CHAP. VI. S. WILLIAM-GILBERT DE LA PORÉE.

397

prelate of that See. The rival of the Englishman,_another William, once a Cluniac, was a Cistercian ; and Bernard scruples not to heap on one of the most pious of men accusations of ambition, of worse than ambition: to condemn him to everlasting perdition." The obsequious Pope, no doubt under the same party influence, or quailing under the admonitions of Bernard, which rise into menace, issued his sentence of deposition against William. England, true to that independence which she had still asserted under her Norman sovereigns, refused obedience. King Stephen even prohibited his bishops from attending the Pope's summons to a Council at Rheims; the Archbishop of Canterbury was obliged to cross the sea clandestinely in a small boat. William eventually triumphed over all opposition, obtained peaceable possession of the see, died in the odour of sanctity, and has his place in the sacred calendar.

Bernard had detected new heresies in the church of France. Gilbert de la Porée, the aged Bishop of Gilbert de la Poitiers, was charged with heterodox conceptions

k

Porée.

of the divine nature. This controversy wearied out two Councils; bewildered by the metaphysical subtleties, they came to no conclusion. It was, in fact, in its main article. a mere dialectic dispute, bearing on the point whether the divine nature was God. It was Nominalism and Realism in another form. But the close of this contest demands attention. The Bishop of Poitiers, instead of shrinking from his own words, in a discussion before the Pope, who was now at Paris, exclaimed:-" Write them down with a pen of adamant!" Notwithstanding this, under the influence and direction of Bernard four articles were drawn and ratified by the Synod. The Pope himself,

h Epist. 241. "Sævit frustrata ambitio imo desperata furit. ... Clamat contra eorum capita sanguis sanctorum de terrâ.' "St. William shewed no enmity, sought no revenge against his most inveterate enemies, who had prepossessed Eugenius III. against him by the blackest calumnies." -Butler, Lives of Saints.

i June 8th. S. William. Was Bernard imposed upon, or the author of these calumnies? It is a dark page in

his life.

Otho of Freisingen, however, ascribes

two other tenets to Gilbert, one denying all human merit; the other, a peculiar opinion on baptism. "Quod meritum humanum attenuando, nullum mereri diceret præter Christum." He appeared too to deny that any one was really baptised, except those who were to be saved.

-Otho Freisingen, i. 50. M. Haureau (Philosophie Scolastique) has a much higher opinion of Gilbert de la Porée as an original thinker than the historians of philosophy previous to him.- vol. i. c. xviii.

worn out, acknowledged that the controversy was beyond his understanding. These articles were the direct converse to those of Gilbert of Poitiers. They declared the divine nature to be God, and God the divine nature. But Rome heard with indignation that the Church of France had presumed to enact articles of faith. The Cardinals published a strong remonstrance impeaching the Pope of presumption; of abandoning the advice of his legitimate counsellors, who had promoted him to the Papacy; and yielding to the sway of private, of more recent friendship."

It is not for thee alone, but for us with thee to frame articles of faith. Is this good Abbot to presume to dictate to Christendom? The Eastern churches would not have dared to do this." The Pope endeavoured to soothe them by language almost apologetic; they allowed themselves at length to be appeased by his modest words, but on condition that no symbol of faith should be promulgated without the authority of the Roman court, the College of Cardinals.

Crusade.

These, however, were trivial and unimportant considerations; before and during the agitation of these contests, the whole soul of Bernard was absorbed in a greater object: he aspired to be a second Peter the Hermit, the preacher of a new crusade. The fall of Edessa, and other tidings of defeat and disaster, had awakened the slumbering ardour of Europe. The kingdom of Jerusalem trembled for its security. Peter himself was not more active or more successful in traversing Europe, and wakening the passionate valour of all orders, than Bernard. In the cities of Germany, of Burgundy, of Flanders, of France, the pulpits were open to him; he preached in the market-places and highways. Nor did he depend upon human eloquence alone: according to his wandering followers, eye-witnesses as they declared themselves, the mission of Bernard was attested by miracles, at least as frequent and surprising as all those of the Saviour, recorded

The Bishop Otho of Freisingen writes thus of Bernard: "Erat autem prædictus Abbas, tam ex Christianæ religionis fervore zelotypus, quam ex habituali mansuetudine quodammodo credulus, ut et magistros, qui humanis

rationibus, sæculari sapientiæ confisi, nimium inhærebant, abhorreret, et si quidquam ei Christianæ fidei absonum de talibus diceretur facile aurem præberet."-De Rebus Freder. I., i. 47.

CHAP. VI.

S. BERNARD'S CRUSADE.

399

in the New Testament. They, no doubt, imagined that they believed them, and no one hesitated to believe their report. In sermons, in speeches, in letters, by public addresses, and by his private influence, Bernard wrought up Latin Christendom to a second access of phrenzy equal to the first." The Pope, Eugenius III., probably by his instigation, addressed an animated epistle to Western Christendom. He promised the same privileges offered by his predecessor Urban, the remission of all sins, the protection of the crusaders' estates and families during their absence in the Holy Land, under the tutelage of the Church; and he warned them against profane luxury in their arms and accoutrements; against hawks and hounds, while engaged in that hallowed warfare. Bernard preached a sermon to the Knights Templars, now in the dawn of their valour and glory. The Korân is tame to this fierce hymn of battle. "The Christian who slays the unbeliever in the Holy War is sure of his reward, more sure if he is slain. The Christian glories in the death of the Pagan, because Christ is glorified: by his own death both he himself and Christ are still more glorified." Bernard at the Council Easter, 1146. of Vezelay wrought no less wonderful effects Vezelay. than Pope Urban at Clermont. Eugenius alone, who had not yet crossed, or had hardly crossed the Alps, was wanting at that august assembly, but in a letter he had declared that nothing but the disturbances at Rome prevented him from following the example of his predecessor Urban. A greater than the Pope was there. The Castle of Vezelay could not contain the multitudes who thronged to hear the fervid eloquence of Bernard. The preacher, with the King of France Louis VII. by his side, wearing the cross conspicuously on his dress, ascended a platform of wood. At the close of his harangue the whole assembly broke out in tumultuous cries, "The Cross, the Cross!" They crowded to the stage to receive the holy badge; the preacher was obliged to scatter it among them, rather than deliver it to each. The stock at hand was soon exhausted. Bernard tore up his own dress to satisfy the eager claimants. For the first time, the two greatest sovereigns in Christendom, the Emperor and the Epist. to the Pope Eugenius, 256; to the Bishop of Spires, 322.

n

Louis had ap

King of France,' embarked in the cause. peared at Vezelay; he was taking measures for the campaign. But Conrad shrank from the perilous enterprise; the affairs of Germany demanded the unintermitting care of her sovereign. Bernard watched his opportunity. At a great Diet at Spires, at Christmas, after the reSpires. conciliation of some of the rebellious princes with the Empire, he urged both the Emperor and the princes, in a long and ardent sermon, to testify to their Christian concord by taking the Cross together. Three days after, at Ratisbon, he had a private interview with the Emperor. Conrad still wavered, promised to consult his nobles, and to give an answer on the following day. On that day, after the mass, Bernard ascended the pulpit. At the close of his sermon he turned to the Emperor, and after a terrific description of the terrors of the last day, he sum-moned him to think of the great gifts, for which he would have to give account at that awful advent of the Lord. The Emperor and the whole audience melted into tears; he declared himself ready to take the Cross: he was at once invested with the irrevocable sign of dedication to the holy warfare; many of his nobles followed his example. Bernard, for all was prepared, took the consecrated banner from the altar, and delivered it into the hands of Conrad. Three bishops, Henry of Ratisbon, Otho of Freisingen, Reginbert of Padua, took the Cross. Such a multitude of thieves and robbers crowded to the sacred standard, that no one could refuse to see the hand of God. Nowhere would even kings proceed without the special benediction of Bernard. At Etampes, and at St. Denys in the next year, he appeared among the assembled crusaders of France. The Pope Eugenius was now in France; the King at St. Denys prostrated himself before the feet of his Holiness and of Bernard; they opened a box May 11, 1147. of golden crucifixes; they led him to the altar and bestowed on him the consecrated banner, the pilgrim's wallet and staff. At another meeting at Chartres, Bernard, so great was the confidence in his more than human powers, was entreated himself to take the command of the crusade. But he wisely remembered the fate of Peter's

Pentecost,

• Otho Freisingen, i. 40.

CHAP. VI.

THE CRUSADE.

401

followers, and exhorted the warriors to place themselves under the command of some experienced general.

The Jews.

But there was a miracle of Christian love, as far surpassing in its undoubted veracity as in its evangelic beauty all which legend gathered around the preaching pilgrimage of Bernard. The crusade began; a wild monk named Rodolph raised the terrible cry against the Jews, which was even more greedily than before heard by the populace of the great cities, and by the armed soldiers. In Cologne, Mentz, Spires, Worms, Strasburg, a massacre the most frightful and remorseless broke out. Bernard arose in all his power and authority. He condemned the unchristian act in his strongest language. "God had punished the Jews by their dispersion, it was not for man to punish them by murder." Bernard himself confronted the furious Rodolph at Mentz, and commanded him to retire to his convent; but it required all the sanctity and all the eloquence of Bernard to control the furious populace, now drunk with blood and glutted with pillage." Among the most melancholy reflections, it is not the least sad that the gentle Abbot of Clugny, Peter the Venerable, still to be opposed to Bernard, took the side of blind fanaticism.

the Crusade.

Of all these holy wars, none had been announced with greater ostentation, of none had it been more Disasters of boldly averred that it was of divine inspiration, the work of God; of none had the hopes, the prophecies of success been more confident; none had been conducted with so much preparation and pomp; none had as yet been headed by kings--none ended in such total and deplorable disaster. So vast had been the movement, so completely had the West been drained to form the army of the Cross, that not merely had all war come to an end, but it was almost a crime, writes the warlike Bishop of Freisingen, to be seen in arms. "The cities and the castles are empty,' writes Bernard, "there is hardly one man to seven women.' What was the close? At least thirty thousand lives were sacrificed, and there was not even the consolation of one glorious deed achieved. The Emperor, the King of France, returned to their dominions, the ignominious P Otho Freisingen, i. 37, 8. It is cu- tisbonne, were once Jews. Their works rious that the two modern biographers are labours of gratitude as well as of of S. Bernard, Neander and M. de Ra- love. VOL. III.

2 D