CHRISTENDOM
702
CHRISTENDOM
peased the feuds of German noble families and recon-
ciled Italian cities, he led one emperor to the South of
Italy and sent another on a crusade to the East; more
wonderful still, single-handed he persuaded the Ro-
man people to forsake the antipope. Though not the
originator, he was the motive power of the Second
Crusade, and his eloquence seemed as persuasive in
the Rhine cities as in Burgundy, and as successful in
saving the Jews from the fanaticism of the crusaders
as in rousing the crusading spirit.
Besides the Church and its many activities, there were other forces at work, other expressions of the energy of youthful Christendom which must at least be enumerated. The twelfth-century renaissance was a rapid development of what may be called Franco-Norman civilization. France, if the name is given a comprehensive meaning, had conquered Eng- land and South Italy, had brought about the Crusades, and had helped the papacy to victory over the empire. It was in France that the new monastic movements took their rise, and the intellectual movement as well. The University of Paris was the university of Christen- dom, and the problems stated by the Breton Abelard excited the curiosity and the enthusiasm of young men from every country. French was spoken nearly as widely as Latin, and the medieval epic, the ro- mances of the Arthurian legend, and the lyrics of the troubadours, the three most characteristic forms of medieval vernacular literature, all were developed amongst men who spoke one of the dialects of French. Politically the Franco-Norman world was divided be- tween Plantagenet, Capetian, and the princes of the South, and the personality of Frederick Barbarossa gave a splendour to German politics, but intellectually and socially French civilization dominated Europe. It was, however, a supremacy which lay in the rapid- ity and logical thoroughness with which she expressed ideas common to the whole West. The development of Gothic architecture in England was almost parallel to the French, the epic and the Arthurian legend found a congenial soil in Germany, and the lyrical poetry of Italy was almost a younger sister to that of Provence. The same spirit seemed to be abroad from Scotland to Palermo, and the Christians of the West must have felt that they were indeed citizens of a great city.
For this sense of a common Christendom was not confined to the clergy or the knightly and baronial classes. The peasantry and the town-population had much improved their economic and legal positions since the beginning of the eleventh century; they had also profited by the education of action and expe- rience. In the movement for the Truce of God, in the Hildebrandine reform, in the Crusades, in all these struggles of a crowded age, " the holy people of God " had taken a prominent part; all had increased their self-confidence, all had drawn them closer to the clergy and to one another. Though the aim of the Hildebrandine reform was to preserve the distinctive features of the priestly life, it had not formed the clergy into a caste. Gregory VII had appealed to the laity, and the reformers found among the people allies most enthusiastic, at times indeed fanatical and cruel. The Crusades, too, had consecrated the devotion of
ili<' | ■ pilgrims as well as knightly valour. At one
i hi, when the leaders had forgotten the Holy
City for the sake of Syrian castles, it was (he zeal of tin' poor that alone saved the fortunes of tin- expedi tion, [n the other movements of the time clergy and people wiiv often united, and municipal liberties, at least in their earlier stages, found a support in the Church. Alexander III. the greatest pope of the century, was allied with the Lombard republics in their struggle with Frederick Barbarossa, tin' greatest of itsemperoi It isat leasl probable that since the
early ages of the Church, clergy and laity have never o united as in this century. Few medieval
saints have excited so much universal and popular
enthusiasm as St. Thomas of Canterbury, a martyr
for the rights of the Church and the clergy, and the
pilgrims who thronged to Canterbury from all parts
of Christendom are perhaps the best evidence of the
union between people and clergy, and between the
different nations of the West.
The pontificate of Innocent III, which began before the close of the twelfth century, was the climax of this period of Christian cosmopolitanism. It illustrates both the splendour of the ideal and the increasing dif- ficulty of realizing it. Few popes have had nobler aims than Innocent, few have been more favoured by nature and circumstance or have been apparently more successful. He was enabled to put himself at the head of a national movement in Italy, to govern Rome, where his predecessors had been weakest, to compel the King of France to respect tin- rights of marriage and the King of England those of the Church, to help in the success of two papalist candidates to the empire, and to see a crusade sail for the East. These are but some of the successes of his reign, yet it is impossible to study the fortunes of his pontificate without observing that nearly every one of his victo- ries is marked by the signs of ultimate failure. Of the two emperors whom he helped to the throne, the first repudiated all his engagements and declared open war upon him in Italy, the second was that Frederick II who was to be the most thoroughgoing foe of the papacy. The homage which Innocent won from King John contributed in a later generation to embitter the relations between England and the Holy See. In his Italian policy, disinterested as it was, can be traced the first beginnings of future evils; the political power he had acquired led to the first case of nepotism and to the first appeal to a French noble for help in tin- South of Italy. He lost control over both the relig- ious campaigns which he set in motion, for he en- deavoured unsuccessfully to protect Raymond of Toulouse from the Albigensian crusaders and to pre- vent the Venetians diverting the Fourth Crusade from Jerusalem to Constantinople.
That so great a pope should meet with failures so signal was significant of the change coming over Eu- rope. The control over temporal and even ecclesias- tical matters was slipping away from the head of Christendom, though the gnat personality of Inno- cent and the successful war waged by his successors against the empire might disguise the fact from con- temporaries. In the fourteenth century the national wars, the Great Schism, the unimpeded progress of the Turks, these were all witnesses to the divisions of Christendom. For a moment, at the time of the Council of Constance in 1 lit. th.re seemed to he a rally: the Christian society appeared to be drawing together again in order to put an end to the schism and to reform the Church: hut as a matter of facl that council was the first of European congresses, a meeting of national delegates rather than a parlia- ment of Christendom. The history of this change from the Christendom of the twelfth century to the nations of the Reformation epoch, is the history of the later Middle Aims. It is possible, however, to disentangle some of the elements ol this complicated process of disintegration.
To the modern student, who is wise after i he event, it is clear bj the eleventh century thai the Europe of the future is. not going to In- liuill up politically as an empire, and that the ultimate development of some
form of national slate is assured, the Church, though she might have preserved a large measure of social unity and linked the nations together, could never have formed a permanent, universal stale, lor Chris- tianity is not, like Islam, a political system. IVliti- cally, there seem but two alternatives: empire or na- tions. Indeed the roots of nationality can he traced deep down in geographical ami racial differences and
