the descendants of Charlemagne. Two usurpers seized and divided Burgundy. In France, the Carlovingian kings continued for another century; "but their line was interrupted two or three times by the election or usurpation of a powerful family, the counts of Paris and Orleans, who ended, like the old mayors of the palace, in dispersing the phantoms of royalty they had professed to serve. Hugh Capet, the representative of this house, upon the death of Louis V. placed himself upon the throne; thus founding the third and most permanent race of French sovereigns." "These were times of great misery to the people, and perhaps the worst that Europe has ever known." "When the restraining power of Charlemagne was removed, the nobles became so many petty sovereigns in their respective territories, and brought the scourge of tyranny and oppression home to every man's door. The South was exposed to the continual ravages of the Saracens, who were masters of the Mediterranean. Germany was assailed by the Sclavonians, who occupied the countries of Bohemia, Poland, and Pannonia. Their language is still spoken upon half the surface of Europe. All Italy, all Germany, and the South of France, felt this scourge; till Henry the Fowler, and Otho the Great, drove them back to their own limits, where, in a short time, they learned peaceful arts, adopted the religion, and followed the policy of Christendom."

The Norman pirates were a scourge equally dreadful. France was reduced to the lowest point of depression by their predatory excursions. Charles the Simple at length ceded to them the country afterwards called Normandy', and Rollo and his followers became Christians, according to the fashion of the age. Hence, a new cup of affliction, and a long source of suffering to England. The same northern pirates, called by us Danes, had long miserably harasssed and struggled with the Anglo-Saxons for the sovereignty of this island. William, a descendant of Rollo, from Normandy, completed its final subjection, and introduced an almost total change in the nobility and landed proprietors in the kingdom; but the obtruders were not absorbed into the common mass of the people till about the time of Edward III.

The continual wars, which lasted, with little intermission, for three centuries and a half, between the Norman kings of England and the sovereigns of the French monarchy, form the leading feature of French history during these ages.

A.D. 918.

2 A.D. 1066.

3 A.D. 1108.

Before the end of the twelfth century, the Spaniards had recovered much ground from the Moors. Toledo and Saragossa had fallen into their hands, and the foundations of the kingdoms of Leon and Castile, and of Arragon, had been laid.

The five nations of Germany, after their separation1 from France, elected as their sovereign, Conrad, duke of Franconia; and on his death 3, Henry the Fowler, duke of Saxony, ancestor of the three Othos, who followed him in direct succession. Otho I. conquered Italy, and recovered the imperial title. On the death of Henry 5, duke of Bavaria, Germany, with the titular empire, passed into the family of Franconia. From Conrad II., the first of this house, sprang three successive emperors, Henry III.6 IV. and V. On the extinction of this house, Lothaire, duke of Saxony, was elevated to the throne; and on his death, Conrad III.10 of the house of Swabia, to whom succeeded Frederic Barbarossa 11. In the contests between the two houses of Saxony and Swabia, originated the parties of the Guelfs and Gibelins, whose mutual struggles occupy a considerable space in the civil history of these times.

Italy, divided into a number of small states, interests us only as being the seat of the supreme pontiff, or head of the ecclesiastic state, which had its branches in every nation of the divided empire, and soon erected upon the seven hills of Rome a new spiritual monarchy, which rendered her again the city that ruled over the kings of the earth.' In the ninth century, the ecclesiastical estate had not concentred all its power in the pope and see of Rome, but exercised it in great encroachment on the civil power, in the several national synods of the bishops. Mr. Hallam approves the remark, "that the ninth century was the age of bishops, as the eleventh and twelfth were of the popes."

He produces, as a proof of this, the conduct of the prelates to the descendants of Charlemagne. An assembly of bishops declared Lothaire unworthy to reign. Another declared that Charles the Bald had forfeited his crown. He quotes the words of this prince. "No one ought to have degraded me from the throne to which I was consecrated, until at least I had been heard and judged by the bishops, through whose ministry I was consecrated - who are called the thrones of God, in which God

sitteth, and by whom He dispenses His judgments; to whose paternal chastisement I was willing to submit, and do still submit myself." He instances also the intolerable outrage of spiritual tyranny shewn towards Edwy, by Archbishop Otho and St. Dunstan; and the assertion of the bishop of Winchester, during the civil wars of Stephen and Matilda, "that it pertained chiefly to the order of clergy to elect the king." "It seemed," says this historian," as if Europe was about to pass under as absolute a domination of the hierarchy, as had been exercised by the priesthood of ancient Egypt, or the Druids of Gaul."

The Roman catholic clergy, however, who had already surrendered much of their independence, were induced, during the period of which we are treating, to clothe their chief pastor with the imperial purple, and to support his empire over the church, as the representative of Christ himself. The Gallican church made for some time a spirited, though unavailing struggle against this rising despotism. The exemption of monasteries from episcopal jurisdiction, which now began to be common, added much to the direct power of the pope. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, whole orders of monks were declared exempt, at a single stroke; and thus the Roman pontiff had armies at his command, in every district of his spiritual empire, which were ready to give effect to his decrees, against the interest both of the clergy and laity; and the greatest sovereigns were soon made to feel that the threats of the Vatican were not to be despised.

*

The chief weapon of this spiritual warfare was the sentence of excommunication, which, in its origin, was the mere exclusion of an individual from the external privileges of the Christian community, but to which, through superstition and priestcraft, most dreadful civil penalties now attached. The excommunicated person was in fact outlawed, and might be retained in prison till he obtained absolution. In some countries, his property might be confiscated. In the general estimation of mankind he was an object of abhorrence, and was shunned by friends and attendants like a person infected with leprosy. It is reported of Robert, king of France, when under this sentence, that only two servants remained with him, and that these threw into the fire all the meats which had been placed on his table. To hold any intercourse with an excommunicated person, was prohibited under pain of the lesser excommunication, which excluded from sacred rites, and subjected to penance. In some places, a bier was set before the door of the person under sen

tence, and his windows were assailed with stones; a very ancient expression, it should seem, of popular indignation. The Roman policy had contrived to extend this dreadful penalty over whole districts and nations. For the offence of the ruler, all his territories, with his vassals or subjects, were placed under an interdict. At the command of the pope, or bishop, the churches were shut up, the bells unstrung, and the funeral and other sacred rites prohibited, except baptism and extreme unction. "This was the mainspring of the machinery that the clergy set in motion, the lever by which they moved the world. From the moment that these interdicts and excommunications had been tried, the powers of the earth might be said to have existed only by sufferance'."

Rome was now in a state to command universal submission, but the extension of her dominion was long checked by her private calamities, and the extreme viciousness of her pontiffs, For more than a hundred and fifty years the annals of the papacy are filled up with a series of revolutions and crimes. Six popes were deposed, two murdered, one mutilated. Frequently two or even three competitors appeared together, and alternately drove one another from the city. This corruption of the head extended naturally to all the other members of the church. Writers concur universally in stigmatising the dissoluteness and neglect of decency that prevailed among the clergy. The mask of hypocrisy, indeed, through the pride of success, was too much laid aside, to command the respect of the most superstitious. The secular clergy were already sunk low in the reverence of the people, but the regulars, or monastic orders, still preserved at least appearances; and though they were, in fact, much degenerated from the original strictness of their rules, by their " voluntary humility," their fastings and watchings, and all the specious impostures of self-mortification, they still kept up the show of superior piety, and long retained the admiration of the people.

The detail of the violent disputes and contests respecting the celibacy of the clergy, and the investitures of benefices, hardly falls within the purpose of this history, though they intimately concern the rise and progress of the papal empire. Suffice it to say, that in the eleventh century, the famous Hildebrand, afterwards Gregory VII., restored the discipline, and extended the claims of the see of Rome; and he so far pre

vailed in his contest with the German emperor, that having, by a solemn sentence, not only excommunicated, but deposed him from his throne, he brought him as an humble supplicant to sue for absolution, and made him wait for three successive days, from morning to evening, in a woollen shirt, and with naked feet, in the outer court of the castle where he was. Gregory VII. and his immediate successors, carried the claims of the church to the utmost. But the epocha when the spirit of papal usurpation was most strikingly displayed, was the pontificate of Innocent III. In each of the three leading objects which Rome had pursued - independent sovereignty-supremacy over the Christian church-and control over the princes of the earth, it was the fortune of this pontiff to conquer.

SECT. III.

In proceeding with the secular history of the last three centuries of this religious and intellectual darkness, the more settled state of the kingdoms of the Roman catholic world, renders it unnecessary that we should attend to their domestic concerns, in order to illustrate the history of the church of Christ. They were, upon the whole, in a progressive state of improvement, as to their temporal concerns; but with respect to religion, every corruption was at its utmost height; and though, as we shall see hereafter, testimonies more and more clear and efficient were borne against the abomination which had desolated the church, it was long before any sensible impression was made upon those who governed the opinions of mankind.

"The noon-day of papal dominion," observes Mr. Hallam, "extends from the pontificate of Innocent III. inclusively, to that of Boniface VIII.; or, in other words, through the thirteenth century. Rome inspired, during this age, all the terror of her ancient name. She was once more the mistress of the world, and its kings were her vassals." "The general supremacy of the Roman church over mankind," "derived material support from the promulgation of the canon law, and a new set of legal practitioners, which the study of it had raised up." This was a regular and copious system of jurisprudence, derived in a great measure from the civil law of Justinian. "The superiority of ecclesiastical to temporal

'A.D. 1194—1216.

2 Hallam,