hammedan rule. The voice of a Pope was indeed occasionally raised in favor of a crusade. But zeal for the enterprise had perished, and could not be revived. Europe had not the requisite ambition to guard her own borders against the Turk, to say nothing about routing him from more distant fields.

Among the memorials which survived the crusades. the military orders were one of the most interesting. There were three, the Hospitallers or Knights of St. John, the Templars, and the Teutonic Knights. The germ of the first was a hospital, which was founded in the eleventh century for the care of sick and wounded pilgrims. The brothers of the hospital lived under monastic rule. In the first half of the twelfth century the association took on a military cast. As now organized, the order consisted of serving brothers, who were occupied with the care of the sick, priests, who discharged the rites of religion, and knights, whose duty it was to fight against the infidel and to guard the pilgrim. On the evacuation of Palestine, the Hospitallers retired to the island of Rhodes. In the time of Charles V. the island of Malta was assigned to them. The organization of the Templars was like that of the Hospitallers. By the end of the crusades the order was extended. over a large part of Europe, and was extensively endowed. An object at once of jealousy and avarice, they were assailed by the most damaging reports as respects their morals and their faith, and, at the instigation of the despotic Philip the Fair, the order was dissolved in 1312, after having been subjected to a tragic ordeal. The Teutonic Knights were instituted, after the model of the other orders, in connection with the third cru

sade, and were specially devoted to the care and protection of German pilgrims. Service was also rendered by this order in the protection of Christianity in the district bordering on the Prussians, who still in the thirteenth century were stubbornly attached to their paganism.

However fruitless the crusades may have been as respects their immediate object, they were far from being destitute of substantial results. If they did not transform Asia according to their intent, they transformed Europe far beyond their design. They brought isolated sections into contact with each other, and led the nations to a wider outlook. They gave a new stimulus to thought and enterprise. The mind of Europe was made by their means more active, more inquisitive, and more confident. Hence, while they enlarged the power of the papacy in the beginning, they abridged it in the end. The Popes came to find in the people a less passive instrument to deal with, so that the assertion of their more extreme pretensions was likely to incur the ignominy of defeat.

At the same time, the crusades effected a great transformation in the constitution of society. They hastened the disintegration of the feudal system. Union in a common enterprise tended to lessen somewhat the distance between lord and vassal, between noble and peasant. Moreover, many a noble found himself embarrassed by the pecuniary demands of these great expeditions. To gain the necessary funds, he might be obliged to release a city from feudal obligations, or to make over a part of his domain to the king or

other purchaser. Thus it came to pass that the feudal nobility were depressed, and a relative ascendency was given to the king and the commercial classes. A centralizing movement, a movement toward the modern type of states, dates from the era of the crusades.

CHAPTER IV.

MONASTICISM.

I. THE CISTERCIANS AND THEIR GREAT REPRE

A

SENTATIVE.

MONG the monastic fraternities which originated in the eleventh century, a distinguished place was occupied by the Carthusians and the Cistercians. The founder of the former was Bruno, the cultured principal of the cathedral school at Rheims. His fervent piety gave him a predilection for the monastic life. At the same time, the conduct of his ecclesiastical superiors stimulated his desire to escape the world. His archbishop was a man who could indulge the declaration that the episcopal charge at Rheims would be a fine thing, if only one could enjoy the income without being obliged to say mass. Disgusted by this heartless dealing with sacred things, Bruno retired to the lonely vale of Chartreuse in the neighborhood of Grenoble. Here, in 1084, with twelve companions, he initiated an order which bore an honored name by reason of unusual perseverance in a simple and austere piety.

A kindred spirit gave rise to the Cistercians. The founder, Robert of Molesme, being dissatisfied with the lax fashion in which the Benedictine discipline was ad

ministered in the existing societies, retired to Citeaux in the bishopric of Chalons, in 1098. Little addition was made under the first three abbots to the twenty monks who began the foundation. The severity of the Cistercian rule was too far above the level of monastic enthusiasm to be generally attractive. Only the personal force of a great leader could enkindle the zeal which would welcome the rigorous scheme of the new order. In Bernard of Clairvaux such a leader was found. His name by itself established the reputation of the order, and secured its rapid spread. Its monasteries are said to have amounted to two thousand, and its nunneries to nearly six thousand, in the thirteenth century.1

Bernard was born in 1091. His life, accordingly, fell at a marked epoch in the history of Europe. It was the youthful, romantic, crusading era. Within the first eight years of his life came the stirring summons to the earliest of the crusades from the lips of Peter the Hermit, the sacrifice of scores of thousands of lives in the project, and the recovery of Jerusalem from the infidel. In the inauguration of the second crusade Bernard was himself the most conspicuous agent, and gave the full energies of his manhood to stir up princes and people to the holy emprise. It was a time when feeling was dominant over reflection; a time when men were dissatisfied with the ordinary, and piety sought for itself extraordinary expression, urging its devotees to the cloister, the pilgrimage, or the adventurous undertaking. Such an age Bernard was fitted at once to represent and to command. Possessing himself a heart deeply

1 Kurtz, Kirchengeschichte, § 99.