OF THE EOMAN EMPIRE 261 The magnanimous spirit of Gregory the Seventh had already urban^^ bi^^ embraced the design of arming Europe against Asia ; the ardour ^'^euwa. of his zeal and ambition still breathes in his epistles. From March either side of the Alps, fifty thousand Catholics had enlisted under the banner of St. Peter ;3 and his successor reveals his in- tention of marching at their head against the impious sectaries of Mahomet. But the glory or reproach of executing, though not in person, this holy entei-prise was reserved for Urban the Second,^ the most faithful of his disciples. He undertook the conquest of the East, whilst the larger portion of Rome was pos- sessed and fortified by his rival, Guibert of Ravenna, who con- tended with Urban for the name and honours of the pontificate. He attempted to unite the powers of the West, at a time when the princes were separated from the church, and the people from their princes, by the excommunication which himself and his predecessors had thundered against the emperor and the king of France. Philip the First, of France, supported with patience the censures which he had provoked by his scandalous life and adulterous marriage. Henry the Fourth, of Geraiany, asserted the right of investitures, the prerogative of confirming his bishops by the deliver}^ of the ring and crosier. But the emperor's party was crushed in Italy by the arms of the Normans and the Countess Mathilda : and the long quarrel had been recently envenomed by the revolt of his son Conrad, and the shame of his wife,^ who, in the synods of Constance and Pla- centia, confessed the manifold prostitutions to which she had been exposed by an husband regardless of her honour and his •* Ultra quinquaginta millia, si me possunt in expeditione pro duce et pontifice habere, armata manu volunt in inimicos Dei insurgere, et ad sepulchrum Domini ipso ducente pervenire (Gregor. vii. epist. ii. 31, in tom. xii. p. 322, concil.). ■*See the original lives of Urban II. by Pandulphus Pisanus and Bernardus Guido [in his Vitae Pontificum Romanorum ; Bernard flourished at the beginning of the 14th century], in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script, tom. iii. pars i. p. 352, 353. [The continuation of the Liber Pontificalis from Gregory VII. to Honorius II. was ascribed by Baronius to Pandulfus of Pisa, and this view was adopted in Muratori's edition. But Giesebrecht has shown that the lives of Gregory VII., Victor III., and Urban II. are independent compositions and probably the work of the Cardinal Petrus Pisanus. The lives of Gelasius II., Calixtus II. , and Honorius II. were written by Pandulf, the nephew of Hugh of Alatri. See Giesebrecht, Allgemeine Monatschrift, 1852, p. 260 si/i/., and Gesch. der deutschen Kaiserzeit, iii. p. 1067-8 (5th ed.). — On Urban II. cp. M. F. Stern, Biographic des Papstes Urban II., 1883.]
- She is known by the different names of Praxes, Eupriecia, Eufrasia, and
Adelais [generally called Praxedis in the sources] ; and was the daughter of a Russian prince [Vsevlad of Kiev], and the widow of a Margrave of Brandenburg. JStruv. Corpus Hist. Germanicae, p. 340,
