15 Chapter 15.The Church in the Thirteenth Century; with an Account of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh...

Chapter 15. The Church in the Thirteenth Century; with an Account of the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Crusades.

A.D. 1200-1300. The thirteenth century, though in many respects a period of great importance, has little to shew in the way of missionary achievements. The Nestorians continued to gain converts in Tartary, India, Persia and China; and the Danes made some feeble attempts of a similar kind in the last-named country. In Spain also, some efforts were made to Christianise the Arab population of the country, but without success. Pope Clement IV. thereupon advised their expulsion from the kingdom; and his advice having been listened to, much cruelty and bloodshed resulted. An attempt was also made to carry the gospel into the pagan parts of Prussia on the point of the sword, and Conrad, Duke of Massora, engaged the Teutonic knights in this barbarous enterprise. Such compulsory measures were at first resented by the inhabitants, but force of arms at length compelled them to submission, and they reluctantly bowed their necks to the papal yoke. Encouraged by this success the knights afterwards extended their mission to Lithuania; where, by robbery, murder, and incendiarism, they speedily reduced the people to a similar state of servitude, and forced them to be baptised.

These acts of injustice and oppression, committed within the bounds of Christendom, need not occasion much surprise, when we consider the condition of the professing church at this period. Ecclesiastics of every grade, from the Pope downwards, were engaged in a scramble for wealth and power, and the schoolmen and other theologians were exhausting their learning and eloquence in idle controversies, and profitless speculations on questions beyond the ken of finite minds. "Never," says Roger Bacon, the most learned Englishman of the age, "never was there so great an appearance of wisdom, and so great ardour in study, in so many faculties and so many countries, as during the last forty years — for doctors are scattered in every city, in every castle, in every borough, and yet never was so great ignorance and misapprehension. The mass of students doze like asses over bad translations of Aristotle, and waste together the time, labour, and expense they lay out upon them. Appearances are all which engross their attention, and they care not what it is they know, but only to appear very learned before the senseless multitude." The "multitude" were, indeed, as ignorant as they could be, and almost entirely destitute of spirituality. Despising learning, they were thus at the mercy of the priests, who saw the value of it, and sought in every way to limit the boundaries of their knowledge. It was the policy of the clergy to encroach as much as possible upon the civil courts of law; so that in time almost every case of perjury, blasphemy, usury, bigamy, incest, fornication, etc. etc., was tried in the ecclesiastical courts. Yet they craftily managed that the enforcement of their decisions, and the execution of their sentences should be left to the temporal power; thus absolving themselves, as they thought, from the responsibilities incurred by any miscarriage of justice. There is no doubt, indeed, that Europe in the thirteenth century was ruled by the priests, who had both wealth and learning to support them. The monasteries had become palaces, in which the lordly abbots could give their sumptuous entertainments, and carry on their guilty amours, protected by the strong arm of Rome. The bishops were princes, who, in many instances, owned the lands over which they had been appointed spiritual overseers. The friars had their substantial dwellings in the suburbs of every important town, and wandered daily through the streets, in their sombre frocks, to receive the reverent salutations of the people. The cottages of the poor, and the castles of the rich, were always open to their visits; and whether welcome or unwelcome, a reception must be accorded them. Hermits and other recluses still wandered moodily among the tombs and mountain paths, and by their ascetic severities did much to strengthen the hands of the pope. Many a true Christian, disgusted with the licentious conduct of the priests, would doubtless have left the fold, had it not been for these hermits, who, by their supposed sanctity, overawed the superstitious, and disarmed the objections of the discontented. We can imagine what that power must have been, which could compel a man, for some venial offence, extorted from him at the confessional, to fast, or to go about with bare feet, or to leave off wearing linen, or to go on pilgrimages, or even, where the removal of the offender was thought desirable, to take the cowl and enter a monastery! Yet this was the power invested in the priests; and we may be sure they were not slow to use it, where there was anything to be gained by so doing. But if the priests ruled the people, the pope ruled the priests. All were subject to him; and the more so, as, during this century, the dogma of the pope’s infallibility was brought prominently to the front. Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican, assuming the truth of the writings of one Gratian, a Benedictine of the previous century, added thereto a mass of spurious and traditional matter which was still floating about, and from this patchwork of error and superstition evolved the dangerous doctrine, that "Christ is fully and completely with every pope in sacrament and authority." His work, the "Summa Theologiae," contains various other canon or ecclesiastical laws, and is still a theological text book of the Romish church. Of the popes of this century, Innocent III., who rose to that dignity in the year 1198, was perhaps the greatest; certainly he was unexcelled for his wickedness. His real name was Lothario de’ Conti; he was named Innocent by his cardinals in testimony to his blameless life!

One of the first acts of Innocent on his elevation to the papal chair, was to ruin the domestic happiness of the French king. Philip Augustus, attracted by the fame of the Danish princess Isamburga’s beauty, had given his hand to that lady, and a marriage had been hastily concluded between them. But the monarch had not known his own mind, and from the first had shewn an unaccountable aversion to his young queen. Refusing to live with her as his wife he shut himself up in a convent and transferred his attentions to the young and beautiful Agnes, daughter of the duke of Meran; a lady for whom his love was deep and real, and to whom he was shortly afterwards united. The pope, however, espoused the cause of the repudiated princess, and threatened to place the whole kingdom under an interdict unless the king put away the duke’s daughter, and received the princess Isamburga with conjugal affection. This was no light or empty threat, and the consequences of such an interdict would have fallen heavily on the unoffending subjects of the French king. To suspend the public exercise of religion was a terrible matter in their eyes, for almost all their worship was through the priests, and, speaking generally, they had no resource in private prayer. But Philip refused to give way. He pleaded that his divorce from the Danish princess was a lawful one, and had been ratified by a former pope (Celestine III.): moreover, he had been legally married to the lady Agnes, who had already borne him two children. The pope, however, would allow of no exonerating plea; and when Philip continued obstinate, he gave the necessary authority to his legate, then at Dijon, to proclaim the interdict. At midnight, amid the tolling of bells, the execrable ceremony took place. The consecrated bread was burned, the images were draped in black, and the relics replaced in the tombs. Then the clergy came forth from the church in solemn procession, headed by the cardinal in his mourning stole of violet; and when he had pronounced the ban, the priests extinguished their torches; the church doors were locked; and all religious services, and all prayers, were indefinitely suspended. Only the sacraments of baptism, confession, and extreme unction were now permitted by the church; and meanwhile the people went about unshaven, the use of meats was prohibited, and the dead, without place of sepulture, were left to the dogs which infested the cities, and to the wandering birds of prey.

It was in vain for Philip to protest against these extreme proceedings; the pope was inexorable, and his mandate must be obeyed. Agnes must be put away, and Isamburga reinstated in her rights; until this was done, the interdict could not be removed. But Philip’s affections were centred in his beautiful wife, and he could not bring himself to submit to the harsh demand. Agnes herself had no ambition for queenly honours, but the thought of separation from her husband was more than she could bear: she only wanted to remain, what pope and parliament alike had made her, his lawful wife. Driven to madness by his wife’s grief, and his own impotence to assuage it, the king at last exclaimed, "I will turn Mahometan! Happy Saladin, he has no pope above him." But to all this the pitiless demand was repeated, Obey the pope, dismiss Agnes, receive back lsamburga." At last the king consented. Innocent had gained the day, and now removed the interdict. The churches were again thrown open to the people, the images were undraped, the relics were again exhibited, and the sacraments were administered as before. The princess Isamburga returned to the French court, and was outwardly acknowledged as Philip’s queen, but his aversion to her was only deepened by all that had occurred, and he still refused to live with her as his wife. The lovely and loving Agnes, torn from her husband, died soon after of a broken heart. But France was not the only country which experienced the horrors of an interdict during the pontificate of Innocent III. John of England, by his undignified menaces to the pope in the year 1207, brought a similar visitation on our own country. The circumstances will be familiar to all readers, and we need not dwell upon them. Even the interdict, however, had no effect upon John, and when he was excommunicated in the following year, he treated the pope’s bull with contempt. The bull was followed, in the year 1211, by an act of deposition, and John was declared to have forfeited the crown. His subjects meanwhile were absolved from their oath of allegiance, and liberty was given them to transfer their allegiance "to a person worthier to fill the vacant throne."

Lastly, Philip Augustus of France was invited to take up arms against the contumacious king, and the territories of the English crown were promised as an appendage to his own kingdom. This final measure brought the craven-hearted John to his knees, and his former haughtiness and independence suddenly gave place to a meanness and servility which is almost without parallel in history. At the house of the Templars, near Dover, the degrading ceremony took place. On bended knees, the king of England laid his crown at the feet of Pandulph, the papal legate; "resigned England and Ireland into the hands of the pope, swore homage to him as his liege lord, and took an oath of fealty to his successors." The following is a copy of the king’s oath: "I, John, by the grace of God, king of England and lord of Ireland, in order to expiate my sins, from my own free will, and the advice of my barons, give to the church of Rome, to pope Innocent and his successors the kingdom of England, and all other prerogatives of my crown. I will hereafter hold them as the pope’s vassal. I will be faithful to God, to the church of Rome, to the pope, my master, and his successors legitimately elected. I promise to pay him a thousand marks yearly; to wit, seven hundred for the kingdom of England and three hundred for the kingdom of Ireland." Such were the shameful and humiliating terms dictated by the simulated shepherd of Christ’s flock, and submitted to by an English king! Philip Augustus, who had meanwhile gone to enormous expense in raising an army, was now coolly informed that he must desist from hostilities, and that any attempt "to annoy the king of England would be highly offensive to the holy see." But the triumph of the pope was changed to wrathful alarm, when, two years later, the barons of England, headed by archbishop Langton, met at Runnymede, and forced the tyrannical John to renew and ratify the charter of their liberties, which had been granted to them by Henry I. "What!’ exclaimed Innocent, "do the barons of England transfer to others the patrimony of the church of Rome? By St. Peter we cannot leave such a crime unpunished." But the barons were made of other metal than their sovereign; and when the pope annulled the great charter, and threatened those who defended it, they received his communication in contemptuous silence. The pontificate of Innocent acquires a further importance from the fact, that it was he who established by decree the fatal dogma of transubstantiation; thus settling, as he fondly deemed, a question which had long been fermenting in the minds of many. At the fourth Lateran Council (A.D. 1215), it was canonically affirmed that when the officiating priest utters the words of consecration, the sacramental elements of bread and wine are converted into the substance of the body and blood of Christ.* Divine honours were now decreed to them, and the consecrated elements became the objects of worship and adoration. Costly caskets, exquisitely chased, were made for their reception: and thus, according to this doctrine of hell, the living God was confined in a casket, and might be carried about from place to place!

{*The same body which was born of the Virgin. It was reserved for pope Pius IV., in the year 1563, to decree that "the body and blood of Christ, together with His soul and divinity, are truly and really and substantially in the Eucharist, and that there is a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into His body, and of the whole substance of the wine into His blood, which conversion the Catholic church calls transubstantiation." It is worth noting that this dreadful doctrine finds no place whatever in the writings of the Fathers, on which the Romish church professes to build so largely.} But the activity of the papacy was shewn in yet another way during this century. The decay of the crusading spirit, which had filled the coffers of the church, while it impoverished the whole of Europe, made it necessary for the pope to look about him for a fresh source of revenue; and the suggestion of an ingenious catholic, that the place of pilgrimage for Christians should be transferred from Jerusalem to that city, most happily met the case. Streams of wealth now flowed in to the treasuries of the Vatican, and when, at the close of the century, pope Boniface VIII. instituted what is called the Jubilee, the success was complete. Every hundred years was to be the grand occasion for a general pilgrimage to Rome; and so fruitful did this institution prove, that the task of waiting one hundred years for the next influx of wealth proved too great a tax on the patience of the popes, and the interval was changed to fifty years. Eventually even this term was found too lengthy, and twenty-five years became, in due time, the prescribed and settled period. Of the pope who instituted the Jubilee we shall have more to say hereafter.

We have already intimated that the crusading spirit was on the decline, but history has to record the banding, on different occasions, of no less than five other armies in that hopeless cause. The first of these, which forms the Fifth Crusade, was proclaimed by Innocent III., and met with but a feeble response. A few French nobles, aided by the Venetian Republic, succeeded in mustering a small army; and having sailed to Constantinople, took the city by storm. They re-instated Isaac Angelus on the throne, as emperor of the Greeks, and were preparing to return, when the newly appointed emperor was murdered, and the city was suddenly thrown into a state of tumult and insurrection. After order was again restored, the crusaders elected a new emperor, Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and then returned home. Their victory, so far as it went, was complete; and during fifty-seven succeeding years the Greek empire was ruled by this Frankish dynasty.

Between this crusade and the sixth, the feverish spirit of the times produced one of mere children. Ninety thousand boys, varying from ten to twelve years of age, placed themselves under the leadership of a shepherd lad, named Stephen, who professed to be acting by divine guidance, and marched forth, singing as they went. They carried banners and crosses in their hands, and cried as they went along, "O Lord, help us to recover Thy true and holy cross!" Without weapons, they thought to overcome the infidels by their prayers and innocence; and it is deplorable to think that no one came forward to restrain these poor children, or even to warn them from their foolish enterprise. How many reached the coast is not recorded, but thousands must have perished by hunger and fatigue, and many were doubtless sold into slavery. None, of course, reached the Holy Land. The Sixth Crusade was proclaimed by Honorius III., and the warriors were chiefly Germans and Italians. They marched into Egypt, and captured Damietta; but not before 70,000 of the inhabitants had perished in the siege. It was a shocking waste of human life, as the sequel proved, for the city was recaptured by the Saracens in the course of the next few years. The Seventh and Eighth Crusades may be said to have resulted from a vow, made by Louis IX. of France, on a sick bed. He saw in his recovery, the expression of the will of heaven that he should deliver the holy sepulchre from the power of the infidel, and neither returning health, nor long delays could dissipate the conviction. The first expedition was undertaken in the year 1249, and resulted in the recapture of Damietta, but in the following year the king and nearly his whole army were taken prisoners. After four years his liberty was purchased for a large sum, and a truce was concluded with the Saracens for ten years. Having made a few pilgrimages to the sacred places, he then returned to France. But his vow was not forgotten, and sixteen years later he engaged upon his second crusade. With a worn-out body, but a spirit as vigorous and hopeful as ever, he set out with his army on the 14th of March, A.D. 1270. Before a year had passed, the miserable remnant of that army was on its way back to Europe, having left the king behind in Palestine. His vow unfulfilled, his hopes unrealised, he had been carried off by the pestilence, during the month of August, leaving the conquest of the Holy Land as distant an achievement as ever.

Thus terminated the Eighth Crusade, the last for many years which any pope proclaimed, and, with one or two exceptions, the last in which any sovereign of Europe took part. Kings and emperors had seen the evils which these "Holy Wars" engendered, and the popes had grown too busy with crusades of another kind, and nearer home, to waste their thoughts on such visionary enterprises.

Yet the popes had been the chief gainers by the crusades, and the increase to their temporal power was considerable during those 180 years of strife and bloodshed. Indeed, the clergy generally had not failed to profit by the occasion; and whilst the nobility of Europe were throwing away their lives in Palestine, bishops and abbots had been encroaching upon their estates, and filling the coffers of the church with plundered treasure.