much as the beginnings of such freedom. The appointment of Simon Langton to the archbishopric of York was annulled. One De Gray was substituted for him. It illustrated the simony into which the papal government had fallen, that De Gray had become, in these transactions, indebted to Rome ten thousand pounds. In fact, through the operation of the Crusades, all Europe was The drain of tributory to the pope. He had his fiscal agents money from in every metropolis; his travelling ones wander- that country. ing in all directions, in every country, raising revenue by the sale of dispensations for all kinds of offences, real and fictitious-money for the sale of appointments, high and low-a steady drain of money from every realm. Fifty years after the time of which we are speaking, Robert Grostete, the Bishop of Lincoln and friend of Roger Bacon, caused to be ascertained the amount received by foreign ecclesiastics in England. He found it to be thrice the income of the king himself. This was on the occasion of Innocent IV. demanding provision to be made for three hundred additional Italian clergy by the Church of England, and that one of his nephews-a mere boyshould have a stall in Lincoln cathedral.

Goading of

sade.

While thus Innocent III. was interfering and intriguing with every court, and laying every people under tribute, he did not for a moment permit his attention to be diverted from the Crusades, the singular Europe into advantages of which to the papacy had now a new crubeen fully discovered. They had given to the pope a suzerainty in Europe, the control of its military as well as its momentary resources. Not that a man like Innocent could permit himself to be deluded by any hopes of eventual success. The crusades must inevitably prove, so far as their avowed object was concerned, a failure. The Christian inhabitants of Palestine were degraded and demoralized beyond description. Their ranks were thinned by apostasy to Mohammedanism. In Europe, not only the laity begun to discover that the money provided for the wars in the Holy Land was diverted from its purpose, and in some inexplicable manner, found its way into Italy-even the clergy could not conceal their suspicions that the proclamation of a crusade was merely

the preparation for a swindle. Nevertheless, Innocent pressed forward his schemes, goading on Christendom by upbraiding it with the taunts of the Saracens. "Where,' they say, "is your God, who can not deliver you out of our hands? Behold! we have defiled your sanctuaries; we have stretched forth our arm; we have taken at the first assault, we hold in despite of you, those your desirable places, where your superstition had its beginning. Where is your God? Let him arise and protect you and himself." "If thou be the Son of God, save thyself if thou canst; redeem the land of thy birth from our hands. Restore thy cross, that we have taken, to the worshippers of the Cross." With great difficulty, however, Innocent succeeded in preparing the fourth crusade, A.D. 1202. The Venetians consented to furnish a fleet of transports. But the expedition was quickly diverted from its true purpose; the Venetians employing the Crusaders for the capture of Zara from the King of Hungary. Still worse, and shameful to be said-partly from the lust of plunder, and partly through ecclesiastical machinations-it again turned aside The crusade for an attack upon Constantinople, and took is used for the that city by storm A.D. 1204, thereby establishing Latin Christianity in the Eastern metropolis, but, alas! with bloodshed, rape, and fire. On the night of the assault more houses were burned than could be found in any three of the largest cities in France. Even Christian historians compare with shame the stormSack of that ing of Constantinople by the Catholics with the city by the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin. Pope Innocent Catholics. himself was compelled to protest against enormities that had outrun his intentions. He says: "They practised fornications, incests, adulteries in the sight of men. They abandoned matrons and virgins, consecrated to God, to the lewdness of grooms. They lifted their hands against the treasures of the churches-what is more heinous, the very consecrated vessels-tearing the tablets of silver from the very altars, breaking in pieces the most sacred things, carrying off crosses and relics." In St. Sophia, the silver was stripped from the pulpit; an exquisite and highly-prized table of oblation was broken in pieces; the sacred chalices were turned into

seizure of

Constanti-
nople.

drinking-cups; the gold fringe was ripped off the veil of the sanctuary. Asses and horses were led into the churches to carry off the spoil. A prostitute mounted the patriarch's throne, and sang, with indecent gestures, a ribald song. The tombs of the emperors were rifled; and the Byzantines saw, at once with amazement and anguish, the corpse of Justinian-which even decay and putrefaction had for six centuries spared in his tomb-exposed to the violation of a mob. It had been understood among those who instigated these atrocious proceedings that the relics were to be brought into a common stock and equitably divided among the conquerors! but each ecclesiastic seized and secreted whatever he could. The idolatrous state of the Eastern Church is illustrated by some of these relics. Thus the Abbot Martin The relics obtained for his monastery in Alsace the follow- found there, ing inestimable articles: 1. A spot of the blood of our Saviour; 2. A piece of the true cross; 3. The arm of the Apostle James; 4. Part of the skeleton of John the Baptist; 5.-I hesitate to write such blasphemy-" A bottle of the milk of the Mother of God!" In contrast with the treasures thus acquired may be set relics of a very different kind, the remains of ancient art which and works of they destroyed: 1. The bronze charioteers from art destroyed. the Hippodrome; 2. The she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus; 3. A group of a Sphinx, river-horse, and crocodile; 4. An eagle tearing a serpent; 5. An ass and his driver, originally cast by Augustus in memory of the victory of Actium; 6. Bellerophon and Pegasus; 7. A bronze obelisk; 8. Paris presenting the apple to Venus; 9. An exquisite statute of Helen; 10. The Hercules of Lysippus; 11. A Juno, formerly taken from the temple at Samos. The bronzes were melted into coin, and thousands of manuscripts and parchments were burned. From that time the works of many ancient authors disappeared altogether.

With well-dissembled regret, Innocent took the new order of things in the city of Constantinople under his protection. The bishop of Rome at last appointed the Bishop of Constantinople. The acknowledgment of papal supremacy was complete. Rome and Venice divided

The pope and

the doge divide the spoil.

Venice.

between them the ill-gotten gains of their undertaking. If anything had been wanting to open the eyes of Europe, surely what had thus occurred should have been enough. The pope and the dogethe trader in human credulity and the trader of the Adriatic-had shared the spoils of a crusade meant by religious men for the relief of the Holy Land. carried to The bronze horses, once brought by Augustus from Alexandria, after his victory over Antony and transferred from Rome to Constantinople by its founder, were set before the Church of St Mark. They were the outward and visible sign of a less obvious event that was taking place, For to Venice was brought a residue of the literary treasures that had escaped the fire and the destroyer; and while her comrades in the outrage were satisfied, in their ignorance, with fictitious relics, she took possession of the poor remnant of the glorious works of art, of letters, and of science. Through these was hastened the intellectual progress of the West.

The punish

So fell Constantinople, and fell by the parricidal hands of Christians. The days of retribution for the curse she had inflicted on Western civilization were now ment of Con- approaching. In these events she received a stantinople. first instalment of her punishment. Three hundred years previously, the historian Luitprand, who was sent by the Emperor Otho I. to the court of Nicephorus Phocas, says of her, speaking as an eye-witness, "That city, once so wealthy, so wealthy, so flourishing, is now famished, lying, perjured, deceitful, rapacious, greedy, niggardly, vainglorious;" and since Luitprand's time she had been pursuing a downward career. It might have been expected that the concentration of all the literary and scientific treasures of the Roman empire in Constantinople would have given rise to great mental vigour-that to Europe she would have been a brilliant focus of light.

But when the works on jurisprudence by TriboThe literary worthlessness nian, under Justinian, have been mentioned, of that city. what is there that remains? There is Stephanus, the grammarian, who wrote a dictionary, and Procopius, the historian, who was secretary to Belisarius in his campaigns. There is then a long interval almost

without a literary name, to Theophylact Simocatta, and to the Ladder of Paradise of John Climacus. The mental excitement of the iconoclastic dispute presents us with John of Damascus; and the ninth century, the Myriobiblion and Nomacanon of Photius. Then follows Constantine Porphyrogenitus, vainly and voluminously composing; and Basil II. doubtless truly expresses the opinion of the time, as he certainly does the verdict of posterity respecting the works of his country, when he says that learning is useless and unprofitable lumber. The Alexiad of Anna Comnena, and the history of Byzantine affairs by Nicephorous Bryennius, hardly redeem their age. This barrenness and worthlessness was the effect of the system introduced by Constantine the Great. The long line of emperors had been consistent in one policy-the repression or expulsion of philosophy; and yet it is the uniform testimony of those ages that the Eastern convents were full of secret Platonism-that in stealth, the doctrines of Plato were treasured up in the cells of Asiatic monks. The Byzantines had possessed in art and letters all the best models in the world, yet in a thousand years they never produced one original. Millions of Greeks never advanced one step in philosophy or science-never made a single practical discovery, composed no poem, no tragedy worth perusal. The spirit of their superficial literatureif literature it can be called-is well shadowed forth in the story of the patriarch Photius, who composed at Bagdad, at a distance from his library, an analysis of 280 works he had formerly read. The final age of the city was signalized by the Baarlamite controversy The absurdity respecting the mysterious light of Mount Thabor of its intel-the possibility of producing a beatific vision lectual purand of demonstrating, by an unceasing inspection of the navel for days and nights together, the existence of two eternal principles, a visible and an invisible God!

suits.

What was it that produced this barrenness, Cause of all this intellectual degradation in Constantinople? this. The tyranny of Theology over Thought.

But with the capture of Constantinople by the Latins other important events were occurring. Everywhere an