, upon which are
  represented the coats-of-arms of his different states. Beside him
  are his three wives--Elizabeth of France to the left, next to her
  Anne of Austria, and, to the right, Mary of Portugal. Behind him
  is his son, Don Carlos.--“Iconografia Española,” by Carderera.]

The flat tombs consisted of a slab six feet six inches long, either of
some hard stone or of marble, let into the ground or the pavement above
the coffin (Fig. 363). Upon the slab was originally carved the cross,
no matter what might be the condition of the person interred, with a
crozier for a prelate and a sword for a knight. These objects were
reproduced with considerable skill by carving them out of the stone and
plastering the hollow with red or black cement, which had the effect
of making their outline more distinct. In the twelfth century, the
flat tombs were decorated with a bordering around the stone, similarly
engraved, and intended to form a fillet within which came the epitaph,
with the name of the deceased and the date of his death. Later still,
as in the case of raised tombs, the figure of the deceased came to be
represented on them. This was so in the time of Louis VII., the statues
being made to represent the image of the deceased in the dress of his
particular station in life, with his hands crossed upon his breast;
and, subsequently, lions and dogs were added as accessories--the whole
being carved _into_ the stone. The figure of the deceased was
often surrounded with architectural devices. At first the figure was
placed under a colonnade; subsequently a very complicated edifice
was erected, with the statue of the deceased erect in the foreground
(Fig. 364). The hands and feet were often cemented on in white or
black marble. Flat tombs made either of brass, silver, or bronze were
also used, the last-named metal being much in vogue in the thirteenth
century; for example, we find it in the tomb of Ingerburga, wife of
Philip Augustus, at St. Jean-en-Ile, near Corbeil; in that of Blanche,
wife of Louis VIII., at Maubuisson; in that of Marguerite, wife of St.
Louis, and in that of Blanche, their daughter, at St. Denis. Prince
Louis, son of St. Louis, is also buried in that church, his tomb being
in copper enamelled.

  [Illustration: Fig. 363.--Flat Tomb of Sibylle (wife of Guy de
  Lusignan, King of Jerusalem), who died in 1187. In the church
  at Namèche, near Namur. The inscription, half effaced, may be
  translated as follows:--“Here lies the rightful heiress of
  Samson (a village near Namur), who was descended in a direct
  line from the King of Jerusalem. Let us pray God for her soul’s
  consolation.”]

Many tombs were far more sumptuous. Those of Louis VIII. and Louis
IX. were in silver-gilt, decorated with carved figures. Alphonse de
Brienne, Comte d’Eu, had a tomb of copper-gilt enriched with enamel. It
was probably at about the same period that the chapter of the Abbey of
St. Germain des Prés (Paris) covered with mosaics and filigree-work the
ancient tomb of Fredegonde; for it is difficult to believe, in spite of
Mabillon and Montfaucon, that this tomb dates back to her death at the
end of the sixth century.

  [Illustration: Fig. 364.--Flat Tomb of Alexandre de Berneval,
  architect of the Church of St. Ouen, at Rouen, and of his
  pupil.--In the Church of St. Ouen. (Fifteenth Century.)]

In the fifteenth century the English, masters at that time of a
considerable part of France, laid hands upon these plates of copper,
silver, and gold to convert them into coin; others which escaped
spoliation were melted down during the Revolution, so that we must
look to England and Belgium for flat metal tombs still in a state of
preservation.

Such are the chief characteristics of funeral monuments in the Middle
Ages and down to the period of the Renaissance. These monuments, many
of which are still extant, throw great light upon the costumes of their
time. We must now proceed to speak of the cemeteries, or places of
public burial, in which tombs above ground were legally permitted as
soon as the Church had established its authority. Burials within the
churches were, in fact, a special privilege for the rich, who were able
to purchase it in perpetuity. The presence of these graves in buildings
intended for public worship was, moreover, in accordance with the very
essence of Christianity, by reason of the practice already alluded to,
of placing the body of some saint beneath the altar.

The primitive Latin Church, in the second and in the early part of the
third century, performed the ceremonies of worship in the cemeteries of
the Christians, that is to say, in the crypts and the Catacombs. The
Christians, in imitation of the pagan custom of converting old quarries
into places of common burial, called _hypogea_, sought refuge,
during persecution, in some disused quarries near the gates of Rome,
and there they celebrated their rites in secret and buried their dead.
These are the Catacombs, which constitute a regular subterraneous town,
and the galleries of which, composing an immense labyrinth, have been
opened in the neighbourhood of and in close proximity to the ancient
roads which radiated from Rome towards the surrounding districts.
The appropriation of these Catacombs for Christian burial-places
unquestionably dates from the first century of Christianity. The best
known and the most famous are those which extend beneath the basilica
of St. Sebastian, and form part of what was called the Cemetery of
St. Calixtus, beneath the Appian Way. Since the sixteenth century,
when these Catacombs were first explored and thoroughly studied, this
generic name has been given to all excavations which have led to the
discovery of Christian graves. Each catacomb was called after the
martyr whom the faithful had interred there during the persecutions,
and whose relics have been found beneath altars, which were chiefly
erected and decorated during the eighth century.

  [Illustration: Fig. 365.--Crypt of the Chapel of St. Agnes,
  in the Catacombs at Rome, set apart for the interment of
  Christians.--From M. Perret’s work, “Les Catacombes de Rome.”]

The Catacombs are composed of very narrow galleries, from ninety-seven
centimetres to one metre thirty centimetres in breadth (thirty-eight
to fifty-one inches), cut irregularly through the stone. These
galleries, most of them very short, crossing each other in such a way
as to form an inextricable maze of streets and crossways, had an arched
roof supported by masonry here and there. At intervals there were
chambers, or _cubicula_ (Fig. 365), hollowed out by the Christians
to serve as chapels or oratories; these were either quadrangular
or circular, of small dimensions, and often decorated with fresco
paintings of different epochs dating from the first to the fourth
century. But little fresh air could penetrate into these galleries by
the openings which had been made here and there, and also through old
shafts situated at intervals of about three hundred yards from each
other, which had been used in working the quarries. In the lead-lined
partitions, the graves, most of which are still intact, were ranged in
rows one above the other. Each grave was a hollow of about the size of
a human body hewn lengthwise in the side of the gallery and closed with
a large brick, or with a stone or marble slab, set in cement. Five or
six bodies--sometimes as many as twelve--were so placed one above the
other. The paintings (Fig. 366), the sculptures, and the mosaics of
the Catacombs, are the first products of Christian art as it shook off
the traditions of paganism, and the subjects represented are generally
taken from the Holy Scriptures; such as the Leaving the Ark, Abraham’s
Sacrifice, Jonah, the Good Shepherd, the Raising of Lazarus. Many very
touching funeral epitaphs have also been discovered on them.

  [Illustration: Fig. 366.--Funeral Fresco discovered in the
  Cemetery of St. Pretextat, in the Catacombs at Rome. The two
  doves, emblems of marriage, indicate the tomb of the husband and
  wife.--From M. Perrét’s work, “Les Catacombes de Rome.”]

Nor is it merely from the day when the triumphs of Christianity led to
the building of the basilicas in Rome that personages of rank have been
buried inside the churches. The bodies of bishops and leaders of the
Catholic community, those of patricians and of barbarian princes who
succoured the Church in her early days, were the first to be received
within the sanctuary in as close proximity as possible to the relics of
the saint to whom the building was dedicated.

Very soon these burial-places began to be classified according to the
individual merit of the dead, and the importance of their rank or
fortune. Laymen and priests had a right to be buried in the aisles of
the church, or in the part corresponding to the apse, and it is no
exaggeration to say that the interior was often so full of graves that
they extended outside the building. Such was the case after the seventh
century. A small space, either round or square, was left in front of
the façade of the churches, to be reserved as a privileged place of
burial, and was called the _aitre_ or _parvis_ (_paradisus_); hence
the origin of the rural cemetery which extends along the sides of a
country church, or forms a green in front of it.

  [Illustration: Fig. 367.--The Cross of the Bureau Family,
  formerly in the Cemetery of the Innocents, Paris.--Lenoir’s
  “Statistique Monumentale de Paris.”]

  [Illustration: Fig. 368.--The Knight of Death, by Albert
  Dürer.--This celebrated engraving, so characteristic of the
  fantastic genius of the Middle Ages, represents a fully-armed
  knight going to the wars with a presentiment of coming evil, and
  accompanied by Sin and Death, personified as his running footman
  and esquire.--After the Fac-simile of the original Engraving,
  dated 1513, by one of the Wiericx (1564).]

Burial in the churches was at first interfered with, if not prevented,
even under the Christian emperors, by the Roman law, which prescribed
that the cemeteries should be extramural. Thus, according to tradition,
many of the early French saints were first of all buried outside
the towns, and their remains were subsequently placed within some
consecrated building or a church, erected over their original grave.
The ancient cemetery in some cases developed into an inhabited suburb,
as at Tours, where the Quartier de St. Martin occupies the ground
where that saint originally reposed. In other districts, the Christian
cemeteries occupied the same site down to the thirteenth century, as
at Arles, Autun, Bordeaux, the cemeteries of the Aliscan (_Elisii
campi_), St. Seurin, and Champ-des-Tombes. Other cemeteries,
rendered necessary by the increase in the size of the towns, were made
at about this period. Thus, after the accession of the Capet dynasty,
the capital increased so much in size that it was necessary to limit
the space accorded to burying-places, and twenty-two parishes on the
right bank of the Seine had no cemeteries of their own. A track of
waste land at Champeaux, running along the Rue St. Denis, was converted
into what was called the Cemetery of the Innocents (Fig. 367), and
it consisted of a large enclosure with three gateways; the first at
the corner of the Rue aux Fers; the second at the corner of the Rue de
la Ferronnerie; and the third in the Place-aux-Chats. Philip Augustus
surrounded it with a wall in 1186, to prevent it being overrun by
animals and the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. To this wall was
afterwards added a covered gallery, called the _charnel-house_,
in which were buried those whose fortune allowed them to purchase the
privilege of being interred apart from the masses. This charnel-house,
which was damp and dismal, was paved with tombstones, and its walls
were covered with epitaphs and funeral monuments. In the thirteenth
century it became a fashionable resort in which tradesmen placed their
wares for sale, and the abode of death was converted into a place of
rendezvous and promenade for the idle.

This long gallery was built at different epochs, out of the largesses
given by several inhabitants of Paris. Marshal de Boucicault built
part of it in the beginning of the fifteenth century, and the
famous Nicholas Flamel, who is said to have had a bookstall in the
charnel-house, built at his own cost the whole side which ran parallel
with the Rue de la Lingerie, and in which he and his wife Pernelle
were buried. This charnel-house was surmounted by large _galetas_
(lofts) in which the bones of the dead were preserved. The famous
“Danse Macabre” (Figs. 369–392), that philosophical allegory in which
death was leading in the dance “persons of all conditions,” was painted
about the year 1430 upon the walls of the charnel-house, on the Rue St.
Honoré side.

  [Illustration: Figs. 369 to 392.--The Dance of Death, a
  Fac-simile of Wood Engravings executed after the Holbein
  Drawings in the “Simulachres de la Mort;” small 4to, Treschel
  Brothers, Lyons, 1538.--“As fish are taken speedily with
  the hook (_aine_), so does death take men; for death spares
  no man, king nor emperor, rich nor poor, noble nor villain,
  wise nor fool, physician nor surgeon, young nor old, strong
  nor weak, man nor woman. Nothing is more certain; all have
  to take part in death’s dance.”--Explanation taken from the
  “Forteresses de la Foy,” Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century,
  in the Library at Valenciennes.]

  [Illustration: The Dance of Death, after Holbein’s Drawings
  (_continued_).]

  [Illustration: The Dance of Death, after Holbein’s Drawings
  (_continued_).]

  [Illustration: The Dance of Death, after Holbein’s Drawings
  (_continued_).]

  [Illustration: The Dance of Death, after Holbein’s Drawings
  (_continued_).]

  [Illustration: The Dance of Death, after Holbein’s Drawings
  (_continued_).]

When Charles V. began to construct his château of the Louvre, in 1363,
Raimond Dutemple, the builder, purchased from the churchwardens of
the parish of the Innocents ten ancient tombs, each of which cost him
fourteen sous parisis, for the purpose of using the stones for his
masonry work--a proof that funeral monuments were not treated with
much respect at that epoch. At this same period, the clergy of the
Innocents’ parish sold part of the cemetery, already too small, to the
chapter of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, who built thereon houses and stalls
for the markets. It is estimated that more than two million persons
were buried in the Innocents’ cemetery in the course of six centuries.
In it were accumulated masses of stones, crosses, human remains,
and filth; the grass was growing in the midst of heaps of skulls;
the floors of the charnel-houses bent beneath piles of decomposed
bones; graves had been dug in every available space of ground, and the
smell of the corpses was unbearable. Notwithstanding, this was the
most celebrated cemetery of the Middle Ages, and the charnel-house
which enclosed it upon three sides served as a model for all those
constructed for other Christian churches and cemeteries, in accordance
with a custom dating back, it is reported, to the fifth or sixth
century. Still, no traces can be found of any such constructions around
the Gallo-Roman cemeteries, unless it be a rudely built boundary-wall.
At a later date, the cemeteries contiguous to parish churches or to
the chapels of hospitals were surrounded with cloister-like galleries,
between the roof and ceiling of which was the charnel-house, where the
bones dug up when fresh graves were made found a last resting-place.

Inside the cemeteries there were other erections never omitted, as,
for instance, a large stone cross with florid decoration and varying
in design, many of which date back to the eleventh century. After this
period came into vogue a small lantern, built in the shape of a very
narrow tower, like a hollow column, from twenty-six to forty feet
high, the summit of which was surmounted by arcades, through which
glimmered the faint light of a suspended lamp. This small building was
called “the lantern of the dead” (Figs. 394–396); it was also termed a
beacon (_fanal_), a lighthouse (_phare_), and a little tower
(_tourniele_). These beacon-towers, intended to indicate from afar
during night-time the presence of a cemetery, generally had a door
somewhat above the ground, which was reached by a ladder or flight of
steps.

Upon the side opposite to the door, an altar jutted out at the base
of the tower. This altar was never consecrated, as the canons forbid
any celebration to be held upon those which were in the open air
(_sub dio_). There are many monuments of this kind in Maine,
Berry, Angoumois, and Gascony; they are all of Roman architecture, or
of Gothic bordering upon Roman, and, consequently, do not date back
further than the eleventh century.

There was a tower of this kind in the Cemetery of the Innocents, at
Paris (Fig. 397), but of larger dimensions than any of those alluded
to above. It was a kind of octagon chapel, about forty feet high, and
Gilbert de Metz, who speaks of it, says that he was told it was the
tomb of a rich nobleman who had given orders that he himself should be
buried beneath it in order to save his remains from being profaned by
dogs and vagabonds.

In the fourteenth century the lanterns of the dead, instead of being
isolated and inaccessible columns, were built in the form of open
chapels, in which a lamp was kept constantly burning. Previous to the
erection of these chapels in the cemeteries, there existed others which
have often been taken for pagan temples. We know, through writings
of the ninth century, that in the cemeteries of the Carlovingian
abbeys there were chapels of this kind, with two stories and a crypt;
that these funeral chapels were of the same shape as the ancient
baptisteries, without the surroundings. They were octagonal buildings,
the vaults of which rested upon the boundary-walls of the cemetery.
There are still extant two belonging to the Roman epoch, one at
Montmorillon, in Poitou; the other, enclosed in the citadel of Metz,
was a dependency of the Abbey of St. Arnold.

Having treated of the burial-places and the funeral monuments of the
different epochs of the Middle Ages, we may now go on to speak of the
funeral ceremonies.

As soon as a king or a queen had breathed their last, the face was
covered with wax, in order to take an impression of the features and
reproduce them upon their effigies. Pending the completion of this
likeness, the body was laid by the chamberlains and the gentlemen of
the chamber in a leaden coffin, lined with wood and black velvet,
covered with a white satin cross, and was carried by the archers of
the body-guard into a richly-decorated chamber, and placed upon a bed
trimmed with black cloth hangings which reached to the ground. An altar
was erected in the middle of the chamber for celebrating mass while the
body remained there.

  [Illustration: Fig. 393.--The Torments of Hell.--The Latin
  inscriptions in this engraving may be translated as follows: At
  the top, “The worm which feeds on the ungodly man shall never
  die, and the fire that devours him shall never be quenched;”
  in the centre, “Jews; Men of war;” beneath, “Monk; Lucifer, or
  Satan.”--Fac-simile of a Miniature from the “Hortus Deliciarum,”
  a celebrated Manuscript of the Twelfth Century, executed at
  the Convent of Hohemburg in the time of the Abbess Herrade de
  Landsberg; destroyed in the fire of the Strasburg Library during
  the Prussian bombardment, Sept. 24th, 1870. Reprinted from Count
  de Bastard’s great work.]

When the effigy was completed it was placed in another chamber as
richly decorated as the first, and around it were placed seats, or
_formettes_, covered with striped cloth of gold, upon which the
prelates, lords, gentlemen, and officers took their places. The state
bed, upon which the effigy was laid, was furnished with a covering of
cloth of gold reaching to the ground, and decorated with a bordering
of ermine spotted with black, which overlapped by about two feet the
covering, and was itself trimmed with Hungarian point-lace.

  [Illustration: Fig. 394.--Beacon in the Cemetery of Feniou, near
  St. Jean d’Angely (Eleventh Century); it is formed of eleven
  Roman columns.

  Fig. 395.--Beacon in the Cemetery of Antigny, Vienne (Fifteenth
  Century).

  Fig. 396.--Beacon in the Cemetery of Ciron, Indre (Twelfth
  Century).

  From the “Antiquités Monumentales” of M. de Caumont.]

The effigy was arrayed in a fine linen shirt, or chemise, trimmed at
the neck and sleeves with, black silk, and over this was passed a
doublet of scarlet satin, lined with taffeta of the same colour, edged
with narrow gold braid. Over the doublet was a tunic of azure satin,
spotted with golden fleurs-de-lis, trimmed with a silver and gold lace
about four inches wide, the sleeves reaching only to the elbow. Last
of all came the royal mantle of purple velvet of an azure hue, spotted
with golden fleurs-de-lis, six yards long, open in front, without
sleeves, lined with white satin, the ermine collar about a foot deep,
the facings and the train trimmed with ermine. From the neck of the
effigy hung the royal order; upon the head was a small cap of dark
crimson velvet, surmounted by the crown studded with jewels. Upon the
legs were buskins of cloth of gold, with bright crimson satin feet; the
hands were crossed upon the chest. At the head of the bed were placed
two cushions of red velvet, trimmed with embroidery; upon the one to
the right lay the sceptre, which was almost the same length as the
effigy, while upon that to the left was placed the hand of justice,
open, the staff being about two feet and a half long. The bed, which
was devoid of curtains, was surmounted by a very rich dais. Beside the
head of the bed, to the right, was the chair covered with cloth of
gold, with a cushion of the same material. At the foot was a stool,
also covered with cloth of gold, for the silver vessel containing
the holy water, and upon each side were two other seats covered with
striped cloth of gold for the heralds, arrayed in their coats of mail,
who presented holy water to the princes that came to view the body. The
lower end of the mortuary chamber, which was just opposite the effigy,
was occupied by a very richly decorated altar.

  [Illustration: Fig. 397.--Tower of Notre-Dame-du-Bois,
  constructed during the Eleventh Century, in the Cemetery of the
  Innocents, Paris; demolished in 1786.]

The royal effigy was laid in state for eight or ten days, during which
time the ordinary service of the palace went on just the same as during
the king’s lifetime. At the dinner and supper hours the table was laid
by the officers, and the courses arranged by the gentlemen-in-waiting,
preceded by the usher, and followed by the officers of “the king’s
buttery,” who approached the table with the customary obeisances. The
bread was then cut and placed ready for being handed round, the dishes
were brought to the table by an usher, the maître d’hôtel, the pantler,
the pages, the squire of the kitchen, and the keeper of the plate; the
napkin was presented by the maître d’hôtel to the highest personage
present; grace was said by a prelate or an almoner, who recited the
prayers for the dead. All those who were in the habit of eating at
the king’s table during his lifetime were expected to be present at
each of the repasts, together with the other persons of his household,
the princes, princesses, and prelates. The dishes were afterwards
distributed amongst the poor.

When the effigy had been removed the embalmed body was brought into the
middle of the same room, and the coffin--covered with a pall of black
velvet which touched the ground, with a large cross of white satin
in the centre, and on each side a scutcheon representing the arms of
France--was placed upon trestles; over the whole was thrown another
large pall of cloth of gold with fringes, which had also in the centre
a white satin cross, and at each extremity the arms of France, but
smaller than those on the under pall. The pall was trimmed with violet
velvet of a fine azure, spotted with fleurs-de-lis, and bordered with
ermine. At the head of the coffin was a cushion of cloth of gold, upon
which lay the royal crown, with the sceptre to the right and the hand
of justice to the left; at the foot there was a cross of silver-gilt,
and over it a splendid dais of black velvet; upon a form stood the
vessel for holy water, with a stool on each side for the two heralds
arrayed in their coats of arms, _chaperons en tête_. Beside the
heralds there was a bench covered with black cloth for the princes and
cardinals, who were seated on it during the celebration of mass. The
coffin was surrounded by a black wooden railing. At the lower end were
two altars standing in close proximity to each other; that of the chief
chapel for the high masses for the dead which was chanted, and that of
the oratory for low masses said by the chaplain in ordinary to the late
king. The nobles, several gentlemen, the officers and the body-guard,
all in mourning, were present at these services. A few days previous
to the interment the new sovereign repaired to the mortuary chamber,
attired in a purple mantle--purple was the mourning colour for kings,
as _tanné_ (brown) was that for queens--the train being borne
by five princes, each wearing a hood of the same colour. The chief
gentleman of the chamber presented him the cushion, on which the king
knelt in prayer after making the customary reverences. Then taking the
_aspersorium_ from the hands of a prelate, he sprinkled the coffin
with holy water; this done he withdrew, after making the reverences
usual upon such occasions.

When a king or a queen died in Paris, a procession was formed to their
residence to conduct the body to the place of interment; if he died
outside the city, the cortége started from Notre-Dame des Champs or
St. Antoine des Champs to meet it at its arrival. This cortege was
composed of the presidents and other officers of the parliament in
black robes, the officers of exchequer, of taxes, and of the treasury,
of the delegates, the provost of the merchants, the aldermen, and the
councillors of the city, all in mourning.

  [Illustration: Fig. 398.--Obsequies of St. Cesarius, physician to
  the Emperors Constantius and Julian; died in 369.--Fac-simile of
  a Miniature from a Greek Manuscript of the Ninth Century, in the
  National Library, Paris.]

Early the next morning, the twenty-four criers of the city announced
the event “_en la Chambre du plaidoyé, Table de marbre, et par les
rues_,” enumerating the titles and qualities of the deceased monarch
in the form laid down by the Grand Council, and not by Parliament,
which had refused to draw up this cry for King Henry II. (27th of July,
1559), in compliance with the request of his widow.

In the afternoon, the body was taken to the Church of Notre-Dame, in
Paris, and the effigy of the king was laid upon the coffin, in order to
impress yet more deeply the people who were admitted to do him homage.

By special privilege the _hanouars_, or bearers of salt, carried
the coffin; but at the interment of Charles VIII. twenty gentlemen of
his household volunteered to act as bearers of the body from Notre-Dame
des Champs to St. Denis. At the death of Louis XII., the hanouars
demanded and obtained the restoration of their privilege.

  [Illustration: Fig. 399.--Funeral of St. Edward the Confessor,
  the Anglo-Saxon king, who died on the 5th of January, 1066.--The
  body, covered with an embroidered pall surmounted with two small
  crosses, being carried by eight men to Westminster Abbey, of
  which he was the founder. Behind come priests chanting the Psalms
  for the Dead, while two clerks are ringing bells.--From the
  Bayeux Tapestry (Twelfth Century).]

The ceremonial was altered at the funeral of Francis I. and Henry II.,
the body being placed in the _chariot d’armes ou de parement_,
and the honours due to the body, which was in the hinder part of the
procession, were paid to the effigy. The gentlemen of the chamber to
Francis I., “with straps around their necks,” esteemed it an honour
to bear the effigy of their late master; those who had been in the
service of Henry II. only walked by the side of his effigy, holding up
the pall of cloth of gold. The Parliament, which had always enjoyed
the privilege of walking in front of, as well as of surrounding and
following, the body and the effigy, felt annoyed at being exclusively
attached to the latter, which still represented life; whereas the
body, representing death, was already, so to speak, separated from the
honours of royalty.

  [Illustration: Fig. 400.--Mortuary Cloth from the Church of
  Folleville (Somme), now in the Museum at Amiens (Sixteenth
  Century).--The cloth thrown over the coffin formed three crosses;
  the centre of the largest of these lay over the breast of the
  deceased, the two others covered the two sides of the bier; upon
  the white crosses are death’s heads crunching bones between their
  teeth. Two yellow-hued mirrors reflect the image of a human
  skull. The crosses bear the Latin inscription, “Memento mori.”]

The funeral procession proceeded in the following order through the
streets of Paris to the Abbey of St. Denis. First came an esquire in
mourning and on foot, carrying the banner of France covered with black
crape; then followed, bareheaded, the players of the hautboy, the
tabor, and the fife, with their instruments reversed, and in their rear
trumpeters with their bannerols flying.

  [Illustration: Fig. 401.--Triumphal Vessel, which was drawn upon
  a car in the solemn funeral ceremony celebrated at Brussels, upon
  the 29th of December, 1558, in honour of the Emperor Charles
  V., who died on the 21st of September, in the same year, at the
  Monastery of St. Just.--This vessel gives some idea of the shape
  as well as of the magnificence of the galleys constructed at
  that period. Three symbolic personages are conducting the vessel
  towards eternity: in the stern stands Charity (_Charitas_),
  ever glowing with love; amidships is Faith (_Fides_), with
  her eyes fixed upon the image of Christ; and at the prow, above
  the gilt beak-head, is Hope (_Spes_), standing with one
  hand placed upon the anchor of safety. The masts and bulwarks of
  the ship are decorated with flags upon which figure the arms of
  the different Netherland States, of Burgundy, and the Tyrol--all
  direct fiefs or conquests of the deceased emperor. The triangular
  sail in the stern indicates, by its colour (black), that the
  vessel is in mourning. The marine monsters which are seen
  swimming around it represent the enemies vanquished by Charles
  V., and the columns of Hercules, surmounted by the crown and the
  tiara, typify the alliance between the Empire and the Church,
  an alliance to which the Cesarean motto--“Non plus oultre,”
  lends special significance.--From the “Magnifique et Somptueuse
  Pompe Funèbre faite aux Obsèques du très-grand Empereur Charles
  Cinquième en la Ville de Bruxelles” (Plantin, Antwerp, 1559). In
  the Collection of M. Ruggieri, Paris.]

After these came the _chariot d’armes_, hung with black velvet
which reached to the ground, and upon it a large cross in white satin,
and twenty-four shields representing the arms of France. The coach was
drawn by six horses with black velvet trappings and the large white
satin cross, and on the near wheeler and leader postilions in mourning
and bareheaded. Around the coach were armourers and _sommeliers
d’armes_, together with some members of the four mendicant orders,
carrying tapers to which were affixed armorial shields. Twelve pages
followed, dressed in black velvet, who rode, bareheaded, upon twelve
horses, also caparisoned in black velvet with a white satin cross, each
led by a footman dressed in mourning and also bareheaded.

  [Illustration: Fig. 402.--Mourning Costumes.--Group consisting
  of Gold Fleece, Herald of Spain; of King Philip II., son and
  successor of Charles V., accompanied by Henry IV., Duke of
  Brunswick; of the Duke d’Arcos, Spanish Grandee; of Ruy Gomez de
  Sylva, Count of Melito, and of Emanuel-Philibert, Duke of Savoy.
  The last-named wears, like King Philip, the mourning hood, being
  the son of Beatrice of Portugal, sister-in-law of Charles V. The
  hood was only worn by the heirs of the deceased sovereign.--From
  the work on the funeral of Charles V., quoted on the previous
  page (see Fig. 401), published by Plantin, at Antwerp, in 1559.
  In the Collection of M. Ruggieri, Paris.]

One of the esquires of the stable carried the spurs and another the
gauntlets; a third, the arms of France, in the form of an escutcheon,
with the crown; a fourth bore at the end of a staff, in the form of
a gallows, the coat-of-arms made of violet velvet, and studded with
golden fleurs-de-lis. The first esquire, or, in his absence, the
eldest, carried the royal-crested helmet.

The state charger, with his housings entirely covered with crimson
velvet studded with Cyprus fleurs-de-lis of gold, was led by two
esquires; and upon each side came dismounted heralds-at-arms
_chaperon en tête_.

Behind the master of the horse, hooded and wearing at his side the
royal sword, followed the effigy, drawn upon a car, and holding in its
right hand the sceptre and in its left the hand of justice.

It was succeeded by the personage who was conducting the funeral
procession, and by the first or high chamberlain, bearing the banner
of France. Next to them marched the provost of the merchants and the
aldermen in full dress, bearing the dais and the pall which had been
used in the mortuary chamber, and which were carried at a certain
distance from the effigy, so as not to prevent the latter from being
seen.

Then came the princes, mounted upon small mules, the trains of their
mantles being each held up by a gentleman on foot in deep mourning.
After the princes were the ambassadors, dressed in mourning, but
without hood; the royal knights, wearing their insignia and a
mourning hood; the lords and gentlemen of the chamber; the captains
of the guards and archers in mourning, with their silver-coated
_hocquetons_ (a sort of jacket). Towards the middle of the
sixteenth century, the prelates and almoners also followed the cortége.

In the evening a solemn service was celebrated at Notre-Dame, and
another the next morning. In the afternoon of the latter day the
cortége repaired in the same order to St. Denis, stopping half-way at
a stone cross called the _Croix du Sien_, where the monks of the
abbey came out in procession to receive the king’s body and effigy from
the Archbishop of Paris, who thereupon withdrew, accompanied by his
clergy. As soon as the body entered the town of St. Denis, the monks of
the abbey bore the pall. In the evening the service was celebrated in
the cathedral, and on the following day the body was placed, covered
by the great pall of cloth of gold, in a _chapelle ardente_. The
effigy was removed, and the crown, the sceptre, and the hand of justice
were given to the heralds, who handed them over to three princes of
the blood. The gentlemen of the king’s chamber then took charge of the
body and carried it to the entrance of the vault in which it was to
be interred, and into which one of the kings-at-arms descended, and
in a loud voice bid the other kings-at-arms and heralds to do their
duty. Thereupon they all came forward and divested themselves of their
coats-of-arms. The king-at-arms standing in the vault bid five esquires
bring him the spurs, gauntlets, shield, coat-of-arms, and crested
headpiece; from the first _valet tranchant_ he received the
fanion, and from the captains of the Swiss and the archers of the guard
their insignia; the master of the horse handed him the royal sword; the
high or first chamberlain, the banner of France; the grand master and
all the _maîtres d’hôtel_ threw their staves into the vault; the
three princes brought to him the hand of justice, the sceptre, and the
crown. He then cried three times in a loud voice, “The king is dead;
pray to God for his soul!” and he then added the cry, also three times
repeated, “Long live the king his successor!” This cry was taken up by
another herald; the trumpets sounded, and the ceremony was at an end.
After this the grand master, accompanied by the prelates and knights
of the royal orders, repaired to the principal _table_ of the
Parliament, where the officers of the king’s household were collected,
and there he broke in their presence “the magisterial staff,” telling
them that they were henceforth without a master.

  [Illustration: Fig. 403.--Funeral Service for Anne of Brittany,
  Queen of France, who died on the 9th of January, 1514, at the
  Castle of Blois.--The service was celebrated on the 4th of
  February, in the Church of St. Sauveur, Blois.--In the middle
  of the choir was laid “the body of the noble lady, beneath a
  _chapelle ardente_ (_catafalque_) which had five
  pinnacles, each ornamented with a double cross with lighted
  tapers, crowned with a circle of black velvet, and decorated with
  several escutcheons.” In front of the coffin stood the effigy of
  the Queen, holding the crown and sceptre. Around are kneeling
  Franciscan and Jacobine nuns. Mass is being said by the Bishop
  of Paris.--From a Miniature in a contemporary Manuscript, the
  “Trespas de l’Hermine regrettée;” in the Library of M. Ambroise
  Firmin-Didot.]

A similar order of proceeding was observed at the funeral of a
queen, where the crowned effigy, with the royal mantle studded with
fleurs-de-lis, and with the sceptre in the right hand and the hand of
justice in the left, also figured in the ceremony. But in addition to
the princes, the body was followed by the princesses, and by several
ladies and maids-in-waiting, all of them dressed in mourning.

Isabel of Bavaria, widow of Charles VI., is the only queen of France
who was not buried with the honours due to her rank; her body having
been taken to Notre-Dame (1435), where the customary prayers were said,
the funeral procession and the Parliament followed it to the Port St.
Landri, where the coffin was placed in a boat, and taken by water to
St. Denis under the escort of two clerks and a chaplain.

Under the first Merovingian dynasty, immediately on the death of the
king, his body was washed, embalmed, and arrayed in the royal robes; it
was then taken to the church, which was always some basilica of note
previous to St. Denis being selected as the royal burying-place.

  [Illustration: Fig. 404.--Death of St. Benedict, surrounded by
  his monks, in his Abbey of Monte Cassino, on the 21st of March,
  542.--The “Légende Dorée” says, “At the moment of his death,
  one of the monks who had remained in his cell saw him ascend to
  heaven; and St. Maur, his disciple in France at the time, also
  saw what appeared to be a street, hung with rich tapestry and
  brilliantly lighted, which reached from St. Benedict’s cell to
  heaven. A man of majestic appearance approached him and said,
  ‘Behold the road by which Benedict, the servant and friend of
  God, is travelling to the presence of the Divine Majesty.’” The
  artist has grouped the various incidents of this story into his
  painting.--Fresco by Spinelli d’Arezzo (1390), in the Church of
  San Miniato, near Florence.]

At that period the kings of the Franks assisted in person at the
obsequies of the kings and queens their predecessors. Thus, Childebert
and Clotaire I. accompanied the body of their mother, Clotilde, from
Tours, where she died, to the Church of St. Geneviève, in Paris, where
she was buried. The four sons of Clotaire brought their father’s
body from Compiègne to the Abbey of St. Médard de Soissons, where it
was finally laid. Louis VI. followed on foot the body of his father,
Philip I., from Melun, where he died, to St. Benoît-sur-Loire, where
he was interred. Philip III. helped to carry his father’s bier from
the Church of Notre-Dame, in Paris, to St. Denis. The three sons of
King John--Charles V., Louis, Duke of Anjou, and Philip, Duke of
Burgundy--followed their father’s body to the grave; but the fourth
son, John, Duke of Berri, detained as hostage in England, was unable
to take part in the ceremony. Henceforward, the kings of France gave up
the custom of being present at the obsequies of their predecessors and
of members of the royal family. The sons of Henry II., however, with
the exception of the dauphin Francis, who merely sprinkled holy water
over the corpse, followed their father to the grave.

  [Illustration: Fig. 405.--The Christian professor on his
  death-bed--the priest is exhorting him; his disciples are
  praying for him; his wife is holding a flaming torch over his
  head in token of the resurrection. The dying man contemplates
  the image of Christ on the Cross, who died for the sins of
  mankind; the Holy Virgin, holding the Infant Jesus in her arms,
  implores pardon for the sinner, while evil spirits are searching
  in the professor’s works for some heresy which may ensure his
  damnation. Death is there.--Fac-simile of a Wood Engraving in
  the “Cogitatione della Morte,” by J. Savonarola; the Florence
  edition, in 4to (date unknown).]

In former times, the kings of the third dynasty were present at the
funerals even of their relations or friends. Joinville states that
the bodies of several nobles who had been massacred in prison by the
Saracens were given up to King Louis IX., who had them buried in the
Church of St. John of Acre. Amongst the slain was Gautier de Brienne,
whose cousin, Madame de Secte, discharged all the funeral expenses,
while every knight who was present at the ceremony gave as an offering
a taper and a silver denier. “The king,” says Du Tillet, “was present,
and contributed a taper and a besant, which he took from the lady’s
purse, out of his exceeding graciousness, for kings on funeral
occasions always contributed money of their own, and not that of those
who invited them.” Charles V. was present at the funeral of Jean de
la Rivière, his chamberlain, in the Church of the Val des Ecoliers,
Paris. Edward III. of England honoured with his presence the funeral
of G. Mauny, a knight of Hainault, buried in the Carthusian monastery
of London. After the sixteenth century, the sovereign merely went to
sprinkle the body with holy water, but did not assist at the obsequies
of great officers of his household, or of members of his family.

Funeral rites gave rise to a host of interesting and peculiar customs,
which a want of space prevents us from enumerating and describing.
Thus, in the southern provinces of France, it was the usage in former
days to carry the dead to the place of burial upon their state-beds,
which became the property of the officiating priest as a remuneration
for his services.

In Paris, down to the reign of Louis XIV., it was the custom, when any
personage of note died, for the “crier of the dead,” dressed in black,
to go through the streets, ringing a bell and crying out, “Pray God
for the dead!” This usage still exists in certain districts. Another
custom, altogether of ecclesiastical origin, was that of inscribing the
names of the dead upon placards, and so commending them to the prayers
of the worshippers in the monasteries and churches. Upon some of these
“rolls of the dead” (Fig. 407), composed of several sheets of parchment
sewn together, new names were added to the old, and the good works of
the deceased recorded thereon. These were the perpetual rolls. Orderic
Vital, in his “Ecclesiastical History,” speaks of a long roll in the
Monastery of St. Evroul, upon which were inscribed the names of monks,
and of their fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters. This roll was
laid upon the altar for the whole year, and only unfolded on the Jour
des Morts (All Souls’ Day).

These annual rolls were sent each year from one religious house to
another, to announce the names of those monks belonging to the same
order who had died during the year. A separate roll was forwarded on
the death of each monk, in order to obtain on his behalf the prayers
of his brethren in Christ. A copy of the document was taken for each
community, or perhaps the same was made to serve for all the abbeys in
the diocese. The style was simple or pompous, according to the rank and
position of the deceased.

  [Illustration: Fig. 406.--Jesus Christ descending into Hell,
  carrying with him the victorious Standard of the Cross and
  trampling under foot the spirit of Evil; the wall of separation
  reared by sin falls to the ground, and the saints of the Old
  Testament are set free.--Fresco by Simone di Martino, in the
  Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence (Fourteenth Century).
  (For description, see text, p. 501.)]

  [Illustration: Fig. 407.--Mortuary Roll of the blessed Vital,
  founder of the Abbey of Savigny (in the diocese of Avranches),
  who died on the 16th of September, 1122; it measures twenty-nine
  feet nine inches in length by eight and a half inches in
  breadth. One of the words in this roll commences with a capital
  T, representing Death in the act of devouring men and animals,
  while he treads under foot the Cerberus of the pagans.--National
  Archives of France.]

With respect to the corporations and brotherhoods, the usages varied
in every district and in every town. Thus, for instance, when a member
of the community of criers died, in Paris, all the others were
present at his funeral in the dress of their order, the body being
borne by four of his colleagues. Two others followed the coffin, one
having a handsome goblet (_hanap_), the other a jar filled with
wine. The remainder of the company walked in front, with little bells
in their hands which they kept ringing as they went along. When they
came to a cross-road the procession halted, and the coffin was placed
upon trestles. The crier who carried the goblet held it out to be
filled by the one who had the wine, and each of the four bearers took
a draught. Any looker-on, or any one who happened to be passing, was
asked to share in the libation. The obsequies of the ecclesiastical
body have alone preserved down to our own day a remnant of the
religious pomp with which they were conducted in the Middle Ages.

To form a correct idea of the pomp of these funeral rites, and of the
strange fascination which caused to be maintained, in the heart of a
city, cemeteries in which whole generations of the dead lay buried
together, we must divest ourselves of the positivism of the present
day, and revert to the poetic spiritualism of the Middle Ages, to the
consoling mysticism which then prevailed. Faith at that time reigned
supreme over men’s minds, and three articles of the Apostles’ Creed,
“Christ died and was buried; he descended into hell; the third day
he rose again from the dead,” diffused over the mystery of death an
ineffable splendour.

Dante, theologian as well as poet, divides hell into successive zones,
with the degree of punishment increasing in intensity as the circles
become narrower. In the first he places “Limbo,” a happy resting-place
for the good who have not been baptized. Virgil, his guide, tells him:
“I had not long been here when I saw a mighty Being, crowned with all
the tokens of victory, come down amongst us. He took back with him
to the realms of bliss our first parent; Abel, his son; Noah; Moses,
the faithful lawgiver; the patriarch Abraham; King David; Israel,
his father and his children; Rachel, for whom Israel made so many
sacrifices, and many others. And you must know that before them no man
had been saved.”[14]

This imaginative idea was very much in accordance with the popular
doctrine of the Middle Ages, based upon the teaching of the Church.
Hell, or the infernal regions, was divided into four parts; the
deepest, the abode of the damned; above that, Limbo, in which
unbaptized children found a peaceful resting-place; the third region
was Purgatory, or the place of expiation for the souls which, after
having been purified by temporary punishment, are destined for Heaven;
lastly, and nearest to the surface, came the Limbo of the elect, the
temporary abode of the pious dead, from Abel to Christ. In this latter
there was supposed to be no other punishment than that of expectant
captivity. It was thither that the Redeemer descended, while his body
was at rest beneath the stone of the sepulchre, awaiting the moment
of His resurrection. The gracious Saviour hastened to gladden these
beloved spirits with the news that his blood had washed out upon the
cross the decree that had so long hung upon the children of Abraham,
and that they would soon be permitted to follow Him to the skies, and
at last enter into the heavenly Jerusalem.

The reader has before him the graceful composition in which the painter
has transferred to canvas (Fig. 406) the poem attributed to Venancius
Fortunatus, the Christian poet of the seventh century. The wall of
separation reared by sin falls to the ground at the approach of the
Saviour; the very doors which had held the elect captive serve as a
bridge for them to cross the abyss, and the spirit of evil, trodden
under foot by Jesus Christ, is convulsed with frenzy as he clutches
in his grasp the once fatal but now useless key. The father of the
human race rushes forward with respectful eagerness towards the new
Adam, who bears the victorious standard of the cross; joy, love, and
gratitude animate the majestic group of elect, amongst whom are to be
distinguished Eve and St. Joseph upon their knees; while Abel, Noah,
Moses, Aaron, David, Judas Maccabæus, St. John the Baptist, and others,
are to be recognised either by their emblems or by their garb.

In the gloomy region hard by, whence flames are shooting up, the
infernal spirits are trembling with wonder and awe. A figure in the
shadow of an embrasure opening into purgatory, depicts the consolation
and the relief which Christ’s visit imparts to those souls whose
purification is accomplished.

That which the painter here typifies to the eye, the anniversary of
Christ’s burial, in the last days of the Holy Week, was brought vividly
to the Christian mind in each recurring year. When the long procession
of the people and the clergy wended its way to the sepulchre as the
resurrection morning drew nigh, a pious dialogue was exchanged between
the chanters and the crowd. It was Fortunatus’ poem which furnished the
faithful with the beautiful form in which they gave utterance to their
sentiments of faith. Voices repeated:--

“O Christ! Thou art the salvation, the Creator, full of goodness, and
the Redeemer of the world. Only-begotten Son of the Father, Author of
the life of the world, Thou didst allow thyself to be buried; Thou hast
trodden the pathway of death to give us the blessings of salvation.

“The gates of hell have fallen before their Master, and chaos has been
seized with terror at the inrush of light.

“Deliver the imprisoned souls from the captivity of hell, and make to
ascend on high all those who have gone down into the abyss.

“Thou snatchest from the dungeon of death a teeming host which, when
set free, follows in the footsteps of its deliverer.

“O holy King! the radiant splendour of Thy triumph shines forth when
the purified souls emerge from the sacred bath of purgatory. They,
resplendent in their newly-acquired liberty, array themselves in robes
of innocence, and the Shepherd contemplates with joy His flock, made
white as snow.”

This divine triumph, which the artist has so vividly depicted, and of
which the poet sings with such enthusiasm, was brought home to every
Christian by the aid of the imagination under the guidance of faith.
Nurtured in the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures, the people had got
to be familiar with the wholesome teaching of St. Paul, when he so
eloquently drew a comparison between the seed sown in the ground and
the corruptible body of the Christian changed into the incorruptible.
All men at that time steadfastly believed in the truth of those sublime
words: “The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption:
it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power: it is sown a natural
body, it is raised a spiritual body.”

These thoughts, which softened the sense of sorrow at death in the
days of deep religious faith, have been beautifully expressed by the
great painter of the Middle Ages, so fitly named Angelico. In his
splendid picture, “The Last Judgment,” the grouping of the elect is
a _chef-d’œuvre_ of Christian art. The green grass, the flowers
springing up on all sides, bring before the mind the resurrection,
and the elevated spiritualism of the faces which are depicted in this
exquisite scene carries the imagination into an ideal world. Man, with
the belief in a life to come, looked on death but as a sleep stealing
over the traveller, wearied with his pilgrimage towards the heavenly
country. The place of burial became the _place of sleep_ (which is
the meaning of the word _cemetery_). The corruption of the tomb
was rendered poetical by comparing it to the corruption of the seed,
which decomposed only to be quickened and to develop into a verdant
stem, branching out into sweet-scented and graceful flowers. The fear
of yielding to the lusts of the flesh drove the faithful into the
extreme rigour of penance, but, when death had dispelled all danger,
the body became an object of pious worship: it was encompassed with
floods of light and clouds of incense before being committed to the
earth, which had been blessed and consecrated to make it a fitting
receptacle for so precious a deposit--for faith saw in imagination the
splendour with which it would one day be clothed; and, to help the
imagination, art placed before the gaze the ineffable visions of the
Apocalypse.

  [Illustration: Fragment of Angelico's picture, _the Day of
   Judgement_, XV^{th} century. Florence, Academy of
   Fine-Arts.]

Van Eyck has allegorically treated this great subject of the
Resurrection (Fig. 408), with as much approach to what the Church
believes to be the truth, and perhaps as artistically, as the painter
of Fiesole. Amidst a landscape flooded with light, bright with verdure
and flowers, the Mystic Lamb, standing upon an altar and shedding his
exhaustless blood into the chalice, is being greeted with homage and
hymns of praise by the celestial host. Upon the front of the altar
is the inscription, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the
sin of the world” (_Ecce Agnus Dei, qui tollet peccata mundi_).
Around the altar, angels form a circle; two of them are scattering
incense over the Lamb, while twelve others, six on each side, are
bearing the instruments of the passion, and singing the praises of the
Divine Victim. In front of the altar, in the foreground, bubbles up a
fountain, which, in the language of the Apocalypse, is thus described,
“The Lamb shall be their shepherd, He shall lead them to fountains of
living water, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” M.
Alfred Michiels, in his “Histoire de la Peinture Flamande,” declares
that “no allegory has ever been painted with greater skill.”

Four groups of worshippers are artistically represented amidst verdure
and flowers. Above, on the left side, the holy martyrs are plainly
recognised by the palms in their hands; and foremost amongst these
stand the popes, nearly all of whom, in the early ages, sealed with
their blood their testimony to the divinity of the Lamb. Opposite to
them are the countless virgins who have claimed to be admitted to
the mystic marriage; and below them stand a host of nuns, popes, and
bishops adoring the Celestial Victim, and celebrating His praises.
Upon the other side of the fountain is the not less numerous phalanx
of Old Testament prophets, kings, and illustrious men, whose presence
completes the harmonious whole of this admirable composition. The two
figures standing out in the midst of this group are supposed by many
critics to represent Virgil and Dante. The white robe, the laurel
crown, and the bough with the golden apples seem, in fact, to point
pretty clearly to Dante’s guide in purgatory; but it is difficult to
believe that a painter, who is in other respects the model of pious
orthodoxy, should be guilty of so gross a breach of propriety.

In the distant horizon, churches with their graceful towers and spires
form a connecting link between heaven and earth. They seem to remind
us that it is amidst the notes of sacred music and the splendours of
religious worship, and, above all, by partaking of the mystic banquet
of the Lamb invisible but yet present, that the soul, as it receives
the earnest of the life to come, is enraptured with a prelusive glimpse
of the celestial glories.

  [Illustration: Fig. 409.--Christ, risen from the dead, bearing in
  one hand the Palm of Martyrdom, and in the other the victorious
  Standard of the Cross.--From a Fresco painted by Fra Angelico, in
  the Monastery of St. Mark, Florence (Fifteenth Century).]

The dominant idea in this Flemish masterpiece is but the expression of
those mysterious words which connect the thought of the grave with the
vision of eternal bliss: “Christ is the first-born from the dead.” He
is our elder brother in that new life where the bitterness of mourning
and the sorrow of separation are unknown. At the archangel’s voice, at
the blast of the trumpet, the dead bodies of those whom we have loved
shall rise radiant from the earth, within whose bosom they laid in calm
repose, awaiting the morning of the resurrection. They shall appear,
having put on glory and immortality, conformed to the divine image of
Christ their divine brother, their Risen Lord.

PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD, LONDON.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Neither the bishop nor the emperor can impose upon me any tax or
tribute, nor have they the power to call out the militia, except for
the protection and defence of the town, and then only from cockcrow to
nightfall.”

[2] “Arrivez, ou je vous brûlerai!”

[3] “Dressed like ragamuffins, with puffed trunk hose; some going
barelegged with their stockings hanging to their girdle; singing as
they trudge along to lighten the toil of the road.”

[4] Large-sided.

[5] Poop Guard.

[6] The principal galley of the squadron.

[7] “God wills it.”

[8] Much glory.

[9] “It happened that the king was seized with a serious illness, and
was brought so low that one of the ladies who was tending him, thinking
that he was dead, wished to cover his face with a cloth; while at the
other side of his bed was another lady who would not permit it. But it
fell out that the Lord worked within him and restored him his speech,
so that the good king asked for the cross to be brought to him, which
was done. And when the good lady, his mother, learned that he had
recovered his speech, she was overcome with joy, but when she saw that
he had assumed the cross, she was as much grieved as if she had seen
him a corpse.”

[10] The investiture of knighthood.

[11] This was the night-watch kept over his armour by the candidate for
admission to the order of knighthood.

[12] “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to thy name ascribe the glory.”

[13] Bossuet’s “Histoire Universelle,” p. 101, Firmin-Didot edition.

[14] From Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” p. 15 in the French translation by
Artaud de Montor.


Transcriber’s Notes:

1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
corrected silently.

2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the
original.

3. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have
been retained as in the original.

4. Italics are shown as _xxx_.

5. In the Table of Illustrations, the page number for "Adoration of the
Lamb" has been changed to "Frontispiece" and the image for "The
Judgment Day" has been added under "J".