Emperor, but became Emperor instead of Duke, of Austria alone; Hungary, however, forming an integral portion of the Austrian Empire until 1867. In that year her independence as a kingdom was recognised anew by Austria, and the Emperor Francis Joseph was crowned King" of Hungary, from which time the Austro-Hungarian sovereign has been a dual monarch-Emperor of Austria, and King of Hungary-two sovereignties, independent one of the other, though under the same monarch.

66

Thuringia still remains to be described; for although in the present day it is one of the least prominent portions of the continent in the thoughts of the general English tourist, it occupied an important place in Europe in the thirteenth century, and especially in the history of St. Elizabeth; for it was here that her married life was passed and her death took place, and it forms the centre of her interests and surroundings.

Geographically it is small in extent, and is chiefly characterised by its great forests, and its generally level plains of considerable fertility; and its sovereign, as ruler of Thuringia only, did not occupy any important position in the German confederation, in which he was not even one of the Electors. But in the thirteenth century the Landgrave, or Duke of Thuringia, was also Count of Saxony, and of the Hesses (Hesse Cassel, Hesse Darmstadt, etc.), and was thus a sovereign of far more real weight than some even of the Electors. The capital city— Wartburg-was on a steep, rocky elevation, and consisted chiefly of the castle on the summit (still remaining), and the usual cluster of tenements surrounding its base, which nestled in the usual fashion of the times under the protection of the fortress, and supplied its marketable necessities. In this castle St. Elizabeth lived;

B

and at a period later still by a couple of centuries, it was the stronghold belonging to the Elector of Saxony, in which Luther was nominally imprisoned, but in reality sheltered when his life was in danger, and in which he translated in safety and seclusion a large portion of the Bible into German.

Hermann, the Landgrave of Thuringia at the date of this picture, was a great patron of poetry and other refining influences, besides being a statesman of high character; and he was father of Louis, the future husband of Elizabeth of Hungary. But his personal actions will be described more appropriately in a later portion of this paper.

GREAT ACTORS IN THE THIRTEENTH

CENTURY-CONFLICT FOR SUPREMACY BETWEEN THE ECCLESIASTICAL AND THE CIVIL POWERS-THE POPES AND THE KINGS.

The geography of Europe having been thus passed in review, the great actors of the period now come forward, and of these Pope Innocent III was one of the most powerful and striking, but whether he should be styled the greatest also will largely depend upon the standpoint of the historian. While one school of writers paints him as if he were a Prince of Light, another school

depicts him as an Angel of Darkness, and under this conflict of opinion it seems as if the wise course for an historian, not possessing omniscience, is to describe the events of the period with the utmost impartiality in his power, and leave the reader to judge for himself of the motives which influenced the actions.

Innocent III possesses special interest for us Englishmen, because the first of his great conflicts to be here described was with our own King John, whom he so signally defeated and humbled that England has never

forgiven either of these two great combatants. It may be well to premise that all writers are agreed upon the high character of this Pope for learning, according to the knowledge of the day; for asceticism and consistently high morality of life; for spiritual earnestness; and for absence of everything that could be described as petty or personal selfishness. His conception seems to have been to make the spiritual, i.e. (in his interpretation), the ecclesiastical element supreme throughout Europe; and to this everything else must give way.

His conflict, then, with our King John was upon the question of National Independence. John claimed that England was an independent kingdom, and (like his still greater ancestor, William the Conqueror, *) that whatever he might concede to Rome was of good will, and not of necessity. He therefore claimed the power and right to appoint bishops and other great church dignitaries to their bishoprics, or other positions that might involve feudal rights and duties, as well as spiritual ones; and he exercised this right without the consent of the Pope, either before or after the appointment was made. Innocent insisted upon his right to be first consulted, and to withhold or to bestow the pallium; without which, he mainPope Gregory VII-Hildebrand-sent Hubert as his Legate to William the Conqueror to demand from him homage for his kingdom, and the payment of the tribute-Peter's pence, then considerably in arrear. William replied: 'Thy legate Hubert, holy father, hath called on me in thy name to take the oath of fealty to thee and thy successors, and to exert myself in enforcing the more regular payment of the duties paid of old by my predecessors to the Church of Rome. The one request I have granted, the other I refused. Homage to thee I have not chosen. I do not choose to do. I owe it not on my own account, nor do I find that it has been performed by those before me. The money in question has, during the last three years past while I was in France, been negligently levied. That which has been collected Hubert will lay before thee, and that which we have yet to collect shall be sent thee at a convenient season by the messengers of our trusty Archbishop Lanfranç."-Bowden's Life of Gregory VII (Hildebrand), vol. ii, pp. 258-260. He quotes as his authority Baronius-Annales Ecclesiastici, liber vii, epis. i. A.D. 1079.

*

66

20

PICTURE OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE

tained, none of the bishops' spiritual functions would be valid. Both King and Pope were determined, and at last the Pope excommunicated John, and placed the kingdom under an interdict which remained in force for five years. Bearing in mind that the Saxons in England, after expelling the Britons with their ancient British or Celtic church into the inaccessible fastnesses of Wales, had received their Christianity from Rome through the mission headed by St. Augustine, it is easy to understand that the English, i.e., the Saxon, and the intermixed Danish and Norman clergy, would attach great weight to the dictum of the Pope, however strong their own insular nationality might be; and the interdict seems to have been faithfully carried into force. It is for us to conceive, if we can in this nineteenth century, what its influence would be in the thirteenth, when the church bells for matins, angelus, * and vespers were the only clocks possessed by the people; when the masses living in a condition of serfdom and poverty possessed no relaxation from their labours except on Sundays and Saints' days. When the only brightness and excitement that broke the monotony of their lives were the religious processions organised by the church, and the illuminations and candles before the decorated images of the saints in the churches. When Christianity, however much it might be alloyed with superstition, made the christening of their infants, and the marryings of the young; the visitations, and extreme unction of the aged and dying; and, lastly, the Christian burial ceremonies over the dead, the very essence of their lives,-when all these things were suddenly stopped-the bells were silenced and the churches closed; the infants were only baptized privately, and as it were surreptitiously; the sick were unvisited and unshrived, and only permitted when on

* See p. 22.

1

the verge of death to receive the holy oil of extreme unction, while after death their bodies were unburied, except in ditches by the roadsides, and without Christian ceremonial. When the brightness of this life and the hopes of the future were both extinguished for no fault of their own, and for no benefit they could perceive, no wonder that the nation groaned under it; and its cry at length became so bitter that even John might have been expected to give way. But he refused to yield until the Pope, as a last resource, absolved the nation from its allegiance, and encouraged Philippe Augustus to invade England with the promise of his sanction. Then, and not till then, when Philippe was actually at his door, John gave way, and resigned his kingdom into the hands of the Pope's legate, with the bitterest accompanying humiliations, and received it back again as a papal fief, for which he was to render feudal homage, and pay all the papal money demanded. Innocent conquered, and the Pope thus placed his foot, for the first and last time, upon the neck of an English monarch.

It is so difficult to find the actual terms of an interdict or excommunication in the thirteenth century, that those of the latter are here introduced from Brewer's Political and Social History of France,* 2nd. ed., p. 54.

The actual terms of an interdict, as applied to a nation have varied so much in extent and severity that they are usually described by historians in their general effect and

* Excommunication-" May he be cursed in the city, in the field, and in the highway-in living and in dying. Cursed in his offspring, in his flocks, and in his people. Let no man call him brother, or wish him God-speed. Let all men flee from him while living: and let no consolation attend his death bed; and let his corpse lie unburied in the high road, to whiten in the wind. Cursed be he on the earth, and cursed under the earth; in the life that now is, and in that which is to come." As the curse was ended, all the images were draped in black, all the candles and lamps were suddenly extinguished, and the congregation had to grope their way out of the church in the dark. The foregoing was an excommunication, of an individual.