History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume II (of 2)

Political results of the Crusades. It had been expected by the politicians who first projected these wars that they would heal the divisions of the Latin and Greek churches, and give birth to a European republic, under the spiritual presidency of the pope. In these respects they proved a failure. It does not appear that the popes themselves personally had ever any living faith in the result. Not one of them ever joined a crusade; and the Church, as a corporation, took care to embark very little money in these undertakings. But, though they did not answer to the original intention, they gave, in an indirect way, a wonderful stimulus to the papal power. Give to Rome the control of men and money in Europe. Under the plausible pretences offered by them, the pope obtained control over the person of every Christian man from the highest to the lowest. The cross once taken, all civil control over the Crusader ceased – he became the man of the Church. Under those pretences, also, a right was imperceptibly acquired of raising revenue in all parts of Europe; even the clergy might be assessed. A drain was thus established on the resources of distant nations for an object which no man dared to gainsay; if he adventured on any such thing, he must encounter the odium of an infidel – an atheist. A steady stream of money flowed into Italy. Nor was it alone by this taxation of every Christian nation without permission of its government – this empire within every empire – immense wealth accrued to the projectors, while the infatuation could be kept up, by the diminished rate at which land could be obtained. Domains were thrown into the market; there were few purchasers except the Church. Immense domains were also given away by weak-minded sinners, and those on the point of death, for the salvation of their souls. Thus, all things considered, the effect of the Crusades, though not precisely that which was expected, was of singular advantage to the Church, giving it a commanding strength it had never before possessed.

In their resistance to the German attack the popes never hesitated at any means. They prompted Prince Henry to revolt against their great antagonist, his father; they intervened, not to rebuke, but to abet him, when he threw his father into prison and deprived him of the necessaries of life. They carried their vengeance beyond the grave. When the aged emperor, broken in heart, escaped from their torment, and was honourably buried by the Bishop of Liège, that prelate was forthwith excommunicated and compelled to disinter the corpse. But crimes like these, against which human nature revolts, meet with retribution. Resistance of Henry V. This same Prince Henry, becoming Henry V., was forced by circumstances to resume his father's quarrel, and to refuse to yield his right of granting investitures. He marched upon Rome, and at the point of the sword compelled his adversary, Pope Paschal II., to surrender all the possessions and royalties of the Church – compelled him to crown him emperor – not, however, until the pontiff had been subjected to the ignominy of imprisonment, and brought into condemnation among his own party.

Bernard of Clairvaux stimulates the second crusade. Things seemed to be going to ruin in Rome, and such must inevitably have been the issue, had not an extraneous influence arisen in Bernard of Clairvaux, to whom Europe learned to look up as the beater down of heresies, theological and political. He had been a pupil of William of Champeaux, the vanquished rival of Abelard, and Abelard he hated with a religious and personal hate. He was a wonder-worker. He excommunicated the flies which infested a church – they all fell down dead and were swept out by the basketful. He has been described as "the mellifluous doctor, whose works are not scientific, but full of unction." He could not tolerate the principle at the basis of Abelard's philosophy – the assertion of the supremacy of reason. Of Arnold of Brescia – who carried that principle to its political consequences, and declared that the riches and power of the clergy were inconsistent with their profession – he was the accuser and punisher. Its failure. Bernard preached a new crusade, authenticating his power by miracles, affirmed to be not inferior to those of our Saviour; promising to him who should slay an unbeliever happiness in this life and Paradise in the life to come. This second crusade was conducted by kings, and included fanatic ladies, dressed in the armour of men; but it ended in ruin.

It was reserved for the only Englishman who ever attained to the papacy to visit Rome with the punishment she had so often inflicted upon others. Nicolas Breakspear – Adrian IV. – put the Eternal City under interdict, thereby ending the republic which the partisans of Arnold of Brescia had set up. But in this he was greatly aided by a change of sentiment in many of the inhabitants of Rome, who had found to their cost that it was more profitable for their city to be the centre of Christianity than the seat of a phantom republic. Murder of Arnold of Brescia. As an equivalent for his coronation by Adrian, Frederick Barbarossa agreed to surrender to the Church Arnold of Brescia. With indecent haste, the moment she had obtained possession of her arch-enemy she put him to death – not delivering him over to the secular arm, as the custom had been, but murdering him with her own hand. Seven centuries have elapsed, and the blood of Arnold is still crying from the ground for retribution. Notwithstanding a new – the third – crusade, things went from bad to worse in the Holy Land. Saladin had retaken Jerusalem, A.D. 1187. Barbarossa was drowned in a river in Pisidia. Richard of England was treacherously imprisoned; nor did the pope interfere for this brave soldier of the Cross. Birth of Frederick II. In the meantime, the Emperors of Germany had acquired Sicily by marriage – an incident destined to be of no little importance in the history of Europe; for, on the death of the Emperor Henry VI. at Messina, his son Frederick, an infant not two years old, was left to be brought up in that island. What the consequences were we shall soon see.

Review of the preceding events. If we review the events related in this chapter, we find that the idolatry and immorality into which Rome had fallen had become connected with material interests sufficiently powerful to ensure their perpetuation; that converted Germany insisted on a reform, and therefore made a moral attack on the Italian system, attempting to carry it into effect by civil force. This attack was, properly speaking, purely moral, the intellectual element accompanying it being derived from Western or Arabian influences, as will be shown in the next chapter; and, in its resistance to this, the papacy was not only successful, but actually was able to retaliate, overthrowing the Emperors of Germany, and being even on the point of establishing a European autocracy, with the pope at its head. It was in these events that the Reformation began, though circumstances intervened to postpone its completion to the era of Luther. Henceforth we see more and more plainly the attitude in which the papacy, through its material interests, was compelled to stand, as resisting all intellectual advancement. Our subject has therefore here to be left unfinished until we shall have described the Mohammedan influences making pressures on the West and the East.

CHAPTER II

THE AGE OF FAITH IN THE WEST – (Continued)

THE WESTERN OR INTELLECTUAL ATTACK ON THE ITALIAN SYSTEM

The intellectual Condition of Christendom contrasted with that of Arabian Spain.

Diffusion of Arabian intellectual Influences through France and Sicily. – Example of Saracen Science in Alhazen, and of Philosophy in Algazzali. – Innocent III. prepares to combat these Influences. – Results to Western Europe of the Sack of Constantinople by the Catholics.

The spread of Mohammedan light Literature is followed by Heresy. – The crushing of Heresy in the South of France by armed Force. – The Inquisition, mendicant Orders, auricular Confession, and Casuistry.

The rising Sentiment is embodied in Frederick II. in Sicily. – His Conflict with and Overthrow by the Pope. – Spread of Mutiny among the mendicant Orders.

The pressure from the West upon Rome. A pressure upon the Italian system had meantime been arising in the West. It was due to the presence of the Arabs in Spain. It is necessary, therefore, to relate the circumstances of their invasion and conquest of that country, and to compare their social and intellectual condition with the contemporary state of Christendom.

Barbarism of Europe. From the barbarism of the native people of Europe, who could scarcely be said to have emerged from the savage state, unclean in person, benighted in mind, inhabiting huts in which it was a mark of wealth if there were bulrushes on the floor and straw mats against the wall; miserably fed on beans, vetches, roots, and even the bark of trees; clad in garments of untanned skin, or at the best of leather – perennial in durability, but not conducive to personal purity – a state in which the pomp of royalty was sufficiently and satisfactorily manifested in the equipage of the sovereign, an ox-cart, drawn by not less than two yokes of cattle, quickened in their movements by the goads of pedestrian serfs, whose legs were wrapped in wisps of straw; from a people, devout believers in all the wild fictions of shrine-miracles and preposterous relics; from the degradation of a base theology, and from the disputes of ambitious ecclesiastics for power, it is pleasant to turn to the south-west corner of the continent, where, under auspices of a very different kind, the irradiations of light were to break forth. The crescent in the West was soon to pass eastward to its full.

But I must retrace my steps through four centuries, and resume the description of the Arabian movement after the subjugation of Africa, as related in the former volume, Chapter XI.

Arab invasion of Spain. Those were the circumstances of the Arab conquest of Spain. In that country the Arian Creed had been supplanted by the orthodox, and the customary persecutions had set in. From the time of the Emperor Hadrian, who had transported 50,000 Jewish families into Spain, that race had greatly increased, and, as might be expected, had received no mercy at the hands of the orthodox. Ninety thousand individuals had recently suffered compulsory baptism, and so had been brought under the atrocious Catholic law that whoever has been baptized shall be compelled to continue the observances of the Church. The Gothic monarchy was elective, and Roderic had succeeded to the throne, to the prejudice of the heirs of his predecessor. Though a very brave soldier, he was a luxurious and licentious man. It was the custom of the Goths to send their children to Toledo to be educated, and, under these circumstances, a young girl of extraordinary beauty, the daughter of Count Julian, governor of Ceuta in Africa, was residing there. King Roderic fell passionately in love with her, and, being unable to overcome her virtuous resolution by persuasion, resorted to violence. The girl found means to inform her father of what had occurred. "By the living God!" exclaimed the count, in a paroxysm of rage, "I will be revenged." But, dissembling his wrath, he crossed over into Spain, had an understanding with Oppas, the Archbishop of Toledo, and other disaffected ecclesiastics, and, under specious pretences, lulled the suspicions of Roderic, and brought his daughter away. And now he opened communications with the Emir Musa, prevailing upon him to attempt the conquest of the country, and offering that he himself would take the lead. The conditions were settled between them, and the consent of the khalif to the expedition obtained. Its conquest. Tarik, a lieutenant of the emir, was sent across the Straits with the van of the army. He landed on the rock called, in memory of his name, Gibraltar, April, A.D. 711. In the battle that ensued, a part of Roderic's troops, together with the Archbishop of Toledo, consummated their treasonable compact, and deserted to the Arabs; the rest were panic-stricken. In the rout, Roderic himself was drowned in the waters of the Guadalquivir.

Tarik now proceeded rapidly northward, and was soon joined by his superior, the Emir Musa, who was not, perhaps, without jealousy at his success. As the Arab historians say, the Almighty delivered the idolators into their hand, and gave them one victory after another. As the towns successively fell, they left them in charge of the Jews, to whose revenge the conquest was largely due, and who could be thoroughly trusted; nor did they pause in their march until they had passed the French frontier and reached the Rhone. It was the intention of Musa to cross the European continent to Constantinople, subjugating the Frank, German, and Italian barbarians by the way. At this time it seemed impossible that France could escape the fate of Spain; and if she fell, the threat of Musa would inevitably have come to pass, that he would preach the Unity of God in the Vatican. But a quarrel had arisen between him and Tarik, who had been imprisoned and even scourged. The friends of the latter, however, did not fail him at the court of Damascus. An envoy from the Khalif Alwalid appeared, ordering Musa to desist from his enterprise, to return to Syria, and exonerate himself of the things laid to his charge. But Musa bribed the envoy to let him advance. Hereupon the angry khalif dispatched a second messenger, who, in face of the Moslems and Christians, audaciously arrested him, at the head of his troops, by the bridle of his horse. The conqueror of Spain was compelled to return. He was cast into prison, fined 200,000 pieces of gold, publicly whipped, and his life with difficulty spared. As is related of Belisarius, Musa was driven as a beggar to solicit charity, and the Saracen conqueror of Spain ended his days in grief and absolute want.

Arrest of Mohammedanism in Western Europe. The dissensions among the Arabs, far more than the sword of Charles Martel, prevented the Mohammedanization of France. Their historians admit the great check received at the battle of Tours, in which Abderrahman was killed; they call that field the Place of the Martyrs; but their accounts by no means correspond to the relations of the Christian authors, who affirm that 375,000 Mohammedans fell, and only 150 °Christians. The defeat was not so disastrous but that in a few months they were able to resume their advance, and their progress was arrested only by renewed dissensions among themselves – dissensions not alone among the leaders in Spain, but also more serious ones of aspirants for the khalifate in Asia. On the overthrow of the Ommiade house, Abderrahman, one of that family, escaped to Spain, which repaid the patronage of its conquest by acknowledging him as its sovereign. He made Cordova the seat of his government. Neither he nor his immediate successors took any other title than that of Emir, out of respect to the khalif, who resided at Bagdad, the metropolis of Islam, though they maintained a rivalry with him in the patronage of letters and science. Abderrahman himself strengthened his power by an alliance with Charlemagne.

Civilization and splendour of the Spanish Arabs. Scarcely had the Arabs become firmly settled in Spain when they commenced a brilliant career. Adopting what had now become the established policy of the Commanders of the Faithful in Asia, the Emirs of Cordova distinguished themselves as patrons of learning, and set an example of refinement strongly contrasting with the condition of the native European princes. Cordova, under their administration, at its highest point of prosperity, boasted of more than two hundred thousand houses, and more than a million of inhabitants. After sunset, a man might walk through it in a straight line for ten miles by the light of the public lamps. Seven hundred years after this time there was not so much as one public lamp in London. Its streets were solidly paved. In Paris, centuries subsequently, whoever stepped over his threshold on a rainy day stepped up to his ankles in mud. Other cities, as Granada, Seville, Toledo, considered themselves rivals of Cordova. The palaces of the khalifs were magnificently decorated. Those sovereigns might well look down with supercilious contempt on the dwellings of the rulers of Germany, France, and England, which were scarcely better than stables – chimneyless, windowless, and with a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape, like the wigwams of certain Indians. The Spanish Mohammedans had brought with them all the luxuries and prodigalities of Asia. Their palaces and gardens. Their residences stood forth against the clear blue sky, or were embosomed in woods. They had polished marble balconies, overhanging orange-gardens; courts with cascades of water; shady retreats provocative of slumber in the heat of the day; retiring-rooms vaulted with stained glass, speckled with gold, over which streams of water were made to gush; the floors and walls were of exquisite mosaic. Here, a fountain of quicksilver shot up in a glistening spray, the glittering particles falling with a tranquil sound like fairy bells; there, apartments into which cool air was drawn from the flower-gardens, in summer, by means of ventilating towers, and in winter through earthen pipes, or caleducts, imbedded in the walls – the hypocaust, in the vaults below, breathing forth volumes of warm and perfumed air through these hidden passages. The walls were not covered with wainscot, but adorned with arabesques, and paintings of agricultural scenes and views of Paradise. From the ceilings, corniced with fretted gold, great chandeliers hung, one of which, it is said, was so large that it contained 1804 lamps. Clusters of frail marble columns surprised the beholder with the vast weights they bore. In the boudoirs of the sultanas they were sometimes of verd antique, and incrusted with lapis lazuli. The furniture was of sandal and citron wood, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, ivory, silver, or relieved with gold and precious malachite. In orderly confusion were arranged vases of rock crystal, Chinese porcelains, and tables of exquisite mosaic. The winter apartments were hung with rich tapestry; the floors were covered with embroidered Persian carpets. Pillows and couches, of elegant forms, were scattered about the rooms, perfumed with frankincense. It was the intention of the Saracen architect, by excluding the view of the external landscape, to concentrate attention on his work; and since the representation of the human form was religiously forbidden, and that source of decoration denied, his imagination ran riot with the complicated arabesques he introduced, and sought every opportunity of replacing the prohibited works of art by the trophies and rarities of the garden. For this reason, the Arabs never produced artists; religion turned them from the beautiful, and made them soldiers, philosophers, and men of affairs. Splendid flowers and rare exotics ornamented the courtyards and even the inner chambers. Great care was taken to make due provision for the cleanliness, occupation, and amusement of the inmates. Through pipes of metal, water, both warm and cold, to suit the season of the year, ran into baths of marble; in niches, where the current of air could be artificially directed, hung dripping alcarazzas. Libraries and works of taste. There were whispering-galleries for the amusement of the women; labyrinths and marble play-courts for the children; for the master himself, grand libraries. The Khalif Alhakem's was so large that the catalogue alone filled forty volumes. He had also apartments for the transcribing, binding, and ornamenting of books. A taste for caligraphy and the possession of splendidly-illuminated manuscripts seems to have anticipated in the khalifs, both of Asia and Spain, the taste for statuary and paintings among the later popes of Rome.

The court of Abderrahman III. Such were the palace and gardens of Zehra, in which Abderrahman III. honoured his favourite sultana. The edifice had 1200 columns of Greek, Italian, Spanish, and African marble. Its hall of audience was incrusted with gold and pearls. Through the long corridors of its seraglio black eunuchs silently glided. The ladies of the harem, both wives and concubines, were the most beautiful that could be found. To that establishment alone 6300 persons were attached, The body-guard of the sovereign was composed of 12,000 horsemen, whose cimeters and belts were studded with gold. This was that Abderrahman who, after a glorious reign of fifty years, sat down to count the number of days of unalloyed happiness he had experienced, and could only enumerate fourteen. "Oh man!" exclaimed the plaintive khalif, "put not thy trust in this present world."

Social habits of the Moors. No nation has ever excelled the Spanish Arabs in the beauty and costliness of their pleasure-gardens. To them we owe the introduction of very many of our most valuable cultivated fruits, such as the peach. Retaining the love of their ancestors for the cooling effect of water in a hot climate, they spared no pains in the superfluity of fountains, hydraulic works, and artificial lakes in which fish were raised for the table. Into such a lake, attached to the palace of Cordova, many loaves were cast each day to feed the fish. There were also menageries of foreign animals; aviaries of rare birds; manufactories in which skilled workmen, obtained from foreign countries, displayed their art in textures of silk, cotton, linen, and all the miracles of the loom; in jewelry and filigree-work, with which they ministered to the female pride of the sultanas and concubines. Under the shade of cypresses cascades disappeared; among flowering shrubs there were winding walks, bowers of roses, seats cut out of the rock, and crypt-like grottoes hewn in the living stone. Nowhere was ornamental gardening better understood; for not only did the artist try to please the eye as it wandered over the pleasant gradation of vegetable colour and form – he also boasted his success in the gratification of the sense of smell by the studied succession of perfumes from beds of flowers.

Their domestic life. To these Saracens we are indebted for many of our personal comforts. Religiously cleanly, it was not possible for them to clothe themselves according to the fashion of the natives of Europe, in a garment unchanged till it dropped to pieces of itself, a loathsome mass of vermin, stench, and rags. No Arab who had been a minister of state, or the associate or antagonist of a sovereign, would have offered such a spectacle as the corpse of Thomas à Becket when his haircloth shirt was removed. They taught us the use of the often-changed and often-washed under-garment of linen or cotton, which still passes among ladies under its old Arabic name. But to cleanliness they were not unwilling to add ornament. Especially among women of the higher classes was the love of finery a passion. Their outer garments were often of silk, embroidered and decorated with gems and woven gold. So fond were the Moorish women of gay colours and the lustre of chrysolites, hyacinths, emeralds, and sapphires, that it was quaintly said that the interior of any public building in which they were permitted to appear looked like a flower-meadow in the spring besprinkled with rain.

They cultivate literature, music, In the midst of all this luxury, which cannot be regarded by the historian with disdain, since in the end it produced a most important result in the south of France, the Spanish khalifs, emulating the example of their Asiatic compeers, and in this strongly contrasting with the popes of Rome, were not only the patrons, but the personal cultivators of all the branches of human learning. One of them was himself the author of a work on polite literature in not less than fifty volumes; another wrote a treatise on algebra. When Zaryab the musician came from the East to Spain, the Khalif Abderrahman rode forth to meet him in honour. The College of Music in Cordova was sustained by ample government patronage, and produced many illustrious professors.

but disapprove of European mythology. The Arabs never translated into their own tongue the great Greek poets, though they so sedulously collected and translated the Greek philosophers. Their religious sentiments and sedate character caused them to abominate the lewdness of our classical mythology, and to denounce indignantly any connexion between the licentious, impure Olympian Jove and the Most High God as an insufferable and unpardonable blasphemy. Haroun al Raschid had gratified his curiosity by causing Homer to be translated into Syriac, but he did not adventure on rendering the great epics into Arabic. Notwithstanding this aversion to our graceful but not unobjectionable ancient poetry, among them originated the Tensons, or poetic disputations, carried afterward to perfection among the Troubadours; from them, also, the Provençals learned to employ jongleurs. Across the Pyrenees, literary, philosophical, and military adventurers were perpetually passing; and thus the luxury, the taste, and above all, the chivalrous gallantry and elegant courtesies of Moorish society found their way from Granada and Cordova to Provence and Languedoc. The south of France contracts their tastes. The French, and German, and English nobles imbibed the Arab admiration of the horse; they learned to pride themselves on skilful riding. Hunting and falconry became their fashionable pastimes; they tried to emulate that Arab skill which had produced the celebrated breed of Andalusian horses. It was a scene of grandeur and gallantry; the pastimes were tilts and tournaments. The refined society of Cordova prided itself in its politeness. A gay contagion spread from the beautiful Moorish miscreants to their sisters beyond the mountains; the south of France was full of the witcheries of female fascinations, and of dancing to the lute and mandolin. Light literature spreads into Sicily and Italy. Even in Italy and Sicily the love-song became the favourite composition; and out of these genial but not orthodox beginnings the polite literature of modern Europe arose. The pleasant epidemic spread by degrees along every hillside and valley. In monasteries, voices that had vowed celibacy might be heard carolling stanzas of which St. Jerome would hardly have approved; there was many a juicy abbot, who could troll forth in jocund strains, like those of the merry sinners of Malaga and Xeres, the charms of women and wine, though one was forbidden to the Moslem and one to the monk. The sedate greybeards of Cordova had already applied to the supreme judge to have the songs of the Spanish Jew, Abraham Ibn Sahal, prohibited; for there was not a youth, nor woman, nor child in the city who could not repeat them by heart. Their immoral tendency was a public scandal. The light gaiety of Spain was reflected in the coarser habits of the northern countries. It was an archdeacon of Oxford who some time afterward sang,