prodigious number of Arians that were scattered CENT. XII. throughout Italy long before this period.

XV. A sect of fanatics, called Caputiati, from a The Capusingular kind of cap that was the badge of their fac. tiati. tion, infested the province of Burgundy, the diocese of Auxerre, and several other parts of France, in all which places they excited much disturbance among the people. They wore upon their caps a leaden image of the Virgin Mary; and they declared publicly, that their purpose was to level all distinctions, to abrogate magistracy, to remove all subordination among mankind, and to restore that primitive liberty, that natural equality, which were the inestimable privileges of the first mortals. Hugo, bishop of Auxerre, attacked these disturbers of human society in the proper manner, employing against them the force of arms, instead of arguments".

The sect of the apostolics, whom St. Bernard opposed with such bitterness and fury, and who were so called, as that zealous abbot himself acknowleged, because they professed to exhibit, in their lives and manners, the piety and virtues of the holy apostles, were very different from the audacious heretics now mentioned. They were a clownish set of men, of the lowest birth, who gained their subsistence by bodily labor; yet, as soon as they formed themselves into a sect, they drew after them a multitude of adherents of all ranks and orders. Their religious doctrine, as St. Bernard confesses, was free from error, and their lives and manners were irreproachable and exemplary: but they were reprehensible on account of the following peculiarities: 1. They held it unlawful to take an oath; 2. They suffered their hair and their beards to grow to an enormous length, so that their aspect was inexpressibly extravagant

• See F. Bonacursi Manifestatio hæresis Catharorum, in d'Acheri's Spicileg. Veter. Scriptor. tom. i. p. 211. Gerard. Bergamensis contra Catharos et Pasagios, in Lud. Anton. Muratorii Antiq. Ital. medii ævi, tom. v. p. 151.

P Jaques Le Boeuf, Memoires sur l'Histoire d'Auxerre, tom. i. p. 317.

CENT. XII. and savage; 3. They preferred celibacy to wedlock, and called themselves the chaste brethren and sisters; notwithstanding which, 4. Each man had a spiritual sister with him, after the manner of the apostles, with whom he lived in a domestic relation, lying in the same chamber with her, though not in the same bed 9.

Eon, a

wrong-head

XVI. In the council assembled at Rheims, in the ed fanatic year 1148, in which pope Eugenius III. presided, a gentleman of the province of Bretagne, whose name was Eon, and whose brain was undoubtedly disordered, was condemned for pretending to be the Son of God. Having heard, in the form that was used for exorcising malignant spirits, these words pronounced, per Eum, qui venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos, he concluded, from the resemblance between the word Eum and his name, that he was the person who was to come and judge both the quick and the dead. This poor man should rather have been delivered over to the physicians than placed in the list of heretics. He ended his days in a miserable prison, and left a considerable number of followers and adherents, whom persecution and death in the most dreadful forms could not persuade to abandon his cause, or to renounce an absurdity, which one would think could never have gained credit, but in a receptacle of lunatics". This remarkable example is sufficient to shew, not only the astonishing credulity of the stupid multitude, but also how far even the rulers of the church were destitute of judgement, and unacquainted with true and genuine religion.

a Sti. Bernardi Serm. lxv. in Canticum, tom. iv. op. p. 1495, edit. Mabillon.

Matth. Paris, Historia Major, p. 68.-Guil. Neubrigensis, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, lib. i. p. 50.-Boulay, Historia Acad. Paris. tom. ii. p. 241.

THE

THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

PART I.

THE EXTERNAL HISTORY OF THE CHURCH.

CHAPTER I.

Concerning the prosperous Events that happened to the Church during this Century.

in the north

China.

I. THOUGH the successors of Genghiz-Khan, the CENT. XIII. powerful emperor of the Tartars, or rather of the The state of Mogols, had carried their victorious arms through a Christianity great part of Asia, and, having reduced China, India, ern parts of and Persia, under their yoke, had involved in many Asia and in calamities and sufferings the Christian assemblies which were established in those vanquished lands a, yet we learn from the best accounts, and the most respectable authorities, that in China, and in the northern parts of Asia, the Nestorians continued to have a flourishing church, and great number of adherents. The emperors of the Tartars and Mogols had no great aversion to the Christian religion. It even appears from authentic records, that several kings and grandees of those nations had either been instructed in the doctrines of the Gospel by their ancestors, or were converted to Christianity by the ministry and exhortations of the Nestorians. But the religion of Mohammed, which

a

Gregor. Abulfaraj. Historia Dynastiar. p. 281, edit. Focock. b See Marc. Paul. Venet. de Regionibus Oriental. lib. i. c. iv. lib. ii. c. vi.-Haytho the Armenian's Histor. Oriental cap, xix,

CENT. XIII. was so calculated to flatter the passions of men, gradually infected these noble converts, opposed with success the progress of the Gospel, and at length so effectually triumphed over it, that not the least remains of Christianity were to be perceived in the courts of those eastern princes.

A papal ambassy is

Tartars.

II. The Tartars having made an incursion into sent to the Europe in the year 1241, and having laid waste, with the most unrelenting and savage barbarity, Hungary, Poland, Silesia, and the adjacent countries, the Roman pontiffs thought it incumbent upon them to endeavour to calm the fury, and soften the ferocity, of these new and formidable enemies. For this purpose, in 1245, Innocent IV. sent an ambassy to the Tartars, which consisted of Dominican and Franciscan friars. In 1274, Abaca, the emperor of that fierce nation, sent ambassadors to the council of Lyons, which was holden under the pontificate of Gregory Xd. About four years after this, pope Nicolas III. paid the same compliment to Coblai, emperor of the whole Tartar nation, to whom he sent a solemn ambassy of Franciscan monks, with a view to render that prince propitious to the Christian cause. The last expedi

tion of this kind that we shall mention at present, was that of Johannes à Monte Corvino, who, in 1289, was sent with other ecclesiastics to the same emperor, by Nicolas IV., and who carried letters to the Nestorians from that zealous pontiff. This mission was far from being useless, since those spiritual ambassadors converted many of the Tartars to Christianity, engaged considerable numbers of the Nestorians to adopt the doctrine and discipline of the church of

p. 35, cap. xxiii. p. 39, cap. xxiv.-Jos. Sim. Assemani Biblioth. Orient. Vatic. tom. iii. part ii. See particularly the Ecclesiastical History of the Tartars, published in Latin at Helmstadt, in 1741, under my auspices and inspection.

See Wadding, Annal. Minor. tom. iii. p. 116, 149, 179, 256. d Wadding, tom. iv. p. 35. tom. v. p. 128. See particularly an accurate and ample account of the negotiations between the pontiffs and the Tartars, in the Historia Ecclesiastica Tartarorum, already mentioned.

Rome, and erected churches in various parts of CENT. XIII, Tartary and China. In order to accelerate the propagation of the Gospel among these darkened nations, Johannes à Monte Corvino translated the New. Testament and the Psalms of David into the language of the Tartars".

III. The Roman pontiffs employed their most Crusades zealous and assiduous efforts in the support of the renewed. Christian cause in Palestine, which was now in a most declining, or rather in a desperate state. They had learned, by a delightful experience, how much these Asiatic wars, undertaken from a principle, or at least carried on under a pretext of religion, had contributed to fill their coffers, augment their authority, and cover them with glory; and therefore they had nothing more at heart than the renewal and prolongation of these sacred expeditions. Innocent III., therefore, sounded the charge; but the greatest part of the European princes and nations were deaf to the voice of the holy trumpet. At length, however, after many unsuccessful attempts in different countries, a body of French nobles entered into an alliance with the republic of Venice, and set sail for the east with an army that was far from being formidable. The event of this new expedition was by no means answerable to the expectations of the pontiff. The French and Venetians, instead of steering their course toward Palestine, sailed directly for Constantinople, and, in 1203, took that imperial city by storm, with a design of restoring to the throne Isaac Angelus, who implored their succour against the violence of his brother Alexius, the usurper of the empire. In the following year a dreadful sedition was raised at

* Odor. Raynaldus, Annal. Ecclesiastic. tom. xiv. ad annum 1278, sect. 17, and ad annum 1289, sect. 59.-Pierre Bergeron, Traité des Tartares, chap. xi. See also the writers mentioned in the Historia Ecclesiastica Tartarorum.

f This is remarked by the writers of the twelfth century, who soon perceived the avaricious and despotic views of the pontiffs, in the encouragement they gave to the crusades. See Matth. Paris, Hist. Major.