CHAP. syncope, during which it could not be formidable to IV. the French king, and during which, in consequence,

the great feudatories did not see the necessity of rallying to the sovereign or sacrificing their independence to his grandeur. The absence of English rivalry checked, rather than advanced, the rise of France as a kingdom.

The first act of Louis the Young seemed in contradiction with the policy of his sire. The citizens of Orleans, deeming the opportunity favourable, assembled and swore a commune. Such an act on the part of townspeople was always to abate a practical grievance, such as the exaction of a count or the severity of a bishop. But in Orleans there was a royal prefect, and to rise against him was to rebel against the king. Louis therefore entered Orleans in ire. The absence of resistance showed the commune to have been the act of a minority of the citizens. Those guilty of it were mercilessly put to death. But Louis afterwards published an edict, forbidding his provost or prevot to levy arbitrary contributions or taxes, or debase the coin.

It was a different case, when about the same time the citizens of Rheims rose against their archbishop, and demanded the same municipal rights as those enjoyed by Laon and other episcopal towns. The clergy appealed to the young king. But he, under Suger's advice, approved the act of the citizens of Rheims and sanctioned their commune. His treatment of Sens, at a later date, led to a catastrophe. When about to depart for the Holy Land, the monarch sold to the citizens communal rights in return for a sum of money. The bishop declared that he could not furnish his contributions to the crusade, unless he had the powers of taxation usurped by the commune. The bishop, by the royal permission, began to exercise them. Whereupon the citizens rose and slew the prelate. The monarch, engaged in a holy war, could not but punish such an

outrage.
He caused the chiefs of the tumult to be
seized and precipitated from the cathedral steeple.

Louis's first aim and ambition were to extend and establish his empire in the south. He caused himself to be crowned at Bourges, as if to make known his dignity to the southern populations. He summoned the great feudatories who had supported his father's pretensions in Auvergne, and the Bourbonnais, to follow him in an expedition against the Count of Toulouse. Louis the Young did not, however, enjoy that command or that influence over the high aristocracy which his father had acquired. Thibaud, Count of Champagne, especially refused to second his designs in the south: and Louis, thus deserted, laid siege to Toulouse in vain. The same eagerness to dominate in the south caused a breach between the king and Pope Innocent. The Roman pontiff had established in the south of France that right of investiture, which the Germans expressly denied him, and which the French set practically at nought. Louis was indignant to find the Pope nominating, without even consulting him, an Archbishop of Bourges. He boldly appointed another; and a war of investiture forthwith arose. Louis, like his grandsire Philip, was excommunicated, and the clergy suspended all devotional functions in whatever town he held his court. The King of France learned to brave, or play with, these papal thunders, which were powerless against a prince who possessed the rights, and a people that was animated by the feelings, of true nationality.

An accident which occurred in 1142 very much afflicted Louis. He was at war with the Count of Champagne, and laid siege to Vitry, into which his troops penetrated by assault. The inhabitants, to the number of 700, took refuge in the church. The portal being set on fire, the flames at once communicated to the edifice, and prevented all exit from it. Those

CHAP.

IV.

CHAP.
IV.

within were burned and crushed beneath the ruins.
Louis was witness of the catastrophe, heard the cries
of the dying, and saw their scorched remains. He
was so struck with remorse that he made peace with
the Count of Champagne, besought the pardon of the
Pope, and retained those stings of conscience which
prompted him, a few years after, to assume the cross.
Louis was ready to yield to the Pope in the matter of
the Archbishop of Bourges. He only demanded that
the sentence of excommunication passed against the
Count of Vermandois, his friend and councillor, should
be recalled. St. Bernard, in a letter which is extant,
advised the Pope to take off the excommunication for a
moment, until the king had executed his part of the
contract, and then lay it on again. This unworthy
manœuvre of Pope and saint naturally disgusts the mo-
ralist, and is reprobated by all writers. Louis was so
indignant at it, that he defied the Pope, stopped the
nomination to all the vacant prelacies, and sequestered
their revenues a proof of the power of even young
Louis in ecclesiastical affairs. The death of Pope Inno-
cent put an end to this strife and scandal.

There was another consequence of France being the still lake amidst the storms of surrounding regions, which deserves to be noticed. It became the asylum of education; it harboured, if it did not produce, learned men, whom the strife of Italy and the rudeness of England would not tolerate. Monastic schools, of even greater celebrity than those of France, flourished on each side of it. At Bec in Normandy, at Cluny in Burgundy, were reared the churchmen who filled the rich benefices and abbacies of those countries. There reigned the stern orthodox doctrines of obedience to tradition and authority. All that Paris could boast was greater freedom of teaching. Professors there studied Aristotle, in translations it might be; and they established a new basis for reasoning as for teaching.

1

an as

The logic of the Greek philosopher taught that there
were such things as universals; reasoning from which
to particulars produced such absurdity, that Roscelin, a
Breton teacher, denied altogether the existence of such
abstractions. They were mere names, he said,
sertion that founded the school of the nominalists. The
churchmen, on their side, perceived that not only were
virtues abstractions, but even the Godhead itself, as also
the three persons of the Trinity; and to doubt the exist-
ence of universals was to question its reality. Such
was the wisdom, such the fears, of the divines of those
days. The controversy still raged, when another Bre-
ton arrived in Paris, and soon gained a reputation
in dispute. His name was Abelard. That the prevail-
ing quarrel was merely one of words, and that religion
or its interests were not affected by it, was at once per-
ceived by Abelard, who took that common-sense view of
the different kinds of existences which most men, save
metaphysicians, have been contented to take. Lucky
would it have been for Abelard had he stopped here,
and contented himself with exposing logical absurdities.
But he was vain, anxious for distinction in every branch
of learning, and he at length undertook to explore and
expound theology itself. Into its edifice, too, he brought
the torch of common sense, and insisted that faith should
be based upon reason. But when he came to apply this
rule in-explaining the Trinity, or in expatiating upon
Grace, and upon Original Sin, he aroused the ire of the
churchmen. Abelard was first condemned to perpetual
seclusion by the Synod of Soissons, which wisely adopted
the rule of silencing, not refuting. He was released
from this penalty by Suger, abbot of St. Denis. But
Abelard's reputation, his adventures, his obstinacy in
attracting followers and opening schools were species of
rivalry, and even of hostility, that the Church could not
brook. St. Bernard, the great chief and saint of the
day, raised his voice against Abelard, and denounced

CHAP.

IV.

IV.

him to the Pope. Abelard replied boldly by summoning his accuser to a public disputation before a council at Sens. This intellectual tournament was of sufficient importance for King Louis to come and preside over it in person in 1140. St. Bernard appeared; but Abelard, aware, on second thoughts, that the doctrines of a religious creed, founded upon and consonant with reason, would assuredly be condemned by an assembly of prelates, declined the dispute, and allowed ecclesiastical sentence to go against him. The Pope corroborated the verdict, and condemned not only Abelard to perpetual silence, but also Arnold of Brescia, who had drawn much more formidable conclusions against Church authority than Abelard ventured.

Louis had no objects of much greater importance to occupy him. He had hitherto favoured the cause of Stephen in England on account of his connexion with the king's son Eustace, who had married his sister. But the French monarch had since become more impar tial; and he at last consented to an accommodation, which should leave England to Stephen, but give Normandy to his rival, Henry Plantagenet. Louis went so far as to support this in arms, and he entered Normandy in 1144, on behalf of the Plantagenets. The proposed arrangement took place, and left the French king free to seek in distant lands that renown for which his native country offered no battle-field.

Circumstances offered what young Louis desired. It was now nearly half a century since the crusaders, under Godfrey and Tancred, had conquered Antioch and Jeru salem. The heroes of that conquest were no more. Other feudal chiefs of European stock had succeeded to their honours, but the soldiers had died away and been but ill replaced by men of Syrian birth. As to the natives, even those who had embraced Christianity were despised. And whilst the monarchs and barons of England and of France were still willing to make use