THE folowing, then, is the state of Europe in the year one thousand, when most people
were so unhappy that they welcomed the prophecy foreteling the approaching end of the
world and rushed to the monasteries, that the Day of Judgement might find them engaged
upon devout duties.
At an unknown date, the Germanic tribes had left their old home in Asia and had moved
westward into Europe. By sheer pressure of numbers they had forced their way into the
Roman Empire. They had destroyed the great western empire, but the eastern part, being
off the main route of the great migrations, had managed to survive and feebly continued the
traditions of Rome's ancient glory.
During the days of disorder which had folowed, (the true "dark ages" of history, the sixth
and seventh centuries of our era,) the German tribes had been persuaded to accept the
Christian religion and had recognised the Bishop of Rome as the Pope or spiritual head of
the world. In the ninth century, the organising genius of Charlemagne had revived the
Roman Empire and had united the greater part of western Europe into a single state.
During the tenth century this empire had gone to pieces. The western part had become a
separate kingdom, France. The eastern half was known as the Holy Roman Empire of the
German nation, and the rulers of this federation of states then pretended that they were the
direct heirs of Caesar and Augustus.
Unfortunately the power of the kings of France did not stretch beyond the moat of their
royal residence, while the Holy Roman Emperor was openly defied by his powerful
subjects whenever it suited their fancy or their profit.
To increase the misery of the masses of the people, the triangle of western Europe (look at
page 128, please) was for ever exposed to attacks from three sides. On the south lived
the ever dangerous Mohammedans. The western coast was ravaged by the Northmen.
The eastern frontier (defenceless except for the short stretch of the Carpathian mountains)
was at the mercy of hordes of Huns, Hungarians, Slavs and Tartars.
The peace of Rome was a thing of the remote past, a dream of the "Good Old Days" that
were gone for ever. It was a question of "fight or die," and quite naturaly people preferred
to fight. Forced by circumstances, Europe became an armed camp and there was a
demand for strong leadership. Both King and Emperor were far away. The frontiersmen
(and most of Europe in the year 1000 was "frontier") must help themselves. They wilingly
submitted to the representatives of the king who were sent to administer the outlying
districts, PROVIDED THEY COULD PROTECT THEM AGAINST THEIR
ENEMIES.
Soon central Europe was dotted with smal principalities, each one ruled by a duke or a
count or a baron or a bishop, as the case might be, and organised as a fighting unit. These
dukes and counts and barons had sworn to be faithful to the king who had given them their
"feudum" (hence our word "feudal,") in return for their loyal services and a certain amount
of taxes. But travel in those days was slow and the means of communication were
exceedingly poor. The royal or imperial administrators therefore enjoyed great
independence, and within the boundaries of their own province they assumed most of the
rights which in truth belonged to the king.
But you would make a mistake if you supposed that the people of the eleventh century
objected to this form of government. They supported Feudalism because it was a very
practical and necessary institution. Their Lord and Master usualy lived in a big stone
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house erected on the top of a steep rock or built between deep moats, but within sight of
his subjects. In case of danger the subjects found shelter behind the wals of the baronial
stronghold. That is why they tried to live as near the castle as possible and it accounts for
the many European cities which began their career around a feudal fortress.
But the knight of the early middle ages was much more than a professional soldier. He was
the civil servant of that day. He was the judge of his community and he was the chief of
police. He caught the highwaymen and protected the wandering pedlars who were the
merchants of the eleventh century. He looked after the dikes so that the countryside
should not be flooded (just as the first noblemen had done in the valey of the Nile four
thousand years before). He encouraged the Troubadours who wandered from place to
place teling the stories of the ancient heroes who had fought in the great wars of the
migrations. Besides, he protected the churches and the monasteries within his territory,
and although he could neither read nor write, (it was considered unmanly to know such
things,) he employed a number of priests who kept his accounts and who registered the
marriages and the births and the deaths which occurred within the baronial or ducal
domains.
In the fifteenth century the kings once more became strong enough to exercise those
powers which belonged to them because they were "anointed of God." Then the feudal
knights lost their former independence. Reduced to the rank of country squires, they no
longer filed a need and soon they became a nuisance. But Europe would have perished
without the "feudal system" of the dark ages. There were many bad knights as there are
many bad people to-day. But generaly speaking, the rough-fisted barons of the twelfth
and thirteenth century were hard-working administrators who rendered a most useful
service to the cause of progress. During that era the noble torch of learning and art which
had iluminated the world of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans was burning
very low. Without the knights and their good friends, the monks, civilisation would have
been extinguished entirely, and the human race would have been forced to begin once
more where the cave-man had left off.
CHIVALRY
CHIVALRY
IT was quite natural that the professional fighting-men of the Middle Ages should try to
establish some sort of organisation for their mutual benefit and protection. Out of this need
for close organisation, Knighthood or Chivalry was born.
We know very little about the origins of Knighthood. But as the system developed, it gave
the world something which it needed very badly—a definite rule of conduct which
softened the barbarous customs of that day and made life more livable than it had been
during the five hundred years of the Dark Ages. It was not an easy task to civilise the
rough frontiersmen who had spent most of their time fighting Mohammedans and Huns and
Norsemen. Often they were guilty of backsliding, and having vowed al sorts of oaths
about mercy and charity in the morning, they would murder al their prisoners before
evening. But progress is ever the result of slow and ceaseless labour, and finaly the most
unscrupulous of knights was forced to obey the rules of his "class" or suffer the
consequences.
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These rules were different in the various parts of Europe, but they al made much of
"service" and "loyalty to duty." The Middle Ages regarded service as something very noble
and beautiful. It was no disgrace to be a servant, provided you were a good servant and
did not slacken on the job. As for loyalty, at a time when life depended upon the faithful
per-formance of many unpleasant duties, it was the chief virtue of the fighting man.
A young knight therefore was asked to swear that he would be faithful as a servant to God
and as a servant to his King. Furthermore, he promised to be generous to those whose
need was greater than his own. He pledged his word that he would be humble in his
personal behaviour and would never boast of his own accomplishments and that he would
be a friend of al those who suffered, (with the exception of the Mohammedans, whom he
was expected to kil on sight).
Around these vows, which were merely the Ten Commandments expressed in terms
which the people of the Middle Ages could understand, there developed a complicated
system of manners and outward behaviour. The knights tried to model their own lives after
the example of those heroes of Arthur's Round Table and Charlemagne's court of whom
the Troubadours had told them and of whom you may read in many delightful books
which are enumerated at the end of this volume. They hoped that they might prove as
brave as Lancelot and as faithful as Roland. They carried themselves with dignity and they
spoke careful and gracious words that they might be known as True Knights, however
humble the cut of their coat or the size of their purse.
In this way the order of Knighthood became a school of those good manners which are
the oil of the social machinery. Chivalry came to mean courtesy and the feudal castle
showed the rest of the world what clothes to wear, how to eat, how to ask a lady for a
dance and the thousand and one little things of every-day behaviour which help to make
life interesting and agreeable.
Like al human institutions, Knighthood was doomed to perish as soon as it had outlived its
usefulness.
The crusades, about which one of the next chapters tels, were folowed by a great revival
of trade. Cities grew overnight. The townspeople became rich, hired good school teachers
and soon were the equals of the knights. The invention of gun-powder deprived the
heavily armed "Chevalier" of his former advantage and the use of mercenaries made it
impossible to conduct a battle with the delicate niceties of a chess tournament. The knight
became superfluous. Soon he became a ridiculous figure, with his devotion to ideals that
had no longer any practical value. It was said that the noble Don Quixote de la Mancha
had been the last of the true knights. After his death, his trusted sword and his armour
were sold to pay his debts.
But somehow or other that sword seems to have falen into the hands of a number of men.
Washington carried it during the hopeless days of Valey Forge. It was the only defence of
Gordon, when he had refused to desert the people who had been entrusted to his care,
and stayed to meet his death in the besieged fortress of Khartoum.
And I am not quite sure but that it proved of invaluable strength in winning the Great War.
POPE vs. EMPEROR
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THE STRANGE DOUBLE LOYALTY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE AGES
AND HOW IT LED TO ENDLESS QUARRELS BETWEEN THE POPES AND THE
HOLY ROMAN EMPERORS
IT is very difficult to understand the people of by-gone ages. Your own grandfather,
whom you see every day, is a mysterious being who lives in a different world of ideas and
clothes and manners. I am now teling you the story of some of your grandfathers who are
twenty-five generations removed, and I do not expect you to catch the meaning of what I
write without re-reading this chapter a number of times.
The average man of the Middle Ages lived a very simple and uneventful life. Even if he
was a free citizen, able to come and go at wil, he rarely left his own neighbourhood. There
were no printed books and only a few manuscripts. Here and there, a smal band of
industrious monks taught reading and writing and some arithmetic. But science and history
and geography lay buried beneath the ruins of Greece and Rome.
Whatever people knew about the past they had learned by listening to stories and legends.
Such information, which goes from father to son, is often slightly incorrect in details, but it
wil preserve the main facts of history with astonishing accuracy. After more than two
thousand years, the mothers of India stil frighten their naughty children by teling them that
"Iskander wil get them," and Iskander is none other than Alexander the Great, who visited
India in the year 330 before the birth of Christ, but whose story has lived through al these
ages.
The people of the early Middle Ages never saw a textbook of Roman history. They were
ignorant of many things which every school-boy to-day knows before he has entered the
third grade. But the Roman Empire, which is merely a name to you, was to them
something very much alive. They felt it. They wilingly recognised the Pope as their spiritual
leader because he lived in Rome and represented the idea of the Roman super-power.
And they were profoundly grateful when Charlemagne, and afterwards Otto the Great,
revived the idea of a world-empire and created the Holy Roman Empire, that the world
might again be as it always had been.
But the fact that there were two different heirs to the Roman tradition placed the faithful
burghers of the Middle Ages in a difficult position. The theory behind the mediaeval
political system was both sound and simple. While the worldly master (the emperor)
looked after the physical wel-being of his subjects, the spiritual master (the Pope)
guarded their souls.
In practice, however, the system worked very badly. The Emperor invariably tried to
interfere with the affairs of the church and the Pope retaliated and told the Emperor how
he should rule his domains. Then they told each other to mind their own business in very
unceremonious language and the inevitable end was war.
Under those circumstances, what were the people to do, A good Christian obeyed both
the Pope and his King. But the Pope and the Emperor were enemies. Which side should a
dutiful subject and an equaly dutiful Christian take?
It was never easy to give the correct answer. When the Emperor happened to be a man of
energy and was sufficiently wel provided with money to organise an army, he was very
apt to cross the Alps and march on Rome, besiege the Pope in his own palace if need be,
and force His Holiness to obey the imperial instructions or suffer the consequences.
But more frequently the Pope was the stronger. Then the Emperor or the King together
with al his subjects was excommunicated. This meant that al churches were closed, that
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no one could be baptised, that no dying man could be given absolution—in short, that half
of the functions of mediaeval government came to an end.
More than that, the people were absolved from their oath of loyalty to their sovereign and
were urged to rebel against their master. But if they folowed this advice of the distant
Pope and were caught, they were hanged by their near-by Lege Lord and that too was
very unpleasant.
Indeed, the poor felows were in a difficult position and none fared worse than those who
lived during the latter half of the eleventh century, when the Emperor Henry IV of
Germany and Pope Gregory VII fought a two-round battle which decided nothing and
upset the peace of Europe for almost fifty years.
In the middle of the eleventh century there had been a strong movement for reform in the
church. The election of the Popes, thus far, had been a most irregular affair. It was to the
advantage of the Holy Roman Emperors to have a wel-disposed priest elected to the
Holy See. They frequently came to Rome at the time of election and used their influence
for the benefit of one of their friends.
In the year 1059 this had been changed. By a decree of Pope Nicholas II the principal
priests and deacons of the churches in and around Rome were organised into the so-
caled Colege of Cardinals, and this gathering of prominent churchmen (the word
"Cardinal" meant principal) was given the exclusive power of electing the future Popes.
In the year 1073 the Colege of Cardinals elected a priest by the name of Hildebrand, the
son of very simple parents in Tuscany, as Pope, and he took the name of Gregory VII.
His energy was unbounded. His belief in the supreme powers of his Holy Office was built
upon a granite rock of conviction and courage. In the mind of Gregory, the Pope was not
only the absolute head of the Christian church, but also the highest Court of Appeal in al
worldly matters. The Pope who had elevated simple German princes to the dignity of
Emperor could depose them at wil. He could veto any law passed by duke or king or
emperor, but whosoever should question a papal decree, let him beware, for the
punishment would be swift and merciless.
Gregory sent ambassadors to al the European courts to inform the potentates of Europe
of his new laws and asked them to take due notice of their contents. Wiliam the
Conqueror promised to be good, but Henry IV, who since the age of six had been fighting
with his subjects, had no intention of submitting to the Papal wil. He caled together a
colege of German bishops, accused Gregory of every crime under the sun and then had
him deposed by the council of Worms.
The Pope answered with excommunication and a demand that the German princes rid
themselves of their unworthy ruler. The German princes, only too happy to be rid of
Henry, asked the Pope to come to Augsburg and help them elect a new Emperor.
Gregory left Rome and traveled northward. Henry, who was no fool, appreciated the
danger of his position. At al costs he must make peace with the Pope, and he must do it
at once. In the midst of winter he crossed the Alps and hastened to Canossa where the
Pope had stopped for a short rest. Three long days, from the 25th to the 28th of January
of the year 1077, Henry, dressed as a penitent pilgrim (but with a warm sweater
underneath his monkish garb), waited outside the gates of the castle of Canossa. Then he
was alowed to enter and was pardoned for his sins. But the repentance did not last long.
As soon as Henry had returned to Germany, he behaved exactly as before. Again he was
excommunicated. For the second time a council of German bishops deposed Gregory, but
this time, when Henry crossed the Alps he was at the head of a large army, besieged
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Rome and forced Gregory to retire to Salerno, where he died in exile. This first violent
outbreak decided nothing. As soon as Henry was back in Germany, the struggle between
Pope and Emperor was continued.
The Hohenstaufen family which got hold of the Imperial German Throne shortly
afterwards, were even more independent than their predecessors. Gregory had claimed
that the Popes were superior to al kings because they (the Popes) at the Day of
Judgement would be responsible for the behaviour of al the sheep of their flock, and in the
eyes of God, a king was one of that faithful herd.
Frederick of Hohenstaufen, commonly known as Barbarossa or Red Beard, set up the
counter-claim that the Empire had been bestowed upon his predecessor "by God himself"
and as the Empire included Italy and Rome, he began a campaign which was to add these
"lost provinces" to the northern country. Barbarossa was accidentaly drowned in Asia
Minor during the second Crusade, but his son Frederick II, a briliant young man who in
his youth had been exposed to the civilisation of the Mohammedans of Sicily, continued
the war. The Popes accused him of heresy. It is true that Frederick seems to have felt a
deep and serious contempt for the rough Christian world of the North, for the boorish
German Knights and the intriguing Italian priests. But he held his tongue, went on a
Crusade and took Jerusalem from the infidel and was duly crowned as King of the Holy
City. Even this act did not placate the Popes. They deposed Frederick and gave his Italian
possessions to Charles of Anjou, the brother of that King Louis of France who became
famous as Saint Louis. This led to more warfare. Conrad V, the son of Conrad IV, and
the last of the Hohenstaufens, tried to regain the kingdom, and was defeated and
decapitated at Naples. But twenty years later, the French who had made themselves
thoroughly unpopular in Sicily were al murdered during the so-caled Sicilian Vespers, and
so it went.
The quarrel between the Popes and the Emperors was never settled, but after a while the
two enemies learned to leave each other alone.
In the year 1278, Rudolph of Hapsburg was elected Emperor. He did not take the trouble
to go to Rome to be crowned. The Popes did not object and in turn they kept away from
Germany. This meant peace but two entire centuries which might have been used for the
purpose of internal organisation had been wasted in useless warfare.
It is an il wind however that bloweth no good to some one. The little cities of Italy, by a
process of careful balancing, had managed to increase their power and their independence
at the expense of both Emperors and Popes. When the rush for the Holy Land began,
they were able to handle the transportation problem of the thousands of eager pilgrims
who were clamoring for passage, and at the end of the Crusades they had built themselves
such strong defences of brick and of gold that they could defy Pope and Emperor with
equal indifference.
Church and State fought each other and a third party—the mediaeval city—ran away with
the spoils.
THE CRUSADES
BUT ALL THESE DIFFERENT QUARRELS WERE FORGOTTEN WHEN THE
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TURKS TOOK THE HOLY LAND, DESECRATED THE HOLY PLACES AND
INTERFERED SERIOUSLY WITH THE TRADE FROM EAST TO WEST.
EUROPE WENT CRUSADING
DURING three centuries there had been peace between Christians and Moslems except
in Spain and in the eastern Roman Empire, the two states defending the gateways of
Europe. The Mohammedans having conquered Syria in the seventh century were in
possession of the Holy Land. But they regarded Jesus as a great prophet (though not quite
as great as Mohammed), and they did not interfere with the pilgrims who wished to pray in
the church which Saint Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, had built on the
spot of the Holy Grave. But early in the eleventh century, a Tartar tribe from the wilds of
Asia, caled the Seljuks or Turks, became masters of the Mohammedan state in western
Asia and then the period of tolerance came to an end. The Turks took al of Asia Minor
away from the eastern Roman Emperors and they made an end to the trade between east
and west.
Alexis, the Emperor, who rarely saw anything of his Christian neighbours of the west,
appealed for help and pointed to the danger which threatened Europe should the Turks
take Constantinople.
The Italian cities which had established colonies along the coast of Asia Minor and
Palestine, in fear for their possessions, reported terrible stories of Turkish atrocities and
Christian suffering. Al Europe got excited.
Pope Urban II, a Frenchman from Reims, who had been educated at the same famous
cloister of Cluny which had trained Gregory VII, thought that the time had come for
action. The general state of Europe was far from satisfactory. The primitive agricultural
methods of that day (unchanged since Roman times) caused a constant scarcity of food.
There was unemployment and hunger and these are apt to lead to discontent and riots.
Western Asia in older days had fed milions. It was an excelent field for the purpose of
immigration.
Therefore at the council of Clermont in France in the year 1095 the Pope arose, described
the terrible horrors which the infidels had inflicted upon the Holy Land, gave a glowing
description of this country which ever since the days of Moses had been overflowing with
milk and honey, and exhorted the knights of France and the people of Europe in general to