terests of mankind, and that in Europe more especially, they were fruitful of innumerable evils and calamities, whose effects are yet perceivable in our times. The European nations were deprived of the greatest part of their inhabitants by these ill-judged expeditions; immense sums of money were exported into Asia for the support of the war; and numbers of the most powerful and opulent families became either extinct, or were involved in the deepest miseries of poverty and want. It could not well be otherwise; since the heads of the most illustrious houses, either not only extremely difficult, but also highly doubtful. It is however proper to inform the reader, that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the justice of this holy war was called in question, and warmly disputed among Christians. The Waldenses and Albigenses, who were distinguished by the name of Cathari, or Puritans, considered these expeditions into Palestine as absolutely unlawful. The reasons they alleged were collected and combated by Francis Moneta, a Dominican friar of the thirteenth century, in a book entitled Summa contra Catharos et Waldenses, lib. v. cap. xiii. p. 531, which was published some years ago at Rome by Richini. But neither the objections of the Waldenses, nor the answers of Moneta, were at all remarkable for their weight and solidity, as will appear evidently from the following example; the former objected to the holy war the words of St. Paul, 1 Cor. x. 32. "Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles." By the Gentiles, said they, are to be understood the Saracens. And therefore the European Christians are to abstain from making war upon the Saracens, lest they give offence to the Gentiles. We shall give Moneta's answer to this argument in his own words. "We read," says he, "Genes. xii. 7, that God said unto Abraham, Unto thy seed will I give this land. Now we (Christians who dwell in Europe) are the seed of Abraham, as the Apostle affirms, Galat. iii. 29. Therefore we are heirs of the promise, and the holy land is given to us by the covenant as our lawful possession. From all which it appears, that it is the duty of civil and temporal rulers to use their most zealous efforts to put us in possession of the promised land, while it is at the same time incumbent upon the church and its ministers, to exhort these rulers in the most urgent manner to the performance of their duty." A rare argument this truly! but let us hear him out. "The church has no design to injure or slaughter the Saracens, nor is such the intention of the Christian princes engaged in this war. Yet the blood of the infidels must of necessity be shed, if they make resistance and oppose the victorious arms of the princes. The church of God therefore is entirely innocent and without reproach in this matter, and gives no offence to the Gentiles, because it does no more in reality than maintain its undoubted right." Such is the subtile reasoning of Moneta, on which it is not necessary to make any reflections. Dr. Mosheim seems too modest, nay even timorous in his manner of expressing himself concerning the justice of this holy war, which was so absurd in its principle, and so abominable in the odious circumstances that attended it. His respect perhaps for the Teutonic crosses which abound in Germany, and are the marks of an order which derives its origin from these fanatical expeditions into Palestine, may have occasioned that ambiguity and circumspection in his expressions, through which however it is easy to perceive his disapprobation of the crusades. The holy place profaned by the dominion of infidels, was the apparent pretext for this fanatical war. What holy place? Jerusalem, say the knights errant of Palestine. But they forget that Jerusalem was a city, which, by the conduct of its inhabitants and the crucifixion of Christ, was become most odious in the eye of God; that it was visibly loaded with a divine malediction, and was the miserable theatre of the most tremendous judgments and calamities that ever were inflicted upon any nation. Had the case been otherwise, we know of no right which Christianity gives its professors to seize upon the territories and invade the possessions of unbelievers. Had the Jews attempted the conquest of Palestine, they would have acted conformably with their apparent rights; because it was formerly their country; and consistently also with their religious principles; because they expected a Messiah who was to bind the kings of the Gentiles in chains, and to reduce the whole world under the Jewish yoke. VOL. II. 17 mortgaged or sold their lands and possessions in order to pay the expenses of their voyage; while others imposed such intolerable burdens upon their vassals and tenants, as obliged them to abandon their houses, and all their domestic concerns, and to enlist themselves, rather through wild despair than religious zeal, under the sacred banner of the cross. Hence the face of Europe was totally changed, and all things thrown into the utmost confusion. We pass in silence the various enormities that were occasioned by these crusades, the murders, rapes, and robberies of the most infernal nature, that were every where committed with impunity by these holy soldiers of God and of Christ, as they were impiously called; nor shall we enter into a detail of the new privileges and rights, to which these wars gave rise, and which were often attended with the greatest inconveniences." Its unhappy effects consiwith spect to the state of reli x. These holy wars were not less prejudicial to the cause of religion, and the true interests of the Christian rewire church, than they were to the temporal concerns of men. One of their first and most pernicious gion. effects was the enormous augmentation of the influence and authority of the Roman pontiffs; they also contributed, in various ways, to enrich the churches and monasteries with daily accessions of wealth, and to open new sources of opulence to all the sacerdotal orders. For they who assumed the cross disposed of their possessions as if they were at the point of death, and this on account of the imminent and innumerable dangers they were to be a We find many memorable examples of this in the ancient records. Robert, duke of Normandy, mortgaged his dutchy to his brother William, king of England, to defray the expenses of his voyage to Palestine. See the Histor. Major of Matthew Paris, lib. i. p. 24. Odo, viscount of Bourges, sold his territory to the king of France. Gallia Christian. Benedictinorum, tom. ii. p. 45. See, for many examples of this kind, Cardu Fresne, Adnot. ad Joinvilli vilam Ludovici S. p. 52. Boulainvilliers, Sur Porigine et les droits de la Noblesse in Molet's Memoires de Literature et de l'Histoire, tom. ix. part i. p 68. Jo. George Cramer, De juribus et prærogativis Nobilitatis, tom. i. p. 81, 409. From the commencement therefore of these holy wars, a vast number of estates belonging to the European nobility were either mortgaged, or totally transferred, some to kings and princes, others to priests and monks, and not a few to persons of private condition, who, by possessing considerable sums of ready money, were enabled to make advantageous purchases. b Such persons as entered into these expeditions, and were distinguished by the badge of the military cross, acquired thereby certain remarkable rights, which were extremely prejudicial to the rest of their fellow-citizens. Hence it happened, that when any of these holy soldiers contracted any civil obligations, or entered into conventions of sale, purchase, or any such transactions, they were previously required to renounce all privileges and immunities, which they had obtained, or might obtain in time to come by taking on the cross. Se Le Boeuf, Memoires sur l' Histoire d'Auxerre, Append, tom. ii. p. 262. op exposed to in their passage to the Holy Land, and the position they were to encounter there upon their arrival. They therefore, for the most part, made their wills before their departure, and left a considerable part of their of their possessions to the priests and monks, in order to obtain, by these pious legacies, the favour and protection of the Deity." Many examples of these donations are to be found in ancient records. Such of the holy soldiers as had been engaged in suits of law with the priests or monks, renounced their pretensions, and submissively gave up whatever it was that had been the subject of debate. And others, who had seized upon any of the possessions of the churches or convents, or had heard of any injury that had been committed against the clergy, by the remotest of their ancestors, made the most liberal restitution, both for their own usurpations and those of their forefathers, and made ample satisfaction for the real or pretended injuries they had committed against the church by rich and costly donations. Nor were these the only unhappy effects of these holy expeditions,considered with respect to their influence upon the state of religion, and the affairs of the Christian church. For while whole legions of bishops and abbots girded the sword to their thigh, and went as generals, volunteers, or chaplains into Palestine, the priests and monks, who had lived under their jurisdiction, and were more or less awed by their authority, threw off all restraint, lived the most lawless and profligate lives, and abandoned themselves to all sorts of licentiousness, committing the most flagitious and extravagant excesses without reluctance or remorse. The monster superstition, which was already grown to an enormous size, received new accessions of strength and influence by this holy war, and exercised with more vehemence than ever, its despotic dominion over the minds of the Latins. For the crowd of saints, and tutelary patrons, whose number was prodigious before this period, was now augmented by fictitious saints of Greek and Syrian origin. c The translator has here inserted into the text, the note r of the original, as it is purely historical, and makes a very interesting part of the narration. d See Plessis Hist. de Meaux, tom. ii. p. 76, 79, 141. Gallia Christiana, tom. ii. p. 138, 139. Le Boeuf, Memoires pour l'Histoire d'Auxerre, tom. ii. Append. p. 31. Du Fresne, Nota ad Vitam Ludovici Sancti, p. 52. e Du Fresne, 1. c. p. 52. f The Roman catholic historians acknowledge, that during the time of the crusades, many saints unknown to the Latins before that period, were imported into Europe from Greece and the eastern provinces, and were treated with the utmost respect and which had hitherto been unknown in Europe, and an incredible quantity of relics, the greatest part of which were ridiculous in the highest degree, were imported into the European churches. The armies that returned from Asia after the taking of Jerusalem, brought with them a vast number of these saintly relics, which they bought at a high price from the cunning Greeks and Syrians, and which they considered as the noblest spoils that could crown their return from the Holy Land. These they committed to the custody of the clergy in the churches and monasteries, or ordered them to be most carefully preserved in their families from generation to generation. the most devout veneration. Among these new patrons, there were some whose exploits, and even their existence, were called in question. Such, among others, was St. Catharine, whom Baronius and Cassander represent as having removed from Syria into Europe. See Baronius, Ad Martyrol. Roman. p. 728. George Cassander Schol ad hymnos Ecclesiæ, p. 278, 278, opp. Paris, 1616, fol. It is however extremely doubtful, whether or no this Catharine, who is honoured as the patroness of learned men, ever existed. g The sacred treasures of musty relics, which the French, Germans, Britons, and other European nations preserved formerly with so much care, and show even in our times with such pious ostentation, are certainly not more ancient than these holy wars, but were then purchased at a high rate from the Greeks and Syrians. These cunning traders in superstition, whose avarice and fraud were excessive, imposed upon the credulity of the simple and ignorant Latins, and often sold them fictitious relics. Richard, king of England, bought in the year 1191, from the famous Saladin, all the relics that were to be found in Jerusalem, as appears from the testimony of Mathew de Paris, Hist. Major. p. 138, who tells us also, p. 966, of the same work, that the Dominicans brought from Palestine a white stone, in which Jesus Christ had left the print of his feet. The Genoese pretend to have received from Baldwin, second king of Jerusalem, the very dish in which the paschal lamb was served up to Christ and his disciples at the last supper; though this famous dish excites the laughter of even father Labat, in his Voyages en Espagne et en Italie, tom. ii. p. 63. For an account of the prodigious quantity of relics which St. Louis brought from Palestine into France, we refer the reader to the life of that prince, composed by Joinville, and published by Du Fresne ; as also to Plessis, Histoire de l'Eglise de Meaux, tom. i p. 120, and Lancelot, Memoires pour la vie de l'Abbe de St. Cyran, tom. ii. p. 175. Christ's handkerchief, which is worshipped at Benzancon, was brought there from the holy land. See Jo. Jac. Chiflet, Visontio, part ii. p. 108, and De Linteis Christi Sepulchralibus, c. ix. p. 50. Many other examples of this miserable superstition may be seen in Anton. Matthæi Analecta veteris ævi, tom. ii p. 677. Jo. Mabillon, Annal. Bened. tom. vi. p. 52, and principally Chiflet's Crisis Historica de Linteis Christi Sepulchralibus, c. ix. x. p. 50, and also 59, where we find the following passage. "Sciendum est, vigenti, immani, et barbara Turcarum persecutione, et imminente Christianæ religionis in oriente naufragio, eductae Sacrariis et per Christianos quovis modo recondita Ecclesiæ pignora... Hisce plane divinis opibus illecti præ aliis, Sacra Aumoava qua vi, quo pretio, a detinentibus hac illac, extorserunt." CHAPTER II. CONCERNING THE CALAMITOUS EVENTS THAT HAPPENED TO THE The sufferings of the church under the do and the Saracens I. THE greatest opposition the Christians met with in this century was from the Saracens and Turks. To the latter the Christians and Saracens were equally odious, and felt equally the fatal consequences of their increasing dominion. The Sara- usurpations of cens, notwithstanding their bloody contests with and Turks, the Turks, which gave them constant occupation, and the vigorous, though ineffectual efforts they were continually making to set limits to the power of that fierce nation, which was daily extending the bounds of its empire, persisted still in their cruelty toward their Christian subjects, whom they robbed, plundered, maimed, or murdered, in the most barbarous manner, and loaded with all sorts of injuries and calamities. The Turks, on the other hand, not only reduced the Saracen dominion to very narrow bounds, but also seized upon the richest provinces of the Grecian empire, those fertile countries that lay upon the coasts of the Euxine Sea, and subjected them to their yoke, while they impoverished and exhausted the rest by perpetual incursions, and by the most severe and unmerciful exactions. The Greeks were not able to oppose this impetuous torrent of prosperous ambition. Their force was weakened by intestine discords, and their treasures were exhausted to such a degree as rendered them incapable of raising new troops, or of paying the armies they had already in their service. western pro vinces. II. The Saracens in Spain opposed the progress of the gospel in a different, yet still more pernicious way. They used all sorts of methods to allure the and in the Christians into the profession of Mahometanism; alliances of marriage, advantageous contracts, flattering rewards, were employed to seduce them with too much success; for great numbers fell into these fatal snares, and apostatized from the truth." And these allurements would have undoubtedly still continued to seduce multitudes of b Jo. Henr. Hottingeri Histor. Ecclesiast. Sæc. xi. § ii. p. 452. Michael Geddes's History of the Expulsion of the Moriscoes out of Spain, which is to be found in the Miscellaneous Tracts of that Author, tom. i. p. 104. |
