BOOK V.

CONRAD IV—WILLIAM—RICHARD.

CONCLUDING CHAPTER.

Political, Intellectual, and Social Condition of Europe in the second half of the Thirteenth Century.

 

With the splendid Swabian dynasty, that irradiated this century and a half, or rather, perhaps, with its greatest man, Frederic II, expired, in fact, if not in name, the Holy Roman Empire. The struggles of the Popes for supremacy, of the great vassals, Italian and German, for actual sovereignty, and of the thriving Italian cities, for republican independence, all co-operating, had been successful; breaking the one Empire, in Germany, into an agglomeration of states, professing allegiance to an impotent Head; in Italy, into a mass of rivalry and contention, without even that slight bond of union. The Emperors, indeed, still claimed the rights and prerogatives of their great predecessors; but seldom as they could even dream of attempting to inforce the claim, yet seldomer had the attempt any success; whilst Dante censures their neglect of the imperial duty, (s’⁴) And in this debilitated condition, with occasional fits of power and energy, the Holy Roman Empire lingered till Napoleon I tore it piecemeal, extinguishing the old, respected title, transferring nominal empire, without its rights—appropriate solely to the Holy Roman Empire—to Austria.

The power of the greatest among the all but independent German princes, was variously kept in check. The practice, becoming more and more prevalent, of dividing a principality amongst all the deceased prince’s sons, generally prevented the growth of states to formidable dimensions. Moreover, the great vassals of the Princes were hot more disposed to submit to their authority, than they to acknowledge the Emperor’s, whilst the lesser princes and nobles usually supported the Emperor, as a protector against mesne lords, and mighty neighbours; and the robberknights, multiplying in the absence of controlling authority, harassed and plundered all who had not strength to master them.

The cities alone, whether Free Imperial or subject to mesne lords, throve amidst the anarchy, which failed to stop, however it might retard, the progress of trade and manufacture. But of the rights and privileges, subsequently the pride of the Free Imperial cities, they as yet possessed few; and most of these recently acquired. When acquired, they were enjoyed by the city patricians, upon whose monopoly of municipal authority few encroachments were as yet attempted. In some towns, indeed, chiefly in Lower Lorrain, the heads of the Zünfte (Guilds) had extorted a share; and in some others were endeavouring to do so. They were respectable antagonists; each Head (Altermeister or Alderman), as the impersonation of the strength and ambition of his Guild, being supported by its Masters; who again were an intelligent, energetic body, no journeyman being admitted into it until he had produced an allowed masterpiece in his own craft, be it the blacksmith’s or the jeweller’s. Yet so different was the Teutonic from the Italian temper, that Bruges, about the year 1240, excluded, by a law from the Great Council, whoever had not abstained for a year from manual labour. The feudal lords of towns were commonly disposed to assist the lower orders against the city patricians, whom they regarded as rebellious vassals. But the prince-bishops, residing in their urban, episcopal palaces, and frequently embroiled with all classes of their townsmen, were more obstinately opposed to all city emancipation, than lay superiors, in their country castles, exercising their authority by deputy, over rarely seen city vassals. One instance will sufficiently show the relative position of prelates and their city flock.

Cologne appears to have, in all ways, taken the lead amongst German cities, and was esteemed, although the Emperor had a Burgrave there, and the Archbishop appointed the Schoffen, a pattern of self-government. Other towns copied her envied institutions; which the Archbishops considered as so decidedly over-liberal, that they had almost uninterruptedly endeavoured, by overthrowing the city’s chartered rights, to monopolize the authority; and in the second half of the thirteenth century, the broils between the patrician and plebeian citizens, appeared to offer an especial opportunity. Archbishop Conrad von Hochstaden, founder of the Cologne Cathedral, and seller of the German Crown, by supporting either patricians or citizens, as seemed best for keeping the quarrel alive, possessed himself of despotic power. His nephew, Engelbert von Falkenstein, who, in 1261, succeeded to the see, used this despotic power so tyrannically, that the city, revolting in his absence, expelled his officers. He negotiated with the rebels, concluded a reasonably fair treaty with them, solemnly swore to observe it faithfully, and, in return, was paid the contribution due for the expenses of his pall. For investiture therewith, he went to Rome, where he solicited and received a dispensation from his oath. Again he tyrannized, and again Cologne revolted. In concert with the most potent of his neighbours, the Archbishop of Mainz and the Earls of Berg, Cleves, and Guelders, Engelbert now besieged his rebellious capital. But his lay allies beheld, in a vision the 11,000 Virgin Martyrs personally blessing Cologne, and they at once withdrew from the siege of a town so favoured. Meanwhile, the citizens also had sought efficient allies; and the Earl of Juliers, being satisfied with their proposals, appeared at the head of his forces, at the very moment when the two Prelates were weakened by the desertion of the three Earls; he defeated them, taking Engelbert prisoner. The ransom demanded by the Earl, and the concessions required by Cologne, the captive rejected, as exorbitant. And in this rejection he persevered, although his captor, angry at being disappointed of the large sum he had expected, strove to make his situation unendurable. He confined and exhibited him in an iron cage, and persisted in this coercive system, in defiance of the Pope’s admonitions, followed by a sentence of excommunication. Neither party gave way, until, in 1270, the celebrated Albertus Magnus, otherwise Graf von Bollstadt, Provincial of the Dominicans and Bishop of Ratisbon, visiting the captive prelate, convinced him, by his eloquently Christian remonstrances, of the duty of purchasing, at any price, the power of discharging the important sacred functions to which he had been consecrated, and of resting content, when free, with the measure of authority lawfully his. The obstinacy of the Prince-Archbishop was overpowered; he paid his ransom, assented to the concessions demanded, and swore to respect the rights and liberties of Cologne. Thenceforward keeping his word, he proved an excellent prelate and ruler. His successor renewed the struggle, and, being completely beaten, quitted the mutinous city to fix his residence at Bonn.

The number of Free Imperial cities (the municipality of each of which was held a concrete corporate person, the immediate vassal) had greatly increased, and they were now reckoned amongst the estates of the Empire, their deputies forming part of the Diet, though whether already having votes—like the Reichsgrofen (immediate Earls) not individually, but collectively—or only obtained this privilege conjointly with the Reichsritterschaft (immediate chivalry), in the fifteenth century, is another moot point. The towns subject to princes in like manner sent deputies to the provincial Diet. The rapid increase of the Town Leagues, guarding town prosperity, has been seen ; but by this time, all others sink into insignificance in presence of the Hansa or Hanse. Of this extraordinary League, twenty-three cities were members before the end of the century, whilst princes, even bishops, joined it, for protection. Lubeck was the Hanse metropolis, although the factory at Novogorod was so considerable, as to be called the Mother Factory. The Hanse was a regularly organized association, with republican forms; and so completely an imperium in imperio, that, upon Brunswick’s resisting an order of the Hanse Council, all members of the League were forbidden to trade with Brunswickers in Brabant, Flanders, or Holland-

Those, with whom the Hanse might have come into collision in the north-east, the Marian Knights, heeded not the commercial association. They were extending the Empire, through their own domination, along-the shores of the Baltic; where, before the end of the century, they had converted and subjected most of the Slavonian tribes; Lithuania, alone, remaining an independent Heathen principality. The dominions of the Order at one time comprised Pomerelia, Prussia, Livonia, Esthonia, Courland, Samogitia, Semigallia, and some islands of the Baltic.

Of non-noble freemen, or more properly freeholders, few now remained; the higher class being absorbed into the chivalry and baronage of the Empire, the lower pressed down into the upper class of the unfree, i. e., the rent-paying peasantry. Townsmen were rather free citizens than freemen, according to the original definition of the title. Only in some districts of Saxony and Westphalia, extending into Lower Lorrain, as Friezeland, and Ditmarsen, amidst lowlands, protected by human labour from the sea, or amidst the Alps in Switzerland and the Tyrol, were still to be found peasant landholders, entitled to bear arms, and owing the Emperor military service. So sadly had the relative proportions changed, if rather in name than reality, that the unfree—including in this class the rent-paying peasantry, who were really free though without freemen’s privileges—now constituted the bulk of the nation. But the emancipation of villeins, either out of individual kindness, or as a work of mercy and piety, was gaining ground. Countess Margaret emancipated her villeins, merely subjecting them to a small annual poll-tax, and some nobles of the Liege bishopric made theirs rent-paying peasants.

This had for years been the state of the country, save as the want of a powerful controlling head left every freeman’s conduct to his own discretion—rarely an efficient curb. Accordingly, when the death of Richard, A.D. 1271, removed the small restraint that his talents and resolution, unsupported by territorial sovereignty, could place upon his vassals, the anarchy became such, that, the princes themselves growing weary of it, an Electoral Diet was convened in 1273. The cities had long been urging the election of an Emperor, fitted by energy, intellect, integrity, and power, for bridling the wild passions distracting Germany. The princes so far complied with the prayer, that they subtracted only one of the qualifications, required by the cities, in their Emperor—to wit, power. Their choice fell upon the nobleman then most distinguished for high character, piety, talents, and prowess, Rudolph von Habsburg. But, if not one of the greatest princes, Rudolph was yet further from being the nearly landless knight, that some modern historians depict him. The head of one of the first families in Switzerland, and connected with the most exalted in Germany, he enjoyed a fair patrimony, besides inheriting largely, through his mother, of the Kyburg and Zäringen property, and had married a great Swiss heiress. The three cantons, Schwitz, Uri, and Unterwalden, had chosen him their Warden; he was Landgrave of Upper Alsace and Burgrave of Rheinfelde: altogether in a position to wage war upon the Prince-bishop of Basle and the Princeabbot of St. Gall. Rudolph accomplished most of what the cities desired, and more than the princes had intended. Amongst these he married a large family of daughters, thus conciliating, as well as controlling, even the greatest; he nearly put down the robber-knights—destroying most of their castles—and re-established the authority of the law. Moreover, he compelled the Comte de Châlons to do homage for the county of Burgundy, which he had seized in right of his Andechs wife. But he achieved all this only by devoting his energies exclusively to Germany, suffering the Imperial rights over Italy to sleep—greatly, as before said, to Dante’s indignation—and suffering the Arelat to transfer its allegiance from the Empire to the French crown. In Germany, indeed, the Imperial authority was generally acknowledged, and, under Rudolph, tolerably well obeyed:—amongst other wrongs redressed, he obliged Ottocar of Bohemia to resign Austria; which, as a lapsed fief, bestowed upon Rudolph’s eldest son, Albert, became the patrimony of the House of Habsburg.

The contest between the Papacy and the Empire had ended in favour of the former; the Emperors appeared to be finally driven beyond the Alps, the Pope’s supremacy was universally acknowledged, and he was established as an Italian temporal prince. Yet was the triumph less satisfactory than it seemed. By expelling the Emperors from Italy, the Popes lost their hold both upon them and upon the Italian Guelphs, who, no longer dreading Imperial sovereignty, were no longer subservient to pontifical ambition. And the very king, placed by two Popes upon the throne of the Sicilies, when he ceased to need support, proved quite as refractory a vassal as any of his predecessors; only less to be feared, when his tyranny lost him half the kingdom they had given him. Before the end of the century, St Lewis’s grandson, Philip the Fair, by the insults with which he loaded Boniface VIII, avenged the Swabian Emperors at least upon the papacy.

Over the Church, the Popes had, in the course of the century, assumed absolute despotism, monopolizing, in addition to their own pristine rights and prerogatives, not only the rights and prerogatives, but also the abuses, of which they had despoiled temporal sovereigns, to render them far more annoying. Their heavy pecuniary demands—for personal interests—upon the pockets of the clergy, and the offence of all kinds, habitually given by the legates—their usual conduct, even earlier, may be judged, by the amazement which Innocent III’s offer to discharge any debts that a legate a latere of his might have incurred, excited in Germany—were alienating men’s minds, and paving the way for the Reformation. Church discipline seemed annihilated. The clerical celibacy, that Gregory VII had, two centuries before, so laboured to inforce, still very imperfectly observed even in England, France, and Germany, seems, in the Scandinavian and Slavonian states, scarcely thought of till towards the end of the century. The sale of indulgences, forbidden by Innocent III’s Lateran Council, became more and more common. The frequency of appeals to Rome had now virtually destroyed episcopal jurisdiction, since a sentence, followed by such an appeal, involved the judge in a tedious and expensive lawsuit, not to be willingly incurred. The efforts of the Popes for the education of the clergy at large, had, judging from circumstances incidentally mentioned, been yet less successful, than those relative to their celibacy. St. Gall, centuries back the Alma Mater of extraordinary scholars, as witness Hermannus Contractus, had so strangely degenerated, that, in 1291, neither the Abbot nor any one of the monks, we are told, could read. Gregory IX rejected a newly-appointed Bishop of Sta. Agatha, for ignorance beyond a child’s, suspending the Archbishop of Benevento for having sanctioned the election. In 1240, an English Synod decided that a priest ought to know the ten Commandments, the seven Sacraments, with their simple meaning, and the seven deadly sins; to which requisites, Nicholas III, in 1280, added Latin enough to read mass, understanding what he read. And this ignorance is found in the clergy, whilst so many Popes were distinguished for extensive learning, and all anxiously inforced the maintenance of Cathedral schools, regulating the discipline of all schools with minute care, ordering, e.g., that a boy dismissed from one school for a fault, should not be received into any other; but, that if a schoolmaster broke a boy’s arm in flogging him, the injured boy should be allowed to change his school.

These, and other similar causes, had, even whilst Popes were triumphing over Emperors and Kings, produced a re-action throughout the century, in the various forms of heresy, and of resistance to Church authority and discipline. As early as under the pontificate of Honorius III, the Podestà of Milan took upon himself to dissolve that Roman Catholic sacrament, marriage; and, at Parma, the Council of Three Hundred, with analogous presumption, gave their Podestà a dispensation from the oath he had taken to protect churches, the bishop, and the clergy: that they simultaneously forbade all shopkeepers to sell to the bishop, was simply a piece of democratic tyranny; as was the murder of the Bishop of Mantua, with twenty distinct wounds, of democratic violence. Venice forbade appeals to Rome, whilst the Doge conferred ecclesiastical dignities, (of the right to do which the Emperors were despoiled,) and, in 1243, the Podesta of Piacenza hanged a papal messenger, who brought him disagreeable commands. Heresy, it has been seen, first, in this century, assumed an aspect threatening to the Established Church; and, despite crusades and persecutions, was never effectively crushed.

In this earliest serious alarm of heresy appears to have originated the withholding of the Bible from the laity by the Roman Catholic Church; the prohibition to read the Holy Scriptures, issued by the Synod or Council of Toulouse, A.D. 1229, being evidently a novelty, far from generally inforced. Innocent III’s view of the subject was seen, relatively to the Scripture readers at Metz; later in the century, monks are found translating the sacred volume, thus to assist the diffusion of Christianity amongst the Heathen; and Conrad IV’s having, during his government of Germany, ordered new German versions of some parts to be made, is not named amongst the crimes by which he had incurred excommunication. Nay, a century later, at the close of the fourteenth, Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, in his funeral sermon upon Richard IPs Good Queen Ann, praised her for her assiduous study of the Gospel in the vulgar tongue.

With respect to the Sicilies, there is little to add to what has been said. The island, after the Sicilian Vespers, became the separate kingdom of a younger son of Constance, and Don Pedro of Aragon; and remained in her posterity. The House of Anjou retained the continental portion, as the kingdom of Naples. But the species of imperial authority that Charles had attempted to exercise over Italy, was irrecoverably lost with Sicily, and the illusion as to the absolute invincibility of the French chivalry.

Northern and central Italy were at this time divided into about forty independent states, of various kinds and sizes. Of the former princely nobles, only the Earl of Savoy, and Marquesses of Montferrat, Malaspina—ere long to be absorbed by Savoy—and of Este, remained: the others had become citizens of the towns. Of the towns, whose struggles for republican liberty have occupied so many of these pages, few indeed enjoyed the liberty for which they had striven; the immense majority having fallen under the yoke, either of a stronger town, or of one of their own urban nobles, bearing the modest title of Signore, or Signore Perpetuo. This species of subjection usually began by the election of a native noble to the office of Podesta for ten years; a period long enough to enable him to secure its further continuance. And one advantage the cities appear to have enjoyed under these small despots; namely, internal tranquillity. The city fortresses, from which the city nobles had threatened the people and warred on each other, had almost ceased to exist; being either demolished—Brancaleone destroyed 140 within the walls of Rome,—or so lowered as to be innoxious. At Lucca, almost alone, a few survived the century. Of the Signori, the first formidably great were the Scaligeri at Verona, who had succeeded to much of the dominions and power of the Romano brothers; whilst at Milan, the delle Torri and the Visconti were tearing the perpetual lordship from each other, till the violent and rapacious tyranny of Napoleone della Torre finally transferred the authority to the Visconti.

The republicanism of Bologna ended more romantically. The city was distracted by the broils, not of factions, but, as at Florence, of families. The Geremei and Lambertazzi were the Montagues and Capulets of Bologna, and could have supplied Shakespeare with another Romeo and Juliet; for a Geremeo loved a Lambertazza, and, his passion being returned, was surprised by the lady’s brothers in her room. They there stabbed him with poisoned daggers; and she, sucking the poison from his wounds, died clasping the corpse to her heart. This catastrophe so embittered the enmity of the two families, that republican Bologna, unable to endure their incessant fighting in the streets, in 1276, voluntarily bowed her stiff neck to the yoke of King Charles.

Pisa, no longer supported by Imperial favour, and a prey to a succession of Signori;—of whom Dante’s Conte Ugolino was one—her fleet defeated by the Genoese, in 1284, off Meloria, where, forty-two years before, she had triumphed; her port obstructed and destroyed by the victors, and her commerce stolen by Florence, was, ere long, enthralled by her former rival.

Wherever republicanism was preserved, there, with one exception, democracy prevailed. This has been seen at Florence, where almost every grown man had his turn as a member of government; and where, before long, the nobles were by name excluded from getting their turn: to ennoble a man was a punishment, a sort of ostracism. Florence was mistress of great part of Tuscany, and, with Bologna, was distinguished for a humanity and liberality towards the very lowest classes, combined with a respect for private property unusual in democracies. In the second half of the century, they emancipated all villeins belonging to the two corporations, not interfering with those of individuals. In Genoa, a less extreme democracy prevailed; but Genoa, mistress of most of the Riviera, engrossed with her commerce, her rivalry with Venice, and her immense advantages upon the Euxine, cared little for Italian politics.

The republican exception from increasing democracy was Venice: and her extraordinary constitution, securing despotic authority over Doge, nobility, and people, to an oligarchy, having now acquired the completeness, that remained nearly unaltered, until Venice fell before the French Revolution, a few words concerning some of the peculiarities of that constitution, especially the favourite complicated form of election, in its fulness of involution, will here find their proper place. The Grand Council of 480 members, which had long superseded all popular assemblies, was now self-elected, naming both the Councillors who, in a sort of rotation, were to go out, and their successors. None were eligible, whose ancestors had not been Grand-Councillors, (an exclusion of new families, called the closing of the Libro d’Oro,) the especial request of the Doge, alone rendering the election of such a member possible. The right, to make this effective request, appears to have been the sole power left to the once absolute Doge; all those originally exercised by him, having been transferred to the different Councils—as the Council of the Ten, of the Inquisition, &c., &c.,—that really conducted the administration; whilst spies watched every movement of this phantom of sovereignty, as also those of every individual, in or out of the Councils, worth watching. Yet was the election of a Doge as carefully guarded against cabal or corruption, as if the office could still be an object of ambition; this election being the very ideal of the complication, at which Italian republics aimed. In the first place, thirty members of the great Council, each thirty years old at least, were chosen by lot, and by lot reduced to nine, who elected forty, each man naming a fixed proportion of the number—five, four each, and four, five— who were to be of forty different families. These forty reduced themselves by lot to twelve, who selected twenty-five, as before, and so every time; the twenty-five, reduced by lot to nine, elected forty-five, to be again reduced by lot to eleven, who elected the ultimate forty-one electors. These forty-one men threw each a name into a box, from which the names were promiscuously drawn, and the votes taken; when the bearer of the first obtaining twenty-five affirmative votes, was proclaimed Doge. The only subsequent change in this whimsical blending of chance and choice, was taking the final votes by ballot. In 1288, the people attempted to regain some degree of power, and make their champion, a Tiepolo, Doge. But the nobles, instantly electing the most energetic man of their order, Petro Gradenigo, Doge, permanently established the supremacy of the aristocratic oligarchy, the strength of which, as a government, was demonstrated by the extensive dominions, of which, abroad and at home, Venice gradually possessed herself.

For the rest of Europe and the adjacent countries, a few words will suffice. In the Western Peninsula the kingdom of Granada alone remained to the Moors, but, within its narrow limits, displayed the science, literature, prosperity, and refinement of the Caliphate of Cordova. The other provinces had all been recovered by, and were divided between, Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Portugal. England wanted only a better monarch than Henry III, to be a free, powerful, and formidable insular kingdom, although John had suffered her to be robbed of full two thirds of her French provinces by Philip Augustus. By this robbery, the skilfully negotiated marriage of two of Lewis IX’s brothers with the heiresses of Toulouse and Provence, and then taking advantage of, first, the virtual, and then the real, interregnum in the Empire, to steal the allegiance of these principalities, France had acquired dimensions that quite altered her position in Europe. Denmark was torn, as usual, with civil war, growing out of contests for the crown, but had shaken off all vassalage to the Empire; whilst Scandinavia was slowly advancing, amidst internal broils, towards civilization. Russia, under pressure of the Mongols, was amalgamating into one large and united empire. Poland, freed like Denmark, from any claim of vassalage, was, before the end of the century, re-united into a kingdom; Hungary was slowly recovering from devastation; and the Slavonian States south of the Danube were securing their independence, very much through the excessive weakness, to which conquest by the Crusaders and its consequences had reduced the Eastern Empire, now again Greek.

The Syro-Frank states, reduced to the mere seashore, were, as usual, internally distracted. The death of Conradin left the right of the Queen of Cyprus to the throne unquestionable; nevertheless, Maria of Antioch, a grandchild of Isabel’s by a daughter of her fourth marriage, Melisenda, married to the Prince of Antioch, laid claim to it; Charles of Anjou, whose grasping ambition seemed insatiable, purchased her pretensions of her; and Gregory X, who saw a more usefully efficient King of Jerusalem in the King of the Sicilies, than in his rival of Cyprus, sanctioned the shadowy title. But Charles, though he assumed, and transmitted to his heirs, the title of King of Jerusalem, was as inefficient as Alicia, or her son Hugh. Palestine was deserted by Europe, whence no Crusade set forth after St. Lewis’s, though crusading bands occasionally prolonged the struggle. Prince Edward’s, designed only as part of a general Crusade, was one of the most considerable—but useless—save to its own and its leader’s reputation. Meanwhile, Bibars Bondocdar, with his Mamelukes, pressed steadily forward. He first overthrew and enthralled the Sheik of the Assassins; in 1267, he took Antioch, and in 1291—nineteen years after Prince Edward’s return to England—Acre submitted to him; when, or, if Tyre remained Christian a few years longer, which seems very doubtful, certainly before the close of the century, every vestige of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem vanished. The Templars removed to Cyprus, as their headquarters, and to their estates in Europe; where, in their Preceptories, they haughtily enjoyed the wealth, with which piety had endowed the Order, when useful; until, early in the next century, this wealth provoking cupidity, Order and Knights were, together, destroyed. The Knights Hospitalers established themselves in the island of Rhodes; where, their offer to hold it in vassalage of Constantinople being rejected by the arrogance of Greek bigotry, they dwelt self-dependent; thence waging incessant war against Moslem states. The Marians were one and all, concentrated in Germany, and on the Baltic. The Mamelukes remained masters of Egypt and Syria, whilst the Ottoman Turks loomed in the Eastern horizon.

In regard to the business of government, a considerable advance towards the modern science of statesmanship has been shown in the legislation and administration of Frederic II, in the Sicilies. Elsewhere, the chief progress appears in the financial department. From the before-mentioned indifference of old chroniclers to such matters, a distinct history of this progress can hardly be given, even by those who devote their researches exclusively to the subject, though something may be gathered from facts relative thereto, casually noticed. To mention a few of these: the first steps in this direction evidently were the commutation of military service for a money payment, and the purchase, by the republican cities, of the royalties and feudal privileges that galled their pride, for similar annual money payments. Then, these same cities, when no longer dependent upon a feudal superior, had to contrive means of raising funds for their stipulated payments and other public purposes. Venice, long virtually independent, appears to have had a regular income tax. At Milan, a proposal was made, A.D. 1248, to value and register all property, that it might be equitably assessed to the requisite taxation,—probably for League expenses. But the Milanese chose to have their liberty cheaper, and rejected all idea of such a regulation, although seemingly not uncommon in Italian cities. Certainly at Sienna, some twelve years later, all property was thus valued, and assessed accordingly; and that such was the practice at Ferrara, seems indicated by the complaint of the citizens under Salinguerra’s administration, that the lightness of their taxation lowered the dignity of the city. About the middle of the century, Cologne established an excise upon beer, meat, and meal, to raise money with which to discharge a debt. Kings and princes followed the example of the towns; the reduction of the small public revenue, consequent upon the frequent sale and gift of lands, royalties, and feudal services, having rendered money indispensable to government. Taxes, when imposed, appear to have been often farmed by Jews, whence, m Germany, their title of Kammerknechte (Exchequer servants), in Austria of Kammergrafen (Exchequer earls). Frederic Il’s systematic financial arrangement in the Sicilies was completed, when the wars to which he was driven by the persecution of Gregory IX and Innocent IV, rendered his ordinary revenue insufficient, by another modern resource, a loan; not, indeed, a loan upon the principle of a funded debt, but simply a loan for which he was to pay interest, till he could return the sum borrowed. And the rate of interest, which the absolute prohibition to take any remuneration for the use of money, branding the smallest as usury, compelled him and other borrowers to pay, is startling. The regular fate appears to have been 20 per cent, per annum, and much more was frequently demanded. To some Roman merchants Frederic paid 36 per cent., which, in case of unpunctuality, was to become 48, and this enormous interest he paid, whilst his credit sufficed to pass stamped leather for gold coin! It has been inferred that he had some political object in submitting to such extortion,—if extortion it be, seeing that Philip Augustus fixed upon 48 per cent, per annum as the rate to which, as reasonable, he limited the rate of interest, and that Matthew Paris speaks of 60, as having been paid in England, though not the regular rate. This large profit, gained without the fatigues and perils then attending the career of a merchant—high as the rate of mercantile profit must then have been, being computed at Venice two centuries later, at 40 per cent.—tempted Christians to risk excommunication by rivalling the Jews. If the Lombards addicted themselves so largely to this business, as to make their name—like that of Jew—synonymous with money lender, they did not monopolize it. The town of Cahors, in France, is called a nest of usurers; and Frederic II, who has been seen borrowing from usurious Roman citizens, got fiefs from the Bishop of Passau in return for assistance to pay ruinously usurious debts to Siennese as well as to Roman money lenders. The Church spared not her thunders against these Christian usurers; and her spiritual chastisements were occasionally inforced by worldly measures. Lewis IX of France, and James of Aragon, banished all Lombard and Italian usurers from their dominions, whilst Innocent IV imprisoned them at Lyons.

In connexion with finance, the condition of the Jews—the chief mediaeval financiers—in the last half of the century, may here be disposed of. In Germany, the Emperor might be expected to protect the servants of his Exchequer; yet Conrad IV imprisoned rich Jews, to extort fines, as ransom, from them; and many of the princes followed his example. On the other hand, the ecclesiastical princes, following the example of the Popes, dealt more fairly, tolerating them, but repressing their extortion; whilst the towns favoured them. At Cologne they had judges of their own, and at Augsburg the full rights of citizenship. The complete toleration they long enjoyed, in the south of France, appears from their holding office under the Earls of Toulouse, one condition of the first reconciliation of Raymond VI with the Church, being, that he should never more employ a Jew in his administration. In northern France, Philip Augustus released all debts due by his subjects to Jews, upon paying a fifth of the amount into his own exchequer, banished the defrauded creditors, and then sold them permission to return. Yet, habitually plundered as they were in the whole kingdom, St. Lewis is said to have been reproached by his Mohammedan captors, with tolerating the murderers of the great Prophet, in whom he professed to believe. Touched with this reproach, upon returning from his Crusade, he banished all of the race who were not mechanics—meaning, apparently, the usurers; yet is he, like his predecessors and successors, charged with using these same Jews as a sponge; squeezing them, when they had absorbed the wealth of the country. In England, their treatment varied with the temper of the monarch. Richard I, like the ecclesiastical princes, protected them from ill-usage, and also his subjects from their extortion, declaring no unwritten contract with them binding. But they suffered much from the rapacity of John, as also from the hatred of the nation. In London, A.D. 1256, an accusation of crucifying a child, was brought by twenty-five Knights against seventy-two Jews, who were imprisoned, sentenced to death, and saved by the intervention of the Franciscans; whereupon the Londoners pronounced the Friars bribed, and refused them their usual alms. In 1279, the Jews were charged with a more probable crime, viz., clipping the coin, for which some were executed; and before the end of the century they were banished. Few thought of acting upon the precept of the Dominican, Thomas Aquinas, who thus, in the very spirit of St Bernard, describes the law that should regulate Christian treatment of Jews: “Jews are to be taxed, not stripped of the necessaries of life; their usurious gains are to be restored to those whom they have plundered, not taken as a tax.”

Respecting the military department there is little to say, although the progress towards the national standing army is very observable. The feudal array was beginning to be, if not superseded, yet prodigiously supported and reinforced by hired troops. In Germany—where Schmidt says they were much employed—they usually consisted of the chivalry of the Empire, the landless or nearly landless knights, with such followers as they could collect—all who preferred fighting to work—for privates; and in France, of a similar class, with the addition of foreign mercenaries. In Italy, princely nobles have been seen, already beginning to engage, with their own vassals, or with hireling vagabonds, in the service of greater princes or of cities, as Condottieri, though not yet bearing the name; and foreigners began to compete with them. The highest of the class, Don Henrique of Castile, with his band of adventurers, almost assumes the character of an ally. Lesser nobles, upon a humbler scale, followed these examples. If Frederic II raised troops amongst his own subjects, he likewise hired foreign mercenaries,—rather individuals, as they offered, seemingly, than such bands; Conrad and Manfred followed his example^³⁵⁰) Charles of Anjou’s army appears to have been gathered more after the manner of William the Conqueror’s^³⁵¹) Florence, where, early in the century, a lighted candle was regularly placed over the gate through which a military expedition was to issue, the organized Arti, under their Gonfalonieri, being bound to have passed forth ere it burnt out,—that same Florence, in 1282, hired a French company of 500 lances; and, in 1289, the last Italian battle in which the burgher militia bore any proportion to the mercenaries, was fought by Florence against Arezzo.

In the mode of waging war, and in its implements, some improvement is perceptible. More arrangement in the plan and conduct of an enterprise,—something, almost like strategy, appears in the wars of Frederic II, Manfred, and Ezzelino, and especially at Tagliacozzo. Contemporary chroniclers speak of improvement in the regular battering engines and the operations of a siege, but no actually novel invention is mentioned, with the exception of what seems to have been a sort of portable chevaux-de-frize, or cats, devised by Margrave Berthold to protect the camp occupied by the Pope's army from assault; and, perhaps, of the defensive barbican without, and the portcullis in the gateway, both said to be borrowed from the Saracens. The Greek fire, mentioned in the twelfth century as used in the defence of Acre, appears more formidable in the thirteenth; but, at this distance of time, it were hard to say whether because likewise improved, or only more accurately and more graphically described in aspect and in action, as employed by the Egyptians at Damietta, and the Mongols in Silesia. Joinville says, that the fire, when thrown, flew through the air like a dragon of fire, in form resembling a large tun, with a tail the length of a spear, in sound like thunder, and emitting so much light, that in the French camp they saw at midnight as at noon. Though called Greek fire, Greek writers speak of it as a weapon of Oriental enemies.C⁸⁵³) But, if little progress appears, a recent traveller in China and Tartary, the Missionary Hue, conceives that, in this century, the Tartars had learned from the Chinese the use of “bombardes et pierriers; whence, perhaps, the great change in European warfare, even then imminent. The use of gunpowder and artillery by the Spanish Arabs, is named very early in the following century.

Similar remarks apply to ships and navigation; both were evidently improving, but too gradually to afford much noticeable matter. It may, however, be observed that the vessels seem larger than, from the numbers comprised in fleets, would be inferred. For conveying the warriors of the Fourth Crusade to their destination, or rather, to that substituted by Dandolo, Venice equipped 480 ships, of which 240, allotted to the Crusaders themselves, are described as impelled solely by sails, without oars. Later in the century, the wars between Venice and Genoa bring forth fleets of 155 galleys, manned with crews of from 200 to 300 men. The ship of Frederick IPs Sicilian Grand-Admiral carried 1000 men; his ordinary vessels, destined to transport soldiers, had crews of 150 or 200 men. Norway is spoken of as possessing 292, and even 410, ships of war, rowed or manned by 12,700 sailors. Frederick II built lighthouses for the guidance of mariners.

In civil engineering little progress is apparent. Bridges, Canals, and mills continued to be constructed as before, and that the Capuan bridge was designed by Frederic II has been said. Either Bene de Gozzadini, as Podesta of Milan, or Napoleone della Torre, as Signor Perpetuo began the Naviglio, or navigable canal, which, besides irrigating the southern plain of the Milanese, connects the Lombard capital with the Po, the obstacle from difference of levels being mastered by locks, seemingly a new invention, if great, the only one in this department. The canal that brings the water of the Ticino to Milan, and irrigates the north-western Milanese territory, had been completed in the twelfth century. The windmill is believed to have been introduced into Italy from the East, in the first years of this century.

The impulse given to the study of jurisprudence, by the first Frederic’s gratification, at finding his notions of Imperial rights authorized by Justinian, was even quickened by the not more disinterested zeal of the cities, for that science. They were confident, that the laws of republican Rome must prove their municipal privileges to include independent self-government. Honours, exemption from burthens, amongst others, from military service, were showered upon celebrated Doctors of Law and their descendants; Reggio in 1270 conferred the full rights of citizenship upon the bold opposer of Charles of Anjou’s injustice, Guido da Suzara; and men of noble birth gradually addicted themselves to a study, the importance of which began to be universally appreciated.

Simultaneously with, if not growing out of, this profound respect for legal science, arose the idea, that the laws to be obeyed should be as generally known as might be. Earl Baldwin’s Collection of laws in the last century has been named. And early in this century, perhaps before 1215, Eike von Repgow, a noble Saxon Knight, by command of his Lord, Hoyer von Falkenstein, as announced by a prefatory couplet in the oldest copy extant, collected the laws of Saxony, and published his compilation under the title of Sachsen-Spiegel, or Mirror of Saxony- Whether this Mirror first appeared in Latin or in German is another of the many unsettled questions: but, if in the former, a German version by the collector speedily afforded more general information. Both original MSS., Latin and German, are lost, the oldest copy extant being a Latin translation from the German. This legal work was followed, in a few years, by a Schwaben-Spiegel, or Mirror of Swabia. Both collections, appearing to have been made without even the knowledge of the ruling powers, evidently originated in the spirit of the age. A few years later appeared a similar compilation of Austrian laws; the three constituting what might be termed a code of the common law of Germany, in opposition to the civil and the canon law. To the same spirit of the age may, in part at least, be ascribed the production, in the last quarter of the century, of a book upon English law by Bracton, esteemed the best until Blackstone’s Commentaries appeared.

But the study of jurisprudence had given birth to the spirit of legislation. Frederic II’s systematic code for the Sicilies, and his less complete, but still very considerable, legislative labours in Germany, have been described. So has the systematic code of canon law—formed by modelling Penaforte’s new methodized compilation of Decretals somewhat upon Justinian’s plan—with which Gregory IX opposed, what appeared to him, an attempt at escape from the universal sovereignty of the Church. Copies of the improved Decretals were sent to all universities and schools of law to be there taught. Contemporary princes were either stimulated by these examples or sympathetically actuated. In France, Lewis IX made various laws regularizing and purifying the administration of justice, which, collected after his death, were dedicated to his son, Philip III, as Les Coutusnes de Beauvoisis; and afterwards, methodized and improved into a regular code, apparently by order of Philip IV, were published under the title of Etablissements de St. Louis. Alfonso X, of Leon and Castile, the rival of Richard of Cornwall for the Empire, did the same in Spain, giving his code, written in Spanish, the title of Las Siete Partidas. In Denmark, Waldemar II completed the laws published by Waldemar I and Archbishop Absalom, which are still in force. In Norway, King Magnus Lagabäter, who in 1266 sold the Isle of Man and the Hebrides to Alexander, King of Scotland, diligently reformed the legislation of his kingdom; and what English reader need be reminded that this century saw the cornerstone of the English constitution laid in Magna Charta, and entitled Edward I, for his legal reforms, the English Justinian?

That the laws of all these codes were still sanguinary, hardly need be added; even those of the philosopher Frederic being so. The mediaeval Draconian period was not yet passed. Against this severity may be placed in the balance that, by the end of the century, so thoroughly odious had the right of wrecking become, that states, in their treaties, stipulated reciprocal aid to their shipwrecked vessels and sailors.  It may be further worth observing, that large states were now generally provided with executioners, although in the smaller, such functionaries were clearly not yet deemed necessary appendages of Courts of Criminal Law; since, a century later, Florence, by an especial edict, exempted casually passing pilgrims from compulsorily discharging the fearful duty of such officials, thenceforward assigned to criminals under sentence of perpetual or very long imprisonment, or of confiscation. A step may be said to have been previously taken towards international law, by Richard Cceur-de-Lion’s sea-laws of Oleron,—if his they were, and do not, as some inquirers have thought, rather belong to this thirteenth century; towards the middle of which this maritime code was followed by the Consolato del Mare, whether put forth by Barcelona, Venice, or Pisa. The two codes were speedily acknowledged as conjointly supreme in all maritime affairs.

Commerce, as has been seen, was increasing, and, where cultivated, flourished; but with little change in its nature or mode of transaction. Great fairs were still its chief scenes; prohibition, privilege, and coercion, still its soul, in all eyes save those of Frederic II. Thus Barcelona, in the genuine monopolizing spirit, obtained from James,

King of Aragon, the restriction of all Aragonese and Catalan exports, to her own port and shipping, with an exclusive right of warehousing foreign goods; and Cremona, from the Emperors, a right to compel all merchants crossing the Tyrolese Alps to house their goods for one night in her warehouses, pay toll upon them, and employ her means of transport for the prosecution of their journey. The commercial treaty betwixt Venice and Sicily, limiting the trade of Sicilian vessels, has been mentioned. An earlier, analogous treaty, betwixt Pisa and Arles, dated 1221, prohibits to Arles ships, the selling of goods upon the coast betwixt Pisa and Genoa, and purchasing, except for home consumption, or sale at Pisa, betwixt this city and Ci vita Vecchia; further, so far settling the law as to neutrals, that Arles admits her men and goods, when found in Genoese ships, to be lawful prize for Pisans. Lewis IX’s course can hardly be esteemed an exception to this ultra-protective system, of fostering by monopoly, since, if he forbade the imposing of new prohibitions without just cause and due deliberation, he likewise forbade the revocation of any already existing.

The Popes would fain have prevented all commercial intercourse with Mohammedan states; but Venice, it may be remembered, upon the plea of depending for her daily bread upon imported corn, obtained the Pope’s permission to traffic with the Saracens, carrying them everything except contraband of war and Christian slaves;—dealing in slaves, not Christian, was still a favourite branch of traffic, deemed perfectly unobjectionable. But, despite papal prohibitions and denunciations, Venice still kidnapped Christians, chiefly Greeks, Walachians, Bulgarians, and Russians, to supply the Moslem markets. The Jews were their rivals in this detestable trade. The commerce of Flanders, always prosperous to a degree surpassed only in the chief Italian mercantile cities, is averred to have received a powerful impetus from the intercourse with Constantinople, consequent upon the Crusaders’ conquest of that city, and Earl Baldwin’s election as Emperor; although his hereditary counties do not appear to have interfered with the strife of Venice and Genoa for the command of the Euxine, then the regular channel, by which the costly wares of the far East reached Europe, and whence each of those cities sought to monopolize their conveyance for distribution; building, the former Azof, the latter Caffa, as storehouses rather than marts. The Mongols appear to have favoured the transit of Oriental merchandise; and consequent upon even this degree of connexion with trade, by the end of the century, such was the magnificence of the courts of this, recently savage, wandering Horde, that they attracted Italian merchants, giving rise to some of those journeys, consuming years upon years, described by early Italian novelists. Thus, the father and uncle of Marco Polo, setting out upon their trading expedition prior to his birth, saw him not, till he was almost a man. Marco Polo himself spent twenty-six years, journeying in Asia, and, after his return, being made a prisoner by the Genoese, in a great naval action, in which he commanded a galley, solaced the weary hours of captivity, by writing his travels. Bills of exchange are thought to be an invention of this century.

Manufactures appear to have been steadily progressive, alike in importance and in excellence. The woollen manufacture, the staple of Flanders, was only introduced into Florence, A.D. 1239, and as has been seen, had already become one of the Arti Maggiori. Before the close of the century, silk-weaving was, throughout Italy, if not the staple national manufacture, yet one of the chiefest; as, yet the insect that produces the raw material was reared only further South. The excellence of the Sicilian manufacture is apparent, even at the present day, in the fragments occasionally found in tombs. In Germany, manufacturing was encouraged by the growth of the towns, and wool-weaving flourished upon the banks of the Rhine, although this is the century in which Matthew of Westminster boasted that the whole world was clad in English wool, manufactured in Flanders. In answer, perhaps, to this boast, the Parliament held at Oxford, A.D. 1261, prohibited the exportation of wool, and the importation of woollen cloth. The Cistertians, whom their rule bound to occupy themselves with agriculture, or the raising of produce, began to aim at increasing the value of the produce when raised, by a second application of manual labour: in a Prussian

Monastery, they wove cloth from the wool of their sheep, and in another, at Eberbach, they built ships of their own timber, in which the lay brothers navigated the Rhine. In Poland, a convent of nuns taught the art of weaving linen to the Slavonian princesses and noble ladies.

Of agriculture little mention occurs. The interest, taken by Frederic II therein, has been described, and the irrigation, above mentioned, must have greatly increased the boasted fertility of Lombardy. Nevertheless, no other improvement appears in the most useful of arts; and, probably, none was conceived possible. Horticulture must, however, be allowed to have made a considerable stride forward, if we may trust the accounts of the hothouse, or conservatory, constructed by Albertus Magnus, in the garden of his Dominican Friery. In this winter garden he entertained the Anti-King William; and to the shrubs and flowers, there green and blossoming, amidst winter’s frost and snow, much of the inventor’s fame, as a magician controlling the seasons, may be due.

That, in which great progress was really making, was literature and the arts. With respect to the first, the favour, with which learning was regarded, appeared in the great increase of universities. The Emperor Frederic H’s foundation of such a school of science at Naples, with the means he took to insure its prosperity, has already been recorded. Two of his most confidential ministers, Taddeo da Suessa and Roffredo da Benevento, he first drew from the schools at which they taught, to his own, then raised them from Professor’s Chairs to high place in his councils. The ephemerous duration of prosperity to [this Institution, which seemed permanently established, may be ascribed to the overthrow of his race, and the usurper’s anxiety to obliterate the merits, even the memory, of those he had superseded. Frederic’s foundation had been preceded, in 1222, by a grand migration of Professors and Students from Bologna, consequent upon dissensions; the seceders founding the University of Padua; a move favoured at the time by the Emperor-King, to whom the University of Bologna shewed habitual hostility. In many Italian towns, Universities of more or less reputation now arose—Frederic Il’s letter on sending a Law Professor to the Vercelli University will not have been forgotten,—all immeasurably inferior in character to the Bolognese, with which, in civil law, none presumed to compete. In Germany, nothing of the kind was introduced before the next century, and the high schools seem to have lost much of their early fame. In France, between the years 1228 and 1233, Raymond VII of Toulouse founded an University in that city, which, it was hoped, might prove a potent auxiliary in converting heretics; and, in 1229, some supposed encroachment by the government or the civic authorities upon the privileges of the University of Paris, produced a migration similar to that from Bologna; but, upon this occasion the separatists, instead of founding a new, joined an existing rival, that of Oxford, which thenceforward ranked second only to Paris in scholasticism, remaining first in canon law. In 1234, another broil with, or in, the Parisian University, gave birth to a new seat of learning at Orleans, which, in deference to its parent, avoided every appearance of rivalry, by forbearing to teach scholastic theology. In 1250, the Sorbonne was founded, for poor students of theology, such as the Church often recommended to the charity of the faithful, for support during their course of study. In England, the University of Cambridge was incorporated in 1231, but hardly seems as yet to have rivalled Oxford, which was daily increasing in prosperity. In Spain, the Universities of Valencia and Salamanca were founded in this century; in Portugal, that of Coimbra; and in Hungary, one at Westprim. Of the regular number of students little seems to be known; but, incidentally, 10,000 are named as at one time, studying at Bologna; upon another occasion, the same number is mentioned as matriculated at Paris; and, in the following century, 30,000 are spoken of at Oxford.

Most of these universities appear in the course of the century, to have become chartered corporations; those originating in the migration of Professors and Students, somewhat strangely, the migratory body being supposed to carry with them their share of the corporate character. But the charters were far from identical. In the University of Paris, copied by the English and Hungarian, the Professors formed the Corporation, to which the Students were subject, even to the degree of school-boy subjection; the rod having been, we are told, an ordinary implement for the chastisement of youths, preliminarily and judiciously, forbidden to wear arms. At Bologna, on the other hand, and the various Italian, Spanish, and even French universities, modelled upon this first real university, more whimsically, the Students were the Corporate Body, and elected a Head, to whom the Professors, notwithstanding their jurisdiction over the students, seem to have been in some measure subjected. It is to be hoped that, in these last-mentioned universities, the law, which expressly denied to robbers, murderers, and all who did not attend, at least, two lectures every week, the privilege of students, would be strictly inforced.

Almost everywhere, universities appear to have been exempt from the jurisdiction of the municipal or other tribunals of the towns in which they were established. At Bologna, it may be recollected that, before the close of the preceding century, the Professors, for their own relief, resigned the judicial authority given them, to the Bolognese Magistracy; but, by the middle of the thirteenth, their successors, taking a different view of the matter, saw the advantage of a position so commanding as that of the Students’ Judges, and resumed their privileges,—the exact extent of their jurisdiction is uncertain. The Neapolitan University stands nearly alone, as somewhat less privileged. Frederic II did not make it a self-governing corporation; but, exempting the students from the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals, he named an especial justiciary to judge in criminal cases, implicating any of them; and he allowed them to submit civil disputes, at their choice, to that Magistrate, to the Archbishop, or to the body of Professors.

Different universities have been seen excelling, in different studies, although, with the exception of the Salernitan, and, perhaps, the Montpelier, which seem to have been solely medical, they did not confine themselves to those several especial departments: at the Neapolitan, all known sciences appear to have been simultaneously taught. But, whatever the system of tuition, the Popes, against whom mighty sovereigns strove in vain, found themselves powerless to change it. The beginning of the century saw the struggle for and against Aristotle in progress. A Parisian Synod, A.D. 1209, ordered all his works to be burnt, thus to prevent their being studied at the Parisian University. Innocent III limited the prohibition of their use, to his writings upon Physics and Metaphysics. Gregory IX,— Frederic II’s patronage rendering the Stagyrite, in his eyes, yet more objectionable,—again included the whole. As the century advanced, the Popes, alarmed by the increase of heresy, repeated more imperatively, and endeavoured to inforce, the interdiction of all Aristotle’s works; regarding the prevalence of scholastic subtlety, and a consequent disposition to reason, upon dogmas implicitly received and taught by the Church, as the fruit of their tendency to cultivate over-astuteness of intellect:—the very fruit that St. Bernard had dreaded. Yet, despite papal injunctions and denunciations, so decidedly did Aristotle remain the favourite philosopher, that Urban IV, in actual despair of excluding him from any university, commissioned Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, by commentaries and explanations, to render this classical Arch-Heresiarch as innocuous as might be, to orthodoxy. Upon another point had papal authority similarly failed. Innocent IV, in the height of his quarrel with Frederic II, forbade all universities to teach the Civil Law, which he held unduly favourable to Imperial authority; and every university disregarded the prohibition.

The Universities appear to have given the degree of Doctor, in law, medicine, grammar, and philosophy; but the jurists, jealous of the title, suffered none but themselves to bear it; confining the others to that of Magister; and so high did these legal doctors rank, that the opinion of one of them was held equivalent to a judge’s verdict. Regular salaries to Professors do not appear to have become general till very late in the century, and even then were insufficient to avert dependence upon private agreements with the students for remuneration. At the close of the century, the maximum salary, in Italy, was 200 lire, which, according to Savigny’s calculation, would be about 43 pounds sterling; whilst, in 1279, a party of students subscribed, to pay Guido da Suzara 300 lire, or, at the same rate, 64Z. 10s., for a course of lectures upon the Digestum Novum. Modena, appointing him to the Chair of Civil Law, gave him, once for all, 2250 Modenese lire, or about 480Z. With such remuneration, it cannot be matter of surprise to find the best professors itinerants, wandering from university to university. Even the Angelic Doctor taught alternately at the Universities of Paris and of Naples.

Few of the then celebrated Doctors of Law have come down to modern times with fame adequate to awakening interest in the nineteenth century. Even the Tuscan Glossarist, Accorso, (Latiné, Accursius,) whom Tiraboschi, writing in the eighteenth, calls il grande Accorso, is, perhaps, to the general reader, more interesting as the father of his feminine coadjutor, Accorsa, who is represented as supplying his place in the lecture-room when he was indisposed: so, it is said, did Elisabetta d’Andrea, daughter and wife of the respective Professors Giovanni d’Andrea and Giovanni di San Giorgio, her father’s or her husband’s, when necessary; whilst Bettisia Gozzadini, more boldly, and assuming, for the nonce, male attire, gave, we are told, a regular course of lectures upon the Institutions, and took a Doctor’s degree.

If jurisprudence were peculiarly the scientific glory of the age, it was not, as has been seen, to the exclusion of Scholasticism, which, in this century, produced some of the children in whom she most glories. At their head stands the Apulian, Thomas Aquinas, who conceived the beautiful idea that the felicity of Heaven consists in fulness of knowledge and of love. Then follow, Albertus Magnus, who, in pure love of science, resigned the bishopric of Ratisbon to devote himself more uninterruptedly to study; Raymond Lulli, another miracle of learning, and the inventor of an arguing machine; the less known Vincent de Beauvais, who, about the middle of the century, wrote eighty-two books, divided into 9905 chapters, upon all extant learning, the matter for which he collected and translated from Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew writings;—all trained in scholastic philosophy; to say nothing of Friar Bacon, the first calendar reformer, who, however depreciated of late, as credulous and fanciful, has by competent judges been held the meet precursor of Lord Bacon, both in natural philosophy and in the spirit of philosophizing; he is said to have first started the idea of relation and reciprocal influence betwixt the language and the character of a nation. Another, of less extensive fame, and who lived earlier in the century, Guillaume d’Auvergne, Bishop of Paris from 1228 to 1249, rivalled the Lombard Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselmo, in furnishing Descartes with arguments, to which he is not a little indebted for his philosophic preeminence. In one of this prelate’s many metaphysical disquisitions, is found the developed process of reasoning, condensed by Descartes into his celebrated ^w Cogito, ergo sum.” These men, besides being original thinkers, had mastered a mass of knowledge, a variety of sciences, such as has since, only by Pico di Mirandola and the Admirable Crichton, been emulated. To these names it might scarcely seem worth adding that of Robert Grossette, Grouthoved, or Copley, Bishop of Lincoln, a low-born Englishman, as not only the first Greek scholar of the age, but also a distinguished poet (his poems are allegorical), historian (he wrote a history from the Creation, in French), mathematician, naturalist, canonist, and theologian, were it not likewise to add, that he was one of the sturdiest opponents of Papal encroachment.

The Spanish Moors, in their now single kingdom of Granada, cultivated literature, science, and the useful arts, as diligently, and, perhaps, as successfully, as ever; although the more general dissemination of knowledge rendered Arab eminence, whether in Spain or the Levant, less strikingly brilliant than of yore. But, in the second half of the century, the Asiatic Mohammedans no longer aspired to the fame of their forefathers, and of their western brethren. Earlier, a Bagdad library, founded in connexion with a Medrisi, or College, by a Vizier of Saladin’s, was dispersed by the easy charity of the Caliph, who, upon occasion of a dearth, permitted the students to sell the books lent them, in order to buy bread with their priced. Afterwards, the devastating dominion of Mameluke, Mongol, and Turcoman, rapidly extinguished civilization and intellectual culture in the Levant. Frederic II, indeed, found learned Mohammedans, whom he drew to his Court, amongst others, the sons of the famous Averrhoes: and Abulfeda, the Eyubite Prince of Hamah, at once an historian, botanist, physician, lawyer, and astronomer, belongs to the latter end of this century.

Latin was still the established language of philosophy, history, and even of poetry, at least of the more ambitious kinds. To enumerate the now forgotten, would-be Classical writers of the thirteenth century were tedious; but a few of the more distinguished may be named. Amongst these, rank Gulielmus Brito, or Armoricus, who wrote both a history of Philip II, De Rebus Gestis Philippi Augusti, and an epopaea upon the same subject, entitled Philippeis, in twelve books; Rigordus, another chronicler of this King’s deeds; Jacques de Vitry, Bishop of Acre, one of the historians of the kingdom of Jerusalem and of the Crusades; the English historians, Matthew Paris, the monk of St. Albans, who, freely admitted to the table of Henry III, and, apparently, of Lewis IX, often derived the matter of his narrative from the lips of royalty; Matthew of Westminster, with others, some of whom, Henry of Huntingdon being one, like Brito and Rigordus, belong to both twelfth and thirteenth centuries. German historians still, invariably wrote in Latin,—not just now in their happiest vein,—so did the few Poles, whose chronicles serve as authority for the early history of that unhappy country. And, that, in Italy, Latin was still esteemed the proper language of history, Muratori’s Scriptores Rerum Italicarum bear witness. Of these, Jamsilla, who writes with the animation of a man telling what has interested him; Gerardo Maurisio, esteemed the best Latin historian of his day, Ugo Falcando, likewise belonging to both centuries, and a very few more, are, with the French and English named, allowed still to display tolerable Latinity; whilst in others, as, e.g., in Saba Malaspina, the tongue, no longer classic, was growing ruder and ruder. Its utter corruption is, however, imputed to Albertus Magnus, who, engrossed by his matter, held aiming at classicism in contempt. The Trojan War of Dares Phrygius is, by some critics, assigned to this century; in which case, Benoit’s poem, written in the twelfth, cannot, as has also been supposed, have been taken from his. The Latin writers of France and Italy belong chiefly to the earlier half and middle of the century.

But the most truly important part of literary progress in the age lay in the cultivation of modern languages. The commencement of this great movement was seen in the preceding century; earliest, perhaps, in the Langue d’oc and the Langue d’oil, though with little difference of time in the Spanish and the German, and not much later in the English tongues. In the thirteenth, the change becomes everywhere prominent. The Troubadours of this century are estimated at two hundred, of whom six were enthroned votaries of the Muse: Elinor, Duchess of Aquitaine and Queen of England, already named as a dabbler in the Gai Saber, was still alive; and Elinor of Provence is said to have been indebted for her share of Henij Ill’s throne, solely to her poetic fame. Richard, Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans, is the third royal Troubadour; Pedro II of Aragon, the victor of Navas de Tolosa, and victim at Muret, the fourth; and his grandson, Pedro III, the fifth. The sixth, and most celebrated, is King Thibalt of Navarre, who sighed in verse for Queen Blanche, the widow of Lewis VIII, and mother of Lewis IX, of France. The remaining 194 were of all ranks, and of these, Elias Cairol may be worth naming, as an artist in gold and silver, jongleur, and troubadour; whose vituperation of Frederic II may indicate, that the Imperial and poetic Maecenas had not duly appreciated his genius. The metrical history of the Crusade against the Albigenses, already quoted, is evidently the work of a contemporary troubadour,—another of the non-lyric class. The author begins as a zealous Crusader, changing sides as he proceeds; perhaps as he saw fanatic persecution unfold itself into a pretext for robbery and usurpation. But the really distinguished troubadour of this century, called the last of Troubadours, and almost so literally, was Sordello. He wrote in Italian as well as in Provencal, and which was his mother tongue is uncertain, as is much of his history. Dante, in his Volgare Eloquio. praises him for improving the Mantuan dialect; and no reader of the Divina Commedia need be told how highly the mighty Florentine esteemed his poetic powers. Sordello was much favoured and trusted by Ezzelino di Romano, who made him Governor of Mantua. He died A.D. 1280.

But numerous and distinguished as were the troubadours of this century, the best antiquarian critics hold their strains very inferior to those of their predecessors in the twelfth; as less natural in sentiment—the “high-fantastical passion” becoming even more fantastical and unreal—and less poetic in expression; quaint conceits being substituted for flights of fancy, and artificial difficulties for mellifluous versification. Whether this gradual deterioration would have proved fatal to the Joyous Science, may be questionable; but two mortal wounds precipitated the slow decline. The first was dealt by the Crusade against the Albigenses, which seems to have changed the temper of southern France. The second was the annihilation of the brilliant, luxurious, and literary courts of the Earls of Toulouse and Provence, jointly its Parnassus, by the absorption of the first county into the French monarchy, and the annexation of the other to the Neapolitan; thus degrading the Langue d’oc, from a courtly language to a provincial dialect. So rapidly sank, in public estimation, the art, erst cultivated and half worshipped as well as patronized by the highest, that Giorgi, a troubadour, in a Sirvente published about 1270, execrates him from whom he learnt to rhyme. But, how generally soever favoured was the Gai Saber in northern Italy, its death might be accelerated by the extinction of the House of Romano, the most constant, as the most splendid, of its Italian patrons.

If the Langue d’oc were decaying, the Langue d’oil, the language of the Courts of France and England, was more than proportionately flourishing. It was assuming the fixity and dignity of one of the chief European languages, as it grew into French, and was producing works “in prose and rhyme,” which still survive, and—if, from obsolete words and antiquated forms, no longer adapted to the general reader—still delight the student. The Trouveurs continued to pour forth romances in verse; one of the most popular of which entitled itself an epic poem upon the Life of Alexander the Great. In this Alexandreide -—if Li Roumans d’Alexandre be not the original title —the classic conqueror is, even more completely than in its Latin predecessor, the Alexandreis of the last century, transformed into a knight-errant, upon whose head all the marvellous adventures ever achieved by an Amadis or a Palmerin, are accumulated. The most admired trouveurs-of the day,—the now forgotten Lambert le Cors, (the short,) Alexandre de Bernay, Thomas de Kent, &c.,—nine in number, combined to produce the poem, which is written in lines of twelve syllables, thence still named Alexandrines. Doubts are, however, entertained, whether the Alexandreide be an original work, or a translation, with improvements, of the earlier Latin poem. The romances relative to Arthur, and “his table round, Begirt with many a knight,” arose in this century; which also gave birth to the first attempt at prolonged and sustained allegory, (the Thier-Epos, simply bestowing human articulation upon animals, acting according to their respective natures, can hardly be so called,) in the Roman de la Rose of Guillaume de Lorris. The end of this same century beheld a versified French History of France, extending from the abduction of Helen down to the moment at which the author, a Fleming, Philippes de Mouskes, Bishop of Tournay, lived and rhymed; and, naturally, including the Flemish Emperors of Constantinople. The long romances were rivalled by shorter tales; the most pleasing of which are, perhaps, the Lais of Marie de France, written for the amusement of the English Court: but, whether she borrowed her stories from Wales or from Britany, whether she found them as ballads, or as traditions which she versified and wrought into form, are questions that divide antiquaries. Her Lais, as might be augured from her sex, are almost free from the licentiousness in tone, incident, and language, of her male rivals; though, at times, even she somewhat plainly tells, what at the present day could be but delicately insinuated.

The powers of the rhymsters were inadequate to satisfying the thirst for fiction: and prose romances, taking their heroes from both cycles, viz., those of Charlemagne and his Paladins, and of Arthur and his Round Table, vied with the metrical. But the writers of short prose Fabliaux and Nouvellettes, the very storehouses of immoral, and anti-monacal, rather than anti-religious, anecdotes; whence Boccaccio and Co. drew the more objectionable portion of their tales, were more numerous, and, painful -it is to add, the most popular. In France and England the number of Langue d’oil poets—whether including prose novelists seems uncertain—in the thirteenth century, is again estimated at two hundred.

The idea of extending the knowledge of history, by writing it in the mother-tongue, had, as has been seen, before the close of the preceding century, been conceived by Baldwin, Earl of Flanders and Walloon-speaking Hainault. He did not live to see the Crusade, that gave him a crown, produce the full embodying of his idea, in the first regular history in a modern living language. This was the work of his gallant comrade, Geoffroi de Villehardouin, Marechal de Champagne, who, as the narrator of feats in which he bore part, claims the title of the earliest modern vernacular historian. In the second half of the century, his example was followed by another Marshal of Champagne, Jean de Joinville, who wrote in French the history of the Crusade to which he belonged, having accompanied Lewis IX. Between the two noble Marshals may be placed a continuator of the Archbishop of Tyre’s history, Bernardus Thesaurarius. Whoever or whatever he may have been, Syro-Frank or Frenchman— uncertain points—his work, though extant only in Latin, is believed to have been written in French—partly because Joinville makes extracts from it as en langue vulgaire, and Ducange quotes it as such—and translated into Latin by an Italian. Whether the Histoires de Baudouin preceded, or closely followed, the prose fiction, is still a question ; but one remarkable circumstance connected with this subject is, that the European prevalence of the French language had already begun. The Florentine, Brunetto Latini, best known as Dante’s instructor, wrote his philosophic Tesoro in French that it might be more extensively read—the first exaltation of a vulgar tongue to the service of philosophy, if not preceded in the Spanish. Yet, like the Treasurer’s History, the oldest copy known is a translation into its author’s native language.

In England, if French were still the poetic, as well as $19 the social language of the higher classes, Anglo-Saxon was in course of rapid transformation into English. The difference between the language into which Layamon translated Wace’s Brut at the close of the twelfth, or the very opening of the thirteenth century, and that of the latter half of this same thirteenth, is striking. The middle of this century is the epoch fixed upon by some critics as that of English undefiled; and a song of triumph upon the Barons’ victory over Henry III, A.D. 1264, evidently written in the very flush of present exultation, clearly before Prince Edward’s counter victory at Evesham in 1265, is really old English. Still more may this be asserted of other writers of this period, first among whom stands Robert of Gloucester, with his rhymed translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s romance-history. In this century Scotland boasted of Thomas the Rhymer, who died towards its close.

Italian, if the youngest child of the Latin, was born, Minerva-like, full grown; being little different in the thirteenth and the nineteenth centuries. The existence of Italian, or rather Sicilian, verse, before the death of Saladin in 1193, has been seen; but those rude lines of Ciullo d’Alcamo are all that can be quoted prior to the thirteenth century; which teems with his successors. That Frederic II, nis sons, and his ministers, were all more or less poets, hardly need be repeated; or that his Court, which, at Palermo and Naples set the fashion of vernacular, in preference to Provencal, poetry—whence Italian poetry was long called Sicilian—became a centre of attraction to all votaries of the Muse, throughout Italy. Pietro delle Vigne enjoys the fame of having invented the sonnet; but, ere he had left his father’s cottage, to study, as a pauper, at Bologna, his future master was writing Sicilian verses. Some pf the earliest of these have been preserved; to which Bettinelli vaguely assigns the date of 1200, when this lisper in numbers had scarcely completed his fifth year, but clearly written prior to the adventurous expedition, in which he recovered his patrimonial crown. Sicilian poetry was amatory; and a poetess of the island is reported to have become so spiritually enamoured of a Florentine poet,—a predecessor and namesake of Dante’s,—that she addressed love lays to him, designating herself, Nina di Dante. These intellectual lovers are believed never to have met. Up to the middle of the century, the character of all Italian poetry was of this character, with the exception of Hymns, —first written in Italian by St. Francis—if they, equally speaking the language of passion, although addressed to Divinity, can rightly be termed an exception. But, about the time mentioned, Satire began to vary the sameness of amorous ditties; and Guido Guinocelli, a Bolognese, introducing aphoristic, or didactic poetry, versified ethics rose into public favour. In the Sicilies, the spirit of poesy seems to have expired with the posterity of Frederic, whilst reigning supreme beyond the Neapolitan frontiers. Whether the Divina Commedia had begun to exist in the mind that brought it forth, may be doubted; not so that Dante ranks amongst the glories of this century, which ripened him to the age required for participation in government; which saw him officiate, as not only one of the Priors of the Republic, but as ambassador at Naples, where he formed with Charles Martel, Charles of Anjou’s grandson, a friendship, explanatory of his poetical forbearance towards the usurping grandfather.

The fiction of the peninsula was, during this century, limited to short prose tales, too similar, in the worst feature, to the French. Of these, the Cento Novelle antiche, in which Frederic II’s Court is depicted as the resort of Artists of all descriptions, are perhaps, the oldest.

But, in the second half of the century, Italian prose was more worthily employed by the Florentines, Ricordano Malespini, and Giovanni Villani, the first writers of history in Lingua Toscana; Matteo Spinelli, who preceded them, having recorded the events, in which, from 1247 to 1268, he appears to have been an actor, in the Neapolitan dialect. Villani’s style is easy, flowing, and much admired by compatriot critics. He carried on the narrative nearly to his own death, but is really authority only for what occurred within his personal knowledge, strangely blundering as to facts, either geographically, or chronologically, distant, even within the peninsula. His history was continued by members of his family.

In Germany, the literary use of the living language, although introduced by Frederic II into legislation, appears long confined to poetry, in all branches of which the thirteenth century was rich. The highest place is of course taken by the cultivators of the before-mentioned Kunst-Poesie (Artistic poetry); who, after a long interval of contemptuous neglect, appear, at the present day, again to command nearly as much admiration amongst their erudite compatriot posterity, as they could amongst their contemporaries. The narrative, in artistic poetry, was distinguished by the chivalrous character of the story, its skilful construction and conduct, a carefully polished style and epic dimensions, from the ruder ballads, belonging to the humbler Volks-Poesie or popular poetry. All the romances were long supposed to be translations from those of the trouveurs; though generally so Germanized, with so much chastening of the immorality, as to give them an air of Teutonic originality. Modern German critics think some of them original, and others taken, like the Lais of Marie de France, directly from Welsh and Breton tales. As to the comparative merit of the Artistic poets, these critics agree only as to two persons of the triad, that they place at the head of the class,—Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strasburg. As the third, some name Heinrich von Veldeke, others, Hartmann von der Aue. The undisputed two are esteemed masters of their art as romance writers, of which Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival is held a first-rate specimen. This poem is the development and Germanization of a French Rouman written at the close of the preceding century, and is peculiar enough to deserve a few words:—Parzival, the son of a slain warrior, reared by his mother in strict seclusion to guard him from his father’s fate, casually meeting with some knights, is awakened to chivalrous yearnings, goes forth in blundering ignorance, fights knight-like, commits serious offences against morality as well as good manners, misses offered glory and happiness, is converted by a hermit, and, passing through numerous trials, proves the only one of Arthur’s knights, whose purity and valiancy are equal to achieving the high and holy adventure of the San Graal.

In contrast to such chivalry, Hartmann von der Aue produced a romance, Der Arme Heinrich (Poor Henry), of which the vital spirit is that enthusiastic piety, to which this world is nothing, save as the road to heaven. Poor Henry is a great noble, but a leper, curable only by virgin blood; and the daughter of one of his vassals gives hers, out of neither woman’s love nor vassal’s loyalty, but simply as a means of getting speedily to heaven. The peculiar tenderness and delicacy of the poet strikingly distinguish Poor Henry from the numberless legends of warlike saints, whose horrific martyrdoms are relieved by the wildest marvels of Arabian fiction.

But the grand, the sterling production of the mediaeval German Muse—an earlier birth, almost opening the century—was the Niebelungen Lied, (Lay of the Niebelungs,) epic in tone and spirit. The most esteemed German critics, as Goethe, the Grimms, and Gervinus, consider this poem as the Christianized, and, according to the ideas of the day, modernized, contexture of old Heathen lays resembling, though differing in tone of feeling, as in important incidents, those of the Edda. They conceive that each successive generation of ballad singers or reciters, either unconsciously or purposely, adapted the strain to the feelings and habit of their audience; whose sympathy they sought to quicken by interweaving portions of recent history. Thus the introduction of Attila and the Huns is ascribed to the ravages of the Magyars in the ninth and tenth centuries. Three questions relative to the Niebelungen Lied are still undecided. One, its nationality, whether Scandinavian or Low German: Gervinus infers, from so much of the scene lying upon the lower Rhine, that the story originated in the Netherlands; but that, the uncongenial commercial spirit smothering the poetic, it was there forgotten, and appropriated by Southern Germany. Another, whether the poem be allegorical or historical; and, if the latter, whether the idealized history be that of the Burgundian settlement upon the Rhine; of the Franks establishing themselves in Gaul; or of the Barbarian Emperors of the West-Roman Empire^²⁹³) The third is, whether the author of the poem, in its present form, were Heinrich von Ofterdingen, the imaginative son of a sober citizen of Erfurth, or Klingsohr, otherwise Klinsor, a physician, geometrician, astrologer, privy councillor, and reputed wizard, as well as a poet. The HEL-DENBUCH(Book of Heroes), which ranks next in estimation, Gudrun, and the Rosen-Garten, in a manner belong to— might be said to form a sort of cycle with—the Niebelungen Lied. Late in the century a Brabanter, Jan van Heeln, strove to redeem the poetic reputation of Lower Lorrain, by celebrating, in a Low German epic, the warlike feats of a Duke of Brabant.

The Lyrics of Artistic poetry, were—need it be repeated?—those of the Minnesingers, amongst whom, as amongst the troubadours, were still to be found princes; as Otho IV, Margrave of Brandenburg, Henry the Magnificent, the tournament-giving Margrave of Misnia, and a Henry, Duke of Lower Silesia. That Princes of the Empire should likewise prove Princes of Parnassus, was hardly to be expected; and, in fact, the latter title can be claimed by only one amongst the Minnesingers swarming throughout the century. This one is Walter von der Vogelweide, in whose case Minnesinger might seem a misnomer, so few of his lays are devoted to love. He sang every species of sentiment, every occurrence, natural, social, or political; and his strains exhibit the fancy of the troubadour blended with German feeling. Whereupon it must be observed, that Alexander Humboldt holds love of nature to be a characteristic of all the Kunst-poesie of this century. It is mortifying to add, that many of these admired compositions, many even of Walter von der Vogelweide’s, are dedicated to the panegyric or satire of prince or noble, according as their gratuities had satisfied or disappointed the author’s expectations. It must not be omitted, that these German Lyrists, mindful that “Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round,” composed dancing songs, or songs that ruled the dance, in lieu, it is supposed, of instrumental music.

In the first quarter of this century, the Thuringian Court of Landgrave Hermann (St. Elizabeth’s father-in-law) was the haunt of German poets, who found in him an efficient patron. His assistance enabled Heinrich von Veldeke to complete his long-interrupted version of the Eneid; he persuaded Albert von Halberstadt to translate Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Wolfram von Eschenbach to remodel one of his less important romances, Wilhelm von Orense. His Court was the scene of the extraordinary poetic tournament, known as the Wartburg-Krieg; Anglicé, the Wartburg War, in which, we are assured, that the beaten candidate was to lose his head,—a condition of such a contest, the harder to believe, because, the combatants being six, it would seem as though there could be but one victor, over five vanquished, and, therefore, death-doomed rivals: happily, though puzzlingly, no such execution took place. But this improbability must not place the story amongst mediaeval fictions: for that this war of song was fought upon the Wartburg, A.D. 1207, under the patronage of Landgrave Hermann and Landgravine Sopnia, is unquestionable; though the accuracy of its poetic history, attributed to either Ofterdingen or Eschenbach, or to both conjointly, may be mistrusted. The six champions were, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Heinrich von Rispach, Walter von der Vogelweide, and Reiner von Zweter or Zwetzen, nobles, Heinrich von Ofterdingen and Bieterolf aus Eisenach, plebeians. The poets were divided into two parties, by Eschenbach’s declared preference of Breton and French subjects, for his lays, and his admiration of Philip Augustus as the modern Maecenas, in opposition to Ofterdingen, the partisan, as might be expected, of national subjects and patrons; amongst whom he extolled, not, as might also be expected, his princely host the Landgrave, but Leopold the Glorious, of Austria. Ofterdingen’s head,—whether, as is asserted, he was struck dumb at the point of triumph by the sudden appearance of the Landgravine, or was overpowered by a sense of his own audacity in thus standing single against five, the other four having joined Eschenbach—was, we are told, forfeited; when, as the only chance of saving it, he, or the merciful Sophia, proposed summoning the wizard Klingsohr from Hungary, to decide who was the victor in this intellectual melee. He came, seemingly, in the double capacity of Tilter and Judge of the lists; for he first broke a theological lance with Eschenbach, and then pronounced Ofterdingen the victor, who thereupon received the prize from the hand of the Landgravine. Of decapitating the vanquished, nothing more is heard.

Later in the century, Italy robbing Germany of the habitual presence of the Imperial Court, the patronage of literature devolved upon the successors of Leopold the Glorious. This was a heavy blow to the spirit of German poetry; the good-natured sensuality of the Austrians, combining with the licentiousness of Frederic the Combative, to degrade its tone to that of mere social amusement. In strains adapted solely to such a purpose, neither depth of passion, nor wild flights of vigorous imagination, could counteract the growing influence of cities; which, after the extinction of the Babenbergs and the Hohenstaufen, appears, for a while at least, to have dethroned Apollo for Momus, or rather for “Gentle Dulness” and the jokes she loves. At burgher festivals, the myths of heathen Frank or Burgundian forefathers awoke as little interest as the adventures of an errant knight, deemed the prototype of the dreaded and abhorred marauding noble. Jocularity or utility was now required of the Muse; and didactic poetry, if the name may be given to mere versified rules of commonplace morality, or proverbs, arose, in somewhat incongruous companionship with Bacchanalian songs, and the coarsest, grossest buffoonery. Of the earlier strain nothing remained but the mystical religious effusions, in which pious minds sought relief. Singing schools were now established, which may be presumed to have led the way to the complete triumph, exhibited a century later, of the municipal over the poetic temperament, in a Guild of Poets, admittance into which was earned, not by flowers of fancy, but by strict observance of certain capricious rules. Under the Swabian dynasty, Germany is said to have produced two hundred poets; a favourite figure, seemingly, in the statistics of Parnassus.

The Drama did not in this century fulfil the promise of the last. Works of this description are scarcely mentioned, save a Commedia Spirituals, said to have been performed at Padua, in 1243, and a piece ascribed to Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury, in which the Mystery and the Morality are blended, his allegorical personages discussing the lot of Adam after his fall, and appealing to the Redeemer in person to judge between them. The representation of Mysteries so generally appears in the light, almost, of an act of devotion, that it is matter of some surprise to find Innocent III treat them as desecrating the churches in which they took place;—desecrating churches in which the Fete de l’Ane was allowed to be celebrated; in which at festivals the people danced; not to speak of their frequent use as town halls, or of the regular Parisian Easter custom of blessing hams at Notre Dame, and selling them almost in the portico of the Cathedral! Kings and great princes appear now to have entertained companies of actors—the Archbishop of Cologne and Duke of Brabant, when sent to England to escort the future Empress to Germany, are said to have been accompanied by theirs, upon whom Henry III lavished gifts. If these were of the Jongleur class, as is likely, that may explain the degradation of the histrionic art.

With respect to the rest of Europe. In Spain, James I, of Aragon, who has recorded his own feats in Spanish prose, claims rank, chronologically, as the third historian in a modern language, Bernardus Thesaurarius—either a Frenchman or a Syro-Frank—being the second, and the Neapolitan Spinelli the fourth; whilst, as the century rolled on, the next royal Spanish historian and poet as also a legislator, geometrician, astronomer, and astrologer, Alfonso X of Castile, the two Florentines and Joinville, shew the increasing general taste for information intelligibly imparted. James likewise wrote also a philosophical treatise, entitled Libro de la Sabieza. Some religious Spanish poetry is mentioned, as is a poem upon Alexander the Great, of the same character as the older Latin and the contemporary French rivals. In Denmark no notice of new authors occurs in this century; during which Snorre Sturleson, Governor of Iceland for Hako, King of Norway, was still busy with the compilation of the Younger Edda and his History, the only monuments of Scandinavian literature bearing this date. The Slavonian countries were a little less sterile. In Russia a sort of vernacular epopaea, upon a warlike expedition of the Russian Prince Ivor, was produced, evidently in the very beginning of the century, inasmuch as the bard personally addresses the Grand Duke Wsewolod III, who died in 1213; and somewhat later a Chronicle of Volhynia appeared- Poland’s Latin chroniclers have already been named, and other Slavonian poetry must, in this century, be sought where, perhaps, few would look for it, viz., in Bohemia and Servia. In the former kingdom, Hanka found in an old church tower, A.D. 1817, some very antiquated poetry in the Czech form of Slavonian. One of the pieces, celebrating the successful resistance opposed by the Heathen Czechs to their Christian invaders, critics conversant with the language have pronounced to be spiritedly dramatic, rivalling if not surpassing all mediaeval poetry. The supposed date of this poem is 1290. Servian chronicles and poetry of this century are reported to have been yet more recently discovered. In the East-Roman empire, Greek literature never recovered from the wound inflicted by Latin conquest; and a proof of its imminent if not actual extinction is said to exist in the Biblioth£que du Roi at Paris, in the shape of a Romaic MS. of this century.

Geography, including Ethnology, made some progress through the natural means of acquiring information upon such subjects, viz., travelling. Towards the middle of this century, the Pope sent forth missionaries, mostly Franciscans, to convert the Heathen, especially the Mongols; and the Friars, if failing in the object of their journey, brought back considerable knowledge of the countries they had visited; and these were several. Whilst some went among the idolaters of Africa, others set forth eastward from Palestine; and the party, commissioned by Innocent IV to convert Mangu Khan, left a detachment in Russia, then nearly terra incognita to the rest of Europe. About the same time, Lewis IX sent Rubruquis, alias Ruischbrock, upon a political errand to the same Mangu Khan; and the diplomatist addressed a written report of his expedition to the King. The prolonged mercantile journeys, above mentioned, yielded similar harvests. The father and uncle of Marco Polo would not have returned, even when they did, from their commercial expedition, but for the compulsory honour of accompanying an envoy from the Mongol, Kublai Khan. His own yet more prolonged travel and its record have been named and are known. These were all land journeys, maritime discovery not having yet begun, at least successfully; for the Genoese are said to have attempted forestalling their yet unborn, illustrious compatriot, Columbus, in the search for a western route to India. An exploring squadron passed the Straits of Gibraltar, into the broad Atlantic, but was never heard of more; a damper, probably to the spirit of naval enterprise.

Nevertheless, the guide and facilitator of such expeditions, the Mariner’s Compass, was now evidently too well known not to have been in general use. Brunetto Latino, in his Tesoro, accurately describes it and its uses; of which, earlier in the century, Guiot de Provins and Jacques de Vitry speak familiarly; and the lately named Alfonso X, el Sabio, in his Siete Partidas, distinctly calls the needle, the sailor’s guide in dark nights. In the very first quarter of the century, Leonardo Fibonaccio introduced Arabic numerals into Italy, if they were not earlier known there,  another open question. Astronomy was so far advanced, that two eclipses, occurring, the one in 1267, the other in 1270, were accurately calculated and foretold by a monk; although the description given of a comet, which, visiting this solar system in the year 1264, is said to have covered from a third to one-half of the visible sky with its enormous, bifurcated tail, may not awaken much respect for the accuracy of mediaeval observation. If Friar Bacon really did present to his protector, Clement IV, a scheme of Calendar reform—of which the Bodleian library possesses a copy—similar to that which, after an interval of centuries, was introduced by Gregory XIII, the Friar, like Frederic II, was too much in advance of his age for appreciation ; the Pope rejected a scheme that would disturb the settled times of Church festivals. Astronomy bad, in fact, scarcely yet begun to supersede or to rival astrology; even the philosophic Frederic II seeming to have prized the wondrous Michael Scott, quite as much in his proper capacity of Imperial Astrologer, as in that of translator of Aristotle, and brother-inquirer into Natural History. Frederic, however, tested astrology ere believing in it. The story goes that, A.D. 1236, he bade his Astrologer learn from the stars by what gate he would leave the city in which he was then sojourning, write down the name, and give it to him in a sealed note. When the sealed note was in his own hand, he ordered a piece of the town wall to be broken down, rode out through the gap, thinking thus to baffle the prediction, and opening the note, read, “Through the newest gate.” He was convinced. But to return to more real science. Early iu the thirteenth century a Pole, named Vitellio Ciolak wrote upon Optics, his system being borrowed, it is conceived, from the Arab Al Hasen, who lived in the twelfth. Spectacles are said to have been the invention of this century. Of the state of medicine there is little to be known beyond the course of professional study prescribed by Frederic II,‘ which includes botany, chemistry, anatomy, logic, and astrology. With respect to the fees demanded by physicians and paid by patients, some little information has been preserved. Taddeo, a Florentine leech of this century, said to be the first Christian who rivalled his Hebrew and Arab brethren, when summoned to a distance bargained for 50 gold scudi per day as his regular fee, with a safe escort out and home again; from the Pope, Honorius III, demanding double that sum. In ordinary cases a load of hay—a physician being bound to keep a horse—was no unusual fee.

So great an honour did Bologna esteem Taddeo to her University, where he had studied, that she placed his family upon a footing with the families of Jurists, and granted the privileges of law students to his scholars.

Books were still costly, beyond what any but the really affluent could afford, and the price was greatly enhanced by the practice of illuminating them. A portion of the Pandects, the Digestum Vetus, and the Digestum Novum, sold at Pisa, at the opening of this century, for sixteen Bolognese lire, equal to about four guineas; and a Bible, at Bologna, A.D. 1279, for eighty Modenese lire, or about seventeen pounds sterling, the Bolognese lire being worth more than the Modenese. Cheaper copies were indeed made for students; but still so dear, that lending books, and that in portions, became a regular business, by which the lenders, called stationarii, acquired fortunes.

Architecture made great progress in this century; whilst the Byzantine style degenerated, the Gothic order of church architecture is generally allowed to have attained to its perfection, all subsequent additions being merely decorative. The proof is found in the names of churches, begun, carried forward, or completed in the thirteenth century; as, in Italy, the already-mentioned beautiful church of St. Francis at Assisi, which introduced the pointed arch to Italy; the cathedrals of Orvieto and Florence, planned and begun; those of Sienna and Arezzo, in progress.

But Italy was not the native land of Gothic architecture. Transplanted thither from Germany, and called Tedesco (German) Rome needed it not, having her magnificent temples and basilicas to convert into Christian churches, as had other Italian cities. Hence Italy has least to show in this line. In Germany, the cathedrals of Cologne, Strasburg, Ratisbon, Lausanne, the church of St. Elizabeth at Marburg, St Gudule’s at Brussels, and others, were, at this epoch, some begun, some finished. So were most of the fine old French churches, especially those of Rheims, Amiens, Beauvais, Notre Dame, and St. Denis, the last two completed in this century. So likewise, were, in England, amongst others, Westminster Abbey, York Minster, and Salisbury Cathedral, and in Spain, the Cathedral of Toledo. If Frederic II had no equally splendid church to show, he may, probably, claim the Campanile at Gaeta, capriciously ascribed to his grandfather, Frederic I, who never even visited Apulia, with which, till his son’s marriage, he was really unconnected. But the grandson* in whatever he built, preferred imitating classic models, the beauty of which he And Nicolo Pisano inly felt; and he appears to have given more attention to civil than ecclesiastical architecture. He built the Neapolitan Castel Nuovo, and has left some other monuments of his taste in this art. Charles of Anjou, as mentioned in the history, employed Nicolo Pisano, or his son Giovanni, and their scholars, in building at least one church or abbey. These artists completed the Campo Santo of Pisa, which, though no church, as a place of burial belongs to church architecture. The cities, also, however emulous of each other’s splendour in churches, might at this epoch be yet more intent upon honouring their municipal magistracies, t. e,₉ themselves, with buildings for purposes of government, than upon ecclesiastical decoration. About this time arose the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, in which resided, as well as sat, Priors, Anziani, &c.; the Palazzo del Comune at Piacenza, the Palazzo della Ragione at Padua, &c.; whilst bridges, arsenals, and other works of public utility, were everywhere built, as in some places were castle-palaces. At Rome, Innocent III—who avowedly patronized the arts, and, as Pope, embellished as well as repaired the church, to which, as a cardinal, he had been attached—rebuilt the Vatican, employing one Marchionne, an architect who may think himself fortunate in being thus renowned; for—freemasonry, perhaps, absorbing the fame of the individual into the body—few names of early architects have been recorded. Amongst the few are, the Florentine, Arnolfo di Lapo, William of Innsbruck, Bononi, who built the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the German Jacob, and Erwin von Steinbach, who planned and began the Strasburg Minster.

Sculpture is more indebted than architecture to Frederic II, who is said to have been the first person sensible to the beauty of the antique, after the barbarian torrent had swept away classic art, together with taste and civilization. Appreciating the works of the Hellenic chisel, he sought and collected the remains, of what the early Christians, seeing in a statue an infraction of the second commandment, had zealously destroyed. And, to the study of the treasures of art, thus presented to the artist’s eye, has the sudden and prodigious advance apparent in the works of Nicolo Pisano, his son Giovanni, and their scholars, been attributed; an advance, by artistic judges pronounced incomprehensible.     But, if Lanzi’s account, that Nicolo had endeavoured to form himself upon an antique sarcophagus, carved in basso relievo, with Hippolytus hunting, be correct, as the sarcophagus, in which were deposited the ashes of Marchioness Beatrice, mother of the great Countess, would be in Tuscany—where, in the Pisan Duomo, it still remains—the Emperor would seem to have owed his classic taste to the artist, rather than the artist to him. The pulpit of the Sienna cathedral is esteemed Nicolo’s masterpiece; but Pisa, Lucca, Bologna, and Arezzo, still glory in rilievos, of father and son; which, if falling short of ideal perfection, are works of genius, displaying spirit and expression, congenial with the architecture they adorn, and truly inconceivable when compared to the state of the sister art, painting. In Germany likewise, sculpture, if in its higher department, statuary, no progress is perceptible—as, taking the effigies of Philip and Irene upon their tomb at Walzheim as specimens of the art of the day, must be admitted—carving in stone, wood, and ivory, was rapidly advancing towards the beauty and delicacy to which it presently attained.

Painting received, in the beginning of the century, what may be thought either an impulse or a check, when the Crusaders’ conquest of Constantinople dispersed Greek artists—still, however degenerate, very superior in the mechanical part of their art—over Europe, especially over Italy and Germany, where they established—if the word may be used for what in Italy proved so transitory—their school. The earliest Italian school named, is that of Sienna, however jejune, more susceptible of improvement than the Byzantine; and a picture painted by Guido da Sienna, in 1221, is praised by judges. But not till later in the century did the progress really begin, stimulated possibly by that of sculpture. In 1235, the first portrait from the life was painted, that of Fra Elia, the deposed Minorite, Father Guardian, by Giunta Pisano. In the second half Cimabue flourished, decorating, with his pencil, amongst other sacred edifices, the church at Assisi, and was latterly assisted by his lowly born pupil Giotto, who is held to have given, by variety of posture, more life, and something of a dramatic nature to the art. But, in truth, the thought of what their successors were to become is required, to make the productions of these first discoverers that the graphic art needed improvement, interesting to any but scientific artists and antiquaries; so deficient are they, though not without expression and a certain vitality, in all that captivates the eye of the mere connoisseur. Painting was, however, as much prized then as now; arguing from the many extant orders for adorning the apartments of Henry III and his Queen, in divers royal castles, with pictures presenting historical and sacred subjects; and with the last class, many church windows were “storied.”

The Italian school of Mosaicists now fully rivalled the Byzantine, judging from a comparison of the Mosaics executed by Jacopo or Giacomo Turila, a Siennese Franciscan, in Santa Maria Maggiore, at Rome, to those which Byzantine artists were simultaneously adding to the abundant ornaments of St. Mark’s at Venice, long after this church had been considered as finished. Gold and silver images with jewelled eyes—goldsmith’s work, and even embroidery, it will be remembered, then ranked amongst the fine arts—richly embossed gold work set with jewellery, engraved precious stones, silks with figures inwoven, in gold thread, or subsequently, embroidered, chiefly destined for the embellishment of altars and shrines, abounded. Lewis IX, upon his return from his first Crusade, in gratitude for his escape from a storm during the homeward voyage, ordered a silver ship, completely rigged, and containing silver images of himself, his family, and the crew, to be made, and sent to the shrine of St. Nicholas: to whom, indeed, the Queen, in the extremity of the danger, had vowed such an offering. The first letters patent of nobility heard of in France were granted, A.D. 1271, by Philip III to Raoul, a goldsmith, who had skilfully and splendidly wrought a sarcophagus, or a shrine, for St. Genevieve.

Of progress in Music no especial notice appears. Most churches seem to have had organs; but so had strolling musicians, whence the style of instrument may be conjectured. Such as the art was, however, both Frederic and Manfred encouraged it, their artists being, apparently, for the most part Saracens.

With respect to the social condition of Europe, there seems not much to add to the last chapter of this kind. The progress towards modern civilization and refinement was necessarily slow, and longer periods than three quarters of a century are required, to produce striking change. Chivalry, Troubadours, and the Minnesingers, had brought woman more prominently forward; but there was no habitual society in which she could hold her place, and only so can her general influence be felt. At tournaments everywhere, and, in the south of France, at Cours Amour,  she reigned supreme; and, to the causes producing this species of occasional female sovereignty, has the worship of the Virgin—first known in this century—been ascribed. But tournaments, if frequent, were not of daily occurrence; and when there were none, woman remained secluded, the noble dame in her castle, where she passed her time—as of yore—in superintending the spinning, weaving, and other domestic manufactures, carried on in all families, until the manufacturer, extending his business as he improved in skill, supplanted home produce; when this occupation must have died away. Such being the life of noble ladies, citizen’s wives and daughters were then, probably, everywhere, as now in Germany, the mere upper-servants of their husbands and fathers. What has been said of the character of poetry under burgher patronage might alone mark the position of city dames.

Tournaments indeed abounded, becoming more numerous and more extravagantly magnificent, as if in defiance of papal prohibition; save in Italy, where, the democratic temper of the towns, and the utter absorbing of the few independent nobles in political faction, being unfavourable to such pleasures, they were long almost unknown, and first introduced—at least into the southern portion of the peninsula, for something of the kind, in honour of Frederic II, was seen at Padua—strange to say, by the Popes’ protégé, the disdainer of all pleasures and pastimes, Charles of Anjou. The prohibitions became more and more positive and vehement, as successive Popes saw more of the lives, which they would fain have dedicated to again wresting the cradle of Christianity from misbelievers, sacrificed to mere amusement; and lives were so sacrificed, purposely as well as casually. As, e.g, at a tournament in the year 1234, the Countess of Clermont betrayed so deep an interest in the feats and perils of Florence, Earl of Holland, that her husband rushed upon his presumed rival; a fierce combat ensued; both fell, mortally wounded, and the fair cause of the disaster died broken-hearted. A tournament held near Cologne, in 1241, if barren of such romance, cost, unintentionally, the lives of 60 knights. In 1268, a Margrave of Brandenburg was slain in this chivalrous sport; as was, in 1290, another Prince of the Empire, a Duke of Bavaria; and four years later, in 1294, at a tournament given by the Duke of Bar, in honour of his marriage with an English Princess, Edward I’s daughter, the Duke of Brabant, in his youth a renowned tilter, but now somewhat advanced in years, being wounded and unhorsed, presently died, forgiving his inconsolable antagonist. Yet so unsuccessful, when opposed to the taste and temper of the age, did Church weapons prove, though supported by such fatal evidence of their being rightfully employed, that, whilst the Fourth Crusade owed its existence to one tournament, at the very opening of the century, towards its close, permission to hold another for practice in chivalrous feats, was made the condition of receiving the Cross; and in this tournament for practice, a second Conte de Clermont was, if not killed, rendered a maniac for fife, by a blow on the head. That ladies were eager spectatresses of these death-dealing sports might, at this time of day, seem incredible, but for the known fact that Spanish ladies gaze upon the disgustingly bloody incidents of a bull-fight, even as French and Englishwomen do upon a tragedy. That, so attending tournaments, they would watch every movement of the tilters with intense interest, might half disrobe themselves in zeal to shower favours, each upon her own especial knight amongst the combatants, as told of them, is perfectly conceivable; scarcely so, that from such tremendous excitement they repaired to the ball, which terminated the day’s pleasures, and danced as light heartedly as though the sanguinary scene had been a dramatic representation, leaving the dead men alive. Whilst speaking of the pleasures of the age, the Fete des Fous, mentioned for the first time as celebrated at Ratisbon in 1246, must not be overlooked, more especially as, however inconceivable the idea in more refined times, the festival in question was really deemed a religious observance, even as the revolting festival of the Ass was a commemoration of the flight to Egypt.

Perhaps to the universal delight in a sanguinary pastime may partly be imputed the continuing cruelty that disfigures the age. The frequent massacre of prisoners of war, the atrocities perpetrated on both sides during the crusade against the Albigenses, have been seen; so have the burning of fugitives in buildings which they thought sheltered them, the dashing out the brains of infants against the pillars of a church, the executions and mutilations ordered by Charles of Anjou, and their fearful retaliation in the Sicilian Vespers. Nor does any moderating of legally inflicted punishment appear, even subsequent to this period, if the legal doom of traitors at Florence, in the next century, was, to be planted in the earth with the head downward. Happily this torture could not last long. Do the coldblooded vagaries of individuals more characterize an age than such wholesale, authorized atrocities? Here is one specimen amongst many. A knight of the Archbishopric of Treves is reported to have plundered his own peasants, burnt their cottages, forcibly deflowered their daughters, and laughed at the agonies of women in child-birth, whom he suffered to die in his castle for want of help. Yet amidst the perpetration of such deeds, a contemporary writer, Rolandinus, chivalrously exclaims against the soldier who wounded the captured Ezzelino, saying, “To wound a prisoner, noble or ignoble, is base.”

The extravagant magnificence displayed upon festive occasions, undiminished since the preceding century, still bewilders the imagination, whilst everyday comfort improved but slowly. Mirrors indeed had been introduced, whether of glass or metal; St. Elizabeth had one, set in ivory; and mirrors set in lead do not seem uncommon. Glass lamps likewise are mentioned; but such costly rarities were glass windows, that an Earl of Northumberland, having indulged in such splendid luxury, the windows were carefully taken out and stowed away, when he and his Countess left home. If the apartments of Henry Ill’s Queen were ornamented with historical pictures, and hung with tapestry, and her table was actually furnished with forks, her floors, like those of her royal predecessors, were carpeted only with rushes, fresh ones being strewed over the decayed, and her whole stock of household furniture, even to her bed curtains, travelled with her from palace to palace. If such were the accustomed discomfort of the highest classes, those of the inferior may be surmised; yet was the luxury of the middle classes, especially in Italy, thought to require sumptuary laws for its restraint, and provoked the indignation of reformers, whose irate regrets afford some knowledge of the conditions of life in the thirteenth century. Ricobaldus Ferrariensis, who wrote towards its close, thus mourns over the change in the manners of citizens in the less than half century that had elapsed since the days of Frederic II: “Then a man and his wife eat off the same plate; there were no wood-handled knives, and not more than two drinking cups in a house. Candles of wax or tallow were unknown; a servant held a torch (probably a piece of pine wood) during supper. Men’s clothes were of leather, unlined, scarcely any gold or silver was seen in their dress. The common people eat flesh only three times in the week, and kept their cold meat for supper. Few drank wine in summer. A small stock of corn was esteemed riches. The portions of women were inconsiderable, and their dress plain, even after marriage. The pride of men turned upon being well provided with arms and horses; of the nobles upon the height of their towers, with which all Italian cities are filled.” The reformer imputes the change from these homely ways to Charles of Anjou’s Provençal followers. Ricobaldus speaks only of the citizens. The species of luxury which, amongst the higher classes of Italy, was even earlier superseding the homeliness of every day life, may be gathered from the satiric sonnets, addressed, A.D. 1260, by Folgore di San Geminiano to some gentlemen of Sienna, professing to teach them how to amuse themselves. He speaks of bedrooms well warmed and lighted, with silken sheets upon the beds; for pastimes, of hunting, hawking, fishing, pelting fair maidens with snowballs, and lovemaking in beautiful gardens; of banquets with iced wines, oranges, and other fruits. Now this being prior to Charles’s invasion, the luxury of Provence must be supposed still greater; whence it may be suspected, that the daughter of the Earl of Provence did not increase her personal indulgences, as much as she raised her dignity, by marrying the King of England. But it is known from other sources that the commercial cities of Italy were distinguished by a frugality which helped to accumulate the large mercantile fortunes, whence the owners gained the designation of merchant-princes. The traders of Lower Lorrain, on the contrary, are always described as self-indulgent; luxurious at table, magnificent, without extravagance, in mansion and apparel. Before the end of the century, the splendid attire, in which the city dames of Bruges met the Queen of France, provoked a jealous anger in her Majesty, from which Flanders suffered severely.

The Church still thundered in vain against the capricious absurdities of fashion, whilst sumptuary laws, or police regulations, forbade the middle classes to ape the prodigality of their superiors in these respects. This species of minor legislation was more usefully occupied in guarding against widely destructive fires, by ordering town houses to be tiled instead of thatched. Coats of arms were beginning to supersede effigies upon seals; but their use was still confined to the higher ranks; even knights were obliged to authenticate their legal documents by the seal of their feudal superior.

Superstition, as well as bigotry, still deformed the sincere devotion of the age, and priest-craft was still on the alert to coin weakness. Of this a single instance may suffice to complete, in some measure, the portraiture of the thirteenth century. In the year 1288, Rudolph, Archbishop of Salzburg, being at feud with the Duke of Austria and short of money to pay troops, announced a vision, in which St. Virgil, the eighth occupant of his see, had appeared to him, pointing out the precise spot in the cathedral in which his ashes lay. The prelate next obtained the Pope’s permission to exhume the sacred relics; then convoked a Synod of the clergy of the province to assist at the solemn ceremony, and promised indulgences to all the laity who should attend. Amidst masses, psalms, and litanies, the excavation, in the designated spot, began. When it had proceeded a certain length, the Archbishop and four of his suffragan bishops, took the spades into their own hallowed hands. But they toiled in vain; no symptoms of a dead saint appeared. Then they left the opened trench, performed divers sacred rites, took off their shoes—how useful soever in digging—and barefoot resumed their unwonted labours, when the body was instantly found. So prodigious was the concourse of spectators, that their offerings sufficed amply to equip the archiepiscopal army.

 

THE END.