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CHAP. Germany, or the King of England? Such a betrayal of humanity, such a perversion of every Christian principle, desecrated the Popedom, and precluded every reasoning mind from considering it as the interpreter of the wisdom or the dispenser of the favours of the Divine Being.

At the same time it must be confessed, that this disgust of the Papal authority and dissent towards its doctrines, neither issued from the classes, nor assumed the shape, calculated to erect a barrier against the evils of sacerdotalism. Dissent sprung up among the upper ranks, amongst the crusaders who had conversed with enlightened Saracens, and who found their religious reasoning quite as sensible and plausible as those of the monks and doctors at home. These free thinkers had neither the sincerity nor the zeal to preach and practise their opinions, but communicated them one to another, expressed them in jokes and in verse, and in some cases formed secret societies, in which they might indulge safely in the contempt of the only taught religion. But they either saw the uselessness or wanted the courage to appeal to a public as yet so ill-informed and unfit to embrace a creed founded upon, and compatible with, common sense and reason. In the beautiful and rich Languedoc, these opinions of the upper class filtered gradually down to the middle and lower strata of society, till the whole region became infidel to Rome. But even then, although the passive zeal to die bravely was not wanting to the Protestant martyr, the ardent enthusiasm that organises and animates resistance did not exist. And the creed of the Albigenses, with the poetry of the troubadours, were both drowned in blood. It is remarkable that in the course of that war, throughout the resistance of the Toulousans and of Provence, there did not arise a hero or a great character in the cause of the reformers. The Counts of Toulouse themselves, the Viscount of Beziers, and other chiefs, all showed a want

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of resolution, a mistrust of themselves and of their CHAP. people, which was ruinous to their cause, and which greatly diminishes our sympathy for them. Whilst on the side of the Church stood forth such a character as De Montfort, forbidding, no doubt, by its cruelty and fanaticism, but still displaying that whole-souled enthusiasm, that indomitable energy, that devotion to a principle, which commands our respect by its gloomy grandeur, however unjust its aim, and however execrable and immoral its means of accomplishing it. Nor does Simon de Montfort stand alone as an eminent man, fitly selected and employed by Rome in its cause. There were St. Dominick and St. Francis, types of missionary genius, the one destined to crush and extinguish the kindling intellect of the middle class, the other intended to captivate the awakening sense of the humble and the poor. Wherever, indeed, there was a breach in the fortified edifice of the Romish Church, it forthwith found a man to fill it, so as to repel any attack, and crush every enemy.

But in these efforts of the Church it should not be forgotten that it perverted every principle of morality. Its vaunted breach of faith to heretics; its deceit in luring prince and people to surrender on conditions, instantly broken; its habit of suborning son to rise against father and one member of a family to betray the other; its interested interference with marriages, not to enforce chastity, but to gratify its rapacity and exercise its own power; its excommunication and dethronement of princes and monarchs, and excitement of civil and internecine war, often for no cause beyond the personal caprice or dislikes of the popes, threatened not only the political and social state of Europe with destruction, but went to efface and destroy every moral principle and feeling.

To political progress it was of course a more decided. enemy, for the Popedom could tolerate no power save

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CHAP. its own or an auxiliary to it. The establishment of aught like an organised political society in Italy, Germany, the south of France, or any country subject to Papal influence, became utterly impossible; for the churchmen were everywhere, and struck down everything, whether institutions or authority, that did not bow to spiritual supremacy. The English escaped by their determination and their distance. The French kings had been pets and protégés of the popes, who never attacked one of them with systematic or continued hatred. They were in general the instruments of the Holy See, strengthening themselves and extending their empire mainly by the support of the priesthood. But, as we have before said, the French monarchy rose in a kind of imitation, and afterwards of rivalry, to Rome, that greatly enhanced the power of the crown, and had, if we mistake not, a fatal influence in checking the formation and growth of those free institutions which the English were fortunate enough to develope and to preserve.

The political and social influence of the popes were, however, of still remote result. At the time we speak of the danger was that the cruelty, the tyranny, the immorality of the only acknowledged chief of religion would disgust the world with the creed itself which it pretended to respect as well as to interpret. It was at such a time that there succeeded to the throne of France a prince as deeply and devoutly religious as any fanatic of persecution or crusade, and yet entertaining moral sentiments of scrupulous delicacy and uprightness. Though practising the asceticism of a monk, he still distinguished between the interests of religion and those of the clergy; and that as a politician he could rise above the prejudices of the devotee, is fully evinced in that argument of his recorded by Joinville, proving how much superior a prudhomme, or honest man of the world, was to a beguin, or monk, however saintly.

Though born to the throne and ascending it at a period when right was utterly disregarded and when religion was easily wrested to sanction the worst of causes, Louis the Ninth rose above such vile principles of state-and-church craft. Reviving for his own reverence and guidance the ideas of the christian and the knight, he realised in life and act the perfection and nobleness of both. It so happened, indeed, that conquest was not required in his reign. His grandsire, sire, and mother had grasped as much as wisdom and care could retain and organise. The more difficult and beneficent duty St. Louis undertook, of being the legis lator of the vast kingdom which had so suddenly sprung up. His laws were, for the most part, opportune and wisely purposed. But still, the noble character, the great example of both political and christian virtues which St. Louis displayed upon the throne, did more to strengthen and sanctify the monarchy, and root it in the minds and respect of men, than any act or series of legislation. A sense of feudal superiority had hitherto "hedged in" the King of France. Feudal ideas were now destined to die away, and no one contributed more than St. Louis to introduce totally different principles. But the French monarchy soon found other than a feudal basis, and it owed its sacro-sanctity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in no small degree to the impeccable virtues of the good and saintly king.

Louis the Ninth was but a boy of twelve at the time of his father's death. The question of who should be regent was the first to be solved. Blanche of Castille, the young king's mother, claimed the authority, and she was supported by the cardinal legate, who disposed of the power of the Church, and was the soul of the Southern war. Blanche could also rely upon Thibaud, Count of Champague. This noble troubadour had made Blanche the lady of his thoughts and the muse of his verse, addressing to her that devotion which Dante,

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and perhaps Petrarch, paid to ideal excellence and beauty. The age did not or would not believe in the Platonism of Thibaud's attachment. But Thibaud and his county of Champagne, like the Raymonds and their county of Toulouse, were enlightened and educated, and the citizens and trading class had risen to a par with the noblesse. For these reasons both were hated

by the rude feudal chiefs. When Blanche published a letter of two bishops, who had been in attendance on Louis the Eighth, attesting that he had appointed Blanche regent; and when by virtue of such authority she summoned the barons to be present at the young king's coronation at Rheims, there was but scant attendance. The Counts of Brittany and St. Pol refused to come, accompanying their refusal by the demand that the Counts of Flanders and Boulogne, detained in prison, might be released, and no noble or prince be deprived of his dignity and lands without judgment of his peers.

Blanche had for the moment secured the adherence of him who had most pretensions to be her rival. This was Philip, the brother of the late king and son of Philip Augustus by Marie of Meran. He had been given the daughter of Renand Count of Boulogne, who was kept in prison, whilst Philip enjoyed the county. Philip, however, was one of those who hated the Count of Champagne, and when the latter came to Rheims for the coronation, Philip made the soldiers of the commune, who kept guard, close the gates against him. Such a slight incensed the poet-count, who flung himself consequently into the league of the barons. The head of this league was Peter of Dreux, Count of Brittany, who had cultivated study as much as Thibaud, and who had derived from it such a dislike to priests, that they in revenge gave him the name of Mauclerc. The Poitevins too joined the league, apparently in regret of the English connexion. Under Henry the Third the Poitevins not only enjoyed high power in England, but of course

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