Sept., Oct. mony; of consecrating Fulmar Archbishop of Treves, without the approbation of the Emperor. Fulmar was finally expelled; Rudolf, the Emperor's partisan, consecrated Archbishop of Treves. Frederick disposed at his will of the German sees. The German bishops were called upon to aid their Emperor in his resistance to this contumacious Pope. They offered their mediation; they signed and sealed a document, imploring the Pope in these perilous times not to renew the old fatal wars; they urged him at least to politic dissimulation; at the same time they represented the exactions of his legates, and complained of the contributions levied by his officers on the monasteries in Germany, some of which had been reduced to penury. Urban III. at length determined on the excommunication of Frederick; but the citizens of Verona declared that no such act of hostility should take place within their walls. Urban departed to Ferrara ; for this act of resistance on the part of Verona was of evil augury, as to the disposition of his only remaining allies, the Lombard republics, to risk their growing opulence in his cause. At Ferrara he died. Of his death there is an account by one who solemnly protests to the truth of his statementhe was an eye-witness. Peter of Blois rode with the Pope from Verona towards Ferrara. Peter endeavoured to appease the deadly hatred which had been instilled into the soul of Urban against Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury. The Pope, red with anger, broke out, "May I never dismount this horse and mount another, if I do not depose him!" He had hardly spoken, when the cross borne before him was dashed in pieces. It was hastily tied together. At the next town Urban fell ill he never again mounted a horse." He was conveyed slowly by water to Ferrara. Through Christendom it was reported that the cause of his hatred against the English Prelate was this: Baldwin of Canterbury had set up a chapter of secular canons against the unruly monks of Canterbury ; the monks appealed to Rome, and had inflamed the Pope with implacable resentment against Baldwin. See the very curious letter of Peter of Blois. Peter says that he had been at school with Urban at Marlborough (Maldebyrig), and was also Baldwin's commensalis.-Epist. 216. Giles, ii. p. 165. On Baldwin's quarrel with the monks, see Collier, i. p. 393. CHAP. IX. LOSS OF JERUSALEM-GREGORY VIII. 543 The peace of European Christendom was owing less to the respect for recent treaties, to either satiety of ambition in the contending parties, or the seeming isolation of the Pope, than to the calamities in the East. The rise of the great Saladin had appalled, it had even extorted generous admiration from the chivalrous kings of the West. But when Jerusalem fell before the Saracen, the loss afflicted all Christendom with grief and shame; at one blow all the glories of the Crusades were levelled to the dust. The war was to begin anew, and if with a nobler enemy, and one more worthy to conflict with European kings-with an enemy more formidable-one unconquered, it might seem unconquerable. Urban hardly retired to Ferrara, and died of grief, it was said (though the news could not possibly have reached Italy), for this disaster. But Urban knew not that this disaster would save the papacy from its imminent peril; it diverted at once even Barbarossa himself from his hostile plans; it awed the most implacable enemies in Christendom to peace and amity. The first act of Gregory VIII. (Albert, Cardinal of St. Lorenzo in Lucina) was to issue lamentable letters to the whole of Christendom. They described in harrowing terms the fall of Jerusalem. Saladin (for the cross of Christ had ceased to be the unconquerable defence of the Christians) had overthrown the whole Christian host; had broken into the holy city; the cross itself was taken; the Bishop slain; the King a prisoner; many knights of the Temple and of St. John beheaded. This was the Divine visitation for the sins, not of the kingdom of Jerusalem, but of Christendom: it might melt the hearts, not only of all believers, but of mankind. The Pope exhorted all men to take arms, or at least to offer the amplest contributions for the relief of their imperilled brethren, the recovery of the city, the sepulchre, the cross of the Lord. He appointed a fast for five years, to appease the wrath of God. Every Friday in the year was to be observed as Lent; on Wednesdays and Saturdays meat was forbidden. To these days of Urban left Verona in September; 'Gregory, consecrated Oct. 25, 1187. Jerusalem fell on the 2nd October; The letters are dated Oct. 29. Urban died on the 20th. abstinence the Pope and the cardinals were to add Monday. The cardinals imposed on themselves even more exemplary duties: to take the cross, to go to the Holy Land as mendicant pilgrims, to receive no presents from those who came on business to the papal court; not to mount on horseback, but to go on foot so long as the ground on which the Saviour walked was trodden by the feet of the unbeliever. Gregory set off for Pisa to reconcile the hostile republics of Pisa and Genoa, in order that their mighty armaments might combine for the Dec. 17, 1187. reconquest of Palestine. But Gregory died before he had completed the second month of his pontificate. His successor, elected two days after his decease, was by Clement III. birth a Roman, Paul Cardinal of Palestrina: he Dec. 19. took the Roman name of Clement III. The pontificate was rescued from the immediate influence of the northern republics, and, as a Roman, Clement had the natural ambition to restore the Papacy to Rome. Rome herself had now again grown weary of that republican freedom which was bought at the cost of her wealth, her importance, her magnificence. Rome inhabited by the Pope was the centre of the civilised world; as an independent republic, only an inheritor of a barren name, of unproductive glory. Yet must the Pope purchase his restoration by the sacrifice of Tusculum and of Tivoli; to a Roman perhaps no heartfelt sacrifice; Tivoli had become an object of jealousy, as Tusculum formerly of implacable hatred. On these terms Clement III. obtained not merely his safe return to Rome, but the restoration of the Papal royalties from the Roman people. republic by this treaty recognised the sovereignty of the Pope; the patriciate was abolished, a prefect named with more limited powers. The senators were to be annually elected, to receive the approbation and swear allegiance to the Pope. St. Peter's Church and all its domains were restored to the Pope; of the tolls which were levied onethird was to be expended for the use of the March, 1191. Roman people. The senate and people were to respect the majesty and maintain the honour and dignity of the Roman Pontiff; the Roman Pontiff to bestow the A.D. 1188. 8 Hoveden. The CHAP. IX. BARBAROSSA'S CRUSADE. 545 accustomed largesses on the senators, their judges, and officers." Clement III. ruled in peace for two years; he died in Rome. Hyacinth, Cardinal of St. Maria in Cosmedin, was elected to the Papacy; he took the name of April 15. Cœlestine III. His first act must be the corona- CœlestineIII. tion of the Emperor Henry. Since the loss of Jerusalem, the new Crusade had absorbed the mind of Europe. Of all these expeditions none had commenced with greater pomp, and it might seem security of victory. Notwithstanding the prowess of Saladin, could he resist the combined forces, the personal ability and valour of the three greatest monarchs of Europe? Barbarossa himself had yielded to the irresistible enthusiasm; at the head of such an army as might become the great Cæsar of the West, he had set forth by land to Palestine. The Kings of France, of England, Philip Augustus, Richard the Lionhearted, proceeded by sea. But, if possible, this Crusade was even more disastrous, achieved less and suffered more, than all before. The Emperor Frederick was drowned in a small river of Pisidia; his vast host wasted Drowning of away, and part only, and that in miserable plight Barbarossa. reached Antioch. The jealousies of Philip Augustus of France, and Richard of England made the success of their great army impossible. Philip Augustus left the fame of an accomplished traitor, Richard that of ungovernable pride and cruelty, as well as of unrivalled valour. His chivalrous courage had won the respect of Saladin, his ruthless massacres made his name the terror, for a long time, of Saracen mothers; but no permanent conquest was made; the kingdom of Jerusalem was left to sink into a barren title. Richard's short career of glory ended in his long imprisonment in Austria. The news of Frederick's death had reached Italy before the decease of Clement III. His suc A.D. 1189. The cessor dared not refuse the coronation of Henry, now Lord of Germany and of Sicily. Fiction at times becomes history. It is as important to know what men were believed to do, as what they actually did. account of Henry's coronation, in an ancient chronicler, The treaty in Baronius and Muratori. Antiqu. Ital. Dissert. 32. VOL. III. 2 N the Emperor cannot but be false in many of its most striking particulars, as being utterly inconsistent, at least with the situation if Coronation of not with the character of the Pope, no less than Henry. with the haughty and unscrupulous demeanour of Henry. The Pope may have beheld with secret satisfaction the seizure of the Sicilian kingdom by Tancred the Norman, the progress made by his arms in the kingdom of Naples, the ill-concealed aversion of the whole realm to the Germans; he may have looked forward to the time when a new Norman kingdom, detached from the imperial alliance, might afford security to the Roman Pontiff. But Henry was still with his unbroken forces; the husband of the Queen of Naples; there was no power at hand to protect the Pope. Cœlestine could as yet reckon on no more than the precarious support of the Romans. Henry, when he appeared with his Empress and his army in the neighbourhood of Rome might, in his eager desire to secure his coronation, quietly smile at the presumptuous bearing of the Romans, who manned their walls, and though they would admit the Emperor, refused to open their gates to his German troops; he might condescend to enter alone, to meet the Pope on the steps of St. Peter's. But the haughty and insulting conduct attributed to Pope Cœlestine only shows what Europe, to a great extent, believed to be the relation in which the Popes supposed themselves to stand towards the Emperor; the wide-spread opinion of the supremacy which they claimed, and which they exercised on all practicable occasions. Cœlestine sate on his pontifical throne, holding the imperial crown between his feet; the Emperor and Empress bowed their heads, and from between the feet of the Pope received each the crown. But the Lord Pope immediately struck the crown of the Emperor with his foot and cast it to the ground, signifying that if he should deserve it, it was in the Pope's power to degrade him from the empire. The cardinals caught up the fallen crown and replaced it on the brow of the Emperor. Such was the notion of an English historian,' such in England was proclaimed to be the treatment of the Emperor by the Pope at this solemn time; it was Roger Hoveden. The passage is quoted with manifest satisfaction, as of undoubted authority, by Cardinal Baronius. |