Division of Germany and Italy into small independent states.

By the middle of the thirteenth century it became apparent that neither Germany nor Italy was to be converted into a strong single kingdom like England and France. The map of Germany shows a confused group of duchies, counties, archbishoprics, bishoprics, abbacies, and free towns, each one of which asserted its practical independence of the weak king and emperor.

In northern Italy each town, including a certain district about its walls, had become an independent state, dealing with its neighbors as with independent powers. The Italian towns were destined to become the birthplace of our modern culture during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Venice and Florence, in spite of their small size, came to be reckoned among the most important states of Europe. In the central part of the peninsula the pope maintained more or less control over his possessions, but he often failed to subdue the towns within his realms. To the south Naples remained for some time under the French dynasty, which the pope had called in, but the island of Sicily drifted into Spanish hands.

CHAPTER XV

THE CRUSADES

73. Of all the events of the Middle Ages, the most romantic and fascinating are the Crusades, the adventurous expeditions to Syria, undertaken by kings and doughty knights with the hope of permanently reclaiming the Holy Land from the infidel Turks. All through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries each generation beheld at least one great army of crusaders gathering from all parts of the West and starting toward the Orient. Each year witnessed the departure of small bands of pilgrims or of solitary soldiers of the cross. For two hundred years there was a continuous stream of Europeans of every rank and station making their way into western Asia. If they escaped the countless hazards of the journey, they either settled in this distant land and devoted themselves to war or commerce, or returned home, bringing with them tales of great cities and new peoples, of skill and luxury unknown in the West.

Our sources of information in regard to the Crusades are so abundant and so rich in picturesque incidents that writers have often yielded to the temptation to give more space to these expeditions than their consequences really justify. They were, after all, only one of the great foreign enterprises which have been undertaken from time to time by the European peoples. While their influence upon the West was doubtless very important, like that of the later conquest of India by the English and the colonization of America, the details of the campaigns in the East scarcely belong to the history of western Europe.

The Holy Land conquered first by the Arabs and then by

the Turks.

Eastern emperor appeals to

the pope for aid against the infidel Turks.

Urban II issues the call to the First Crusade

of Clermont,

1095.

Syria had been overrun by the Arabs in the seventh century, shortly after the death of Mohammed, and the Holy City of Jerusalem had fallen into the hands of the infidels. The Arab, however, shared the veneration of the Christian for the places associated with the life of Christ and, in general, permitted the Christian pilgrims who found their way thither to worship unmolested. But with the coming of a new and ruder people, the Seljuk Turks, in the eleventh century, the pilgrims began to bring home news of great hardships. Moreover, the eastern emperor was defeated by the Turks in 1071 and lost Asia Minor. The presence of the Turks in possession of the fortress of Nicæa, just across from Constantinople, was of course a standing menace to the Eastern Empire. When the energetic Emperor Alexius (1081-1118) ascended the throne he endeavored to expel the infidel. Finding himself unequal to the task, he appealed for assistance to the head of Christendom, Urban II. The first great impetus to the Crusades was the call issued by Urban at the celebrated council which met in 1095 at Clermont in France.

In an address, which produced more remarkable immediate results than any other which history records, the pope exhorted at the Council knights and foot soldiers of all ranks to give up their usual wicked business of destroying their Christian brethren in private warfare and turn instead to the succor of their fellow-Christians in the East. Otherwise the insolent Turks would, if unchecked, extend their sway still more widely over the faithful servants of the Lord. "Let the Holy Sepulcher of the Lord our Saviour, which is possessed by unclean nations, especially urge you on, and the holy places which they are now treating with ignominy and irreverently polluting." Urban urged besides that France was too poor to support all its people, while the Holy Land flowed with milk and honey. "Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulcher; wrest the land from the wicked race and subject it to yourselves." When the pope had finished,

all who were present exclaimed, with one accord, "It is the will of God." This, the pope declared, should be the rallying cry of the crusaders, who were to wear a cross upon their bosoms as they went forth, and upon their backs as they returned, as a holy sign of their sacred mission.1

The Crusades are ordinarily represented as the most striking examples of the simple faith and religious enthusiasm of the Middle Ages. They appealed, however, to many different kinds of men. The devout, the romantic, and the adventurous were by no means the only classes that were attracted. Syria held out inducements to the discontented noble who might hope to gain a principality in the East, to the merchant who was looking for new enterprises, to the merely restless who wished to avoid his responsibilities at home, and even to the criminal who enlisted with a view of escaping the results of his past offenses. It is noteworthy that Urban appeals especially to those who had been "contending against their brethren and relatives," and urges those "who have hitherto been robbers now to become soldiers of Christ." The conduct of many of the crusaders indicates that the pope found a ready hearing among this class. Yet higher motives than a love of adventure and the hope of conquest impelled many who took their way eastward. Great numbers, doubtless, went to Jerusalem "through devotion alone, and not for the sake of honor or gain," with the sole object of freeing the Holy Sepulcher from the hands of the infidel.

of the

To such as these the pope promised that the journey itself Privileges should take the place of all penance for sin. The faithful cru- crusaders. sader, like the faithful Mohammedan, was assured of immediate entrance into heaven if he died repentant in the holy cause. Later the Church exhibited its extraordinary authority by what would seem to us an unjust interference with business contracts. It freed those who, with a pure heart, entered upon 1 For the speech of Urban, see Readings, Chapter XV.

Peter the Hermit and his army.

the journey from the payment of interest upon their debts, and permitted them to mortgage property against the wishes of their feudal lords. The crusaders' wives and children and property were taken under the immediate protection of the Church, and he who troubled them incurred excommunication.1 These various considerations help to explain the great popularity of undertakings that, at first sight, would seem to have promised. only hardships and disappointment.

74. The Council of Clermont met in November. Before spring (1096) those who set forth to preach the Crusade, above all the famous Peter the Hermit, who was formerly given credit for having begun the whole crusading movement, had collected, in France and along the Rhine, an extraordinary army of the common folk. Peasants, artisans, vagabonds, and even women and children, answered the summons, all fanatically intent upon rescuing the Holy Sepulcher, two thousand miles away. They were confident that the Lord would sustain them during the weary leagues of the journey, and grant them a prompt victory over the infidel. The host was got under way in several divisions under the leadership of Peter the Hermit, and of Walter the Penniless and other humble knights. Many of the crusaders were slaughtered by the Hungarians, who rose to protect themselves from the depredations of this motley horde. Part of them got as far as Nicæa, only to be slaughtered by the Turks. This is but an example, on a large scale, of what was going on continually for a century or so after this first great catastrophe. Individual pilgrims and adventurers, and sometimes considerable bodies of crusaders, were constantly falling a prey to every form of disaster starvation, slavery, disease, and death in their endeavors to reach the Holy Land.

2

1 The privileges of the crusaders may be found in Translations and Reprints, Vol. I, No. 2.

2 For Peter the Hermit, see Translations and Reprints, Vol. I, No. 2.