appear, he was condemned as contumacious, deposed, and a new poκtiff, Leo VIII., elected in his stead. All. Italy, as far as the ancient kingdom of the Lombards extended, thus fell under the sway of the Germans; there were only some maritime places in Lower Italy which, with Apulia and Calabria, still remained subject to the Greeks. Otho transmitted this kingdom, with the imperial dignity, to his successors on the German throne; but from his reign to that of Maximilian I., no prince took the title of emperor until he had been consecrated by the pope. Maximilian designated himself "Emperor Elect" (A. d. 1508), and his example was followed by his successors down to our times.

Otho I. died after a prosperous reign (A. D. 975), and was succeeded by his son Otho II. His reign was occupied in sanguinary wars, which harassed Germany and Italy. Otho having married the Greek princess Theophania, claimed the provinces of Apulia and Calabria as her dowry. After a tedious struggle, the emperor was mortally wounded by a poisoned javelin in a battle with the Greeks (A. D. 983). His death is said to have been accelerated by indignation at the joy which Theophania showed for the victory of her countrymen, though it was obtained over her own husband.

Otho III., when elected successor to his father, was only twelve years of age; ambitious rivals prepared to dispute his title, but the affection of the Germans for his family enabled him to triumph over all opposition. His authority was more fiercely questioned in Italy, where Crescentius, an ambitious noble, became such a favorite with the Roman populace, that he deposed Pope Gregory, and gave the pontifical dignity to John XVI. Otho hastened to Italy, captured Rome, and put both Crescentius and John to death. These severities did not quell the turbulence of the Italians; fresh insurrections soon compelled the emperor to return to the peninsula, where he was poisoned by the widow of Crescentius, whom he had seduced under a promise of marriage (A. D. 1002). He died without issue.

After some competition, the electors chose Henry, duke of Bavaria, descended from the Othos in the female line, emperor of the West. His reign was disturbed by repeated insurrections, both in Germany and Italy; he succeeded in quelling them, but was so wearied by these repeated troubles, that he seriously designed to abdicate and retire into a monastery. The clergy took advantage of his piety and liberality to extort from him several rich donations, which proved, in an after age, the cause of much evil. His death (A. D. 1024) put an end to the Saxon dynasty.

Conrad II., duke of Franconia, being chosen by the electors, united the kingdom of Burgundy, or, as it was called, Arles, to the empire. But this was an acquisition of little real value; the great vassals of the kingdom, the counts and bishops, preserved the authority they had usurped in their respective districts, leaving the emperors a merely nominal sovereignty. It is even probable that the high authority possessed by the Burgundian lords, induced the German nobles to arrogate to themselves the same prerogatives. The power of the clergy was increasing even more rapidly than that of the nobles, for they extorted fresh privileges and grants from every successive sovereign; Conrad,

who was naturally of a generous disposition, impoverished the state by imitating the unwise liberality of his predecessors. Italy, during this reign and that of Conrad's son and successor, Henry III., continued to be distracted by rival factions; but Henry was an energetic supporter of the imperial authority; he deposed three rival popes, who claimed succession to St. Peter at the same time, and gave the pontifical chai. to a German prelate, Clement II. He even exacted an oath from the Romans, that they would never elect a pope without having previously received the imperial sanction. The imperial pov er, wielded by an energetic monarch like Henry, was still formidable, but its resources were exhausted; and when a feebler sovereign attempted to exercise the Jway over the church which his father had held, he found the papacy stronger than the empire.

The great struggle between the papal and imperial power began in the reign of Henry IV., whose long minority, for he succeeded his father when only five years old, necessarily weakened the influence of the sovereign. On the other hand, the circumstances of Europe, at this crisis, were peculiarly favorable to the policy of the popes. The Saxon line, restored in England by Edward the Confessor, had lost its nationality Edward conferred the chief ecclesiastical dignities of his kingdom on foreigners, or persons remarkable for their foreign attachments: and thus those who wielded the power of the church in the island, were more like missionaries, laboring for the benefit of a distant see, than clergymen, attentive only to their flocks. In Spain, the new provinces wrested from the Moors, when the unity of their empire was destroyed by the subversion of the Ommiade khaliphs, became closely attached to the Roman see. The spread of Christianity in Norway, Poland, Russia, and the other northern states, gave additional vigor to the papal power; for the Northerns, with all the zeal of new converts, became eager to prove their sincerity by some enterprise in support of the pontiff, whom they regarded as the great director of their faith.

But the most potent allies obtained by the church were the Normans of England and Italy. William, the natural son of Robert, duke of Normandy, had been nominated heir of the English throne by Edward he Confessor, who had no right to make any such appointment. Harold, the son of Godwin, earl of Kent, was the favorite of the English people, and it was generally known that he would be elected to the throne on the death of the confessor. Unfortunately Harold's brother was detained as a hostage in Normandy, and in spite of the warnings of King Edward, he crossed the sea in order to obtain his deliverance. The vessel in which the Saxon chief crossed the channel was wrecked near the mouth of the Somme, and, according to the barbarous custom of the age, the court of Ponthieu seized upon the shipwrecked strangers, and threw them into prison, for the purpose of obtaining large ransom. Harold and his companions appealed to Duke William, who procured their liberation, and invited them to his court. A grand council of the Norman prelates and nobles was then convoked, in whose presence

• Many remarkable anecdotes are related of Conrad's generosity; one deserves to be recorded. A gentleman having lost his leg in the imperial service, Conrad ordered that his boot should be filled with gold coins, to defray the expenses of his

cure.

William required Harold to swear that he would support with all his might William's succession to the crown of England, so soon as a vacancy should be created by the death of Edward. Harold's life was in the duke's power, and he consented to take the oath, secretly resolving to violate its obligations. But an artifice was employed, which, in that superstitious age, was supposed to give the oath such sanctity as to ren der its violation an inexpiable crime. By the duke's orders, a chest was secretly conveyed into the place of meeting, filled with the bones and relics of the saints most honored in the surrounding country, and covered with a cloth of gold. A missal was laid upon the cloth, and at William's summons Harold came forward and took the required oath, the whole assembly joining in the imprecation, "So help you God, at his holy doom." When the ceremony was concluded, the cloth of gold was removed, and Harold shuddered with superstitious horror when he found that his oath had been taken on the relics of saints and martyrs.

On Edward's death, Harold, notwithstanding his oath, allowed himself to be elected king by the English nobles and people; but the papal clergy refused to recognise his title, the pope issued a bull excommunicating Harold and his adherents, which he sent to Duke William, accompanied by a consecrated banner, and a ring, said to have contained one of St. Peter's hairs, set under a valuable diamond. Thus supported by the superstitious feelings of the period, William found no difficulty in levying a numerous army, with which he passed over into England. The fate of the kingdom was decided by the battle of Hastings, in which Harold and his bravest soldiers fell. William found little difficulty in completing the conquest of England, into which he introduced the inheritance of fiefs, and the severities of the feudal law. He deprived the native English nobles of their estates, which he shared among his own needy and rapacious followers, and he treated his new subjects with more than the cruelty that barbarous conquerors usually display toward the vanquished.

About the same time, some Norman adventurers laid the foundation of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, in southern Europe. The provinces that compose it were shared among the Lombard feudatories of the empire, the Greeks, and the Saracens, who harassed each other with mutual wars. About a hundred Normans landing on the coast (A. D. 1016), offered their services to the Lombard princes, and displayed so much valor, that they obtained from the duke of Naples a grant of territory, where they built the city of Aversa. Encouraged by their success, Tancred, with another body of Norman adventurers, undertook the conquest of Apulia, which was completed by his son, Rober Guiscard. This warrior subdued Calabria also, and took the title of duke of both provinces. To secure his possessions, he entered into alliance with the pope, securing to the pontiff homage, and an annual tribute, on condition of receiving investiture. Nicholas II., who then filled the chair of St. Peter, willingly ratified a treaty by which the papacy gained important advantages, at the price of an empty title; he stimulated Guiscard to undertake the conquest of Sicily also, an enterprise in which that adventurer completely succeeded. Thus, at the moment that the papacy was about to struggle for power with the em pire, the former had been strengthened by the accession of powerful

allies and vassals, while the latter had given away the greater part of its strength by the alienation of its domains, to gratify the church, or to win the favor of feudatories whose influence was already formidable.

SECTION IV.-State of the East from the Establishment to the Overthrow of the Khaliphate.

THE history of the Byzantine empire, in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, is little better than a tissue of usurpation, fanaticism, and perfidy. "Externally surrounded by foes, superior in numbers, in discipline, and in valor, it seemed as if is safety was guarantied by cowardice, and its security confirmed by defeat. Internally were at work all the causes that usually effect the destruction of states: dishonor and profligacy triumphant in the palace; ferocious bigotry, based at once on enthusiasm and hypocrisy, ruling the church; civil dissensions, equally senseless and bloody, distracting the state; complete demoralization pervading every rank, from the court to the cottage; so that its existence seemed owing to the antagonising effect of the causes that singly produce the ruin of empires." In the tenth century these causes seemed to have reached their consummation; emperor after emperor perished by poison, or the dagger of the assassin; parricide and fratricide were crimes of such ordinary occurrence, that they ceased to excite feelings of horror or disgust. Theological disputes, about questions that pass the limits of human knowledge, and a jealous rivalry between the patriarch of Constantinople and the pope of Rome, produced a division between the eastern and western churches, which the disputes respecting the Bulgarians aggravated into a formal schism. These barbarians were converted to Christianity by Greek and Latin missionaries; the patriarch and the pope contended for the patronage of the new ecclesiastical establishments; the Greeks prevailed in the contest, and forthwith banished their Latin adversaries, while the court of Rome took revenge by describing the Greeks as worse than the worst of the heathen. A brie display of vigor by Nicephorus, Phocus, and John Zimisces, arrested the progress of the Saracens, who were forming permanent establishments within sight of Constantinople. But Zimisces was poisoned at the very moment when his piety, courage, and moderation, had averted impending ruin, and promised to restore some portion of the empire's former strength and former glory. His feeble successors swayed the sceptre with unsteady hands, at a time when the empire was attacked by the fiercest enemies it had yet encountered, the Normans in Sicily, and the Seljukian Turks in Asia Minor.

The names Turk and Tartar are loosely given to the inhabitants of those regions which ancient authors included under the designation of Scythia. Their uncivilized tribes possessed the countries north of the Caucasus and east of the Caspian, from the river Oxus to the wall of China: hordes issuing from these wide plains had frequently devastated the empire of Persia, and more than once placed a new race of sover eigns on the throne. It was not, however, until the eighth century that they were themselves invaded in turn; the Saracens, in the first burst of their enthusiasm, passed the Oxus, subdued Kharasm and Transoxjana, and imposed the religion and law of Mohammed on a race of

warriors more fiery and zealous than themselves. Soon after the es tablishment of the khaliphate at Bagdad, the Saracenic empire began to be dismembered, as we have already stated, and the khaliphs, alarmed by the revolt of their armies, and surrounded only by subjects devoted to the arts of peace, began to intrust the guard of their persons and their capital to foreign mercenaries. Al Moutassem was the first who levied a Turkish army to protect his states (A. D. 833); and even during his reign, much inconvenience was felt from the pride and insolence of soldiers unconnected with the soil they were employed to defend. The evil went on daily increasing, until the emirs, or Turkish commanders, usurped all the real authority of the state, leaving to the khaliphs the outward show and gewgaws of sovereignty, with empty titles, whose pomp was increased as the authority they pretended to represent was diminished. The revolution was completed in the reign of Al Khadi (A. D. 936); hoping to arrest the progress of the revolution, he created a new minister, called the Emir-al-Omra, to whom far greater powers were given than had been intrusted to the ancient viziers. This, as might have been expected, aggravated the evil it was designed to prevent. The family of the Bowides, so called from their ancestor Buyáh, usurped this high office and the sovereignty of Bagdad; the khaliph was deprived of all temporal authority, and was regarded simply as the chief Imán, or pontiff of the Mohammedan faith.

Such was the state of the khaliphate, when a new horde from the interior of Turkestán appeared to change the entire face of Asia. This horde, deriving its name from Seljúk, one of its most renowned chiefs, was invited to cross the Oxus by the Ghaznevid† sultans, who had already established a powerful kingdom in the east of Persia, and subdued the north of Hindostan. The Seljukians finding the pasturages of Khorassan far superior to those of their native country, invited new colonies to the fertile land; they soon became so powerful that Togrul Beg proclaimed himself a sultan, and seized several of the best provinces belonging to the khaliphate. Finally, having taken Bagdad, he became master of the khaliph's person (A. D. 1055) and succeeded to the power which had formerly been possessed by the Bowides. Togrul transmitted his authority to his nephew and heir, the formidable Alp Arslan. This prince renewed the war against the Greek empire, obtained a signal victory over its forces in Armenia, and took the emperor,

• "Lord of the lords," or "Commander of the commanders." †The Ghaznevid dynasty was founded by Sebektagén, who is said to have been originally a slave (A. D. 977). But his fame is eclipsed by that of his son Mahmúd, whose conquests in northern India rival those of a hero of romance. His desire of conquest was rendered more terrible to those he attacked by his cruel bigotry, for in every country that he subdued, the horrors of war were increased by those of religious persecution. At his death, the empire of Ghizni included a great part of Persia, Afghanistan, and northern India, to the provinces of Bengal and the Deccan. But the rise of this great dynasty was not more rapid than its downfall, which we may date from the death of that monarch, to whom it owes all its lustre in the page of history (A. D. 1028). Little more than a century after Mohammed's death, the last of the Ghaznevids was deposed by Mohammed Gouri, the founder of a new dynasty, equally transitory as that which it displaced.

The title of sultan, which in the Chaldaic and Arabic languages signifies a vereign, was first assumed by the Ghaznevid princes.

§ His name signifies the Conquering Lion.