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The Historians' History of the World 08 [Parthians, Sassanids and Arabs; The Crusades and the Papacy]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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Among the causes which enfranchised the plebeians from the yoke of feudal tyranny, the institution of cities and corporations is one of the most powerful; and if those of Palestine are coeval with the First Crusade, they may be ranked with the most ancient of the Latin world. Many of the pilgrims had escaped from their lords under the banner of the cross; and it was the policy of the French princes to tempt their stay by the assurance of the rights and privileges of freemen. It is expressly declared in the Assize of Jerusalem, that after instituting, for his knights and barons, the court of peers, in which he presided himself, Godfrey de Bouillon established a second tribunal, in which his person was represented by his viscount. The jurisdiction of this inferior court extended over the burgesses of the kingdom; and it was composed of a select number of the most discreet and worthy citizens, who were sworn to judge, according to the laws, of the actions and fortunes of their equals. In the conquest and settlement of new cities, the example of Jerusalem was imitated by the kings and their great vassals; and above thirty similar corporations were founded before the loss of the Holy Land. Another class of subjects, the Syrians, or oriental Christians, were oppressed by the zeal of the clergy, and protected by the toleration of the state. Godfrey listened to their reasonable prayer, that they might be judged by their own national laws. A third court was instituted for their use, of limited and domestic jurisdiction; the sworn members were Syrians, in blood, language, and religion; but the office of the president (in Arabic, of the rais) was sometimes exercised by the viscount of the city. At an immeasurable distance below the nobles, the burgesses, and the strangers, the Assize of Jerusalem condescends to mention the villeins and slaves, the peasants of the land and the captives of war, who were almost equally considered as the objects of property. The relief or protection of these unhappy men was not esteemed worthy of the care of the legislator; but he diligently provides for the recovery, though not indeed for the punishment, of the fugitives. Like hounds, or hawks, which had strayed from the lawful owner, they might be lost and claimed; the slave and falcon were of the same value; but three slaves, or twelve oxen, were accumulated to equal the price of the war-horse; and a sum of three hundred pieces of gold was fixed, in the age of chivalry, as the equivalent of the more noble animal.b
RESULTS OF THE FIRST CRUSADE
As if obeying the impetus it had received, the new state continued the spirit of conquest under Godfrey’s first two successors—Baldwin I (1100-1118) and Baldwin II of Bourg (1118-1131). But after these two reigns decadence began in discord. The atabegs who ruled at Mosul and Damascus took Edessa and massacred its people in 1144. There needed nothing less than this bloody disaster, which left Palestine exposed, to drive Europe to the renewal of crusade.
The First Crusade was very different from the seven others. It kindled all Europe, profoundly stirred the masses, both people and peers, and was the symptom of a great upheaval of sentiments and ideals. Those of the two following centuries had not the same motive. They were almost all conducted by kings who had kept aloof from the first; and even if faith were never absent, politics was often superior.
The Second Crusade felt still a vivid reflection of the spirit of devotion that animated the First; but it was no longer the work of the people but of princes—the emperor Conrad III and King Louis VII of France, who took the cross in spite of the prudent counsels of his minister, Abbé Suger. This Crusade was preached in France and Germany by St. Bernard; but already the zeal was somewhat chilled. A general tax levied on the whole kingdom of France, and on every class—nobles, priests, or peasants—roused much protest; at Sens the people killed the abbé of St. Pierre le Vif, ruler of part of their city, because of an impost he had wished to collect. “The king,” said a contemporary, “started on his way in the midst of curses.” St. Bernard had been offered the command of the expedition, but remembering Peter the Hermit, he refused.e
This Peter the Hermit, who for all his meek and lowly manner had unhinged all Europe and led a huge rabble to the slaughter in Asia Minor, had received an address of thanks in Jerusalem when the city had been taken; and then retiring to his native France had built a monastery at Huy on the Maas, where he lived quietly and died obscurely in 1115, recking nothing of the series of bloody wars that were to follow as the aftermath of his perfervid oratory and fanatic frenzy.a
FOOTNOTES
[48] [The reader will be cautious in giving some of these numbers his full credence, but there are often no existing documents on which to base a modification or substitution, and we can only quote the old chronicler and take his figures with a liberal pinch of salt.]
[49] Peter and William fled, during the night, from the distress which prevailed in the camp of the crusaders before the capture of Antioch. In the morning they were pursued by Tancred, brought back, and obliged to swear publicly that they would never again desert the army.—Wilken,c I, p. 184.
Horse Armour of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
CHAPTER III. THE SECOND CRUSADE
Winged is each heart, and winged every heel;
They fly, yet notice not how fast they fly;
But by the time the dewless meads reveal
The fervent sun’s ascension in the sky,
Lo, towered Jerusalem salutes the eye!
A thousand pointing fingers tell the tale;
“Jerusalem!” a thousand voices cry,
“All hail, Jerusalem!” hill, down, and dale
Catch the glad sounds, and shout, “Jerusalem, all hail!”
—Tasso (Jerusalem, Canto iii).
[1147-1189 A.D.]
The enthusiasm of the First Crusade is a natural and simple event, while hope was fresh, danger untried, and enterprise congenial to the spirit of the times. But the obstinate perseverance of Europe may indeed excite our pity and admiration: that no instruction should have been drawn from constant and adverse experience; that the same confidence should have repeatedly grown from the same failures; that six succeeding generations should have rushed headlong down the precipice that was open before them; and that men of every condition should have staked their public and private fortunes on the desperate adventure of possessing or recovering a tombstone two thousand miles from their country. In a period of two centuries after the Council of Clermont, each spring and summer produced a new emigration of pilgrim warriors for the defence of the Holy Land; but the seven great armaments or crusades were excited by some impending or recent calamity; the nations were moved by the authority of their pontiffs and the example of their kings; their zeal was kindled, and their reason was silenced, by the voice of their holy orators; and among these, Bernard, the monk or the saint, may claim the most honourable place.
ST. BERNARD
[1115-1147 A.D.]
About eight years before the first conquest of Jerusalem he was born of a noble family in Burgundy; at the age of twenty-three he buried himself in the monastery of Citeaux, then in the primitive fervour of the institution; at the end of two years he led forth her third colony, or daughter, to the valley of Clairvaux in Champagne; and was content till the hour of his death with the humble station of abbot of his own community. A philosophic age has abolished, with too liberal and indiscriminate disdain, the honours of these spiritual heroes. The meanest among them are distinguished by some energies of the mind; they were at least superior to their votaries and disciples; and in the race of superstition, they attained the prize for which such numbers contended. In speech, in writing, in action, Bernard stood high above his rivals and contemporaries; his compositions are not devoid of wit and eloquence; and he seems to have preserved as much reason and humanity as may be reconciled with the character of a saint. In a secular life he would have shared the seventh part of a private inheritance; by a vow of poverty and penance, by closing his eyes against the visible world, by the refusal of all ecclesiastical dignities, the abbot of Clairvaux became the oracle of Europe, and the founder of 160 convents. Princes and pontiffs trembled at the freedom of his apostolical censures; France, England, and Milan consulted and obeyed his judgment in a schism of the church; the debt was repaid by the gratitude of Innocent II; and his successor, Eugenius III, was the friend and disciple of the holy Bernard.