rowed from the intellectual Arabs, which seemed to the rude but impassioned barons of the south almost inspired. The Gay Science found its fitting birth-place along the soft shores of the Mediterranean Sea, the Courts of Love were held oftenest at Montpellier, Toulouse, or Mar the Archbishop of Canterbury, and that John | magnificent cities, the troubadours had first resisted his pretension. The Pope employed sung to the lute those plaintive love-songs, borthe instrument which had been so effective against France: in 1208 England was laid under an interdict, and for four years beheld its churches closed, its dead cast out into unconsecrated ground, and its whole religious life crushed beneath a fatal malediction. Yet John resisted the clerical assailant with more perti-seilles. The princes and nobles of that southnacity than Philip, and even endured the final penalty of excommunication, and it was not until Innocent had bestowed England upon Philip, and that king had prepared a considerable army to invade his new dominions, that John's courage sank. Full of hatred for the Pope and for religion, it is said that he had resolved to become a Mohammedan, and sent embassadors to the Caliph of Spain and Africa offering to embrace the faith of the Koran in return for material aid; and it is further related that the cultivated Mohammedan rejected with contempt the advances of the Christian renegade. So low, indeed, was sunk the moral dignity of Christianity under the papal rule, so oppressive was that power, that of the three great potentates of Christendom at this period Frederick II. was suspected of preferring the Koran to the Bible, and both Philip Augustus and John are believed to have entertained the desire of adopting the tenets of the Arabian impostor; and all three were no doubt objects of polished scorn to the cultivated Arabs of Bagdad and Cordova. ern clime were allowed to be the models of their age in chivalry, good-breeding, and a taste for poetry and song; and the people of Languedoc and Provence lived in a luxurious ease, rich, happy, and secure. Upon this Eden Innocent chanced to turn his eyes and discover that it was infested by a most fatal form of heresy. The troubadours—gay, witty, and indiscreet— had long been accustomed to aim sharp satires at the vices or the superstitions of monks and bishops; the people had learned to look with pity and contempt upon the ignorance of their spiritual guides; the authority of the Church was shaken, the priest was despised, and the Waldensian and Albigensian doctrines made rapid progress and found an almost universal acceptance in the sunny lands of the south of France. Raymond VI., Count of Toulouse, now reigned with an easy sway over this delightful territory. He was believed to be a heretic, yet he was evidently no Puritan. Gay, licentious, generous, affable, the Count had three wives living at the same time, and might well have merited, by his easy morals, the confidence of the Church of Rome. But, unhappily for Raymond, his humanity surpassed his faith, and drove him to his ruin. Innocent was resolved to extirpate heresy by fire and sword, and Raymond was required to execute the papal commands upon his own people. He was to bring desolation to the fair fields of Languedoc, to banish or de John was soon reduced to submission, and his conduct was so base and dastardly as to awaken the scorn of his own subjects and of Europe. He gave up his independent kingdom to be held as a fief of the Roman see, took the oath of fealty to Innocent, and bound himself and his successors to become the vassals of an Italian lord. But his shame was probably light-stroy the heretics, to lay waste his own happy ened by a sense of the bitter disappointment which he was thus enabled to inflict upon his enemy, Philip Augustus. The Pope, with his usual indifference to the claims of honor and of faith, now prohibited the King of France from prosecuting his designs against England, | and Philip, who at a great expense had assembled all the chivalry of his kingdom, was forced to obey. The barons of England soon after wrested from their dastard king the Magna Charta, and Innocent in vain endeavored to weaken the force of that instrument which laid the foundation of the liberties of England and of America. dominions, depopulate his cities, cut off the But it is chiefly as the first of the great per-humored Provençals. Nothing was hated but secutors that Innocent III. has deserved the execration of posterity. He was the destroyer of the Albigenses and the troubadours, and the first buds and flowers of European literature were crushed by the ruthless hand of the impassive Bishop of Rome. Languedoc and Provence, the southern provinces of modern France, were at this period the most civilized and cultivated portions of Europe. Amidst their graceful scenery, their rich fields, and the bigotry and pride of priesteraft, and when Arnold, Abbot of Citeaux, a severe and stern missionary of Rome, came to preach against heresy and reclaim the erring to the orthodox faith, his most vigorous sermons were received with shouts of ridicule. "The more he preached," says the Provençal chronicler, "the more the people laughed and held him for a fool.” But a terrible doom was now impending over the merry land of song, for Innocent had resolved ence. to call in the aid of the temporal power, and the author of the Inquisition. His history is involve both Raymond and his subjects in a lost in a cloud of miracles, in which it has been common ruin. A fatal event urged him to im- enveloped by his devout disciples; he cast out mediate action. The papal legate was assas- Satan, who ran from him in the form of a great sinated as he was crossing the Rhone, and the black cat with glittering eyes; he raised the Pope charged the crime upon Raymond, who, dead, healed the sick, and more than equalhowever, was wholly guiltless. The blood of ed the miracles of the Gospel. Yet the real the martyr called for instant vengeance, and achievements of Dominic are sufficiently wonInnocent summoned the king, the nobles, and derful. He founded the order of preaching the bishops of France to a crusade against the friars, who, living upon alms and bound to a devoted land. "Up, most Christian king," he perfect self-denial, knew no master but Domiwrote to Philip Augustus; "up, and aid us in nic and the Pope, and before he died he saw a our work of vengeance.' His vengeful cries countless host of his disciples spread over every were answered by a general uprising of the part of Europe. Dominic is chiefly known as chivalry and the bishops of the north of France, the persecutor of the heretics. He infused into who, led by Simon de Montfort, hastened to the the Roman Church that fierce thirst for blood plunder of their brethren of the south. An im- which was exemplified in Philip II. and Alva; mense army suddenly invaded Languedoc; the he hovered around the armies that blasted and war was carried on with a barbarity unfamiliar desolated Languedoc, and his miraculous eloeven to that cruel age, and the Albigenses and quence was aimed with fatal effect against the the troubadours were almost blotted from exist-polished free-thinkers of that unhappy land. No quarter was given, no mercy shown, His admirers unite in ascribing to him the and the battle-cry of the invading army was, founding of the Inquisition. "What glory, 'Slay all, God will know his own." At the splendor, and dignity," exclaims one of them, capture of Beziers it is estimated that fifty thou- "belongs to the Order of Preachers, words can sand persons perished in the massacre. Harm- not express! for the Holy Inquisition owes its less men, wailing women, and even babes at the origin to St. Dominic, and was propagated by breast fell equally before the monkish rage of his faithful followers." Innocent, and the beautiful city was left a smouldering ruin. At the fall of Minerve, a strong-hold in the Cévennes, one hundred and forty women, rather than change their faith, leaped into a blazing pyre and were consumed. When Lavaur, a noted seat of heresy, was taken, a general massacre was allowed, and men, women, and children were cut to pieces, until there was nothing left to kill, except four hundred of the garrison, who were burned in a single pile, which, to the great joy of the victorious Catholics, made a wonderful blaze. After a long and brave resistance the Albigensian armies were destroyed, and the desolate land, once so beautiful, fell wholly into the power of the Catholics. The song of the troubadour was hushed forever, the gay people sank into melancholy under the monkish rule, their very language was proscribed, and a terrible inquisition was established to crush more perfectly the lingering seeds of heresy. Every priest and every lord was appointed an inquisitor, and whoever harbored a heretic was made a slave. Even the house in which a heretic was found was to be razed to the ground; no layman was permitted to possess a Bible; a reward of a mark was set for the head of a heretic; and all caves and hiding-places where the Albigenses might take refuge were to be carefully closed up by the lord of the estate. Two agents of rare vigor had suddenly appeared to aid Innocent in his conquest of mankind; two men of singular moral and mental strength placed themselves at his command. St. Dominic and St. Francis of Assissi founded, under his supervision, the two great orders of mendicant monks. Dominic was a Spaniard of high birth, fierce, dark, gloomy, unsparing, St. Francis of Assissi, a gentler madman, was equally successful with Dominic in founding a new order of ascetics. Born of a wealthy parentage, Francis passed his youth in song and revel until a violent fever won him from the world. His mild and generous nature now turned to universal benevolence; he threw aside his rich dress and joined a troop of beggars; he clothed himself in rags and gave all that he had to the poor. His bride he declared was Poverty, and he would only live by mendicancy; he resolved to abase himself below the meanest of his species, and he devoted himself to the care of lepers-the outcasts of mankind; he tended them with affectionate assiduity, washed their feet, and sometimes healed them miraculously with a kiss. This strange and fervent piety, joined to his touching eloquence and poetic fancy, soon won for St. Francis a throng of followers, who imitated his humility and took the vow of perpetual poverty. He now resolved to convert the world; but he must first gain the sanction of the Pope. Innocent III. was walking on the terrace of the splendid Lateran when a mendicant of mean appearance presented himself and proposed to convert mankind through poverty and humility. It was St. Francis. The Pope at first dismissed him with contempt; but a vision warned him not to neglect the pious appeal. The Order of St. Francis was founded, and countless hosts soon took the vow of chastity, poverty, and obedience. The Franciscans were the gentlest of mankind: they lived on alms; if stricken on one cheek they offered the other; if robbed of a part of their dress they gave the whole. Love was to be the binding element of the brotherhood, and the sweet effluence of universal chari ty, the poetic dream of the gentle Francis, was the duke was missing; several days passed but to be spread over all mankind. he did not return. It was believed that he was murdered; and Alexander, full of grief, ordered the Tiber to be dragged for the body of his favorite child. An enemy, he thought, had made away with him. He little suspected who that enemy was. At length a Sclavonian waterman came to the palace with a startling story. He said that on the night when the prince disappeared, while he was watching some timber on the river, he saw two men approach the bank and look cautiously around to see if they were observed. Seeing no one they made a signal to two others, one of whom was on horseback, and who carried a dead body swung carelessly across his horse. He advanced to the river, How rapidly the Franciscans and Dominicans declined from the rigid purity of their founders need scarcely be told. In a few years their monasteries grew splendid, their possessions were vast, their vows of poverty and purity were neglected or forgotten, and the two orders, filled with emulation and spiritual pride, contended with each other for the control of Christendom. Innocent, meantime, died in 1216, in the full strength of manhood, yet having accomplished every object for which his towering spirit had labored so unceasingly. He had crushed and mortified the pride of every European monarch, had exalted the Church upon the wreck of nations, had seemingly ex-flung the corpse far into the water, and then tirpated heresy, and was become that Universal Bishop which, to the modest Gregory the Great, had seemed the symbol of Antichrist and the invention of Satanic pride. rode away. Upon being asked why he had not mentioned this before the waterman replied that it was a common occurrence, and that he had seen more than a hundred bodies thrown into the Tiber in a similar manner. The search was now renewed, and the body of the ill-fated Francis was found pierced by nine mortal wounds. Alexander buried his son with great pomp, and offered large rewards for the discovery of his murderers. At last the terrible secret was revealed to him; he hid himself in his palace, refused food, and abandoned himself to grief. Here he was visited by the mother of his children, who still lived at Rome. What passed at their interview was never known; but all inquiry into the murder ceased, and Alexander was soon again immersed in his pleasures and his ambitious designs. The next phase in which the Papacy exhibits itself is the natural result of the possession of absolute temporal and spiritual power; the next representative Pope is a Borgia. In no other place than Rome could a Borgia have arisen; in no other position than that of Pope could so frightful a monster have maintained his power. Alexander VI., or Roderic Borgia, a Spaniard of noble family and nephew to Pope Calixtus III., was early brought to Rome by his uncle, and made a cardinal in spite of his vices and his love of ease. He became Pope in 1492 by the grossest simony. Alexander's only object was the gratification of his own desires and the exaltation of his natural children. Of these, Cæsar Borgia now ruled unrestrained, and whom he called his nephews, there were five-preyed upon the Romans like some fabulous one son being Cæsar Borgia, and one daughter monster of Greek mythology. He would suffer the infamous Lucrezia. Alexander is repre- no rival to live, and he made no secret of his sented to have been a poisoner, a robber, a hypo- murderous designs. His brother-in-law was crite, a treacherous friend. His children in all | stabbed by his orders on the steps of the palthese traits of wickedness surpassed their fa- ace. The wounded man was nursed by his ther. Cæsar Borgia, beautiful in person, and wife and his sister, the latter preparing his food so strong that in a bull-fight he struck off the lest he might be carried off by poison, while the head of the animal at a single blow-a majestic Pope set a guard around the house to protect monster ruled by unbridled passions and stained his son-in-law from his son. Cæsar laughed at with blood, now governed Rome and his father these precautions. "What can not be done in by the terror of his crimes. Every night, in the noonday," he said, "may be brought about the streets of the city, were found the corpses in the evening." He broke into the chamber of persons whom he had murdered either for of his brother-in-law, drove out the wife and their money or for revenge, yet no one dared sister, and had him strangled by the common to name the assassin. Those whom he could executioner. He stabbed his father's favorite, not reach by violence he took off by poison. Perotto, while he clung to his patron for proHis first victim was his own elder brother, tection, and the blood of the victim flowed over Francis, Duke of Gandia, whom Alexander the face and robes of the Pope. Lucrezia Borloved most of all his children, and whose rapid gia rivaled, or surpassed, the crimes of her brothrise in wealth and station excited the hatred of er; while Alexander himself performed the holy the fearful Cæsar. Francis had just been ap- rites of the Church with singular exactness, and pointed Duke of Benevento, and before he set in his leisure moments poisoned wealthy cardiout for Naples there was a family party of the nals and seized upon their estates. He is said Borgias one evening at the papal palace, where to have been singularly engaging in his manno doubt a strange kind of mirth and hilarity ners, and most agreeable in the society of those prevailed. The two brothers left together and whom he had resolved to destroy. At length parted with a pleasant farewell, Cæsar having Alexander perished by his own arts. He gave meantime provided four assassins to waylay a grand entertainment, at which one or more his victim that very night. The next morning wealthy cardinals were invited for the purpose Scarcely is the story of the Borgias to be believed: such a father, such children, have never been known before or since. Yet the accurate historians of Italy, and the careful Ranke, unite in the general outline of their crimes. On no other throne save the temporal empire of Rome has sat such a criminal as Alexander; in no other city but Rome could a Cæsar Borgia have pursued his horrible career; in none other was a Lucrezia Borgia ever known. The Pope was the absolute master of the lives and fortunes of his subjects; he was also the absolute master of their souls; and the union of these two despotisms produced at Rome a form of human wickedness which romance has never imagined, and which history shudders to describe. THE MURDER OF ESCOVEDO. O the many eminent men who perished un of being poisoned, and Cæsar Borgia was to provide the means. He sent several flasks of poisoned wine to the table, with strict orders not to use them except by his directions. Alex- der the jealous suspicions of Philip II., one ander came early to the banquet, heated with of the foremost was his brother, Don John of exercise, and called for some refreshment; the Austria. Between his twenty-first and twentyservants brought him the poisoned wine, sup-sixth years this prince had figured repeatedly posing it to be of rare excellence; he drank of as the leader of victorious hosts. Not that he it freely, and was soon in the pangs of death. was more than a nominal chief, since the ablest His blackened body was buried with all the pomp warriors of the day-men like Doria and the of the Roman ritual. Marquis of Santa Cruz-directed his operations, in the guise of lieutenants and advisers. But few people cared to look so deeply; and handsome, valiant, and generous as he was, the renown sat admirably upon him. From the fight of Lepanto to the day of his death he was the idol of the Spaniards, and to a great extent their hope; for the king had then small prospect of male heirs; indeed, Philip III. was not born until 1578, the year of Don John's death. Under these circumstances it would have argued an extraordinary lack of ambition had the prince entertained no hope of the succession. But Don John was one of the most aspiring men of the time: indeed, from his first victory forward, he led the Spanish forces far less in the service of his brother than to carve out a We may pause at this era in our review of kingdom for himself; and wherever there apthe representative bishops of Rome, since the peared a prospect of winning a crown, by sword Reformation was soon to throw a softening and or marriage, thither he turned his attentionrefining light upon the progress of the papacy. intriguing with the Pope, the Guises, the malThere were to be no more Borgias, no second contents of England and Flanders-with every Innocent; the fresh blasts from the north were one, in fact, who could pretend to further his to purify in some measure the malarious atmos- designs; and in the midst of all he betrayed a phere of the Holy City. Yet I trust this brief still deeper and far more dangerous purpose by series of pictures of the early bishops will not hankering after legitimation and the state of have been without interest to the candid read an Infant. Philip had long been weary of his er, and that he will observe that it was only brother's foreign intrigues, but he was thoras the Roman Church abandoned the prime-oughly and deeply alarmed so soon as he caught val laws of gentleness, humility, and humanity a glimpse of his domestic pretensions. He did that it ceased to be the benefactor of the barbarous races it had subdued. As the splendid panorama passes before us, and we survey the meek and holy Stephen perishing a sainted martyr in the Catacombs; the modest Gregory, the first singing-master of Europe, soothing the savage world to obedience and order by the sweet influence of his holy songs; the cunning Zacharias winning a temporal crown from the grateful Frank; Hildebrand rising in haughty intellectual pre-eminence above kings and princes; Innocent III. trampling upon the rights of nations, and lifting over Europe his persecuting arm red with the guiltless blood of the troubadours and the Albigenses; or a Borgia, the incarnation of sin-we shall have little difficulty in discovering why it is that the bishops of Rome have faded into a magnificent pageant before the rise of a purer knowledge, and why it is that the Pope of to-day, surrounded by the most splendid of earthly rituals, and pronouncing from the Vatican the anathemas of the Middle Ages, is heard with mingled pity and derision by the vigorous intellect of the nations over which his predecessors once held an undisputed sway. not, indeed, cease to employ the prince-that would have been to have given free rein to his ambition-and therefore he ventured to send him to Flanders at a very critical period; but he took good care to place brilliant exploits quite beyond his reach, choosing rather that his own interests should suffer than that Don John should increase his already too great reputation. He surrounded him with spies, instructed his coadjutors to hamper and obstruct him, and starved his means to the last degree. Chafing under such difficulties, the prince lost his temper, and what little prudence he ever had, venting the bitterest complaints against the court and the king, and conceiving the wildest schemes. All this was duly reported to Philip, who in return redoubled his precautions, especially in the matter of espionage. principal agent in this base business was the Secretary of State, Antonio Perez. Don John and his faithful secretary and counselor, Juan Escovedo, regarded this man as their truest friend. But devoted body and soul to the king, or rather to the crown, he volunteered his services as spy upon them, and for several years he filled the disgraceful office like one to the His such beauties have recourse, look bewitchingly like modesty." But even gay and gallant princes like Francis I. had failed to secure the fidelity of this particular institution, and it was not likely that better fortune would attend a man like Philip, whose mean and gloomy spirit was incased in a body which a Venetian em calvo, e ha le gambe sottili, ed è piccolo di statura meno che di mezzana, e ha la voce grossa"* manner born-so skillfully, indeed, that to the very last he retained the confidence of his dupes. The better to draw them out, as the phrase goes, he entered warmly into their projects; he sympathized with their difficulties; he even penned boldly those harsh opinions of the King which they scarcely ventured to hint, leaving not one nefarious stratagem in the whole art of treach-bassador of the day describes as "peloso e ery untried. Every letter he dispatched was submitted to his master's eye, and so was every one he received. And he took good care that the monarch's interest in his proceedings should not relax through any subsidence of suspicion, dwelling on every imprudence of prince and secretary, until Philip fully believed that they aimed at no less than his life and crown. And the precious pair justified and encouraged one another in their perfidy-the Minister representing his behavior as the perfection of duty and conscientious scruple, and the monarch declaring that he should have considered the Minister wanting in duty to his God, no less than to his sovereign, had he acted otherwise. Finding his position altogether insupportable, Don John dispatched Escovedo to Spain in July, 1577, to fur-ily laden with presents, including money, plate, ther his interests in any way, but if possible to procure his recall. This visit Philip regarded with the gravest suspicion, and even fear, inscribing the first letter he received from Escovedo with the following remark: "The avantcourier has arrived. We must be quick and dispatch him before he can murder us." So far Perez had no personal animus against Escovedo. Nor had Escovedo any overt reason to distrust Perez. The contrary, indeed, was the fact. They had been brought up together in the house of Ruy Gomez, the most favored and fortunate Minister Philip ever had; they had been introduced together to public life; they belonged to the same political faction-a thing which then bound Spaniards together like brotherhood—and, finally, Escovedo owed his present honorable post to the recommendation of Perez. But matters soon occurred which rendered the destruction of the former indispensable to the safety of the latter. sance. precisely the terms in which one would sketch a veteran monkey. Accordingly, at the time of Escovedo's reappearance in Spain, the whole court was full of whispers concerning the gay doings of the princess; and the scandal-mongers dwelt with especial unction on her intimacy with Philip's favorite Secretary of State. So far had this been carried that the haughty relatives of the dame-Silvas, Guzmans, and Mendozas, the noblest houses in Spain-seriously meditated the murder of the gallant. And the fondness of the princess was too conspicuous not to give them, in Spanish eyes at least, a reasonable excuse. Mules from her various estates, heav furniture, and rich stuffs, were continually arriving at the gates of the fortunate Perez. He was her constant attendant at theatre, bull-fight, and auto-da-fé. And in her own palace he was a visitor so frequent and favored that her very servants-folk not too sensitive in these matters were, or pretended to be, exceedingly scandalized. "One day," said an indignant cousin, the Marquis of Fabrara, "I was stopped at the door and kept waiting among her women because, forsooth, this fellow Perez was with her. My valet, too, has repeatedly seen him leave her palace by stealth at unseasonable hours. Even worse things have been witnessed by myself and others, her relatives. And such effect has all this had upon me, that I have more than once been compelled to retire to the nearest church to beseech God to deliver me from the strong temptation to slay the villain with which the sight of him possessed me." Escovedo, an elève of Ruy Gomez, was devoted with all the enthusiasm of a vassal and a Spaniard to the house of his chief. He was deeply interested in its fortunes, and keenly alive to every thing that touched its honor. One of his first acts was to pay his respects to the princess, and, as his duty required, he was a daily visitor. Of course he soon heard all the gossip, and in a short time he obtained the very strongest confirmation of it. Full of indignation, the worthy secretary hastened to speak his mind to the princess. And, altogether regardless of the presence of a third party-the squire of Antonio Perez, who heard and long remembered every word that passed-he indulged the astonished and indignant lady with a very pretty homily, winding up by declaring that he felt himself obliged to recount the whole affair to the king. There was then at the Spanish court one of those dames who appeared with something of heroism and a good deal of romance during the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages, but who degenerated into the mere creatures of show and sense and selfishness during the RenaisThis lady-the Duchess of Pastrana and Princess of Eboli-was a worthy sister of those fair and honest" frailties, Diana de Poictiers and Gabrielle d'Estrées. Married at age of thirteen to Ruy Gomez, then a man of thirty, she was now a widow, the mistress of vast wealth, and her thirty-eight years had merely ripened her singular loveliness. Nor were her charms a whit impaired by a slight defect (tuerta) in one of her eyes. Indeed, a good judge of these matters, Henri Quatre, considered it an additional attraction; "for," said he, "the fitful looks and drooping lids, and "Bald and hairy, with attenuated limbs, stunted all the other pretty little stratagems to which figure, and harsh voice." the |