not in its purpose, was ever esteemed honourable in proportion as it was perilous. 2. The high esteem of the female sex is characteristic of the Gothic manners. In those ages of barbarism, the castles of the greater barons were in miniature the courts of sovereigns. The society of the ladies, who found only in such fortresses a security from outrage, polished the manners; and to protect the chastity and honour of the fair, was the best employ and highest merit of an accomplished knight. Romantic exploit had, therefore, always a tincture of gallantry : "It hath been through all ages ever seen, For either doth on other much rely; For he, me seems, most fit the fair to serve, That can her best defend from villany; And she most fit his service doth deserve That fairest is, and from her faith will never swerve." (Spenser's Fairy Queen.) 3. To the passion for adventure and romantic love, were added very high ideas of morality and religion; but, as the latter were ever subordinate to the former, we may presume more in favour of their refinement than of their purity. It was the pride of a knight to redress wrongs and injuries; but in that honourable employment he made small account of those he committed; and it was easy to expiate the greatest offences by a penance or a pilgrimage, which furnished only a new opportunity for adventurous exploit. 4. Chivalry, whether it began with the Moors or Normans, attained its perfection at the period of the crusades, which presented a noble object of adventure, and a boundless field for military glory. Few, it is true, returned from those desperate enterprises, but those few had a high reward in the admiration of their countrymen. The bards and romancers sung their praises, and recorded their exploits, with a thousand circumstances of fabulous embellishment. 5. The earliest of the old romances (so termed from the Romance language, a mixture of the Frank and Latin, in which they were written) appeared about the middle of the 12th century, the period of the second crusade. But those more ancient compositions did not record contemporary events, whose known truth would have precluded all liberty of fiction or exaggeration. Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the author who assumed the name of Archbishop Turpin, had free scope to their fancy, by celebrating the deeds of Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, and the exploits of Charlemagne and his twelve peers; and from the fruitful stock of those first romances sprung a numerous offspring, equally wild and extravagant. 6. Philosophers have analyzed the pleasure arising from works of fiction, and have endeavoured, by various hypotheses, to account for the interest we take in the description of an event or scene which we know to be utterly impossible. We may account thus simply for the phenomenon: Every narration is in some degree attended with a dramatic deception. We enter for the time into the situation of the persons concerned. Adopting their passions and their feelings, we lose for a moment all sense of the absurdity of their cause, whilst we see the agents themselves hold it for reasonable and adequate. The most incredulous sceptic may sympathise strongly with the feelings of Hamlet at the sight of his father's spectre. 7. Thus powerfully affected as we are by sympathy, even against the conviction of our reason, how much greater must have been the effect of such works of the imagination in those days when popular superstition gave full credit to the reality, or at least the possibility, of all that they described. And hence we must censure, as both unnecessary and improbable, that theory of Dr. Hurd, which accounts for all the wildness of the old romances, on the supposition that their fictions were entirely allegorical; which explains the giants and savages into the oppressive feudal lords and their barbarous dependants; as M. Mallett construes the serpents and dragons which guarded the enchanted castles, into their winding walls, fossés, and battlements. It were sufficient to say, that many of these old romances are inexplicable by allegory. They were received by the popular belief as truths, and even their contrivers believed in the possibility of the scenes and actions they described. In latter ages, and in the wane of superstition, yet while it still retained a powerful influence, the poets adopted allegory as a vehicle of moral instruction: and to this period belong those poetical romances which bear an allegorical explanation; as the Fairy Queen of Spenser, the Orlando of Ariosto, and the Gierusalemme Liberato of Tasso. 8. In more modern times the taste for romantic composition declined with the popular credulity; and the fastidiousness of philosophy affected to treat all supernatural fiction with contempt. But it was at length perceived that this refinement had cut off a source of very high mental enjoyment. The public taste now took a new turn; and this moral revolution is at present tending to its extreme. We are gone back to the nursery to listen to tales of hobgoblins; a change which we may safely prognosticate can be of no long duration. XIX.—State of Europe in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. 1. Constantinople, taken in 1202 by the crusaders, was possessed only for a short time by its conquerors. It was governed by French [and Venetian] Emperors for the space of 60 years, and was taken by the Greeks in 1261, under Michael Palæologus, who, by imprisoning and putting out the eyes of his pupil Theodore Lascaris, secured to himself the sovereignty. 2. Germany was governed in the beginning of the thirteenth century by Frederick II., who paid homage to the pope for the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, possessed by his son Conrad, and afterwards by his brother Manfred, who usurped the crown in violation of the right of his nephew Conradin. Pope Clement IV., jealous of the dominion of the imperial family, gave the investiture of Naples and Sicily to Charles of Anjou, brother of Lewis IX. of France, who defeated and put to death his competitors. The Sicilians revenged this act of usurpation and cruelty by the murder, in one night, of every Frenchman in the island. This shocking massacre, termed the Sicilian Vespers, happened on Easter Sunday, 1282. It was followed by every evil that comes in the train of civil war and revolution. 3. The beginning of the thirteenth century had been signalized by a new species of crusade. The Albigenses, inhabitants of Albi in the Pays de Vaud, were bold enough to dispute many of the tenets of the catholic church, as judging them contrary to the doctrines of Scripture. Innocent III. established a holy commission at Toulouse, with power to try and punish these heretics. Raymond] the [sixth] count of Toulouse opposed this persecution, and was, for the punishment of his offence, compelled by the pope to assist in a crusade against his own vassals. Simon de Montford was the leader of this [miscalled] pious enterprise, which was marked by the most atrocious cruelties. The benefits of the holy commission were judged by the popes to be so great, that it became from that time a permanent establishment [at Toulouse] known by the name of the Inquisition. 4. The rise of the house of Austria may be dated from 1274, when Rodolph of Hapsburg, a Swiss baron, was elected emperor of Germany. He owed his elevation to the jealousies of the electoral princes, who could not agree in the choice of any one of themselves. Ottocar king of Bohemia, to whom Rodolph had been steward of the household, could ill brook the supremacy of his former dependent; and refusing him the customary homage for his Germanic possessions, Rodolph strippedhim of Austria, which has ever since remained in the family of its conqueror. [Rodolph died A.D. 1291.] 5. The Italian states of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, were at this time flourishing and opulent, while most of the kingdoms of Europe (if we except England under Edward I.) were exhausted, feeble, and disorderly. The dawning of civil liberty began to appear in France under Philip IV. (le Bel), who summoned the third estate to the national assemblies, which had hitherto consisted of the nobility and clergy, 1308. It was the same prince who established perpetual courts of judicature in France, under the name of parliaments. Over these the parliament of Paris possessed a jurisdiction by appeal; but it was not till latter times that it assumed any authority in matters of state. 6. The parliament of England had before this era begun to assume its present constitution. The commons, or the representatives of counties and boroughs, were first called to parliament by Henry III.; before that time this assembly consisted only of the greater barons and clergy. But of the rise and progress of the constitution of England we shall afterwards treat more particularly in a separate section. 7. The spirit of the popedom, zealous in the mainte nance and extension of its prerogatives, continued much the same in the 13th and 14th, as we have seen it in the P three preceding centuries. Philip the Fair had subjected his clergy to bear their share of the public taxes, and prohibited all contributions to be levied by the pope in his dominions. This double offence was highly resented by Boniface VIII., who expressed his indignation by a sentence of excommunication and interdict, and a solemn transference of the kingdom of France to the emperor Albert. Philip, in revenge, sent his general Nogaret to Rome, who threw the pope into prison. The French, however, were overpowered by the papal troops, and the death of Boniface put an end to the quarrel. 8. It is less easy to justify the conduct of Philip the Fair to the knights templars than his behaviour to pope Boniface. The whole of this order had incurred his resentment, from suspicion of harbouring treasonable designs. He had influence with Clement V. to procure a papal bull, warranting their extirpation from all the Christian kingdoms; and this infamous proscription was carried into effect all over Europe. These unfortunate men were solemnly tried, not for their real offence, but for pretended impieties and idolatrous practices, [they were all stripped of their property and possessions] and [many of them were] committed to the flames, 1309—1312. [In England the bulk of property divested from them was] bestowed on the knights hospitalers of St. John of Jerusalem in England. XX.-Revolution of Switzerland. 1. The beginning of the 14th century was distinguished by the revolution of Switzerland, and the rise of the Helvetic republic. The emperor Rodolph of Hapsburg was hereditary sovereign of several of the Swiss cantons, and governed his states with much equity and moderation; but his successor Albert, a tyrannical prince, formed the design of annexing the whole of the provinces to his dominion, and erecting them into a principality for one of his sons. The cantons of Schweitz, Üry, and Underwald, which had always resisted the authority of Austria, combined to assert their freedom; and a small army of 400 or 500 men defeated an immense host of the Austrians in the pass of Morgate, 1315. The rest of the cantons by degrees joined the association, and with invincible perseverance, after 60 pitched battles with their enemies, they won and secured their dear-bought liberty. |