Et concludes thus. "Tout premierement je prouve comme guerre ne se peut ou doit ottroier contre les Sarrazins ou mescreans. La raison est telle tous les biens de la terre a fait Dieu pour creature humaine indifferamment tant pour la mauvaise comme pour la bonne, car Dieu ne fait mye le souleil plus chault ne plus vertueux pour l'ung que pour l'autre et fait porter a la terre des mescreans bons vins, bons bleds, et bons fruits, comme des Chrestiens. Et leur donne science et scavoir naturel de vertu et de justice. Et si leur a donne empires, royaulmes, duchies, contes, et leur foy, et leur loy, et leur ordonnance. si Dieu cela leur a donne, pourquoy leur osteroient les Chrestiens? item plus fort nous ne devons ne pouvons selon la saincte escripture contredire ne offencer ung mescreant de prendre la saincte foy ne le sainct bapteme mais les devons laisser en la franche volonte que Dieu leur a donnee. Car par force ne doit homme estre contraint a la foy croyre. In like manner, St. Thomas Aquinas, writing in the thirteenth century, at the very time of the Crusades, says, that "we ought not to oblige the infidels to embrace the faith; but that it was lawful for Christians to oblige them not to injure religion by their persuasions or open persecutions, and that it was on that ground the Crusades were adopted *." It cannot, however, be denied, that crimes and weakness were associated with these religious enterprises. This it was which afflicted the Popes, and St. Bernard, and Godfrey of Bouillon, and Tancred, and St. Louis. These crimes brought on their own punishment, and the Crusaders, like the Greeks of old, —ἐπεὶ οὔτι νοήμονες, οὐδὲ δίκαιοι πάντες ἔσαν· τῷ σφέων πόλεες κακὸν οἶτον ἔπεσπον †. Raumer is shocked at the terrible description of Jerusalem taken by storm, when cruelty was seen to accompany humility and the hopes of heaven. Without doubt humanity shudders at such scenes. Vinisauf describing the slaughter of the Turkish army, pursued by Richard I. exclaims with much feeling, "O quam multum distans et dissimilis quæcunque contemplatio claustralium juxta columnos meditantium, horrendo illi exercitio militantium!" † Odyss. III. II. 2. 9, 10. a. 8. Better that the last magnificent line of Tasso had been never written, and that the Crusaders had thought, like Hector, when he said, Χερσὶ δ ̓ ἀνίπτοισι Διῒ λείβειν αἴθοπα οἶνον ἅζομαι· οὐδέ πη ἐστὶ κελαινέφεϊ Κρονίωνὶ αἵματι καὶ λύθρῳ πεπαλαγμένον εὐχετάασθαι *. But human nature is like infernal nature in moments such as these; and it should rather excite our admiration that in this instance the interval was so quickly succeeded by a return to the sentiments of humanity and devotion. The faults and crimes, however, of the Crusaders have been enormously overstated, while their virtues have been ungenerously passed over in silence. What an example of purity of heart is given by Raumer, when he relates that the Archduke Frederic of Suabia, who died in the third Crusade, the same which was fatal to the Emperor Frederic I. refused to follow the advice of his physician, saying, "malle se mori quam in peregrinatione divina corpus suum per libidinem maculare +.' Impious novels, professing to be "Tirés de l'Histoire des Croisades," ascribing the basest character to the glorious names of Christian antiquity, and representing the infidels as far surpassing the Christians in every virtue, have contributed not a little to a false opinion of these great heroes. Mr Hammer in his dissertation on the gallantry of Saladin, and of his brother Malek Adel ‡, censures indeed the author in the Gesta Dei per Francos §, for being prejudiced against Saladin; but on the other hand he blames the writers of historical romances for representing these two princes as gallant knights, Saladin in the Amours of Eleanore de Guyenne, and Malek Adel in the Crusades by Madame Cotin. He says that he wished to find authority for their gallantry; and after searching through his manuscripts without meeting with a single trait of the gallantry of Malek Adel, he still resolved to believe him a pattern of chivalry, "but what was my astonishment," he continues, "when finally, in a classical historian of these times I found facts which proved incontestably that this famous Malek Adel not only had none of the superior qualities ascribed to him, but that on the contrary a ferocious soldier, and merciless conqueror, he failed in the most simple duties due to women, even in the land of Harems and Barbarians; that far from being the flower of Arabian knights, he shamefully ill-treated females, and has constantly passed among the Easterns for a man who forgot in the most interesting situations of his life all that unfortunate beauty had claims to! It is the same," he continues, "with respect to his brother Saladin. Without refusing the justice which is due to their warlike and political virtues, history has no less proclaimed them both as two Barbarians, shewing on the most essential occasions the total want of condescension and respect for the most weak and beautiful portion of the human race." 29 But grave historians deserve a more severe reproof for their shameful want of honesty in regard to the Crusaders. Not to notice the cruel haste of Fleury, the great French historian Velly thus remarks; on se croisa donc à l'envie; les uns par libertinage, les autres par un faux zele de religion, ceux-ci pour se faire un nom, ceux-la pour changer de place, quelques-uns pour se soustraire aux importunités de leurs créanciers, quelques-autres pour aller chercher dans un pays étranger une fortune plus favorable que celle dont ils jouissoient dans leur patrie *." Poor Millot must needs publish another motive, namely, 66 en profiter pour séduire les femmes des Croisés +.' Raumer adds another, "to escape from a bad wife," der Pein eines bösen weibes zu entgehn. Now all these writers raise this monstrous superstructure on the basis of William of Tyre, who, however, by his very first words, dispels the horrid image which they hold up; for he says, nec tamen apud omnes erat in causa Dominus ." Why have they omitted these words? and why in translating what follows in William of Tyre, do they pass over in silence all the motives which were generous and honourable, such as is implied in this sentence, " quidam ne amicos desererent?" If a Crusade were undertaken in the present age, what worse motives could be ascribed to the men that would engage in it? And surely in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteen centuries there were other motives *Tome ii. p. 441. Hist. des Troubadours, ii. 503. that might have actuated the warlike youth of Europe? Camoens at least thought so in a later age, when he said, “If youthful fury pant for shining arms, Spread o'er the Eastern world the dread alarms; The Saracen, thy faith, thy nation's foe *." Does our philosophy teach us only to regard the vices of these men, and to take no account of their virtues ? to overlook those who, like the intrepid Brançon, thought themselves too happy, "de mourir pour Jesus Christ +," like Jakeline de Mailliacus, a Knight Templar, who, upon the advance of Saladin into Palestine, in a battle near fiberiad, rushed into the midst of the Sarassens, and as Vinisauf says, "mori pro Christo non timuit?" Have we no sympathy for those who endured the hunger at Antioch and the thirst under the walls of Jerusalem? Piso could not visit the academy without thinking that he beheld Plato, Speusippus, Xenocrates, and Polemo. Coloneus recalled to Quintus, Sophocles and Edipus; he was moved at the sight beyond utterance," inanis scilicet sed commovit tamen." Cicero, when he came to Metapontus, would not turn to his host till he had beheld the seat of Pythagoras; and Lucius not content with viewing the place where Demosthenes and Eschines so often contended, could find no rest till he had gone down to the very shore where the great orator of Athens loved to declaim. Nay, the very Barbarian has so much of feeling, -Phryx incola manes §. Hectoreos calcare vetat And have we nothing but reproach and ridicule for those brave and affectionate men, who went repeating the verse of the Psalmist, "adorabimus in loco," or of the prophet, "His sepulchre shall be glorious," or "osculabor desideratam meam Hierusalem priusquam moriar;" who wept and worshipped as they entered Palestine, "Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which eighteen hundred years ago were nailed and who devoted themselves to death, thinking only upon * Lusiad, X. ↑ Joinville, 55. § Lucan, IX. 976. Mary and the holy child Jesus, upon the mercy of God and the captivity of Jerusalem ? 66 "The Crusades," says David Hume, are a monument of human folly, and the whole religion of our ancestors was mistaken." Be it so; with the Sophist of Glasgow I have no wish to argue, nor will I imitate Cato who used to press his opinions upon men of every description, and would address the Roman mob as if he were speaking in the Republic of Plato; but thus much I will say even to these revilers, that if mankind had always been imbued with such a philosophy, we should never have possessed the paintings of Raphael, or the poetry of Tasso; we should have essays moral and metaphysical, not the visions of Dante and the Minstrel's Lay; our creed would be the maxims of selfishness, not the religion of chivalry and honour. It is much to be lamented that the acquaintance of the English reader with the characters and events of the middle ages, should, for the most part, be derived from the writings of men, who were either infidels, or who wrote, on every subject connected with religion, with the feelings and opinions of Scotch Presbyterian preachers of the last century, conscientious men no doubt, but certainly not the most enlightened estimators of Christianity or human nature. Nor is it foreign from the original design of the writer of these pages, if he thus endeavours to dissuade his reader from too hastily adopting a general opinion, which in fact throws contempt upon religion, and which dishonours human nature; an opinion which is unfair, illiberal, and ungenerous, for it is adopted, partly without having made a due estimate upon the testimony of prejudiced writers, and partly upon detected calumny; for it is founded upon the opinion of our own peculiar age, country, and associates; for it is wantonly insulting to the memory of men, from whom we have inherited every thing that gives Europe a pre-eminence over the rest of the earth, manners, learning, and Christianity. It is painful to turn back from the holy land without a knowledge of its present condition. Much may be learned from the journies of the Viscount Chateaubriand to Jerusalem. The description which he gives of his being admitted to the order of the Holy Sepulchre, is full of in |