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Title: The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Volume 5
Author: Edward Gibbon
Commentator: H. H. Milman
Release Date: November, 1996 [eBook #735]
[Most recently updated: March 7, 2021]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
Produced by: David Reed and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE ***
HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Edward Gibbon, Esq.
With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman
Vol. 5
1788 (Written), 1845 (Revised)
CONTENTS
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part I.
Introduction, Worship, And Persecution Of Images.—Revolt Of Italy
And Rome.—Temporal Dominion Of The Popes.—Conquest Of Italy By The
Franks.—Establishment Of Images.—Character And Coronation Of
Charlemagne.—Restoration And Decay Of The Roman Empire In The
West.—Independence Of Italy.— Constitution Of The Germanic Body.
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part II.
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part III.
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part IV.
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part V.
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part VI.
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part I.
Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Birth, Character, And
Doctrine Of Mahomet.—He Preaches At Mecca.— Flies To
Medina.—Propagates His Religion By The Sword.— Voluntary Or
Reluctant Submission Of The Arabs.—His Death And Successors.—The
Claims And Fortunes Of Ali And His Descendants.
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part II.
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part
III.
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part IV.
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part V.
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part VI.
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part
VII.
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part
VIII.
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part I.
The Conquest Of Persia, Syria, Egypt, Africa, And Spain, By The
Arabs Or Saracens.—Empire Of The Caliphs, Or Successors Of
Mahomet.—State Of The Christians, &c., Under Their Government.
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part II.
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part III.
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part IV.
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part V.
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part VI.
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part VII.
Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part I.
The Two Sieges Of Constantinople By The Arabs.—Their Invasion Of
France, And Defeat By Charles Martel.—Civil War Of The Ommiades
And Abbassides.—Learning Of The Arabs.— Luxury Of The
Caliphs.—Naval Enterprises On Crete, Sicily, And Rome.—Decay And
Division Of The Empire Of The Caliphs. —Defeats And Victories Of
The Greek Emperors.
Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part II.
Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part III.
Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part IV.
Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part V.
Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.—Part I.
Fate Of The Eastern Empire In The Tenth Century.—Extent And
Division.—Wealth And Revenue.—Palace Of Constantinople.— Titles
And Offices.—Pride And Power Of The Emperors.— Tactics Of The
Greeks, Arabs, And Franks.—Loss Of The Latin Tongue.—Studies And
Solitude Of The Greeks.
Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.—Part II.
Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.—Part III.
Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.—Part IV.
Chapter LIV: Origin And Doctrine Of The Paulicians.—Part I.
Origin And Doctrine Of The Paulicians.—Their Persecution By The
Greek Emperors.—Revolt In Armenia &c.—Transplantation Into
Thrace.—Propagation In The West.—The Seeds, Character, And
Consequences Of The Reformation.
Chapter LIV: Origin And Doctrine Of The Paulicians.—Part II.
Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, The Hungarians And The
Russians.—Part I.
The Bulgarians.—Origin, Migrations, And Settlement Of The
Hungarians.—Their Inroads In The East And West.—The Monarchy Of
Russia.—Geography And Trade.—Wars Of The Russians Against The
Greek Empire.—Conversion Of The Barbarians.
Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, The Hungarians And The
Russians.—Part II.
Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, The Hungarians And The
Russians.—Part III.
Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.—Part I.
The Saracens, Franks, And Greeks, In Italy.—First Adventures And
Settlement Of The Normans.—Character And Conquest Of Robert
Guiscard, Duke Of Apulia—Deliverance Of Sicily By His Brother
Roger.—Victories Of Robert Over The Emperors Of The East And
West.—Roger, King Of Sicily, Invades Africa And Greece.—The
Emperor Manuel Comnenus.— Wars Of The Greeks And
Normans.—Extinction Of The Normans.
Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.—Part
II.
Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.—Part
III.
Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.—Part
IV.
Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.—Part V.
Chapter LVII: The Turks.—Part I.
The Turks Of The House Of Seljuk.—Their Revolt Against Mahmud
Conqueror Of Hindostan.—Togrul Subdues Persia, And Protects The
Caliphs.—Defeat And Captivity Of The Emperor Romanus Diogenes By
Alp Arslan.—Power And Magnificence Of Malek Shah.—Conquest Of Asia
Minor And Syria.—State And Oppression Of Jerusalem.—Pilgrimages To
The Holy Sepulchre.
Chapter LVII: The Turks.—Part II.
Chapter LVII: The Turks.—Part III.
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.—Part I.
Origin And Numbers Of The First Crusade.—Characters Of The Latin
Princes.—Their March To Constantinople.—Policy Of The Greek
Emperor Alexius.—Conquest Of Nice, Antioch, And Jerusalem, By The
Franks.—Deliverance Of The Holy Sepulchre.— Godfrey Of Bouillon,
First King Of Jerusalem.—Institutions Of The French Or Latin
Kingdom.
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.—Part II.
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.—Part III.
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.—Part IV.
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.—Part V.
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part I.
Introduction, Worship, And Persecution Of Images.—Revolt Of Italy
And Rome.—Temporal Dominion Of The Popes.—Conquest Of Italy By The
Franks.—Establishment Of Images.—Character And Coronation Of
Charlemagne.—Restoration And Decay Of The Roman Empire In The
West.—Independence Of Italy.— Constitution Of The Germanic Body.
In the connection of the church and state, I have considered the
former as subservient only, and relative, to the latter; a
salutary maxim, if in fact, as well as in narrative, it had ever
been held sacred. The Oriental philosophy of the Gnostics, the
dark abyss of predestination and grace, and the strange
transformation of the Eucharist from the sign to the substance of
Christ’s body, 1 I have purposely abandoned to the curiosity of
speculative divines. But I have reviewed, with diligence and
pleasure, the objects of ecclesiastical history, by which the
decline and fall of the Roman empire were materially affected,
the propagation of Christianity, the constitution of the Catholic
church, the ruin of Paganism, and the sects that arose from the
mysterious controversies concerning the Trinity and incarnation.
At the head of this class, we may justly rank the worship of
images, so fiercely disputed in the eighth and ninth centuries;
since a question of popular superstition produced the revolt of
Italy, the temporal power of the popes, and the restoration of
the Roman empire in the West.
1 (return) [ The learned Selden has given the history of
transubstantiation in a comprehensive and pithy sentence: “This
opinion is only rhetoric turned into logic,” (his Works, vol.
iii. p. 2037, in his Table-Talk.)]
The primitive Christians were possessed with an unconquerable
repugnance to the use and abuse of images; and this aversion may
be ascribed to their descent from the Jews, and their enmity to
the Greeks. The Mosaic law had severely proscribed all
representations of the Deity; and that precept was firmly
established in the principles and practice of the chosen people.
The wit of the Christian apologists was pointed against the
foolish idolaters, who bowed before the workmanship of their own
hands; the images of brass and marble, which, had they been
endowed with sense and motion, should have started rather from
the pedestal to adore the creative powers of the artist. 2
Perhaps some recent and imperfect converts of the Gnostic tribe
might crown the statues of Christ and St. Paul with the profane
honors which they paid to those of Aristotle and Pythagoras; 3
but the public religion of the Catholics was uniformly simple and
spiritual; and the first notice of the use of pictures is in the
censure of the council of Illiberis, three hundred years after
the Christian aera. Under the successors of Constantine, in the
peace and luxury of the triumphant church, the more prudent
bishops condescended to indulge a visible superstition, for the
benefit of the multitude; and, after the ruin of Paganism, they
were no longer restrained by the apprehension of an odious
parallel. The first introduction of a symbolic worship was in the
veneration of the cross, and of relics. The saints and martyrs,
whose intercession was implored, were seated on the right hand of
God; but the gracious and often supernatural favors, which, in
the popular belief, were showered round their tomb, conveyed an
unquestionable sanction of the devout pilgrims, who visited, and
touched, and kissed these lifeless remains, the memorials of
their merits and sufferings. 4 But a memorial, more interesting
than the skull or the sandals of a departed worthy, is the
faithful copy of his person and features, delineated by the arts
of painting or sculpture. In every age, such copies, so congenial
to human feelings, have been cherished by the zeal of private
friendship, or public esteem: the images of the Roman emperors
were adored with civil, and almost religious, honors; a reverence
less ostentatious, but more sincere, was applied to the statues
of sages and patriots; and these profane virtues, these splendid
sins, disappeared in the presence of the holy men, who had died
for their celestial and everlasting country. At first, the
experiment was made with caution and scruple; and the venerable
pictures were discreetly allowed to instruct the ignorant, to
awaken the cold, and to gratify the prejudices of the heathen
proselytes. By a slow though inevitable progression, the honors
of the original were transferred to the copy: the devout
Christian prayed before the image of a saint; and the Pagan rites
of genuflection, luminaries, and incense, again stole into the
Catholic church. The scruples of reason, or piety, were silenced
by the strong evidence of visions and miracles; and the pictures
which speak, and move, and bleed, must be endowed with a divine
energy, and may be considered as the proper objects of religious
adoration. The most audacious pencil might tremble in the rash
attempt of defining, by forms and colors, the infinite Spirit,
the eternal Father, who pervades and sustains the universe. 5 But
the superstitious mind was more easily reconciled to paint and to
worship the angels, and, above all, the Son of God, under the
human shape, which, on earth, they have condescended to assume.
The second person of the Trinity had been clothed with a real and
mortal body; but that body had ascended into heaven: and, had not
some similitude been presented to the eyes of his disciples, the
spiritual worship of Christ might have been obliterated by the
visible relics and representations of the saints. A similar
indulgence was requisite and propitious for the Virgin Mary: the
place of her burial was unknown; and the assumption of her soul
and body into heaven was adopted by the credulity of the Greeks
and Latins. The use, and even the worship, of images was firmly
established before the end of the sixth century: they were fondly
cherished by the warm imagination of the Greeks and Asiatics: the
Pantheon and Vatican were adorned with the emblems of a new
superstition; but this semblance of idolatry was more coldly
entertained by the rude Barbarians and the Arian clergy of the
West. The bolder forms of sculpture, in brass or marble, which
peopled the temples of antiquity, were offensive to the fancy or
conscience of the Christian Greeks: and a smooth surface of
colors has ever been esteemed a more decent and harmless mode of
imitation. 6
2 (return) [ Nec intelligunt homines ineptissimi, quod si sentire
simulacra et moveri possent, adoratura hominem fuissent a quo
sunt expolita. (Divin. Institut. l. ii. c. 2.) Lactantius is the
last, as well as the most eloquent, of the Latin apologists.
Their raillery of idols attacks not only the object, but the form
and matter.]
3 (return) [ See Irenaeus, Epiphanius, and Augustin, (Basnage,
Hist. des Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. p. 1313.) This Gnostic
practice has a singular affinity with the private worship of
Alexander Severus, (Lampridius, c. 29. Lardner, Heathen
Testimonies, vol. iii. p. 34.)]
4 (return) [ See this History, vol. ii. p. 261; vol. ii. p. 434;
vol. iii. p. 158-163.]
5 (return) [ (Concilium Nicenum, ii. in Collect. Labb. tom. viii.
p. 1025, edit. Venet.) Il seroit peut-etre a-propos de ne point
souffrir d’images de la Trinite ou de la Divinite; les defenseurs
les plus zeles des images ayant condamne celles-ci, et le concile
de Trente ne parlant que des images de Jesus Christ et des
Saints, (Dupin, Bibliot. Eccles. tom. vi. p. 154.)]
6 (return) [ This general history of images is drawn from the
xxiid book of the Hist. des Eglises Reformees of Basnage, tom.
ii. p. 1310-1337. He was a Protestant, but of a manly spirit; and
on this head the Protestants are so notoriously in the right,
that they can venture to be impartial. See the perplexity of poor
Friar Pagi, Critica, tom. i. p. 42.]
The merit and effect of a copy depends on its resemblance with
the original; but the primitive Christians were ignorant of the
genuine features of the Son of God, his mother, and his apostles:
the statue of Christ at Paneas in Palestine 7 was more probably
that of some temporal savior; the Gnostics and their profane
monuments were reprobated; and the fancy of the Christian artists
could only be guided by the clandestine imitation of some heathen
model. In this distress, a bold and dexterous invention assured
at once the likeness of the image and the innocence of the
worship. A new super structure of fable was raised on the popular
basis of a Syrian legend, on the correspondence of Christ and
Abgarus, so famous in the days of Eusebius, so reluctantly
deserted by our modern advocates. The bishop of Caesarea 8
records the epistle, 9 but he most strangely forgets the picture
of Christ; 10 the perfect impression of his face on a linen, with
which he gratified the faith of the royal stranger who had
invoked his healing power, and offered the strong city of Edessa
to protect him against the malice of the Jews. The ignorance of
the primitive church is explained by the long imprisonment of the
image in a niche of the wall, from whence, after an oblivion of
five hundred years, it was released by some prudent bishop, and
seasonably presented to the devotion of the times. Its first and
most glorious exploit was the deliverance of the city from the
arms of Chosroes Nushirvan; and it was soon revered as a pledge
of the divine promise, that Edessa should never be taken by a
foreign enemy. It is true, indeed, that the text of Procopius
ascribes the double deliverance of Edessa to the wealth and valor
of her citizens, who purchased the absence and repelled the
assaults of the Persian monarch. He was ignorant, the profane
historian, of the testimony which he is compelled to deliver in
the ecclesiastical page of Evagrius, that the Palladium was
exposed on the rampart, and that the water which had been
sprinkled on the holy face, instead of quenching, added new fuel
to the flames of the besieged. After this important service, the
image of Edessa was preserved with respect and gratitude; and if
the Armenians rejected the legend, the more credulous Greeks
adored the similitude, which was not the work of any mortal
pencil, but the immediate creation of the divine original. The
style and sentiments of a Byzantine hymn will declare how far
their worship was removed from the grossest idolatry. “How can we
with mortal eyes contemplate this image, whose celestial splendor
the host of heaven presumes not to behold? He who dwells in
heaven, condescends this day to visit us by his venerable image;
He who is seated on the cherubim, visits us this day by a
picture, which the Father has delineated with his immaculate
hand, which he has formed in an ineffable manner, and which we
sanctify by adoring it with fear and love.” Before the end of the
sixth century, these images, made without hands, (in Greek it is
a single word, 11 were propagated in the camps and cities of the
Eastern empire: 12 they were the objects of worship, and the
instruments of miracles; and in the hour of danger or tumult,
their venerable presence could revive the hope, rekindle the
courage, or repress the fury, of the Roman legions. Of these
pictures, the far greater part, the transcripts of a human
pencil, could only pretend to a secondary likeness and improper
title: but there were some of higher descent, who derived their
resemblance from an immediate contact with the original, endowed,
for that purpose, with a miraculous and prolific virtue. The most
ambitious aspired from a filial to a fraternal relation with the
image of Edessa; and such is the veronica of Rome, or Spain, or
Jerusalem, which Christ in his agony and bloody sweat applied to
his face, and delivered to a holy matron. The fruitful precedent
was speedily transferred to the Virgin Mary, and the saints and
martyrs. In the church of Diospolis, in Palestine, the features
of the Mother of God 13 were deeply inscribed in a marble column;
the East and West have been decorated by the pencil of St. Luke;
and the Evangelist, who was perhaps a physician, has been forced
to exercise the occupation of a painter, so profane and odious in
the eyes of the primitive Christians. The Olympian Jove, created
by the muse of Homer and the chisel of Phidias, might inspire a
philosophic mind with momentary devotion; but these Catholic
images were faintly and flatly delineated by monkish artists in
the last degeneracy of taste and genius. 14
7 (return) [ After removing some rubbish of miracle and
inconsistency, it may be allowed, that as late as the year 300,
Paneas in Palestine was decorated with a bronze statue,
representing a grave personage wrapped in a cloak, with a
grateful or suppliant female kneeling before him, and that an
inscription was perhaps inscribed on the pedestal. By the
Christians, this group was foolishly explained of their founder
and the poor woman whom he had cured of the bloody flux, (Euseb.
vii. 18, Philostorg. vii. 3, &c.) M. de Beausobre more reasonably
conjectures the philosopher Apollonius, or the emperor Vespasian:
in the latter supposition, the female is a city, a province, or
perhaps the queen Berenice, (Bibliotheque Germanique, tom. xiii.
p. 1-92.)]
8 (return) [ Euseb. Hist. Eccles. l. i. c. 13. The learned
Assemannus has brought up the collateral aid of three Syrians,
St. Ephrem, Josua Stylites, and James bishop of Sarug; but I do
not find any notice of the Syriac original or the archives of
Edessa, (Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 318, 420, 554;) their vague
belief is probably derived from the Greeks.]
9 (return) [ The evidence for these epistles is stated and
rejected by the candid Lardner, (Heathen Testimonies, vol. i. p.
297-309.) Among the herd of bigots who are forcibly driven from
this convenient, but untenable, post, I am ashamed, with the
Grabes, Caves, Tillemonts, &c., to discover Mr. Addison, an
English gentleman, (his Works, vol. i. p. 528, Baskerville’s
edition;) but his superficial tract on the Christian religion
owes its credit to his name, his style, and the interested
applause of our clergy.]
10 (return) [ From the silence of James of Sarug, (Asseman.
Bibliot. Orient. p. 289, 318,) and the testimony of Evagrius,
(Hist. Eccles. l. iv. c. 27,) I conclude that this fable was
invented between the years 521 and 594, most probably after the
siege of Edessa in 540, (Asseman. tom. i. p. 416. Procopius, de
Bell. Persic. l. ii.) It is the sword and buckler of, Gregory
II., (in Epist. i. ad. Leon. Isaur. Concil. tom. viii. p. 656,
657,) of John Damascenus, (Opera, tom. i. p. 281, edit. Lequien,)
and of the second Nicene Council, (Actio v. p. 1030.) The most
perfect edition may be found in Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 175-178.)]
11 (return) [ See Ducange, in Gloss. Graec. et Lat. The subject
is treated with equal learning and bigotry by the Jesuit Gretser,
(Syntagma de Imaginibus non Manu factis, ad calcem Codini de
Officiis, p. 289-330,) the ass, or rather the fox, of
Ingoldstadt, (see the Scaligerana;) with equal reason and wit by
the Protestant Beausobre, in the ironical controversy which he
has spread through many volumes of the Bibliotheque Germanique,
(tom. xviii. p. 1-50, xx. p. 27-68, xxv. p. 1-36, xxvii. p.
85-118, xxviii. p. 1-33, xxxi. p. 111-148, xxxii. p. 75-107,
xxxiv. p. 67-96.)]
12 (return) [ Theophylact Simocatta (l. ii. c. 3, p. 34, l. iii.
c. 1, p. 63) celebrates it; yet it was no more than a copy, since
he adds (of Edessa). See Pagi, tom. ii. A.D. 588 No. 11.]
13 (return) [ See, in the genuine or supposed works of John
Damascenus, two passages on the Virgin and St. Luke, which have
not been noticed by Gretser, nor consequently by Beausobre,
(Opera Joh. Damascen. tom. i. p. 618, 631.)]
14 (return) [ “Your scandalous figures stand quite out from the
canvass: they are as bad as a group of statues!” It was thus that
the ignorance and bigotry of a Greek priest applauded the
pictures of Titian, which he had ordered, and refused to accept.]
The worship of images had stolen into the church by insensible
degrees, and each petty step was pleasing to the superstitious
mind, as productive of comfort, and innocent of sin. But in the
beginning of the eighth century, in the full magnitude of the
abuse, the more timorous Greeks were awakened by an apprehension,
that under the mask of Christianity, they had restored the
religion of their fathers: they heard, with grief and impatience,
the name of idolaters; the incessant charge of the Jews and
Mahometans, 15 who derived from the Law and the Koran an immortal
hatred to graven images and all relative worship. The servitude
of the Jews might curb their zeal, and depreciate their
authority; but the triumphant Mussulmans, who reigned at
Damascus, and threatened Constantinople, cast into the scale of
reproach the accumulated weight of truth and victory. The cities
of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt had been fortified with the images
of Christ, his mother, and his saints; and each city presumed on
the hope or promise of miraculous defence. In a rapid conquest of
ten years, the Arabs subdued those cities and these images; and,
in their opinion, the Lord of Hosts pronounced a decisive
judgment between the adoration and contempt of these mute and
inanimate idols. 1511 For a while Edessa had braved the Persian
assaults; but the chosen city, the spouse of Christ, was involved
in the common ruin; and his divine resemblance became the slave
and trophy of the infidels. After a servitude of three hundred
years, the Palladium was yielded to the devotion of
Constantinople, for a ransom of twelve thousand pounds of silver,
the redemption of two hundred Mussulmans, and a perpetual truce
for the territory of Edessa. 16 In this season of distress and
dismay, the eloquence of the monks was exercised in the defence
of images; and they attempted to prove, that the sin and schism
of the greatest part of the Orientals had forfeited the favor,
and annihilated the virtue, of these precious symbols. But they
were now opposed by the murmurs of many simple or rational
Christians, who appealed to the evidence of texts, of facts, and
of the primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of
the church. As the worship of images had never been established
by any general or positive law, its progress in the Eastern
empire had been retarded, or accelerated, by the differences of
men and manners, the local degrees of refinement, and the
personal characters of the bishops. The splendid devotion was
fondly cherished by the levity of the capital, and the inventive
genius of the Byzantine clergy; while the rude and remote
districts of Asia were strangers to this innovation of sacred
luxury. Many large congregations of Gnostics and Arians
maintained, after their conversion, the simple worship which had
preceded their separation; and the Armenians, the most warlike
subjects of Rome, were not reconciled, in the twelfth century, to
the sight of images. 17 These various denominations of men
afforded a fund of prejudice and aversion, of small account in
the villages of Anatolia or Thrace, but which, in the fortune of
a soldier, a prelate, or a eunuch, might be often connected with
the powers of the church and state.
15 (return) [ By Cedrenus, Zonaras, Glycas, and Manasses, the
origin of the Aconoclcasts is imprinted to the caliph Yezid and
two Jews, who promised the empire to Leo; and the reproaches of
these hostile sectaries are turned into an absurd conspiracy for
restoring the purity of the Christian worship, (see Spanheim,
Hist. Imag. c. 2.)]
1511 (return) [ Yezid, ninth caliph of the race of the Ommiadae,
caused all the images in Syria to be destroyed about the year
719; hence the orthodox reproaches the sectaries with following
the example of the Saracens and the Jews Fragm. Mon. Johan.
Jerosylym. Script. Byzant. vol. xvi. p. 235. Hist. des Repub.
Ital. par M. Sismondi, vol. i. p. 126.—G.]
16 (return) [ See Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 267,)
Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 201,) and Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p.
264,), and the criticisms of Pagi, (tom. iii. A.D. 944.) The
prudent Franciscan refuses to determine whether the image of
Edessa now reposes at Rome or Genoa; but its repose is
inglorious, and this ancient object of worship is no longer
famous or fashionable.]
17 (return) [ (Nicetas, l. ii. p. 258.) The Armenian churches are
still content with the Cross, (Missions du Levant, tom. iii. p.
148;) but surely the superstitious Greek is unjust to the
superstition of the Germans of the xiith century.]
Of such adventurers, the most fortunate was the emperor Leo the
Third, 18 who, from the mountains of Isauria, ascended the throne
of the East. He was ignorant of sacred and profane letters; but
his education, his reason, perhaps his intercourse with the Jews
and Arabs, had inspired the martial peasant with a hatred of
images; and it was held to be the duty of a prince to impose on
his subjects the dictates of his own conscience. But in the
outset of an unsettled reign, during ten years of toil and
danger, Leo submitted to the meanness of hypocrisy, bowed before
the idols which he despised, and satisfied the Roman pontiff with
the annual professions of his orthodoxy and zeal. In the
reformation of religion, his first steps were moderate and
cautious: he assembled a great council of senators and bishops,
and enacted, with their consent, that all the images should be
removed from the sanctuary and altar to a proper height in the
churches where they might be visible to the eyes, and
inaccessible to the superstition, of the people. But it was
impossible on either side to check the rapid through adverse
impulse of veneration and abhorrence: in their lofty position,
the sacred images still edified their votaries, and reproached
the tyrant. He was himself provoked by resistance and invective;
and his own party accused him of an imperfect discharge of his
duty, and urged for his imitation the example of the Jewish king,
who had broken without scruple the brazen serpent of the temple.
By a second edict, he proscribed the existence as well as the use
of religious pictures; the churches of Constantinople and the
provinces were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, the
Virgin, and the saints, were demolished, or a smooth surface of
plaster was spread over the walls of the edifice. The sect of the
Iconoclasts was supported by the zeal and despotism of six
emperors, and the East and West were involved in a noisy conflict
of one hundred and twenty years. It was the design of Leo the
Isaurian to pronounce the condemnation of images as an article of
faith, and by the authority of a general council: but the
convocation of such an assembly was reserved for his son
Constantine; 19 and though it is stigmatized by triumphant
bigotry as a meeting of fools and atheists, their own partial and
mutilated acts betray many symptoms of reason and piety. The
debates and decrees of many provincial synods introduced the
summons of the general council which met in the suburbs of
Constantinople, and was composed of the respectable number of
three hundred and thirty-eight bishops of Europe and Anatolia;
for the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria were the slaves of
the caliph, and the Roman pontiff had withdrawn the churches of
Italy and the West from the communion of the Greeks. This
Byzantine synod assumed the rank and powers of the seventh
general council; yet even this title was a recognition of the six
preceding assemblies, which had laboriously built the structure
of the Catholic faith. After a serious deliberation of six
months, the three hundred and thirty-eight bishops pronounced and
subscribed a unanimous decree, that all visible symbols of
Christ, except in the Eucharist, were either blasphemous or
heretical; that image-worship was a corruption of Christianity
and a renewal of Paganism; that all such monuments of idolatry
should be broken or erased; and that those who should refuse to
deliver the objects of their private superstition, were guilty of
disobedience to the authority of the church and of the emperor.
In their loud and loyal acclamations, they celebrated the merits
of their temporal redeemer; and to his zeal and justice they
intrusted the execution of their spiritual censures. At
Constantinople, as in the former councils, the will of the prince
was the rule of episcopal faith; but on this occasion, I am
inclined to suspect that a large majority of the prelates
sacrificed their secret conscience to the temptations of hope and
fear. In the long night of superstition, the Christians had
wandered far away from the simplicity of the gospel: nor was it
easy for them to discern the clew, and tread back the mazes, of
the labyrinth. The worship of images was inseparably blended, at
least to a pious fancy, with the Cross, the Virgin, the Saints
and their relics; the holy ground was involved in a cloud of
miracles and visions; and the nerves of the mind, curiosity and
scepticism, were benumbed by the habits of obedience and belief.
Constantine himself is accused of indulging a royal license to
doubt, or deny, or deride the mysteries of the Catholics, 20 but
they were deeply inscribed in the public and private creed of his
bishops; and the boldest Iconoclast might assault with a secret
horror the monuments of popular devotion, which were consecrated
to the honor of his celestial patrons. In the reformation of the
sixteenth century, freedom and knowledge had expanded all the
faculties of man: the thirst of innovation superseded the
reverence of antiquity; and the vigor of Europe could disdain
those phantoms which terrified the sickly and servile weakness of
the Greeks.
18 (return) [ Our original, but not impartial, monuments of the
Iconoclasts must be drawn from the Acts of the Councils, tom.
viii. and ix. Collect. Labbe, edit. Venet. and the historical
writings of Theophanes, Nicephorus, Manasses, Cedrenus, Zonoras,
&c. Of the modern Catholics, Baronius, Pagi, Natalis Alexander,
(Hist. Eccles. Seculum viii. and ix.,) and Maimbourg, (Hist. des
Iconoclasts,) have treated the subject with learning, passion,
and credulity. The Protestant labors of Frederick Spanheim
(Historia Imaginum restituta) and James Basnage (Hist. des
Eglises Reformees, tom. ii. l. xxiiii. p. 1339-1385) are cast
into the Iconoclast scale. With this mutual aid, and opposite
tendency, it is easy for us to poise the balance with philosophic
indifference. * Note: Compare Schlosser, Geschichte der
Bilder-sturmender Kaiser, Frankfurt am-Main 1812 a book of
research and impartiality—M.]
19 (return) [ Some flowers of rhetoric. By Damascenus is styled
(Opera, tom. i. p. 623.) Spanheim’s Apology for the Synod of
Constantinople (p. 171, &c.) is worked up with truth and
ingenuity, from such materials as he could find in the Nicene
Acts, (p. 1046, &c.) The witty John of Damascus converts it into
slaves of their belly, &c. Opera, tom. i. p. 806]
20 (return) [ He is accused of proscribing the title of saint;
styling the Virgin, Mother of Christ; comparing her after her
delivery to an empty purse of Arianism, Nestorianism, &c. In his
defence, Spanheim (c. iv. p. 207) is somewhat embarrassed between
the interest of a Protestant and the duty of an orthodox divine.]
The scandal of an abstract heresy can be only proclaimed to the
people by the blast of the ecclesiastical trumpet; but the most
ignorant can perceive, the most torpid must feel, the profanation
and downfall of their visible deities. The first hostilities of
Leo were directed against a lofty Christ on the vestibule, and
above the gate, of the palace. A ladder had been planted for the
assault, but it was furiously shaken by a crowd of zealots and
women: they beheld, with pious transport, the ministers of
sacrilege tumbling from on high and dashed against the pavement:
and the honors of the ancient martyrs were prostituted to these
criminals, who justly suffered for murder and rebellion. 21 The
execution of the Imperial edicts was resisted by frequent tumults
in Constantinople and the provinces: the person of Leo was
endangered, his officers were massacred, and the popular
enthusiasm was quelled by the strongest efforts of the civil and
military power. Of the Archipelago, or Holy Sea, the numerous
islands were filled with images and monks: their votaries
abjured, without scruple, the enemy of Christ, his mother, and
the saints; they armed a fleet of boats and galleys, displayed
their consecrated banners, and boldly steered for the harbor of
Constantinople, to place on the throne a new favorite of God and
the people. They depended on the succor of a miracle: but their
miracles were inefficient against the Greek fire; and, after the
defeat and conflagration of the fleet, the naked islands were
abandoned to the clemency or justice of the conqueror. The son of
Leo, in the first year of his reign, had undertaken an expedition
against the Saracens: during his absence, the capital, the
palace, and the purple, were occupied by his kinsman Artavasdes,
the ambitious champion of the orthodox faith. The worship of
images was triumphantly restored: the patriarch renounced his
dissimulation, or dissembled his sentiments and the righteous
claims of the usurper was acknowledged, both in the new, and in
ancient, Rome. Constantine flew for refuge to his paternal
mountains; but he descended at the head of the bold and
affectionate Isaurians; and his final victory confounded the arms
and predictions of the fanatics. His long reign was distracted
with clamor, sedition, conspiracy, and mutual hatred, and
sanguinary revenge; the persecution of images was the motive or
pretence, of his adversaries; and, if they missed a temporal
diadem, they were rewarded by the Greeks with the crown of
martyrdom. In every act of open and clandestine treason, the
emperor felt the unforgiving enmity of the monks, the faithful
slaves of the superstition to which they owed their riches and
influence. They prayed, they preached, they absolved, they
inflamed, they conspired; the solitude of Palestine poured forth
a torrent of invective; and the pen of St. John Damascenus, 22
the last of the Greek fathers, devoted the tyrant’s head, both in
this world and the next. 23 2311 I am not at leisure to examine
how far the monks provoked, nor how much they have exaggerated,
their real and pretended sufferings, nor how many lost their
lives or limbs, their eyes or their beards, by the cruelty of the
emperor. 2312 From the chastisement of individuals, he proceeded
to the abolition of the order; and, as it was wealthy and
useless, his resentment might be stimulated by avarice, and
justified by patriotism. The formidable name and mission of the
Dragon, 24 his visitor-general, excited the terror and abhorrence
of the black nation: the religious communities were dissolved,
the buildings were converted into magazines, or barracks; the
lands, movables, and cattle were confiscated; and our modern
precedents will support the charge, that much wanton or malicious
havoc was exercised against the relics, and even the books of the
monasteries. With the habit and profession of monks, the public
and private worship of images was rigorously proscribed; and it
should seem, that a solemn abjuration of idolatry was exacted
from the subjects, or at least from the clergy, of the Eastern
empire. 25
21 (return) [ The holy confessor Theophanes approves the
principle of their rebellion, (p. 339.) Gregory II. (in Epist. i.
ad Imp. Leon. Concil. tom. viii. p. 661, 664) applauds the zeal
of the Byzantine women who killed the Imperial officers.]
22 (return) [ John, or Mansur, was a noble Christian of Damascus,
who held a considerable office in the service of the caliph. His
zeal in the cause of images exposed him to the resentment and
treachery of the Greek emperor; and on the suspicion of a
treasonable correspondence, he was deprived of his right hand,
which was miraculously restored by the Virgin. After this
deliverance, he resigned his office, distributed his wealth, and
buried himself in the monastery of St. Sabas, between Jerusalem
and the Dead Sea. The legend is famous; but his learned editor,
Father Lequien, has a unluckily proved that St. John Damascenus
was already a monk before the Iconoclast dispute, (Opera, tom. i.
Vit. St. Joan. Damascen. p. 10-13, et Notas ad loc.)]
23 (return) [ After sending Leo to the devil, he introduces his
heir, (Opera, Damascen. tom. i. p. 625.) If the authenticity of
this piece be suspicious, we are sure that in other works, no
longer extant, Damascenus bestowed on Constantine the titles.
(tom. i. p. 306.)]
2311 (return) [ The patriarch Anastasius, an Iconoclast under
Leo, an image worshipper under Artavasdes, was scourged, led
through the streets on an ass, with his face to the tail; and,
reinvested in his dignity, became again the obsequious minister
of Constantine in his Iconoclastic persecutions. See Schlosser p.
211.—M.]
2312 (return) [ Compare Schlosser, p. 228-234.—M.]
24 (return) [ In the narrative of this persecution from
Theophanes and Cedreves, Spanheim (p. 235-238) is happy to
compare the Draco of Leo with the dragoons (Dracones) of Louis
XIV.; and highly solaces himself with the controversial pun.]
25 (return) [ (Damascen. Op. tom. i. p. 625.) This oath and
subscription I do not remember to have seen in any modern
compilation]
The patient East abjured, with reluctance, her sacred images;
they were fondly cherished, and vigorously defended, by the
independent zeal of the Italians. In ecclesiastical rank and
jurisdiction, the patriarch of Constantinople and the pope of
Rome were nearly equal. But the Greek prelate was a domestic
slave under the eye of his master, at whose nod he alternately
passed from the convent to the throne, and from the throne to the
convent. A distant and dangerous station, amidst the Barbarians
of the West, excited the spirit and freedom of the Latin bishops.
Their popular election endeared them to the Romans: the public
and private indigence was relieved by their ample revenue; and
the weakness or neglect of the emperors compelled them to
consult, both in peace and war, the temporal safety of the city.
In the school of adversity the priest insensibly imbibed the
virtues and the ambition of a prince; the same character was
assumed, the same policy was adopted, by the Italian, the Greek,
or the Syrian, who ascended the chair of St. Peter; and, after
the loss of her legions and provinces, the genius and fortune of
the popes again restored the supremacy of Rome. It is agreed,
that in the eighth century, their dominion was founded on
rebellion, and that the rebellion was produced, and justified, by
the heresy of the Iconoclasts; but the conduct of the second and
third Gregory, in this memorable contest, is variously
interpreted by the wishes of their friends and enemies. The
Byzantine writers unanimously declare, that, after a fruitless
admonition, they pronounced the separation of the East and West,
and deprived the sacrilegious tyrant of the revenue and
sovereignty of Italy. Their excommunication is still more clearly
expressed by the Greeks, who beheld the accomplishment of the
papal triumphs; and as they are more strongly attached to their
religion than to their country, they praise, instead of blaming,
the zeal and orthodoxy of these apostolical men. 26 The modern
champions of Rome are eager to accept the praise and the
precedent: this great and glorious example of the deposition of
royal heretics is celebrated by the cardinals Baronius and
Bellarmine; 27 and if they are asked, why the same thunders were
not hurled against the Neros and Julians of antiquity, they
reply, that the weakness of the primitive church was the sole
cause of her patient loyalty. 28 On this occasion the effects of
love and hatred are the same; and the zealous Protestants, who
seek to kindle the indignation, and to alarm the fears, of
princes and magistrates, expatiate on the insolence and treason
of the two Gregories against their lawful sovereign. 29 They are
defended only by the moderate Catholics, for the most part, of
the Gallican church, 30 who respect the saint, without approving
the sin. These common advocates of the crown and the mitre
circumscribe the truth of facts by the rule of equity, Scripture,
and tradition, and appeal to the evidence of the Latins, 31 and
the lives 32 and epistles of the popes; themselves.
26 (return) [ Theophanes. (Chronograph. p. 343.) For this Gregory
is styled by Cedrenus. (p. 450.) Zonaras specifies the thunder,
(tom. ii. l. xv. p. 104, 105.) It may be observed, that the
Greeks are apt to confound the times and actions of two
Gregories.]
27 (return) [ See Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 730, No. 4, 5;
dignum exemplum! Bellarmin. de Romano Pontifice, l. v. c. 8:
mulctavit eum parte imperii. Sigonius, de Regno Italiae, l. iii.
Opera, tom. ii. p. 169. Yet such is the change of Italy, that
Sigonius is corrected by the editor of Milan, Philipus Argelatus,
a Bolognese, and subject of the pope.]
28 (return) [ Quod si Christiani olim non deposuerunt Neronem aut
Julianum, id fuit quia deerant vires temporales Christianis,
(honest Bellarmine, de Rom. Pont. l. v. c. 7.) Cardinal Perron
adds a distinction more honorable to the first Christians, but
not more satisfactory to modern princes—the treason of heretics
and apostates, who break their oath, belie their coin, and
renounce their allegiance to Christ and his vicar, (Perroniana,
p. 89.)]
29 (return) [ Take, as a specimen, the cautious Basnage (Hist.
d’Eglise, p. 1350, 1351) and the vehement Spanheim, (Hist.
Imaginum,) who, with a hundred more, tread in the footsteps of
the centuriators of Magdeburgh.]
30 (return) [ See Launoy, (Opera, tom. v. pars ii. epist. vii. 7,
p. 456-474,) Natalis Alexander, (Hist. Nov. Testamenti, secul.
viii. dissert. i. p. 92-98,) Pagi, (Critica, tom. iii. p. 215,
216,) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile Napoli, tom. i. p. 317-320,)
a disciple of the Gallican school In the field of controversy I
always pity the moderate party, who stand on the open middle
ground exposed to the fire of both sides.]
31 (return) [ They appeal to Paul Warnefrid, or Diaconus, (de
Gestis Langobard. l. vi. c. 49, p. 506, 507, in Script. Ital.
Muratori, tom. i. pars i.,) and the nominal Anastasius, (de Vit.
Pont. in Muratori, tom. iii. pars i. Gregorius II. p. 154.
Gregorius III. p. 158. Zacharias, p. 161. Stephanus III. p. 165.;
Paulus, p. 172. Stephanus IV. p. 174. Hadrianus, p. 179. Leo III.
p. 195.) Yet I may remark, that the true Anastasius (Hist.
Eccles. p. 134, edit. Reg.) and the Historia Miscella, (l. xxi.
p. 151, in tom. i. Script. Ital.,) both of the ixth century,
translate and approve the Greek text of Theophanes.]
32 (return) [ With some minute difference, the most learned
critics, Lucas Holstenius, Schelestrate, Ciampini, Bianchini,
Muratori, (Prolegomena ad tom. iii. pars i.,) are agreed that the
Liber Pontificalis was composed and continued by the apostolic
librarians and notaries of the viiith and ixth centuries; and
that the last and smallest part is the work of Anastasius, whose
name it bears. The style is barbarous, the narrative partial, the
details are trifling—yet it must be read as a curious and
authentic record of the times. The epistles of the popes are
dispersed in the volumes of Councils.]
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part II.
Two original epistles, from Gregory the Second to the emperor
Leo, are still extant; 33 and if they cannot be praised as the
most perfect models of eloquence and logic, they exhibit the
portrait, or at least the mask, of the founder of the papal
monarchy. “During ten pure and fortunate years,” says Gregory to
the emperor, “we have tasted the annual comfort of your royal
letters, subscribed in purple ink, with your own hand, the sacred
pledges of your attachment to the orthodox creed of our fathers.
How deplorable is the change! how tremendous the scandal! You now
accuse the Catholics of idolatry; and, by the accusation, you
betray your own impiety and ignorance. To this ignorance we are
compelled to adapt the grossness of our style and arguments: the
first elements of holy letters are sufficient for your confusion;
and were you to enter a grammar-school, and avow yourself the
enemy of our worship, the simple and pious children would be
provoked to cast their horn-books at your head.” After this
decent salutation, the pope attempts the usual distinction
between the idols of antiquity and the Christian images. The
former were the fanciful representations of phantoms or daemons,
at a time when the true God had not manifested his person in any
visible likeness. The latter are the genuine forms of Christ, his
mother, and his saints, who had approved, by a crowd of miracles,
the innocence and merit of this relative worship. He must indeed
have trusted to the ignorance of Leo, since he could assert the
perpetual use of images, from the apostolic age, and their
venerable presence in the six synods of the Catholic church. A
more specious argument is drawn from present possession and
recent practice the harmony of the Christian world supersedes the
demand of a general council; and Gregory frankly confesses, than
such assemblies can only be useful under the reign of an orthodox
prince. To the impudent and inhuman Leo, more guilty than a
heretic, he recommends peace, silence, and implicit obedience to
his spiritual guides of Constantinople and Rome. The limits of
civil and ecclesiastical powers are defined by the pontiff. To
the former he appropriates the body; to the latter, the soul: the
sword of justice is in the hands of the magistrate: the more
formidable weapon of excommunication is intrusted to the clergy;
and in the exercise of their divine commission a zealous son will
not spare his offending father: the successor of St. Peter may
lawfully chastise the kings of the earth. “You assault us, O
tyrant! with a carnal and military hand: unarmed and naked we can
only implore the Christ, the prince of the heavenly host, that he
will send unto you a devil, for the destruction of your body and
the salvation of your soul. You declare, with foolish arrogance,
I will despatch my orders to Rome: I will break in pieces the
image of St. Peter; and Gregory, like his predecessor Martin,
shall be transported in chains, and in exile, to the foot of the
Imperial throne. Would to God that I might be permitted to tread
in the footsteps of the holy Martin! but may the fate of Constans
serve as a warning to the persecutors of the church! After his
just condemnation by the bishops of Sicily, the tyrant was cut
off, in the fullness of his sins, by a domestic servant: the
saint is still adored by the nations of Scythia, among whom he
ended his banishment and his life. But it is our duty to live for
the edification and support of the faithful people; nor are we
reduced to risk our safety on the event of a combat. Incapable as
you are of defending your Roman subjects, the maritime situation
of the city may perhaps expose it to your depredation but we can
remove to the distance of four-and-twenty stadia, to the first
fortress of the Lombards, and then—you may pursue the winds. 34
Are you ignorant that the popes are the bond of union, the
mediators of peace, between the East and West? The eyes of the
nations are fixed on our humility; and they revere, as a God upon
earth, the apostle St. Peter, whose image you threaten to
destroy. 35 The remote and interior kingdoms of the West present
their homage to Christ and his vicegerent; and we now prepare to
visit one of their most powerful monarchs, who desires to receive
from our hands the sacrament of baptism. 36 The Barbarians have
submitted to the yoke of the gospel, while you alone are deaf to
the voice of the shepherd. These pious Barbarians are kindled
into rage: they thirst to avenge the persecution of the East.
Abandon your rash and fatal enterprise; reflect, tremble, and
repent. If you persist, we are innocent of the blood that will be
spilt in the contest; may it fall on your own head!”
33 (return) [ The two epistles of Gregory II. have been preserved
in the Acta of the Nicene Council, (tom. viii. p. 651-674.) They
are without a date, which is variously fixed, by Baronius in the
year 726, by Muratori (Annali d’Italia, tom. vi. p. 120) in 729,
and by Pagi in 730. Such is the force of prejudice, that some
papists have praised the good sense and moderation of these
letters.]
34 (return) [ (Epist. i. p. 664.) This proximity of the Lombards
is hard of digestion. Camillo Pellegrini (Dissert. iv. de Ducatu
Beneventi, in the Script. Ital. tom. v. p. 172, 173) forcibly
reckons the xxivth stadia, not from Rome, but from the limits of
the Roman duchy, to the first fortress, perhaps Sora, of the
Lombards. I rather believe that Gregory, with the pedantry of the
age, employs stadia for miles, without much inquiry into the
genuine measure.]
35 (return) [ {Greek}]
36 (return) [ (p. 665.) The pope appears to have imposed on the
ignorance of the Greeks: he lived and died in the Lateran; and in
his time all the kingdoms of the West had embraced Christianity.
May not this unknown Septetus have some reference to the chief of
the Saxon Heptarchy, to Ina king of Wessex, who, in the
pontificate of Gregory the Second, visited Rome for the purpose,
not of baptism, but of pilgrimage! (Pagi. A., 89, No. 2. A.D.
726, No. 15.)]
The first assault of Leo against the images of Constantinople had
been witnessed by a crowd of strangers from Italy and the West,
who related with grief and indignation the sacrilege of the
emperor. But on the reception of his proscriptive edict, they
trembled for their domestic deities: the images of Christ and the
Virgin, of the angels, martyrs, and saints, were abolished in all
the churches of Italy; and a strong alternative was proposed to
the Roman pontiff, the royal favor as the price of his
compliance, degradation and exile as the penalty of his
disobedience. Neither zeal nor policy allowed him to hesitate;
and the haughty strain in which Gregory addressed the emperor
displays his confidence in the truth of his doctrine or the
powers of resistance. Without depending on prayers or miracles,
he boldly armed against the public enemy, and his pastoral
letters admonished the Italians of their danger and their duty.
37 At this signal, Ravenna, Venice, and the cities of the
Exarchate and Pentapolis, adhered to the cause of religion; their
military force by sea and land consisted, for the most part, of
the natives; and the spirit of patriotism and zeal was transfused
into the mercenary strangers. The Italians swore to live and die
in the defence of the pope and the holy images; the Roman people
was devoted to their father, and even the Lombards were ambitious
to share the merit and advantage of this holy war. The most
treasonable act, but the most obvious revenge, was the
destruction of the statues of Leo himself: the most effectual and
pleasing measure of rebellion, was the withholding the tribute of
Italy, and depriving him of a power which he had recently abused
by the imposition of a new capitation. 38 A form of
administration was preserved by the election of magistrates and
governors; and so high was the public indignation, that the
Italians were prepared to create an orthodox emperor, and to
conduct him with a fleet and army to the palace of
Constantinople. In that palace, the Roman bishops, the second and
third Gregory, were condemned as the authors of the revolt, and
every attempt was made, either by fraud or force, to seize their
persons, and to strike at their lives. The city was repeatedly
visited or assaulted by captains of the guards, and dukes and
exarchs of high dignity or secret trust; they landed with foreign
troops, they obtained some domestic aid, and the superstition of
Naples may blush that her fathers were attached to the cause of
heresy. But these clandestine or open attacks were repelled by
the courage and vigilance of the Romans; the Greeks were
overthrown and massacred, their leaders suffered an ignominious
death, and the popes, however inclined to mercy, refused to
intercede for these guilty victims. At Ravenna, 39 the several
quarters of the city had long exercised a bloody and hereditary
feud; in religious controversy they found a new aliment of
faction: but the votaries of images were superior in numbers or
spirit, and the exarch, who attempted to stem the torrent, lost
his life in a popular sedition. To punish this flagitious deed,
and restore his dominion in Italy, the emperor sent a fleet and
army into the Adriatic Gulf. After suffering from the winds and
waves much loss and delay, the Greeks made their descent in the
neighborhood of Ravenna: they threatened to depopulate the guilty
capital, and to imitate, perhaps to surpass, the example of
Justinian the Second, who had chastised a former rebellion by the
choice and execution of fifty of the principal inhabitants. The
women and clergy, in sackcloth and ashes, lay prostrate in
prayer: the men were in arms for the defence of their country;
the common danger had united the factions, and the event of a
battle was preferred to the slow miseries of a siege. In a
hard-fought day, as the two armies alternately yielded and
advanced, a phantom was seen, a voice was heard, and Ravenna was
victorious by the assurance of victory. The strangers retreated
to their ships, but the populous sea-coast poured forth a
multitude of boats; the waters of the Po were so deeply infected
with blood, that during six years the public prejudice abstained
from the fish of the river; and the institution of an annual
feast perpetuated the worship of images, and the abhorrence of
the Greek tyrant. Amidst the triumph of the Catholic arms, the
Roman pontiff convened a synod of ninety-three bishops against
the heresy of the Iconoclasts. With their consent, he pronounced
a general excommunication against all who by word or deed should
attack the tradition of the fathers and the images of the saints:
in this sentence the emperor was tacitly involved, 40 but the
vote of a last and hopeless remonstrance may seem to imply that
the anathema was yet suspended over his guilty head. No sooner
had they confirmed their own safety, the worship of images, and
the freedom of Rome and Italy, than the popes appear to have
relaxed of their severity, and to have spared the relics of the
Byzantine dominion. Their moderate councils delayed and prevented
the election of a new emperor, and they exhorted the Italians not
to separate from the body of the Roman monarchy. The exarch was
permitted to reside within the walls of Ravenna, a captive rather
than a master; and till the Imperial coronation of Charlemagne,
the government of Rome and Italy was exercised in the name of the
successors of Constantine. 41
37 (return) [ I shall transcribe the important and decisive
passage of the Liber Pontificalis. Respiciens ergo pius vir
profanam principis jussionem, jam contra Imperatorem quasi contra
hostem se armavit, renuens haeresim ejus, scribens ubique se
cavere Christianos, eo quod orta fuisset impietas talis. Igitur
permoti omnes Pentapolenses, atque Venetiarum exercitus contra
Imperatoris jussionem restiterunt; dicentes se nunquam in ejusdem
pontificis condescendere necem, sed pro ejus magis defensione
viriliter decertare, (p. 156.)]
38 (return) [ A census, or capitation, says Anastasius, (p. 156;)
a most cruel tax, unknown to the Saracens themselves, exclaims
the zealous Maimbourg, (Hist. des Iconoclastes, l. i.,) and
Theophanes, (p. 344,) who talks of Pharaoh’s numbering the male
children of Israel. This mode of taxation was familiar to the
Saracens; and, most unluckily for the historians, it was imposed
a few years afterwards in France by his patron Louis XIV.]
39 (return) [ See the Liber Pontificalis of Agnellus, (in the
Scriptores Rerum Italicarum of Muratori, tom. ii. pars i.,) whose
deeper shade of barbarism marks the difference between Rome and
Ravenna. Yet we are indebted to him for some curious and domestic
facts—the quarters and factions of Ravenna, (p. 154,) the revenge
of Justinian II, (p. 160, 161,) the defeat of the Greeks, (p.
170, 171,) &c.]
40 (return) [ Yet Leo was undoubtedly comprised in the si quis
.... imaginum sacrarum.... destructor.... extiterit, sit extorris
a cor pore D. N. Jesu Christi vel totius ecclesiae unitate. The
canonists may decide whether the guilt or the name constitutes
the excommunication; and the decision is of the last importance
to their safety, since, according to the oracle (Gratian, Caus.
xxiii. q. 5, 47, apud Spanheim, Hist. Imag. p. 112) homicidas non
esse qui excommunicatos trucidant.]
41 (return) [ Compescuit tale consilium Pontifex, sperans
conversionem principis, (Anastas. p. 156.) Sed ne desisterent ab
amore et fide R. J. admonebat, (p. 157.) The popes style Leo and
Constantine Copronymus, Imperatores et Domini, with the strange
epithet of Piissimi. A famous Mosaic of the Lateran (A.D. 798)
represents Christ, who delivers the keys to St. Peter and the
banner to Constantine V. (Muratori, Annali d’Italia, tom. vi. p.
337.)]
The liberty of Rome, which had been oppressed by the arms and
arts of Augustus, was rescued, after seven hundred and fifty
years of servitude, from the persecution of Leo the Isaurian. By
the Caesars, the triumphs of the consuls had been annihilated: in
the decline and fall of the empire, the god Terminus, the sacred
boundary, had insensibly receded from the ocean, the Rhine, the
Danube, and the Euphrates; and Rome was reduced to her ancient
territory from Viterbo to Terracina, and from Narni to the mouth
of the Tyber. 42 When the kings were banished, the republic
reposed on the firm basis which had been founded by their wisdom
and virtue. Their perpetual jurisdiction was divided between two
annual magistrates: the senate continued to exercise the powers
of administration and counsel; and the legislative authority was
distributed in the assemblies of the people, by a
well-proportioned scale of property and service. Ignorant of the
arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of
government and war: the will of the community was absolute: the
rights of individuals were sacred: one hundred and thirty
thousand citizens were armed for defence or conquest; and a band
of robbers and outlaws was moulded into a nation deserving of
freedom and ambitious of glory. 43 When the sovereignty of the
Greek emperors was extinguished, the ruins of Rome presented the
sad image of depopulation and decay: her slavery was a habit, her
liberty an accident; the effect of superstition, and the object
of her own amazement and terror. The last vestige of the
substance, or even the forms, of the constitution, was
obliterated from the practice and memory of the Romans; and they
were devoid of knowledge, or virtue, again to build the fabric of
a commonwealth. Their scanty remnant, the offspring of slaves and
strangers, was despicable in the eyes of the victorious
Barbarians. As often as the Franks or Lombards expressed their
most bitter contempt of a foe, they called him a Roman; “and in
this name,” says the bishop Liutprand, “we include whatever is
base, whatever is cowardly, whatever is perfidious, the extremes
of avarice and luxury, and every vice that can prostitute the
dignity of human nature.” 44 441 By the necessity of their
situation, the inhabitants of Rome were cast into the rough model
of a republican government: they were compelled to elect some
judges in peace, and some leaders in war: the nobles assembled to
deliberate, and their resolves could not be executed without the
union and consent of the multitude. The style of the Roman senate
and people was revived, 45 but the spirit was fled; and their new
independence was disgraced by the tumultuous conflict of
vicentiousness and oppression. The want of laws could only be
supplied by the influence of religion, and their foreign and
domestic counsels were moderated by the authority of the bishop.
His alms, his sermons, his correspondence with the kings and
prelates of the West, his recent services, their gratitude, and
oath, accustomed the Romans to consider him as the first
magistrate or prince of the city. The Christian humility of the
popes was not offended by the name of Dominus, or Lord; and their
face and inscription are still apparent on the most ancient
coins. 46 Their temporal dominion is now confirmed by the
reverence of a thousand years; and their noblest title is the
free choice of a people, whom they had redeemed from slavery.
42 (return) [ I have traced the Roman duchy according to the
maps, and the maps according to the excellent dissertation of
father Beretti, (de Chorographia Italiae Medii Aevi, sect. xx. p.
216-232.) Yet I must nicely observe, that Viterbo is of Lombard
foundation, (p. 211,) and that Terracina was usurped by the
Greeks.]
43 (return) [ On the extent, population, &c., of the Roman
kingdom, the reader may peruse, with pleasure, the Discours
Preliminaire to the Republique Romaine of M. de Beaufort, (tom.
i.,) who will not be accused of too much credulity for the early
ages of Rome.]
44 (return) [ Quos (Romanos) nos, Longobardi scilicet, Saxones,
Franci, Locharingi, Bajoarii, Suevi, Burgundiones, tanto
dedignamur ut inimicos nostros commoti, nil aliud contumeliarum
nisi Romane, dicamus: hoc solo, id est Romanorum nomine, quicquid
ignobilitatis, quicquid timiditatis, quicquid avaritiae, quicquid
luxuriae, quicquid mendacii, immo quicquid vitiorum est
comprehendentes, (Liutprand, in Legat Script. Ital. tom. ii. para
i. p. 481.) For the sins of Cato or Tully Minos might have
imposed as a fit penance the daily perusal of this barbarous
passage.]
441 (return) [ Yet this contumelious sentence, quoted by
Robertson (Charles V note 2) as well as Gibbon, was applied by
the angry bishop to the Byzantine Romans, whom, indeed, he admits
to be the genuine descendants of Romulus.—M.]
45 (return) [ Pipino regi Francorum, omnis senatus, atque
universa populi generalitas a Deo servatae Romanae urbis. Codex
Carolin. epist. 36, in Script. Ital. tom. iii. pars ii. p. 160.
The names of senatus and senator were never totally extinct,
(Dissert. Chorograph. p. 216, 217;) but in the middle ages they
signified little more than nobiles, optimates, &c., (Ducange,
Gloss. Latin.)]
46 (return) [ See Muratori, Antiquit. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom.
ii. Dissertat xxvii. p. 548. On one of these coins we read
Hadrianus Papa (A.D. 772;) on the reverse, Vict. Ddnn. with the
word Conob, which the Pere Joubert (Science des Medailles, tom.
ii. p. 42) explains by Constantinopoli Officina B (secunda.)]
In the quarrels of ancient Greece, the holy people of Elis
enjoyed a perpetual peace, under the protection of Jupiter, and
in the exercise of the Olympic games. 47 Happy would it have been
for the Romans, if a similar privilege had guarded the patrimony
of St. Peter from the calamities of war; if the Christians, who
visited the holy threshold, would have sheathed their swords in
the presence of the apostle and his successor. But this mystic
circle could have been traced only by the wand of a legislator
and a sage: this pacific system was incompatible with the zeal
and ambition of the popes; the Romans were not addicted, like the
inhabitants of Elis, to the innocent and placid labors of
agriculture; and the Barbarians of Italy, though softened by the
climate, were far below the Grecian states in the institutions of
public and private life. A memorable example of repentance and
piety was exhibited by Liutprand, king of the Lombards. In arms,
at the gate of the Vatican, the conqueror listened to the voice
of Gregory the Second, 48 withdrew his troops, resigned his
conquests, respectfully visited the church of St. Peter, and
after performing his devotions, offered his sword and dagger, his
cuirass and mantle, his silver cross, and his crown of gold, on
the tomb of the apostle. But this religious fervor was the
illusion, perhaps the artifice, of the moment; the sense of
interest is strong and lasting; the love of arms and rapine was
congenial to the Lombards; and both the prince and people were
irresistibly tempted by the disorders of Italy, the nakedness of
Rome, and the unwarlike profession of her new chief. On the first
edicts of the emperor, they declared themselves the champions of
the holy images: Liutprand invaded the province of Romagna, which
had already assumed that distinctive appellation; the Catholics
of the Exarchate yielded without reluctance to his civil and
military power; and a foreign enemy was introduced for the first
time into the impregnable fortress of Ravenna. That city and
fortress were speedily recovered by the active diligence and
maritime forces of the Venetians; and those faithful subjects
obeyed the exhortation of Gregory himself, in separating the
personal guilt of Leo from the general cause of the Roman empire.
49 The Greeks were less mindful of the service, than the Lombards
of the injury: the two nations, hostile in their faith, were
reconciled in a dangerous and unnatural alliance: the king and
the exarch marched to the conquest of Spoleto and Rome: the storm
evaporated without effect, but the policy of Liutprand alarmed
Italy with a vexatious alternative of hostility and truce. His
successor Astolphus declared himself the equal enemy of the
emperor and the pope: Ravenna was subdued by force or treachery,
50 and this final conquest extinguished the series of the
exarchs, who had reigned with a subordinate power since the time
of Justinian and the ruin of the Gothic kingdom. Rome was
summoned to acknowledge the victorious Lombard as her lawful
sovereign; the annual tribute of a piece of gold was fixed as the
ransom of each citizen, and the sword of destruction was
unsheathed to exact the penalty of her disobedience. The Romans
hesitated; they entreated; they complained; and the threatening
Barbarians were checked by arms and negotiations, till the popes
had engaged the friendship of an ally and avenger beyond the
Alps. 51
47 (return) [ See West’s Dissertation on the Olympic Games,
(Pindar. vol. ii. p. 32-36, edition in 12mo.,) and the judicious
reflections of Polybius (tom. i. l. iv. p. 466, edit Gronov.)]
48 (return) [ The speech of Gregory to the Lombard is finely
composed by Sigonius, (de Regno Italiae, l. iii. Opera, tom. ii.
p. 173,) who imitates the license and the spirit of Sallust or
Livy.]
49 (return) [ The Venetian historians, John Sagorninus, (Chron.
Venet. p. 13,) and the doge Andrew Dandolo, (Scriptores Rer.
Ital. tom. xii. p. 135,) have preserved this epistle of Gregory.
The loss and recovery of Ravenna are mentioned by Paulus
Diaconus, (de Gest. Langobard, l. vi. c. 42, 54, in Script. Ital.
tom. i. pars i. p. 506, 508;) but our chronologists, Pagi,
Muratori, &c., cannot ascertain the date or circumstances]
50 (return) [ The option will depend on the various readings of
the Mss. of Anastasius—deceperat, or decerpserat, (Script. Ital.
tom. iii. pars i. p. 167.)]
51 (return) [ The Codex Carolinus is a collection of the epistles
of the popes to Charles Martel, (whom they style Subregulus,)
Pepin, and Charlemagne, as far as the year 791, when it was
formed by the last of these princes. His original and authentic
Ms. (Bibliothecae Cubicularis) is now in the Imperial library of
Vienna, and has been published by Lambecius and Muratori,
(Script. Rerum Ital. tom. iii. pars ii. p. 75, &c.)]
In his distress, the first 511 Gregory had implored the aid of
the hero of the age, of Charles Martel, who governed the French
monarchy with the humble title of mayor or duke; and who, by his
signal victory over the Saracens, had saved his country, and
perhaps Europe, from the Mahometan yoke. The ambassadors of the
pope were received by Charles with decent reverence; but the
greatness of his occupations, and the shortness of his life,
prevented his interference in the affairs of Italy, except by a
friendly and ineffectual mediation. His son Pepin, the heir of
his power and virtues, assumed the office of champion of the
Roman church; and the zeal of the French prince appears to have
been prompted by the love of glory and religion. But the danger
was on the banks of the Tyber, the succor on those of the Seine,
and our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
Amidst the tears of the city, Stephen the Third embraced the
generous resolution of visiting in person the courts of Lombardy
and France, to deprecate the injustice of his enemy, or to excite
the pity and indignation of his friend. After soothing the public
despair by litanies and orations, he undertook this laborious
journey with the ambassadors of the French monarch and the Greek
emperor. The king of the Lombards was inexorable; but his threats
could not silence the complaints, nor retard the speed of the
Roman pontiff, who traversed the Pennine Alps, reposed in the
abbey of St. Maurice, and hastened to grasp the right hand of his
protector; a hand which was never lifted in vain, either in war
or friendship. Stephen was entertained as the visible successor
of the apostle; at the next assembly, the field of March or of
May, his injuries were exposed to a devout and warlike nation,
and he repassed the Alps, not as a suppliant, but as a conqueror,
at the head of a French army, which was led by the king in
person. The Lombards, after a weak resistance, obtained an
ignominious peace, and swore to restore the possessions, and to
respect the sanctity, of the Roman church. But no sooner was
Astolphus delivered from the presence of the French arms, than he
forgot his promise and resented his disgrace. Rome was again
encompassed by his arms; and Stephen, apprehensive of fatiguing
the zeal of his Transalpine allies enforced his complaint and
request by an eloquent letter in the name and person of St. Peter
himself. 52 The apostle assures his adopted sons, the king, the
clergy, and the nobles of France, that, dead in the flesh, he is
still alive in the spirit; that they now hear, and must obey, the
voice of the founder and guardian of the Roman church; that the
Virgin, the angels, the saints, and the martyrs, and all the host
of heaven, unanimously urge the request, and will confess the
obligation; that riches, victory, and paradise, will crown their
pious enterprise, and that eternal damnation will be the penalty
of their neglect, if they suffer his tomb, his temple, and his
people, to fall into the hands of the perfidious Lombards. The
second expedition of Pepin was not less rapid and fortunate than
the first: St. Peter was satisfied, Rome was again saved, and
Astolphus was taught the lessons of justice and sincerity by the
scourge of a foreign master. After this double chastisement, the
Lombards languished about twenty years in a state of languor and
decay. But their minds were not yet humbled to their condition;
and instead of affecting the pacific virtues of the feeble, they
peevishly harassed the Romans with a repetition of claims,
evasions, and inroads, which they undertook without reflection,
and terminated without glory. On either side, their expiring
monarchy was pressed by the zeal and prudence of Pope Adrian the
First, the genius, the fortune, and greatness of Charlemagne, the
son of Pepin; these heroes of the church and state were united in
public and domestic friendship, and while they trampled on the
prostrate, they varnished their proceedings with the fairest
colors of equity and moderation. 53 The passes of the Alps, and
the walls of Pavia, were the only defence of the Lombards; the
former were surprised, the latter were invested, by the son of
Pepin; and after a blockade of two years, 531 Desiderius, the
last of their native princes, surrendered his sceptre and his
capital.
Under the dominion of a foreign king, but in the possession of
their national laws, the Lombards became the brethren, rather
than the subjects, of the Franks; who derived their blood, and
manners, and language, from the same Germanic origin. 54
511 (return) [ Gregory I. had been dead above a century; read
Gregory III.—M]
52 (return) [ See this most extraordinary letter in the Codex
Carolinus, epist iii. p. 92. The enemies of the popes have
charged them with fraud and blasphemy; yet they surely meant to
persuade rather than deceive. This introduction of the dead, or
of immortals, was familiar to the ancient orators, though it is
executed on this occasion in the rude fashion of the age.]
53 (return) [ Except in the divorce of the daughter of
Desiderius, whom Charlemagne repudiated sine aliquo crimine. Pope
Stephen IV. had most furiously opposed the alliance of a noble
Frank—cum perfida, horrida nec dicenda, foetentissima natione
Longobardorum—to whom he imputes the first stain of leprosy,
(Cod. Carolin. epist. 45, p. 178, 179.) Another reason against
the marriage was the existence of a first wife, (Muratori, Annali
d’Italia, tom. vi. p. 232, 233, 236, 237.) But Charlemagne
indulged himself in the freedom of polygamy or concubinage.]
531 (return) [ Of fifteen months. James, Life of Charlemagne, p.
187.—M.]
54 (return) [ See the Annali d’Italia of Muratori, tom. vi., and
the three first Dissertations of his Antiquitates Italiae Medii
Aevi, tom. i.]
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part III.
The mutual obligations of the popes and the Carlovingian family
form the important link of ancient and modern, of civil and
ecclesiastical, history. In the conquest of Italy, the champions
of the Roman church obtained a favorable occasion, a specious
title, the wishes of the people, the prayers and intrigues of the
clergy. But the most essential gifts of the popes to the
Carlovingian race were the dignities of king of France, 55 and of
patrician of Rome. I. Under the sacerdotal monarchy of St. Peter,
the nations began to resume the practice of seeking, on the banks
of the Tyber, their kings, their laws, and the oracles of their
fate. The Franks were perplexed between the name and substance of
their government. All the powers of royalty were exercised by
Pepin, mayor of the palace; and nothing, except the regal title,
was wanting to his ambition. His enemies were crushed by his
valor; his friends were multiplied by his liberality; his father
had been the savior of Christendom; and the claims of personal
merit were repeated and ennobled in a descent of four
generations. The name and image of royalty was still preserved in
the last descendant of Clovis, the feeble Childeric; but his
obsolete right could only be used as an instrument of sedition:
the nation was desirous of restoring the simplicity of the
constitution; and Pepin, a subject and a prince, was ambitious to
ascertain his own rank and the fortune of his family. The mayor
and the nobles were bound, by an oath of fidelity, to the royal
phantom: the blood of Clovis was pure and sacred in their eyes;
and their common ambassadors addressed the Roman pontiff, to
dispel their scruples, or to absolve their promise. The interest
of Pope Zachary, the successor of the two Gregories, prompted him
to decide, and to decide in their favor: he pronounced that the
nation might lawfully unite in the same person the title and
authority of king; and that the unfortunate Childeric, a victim
of the public safety, should be degraded, shaved, and confined in
a monastery for the remainder of his days. An answer so agreeable
to their wishes was accepted by the Franks as the opinion of a
casuist, the sentence of a judge, or the oracle of a prophet: the
Merovingian race disappeared from the earth; and Pepin was
exalted on a buckler by the suffrage of a free people, accustomed
to obey his laws and to march under his standard. His coronation
was twice performed, with the sanction of the popes, by their
most faithful servant St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany, and
by the grateful hands of Stephen the Third, who, in the monastery
of St. Denys placed the diadem on the head of his benefactor. The
royal unction of the kings of Israel was dexterously applied: 56
the successor of St. Peter assumed the character of a divine
ambassador: a German chieftain was transformed into the Lord’s
anointed; and this Jewish rite has been diffused and maintained
by the superstition and vanity of modern Europe. The Franks were
absolved from their ancient oath; but a dire anathema was
thundered against them and their posterity, if they should dare
to renew the same freedom of choice, or to elect a king, except
in the holy and meritorious race of the Carlovingian princes.
Without apprehending the future danger, these princes gloried in
their present security: the secretary of Charlemagne affirms,
that the French sceptre was transferred by the authority of the
popes; 57 and in their boldest enterprises, they insist, with
confidence, on this signal and successful act of temporal
jurisdiction.
55 (return) [ Besides the common historians, three French
critics, Launoy, (Opera, tom. v. pars ii. l. vii. epist. 9, p.
477-487,) Pagi, (Critica, A.D. 751, No. 1-6, A.D. 752, No. 1-10,)
and Natalis Alexander, (Hist. Novi Testamenti, dissertat, ii. p.
96-107,) have treated this subject of the deposition of Childeric
with learning and attention, but with a strong bias to save the
independence of the crown. Yet they are hard pressed by the texts
which they produce of Eginhard, Theophanes, and the old annals,
Laureshamenses, Fuldenses, Loisielani]
56 (return) [ Not absolutely for the first time. On a less
conspicuous theatre it had been used, in the vith and viith
centuries, by the provincial bishops of Britain and Spain. The
royal unction of Constantinople was borrowed from the Latins in
the last age of the empire. Constantine Manasses mentions that of
Charlemagne as a foreign, Jewish, incomprehensible ceremony. See
Selden’s Titles of Honor, in his Works, vol. iii. part i. p.
234-249.]
57 (return) [ See Eginhard, in Vita Caroli Magni, c. i. p. 9,
&c., c. iii. p. 24. Childeric was deposed—jussu, the
Carlovingians were established—auctoritate, Pontificis Romani.
Launoy, &c., pretend that these strong words are susceptible of a
very soft interpretation. Be it so; yet Eginhard understood the
world, the court, and the Latin language.]
II. In the change of manners and language the patricians of Rome
58 were far removed from the senate of Romulus, or the palace of
Constantine, from the free nobles of the republic, or the
fictitious parents of the emperor. After the recovery of Italy
and Africa by the arms of Justinian, the importance and danger of
those remote provinces required the presence of a supreme
magistrate; he was indifferently styled the exarch or the
patrician; and these governors of Ravenna, who fill their place
in the chronology of princes, extended their jurisdiction over
the Roman city. Since the revolt of Italy and the loss of the
Exarchate, the distress of the Romans had exacted some sacrifice
of their independence. Yet, even in this act, they exercised the
right of disposing of themselves; and the decrees of the senate
and people successively invested Charles Martel and his posterity
with the honors of patrician of Rome. The leaders of a powerful
nation would have disdained a servile title and subordinate
office; but the reign of the Greek emperors was suspended; and,
in the vacancy of the empire, they derived a more glorious
commission from the pope and the republic. The Roman ambassadors
presented these patricians with the keys of the shrine of St.
Peter, as a pledge and symbol of sovereignty; with a holy banner
which it was their right and duty to unfurl in the defence of the
church and city. 59 In the time of Charles Martel and of Pepin,
the interposition of the Lombard kingdom covered the freedom,
while it threatened the safety, of Rome; and the patriciate
represented only the title, the service, the alliance, of these
distant protectors. The power and policy of Charlemagne
annihilated an enemy, and imposed a master. In his first visit to
the capital, he was received with all the honors which had
formerly been paid to the exarch, the representative of the
emperor; and these honors obtained some new decorations from the
joy and gratitude of Pope Adrian the First. 60 No sooner was he
informed of the sudden approach of the monarch, than he
despatched the magistrates and nobles of Rome to meet him, with
the banner, about thirty miles from the city. At the distance of
one mile, the Flaminian way was lined with the schools, or
national communities, of Greeks, Lombards, Saxons, &c.: the Roman
youth were under arms; and the children of a more tender age,
with palms and olive branches in their hands, chanted the praises
of their great deliverer. At the aspect of the holy crosses, and
ensigns of the saints, he dismounted from his horse, led the
procession of his nobles to the Vatican, and, as he ascended the
stairs, devoutly kissed each step of the threshold of the
apostles. In the portico, Adrian expected him at the head of his
clergy: they embraced, as friends and equals; but in their march
to the altar, the king or patrician assumed the right hand of the
pope. Nor was the Frank content with these vain and empty
demonstrations of respect. In the twenty-six years that elapsed
between the conquest of Lombardy and his Imperial coronation,
Rome, which had been delivered by the sword, was subject, as his
own, to the sceptre of Charlemagne. The people swore allegiance
to his person and family: in his name money was coined, and
justice was administered; and the election of the popes was
examined and confirmed by his authority. Except an original and
self-inherent claim of sovereignty, there was not any prerogative
remaining, which the title of emperor could add to the patrician
of Rome. 61
58 (return) [ For the title and powers of patrician of Rome, see
Ducange, (Gloss. Latin. tom. v. p. 149-151,) Pagi, (Critica, A.D.
740, No. 6-11,) Muratori, (Annali d’Italia, tom. vi. p. 308-329,)
and St. Marc, (Abrege Chronologique d’Italie, tom. i. p.
379-382.) Of these the Franciscan Pagi is the most disposed to
make the patrician a lieutenant of the church, rather than of the
empire.]
59 (return) [ The papal advocates can soften the symbolic meaning
of the banner and the keys; but the style of ad regnum dimisimus,
or direximus, (Codex Carolin. epist. i. tom. iii. pars ii. p.
76,) seems to allow of no palliation or escape. In the Ms. of the
Vienna library, they read, instead of regnum, rogum, prayer or
request (see Ducange;) and the royalty of Charles Martel is
subverted by this important correction, (Catalani, in his
Critical Prefaces, Annali d’Italia, tom. xvii. p. 95-99.)]
60 (return) [ In the authentic narrative of this reception, the
Liber Pontificalis observes—obviam illi ejus sanctitas dirigens
venerabiles cruces, id est signa; sicut mos est ad exarchum, aut
patricium suscipiendum, sum cum ingenti honore suscipi fecit,
(tom. iii. pars i. p. 185.)]
61 (return) [ Paulus Diaconus, who wrote before the empire of
Charlemagne describes Rome as his subject city—vestrae civitates
(ad Pompeium Festum) suis addidit sceptris, (de Metensis
Ecclesiae Episcopis.) Some Carlovingian medals, struck at Rome,
have engaged Le Blanc to write an elaborate, though partial,
dissertation on their authority at Rome, both as patricians and
emperors, (Amsterdam, 1692, in 4to.)]
The gratitude of the Carlovingians was adequate to these
obligations, and their names are consecrated, as the saviors and
benefactors of the Roman church. Her ancient patrimony of farms
and houses was transformed by their bounty into the temporal
dominion of cities and provinces; and the donation of the
Exarchate was the first-fruits of the conquests of Pepin. 62
Astolphus with a sigh relinquished his prey; the keys and the
hostages of the principal cities were delivered to the French
ambassador; and, in his master’s name, he presented them before
the tomb of St. Peter. The ample measure of the Exarchate 63
might comprise all the provinces of Italy which had obeyed the
emperor and his vicegerent; but its strict and proper limits were
included in the territories of Ravenna, Bologna, and Ferrara: its
inseparable dependency was the Pentapolis, which stretched along
the Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona, and advanced into the
midland-country as far as the ridges of the Apennine. In this
transaction, the ambition and avarice of the popes have been
severely condemned. Perhaps the humility of a Christian priest
should have rejected an earthly kingdom, which it was not easy
for him to govern without renouncing the virtues of his
profession. Perhaps a faithful subject, or even a generous enemy,
would have been less impatient to divide the spoils of the
Barbarian; and if the emperor had intrusted Stephen to solicit in
his name the restitution of the Exarchate, I will not absolve the
pope from the reproach of treachery and falsehood. But in the
rigid interpretation of the laws, every one may accept, without
injury, whatever his benefactor can bestow without injustice. The
Greek emperor had abdicated, or forfeited, his right to the
Exarchate; and the sword of Astolphus was broken by the stronger
sword of the Carlovingian. It was not in the cause of the
Iconoclast that Pepin has exposed his person and army in a double
expedition beyond the Alps: he possessed, and might lawfully
alienate, his conquests: and to the importunities of the Greeks
he piously replied that no human consideration should tempt him
to resume the gift which he had conferred on the Roman Pontiff
for the remission of his sins, and the salvation of his soul. The
splendid donation was granted in supreme and absolute dominion,
and the world beheld for the first time a Christian bishop
invested with the prerogatives of a temporal prince; the choice
of magistrates, the exercise of justice, the imposition of taxes,
and the wealth of the palace of Ravenna. In the dissolution of
the Lombard kingdom, the inhabitants of the duchy of Spoleto 64
sought a refuge from the storm, shaved their heads after the
Roman fashion, declared themselves the servants and subjects of
St. Peter, and completed, by this voluntary surrender, the
present circle of the ecclesiastical state. That mysterious
circle was enlarged to an indefinite extent, by the verbal or
written donation of Charlemagne, 65 who, in the first transports
of his victory, despoiled himself and the Greek emperor of the
cities and islands which had formerly been annexed to the
Exarchate. But, in the cooler moments of absence and reflection,
he viewed, with an eye of jealousy and envy, the recent greatness
of his ecclesiastical ally. The execution of his own and his
father’s promises was respectfully eluded: the king of the Franks
and Lombards asserted the inalienable rights of the empire; and,
in his life and death, Ravenna, 66 as well as Rome, was numbered
in the list of his metropolitan cities. The sovereignty of the
Exarchate melted away in the hands of the popes; they found in
the archbishops of Ravenna a dangerous and domestic rival: 67 the
nobles and people disdained the yoke of a priest; and in the
disorders of the times, they could only retain the memory of an
ancient claim, which, in a more prosperous age, they have revived
and realized.
62 (return) [ Mosheim (Institution, Hist. Eccles. p. 263) weighs
this donation with fair and deliberate prudence. The original act
has never been produced; but the Liber Pontificalis represents,
(p. 171,) and the Codex Carolinus supposes, this ample gift. Both
are contemporary records and the latter is the more authentic,
since it has been preserved, not in the Papal, but the Imperial,
library.]
63 (return) [ Between the exorbitant claims, and narrow
concessions, of interest and prejudice, from which even Muratori
(Antiquitat. tom. i. p. 63-68) is not exempt, I have been guided,
in the limits of the Exarchate and Pentapolis, by the Dissertatio
Chorographica Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. x. p. 160-180.]
64 (return) [ Spoletini deprecati sunt, ut eos in servitio B.
Petri receperet et more Romanorum tonsurari faceret, (Anastasius,
p. 185.) Yet it may be a question whether they gave their own
persons or their country.]
65 (return) [ The policy and donations of Charlemagne are
carefully examined by St. Marc, (Abrege, tom. i. p. 390-408,) who
has well studied the Codex Carolinus. I believe, with him, that
they were only verbal. The most ancient act of donation that
pretends to be extant, is that of the emperor Lewis the Pious,
(Sigonius, de Regno Italiae, l. iv. Opera, tom. ii. p. 267-270.)
Its authenticity, or at least its integrity, are much questioned,
(Pagi, A.D. 817, No. 7, &c. Muratori, Annali, tom. vi. p. 432,
&c. Dissertat. Chorographica, p. 33, 34;) but I see no reasonable
objection to these princes so freely disposing of what was not
their own.]
66 (return) [ Charlemagne solicited and obtained from the
proprietor, Hadrian I., the mosaics of the palace of Ravenna, for
the decoration of Aix-la-Chapelle, (Cod. Carolin. epist. 67, p.
223.)]
67 (return) [ The popes often complain of the usurpations of Leo
of Ravenna, (Codex Carolin, epist. 51, 52, 53, p. 200-205.) Sir
corpus St. Andreae fratris germani St. Petri hic humasset,
nequaquam nos Romani pontifices sic subjugassent, (Agnellus,
Liber Pontificalis, in Scriptores Rerum Ital. tom. ii. pars. i.
p. 107.)]
Fraud is the resource of weakness and cunning; and the strong,
though ignorant, Barbarian was often entangled in the net of
sacerdotal policy. The Vatican and Lateran were an arsenal and
manufacture, which, according to the occasion, have produced or
concealed a various collection of false or genuine, of corrupt or
suspicious, acts, as they tended to promote the interest of the
Roman church. Before the end of the eighth century, some
apostolic scribe, perhaps the notorious Isidore, composed the
decretals, and the donation of Constantine, the two magic pillars
of the spiritual and temporal monarchy of the popes. This
memorable donation was introduced to the world by an epistle of
Adrian the First, who exhorts Charlemagne to imitate the
liberality, and revive the name, of the great Constantine. 68
According to the legend, the first of the Christian emperors was
healed of the leprosy, and purified in the waters of baptism, by
St. Silvester, the Roman bishop; and never was physician more
gloriously recompensed. His royal proselyte withdrew from the
seat and patrimony of St. Peter; declared his resolution of
founding a new capital in the East; and resigned to the popes;
the free and perpetual sovereignty of Rome, Italy, and the
provinces of the West. 69 This fiction was productive of the most
beneficial effects. The Greek princes were convicted of the guilt
of usurpation; and the revolt of Gregory was the claim of his
lawful inheritance. The popes were delivered from their debt of
gratitude; and the nominal gifts of the Carlovingians were no
more than the just and irrevocable restitution of a scanty
portion of the ecclesiastical state. The sovereignty of Rome no
longer depended on the choice of a fickle people; and the
successors of St. Peter and Constantine were invested with the
purple and prerogatives of the Caesars. So deep was the ignorance
and credulity of the times, that the most absurd of fables was
received, with equal reverence, in Greece and in France, and is
still enrolled among the decrees of the canon law. 70 The
emperors, and the Romans, were incapable of discerning a forgery,
that subverted their rights and freedom; and the only opposition
proceeded from a Sabine monastery, which, in the beginning of the
twelfth century, disputed the truth and validity of the donation
of Constantine. 71 In the revival of letters and liberty, this
fictitious deed was transpierced by the pen of Laurentius Valla,
the pen of an eloquent critic and a Roman patriot. 72 His
contemporaries of the fifteenth century were astonished at his
sacrilegious boldness; yet such is the silent and irresistible
progress of reason, that, before the end of the next age, the
fable was rejected by the contempt of historians 73 and poets, 74
and the tacit or modest censure of the advocates of the Roman
church. 75 The popes themselves have indulged a smile at the
credulity of the vulgar; 76 but a false and obsolete title still
sanctifies their reign; and, by the same fortune which has
attended the decretals and the Sibylline oracles, the edifice has
subsisted after the foundations have been undermined.
68 (return) [ Piissimo Constantino magno, per ejus largitatem S.
R. Ecclesia elevata et exaltata est, et potestatem in his
Hesperiae partibus largiri olignatus est.... Quia ecce novus
Constantinus his temporibus, &c., (Codex Carolin. epist. 49, in
tom. iii. part ii. p. 195.) Pagi (Critica, A.D. 324, No. 16)
ascribes them to an impostor of the viiith century, who borrowed
the name of St. Isidore: his humble title of Peccator was
ignorantly, but aptly, turned into Mercator: his merchandise was
indeed profitable, and a few sheets of paper were sold for much
wealth and power.]
69 (return) [ Fabricius (Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 4-7) has
enumerated the several editions of this Act, in Greek and Latin.
The copy which Laurentius Valla recites and refutes, appears to
be taken either from the spurious Acts of St. Silvester or from
Gratian’s Decree, to which, according to him and others, it has
been surreptitiously tacked.]
70 (return) [ In the year 1059, it was believed (was it
believed?) by Pope Leo IX. Cardinal Peter Damianus, &c. Muratori
places (Annali d’Italia, tom. ix. p. 23, 24) the fictitious
donations of Lewis the Pious, the Othos, &c., de Donatione
Constantini. See a Dissertation of Natalis Alexander, seculum iv.
diss. 25, p. 335-350.]
71 (return) [ See a large account of the controversy (A.D. 1105)
which arose from a private lawsuit, in the Chronicon Farsense,
(Script. Rerum Italicarum, tom. ii. pars ii. p. 637, &c.,) a
copious extract from the archives of that Benedictine abbey. They
were formerly accessible to curious foreigners, (Le Blanc and
Mabillon,) and would have enriched the first volume of the
Historia Monastica Italiae of Quirini. But they are now
imprisoned (Muratori, Scriptores R. I. tom. ii. pars ii. p. 269)
by the timid policy of the court of Rome; and the future cardinal
yielded to the voice of authority and the whispers of ambition,
(Quirini, Comment. pars ii. p. 123-136.)]
72 (return) [ I have read in the collection of Schardius (de
Potestate Imperiali Ecclesiastica, p. 734-780) this animated
discourse, which was composed by the author, A.D. 1440, six years
after the flight of Pope Eugenius IV. It is a most vehement party
pamphlet: Valla justifies and animates the revolt of the Romans,
and would even approve the use of a dagger against their
sacerdotal tyrant. Such a critic might expect the persecution of
the clergy; yet he made his peace, and is buried in the Lateran,
(Bayle, Dictionnaire Critique, Valla; Vossius, de Historicis
Latinis, p. 580.)]
73 (return) [ See Guicciardini, a servant of the popes, in that
long and valuable digression, which has resumed its place in the
last edition, correctly published from the author’s Ms. and
printed in four volumes in quarto, under the name of Friburgo,
1775, (Istoria d’Italia, tom. i. p. 385-395.)]
74 (return) [ The Paladin Astolpho found it in the moon, among
the things that were lost upon earth, (Orlando Furioso, xxxiv.
80.) Di vari fiore ad un grand monte passa, Ch’ebbe gia buono
odore, or puzza forte: Questo era il dono (se pero dir lece) Che
Constantino al buon Silvestro fece. Yet this incomparable poem
has been approved by a bull of Leo X.]
75 (return) [ See Baronius, A.D. 324, No. 117-123, A.D. 1191, No.
51, &c. The cardinal wishes to suppose that Rome was offered by
Constantine, and refused by Silvester. The act of donation he
considers strangely enough, as a forgery of the Greeks.]
76 (return) [ Baronius n’en dit guerres contre; encore en a-t’il
trop dit, et l’on vouloit sans moi, (Cardinal du Perron,) qui
l’empechai, censurer cette partie de son histoire. J’en devisai
un jour avec le Pape, et il ne me repondit autre chose “che
volete? i Canonici la tengono,” il le disoit en riant,
(Perroniana, p. 77.)]
While the popes established in Italy their freedom and dominion,
the images, the first cause of their revolt, were restored in the
Eastern empire. 77 Under the reign of Constantine the Fifth, the
union of civil and ecclesiastical power had overthrown the tree,
without extirpating the root, of superstition. The idols (for
such they were now held) were secretly cherished by the order and
the sex most prone to devotion; and the fond alliance of the
monks and females obtained a final victory over the reason and
authority of man. Leo the Fourth maintained with less rigor the
religion of his father and grandfather; but his wife, the fair
and ambitious Irene, had imbibed the zeal of the Athenians, the
heirs of the Idolatry, rather than the philosophy, of their
ancestors. During the life of her husband, these sentiments were
inflamed by danger and dissimulation, and she could only labor to
protect and promote some favorite monks whom she drew from their
caverns, and seated on the metropolitan thrones of the East. But
as soon as she reigned in her own name and that of her son, Irene
more seriously undertook the ruin of the Iconoclasts; and the
first step of her future persecution was a general edict for
liberty of conscience.
In the restoration of the monks, a thousand images were exposed
to the public veneration; a thousand legends were inverted of
their sufferings and miracles. By the opportunities of death or
removal, the episcopal seats were judiciously filled; the most
eager competitors for earthly or celestial favor anticipated and
flattered the judgment of their sovereign; and the promotion of
her secretary Tarasius gave Irene the patriarch of
Constantinople, and the command of the Oriental church. But the
decrees of a general council could only be repealed by a similar
assembly: 78 the Iconoclasts whom she convened were bold in
possession, and averse to debate; and the feeble voice of the
bishops was reechoed by the more formidable clamor of the
soldiers and people of Constantinople. The delay and intrigues of
a year, the separation of the disaffected troops, and the choice
of Nice for a second orthodox synod, removed these obstacles; and
the episcopal conscience was again, after the Greek fashion, in
the hands of the prince. No more than eighteen days were allowed
for the consummation of this important work: the Iconoclasts
appeared, not as judges, but as criminals or penitents: the scene
was decorated by the legates of Pope Adrian and the Eastern
patriarchs, 79 the decrees were framed by the president Taracius,
and ratified by the acclamations and subscriptions of three
hundred and fifty bishops. They unanimously pronounced, that the
worship of images is agreeable to Scripture and reason, to the
fathers and councils of the church: but they hesitate whether
that worship be relative or direct; whether the Godhead, and the
figure of Christ, be entitled to the same mode of adoration. Of
this second Nicene council the acts are still extant; a curious
monument of superstition and ignorance, of falsehood and folly. I
shall only notice the judgment of the bishops on the comparative
merit of image-worship and morality. A monk had concluded a truce
with the daemon of fornication, on condition of interrupting his
daily prayers to a picture that hung in his cell. His scruples
prompted him to consult the abbot. “Rather than abstain from
adoring Christ and his Mother in their holy images, it would be
better for you,” replied the casuist, “to enter every brothel,
and visit every prostitute, in the city.” 80 For the honor of
orthodoxy, at least the orthodoxy of the Roman church, it is
somewhat unfortunate, that the two princes who convened the two
councils of Nice are both stained with the blood of their sons.
The second of these assemblies was approved and rigorously
executed by the despotism of Irene, and she refused her
adversaries the toleration which at first she had granted to her
friends. During the five succeeding reigns, a period of
thirty-eight years, the contest was maintained, with unabated
rage and various success, between the worshippers and the
breakers of the images; but I am not inclined to pursue with
minute diligence the repetition of the same events. Nicephorus
allowed a general liberty of speech and practice; and the only
virtue of his reign is accused by the monks as the cause of his
temporal and eternal perdition. Superstition and weakness formed
the character of Michael the First, but the saints and images
were incapable of supporting their votary on the throne. In the
purple, Leo the Fifth asserted the name and religion of an
Armenian; and the idols, with their seditious adherents, were
condemned to a second exile. Their applause would have sanctified
the murder of an impious tyrant, but his assassin and successor,
the second Michael, was tainted from his birth with the Phrygian
heresies: he attempted to mediate between the contending parties;
and the intractable spirit of the Catholics insensibly cast him
into the opposite scale. His moderation was guarded by timidity;
but his son Theophilus, alike ignorant of fear and pity, was the
last and most cruel of the Iconoclasts. The enthusiasm of the
times ran strongly against them; and the emperors who stemmed the
torrent were exasperated and punished by the public hatred. After
the death of Theophilus, the final victory of the images was
achieved by a second female, his widow Theodora, whom he left the
guardian of the empire. Her measures were bold and decisive. The
fiction of a tardy repentance absolved the fame and the soul of
her deceased husband; the sentence of the Iconoclast patriarch
was commuted from the loss of his eyes to a whipping of two
hundred lashes: the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and the
festival of orthodoxy preserves the annual memory of the triumph
of the images. A single question yet remained, whether they are
endowed with any proper and inherent sanctity; it was agitated by
the Greeks of the eleventh century; 81 and as this opinion has
the strongest recommendation of absurdity, I am surprised that it
was not more explicitly decided in the affirmative. In the West,
Pope Adrian the First accepted and announced the decrees of the
Nicene assembly, which is now revered by the Catholics as the
seventh in rank of the general councils. Rome and Italy were
docile to the voice of their father; but the greatest part of the
Latin Christians were far behind in the race of superstition. The
churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain, steered a middle
course between the adoration and the destruction of images, which
they admitted into their temples, not as objects of worship, but
as lively and useful memorials of faith and history. An angry
book of controversy was composed and published in the name of
Charlemagne: 82 under his authority a synod of three hundred
bishops was assembled at Frankfort: 83 they blamed the fury of
the Iconoclasts, but they pronounced a more severe censure
against the superstition of the Greeks, and the decrees of their
pretended council, which was long despised by the Barbarians of
the West. 84 Among them the worship of images advanced with a
silent and insensible progress; but a large atonement is made for
their hesitation and delay, by the gross idolatry of the ages
which precede the reformation, and of the countries, both in
Europe and America, which are still immersed in the gloom of
superstition.
77 (return) [ The remaining history of images, from Irene to
Theodora, is collected, for the Catholics, by Baronius and Pagi,
(A.D. 780-840.) Natalis Alexander, (Hist. N. T. seculum viii.
Panoplia adversus Haereticos p. 118-178,) and Dupin, (Bibliot.
Eccles. tom. vi. p. 136-154;) for the Protestants, by Spanheim,
(Hist. Imag. p. 305-639.) Basnage, (Hist. de l’Eglise, tom. i. p.
556-572, tom. ii. p. 1362-1385,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist.
Eccles. secul. viii. et ix.) The Protestants, except Mosheim, are
soured with controversy; but the Catholics, except Dupin, are
inflamed by the fury and superstition of the monks; and even Le
Beau, (Hist. du Bas Empire,) a gentleman and a scholar, is
infected by the odious contagion.]
78 (return) [ See the Acts, in Greek and Latin, of the second
Council of Nice, with a number of relative pieces, in the viiith
volume of the Councils, p. 645-1600. A faithful version, with
some critical notes, would provoke, in different readers, a sigh
or a smile.]
79 (return) [ The pope’s legates were casual messengers, two
priests without any special commission, and who were disavowed on
their return. Some vagabond monks were persuaded by the Catholics
to represent the Oriental patriarchs. This curious anecdote is
revealed by Theodore Studites, (epist. i. 38, in Sirmond. Opp.
tom. v. p. 1319,) one of the warmest Iconoclasts of the age.]
80 (return) [ These visits could not be innocent since the daemon
of fornication, &c. Actio iv. p. 901, Actio v. p. 1081]
81 (return) [ See an account of this controversy in the Alexius
of Anna Compena, (l. v. p. 129,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist.
Eccles. p. 371, 372.)]
82 (return) [ The Libri Carolini, (Spanheim, p. 443-529,)
composed in the palace or winter quarters of Charlemagne, at
Worms, A.D. 790, and sent by Engebert to Pope Hadrian I., who
answered them by a grandis et verbosa epistola, (Concil. tom.
vii. p. 1553.) The Carolines propose 120 objections against the
Nicene synod and such words as these are the flowers of their
rhetoric—Dementiam.... priscae Gentilitatis obsoletum errorem
.... argumenta insanissima et absurdissima.... derisione dignas
naenias, &c., &c.]
83 (return) [ The assemblies of Charlemagne were political, as
well as ecclesiastical; and the three hundred members, (Nat.
Alexander, sec. viii. p. 53,) who sat and voted at Frankfort,
must include not only the bishops, but the abbots, and even the
principal laymen.]
84 (return) [ Qui supra sanctissima patres nostri (episcopi et
sacerdotes) omnimodis servitium et adorationem imaginum renuentes
contempserunt, atque consentientes condemnaverunt, (Concil. tom.
ix. p. 101, Canon. ii. Franckfurd.) A polemic must be
hard-hearted indeed, who does not pity the efforts of Baronius,
Pagi, Alexander, Maimbourg, &c., to elude this unlucky sentence.]
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part IV.
It was after the Nycene synod, and under the reign of the pious
Irene, that the popes consummated the separation of Rome and
Italy, by the translation of the empire to the less orthodox
Charlemagne. They were compelled to choose between the rival
nations: religion was not the sole motive of their choice; and
while they dissembled the failings of their friends, they beheld,
with reluctance and suspicion, the Catholic virtues of their
foes. The difference of language and manners had perpetuated the
enmity of the two capitals; and they were alienated from each
other by the hostile opposition of seventy years. In that schism
the Romans had tasted of freedom, and the popes of sovereignty:
their submission would have exposed them to the revenge of a
jealous tyrant; and the revolution of Italy had betrayed the
impotence, as well as the tyranny, of the Byzantine court. The
Greek emperors had restored the images, but they had not restored
the Calabrian estates 85 and the Illyrian diocese, 86 which the
Iconociasts had torn away from the successors of St. Peter; and
Pope Adrian threatens them with a sentence of excommunication
unless they speedily abjure this practical heresy. 87 The Greeks
were now orthodox; but their religion might be tainted by the
breath of the reigning monarch: the Franks were now contumacious;
but a discerning eye might discern their approaching conversion,
from the use, to the adoration, of images. The name of
Charlemagne was stained by the polemic acrimony of his scribes;
but the conqueror himself conformed, with the temper of a
statesman, to the various practice of France and Italy. In his
four pilgrimages or visits to the Vatican, he embraced the popes
in the communion of friendship and piety; knelt before the tomb,
and consequently before the image, of the apostle; and joined,
without scruple, in all the prayers and processions of the Roman
liturgy. Would prudence or gratitude allow the pontiffs to
renounce their benefactor? Had they a right to alienate his gift
of the Exarchate? Had they power to abolish his government of
Rome? The title of patrician was below the merit and greatness of
Charlemagne; and it was only by reviving the Western empire that
they could pay their obligations or secure their establishment.
By this decisive measure they would finally eradicate the claims
of the Greeks; from the debasement of a provincial town, the
majesty of Rome would be restored: the Latin Christians would be
united, under a supreme head, in their ancient metropolis; and
the conquerors of the West would receive their crown from the
successors of St. Peter. The Roman church would acquire a zealous
and respectable advocate; and, under the shadow of the
Carlovingian power, the bishop might exercise, with honor and
safety, the government of the city. 88
85 (return) [ Theophanes (p. 343) specifies those of Sicily and
Calabria, which yielded an annual rent of three talents and a
half of gold, (perhaps 7000 L. sterling.) Liutprand more
pompously enumerates the patrimonies of the Roman church in
Greece, Judaea, Persia, Mesopotamia Babylonia, Egypt, and Libya,
which were detained by the injustice of the Greek emperor,
(Legat. ad Nicephorum, in Script. Rerum Italica rum, tom. ii.
pars i. p. 481.)]
86 (return) [ The great diocese of the Eastern Illyricum, with
Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, (Thomassin, Discipline de l’Eglise,
tom. i. p. 145: ) by the confession of the Greeks, the patriarch
of Constantinople had detached from Rome the metropolitans of
Thessalonica, Athens Corinth, Nicopolis, and Patrae, (Luc.
Holsten. Geograph. Sacra, p. 22) and his spiritual conquests
extended to Naples and Amalphi (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. i.
p. 517-524, Pagi, A. D 780, No. 11.)]
87 (return) [ In hoc ostenditur, quia ex uno capitulo ab errore
reversis, in aliis duobus, in eodem (was it the same?) permaneant
errore.... de diocessi S. R. E. seu de patrimoniis iterum
increpantes commonemus, ut si ea restituere noluerit hereticum
eum pro hujusmodi errore perseverantia decernemus, (Epist.
Hadrian. Papae ad Carolum Magnum, in Concil. tom. viii. p. 1598;)
to which he adds a reason, most directly opposite to his conduct,
that he preferred the salvation of souls and rule of faith to the
goods of this transitory world.]
88 (return) [ Fontanini considers the emperors as no more than
the advocates of the church, (advocatus et defensor S. R. E. See
Ducange, Gloss Lat. tom. i. p. 297.) His antagonist Muratori
reduces the popes to be no more than the exarchs of the emperor.
In the more equitable view of Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles.
p. 264, 265,) they held Rome under the empire as the most
honorable species of fief or benefice—premuntur nocte
caliginosa!]
Before the ruin of Paganism in Rome, the competition for a
wealthy bishopric had often been productive of tumult and
bloodshed. The people was less numerous, but the times were more
savage, the prize more important, and the chair of St. Peter was
fiercely disputed by the leading ecclesiastics who aspired to the
rank of sovereign. The reign of Adrian the First 89 surpasses the
measure of past or succeeding ages; 90 the walls of Rome, the
sacred patrimony, the ruin of the Lombards, and the friendship of
Charlemagne, were the trophies of his fame: he secretly edified
the throne of his successors, and displayed in a narrow space the
virtues of a great prince. His memory was revered; but in the
next election, a priest of the Lateran, Leo the Third, was
preferred to the nephew and the favorite of Adrian, whom he had
promoted to the first dignities of the church. Their acquiescence
or repentance disguised, above four years, the blackest intention
of revenge, till the day of a procession, when a furious band of
conspirators dispersed the unarmed multitude, and assaulted with
blows and wounds the sacred person of the pope. But their
enterprise on his life or liberty was disappointed, perhaps by
their own confusion and remorse. Leo was left for dead on the
ground: on his revival from the swoon, the effect of his loss of
blood, he recovered his speech and sight; and this natural event
was improved to the miraculous restoration of his eyes and
tongue, of which he had been deprived, twice deprived, by the
knife of the assassins. 91 From his prison he escaped to the
Vatican: the duke of Spoleto hastened to his rescue, Charlemagne
sympathized in his injury, and in his camp of Paderborn in
Westphalia accepted, or solicited, a visit from the Roman
pontiff. Leo repassed the Alps with a commission of counts and
bishops, the guards of his safety and the judges of his
innocence; and it was not without reluctance, that the conqueror
of the Saxons delayed till the ensuing year the personal
discharge of this pious office. In his fourth and last
pilgrimage, he was received at Rome with the due honors of king
and patrician: Leo was permitted to purge himself by oath of the
crimes imputed to his charge: his enemies were silenced, and the
sacrilegious attempt against his life was punished by the mild
and insufficient penalty of exile. On the festival of Christmas,
the last year of the eighth century, Charlemagne appeared in the
church of St. Peter; and, to gratify the vanity of Rome, he had
exchanged the simple dress of his country for the habit of a
patrician. 92 After the celebration of the holy mysteries, Leo
suddenly placed a precious crown on his head, 93 and the dome
resounded with the acclamations of the people, “Long life and
victory to Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God the
great and pacific emperor of the Romans!” The head and body of
Charlemagne were consecrated by the royal unction: after the
example of the Caesars, he was saluted or adored by the pontiff:
his coronation oath represents a promise to maintain the faith
and privileges of the church; and the first-fruits were paid in
his rich offerings to the shrine of his apostle. In his familiar
conversation, the emperor protested the ignorance of the
intentions of Leo, which he would have disappointed by his
absence on that memorable day. But the preparations of the
ceremony must have disclosed the secret; and the journey of
Charlemagne reveals his knowledge and expectation: he had
acknowledged that the Imperial title was the object of his
ambition, and a Roman synod had pronounced, that it was the only
adequate reward of his merit and services. 94
89 (return) [ His merits and hopes are summed up in an epitaph of
thirty-eight-verses, of which Charlemagne declares himself the
author, (Concil. tom. viii. p. 520.) Post patrem lacrymans
Carolus haec carmina scripsi. Tu mihi dulcis amor, te modo plango
pater... Nomina jungo simul titulis, clarissime, nostra Adrianus,
Carolus, rex ego, tuque pater. The poetry might be supplied by
Alcuin; but the tears, the most glorious tribute, can only belong
to Charlemagne.]
90 (return) [ Every new pope is admonished—“Sancte Pater, non
videbis annos Petri,” twenty-five years. On the whole series the
average is about eight years—a short hope for an ambitious
cardinal.]
91 (return) [ The assurance of Anastasius (tom. iii. pars i. p.
197, 198) is supported by the credulity of some French annalists;
but Eginhard, and other writers of the same age, are more natural
and sincere. “Unus ei oculus paullulum est laesus,” says John the
deacon of Naples, (Vit. Episcop. Napol. in Scriptores Muratori,
tom. i. pars ii. p. 312.) Theodolphus, a contemporary bishop of
Orleans, observes with prudence (l. iii. carm. 3.) Reddita sunt?
mirum est: mirum est auferre nequtsse. Est tamen in dubio, hinc
mirer an inde magis.]
92 (return) [ Twice, at the request of Hadrian and Leo, he
appeared at Rome,—longa tunica et chlamyde amictus, et
calceamentis quoque Romano more formatis. Eginhard (c. xxiii. p.
109-113) describes, like Suetonius the simplicity of his dress,
so popular in the nation, that when Charles the Bald returned to
France in a foreign habit, the patriotic dogs barked at the
apostate, (Gaillard, Vie de Charlemagne, tom. iv. p. 109.)]
93 (return) [ See Anastasius (p. 199) and Eginhard, (c.xxviii. p.
124-128.) The unction is mentioned by Theophanes, (p. 399,) the
oath by Sigonius, (from the Ordo Romanus,) and the Pope’s
adoration more antiquorum principum, by the Annales Bertiniani,
(Script. Murator. tom. ii. pars ii. p. 505.)]
94 (return) [ This great event of the translation or restoration
of the empire is related and discussed by Natalis Alexander,
(secul. ix. dissert. i. p. 390-397,) Pagi, (tom. iii. p. 418,)
Muratori, (Annali d’Italia, tom. vi. p. 339-352,) Sigonius, (de
Regno Italiae, l. iv. Opp. tom. ii. p. 247-251,) Spanheim, (de
ficta Translatione Imperii,) Giannone, (tom. i. p. 395-405,) St.
Marc, (Abrege Chronologique, tom. i. p. 438-450,) Gaillard,
(Hist. de Charlemagne, tom. ii. p. 386-446.) Almost all these
moderns have some religious or national bias.]
The appellation of great has been often bestowed, and sometimes
deserved; but Charlemagne is the only prince in whose favor the
title has been indissolubly blended with the name. That name,
with the addition of saint, is inserted in the Roman calendar;
and the saint, by a rare felicity, is crowned with the praises of
the historians and philosophers of an enlightened age. 95 His
real merit is doubtless enhanced by the barbarism of the nation
and the times from which he emerged: but the apparent magnitude
of an object is likewise enlarged by an unequal comparison; and
the ruins of Palmyra derive a casual splendor from the nakedness
of the surrounding desert. Without injustice to his fame, I may
discern some blemishes in the sanctity and greatness of the
restorer of the Western empire. Of his moral virtues, chastity is
not the most conspicuous: 96 but the public happiness could not
be materially injured by his nine wives or concubines, the
various indulgence of meaner or more transient amours, the
multitude of his bastards whom he bestowed on the church, and the
long celibacy and licentious manners of his daughters, 97 whom
the father was suspected of loving with too fond a passion. 971 I
shall be scarcely permitted to accuse the ambition of a
conqueror; but in a day of equal retribution, the sons of his
brother Carloman, the Merovingian princes of Aquitain, and the
four thousand five hundred Saxons who were beheaded on the same
spot, would have something to allege against the justice and
humanity of Charlemagne. His treatment of the vanquished Saxons
98 was an abuse of the right of conquest; his laws were not less
sanguinary than his arms, and in the discussion of his motives,
whatever is subtracted from bigotry must be imputed to temper.
The sedentary reader is amazed by his incessant activity of mind
and body; and his subjects and enemies were not less astonished
at his sudden presence, at the moment when they believed him at
the most distant extremity of the empire; neither peace nor war,
nor summer nor winter, were a season of repose; and our fancy
cannot easily reconcile the annals of his reign with the
geography of his expeditions. 981 But this activity was a
national, rather than a personal, virtue; the vagrant life of a
Frank was spent in the chase, in pilgrimage, in military
adventures; and the journeys of Charlemagne were distinguished
only by a more numerous train and a more important purpose. His
military renown must be tried by the scrutiny of his troops, his
enemies, and his actions. Alexander conquered with the arms of
Philip, but the two heroes who preceded Charlemagne bequeathed
him their name, their examples, and the companions of their
victories. At the head of his veteran and superior armies, he
oppressed the savage or degenerate nations, who were incapable of
confederating for their common safety: nor did he ever encounter
an equal antagonist in numbers, in discipline, or in arms The
science of war has been lost and revived with the arts of peace;
but his campaigns are not illustrated by any siege or battle of
singular difficulty and success; and he might behold, with envy,
the Saracen trophies of his grandfather. After the Spanish
expedition, his rear-guard was defeated in the Pyrenaean
mountains; and the soldiers, whose situation was irretrievable,
and whose valor was useless, might accuse, with their last
breath, the want of skill or caution of their general. 99 I touch
with reverence the laws of Charlemagne, so highly applauded by a
respectable judge. They compose not a system, but a series, of
occasional and minute edicts, for the correction of abuses, the
reformation of manners, the economy of his farms, the care of his
poultry, and even the sale of his eggs. He wished to improve the
laws and the character of the Franks; and his attempts, however
feeble and imperfect, are deserving of praise: the inveterate
evils of the times were suspended or mollified by his government;
100 but in his institutions I can seldom discover the general
views and the immortal spirit of a legislator, who survives
himself for the benefit of posterity. The union and stability of
his empire depended on the life of a single man: he imitated the
dangerous practice of dividing his kingdoms among his sons; and
after his numerous diets, the whole constitution was left to
fluctuate between the disorders of anarchy and despotism. His
esteem for the piety and knowledge of the clergy tempted him to
intrust that aspiring order with temporal dominion and civil
jurisdiction; and his son Lewis, when he was stripped and
degraded by the bishops, might accuse, in some measure, the
imprudence of his father. His laws enforced the imposition of
tithes, because the daemons had proclaimed in the air that the
default of payment had been the cause of the last scarcity. 101
The literary merits of Charlemagne are attested by the foundation
of schools, the introduction of arts, the works which were
published in his name, and his familiar connection with the
subjects and strangers whom he invited to his court to educate
both the prince and people. His own studies were tardy,
laborious, and imperfect; if he spoke Latin, and understood
Greek, he derived the rudiments of knowledge from conversation,
rather than from books; and, in his mature age, the emperor
strove to acquire the practice of writing, which every peasant
now learns in his infancy. 102 The grammar and logic, the music
and astronomy, of the times, were only cultivated as the
handmaids of superstition; but the curiosity of the human mind
must ultimately tend to its improvement, and the encouragement of
learning reflects the purest and most pleasing lustre on the
character of Charlemagne. 103 The dignity of his person, 104 the
length of his reign, the prosperity of his arms, the vigor of his
government, and the reverence of distant nations, distinguish him
from the royal crowd; and Europe dates a new aera from his
restoration of the Western empire.
95 (return) [ By Mably, (Observations sur l’Histoire de France,)
Voltaire, (Histoire Generale,) Robertson, (History of Charles
V.,) and Montesquieu, (Esprit des Loix, l. xxxi. c. 18.) In the
year 1782, M. Gaillard published his Histoire de Charlemagne, (in
4 vols. in 12mo.,) which I have freely and profitably used. The
author is a man of sense and humanity; and his work is labored
with industry and elegance. But I have likewise examined the
original monuments of the reigns of Pepin and Charlemagne, in the
5th volume of the Historians of France.]
96 (return) [ The vision of Weltin, composed by a monk, eleven
years after the death of Charlemagne, shows him in purgatory,
with a vulture, who is perpetually gnawing the guilty member,
while the rest of his body, the emblem of his virtues, is sound
and perfect, (see Gaillard tom. ii. p. 317-360.)]
97 (return) [ The marriage of Eginhard with Imma, daughter of
Charlemagne, is, in my opinion, sufficiently refuted by the
probum and suspicio that sullied these fair damsels, without
excepting his own wife, (c. xix. p. 98-100, cum Notis Schmincke.)
The husband must have been too strong for the historian.]
971 (return) [ This charge of incest, as Mr. Hallam justly
observes, “seems to have originated in a misinterpreted passage
of Eginhard.” Hallam’s Middle Ages, vol.i. p. 16.—M.]
98 (return) [ Besides the massacres and transmigrations, the pain
of death was pronounced against the following crimes: 1. The
refusal of baptism. 2. The false pretence of baptism. 3. A
relapse to idolatry. 4. The murder of a priest or bishop. 5.
Human sacrifices. 6. Eating meat in Lent. But every crime might
be expiated by baptism or penance, (Gaillard, tom. ii. p.
241-247;) and the Christian Saxons became the friends and equals
of the Franks, (Struv. Corpus Hist. Germanicae, p.133.)]
981 (return) [ M. Guizot (Cours d’Histoire Moderne, p. 270, 273)
has compiled the following statement of Charlemagne’s military
campaigns:—
1. Against the Aquitanians.
18. ” the Saxons.
5. ” the Lombards.
7. ” the Arabs in Spain.
1. ” the Thuringians.
4. ” the Avars.
2. ” the Bretons.
1. ” the Bavarians.
4. ” the Slaves beyond the Elbe
5. ” the Saracens in Italy.
3. ” the Danes.
2. ” the Greeks. ___
53 total.—M.]
99 (return) [ In this action the famous Rutland, Rolando,
Orlando, was slain—cum compluribus aliis. See the truth in
Eginhard, (c. 9, p. 51-56,) and the fable in an ingenious
Supplement of M. Gaillard, (tom. iii. p. 474.) The Spaniards are
too proud of a victory, which history ascribes to the Gascons,
and romance to the Saracens. * Note: In fact, it was a sudden
onset of the Gascons, assisted by the Beaure mountaineers, and
possibly a few Navarrese.—M.]
100 (return) [ Yet Schmidt, from the best authorities, represents
the interior disorders and oppression of his reign, (Hist. des
Allemands, tom. ii. p. 45-49.)]
101 (return) [ Omnis homo ex sua proprietate legitimam decimam ad
ecclesiam conferat. Experimento enim didicimus, in anno, quo illa
valida fames irrepsit, ebullire vacuas annonas a daemonibus
devoratas, et voces exprobationis auditas. Such is the decree and
assertion of the great Council of Frankfort, (canon xxv. tom. ix.
p. 105.) Both Selden (Hist. of Tithes; Works, vol. iii. part ii.
p. 1146) and Montesquieu (Esprit des Loix, l. xxxi. c. 12)
represent Charlemagne as the first legal author of tithes. Such
obligations have country gentlemen to his memory!]
102 (return) [ Eginhard (c. 25, p. 119) clearly affirms, tentabat
et scribere... sed parum prospere successit labor praeposterus et
sero inchoatus. The moderns have perverted and corrected this
obvious meaning, and the title of M. Gaillard’s dissertation
(tom. iii. p. 247-260) betrays his partiality. * Note: This point
has been contested; but Mr. Hallam and Monsieur Sismondl concur
with Gibbon. See Middle Ages, iii. 330, Histoire de Francais,
tom. ii. p. 318. The sensible observations of the latter are
quoted in the Quarterly Review, vol. xlviii. p. 451. Fleury, I
may add, quotes from Mabillon a remarkable evidence that
Charlemagne “had a mark to himself like an honest, plain-dealing
man.” Ibid.—M.]
103 (return) [ See Gaillard, tom. iii. p. 138-176, and Schmidt,
tom. ii. p. 121-129.]
104 (return) [ M. Gaillard (tom. iii. p. 372) fixes the true
stature of Charlemagne (see a Dissertation of Marquard Freher ad
calcem Eginhart, p. 220, &c.) at five feet nine inches of French,
about six feet one inch and a fourth English, measure. The
romance writers have increased it to eight feet, and the giant
was endowed with matchless strength and appetite: at a single
stroke of his good sword Joyeuse, he cut asunder a horseman and
his horse; at a single repast, he devoured a goose, two fowls, a
quarter of mutton, &c.]
That empire was not unworthy of its title; 105 and some of the
fairest kingdoms of Europe were the patrimony or conquest of a
prince, who reigned at the same time in France, Spain, Italy,
Germany, and Hungary. 106 I. The Roman province of Gaul had been
transformed into the name and monarchy of France; but, in the
decay of the Merovingian line, its limits were contracted by the
independence of the Britons and the revolt of Aquitain.
Charlemagne pursued, and confined, the Britons on the shores of
the ocean; and that ferocious tribe, whose origin and language
are so different from the French, was chastised by the imposition
of tribute, hostages, and peace. After a long and evasive
contest, the rebellion of the dukes of Aquitain was punished by
the forfeiture of their province, their liberty, and their lives.
Harsh and rigorous would have been such treatment of ambitious
governors, who had too faithfully copied the mayors of the
palace. But a recent discovery 107 has proved that these unhappy
princes were the last and lawful heirs of the blood and sceptre
of Clovis, and younger branch, from the brother of Dagobert, of
the Merovingian house. Their ancient kingdom was reduced to the
duchy of Gascogne, to the counties of Fesenzac and Armagnac, at
the foot of the Pyrenees: their race was propagated till the
beginning of the sixteenth century; and after surviving their
Carlovingian tyrants, they were reserved to feel the injustice,
or the favors, of a third dynasty. By the reunion of Aquitain,
France was enlarged to its present boundaries, with the additions
of the Netherlands and Spain, as far as the Rhine. II.
The Saracens had been expelled from France by the grandfather and
father of Charlemagne; but they still possessed the greatest part
of Spain, from the rock of Gibraltar to the Pyrenees. Amidst
their civil divisions, an Arabian emir of Saragossa implored his
protection in the diet of Paderborn. Charlemagne undertook the
expedition, restored the emir, and, without distinction of faith,
impartially crushed the resistance of the Christians, and
rewarded the obedience and services of the Mahometans. In his
absence he instituted the Spanish march, 108 which extended from
the Pyrenees to the River Ebro: Barcelona was the residence of
the French governor: he possessed the counties of Rousillon and
Catalonia; and the infant kingdoms of Navarre and Arragon were
subject to his jurisdiction. III. As king of the Lombards, and
patrician of Rome, he reigned over the greatest part of Italy,
109 a tract of a thousand miles from the Alps to the borders of
Calabria. The duchy of Beneventum, a Lombard fief, had spread, at
the expense of the Greeks, over the modern kingdom of Naples. But
Arrechis, the reigning duke, refused to be included in the
slavery of his country; assumed the independent title of prince;
and opposed his sword to the Carlovingian monarchy. His defence
was firm, his submission was not inglorious, and the emperor was
content with an easy tribute, the demolition of his fortresses,
and the acknowledgement, on his coins, of a supreme lord. The
artful flattery of his son Grimoald added the appellation of
father, but he asserted his dignity with prudence, and Benventum
insensibly escaped from the French yoke. 110 IV. Charlemagne was
the first who united Germany under the same sceptre. The name of
Oriental France is preserved in the circle of Franconia; and the
people of Hesse and Thuringia were recently incorporated with the
victors, by the conformity of religion and government. The
Alemanni, so formidable to the Romans, were the faithful vassals
and confederates of the Franks; and their country was inscribed
within the modern limits of Alsace, Swabia, and Switzerland. The
Bavarians, with a similar indulgence of their laws and manners,
were less patient of a master: the repeated treasons of Tasillo
justified the abolition of their hereditary dukes; and their
power was shared among the counts, who judged and guarded that
important frontier. But the north of Germany, from the Rhine and
beyond the Elbe, was still hostile and Pagan; nor was it till
after a war of thirty-three years that the Saxons bowed under the
yoke of Christ and of Charlemagne. The idols and their votaries
were extirpated: the foundation of eight bishoprics, of Munster,
Osnaburgh, Paderborn, and Minden, of Bremen, Verden, Hildesheim,
and Halberstadt, define, on either side of the Weser, the bounds
of ancient Saxony these episcopal seats were the first schools
and cities of that savage land; and the religion and humanity of
the children atoned, in some degree, for the massacre of the
parents. Beyond the Elbe, the Slavi, or Sclavonians, of similar
manners and various denominations, overspread the modern
dominions of Prussia, Poland, and Bohemia, and some transient
marks of obedience have tempted the French historian to extend
the empire to the Baltic and the Vistula. The conquest or
conversion of those countries is of a more recent age; but the
first union of Bohemia with the Germanic body may be justly
ascribed to the arms of Charlemagne. V. He retaliated on the
Avars, or Huns of Pannonia, the same calamities which they had
inflicted on the nations. Their rings, the wooden fortifications
which encircled their districts and villages, were broken down by
the triple effort of a French army, that was poured into their
country by land and water, through the Carpathian mountains and
along the plain of the Danube. After a bloody conflict of eight
years, the loss of some French generals was avenged by the
slaughter of the most noble Huns: the relics of the nation
submitted the royal residence of the chagan was left desolate and
unknown; and the treasures, the rapine of two hundred and fifty
years, enriched the victorious troops, or decorated the churches
of Italy and Gaul. 111 After the reduction of Pannonia, the
empire of Charlemagne was bounded only by the conflux of the
Danube with the Teyss and the Save: the provinces of Istria,
Liburnia, and Dalmatia, were an easy, though unprofitable,
accession; and it was an effect of his moderation, that he left
the maritime cities under the real or nominal sovereignty of the
Greeks. But these distant possessions added more to the
reputation than to the power of the Latin emperor; nor did he
risk any ecclesiastical foundations to reclaim the Barbarians
from their vagrant life and idolatrous worship. Some canals of
communication between the rivers, the Saone and the Meuse, the
Rhine and the Danube, were faintly attempted. 112 Their execution
would have vivified the empire; and more cost and labor were
often wasted in the structure of a cathedral. 1121
105 (return) [ See the concise, but correct and original, work of
D’Anville, (Etats Formes en Europe apres la Chute de l’Empire
Romain en Occident, Paris, 1771, in 4to.,) whose map includes the
empire of Charlemagne; the different parts are illustrated, by
Valesius (Notitia Galliacum) for France, Beretti (Dissertatio
Chorographica) for Italy, De Marca (Marca Hispanica) for Spain.
For the middle geography of Germany, I confess myself poor and
destitute.]
106 (return) [ After a brief relation of his wars and conquests,
(Vit. Carol. c. 5-14,) Eginhard recapitulates, in a few words,
(c. 15,) the countries subject to his empire. Struvius, (Corpus
Hist. German. p. 118-149) was inserted in his Notes the texts of
the old Chronicles.]
107 (return) [ On a charter granted to the monastery of Alaon
(A.D. 845) by Charles the Bald, which deduces this royal
pedigree. I doubt whether some subsequent links of the ixth and
xth centuries are equally firm; yet the whole is approved and
defended by M. Gaillard, (tom. ii. p.60-81, 203-206,) who affirms
that the family of Montesquiou (not of the President de
Montesquieu) is descended, in the female line, from Clotaire and
Clovis—an innocent pretension!]
108 (return) [ The governors or counts of the Spanish march
revolted from Charles the Simple about the year 900; and a poor
pittance, the Rousillon, has been recovered in 1642 by the kings
of France, (Longuerue, Description de la France, tom i. p.
220-222.) Yet the Rousillon contains 188,900 subjects, and
annually pays 2,600,000 livres, (Necker, Administration des
Finances, tom. i. p. 278, 279;) more people, perhaps, and
doubtless more money than the march of Charlemagne.]
109 (return) [ Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, tom. ii. p. 200,
&c.]
110 (return) [ See Giannone, tom. i. p 374, 375, and the Annals
of Muratori.]
111 (return) [ Quot praelia in eo gesta! quantum sanguinis
effusum sit! Testatur vacua omni habitatione Pannonia, et locus
in quo regia Cagani fuit ita desertus, ut ne vestigium quidem
humanae habitationis appareat. Tota in hoc bello Hunnorum
nobilitas periit, tota gloria decidit, omnis pecunia et congesti
ex longo tempore thesauri direpti sunt. Eginhard, cxiii.]
112 (return) [ The junction of the Rhine and Danube was
undertaken only for the service of the Pannonian war, (Gaillard,
Vie de Charlemagne, tom. ii. p. 312-315.) The canal, which would
have been only two leagues in length, and of which some traces
are still extant in Swabia, was interrupted by excessive rains,
military avocations, and superstitious fears, (Schaepflin, Hist.
de l’Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xviii. p. 256. Molimina
fluviorum, &c., jungendorum, p. 59-62.)]
1121 (return) [ I should doubt this in the time of Charlemagne,
even if the term “expended” were substituted for “wasted.”—M.]
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part V.
If we retrace the outlines of this geographical picture, it will
be seen that the empire of the Franks extended, between east and
west, from the Ebro to the Elbe or Vistula; between the north and
south, from the duchy of Beneventum to the River Eyder, the
perpetual boundary of Germany and Denmark. The personal and
political importance of Charlemagne was magnified by the distress
and division of the rest of Europe. The islands of Great Britain
and Ireland were disputed by a crowd of princes of Saxon or
Scottish origin: and, after the loss of Spain, the Christian and
Gothic kingdom of Alphonso the Chaste was confined to the narrow
range of the Asturian mountains. These petty sovereigns revered
the power or virtue of the Carlovingian monarch, implored the
honor and support of his alliance, and styled him their common
parent, the sole and supreme emperor of the West. 113 He
maintained a more equal intercourse with the caliph Harun al
Rashid, 114 whose dominion stretched from Africa to India, and
accepted from his ambassadors a tent, a water-clock, an elephant,
and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre. It is not easy to conceive
the private friendship of a Frank and an Arab, who were strangers
to each other’s person, and language, and religion: but their
public correspondence was founded on vanity, and their remote
situation left no room for a competition of interest. Two thirds
of the Western empire of Rome were subject to Charlemagne, and
the deficiency was amply supplied by his command of the
inaccessible or invincible nations of Germany. But in the choice
of his enemies, 1141 we may be reasonably surprised that he so
often preferred the poverty of the north to the riches of the
south. The three-and-thirty campaigns laboriously consumed in the
woods and morasses of Germany would have sufficed to assert the
amplitude of his title by the expulsion of the Greeks from Italy
and the Saracens from Spain. The weakness of the Greeks would
have insured an easy victory; and the holy crusade against the
Saracens would have been prompted by glory and revenge, and
loudly justified by religion and policy. Perhaps, in his
expeditions beyond the Rhine and the Elbe, he aspired to save his
monarchy from the fate of the Roman empire, to disarm the enemies
of civilized society, and to eradicate the seed of future
emigrations. But it has been wisely observed, that, in a light of
precaution, all conquest must be ineffectual, unless it could be
universal, since the increasing circle must be involved in a
larger sphere of hostility. 115 The subjugation of Germany
withdrew the veil which had so long concealed the continent or
islands of Scandinavia from the knowledge of Europe, and awakened
the torpid courage of their barbarous natives. The fiercest of
the Saxon idolaters escaped from the Christian tyrant to their
brethren of the North; the Ocean and Mediterranean were covered
with their piratical fleets; and Charlemagne beheld with a sigh
the destructive progress of the Normans, who, in less than
seventy years, precipitated the fall of his race and monarchy.
113 (return) [ See Eginhard, c. 16, and Gaillard, tom. ii. p.
361-385, who mentions, with a loose reference, the intercourse of
Charlemagne and Egbert, the emperor’s gift of his own sword, and
the modest answer of his Saxon disciple. The anecdote, if
genuine, would have adorned our English histories.]
114 (return) [ The correspondence is mentioned only in the French
annals, and the Orientals are ignorant of the caliph’s friendship
for the Christian dog—a polite appellation, which Harun bestows
on the emperor of the Greeks.]
1141 (return) [ Had he the choice? M. Guizot has eloquently
described the position of Charlemagne towards the Saxons. Il y
fit face par le conquete; la guerre defensive prit la forme
offensive: il transporta la lutte sur le territoire des peuples
qui voulaient envahir le sien: il travailla a asservir les races
etrangeres, et extirper les croyances ennemies. De la son mode de
gouvernement et la fondation de son empire: la guerre offensive
et la conquete voulaient cette vaste et redoutable unite. Compare
observations in the Quarterly Review, vol. xlviii., and James’s
Life of Charlemagne.—M.]
115 (return) [ Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 361-365, 471-476, 492. I
have borrowed his judicious remarks on Charlemagne’s plan of
conquest, and the judicious distinction of his enemies of the
first and the second enceinte, (tom. ii. p. 184, 509, &c.)]
Had the pope and the Romans revived the primitive constitution,
the titles of emperor and Augustus were conferred on Charlemagne
for the term of his life; and his successors, on each vacancy,
must have ascended the throne by a formal or tacit election. But
the association of his son Lewis the Pious asserts the
independent right of monarchy and conquest, and the emperor seems
on this occasion to have foreseen and prevented the latent claims
of the clergy. The royal youth was commanded to take the crown
from the altar, and with his own hands to place it on his head,
as a gift which he held from God, his father, and the nation. 116
The same ceremony was repeated, though with less energy, in the
subsequent associations of Lothaire and Lewis the Second: the
Carlovingian sceptre was transmitted from father to son in a
lineal descent of four generations; and the ambition of the popes
was reduced to the empty honor of crowning and anointing these
hereditary princes, who were already invested with their power
and dominions. The pious Lewis survived his brothers, and
embraced the whole empire of Charlemagne; but the nations and the
nobles, his bishops and his children, quickly discerned that this
mighty mass was no longer inspired by the same soul; and the
foundations were undermined to the centre, while the external
surface was yet fair and entire. After a war, or battle, which
consumed one hundred thousand Franks, the empire was divided by
treaty between his three sons, who had violated every filial and
fraternal duty. The kingdoms of Germany and France were forever
separated; the provinces of Gaul, between the Rhone and the Alps,
the Meuse and the Rhine, were assigned, with Italy, to the
Imperial dignity of Lothaire. In the partition of his share,
Lorraine and Arles, two recent and transitory kingdoms, were
bestowed on the younger children; and Lewis the Second, his
eldest son, was content with the realm of Italy, the proper and
sufficient patrimony of a Roman emperor. On his death without any
male issue, the vacant throne was disputed by his uncles and
cousins, and the popes most dexterously seized the occasion of
judging the claims and merits of the candidates, and of bestowing
on the most obsequious, or most liberal, the Imperial office of
advocate of the Roman church. The dregs of the Carlovingian race
no longer exhibited any symptoms of virtue or power, and the
ridiculous epithets of the bard, the stammerer, the fat, and the
simple, distinguished the tame and uniform features of a crowd of
kings alike deserving of oblivion. By the failure of the
collateral branches, the whole inheritance devolved to Charles
the Fat, the last emperor of his family: his insanity authorized
the desertion of Germany, Italy, and France: he was deposed in a
diet, and solicited his daily bread from the rebels by whose
contempt his life and liberty had been spared. According to the
measure of their force, the governors, the bishops, and the
lords, usurped the fragments of the falling empire; and some
preference was shown to the female or illegitimate blood of
Charlemagne. Of the greater part, the title and possession were
alike doubtful, and the merit was adequate to the contracted
scale of their dominions. Those who could appear with an army at
the gates of Rome were crowned emperors in the Vatican; but their
modesty was more frequently satisfied with the appellation of
kings of Italy: and the whole term of seventy-four years may be
deemed a vacancy, from the abdication of Charles the Fat to the
establishment of Otho the First.
116 (return) [ Thegan, the biographer of Lewis, relates this
coronation: and Baronius has honestly transcribed it, (A.D. 813,
No. 13, &c. See Gaillard, tom. ii. p. 506, 507, 508,) howsoever
adverse to the claims of the popes. For the series of the
Carlovingians, see the historians of France, Italy, and Germany;
Pfeffel, Schmidt, Velly, Muratori, and even Voltaire, whose
pictures are sometimes just, and always pleasing.]
Otho 117 was of the noble race of the dukes of Saxony; and if he
truly descended from Witikind, the adversary and proselyte of
Charlemagne, the posterity of a vanquished people was exalted to
reign over their conquerors. His father, Henry the Fowler, was
elected, by the suffrage of the nation, to save and institute the
kingdom of Germany. Its limits 118 were enlarged on every side by
his son, the first and greatest of the Othos. A portion of Gaul,
to the west of the Rhine, along the banks of the Meuse and the
Moselle, was assigned to the Germans, by whose blood and language
it has been tinged since the time of Caesar and Tacitus.
Between the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Alps, the successors of
Otho acquired a vain supremacy over the broken kingdoms of
Burgundy and Arles. In the North, Christianity was propagated by
the sword of Otho, the conqueror and apostle of the Slavic
nations of the Elbe and Oder: the marches of Brandenburgh and
Sleswick were fortified with German colonies; and the king of
Denmark, the dukes of Poland and Bohemia, confessed themselves
his tributary vassals. At the head of a victorious army, he
passed the Alps, subdued the kingdom of Italy, delivered the
pope, and forever fixed the Imperial crown in the name and nation
of Germany. From that memorable aera, two maxims of public
jurisprudence were introduced by force and ratified by time. I.
That the prince, who was elected in the German diet, acquired,
from that instant, the subject kingdoms of Italy and Rome. II.
But that he might not legally assume the titles of emperor and
Augustus, till he had received the crown from the hands of the
Roman pontiff. 119
117 (return) [ He was the son of Otho, the son of Ludolph, in
whose favor the Duchy of Saxony had been instituted, A.D. 858.
Ruotgerus, the biographer of a St. Bruno, (Bibliot. Bunavianae
Catalog. tom. iii. vol. ii. p. 679,) gives a splendid character
of his family. Atavorum atavi usque ad hominum memoriam omnes
nobilissimi; nullus in eorum stirpe ignotus, nullus degener
facile reperitur, (apud Struvium, Corp. Hist. German. p. 216.)
Yet Gundling (in Henrico Aucupe) is not satisfied of his descent
from Witikind.]
118 (return) [ See the treatise of Conringius, (de Finibus
Imperii Germanici, Francofurt. 1680, in 4to.: ) he rejects the
extravagant and improper scale of the Roman and Carlovingian
empires, and discusses with moderation the rights of Germany, her
vassals, and her neighbors.]
119 (return) [ The power of custom forces me to number Conrad I.
and Henry I., the Fowler, in the list of emperors, a title which
was never assumed by those kings of Germany. The Italians,
Muratori for instance, are more scrupulous and correct, and only
reckon the princes who have been crowned at Rome.]
The Imperial dignity of Charlemagne was announced to the East by
the alteration of his style; and instead of saluting his fathers,
the Greek emperors, he presumed to adopt the more equal and
familiar appellation of brother. 120 Perhaps in his connection
with Irene he aspired to the name of husband: his embassy to
Constantinople spoke the language of peace and friendship, and
might conceal a treaty of marriage with that ambitious princess,
who had renounced the most sacred duties of a mother. The nature,
the duration, the probable consequences of such a union between
two distant and dissonant empires, it is impossible to
conjecture; but the unanimous silence of the Latins may teach us
to suspect, that the report was invented by the enemies of Irene,
to charge her with the guilt of betraying the church and state to
the strangers of the West. 121 The French ambassadors were the
spectators, and had nearly been the victims, of the conspiracy of
Nicephorus, and the national hatred. Constantinople was
exasperated by the treason and sacrilege of ancient Rome: a
proverb, “That the Franks were good friends and bad neighbors,”
was in every one’s mouth; but it was dangerous to provoke a
neighbor who might be tempted to reiterate, in the church of St.
Sophia, the ceremony of his Imperial coronation. After a tedious
journey of circuit and delay, the ambassadors of Nicephorus found
him in his camp, on the banks of the River Sala; and Charlemagne
affected to confound their vanity by displaying, in a Franconian
village, the pomp, or at least the pride, of the Byzantine
palace. 122 The Greeks were successively led through four halls
of audience: in the first they were ready to fall prostrate
before a splendid personage in a chair of state, till he informed
them that he was only a servant, the constable, or master of the
horse, of the emperor. The same mistake, and the same answer,
were repeated in the apartments of the count palatine, the
steward, and the chamberlain; and their impatience was gradually
heightened, till the doors of the presence-chamber were thrown
open, and they beheld the genuine monarch, on his throne,
enriched with the foreign luxury which he despised, and encircled
with the love and reverence of his victorious chiefs. A treaty of
peace and alliance was concluded between the two empires, and the
limits of the East and West were defined by the right of present
possession. But the Greeks 123 soon forgot this humiliating
equality, or remembered it only to hate the Barbarians by whom it
was extorted. During the short union of virtue and power, they
respectfully saluted the august Charlemagne, with the
acclamations of basileus, and emperor of the Romans. As soon as
these qualities were separated in the person of his pious son,
the Byzantine letters were inscribed, “To the king, or, as he
styles himself, the emperor of the Franks and Lombards.” When
both power and virtue were extinct, they despoiled Lewis the
Second of his hereditary title, and with the barbarous
appellation of rex or rega, degraded him among the crowd of Latin
princes. His reply 124 is expressive of his weakness: he proves,
with some learning, that, both in sacred and profane history, the
name of king is synonymous with the Greek word basileus: if, at
Constantinople, it were assumed in a more exclusive and imperial
sense, he claims from his ancestors, and from the popes, a just
participation of the honors of the Roman purple. The same
controversy was revived in the reign of the Othos; and their
ambassador describes, in lively colors, the insolence of the
Byzantine court. 125 The Greeks affected to despise the poverty
and ignorance of the Franks and Saxons; and in their last decline
refused to prostitute to the kings of Germany the title of Roman
emperors.
120 (return) [ Invidiam tamen suscepti nominis (C. P.
imperatoribus super hoc indignantibus) magna tulit patientia,
vicitque eorum contumaciam... mittendo ad eos crebras legationes,
et in epistolis fratres eos appellando. Eginhard, c. 28, p. 128.
Perhaps it was on their account that, like Augustus, he affected
some reluctance to receive the empire.]
121 (return) [ Theophanes speaks of the coronation and unction of
Charles (Chronograph. p. 399,) and of his treaty of marriage with
Irene, (p. 402,) which is unknown to the Latins. Gaillard relates
his transactions with the Greek empire, (tom. ii. p. 446-468.)]
122 (return) [ Gaillard very properly observes, that this pageant
was a farce suitable to children only; but that it was indeed
represented in the presence, and for the benefit, of children of
a larger growth.]
123 (return) [ Compare, in the original texts collected by Pagi,
(tom. iii. A.D. 812, No. 7, A.D. 824, No. 10, &c.,) the contrast
of Charlemagne and his son; to the former the ambassadors of
Michael (who were indeed disavowed) more suo, id est lingua
Graeca laudes dixerunt, imperatorem eum et appellantes; to the
latter, Vocato imperatori Francorum, &c.]
124 (return) [ See the epistle, in Paralipomena, of the anonymous
writer of Salerno, (Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars ii. p. 243-254,
c. 93-107,) whom Baronius (A.D. 871, No. 51-71) mistook for
Erchempert, when he transcribed it in his Annals.]
125 (return) [ Ipse enim vos, non imperatorem, id est sua lingua,
sed ob indignationem, id est regem nostra vocabat, Liutprand, in
Legat. in Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 479. The pope had
exhorted Nicephorus, emperor of the Greeks, to make peace with
Otho, the august emperor of the Romans—quae inscriptio secundum
Graecos peccatoria et temeraria... imperatorem inquiunt,
universalem, Romanorum, Augustum, magnum, solum, Nicephorum, (p.
486.)]
These emperors, in the election of the popes, continued to
exercise the powers which had been assumed by the Gothic and
Grecian princes; and the importance of this prerogative increased
with the temporal estate and spiritual jurisdiction of the Roman
church. In the Christian aristocracy, the principal members of
the clergy still formed a senate to assist the administration,
and to supply the vacancy, of the bishop. Rome was divided into
twenty-eight parishes, and each parish was governed by a cardinal
priest, or presbyter, a title which, however common or modest in
its origin, has aspired to emulate the purple of kings. Their
number was enlarged by the association of the seven deacons of
the most considerable hospitals, the seven palatine judges of the
Lateran, and some dignitaries of the church. This ecclesiastical
senate was directed by the seven cardinal-bishops of the Roman
province, who were less occupied in the suburb dioceses of Ostia,
Porto, Velitrae, Tusculum, Praeneste, Tibur, and the Sabines,
than by their weekly service in the Lateran, and their superior
share in the honors and authority of the apostolic see. On the
death of the pope, these bishops recommended a successor to the
suffrage of the college of cardinals, 126 and their choice was
ratified or rejected by the applause or clamor of the Roman
people. But the election was imperfect; nor could the pontiff be
legally consecrated till the emperor, the advocate of the church,
had graciously signified his approbation and consent. The royal
commissioner examined, on the spot, the form and freedom of the
proceedings; nor was it till after a previous scrutiny into the
qualifications of the candidates, that he accepted an oath of
fidelity, and confirmed the donations which had successively
enriched the patrimony of St. Peter. In the frequent schisms, the
rival claims were submitted to the sentence of the emperor; and
in a synod of bishops he presumed to judge, to condemn, and to
punish, the crimes of a guilty pontiff. Otho the First imposed a
treaty on the senate and people, who engaged to prefer the
candidate most acceptable to his majesty: 127 his successors
anticipated or prevented their choice: they bestowed the Roman
benefice, like the bishoprics of Cologne or Bamberg, on their
chancellors or preceptors; and whatever might be the merit of a
Frank or Saxon, his name sufficiently attests the interposition
of foreign power. These acts of prerogative were most speciously
excused by the vices of a popular election. The competitor who
had been excluded by the cardinals appealed to the passions or
avarice of the multitude; the Vatican and the Lateran were
stained with blood; and the most powerful senators, the marquises
of Tuscany and the counts of Tusculum, held the apostolic see in
a long and disgraceful servitude. The Roman pontiffs, of the
ninth and tenth centuries, were insulted, imprisoned, and
murdered, by their tyrants; and such was their indigence, after
the loss and usurpation of the ecclesiastical patrimonies, that
they could neither support the state of a prince, nor exercise
the charity of a priest. 128 The influence of two sister
prostitutes, Marozia and Theodora, was founded on their wealth
and beauty, their political and amorous intrigues: the most
strenuous of their lovers were rewarded with the Roman mitre, and
their reign 129 may have suggested to the darker ages 130 the
fable 131 of a female pope. 132 The bastard son, the grandson,
and the great-grandson of Marozia, a rare genealogy, were seated
in the chair of St. Peter, and it was at the age of nineteen
years that the second of these became the head of the Latin
church. 1321 His youth and manhood were of a suitable complexion;
and the nations of pilgrims could bear testimony to the charges
that were urged against him in a Roman synod, and in the presence
of Otho the Great. As John XII. had renounced the dress and
decencies of his profession, the soldier may not perhaps be
dishonored by the wine which he drank, the blood that he spilt,
the flames that he kindled, or the licentious pursuits of gaming
and hunting. His open simony might be the consequence of
distress; and his blasphemous invocation of Jupiter and Venus, if
it be true, could not possibly be serious. But we read, with some
surprise, that the worthy grandson of Marozia lived in public
adultery with the matrons of Rome; that the Lateran palace was
turned into a school for prostitution, and that his rapes of
virgins and widows had deterred the female pilgrims from visiting
the tomb of St. Peter, lest, in the devout act, they should be
violated by his successor. 133 The Protestants have dwelt with
malicious pleasure on these characters of Antichrist; but to a
philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous
than their virtues. After a long series of scandal, the apostolic
see was reformed and exalted by the austerity and zeal of Gregory
VII. That ambitious monk devoted his life to the execution of two
projects. I. To fix in the college of cardinals the freedom and
independence of election, and forever to abolish the right or
usurpation of the emperors and the Roman people. II. To bestow
and resume the Western empire as a fief or benefice 134 of the
church, and to extend his temporal dominion over the kings and
kingdoms of the earth. After a contest of fifty years, the first
of these designs was accomplished by the firm support of the
ecclesiastical order, whose liberty was connected with that of
their chief. But the second attempt, though it was crowned with
some partial and apparent success, has been vigorously resisted
by the secular power, and finally extinguished by the improvement
of human reason.
126 (return) [ The origin and progress of the title of cardinal
may be found in Themassin, (Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. i. p.
1261-1298,) Muratori, (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. vi.
Dissert. lxi. p. 159-182,) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. Eccles.
p. 345-347,) who accurately remarks the form and changes of the
election. The cardinal-bishops so highly exalted by Peter
Damianus, are sunk to a level with the rest of the sacred
college.]
127 (return) [ Firmiter jurantes, nunquam se papam electuros aut
audinaturos, praeter consensum et electionem Othonis et filii
sui. (Liutprand, l. vi. c. 6, p. 472.) This important concession
may either supply or confirm the decree of the clergy and people
of Rome, so fiercely rejected by Baronius, Pagi, and Muratori,
(A.D. 964,) and so well defended and explained by St. Marc,
(Abrege, tom. ii. p. 808-816, tom. iv. p. 1167-1185.) Consult the
historical critic, and the Annals of Muratori, for for the
election and confirmation of each pope.]
128 (return) [ The oppression and vices of the Roman church, in
the xth century, are strongly painted in the history and legation
of Liutprand, (see p. 440, 450, 471-476, 479, &c.;) and it is
whimsical enough to observe Muratori tempering the invectives of
Baronius against the popes. But these popes had been chosen, not
by the cardinals, but by lay-patrons.]
129 (return) [ The time of Pope Joan (papissa Joanna) is placed
somewhat earlier than Theodora or Marozia; and the two years of
her imaginary reign are forcibly inserted between Leo IV. and
Benedict III. But the contemporary Anastasius indissolubly links
the death of Leo and the elevation of Benedict, (illico, mox, p.
247;) and the accurate chronology of Pagi, Muratori, and
Leibnitz, fixes both events to the year 857.]
130 (return) [ The advocates for Pope Joan produce one hundred
and fifty witnesses, or rather echoes, of the xivth, xvth, and
xvith centuries. They bear testimony against themselves and the
legend, by multiplying the proof that so curious a story must
have been repeated by writers of every description to whom it was
known. On those of the ixth and xth centuries, the recent event
would have flashed with a double force. Would Photius have spared
such a reproach? Could Liutprand have missed such scandal? It is
scarcely worth while to discuss the various readings of Martinus
Polonus, Sigeber of Gamblours, or even Marianus Scotus; but a
most palpable forgery is the passage of Pope Joan, which has been
foisted into some Mss. and editions of the Roman Anastasius.]
131 (return) [ As false, it deserves that name; but I would not
pronounce it incredible. Suppose a famous French chevalier of our
own times to have been born in Italy, and educated in the church,
instead of the army: her merit or fortune might have raised her
to St. Peter’s chair; her amours would have been natural: her
delivery in the streets unlucky, but not improbable.]
132 (return) [ Till the reformation the tale was repeated and
believed without offence: and Joan’s female statue long occupied
her place among the popes in the cathedral of Sienna, (Pagi,
Critica, tom. iii. p. 624-626.) She has been annihilated by two
learned Protestants, Blondel and Bayle, (Dictionnaire Critique,
Papesse, Polonus, Blondel;) but their brethren were scandalized
by this equitable and generous criticism. Spanheim and Lenfant
attempt to save this poor engine of controversy, and even Mosheim
condescends to cherish some doubt and suspicion, (p. 289.)]
1321 (return) [ John XI. was the son of her husband Alberic, not
of her lover, Pope Sergius III., as Muratori has distinctly
proved, Ann. ad ann. 911, tom. p. 268. Her grandson Octavian,
otherwise called John XII., was pope; but a great-grandson cannot
be discovered in any of the succeeding popes; nor does our
historian himself, in his subsequent narration, (p. 202,) seem to
know of one. Hobhouse, Illustrations of Childe Harold, p.
309.—M.]
133 (return) [ Lateranense palatium... prostibulum meretricum ...
Testis omnium gentium, praeterquam Romanorum, absentia mulierum,
quae sanctorum apostolorum limina orandi gratia timent visere,
cum nonnullas ante dies paucos, hunc audierint conjugatas,
viduas, virgines vi oppressisse, (Liutprand, Hist. l. vi. c. 6,
p. 471. See the whole affair of John XII., p. 471-476.)]
134 (return) [ A new example of the mischief of equivocation is
the beneficium (Ducange, tom. i. p. 617, &c.,) which the pope
conferred on the emperor Frederic I., since the Latin word may
signify either a legal fief, or a simple favor, an obligation,
(we want the word bienfait.) (See Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands,
tom. iii. p. 393-408. Pfeffel, Abrege Chronologique, tom. i. p.
229, 296, 317, 324, 420, 430, 500, 505, 509, &c.)]
In the revival of the empire of empire of Rome, neither the
bishop nor the people could bestow on Charlemagne or Otho the
provinces which were lost, as they had been won, by the chance of
arms. But the Romans were free to choose a master for themselves;
and the powers which had been delegated to the patrician, were
irrevocably granted to the French and Saxon emperors of the West.
The broken records of the times 135 preserve some remembrance of
their palace, their mint, their tribunal, their edicts, and the
sword of justice, which, as late as the thirteenth century, was
derived from Caesar to the praefect of the city. 136 Between the
arts of the popes and the violence of the people, this supremacy
was crushed and annihilated. Content with the titles of emperor
and Augustus, the successors of Charlemagne neglected to assert
this local jurisdiction. In the hour of prosperity, their
ambition was diverted by more alluring objects; and in the decay
and division of the empire, they were oppressed by the defence of
their hereditary provinces. Amidst the ruins of Italy, the famous
Marozia invited one of the usurpers to assume the character of
her third husband; and Hugh, king of Burgundy was introduced by
her faction into the mole of Hadrian or Castle of St. Angelo,
which commands the principal bridge and entrance of Rome. Her son
by the first marriage, Alberic, was compelled to attend at the
nuptial banquet; but his reluctant and ungraceful service was
chastised with a blow by his new father. The blow was productive
of a revolution. “Romans,” exclaimed the youth, “once you were
the masters of the world, and these Burgundians the most abject
of your slaves. They now reign, these voracious and brutal
savages, and my injury is the commencement of your servitude.”
137 The alarum bell rang to arms in every quarter of the city:
the Burgundians retreated with haste and shame; Marozia was
imprisoned by her victorious son, and his brother, Pope John XI.,
was reduced to the exercise of his spiritual functions. With the
title of prince, Alberic possessed above twenty years the
government of Rome; and he is said to have gratified the popular
prejudice, by restoring the office, or at least the title, of
consuls and tribunes. His son and heir Octavian assumed, with the
pontificate, the name of John XII.: like his predecessor, he was
provoked by the Lombard princes to seek a deliverer for the
church and republic; and the services of Otho were rewarded with
the Imperial dignity. But the Saxon was imperious, the Romans
were impatient, the festival of the coronation was disturbed by
the secret conflict of prerogative and freedom, and Otho
commanded his sword-bearer not to stir from his person, lest he
should be assaulted and murdered at the foot of the altar. 138
Before he repassed the Alps, the emperor chastised the revolt of
the people and the ingratitude of John XII. The pope was degraded
in a synod; the praefect was mounted on an ass, whipped through
the city, and cast into a dungeon; thirteen of the most guilty
were hanged, others were mutilated or banished; and this severe
process was justified by the ancient laws of Theodosius and
Justinian. The voice of fame has accused the second Otho of a
perfidious and bloody act, the massacre of the senators, whom he
had invited to his table under the fair semblance of hospitality
and friendship. 139 In the minority of his son Otho the Third,
Rome made a bold attempt to shake off the Saxon yoke, and the
consul Crescentius was the Brutus of the republic. From the
condition of a subject and an exile, he twice rose to the command
of the city, oppressed, expelled, and created the popes, and
formed a conspiracy for restoring the authority of the Greek
emperors. 1391 In the fortress of St. Angelo, he maintained an
obstinate siege, till the unfortunate consul was betrayed by a
promise of safety: his body was suspended on a gibbet, and his
head was exposed on the battlements of the castle. By a reverse
of fortune, Otho, after separating his troops, was besieged three
days, without food, in his palace; and a disgraceful escape saved
him from the justice or fury of the Romans. The senator Ptolemy
was the leader of the people, and the widow of Crescentius
enjoyed the pleasure or the fame of revenging her husband, by a
poison which she administered to her Imperial lover. It was the
design of Otho the Third to abandon the ruder countries of the
North, to erect his throne in Italy, and to revive the
institutions of the Roman monarchy. But his successors only once
in their lives appeared on the banks of the Tyber, to receive
their crown in the Vatican. 140 Their absence was contemptible,
their presence odious and formidable. They descended from the
Alps, at the head of their barbarians, who were strangers and
enemies to the country; and their transient visit was a scene of
tumult and bloodshed. 141 A faint remembrance of their ancestors
still tormented the Romans; and they beheld with pious
indignation the succession of Saxons, Franks, Swabians, and
Bohemians, who usurped the purple and prerogatives of the
Caesars.
135 (return) [ For the history of the emperors in Rome and Italy,
see Sigonius, de Regno Italiae, Opp. tom. ii., with the Notes of
Saxius, and the Annals of Muratori, who might refer more
distinctly to the authors of his great collection.]
136 (return) [ See the Dissertations of Le Blanc at the end of
his treatise des Monnoyes de France, in which he produces some
Roman coins of the French emperors.]
137 (return) [ Romanorum aliquando servi, scilicet Burgundiones,
Romanis imperent?.... Romanae urbis dignitas ad tantam est
stultitiam ducta, ut meretricum etiam imperio pareat? (Liutprand,
l. iii. c. 12, p. 450.) Sigonius (l. vi. p. 400) positively
affirms the renovation of the consulship; but in the old writers
Albericus is more frequently styled princeps Romanorum.]
138 (return) [ Ditmar, p. 354, apud Schmidt, tom. iii. p. 439.]
139 (return) [ This bloody feast is described in Leonine verse in
the Pantheon of Godfrey of Viterbo, (Script. Ital. tom. vii. p.
436, 437,) who flourished towards the end of the xiith century,
(Fabricius Bibliot. Latin. Med. et Infimi Aevi, tom. iii. p. 69,
edit. Mansi;) but his evidence, which imposed on Sigonius, is
reasonably suspected by Muratori (Annali, tom. viii. p. 177.)]
1391 (return) [ The Marquis Maffei’s gallery contained a medal
with Imp. Caes August. P. P. Crescentius. Hence Hobhouse infers
that he affected the empire. Hobhouse, Illustrations of Childe
Harold, p. 252.—M.]
140 (return) [ The coronation of the emperor, and some original
ceremonies of the xth century are preserved in the Panegyric on
Berengarius, (Script. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 405-414,)
illustrated by the Notes of Hadrian Valesius and Leibnitz.
Sigonius has related the whole process of the Roman expedition,
in good Latin, but with some errors of time and fact, (l. vii. p.
441-446.)]
141 (return) [ In a quarrel at the coronation of Conrad II.
Muratori takes leave to observe—doveano ben essere allora,
indisciplinati, Barbari, e bestials Tedeschi. Annal. tom. viii.
p. 368.]
Chapter XLIX: Conquest Of Italy By The Franks.—Part VI.
There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than
to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in
opposition to their inclination and interest. A torrent of
Barbarians may pass over the earth, but an extensive empire must
be supported by a refined system of policy and oppression; in the
centre, an absolute power, prompt in action and rich in
resources; a swift and easy communication with the extreme parts;
fortifications to check the first effort of rebellion; a regular
administration to protect and punish; and a well-disciplined army
to inspire fear, without provoking discontent and despair. Far
different was the situation of the German Caesars, who were
ambitious to enslave the kingdom of Italy. Their patrimonial
estates were stretched along the Rhine, or scattered in the
provinces; but this ample domain was alienated by the imprudence
or distress of successive princes; and their revenue, from minute
and vexatious prerogative, was scarcely sufficient for the
maintenance of their household. Their troops were formed by the
legal or voluntary service of their feudal vassals, who passed
the Alps with reluctance, assumed the license of rapine and
disorder, and capriciously deserted before the end of the
campaign. Whole armies were swept away by the pestilential
influence of the climate: the survivors brought back the bones of
their princes and nobles, 142 and the effects of their own
intemperance were often imputed to the treachery and malice of
the Italians, who rejoiced at least in the calamities of the
Barbarians. This irregular tyranny might contend on equal terms
with the petty tyrants of Italy; nor can the people, or the
reader, be much interested in the event of the quarrel. But in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Lombards rekindled the
flame of industry and freedom; and the generous example was at
length imitated by the republics of Tuscany. 1421 In the Italian
cities a municipal government had never been totally abolished;
and their first privileges were granted by the favor and policy
of the emperors, who were desirous of erecting a plebeian barrier
against the independence of the nobles. But their rapid progress,
the daily extension of their power and pretensions, were founded
on the numbers and spirit of these rising communities. 143 Each
city filled the measure of her diocese or district: the
jurisdiction of the counts and bishops, of the marquises and
counts, was banished from the land; and the proudest nobles were
persuaded or compelled to desert their solitary castles, and to
embrace the more honorable character of freemen and magistrates.
The legislative authority was inherent in the general assembly;
but the executive powers were intrusted to three consuls,
annually chosen from the three orders of captains, valvassors,
144 and commons, into which the republic was divided. Under the
protection of equal law, the labors of agriculture and commerce
were gradually revived; but the martial spirit of the Lombards
was nourished by the presence of danger; and as often as the bell
was rung, or the standard 145 erected, the gates of the city
poured forth a numerous and intrepid band, whose zeal in their
own cause was soon guided by the use and discipline of arms. At
the foot of these popular ramparts, the pride of the Caesars was
overthrown; and the invincible genius of liberty prevailed over
the two Frederics, the greatest princes of the middle age; the
first, superior perhaps in military prowess; the second, who
undoubtedly excelled in the softer accomplishments of peace and
learning.
142 (return) [ After boiling away the flesh. The caldrons for
that purpose were a necessary piece of travelling furniture; and
a German who was using it for his brother, promised it to a
friend, after it should have been employed for himself, (Schmidt,
tom. iii. p. 423, 424.) The same author observes that the whole
Saxon line was extinguished in Italy, (tom. ii. p. 440.)]
1421 (return) [ Compare Sismondi, Histoire des Republiques
Italiannes. Hallam Middle Ages. Raumer, Geschichte der
Hohenstauffen. Savigny, Geschichte des Romischen Rechts, vol.
iii. p. 19 with the authors quoted.—M.]
143 (return) [ Otho, bishop of Frisingen, has left an important
passage on the Italian cities, (l. ii. c. 13, in Script. Ital.
tom. vi. p. 707-710: ) and the rise, progress, and government of
these republics are perfectly illustrated by Muratori,
(Antiquitat. Ital. Medii Aevi, tom. iv. dissert xlv.—lii. p.
1-675. Annal. tom. viii. ix. x.)]
144 (return) [ For these titles, see Selden, (Titles of Honor,
vol. iii. part 1 p. 488.) Ducange, (Gloss. Latin. tom. ii. p.
140, tom. vi. p. 776,) and St. Marc, (Abrege Chronologique, tom.
ii. p. 719.)]
145 (return) [ The Lombards invented and used the carocium, a
standard planted on a car or wagon, drawn by a team of oxen,
(Ducange, tom. ii. p. 194, 195. Muratori Antiquitat tom. ii. dis.
xxvi. p. 489-493.)]
Ambitious of restoring the splendor of the purple, Frederic the
First invaded the republics of Lombardy, with the arts of a
statesman, the valor of a soldier, and the cruelty of a tyrant.
The recent discovery of the Pandects had renewed a science most
favorable to despotism; and his venal advocates proclaimed the
emperor the absolute master of the lives and properties of his
subjects. His royal prerogatives, in a less odious sense, were
acknowledged in the diet of Roncaglia; and the revenue of Italy
was fixed at thirty thousand pounds of silver, 146 which were
multiplied to an indefinite demand by the rapine of the fiscal
officers. The obstinate cities were reduced by the terror or the
force of his arms: his captives were delivered to the
executioner, or shot from his military engines; and. after the
siege and surrender of Milan, the buildings of that stately
capital were razed to the ground, three hundred hostages were
sent into Germany, and the inhabitants were dispersed in four
villages, under the yoke of the inflexible conqueror. 147 But
Milan soon rose from her ashes; and the league of Lombardy was
cemented by distress: their cause was espoused by Venice, Pope
Alexander the Third, and the Greek emperor: the fabric of
oppression was overturned in a day; and in the treaty of
Constance, Frederic subscribed, with some reservations, the
freedom of four-and-twenty cities. His grandson contended with
their vigor and maturity; but Frederic the Second 148 was endowed
with some personal and peculiar advantages. His birth and
education recommended him to the Italians; and in the implacable
discord of the two factions, the Ghibelins were attached to the
emperor, while the Guelfs displayed the banner of liberty and the
church. The court of Rome had slumbered, when his father Henry
the Sixth was permitted to unite with the empire the kingdoms of
Naples and Sicily; and from these hereditary realms the son
derived an ample and ready supply of troops and treasure. Yet
Frederic the Second was finally oppressed by the arms of the
Lombards and the thunders of the Vatican: his kingdom was given
to a stranger, and the last of his family was beheaded at Naples
on a public scaffold. During sixty years, no emperor appeared in
Italy, and the name was remembered only by the ignominious sale
of the last relics of sovereignty.
146 (return) [ Gunther Ligurinus, l. viii. 584, et seq., apud
Schmidt, tom. iii. p. 399.]
147 (return) [ Solus imperator faciem suam firmavit ut petram,
(Burcard. de Excidio Mediolani, Script. Ital. tom. vi. p. 917.)
This volume of Muratori contains the originals of the history of
Frederic the First, which must be compared with due regard to the
circumstances and prejudices of each German or Lombard writer. *
Note: Von Raumer has traced the fortunes of the Swabian house in
one of the ablest historical works of modern times. He may be
compared with the spirited and independent Sismondi.—M.]
148 (return) [ For the history of Frederic II. and the house of
Swabia at Naples, see Giannone, Istoria Civile, tom. ii. l. xiv.
-xix.]
The Barbarian conquerors of the West were pleased to decorate
their chief with the title of emperor; but it was not their
design to invest him with the despotism of Constantine and
Justinian. The persons of the Germans were free, their conquests
were their own, and their national character was animated by a
spirit which scorned the servile jurisprudence of the new or the
ancient Rome. It would have been a vain and dangerous attempt to
impose a monarch on the armed freemen, who were impatient of a
magistrate; on the bold, who refused to obey; on the powerful,
who aspired to command. The empire of Charlemagne and Otho was
distributed among the dukes of the nations or provinces, the
counts of the smaller districts, and the margraves of the marches
or frontiers, who all united the civil and military authority as
it had been delegated to the lieutenants of the first Caesars.
The Roman governors, who, for the most part, were soldiers of
fortune, seduced their mercenary legions, assumed the Imperial
purple, and either failed or succeeded in their revolt, without
wounding the power and unity of government. If the dukes,
margraves, and counts of Germany, were less audacious in their
claims, the consequences of their success were more lasting and
pernicious to the state. Instead of aiming at the supreme rank,
they silently labored to establish and appropriate their
provincial independence. Their ambition was seconded by the
weight of their estates and vassals, their mutual example and
support, the common interest of the subordinate nobility, the
change of princes and families, the minorities of Otho the Third
and Henry the Fourth, the ambition of the popes, and the vain
pursuit of the fugitive crowns of Italy and Rome. All the
attributes of regal and territorial jurisdiction were gradually
usurped by the commanders of the provinces; the right of peace
and war, of life and death, of coinage and taxation, of foreign
alliance and domestic economy. Whatever had been seized by
violence, was ratified by favor or distress, was granted as the
price of a doubtful vote or a voluntary service; whatever had
been granted to one could not, without injury, be denied to his
successor or equal; and every act of local or temporary
possession was insensibly moulded into the constitution of the
Germanic kingdom. In every province, the visible presence of the
duke or count was interposed between the throne and the nobles;
the subjects of the law became the vassals of a private chief;
and the standard which he received from his sovereign, was often
raised against him in the field. The temporal power of the clergy
was cherished and exalted by the superstition or policy of the
Carlovingian and Saxon dynasties, who blindly depended on their
moderation and fidelity; and the bishoprics of Germany were made
equal in extent and privilege, superior in wealth and population,
to the most ample states of the military order. As long as the
emperors retained the prerogative of bestowing on every vacancy
these ecclesiastic and secular benefices, their cause was
maintained by the gratitude or ambition of their friends and
favorites. But in the quarrel of the investitures, they were
deprived of their influence over the episcopal chapters; the
freedom of election was restored, and the sovereign was reduced,
by a solemn mockery, to his first prayers, the recommendation,
once in his reign, to a single prebend in each church. The
secular governors, instead of being recalled at the will of a
superior, could be degraded only by the sentence of their peers.
In the first age of the monarchy, the appointment of the son to
the duchy or county of his father, was solicited as a favor; it
was gradually obtained as a custom, and extorted as a right: the
lineal succession was often extended to the collateral or female
branches; the states of the empire (their popular, and at length
their legal, appellation) were divided and alienated by testament
and sale; and all idea of a public trust was lost in that of a
private and perpetual inheritance. The emperor could not even be
enriched by the casualties of forfeiture and extinction: within
the term of a year, he was obliged to dispose of the vacant fief;
and, in the choice of the candidate, it was his duty to consult
either the general or the provincial diet.
After the death of Frederic the Second, Germany was left a
monster with a hundred heads. A crowd of princes and prelates
disputed the ruins of the empire: the lords of innumerable
castles were less prone to obey, than to imitate, their
superiors; and, according to the measure of their strength, their
incessant hostilities received the names of conquest or robbery.
Such anarchy was the inevitable consequence of the laws and
manners of Europe; and the kingdoms of France and Italy were
shivered into fragments by the violence of the same tempest. But
the Italian cities and the French vassals were divided and
destroyed, while the union of the Germans has produced, under the
name of an empire, a great system of a federative republic. In
the frequent and at last the perpetual institution of diets, a
national spirit was kept alive, and the powers of a common
legislature are still exercised by the three branches or colleges
of the electors, the princes, and the free and Imperial cities of
Germany. I. Seven of the most powerful feudatories were permitted
to assume, with a distinguished name and rank, the exclusive
privilege of choosing the Roman emperor; and these electors were
the king of Bohemia, the duke of Saxony, the margrave of
Brandenburgh, the count palatine of the Rhine, and the three
archbishops of Mentz, of Treves, and of Cologne. II. The college
of princes and prelates purged themselves of a promiscuous
multitude: they reduced to four representative votes the long
series of independent counts, and excluded the nobles or
equestrian order, sixty thousand of whom, as in the Polish diets,
had appeared on horseback in the field of election. III. The
pride of birth and dominion, of the sword and the mitre, wisely
adopted the commons as the third branch of the legislature, and,
in the progress of society, they were introduced about the same
aera into the national assemblies of France England, and Germany.
The Hanseatic League commanded the trade and navigation of the
north: the confederates of the Rhine secured the peace and
intercourse of the inland country; the influence of the cities
has been adequate to their wealth and policy, and their negative
still invalidates the acts of the two superior colleges of
electors and princes. 149
149 (return) [ In the immense labyrinth of the jus publicum of
Germany, I must either quote one writer or a thousand; and I had
rather trust to one faithful guide, than transcribe, on credit, a
multitude of names and passages. That guide is M. Pfeffel, the
author of the best legal and constitutional history that I know
of any country, (Nouvel Abrege Chronologique de l’Histoire et du
Droit public Allemagne; Paris, 1776, 2 vols. in 4to.) His
learning and judgment have discerned the most interesting facts;
his simple brevity comprises them in a narrow space. His
chronological order distributes them under the proper dates; and
an elaborate index collects them under their respective heads. To
this work, in a less perfect state, Dr. Robertson was gratefully
indebted for that masterly sketch which traces even the modern
changes of the Germanic body. The Corpus Historiae Germanicae of
Struvius has been likewise consulted, the more usefully, as that
huge compilation is fortified in every page with the original
texts. * Note: For the rise and progress of the Hanseatic League,
consult the authoritative history by Sartorius; Geschichte des
Hanseatischen Bandes & Theile, Gottingen, 1802. New and improved
edition by Lappenberg Elamburg, 1830. The original Hanseatic
League comprehended Cologne and many of the great cities in the
Netherlands and on the Rhine.—M.]
It is in the fourteenth century that we may view in the strongest
light the state and contrast of the Roman empire of Germany,
which no longer held, except on the borders of the Rhine and
Danube, a single province of Trajan or Constantine. Their
unworthy successors were the counts of Hapsburgh, of Nassau, of
Luxemburgh, and Schwartzenburgh: the emperor Henry the Seventh
procured for his son the crown of Bohemia, and his grandson
Charles the Fourth was born among a people strange and barbarous
in the estimation of the Germans themselves. 150 After the
excommunication of Lewis of Bavaria, he received the gift or
promise of the vacant empire from the Roman pontiffs, who, in the
exile and captivity of Avignon, affected the dominion of the
earth. The death of his competitors united the electoral college,
and Charles was unanimously saluted king of the Romans, and
future emperor; a title which, in the same age, was prostituted
to the Caesars of Germany and Greece. The German emperor was no
more than the elective and impotent magistrate of an aristocracy
of princes, who had not left him a village that he might call his
own. His best prerogative was the right of presiding and
proposing in the national senate, which was convened at his
summons; and his native kingdom of Bohemia, less opulent than the
adjacent city of Nuremberg, was the firmest seat of his power and
the richest source of his revenue. The army with which he passed
the Alps consisted of three hundred horse. In the cathedral of
St. Ambrose, Charles was crowned with the iron crown, which
tradition ascribed to the Lombard monarchy; but he was admitted
only with a peaceful train; the gates of the city were shut upon
him; and the king of Italy was held a captive by the arms of the
Visconti, whom he confirmed in the sovereignty of Milan. In the
Vatican he was again crowned with the golden crown of the empire;
but, in obedience to a secret treaty, the Roman emperor
immediately withdrew, without reposing a single night within the
walls of Rome. The eloquent Petrarch, 151 whose fancy revived the
visionary glories of the Capitol, deplores and upbraids the
ignominious flight of the Bohemian; and even his contemporaries
could observe, that the sole exercise of his authority was in the
lucrative sale of privileges and titles. The gold of Italy
secured the election of his son; but such was the shameful
poverty of the Roman emperor, that his person was arrested by a
butcher in the streets of Worms, and was detained in the public
inn, as a pledge or hostage for the payment of his expenses.
150 (return) [ Yet, personally, Charles IV. must not be
considered as a Barbarian. After his education at Paris, he
recovered the use of the Bohemian, his native, idiom; and the
emperor conversed and wrote with equal facility in French, Latin,
Italian, and German, (Struvius, p. 615, 616.) Petrarch always
represents him as a polite and learned prince.]
151 (return) [ Besides the German and Italian historians, the
expedition of Charles IV. is painted in lively and original
colors in the curious Memoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii.
p. 376-430, by the Abbe de Sade, whose prolixity has never been
blamed by any reader of taste and curiosity.]
From this humiliating scene, let us turn to the apparent majesty
of the same Charles in the diets of the empire. The golden bull,
which fixes the Germanic constitution, is promulgated in the
style of a sovereign and legislator. A hundred princes bowed
before his throne, and exalted their own dignity by the voluntary
honors which they yielded to their chief or minister. At the
royal banquet, the hereditary great officers, the seven electors,
who in rank and title were equal to kings, performed their solemn
and domestic service of the palace. The seals of the triple
kingdom were borne in state by the archbishops of Mentz, Cologne,
and Treves, the perpetual arch-chancellors of Germany, Italy, and
Arles. The great marshal, on horseback, exercised his function
with a silver measure of oats, which he emptied on the ground,
and immediately dismounted to regulate the order of the guests.
The great steward, the count palatine of the Rhine, place the
dishes on the table. The great chamberlain, the margrave of
Brandenburgh, presented, after the repast, the golden ewer and
basin, to wash. The king of Bohemia, as great cup-bearer, was
represented by the emperor’s brother, the duke of Luxemburgh and
Brabant; and the procession was closed by the great huntsmen, who
introduced a boar and a stag, with a loud chorus of horns and
hounds. 152 Nor was the supremacy of the emperor confined to
Germany alone: the hereditary monarchs of Europe confessed the
preeminence of his rank and dignity: he was the first of the
Christian princes, the temporal head of the great republic of the
West: 153 to his person the title of majesty was long
appropriated; and he disputed with the pope the sublime
prerogative of creating kings and assembling councils. The oracle
of the civil law, the learned Bartolus, was a pensioner of
Charles the Fourth; and his school resounded with the doctrine,
that the Roman emperor was the rightful sovereign of the earth,
from the rising to the setting sun. The contrary opinion was
condemned, not as an error, but as a heresy, since even the
gospel had pronounced, “And there went forth a decree from Caesar
Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” 154
152 (return) [ See the whole ceremony in Struvius, p. 629]
153 (return) [ The republic of Europe, with the pope and emperor
at its head, was never represented with more dignity than in the
council of Constance. See Lenfant’s History of that assembly.]
154 (return) [ Gravina, Origines Juris Civilis, p. 108.]
If we annihilate the interval of time and space between Augustus
and Charles, strong and striking will be the contrast between the
two Caesars; the Bohemian who concealed his weakness under the
mask of ostentation, and the Roman, who disguised his strength
under the semblance of modesty. At the head of his victorious
legions, in his reign over the sea and land, from the Nile and
Euphrates to the Atlantic Ocean, Augustus professed himself the
servant of the state and the equal of his fellow-citizens. The
conqueror of Rome and her provinces assumed a popular and legal
form of a censor, a consul, and a tribune. His will was the law
of mankind, but in the declaration of his laws he borrowed the
voice of the senate and people; and from their decrees their
master accepted and renewed his temporary commission to
administer the republic. In his dress, his domestics, 155 his
titles, in all the offices of social life, Augustus maintained
the character of a private Roman; and his most artful flatterers
respected the secret of his absolute and perpetual monarchy.
155 (return) [ Six thousand urns have been discovered of the
slaves and freedmen of Augustus and Livia. So minute was the
division of office, that one slave was appointed to weigh the
wool which was spun by the empress’s maids, another for the care
of her lap-dog, &c., (Camera Sepolchrale, by Bianchini. Extract
of his work in the Bibliotheque Italique, tom. iv. p. 175. His
Eloge, by Fontenelle, tom. vi. p. 356.) But these servants were
of the same rank, and possibly not more numerous than those of
Pollio or Lentulus. They only prove the general riches of the
city.]
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part I.
Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Birth, Character, And
Doctrine Of Mahomet.—He Preaches At Mecca.— Flies To
Medina.—Propagates His Religion By The Sword.— Voluntary Or
Reluctant Submission Of The Arabs.—His Death And Successors.—The
Claims And Fortunes Of Ali And His Descendants.
After pursuing above six hundred years the fleeting Caesars of
Constantinople and Germany, I now descend, in the reign of
Heraclius, on the eastern borders of the Greek monarchy. While
the state was exhausted by the Persian war, and the church was
distracted by the Nestorian and Monophysite sects, Mahomet, with
the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, erected his
throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome. The genius of
the Arabian prophet, the manners of his nation, and the spirit of
his religion, involve the causes of the decline and fall of the
Eastern empire; and our eyes are curiously intent on one of the
most memorable revolutions, which have impressed a new and
lasting character on the nations of the globe. 1
1 (return) [ As in this and the following chapter I shall display
much Arabic learning, I must profess my total ignorance of the
Oriental tongues, and my gratitude to the learned interpreters,
who have transfused their science into the Latin, French, and
English languages. Their collections, versions, and histories, I
shall occasionally notice.]
In the vacant space between Persia, Syria, Egypt, and Aethiopia,
the Arabian peninsula 2 may be conceived as a triangle of
spacious but irregular dimensions. From the northern point of
Beles 3 on the Euphrates, a line of fifteen hundred miles is
terminated by the Straits of Bebelmandel and the land of
frankincense. About half this length may be allowed for the
middle breadth, from east to west, from Bassora to Suez, from the
Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. 4 The sides of the triangle are
gradually enlarged, and the southern basis presents a front of a
thousand miles to the Indian Ocean. The entire surface of the
peninsula exceeds in a fourfold proportion that of Germany or
France; but the far greater part has been justly stigmatized with
the epithets of the stony and the sandy. Even the wilds of
Tartary are decked, by the hand of nature, with lofty trees and
luxuriant herbage; and the lonesome traveller derives a sort of
comfort and society from the presence of vegetable life. But in
the dreary waste of Arabia, a boundless level of sand is
intersected by sharp and naked mountains; and the face of the
desert, without shade or shelter, is scorched by the direct and
intense rays of a tropical sun. Instead of refreshing breezes,
the winds, particularly from the south-west, diffuse a noxious
and even deadly vapor; the hillocks of sand which they
alternately raise and scatter, are compared to the billows of the
ocean, and whole caravans, whole armies, have been lost and
buried in the whirlwind. The common benefits of water are an
object of desire and contest; and such is the scarcity of wood,
that some art is requisite to preserve and propagate the element
of fire. Arabia is destitute of navigable rivers, which fertilize
the soil, and convey its produce to the adjacent regions: the
torrents that fall from the hills are imbibed by the thirsty
earth: the rare and hardy plants, the tamarind or the acacia,
that strike their roots into the clefts of the rocks, are
nourished by the dews of the night: a scanty supply of rain is
collected in cisterns and aqueducts: the wells and springs are
the secret treasure of the desert; and the pilgrim of Mecca, 5
after many a dry and sultry march, is disgusted by the taste of
the waters which have rolled over a bed of sulphur or salt. Such
is the general and genuine picture of the climate of Arabia. The
experience of evil enhances the value of any local or partial
enjoyments. A shady grove, a green pasture, a stream of fresh
water, are sufficient to attract a colony of sedentary Arabs to
the fortunate spots which can afford food and refreshment to
themselves and their cattle, and which encourage their industry
in the cultivation of the palmtree and the vine. The high lands
that border on the Indian Ocean are distinguished by their
superior plenty of wood and water; the air is more temperate, the
fruits are more delicious, the animals and the human race more
numerous: the fertility of the soil invites and rewards the toil
of the husbandman; and the peculiar gifts of frankincense 6 and
coffee have attracted in different ages the merchants of the
world. If it be compared with the rest of the peninsula, this
sequestered region may truly deserve the appellation of the
happy; and the splendid coloring of fancy and fiction has been
suggested by contrast, and countenanced by distance. It was for
this earthly paradise that Nature had reserved her choicest
favors and her most curious workmanship: the incompatible
blessings of luxury and innocence were ascribed to the natives:
the soil was impregnated with gold 7 and gems, and both the land
and sea were taught to exhale the odors of aromatic sweets. This
division of the sandy, the stony, and the happy, so familiar to
the Greeks and Latins, is unknown to the Arabians themselves; and
it is singular enough, that a country, whose language and
inhabitants have ever been the same, should scarcely retain a
vestige of its ancient geography. The maritime districts of
Bahrein and Oman are opposite to the realm of Persia. The kingdom
of Yemen displays the limits, or at least the situation, of
Arabia Felix: the name of Neged is extended over the inland
space; and the birth of Mahomet has illustrated the province of
Hejaz along the coast of the Red Sea. 8
2 (return) [ The geographers of Arabia may be divided into three
classes: 1. The Greeks and Latins, whose progressive knowledge
may be traced in Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, in Hudson,
Geograph. Minor. tom. i.,) Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. ii. p.
159-167, l. iii. p. 211-216, edit. Wesseling,) Strabo, (l. xvi.
p. 1112-1114, from Eratosthenes, p. 1122-1132, from Artemidorus,)
Dionysius, (Periegesis, 927-969,) Pliny, (Hist. Natur. v. 12, vi.
32,) and Ptolemy, (Descript. et Tabulae Urbium, in Hudson, tom.
iii.) 2. The Arabic writers, who have treated the subject with
the zeal of patriotism or devotion: the extracts of Pocock
(Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 125-128) from the Geography of the
Sherif al Edrissi, render us still more dissatisfied with the
version or abridgment (p. 24-27, 44-56, 108, &c., 119, &c.) which
the Maronites have published under the absurd title of Geographia
Nubiensis, (Paris, 1619;) but the Latin and French translators,
Greaves (in Hudson, tom. iii.) and Galland, (Voyage de la
Palestine par La Roque, p. 265-346,) have opened to us the Arabia
of Abulfeda, the most copious and correct account of the
peninsula, which may be enriched, however, from the Bibliotheque
Orientale of D’Herbelot, p. 120, et alibi passim. 3. The European
travellers; among whom Shaw (p. 438-455) and Niebuhr
(Description, 1773; Voyages, tom. i. 1776) deserve an honorable
distinction: Busching (Geographie par Berenger, tom. viii. p.
416-510) has compiled with judgment, and D’Anville’s Maps (Orbis
Veteribus Notus, and 1re Partie de l’Asie) should lie before the
reader, with his Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 208-231. *
Note: Of modern travellers may be mentioned the adventurer who
called himself Ali Bey; but above all, the intelligent, the
enterprising the accurate Burckhardt.—M.]
3 (return) [ Abulfed. Descript. Arabiae, p. 1. D’Anville,
l’Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 19, 20. It was in this place, the
paradise or garden of a satrap, that Xenophon and the Greeks
first passed the Euphrates, (Anabasis, l. i. c. 10, p. 29, edit.
Wells.)]
4 (return) [ Reland has proved, with much superfluous learning,
1. That our Red Sea (the Arabian Gulf) is no more than a part of
the Mare Rubrum, which was extended to the indefinite space of
the Indian Ocean.
2. That the synonymous words, allude to the color of the blacks
or negroes, (Dissert Miscell. tom. i. p. 59-117.)]
5 (return) [ In the thirty days, or stations, between Cairo and
Mecca, there are fifteen destitute of good water. See the route
of the Hadjees, in Shaw’s Travels, p. 477.]
6 (return) [ The aromatics, especially the thus, or frankincense,
of Arabia, occupy the xiith book of Pliny. Our great poet
(Paradise Lost, l. iv.) introduces, in a simile, the spicy odors
that are blown by the north-east wind from the Sabaean
coast:——Many a league, Pleased with the grateful scent, old Ocean
smiles. (Plin. Hist. Natur. xii. 42.)]
7 (return) [ Agatharcides affirms, that lumps of pure gold were
found, from the size of an olive to that of a nut; that iron was
twice, and silver ten times, the value of gold, (de Mari Rubro,
p. 60.) These real or imaginary treasures are vanished; and no
gold mines are at present known in Arabia, (Niebuhr, Description,
p. 124.) * Note: A brilliant passage in the geographical poem of
Dionysius Periegetes embodies the notions of the ancients on the
wealth and fertility of Yemen. Greek mythology, and the
traditions of the “gorgeous east,” of India as well as Arabia,
are mingled together in indiscriminate splendor. Compare on the
southern coast of Arabia, the recent travels of Lieut.
Wellsted—M.]
8 (return) [ Consult, peruse, and study the Specimen Hostoriae
Arabum of Pocock, (Oxon. 1650, in 4to.) The thirty pages of text
and version are extracted from the Dynasties of Gregory
Abulpharagius, which Pocock afterwards translated, (Oxon. 1663,
in 4to.;) the three hundred and fifty-eight notes form a classic
and original work on the Arabian antiquities.]
The measure of population is regulated by the means of
subsistence; and the inhabitants of this vast peninsula might be
outnumbered by the subjects of a fertile and industrious
province. Along the shores of the Persian Gulf, of the ocean, and
even of the Red Sea, the Icthyophagi, 9 or fish eaters, continued
to wander in quest of their precarious food. In this primitive
and abject state, which ill deserves the name of society, the
human brute, without arts or laws, almost without sense or
language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the animal
creation. Generations and ages might roll away in silent
oblivion, and the helpless savage was restrained from multiplying
his race by the wants and pursuits which confined his existence
to the narrow margin of the seacoast. But in an early period of
antiquity the great body of the Arabs had emerged from this scene
of misery; and as the naked wilderness could not maintain a
people of hunters, they rose at once to the more secure and
plentiful condition of the pastoral life. The same life is
uniformly pursued by the roving tribes of the desert; and in the
portrait of the modern Bedoweens, we may trace the features of
their ancestors, 10 who, in the age of Moses or Mahomet, dwelt
under similar tents, and conducted their horses, and camels, and
sheep, to the same springs and the same pastures. Our toil is
lessened, and our wealth is increased, by our dominion over the
useful animals; and the Arabian shepherd had acquired the
absolute possession of a faithful friend and a laborious slave.
11 Arabia, in the opinion of the naturalist, is the genuine and
original country of the horse; the climate most propitious, not
indeed to the size, but to the spirit and swiftness, of that
generous animal. The merit of the Barb, the Spanish, and the
English breed, is derived from a mixture of Arabian blood: 12 the
Bedoweens preserve, with superstitious care, the honors and the
memory of the purest race: the males are sold at a high price,
but the females are seldom alienated; and the birth of a noble
foal was esteemed among the tribes, as a subject of joy and
mutual congratulation. These horses are educated in the tents,
among the children of the Arabs, with a tender familiarity, which
trains them in the habits of gentleness and attachment. They are
accustomed only to walk and to gallop: their sensations are not
blunted by the incessant abuse of the spur and the whip: their
powers are reserved for the moments of flight and pursuit: but no
sooner do they feel the touch of the hand or the stirrup, than
they dart away with the swiftness of the wind; and if their
friend be dismounted in the rapid career, they instantly stop
till he has recovered his seat. In the sands of Africa and
Arabia, the camel is a sacred and precious gift. That strong and
patient beast of burden can perform, without eating or drinking,
a journey of several days; and a reservoir of fresh water is
preserved in a large bag, a fifth stomach of the animal, whose
body is imprinted with the marks of servitude: the larger breed
is capable of transporting a weight of a thousand pounds; and the
dromedary, of a lighter and more active frame, outstrips the
fleetest courser in the race. Alive or dead, almost every part of
the camel is serviceable to man: her milk is plentiful and
nutritious: the young and tender flesh has the taste of veal: 13
a valuable salt is extracted from the urine: the dung supplies
the deficiency of fuel; and the long hair, which falls each year
and is renewed, is coarsely manufactured into the garments, the
furniture, and the tents of the Bedoweens. In the rainy seasons,
they consume the rare and insufficient herbage of the desert:
during the heats of summer and the scarcity of winter, they
remove their encampments to the sea-coast, the hills of Yemen, or
the neighborhood of the Euphrates, and have often extorted the
dangerous license of visiting the banks of the Nile, and the
villages of Syria and Palestine. The life of a wandering Arab is
a life of danger and distress; and though sometimes, by rapine or
exchange, he may appropriate the fruits of industry, a private
citizen in Europe is in the possession of more solid and pleasing
luxury than the proudest emir, who marches in the field at the
head of ten thousand horse.
9 (return) [ Arrian remarks the Icthyophagi of the coast of
Hejez, (Periplus Maris Erythraei, p. 12,) and beyond Aden, (p.
15.) It seems probable that the shores of the Red Sea (in the
largest sense) were occupied by these savages in the time,
perhaps, of Cyrus; but I can hardly believe that any cannibals
were left among the savages in the reign of Justinian. (Procop.
de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 19.)]
10 (return) [ See the Specimen Historiae Arabum of Pocock, p. 2,
5, 86, &c. The journey of M. d’Arvieux, in 1664, to the camp of
the emir of Mount Carmel, (Voyage de la Palestine, Amsterdam,
1718,) exhibits a pleasing and original picture of the life of
the Bedoweens, which may be illustrated from Niebuhr (Description
de l’Arabie, p. 327-344) and Volney, (tom. i. p. 343-385,) the
last and most judicious of our Syrian travellers.]
11 (return) [ Read (it is no unpleasing task) the incomparable
articles of the Horse and the Camel, in the Natural History of M.
de Buffon.]
12 (return) [ For the Arabian horses, see D’Arvieux (p. 159-173)
and Niebuhr, (p. 142-144.) At the end of the xiiith century, the
horses of Neged were esteemed sure-footed, those of Yemen strong
and serviceable, those of Hejaz most noble. The horses of Europe,
the tenth and last class, were generally despised as having too
much body and too little spirit, (D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p.
339: ) their strength was requisite to bear the weight of the
knight and his armor]
13 (return) [ Qui carnibus camelorum vesci solent odii tenaces
sunt, was the opinion of an Arabian physician, (Pocock, Specimen,
p. 88.) Mahomet himself, who was fond of milk, prefers the cow,
and does not even mention the camel; but the diet of Mecca and
Medina was already more luxurious, (Gagnier Vie de Mahomet, tom.
iii. p. 404.)]
Yet an essential difference may be found between the hordes of
Scythia and the Arabian tribes; since many of the latter were
collected into towns, and employed in the labors of trade and
agriculture. A part of their time and industry was still devoted
to the management of their cattle: they mingled, in peace and
war, with their brethren of the desert; and the Bedoweens derived
from their useful intercourse some supply of their wants, and
some rudiments of art and knowledge. Among the forty-two cities
of Arabia, 14 enumerated by Abulfeda, the most ancient and
populous were situate in the happy Yemen: the towers of Saana, 15
and the marvellous reservoir of Merab, 16 were constructed by the
kings of the Homerites; but their profane lustre was eclipsed by
the prophetic glories of Medina 17 and Mecca, 18 near the Red
Sea, and at the distance from each other of two hundred and
seventy miles. The last of these holy places was known to the
Greeks under the name of Macoraba; and the termination of the
word is expressive of its greatness, which has not, indeed, in
the most flourishing period, exceeded the size and populousness
of Marseilles. Some latent motive, perhaps of superstition, must
have impelled the founders, in the choice of a most unpromising
situation. They erected their habitations of mud or stone, in a
plain about two miles long and one mile broad, at the foot of
three barren mountains: the soil is a rock; the water even of the
holy well of Zemzem is bitter or brackish; the pastures are
remote from the city; and grapes are transported above seventy
miles from the gardens of Tayef. The fame and spirit of the
Koreishites, who reigned in Mecca, were conspicuous among the
Arabian tribes; but their ungrateful soil refused the labors of
agriculture, and their position was favorable to the enterprises
of trade. By the seaport of Gedda, at the distance only of forty
miles, they maintained an easy correspondence with Abyssinia; and
that Christian kingdom afforded the first refuge to the disciples
of Mahomet. The treasures of Africa were conveyed over the
Peninsula to Gerrha or Katif, in the province of Bahrein, a city
built, as it is said, of rock-salt, by the Chaldaean exiles; 19
and from thence with the native pearls of the Persian Gulf, they
were floated on rafts to the mouth of the Euphrates. Mecca is
placed almost at an equal distance, a month’s journey, between
Yemen on the right, and Syria on the left hand. The former was
the winter, the latter the summer, station of her caravans; and
their seasonable arrival relieved the ships of India from the
tedious and troublesome navigation of the Red Sea. In the markets
of Saana and Merab, in the harbors of Oman and Aden, the camels
of the Koreishites were laden with a precious cargo of aromatics;
a supply of corn and manufactures was purchased in the fairs of
Bostra and Damascus; the lucrative exchange diffused plenty and
riches in the streets of Mecca; and the noblest of her sons
united the love of arms with the profession of merchandise. 20
14 (return) [ Yet Marcian of Heraclea (in Periplo, p. 16, in tom.
i. Hudson, Minor. Geograph.) reckons one hundred and sixty-four
towns in Arabia Felix. The size of the towns might be small—the
faith of the writer might be large.]
15 (return) [ It is compared by Abulfeda (in Hudson, tom. ii. p.
54) to Damascus, and is still the residence of the Imam of Yemen,
(Voyages de Niebuhr, tom. i. p. 331-342.) Saana is twenty-four
parasangs from Dafar, (Abulfeda, p. 51,) and sixty-eight from
Aden, (p. 53.)]
16 (return) [ Pocock, Specimen, p. 57. Geograph. Nubiensis, p.
52. Meriaba, or Merab, six miles in circumference, was destroyed
by the legions of Augustus, (Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 32,) and had
not revived in the xivth century, (Abulfed. Descript. Arab. p.
58.) * Note: See note 2 to chap. i. The destruction of Meriaba by
the Romans is doubtful. The town never recovered the inundation
which took place from the bursting of a large reservoir of
water—an event of great importance in the Arabian annals, and
discussed at considerable length by modern Orientalists.—M.]
17 (return) [ The name of city, Medina, was appropriated, to
Yatreb. (the Iatrippa of the Greeks,) the seat of the prophet.
The distances from Medina are reckoned by Abulfeda in stations,
or days’ journey of a caravan, (p. 15: ) to Bahrein, xv.; to
Bassora, xviii.; to Cufah, xx.; to Damascus or Palestine, xx.; to
Cairo, xxv.; to Mecca. x.; from Mecca to Saana, (p. 52,) or Aden,
xxx.; to Cairo, xxxi. days, or 412 hours, (Shaw’s Travels, p.
477;) which, according to the estimate of D’Anville, (Mesures
Itineraires, p. 99,) allows about twenty-five English miles for a
day’s journey. From the land of frankincense (Hadramaut, in
Yemen, between Aden and Cape Fartasch) to Gaza in Syria, Pliny
(Hist. Nat. xii. 32) computes lxv. mansions of camels. These
measures may assist fancy and elucidate facts.]
18 (return) [ Our notions of Mecca must be drawn from the
Arabians, (D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 368-371.
Pocock, Specimen, p. 125-128. Abulfeda, p. 11-40.) As no
unbeliever is permitted to enter the city, our travellers are
silent; and the short hints of Thevenot (Voyages du Levant, part
i. p. 490) are taken from the suspicious mouth of an African
renegado. Some Persians counted 6000 houses, (Chardin. tom. iv.
p. 167.) * Note: Even in the time of Gibbon, Mecca had not been
so inaccessible to Europeans. It had been visited by Ludovico
Barthema, and by one Joseph Pitts, of Exeter, who was taken
prisoner by the Moors, and forcibly converted to Mahometanism.
His volume is a curious, though plain, account of his sufferings
and travels. Since that time Mecca has been entered, and the
ceremonies witnessed, by Dr. Seetzen, whose papers were
unfortunately lost; by the Spaniard, who called himself Ali Bey;
and, lastly, by Burckhardt, whose description leaves nothing
wanting to satisfy the curiosity.—M.]
19 (return) [ Strabo, l. xvi. p. 1110. See one of these salt
houses near Bassora, in D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 6.]
20 (return) [ Mirum dictu ex innumeris populis pars aequa in
commerciis aut in latrociniis degit, (Plin. Hist. Nat. vi. 32.)
See Sale’s Koran, Sura. cvi. p. 503. Pocock, Specimen, p. 2.
D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 361. Prideaux’s Life of Mahomet,
p. 5. Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 72, 120, 126, &c.]
The perpetual independence of the Arabs has been the theme of
praise among strangers and natives; and the arts of controversy
transform this singular event into a prophecy and a miracle, in
favor of the posterity of Ismael. 21 Some exceptions, that can
neither be dismissed nor eluded, render this mode of reasoning as
indiscreet as it is superfluous; the kingdom of Yemen has been
successively subdued by the Abyssinians, the Persians, the
sultans of Egypt, 22 and the Turks; 23 the holy cities of Mecca
and Medina have repeatedly bowed under a Scythian tyrant; and the
Roman province of Arabia 24 embraced the peculiar wilderness in
which Ismael and his sons must have pitched their tents in the
face of their brethren. Yet these exceptions are temporary or
local; the body of the nation has escaped the yoke of the most
powerful monarchies: the arms of Sesostris and Cyrus, of Pompey
and Trajan, could never achieve the conquest of Arabia; the
present sovereign of the Turks 25 may exercise a shadow of
jurisdiction, but his pride is reduced to solicit the friendship
of a people, whom it is dangerous to provoke, and fruitless to
attack. The obvious causes of their freedom are inscribed on the
character and country of the Arabs. Many ages before Mahomet, 26
their intrepid valor had been severely felt by their neighbors in
offensive and defensive war. The patient and active virtues of a
soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a
pastoral life. The care of the sheep and camels is abandoned to
the women of the tribe; but the martial youth, under the banner
of the emir, is ever on horseback, and in the field, to practise
the exercise of the bow, the javelin, and the cimeter. The long
memory of their independence is the firmest pledge of its
perpetuity and succeeding generations are animated to prove their
descent, and to maintain their inheritance. Their domestic feuds
are suspended on the approach of a common enemy; and in their
last hostilities against the Turks, the caravan of Mecca was
attacked and pillaged by fourscore thousand of the confederates.
When they advance to battle, the hope of victory is in the front;
in the rear, the assurance of a retreat. Their horses and camels,
who, in eight or ten days, can perform a march of four or five
hundred miles, disappear before the conqueror; the secret waters
of the desert elude his search, and his victorious troops are
consumed with thirst, hunger, and fatigue, in the pursuit of an
invisible foe, who scorns his efforts, and safely reposes in the
heart of the burning solitude. The arms and deserts of the
Bedoweens are not only the safeguards of their own freedom, but
the barriers also of the happy Arabia, whose inhabitants, remote
from war, are enervated by the luxury of the soil and climate.
The legions of Augustus melted away in disease and lassitude; 27
and it is only by a naval power that the reduction of Yemen has
been successfully attempted. When Mahomet erected his holy
standard, 28 that kingdom was a province of the Persian empire;
yet seven princes of the Homerites still reigned in the
mountains; and the vicegerent of Chosroes was tempted to forget
his distant country and his unfortunate master. The historians of
the age of Justinian represent the state of the independent
Arabs, who were divided by interest or affection in the long
quarrel of the East: the tribe of Gassan was allowed to encamp on
the Syrian territory: the princes of Hira were permitted to form
a city about forty miles to the southward of the ruins of
Babylon. Their service in the field was speedy and vigorous; but
their friendship was venal, their faith inconstant, their enmity
capricious: it was an easier task to excite than to disarm these
roving barbarians; and, in the familiar intercourse of war, they
learned to see, and to despise, the splendid weakness both of
Rome and of Persia. From Mecca to the Euphrates, the Arabian
tribes 29 were confounded by the Greeks and Latins, under the
general appellation of Saracens, 30 a name which every Christian
mouth has been taught to pronounce with terror and abhorrence.
21 (return) [ A nameless doctor (Universal Hist. vol. xx. octavo
edition) has formally demonstrated the truth of Christianity by
the independence of the Arabs. A critic, besides the exceptions
of fact, might dispute the meaning of the text (Gen. xvi. 12,)
the extent of the application, and the foundation of the
pedigree. * Note: See note 3 to chap. xlvi. The atter point is
probably the least contestable of the three.—M.]
22 (return) [ It was subdued, A.D. 1173, by a brother of the
great Saladin, who founded a dynasty of Curds or Ayoubites,
(Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 425. D’Herbelot, p. 477.)]
23 (return) [ By the lieutenant of Soliman I. (A.D. 1538) and
Selim II., (1568.) See Cantemir’s Hist. of the Othman Empire, p.
201, 221. The pacha, who resided at Saana, commanded twenty-one
beys; but no revenue was ever remitted to the Porte, (Marsigli,
Stato Militare dell’ Imperio Ottomanno, p. 124,) and the Turks
were expelled about the year 1630, (Niebuhr, p. 167, 168.)]
24 (return) [ Of the Roman province, under the name of Arabia and
the third Palestine, the principal cities were Bostra and Petra,
which dated their aera from the year 105, when they were subdued
by Palma, a lieutenant of Trajan, (Dion. Cassius, l. lxviii.)
Petra was the capital of the Nabathaeans; whose name is derived
from the eldest of the sons of Ismael, (Gen. xxv. 12, &c., with
the Commentaries of Jerom, Le Clerc, and Calmet.) Justinian
relinquished a palm country of ten days’ journey to the south of
Aelah, (Procop. de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 19,) and the Romans
maintained a centurion and a custom-house, (Arrian in Periplo
Maris Erythraei, p. 11, in Hudson, tom. i.,) at a place (Pagus
Albus, Hawara) in the territory of Medina, (D’Anville, Memoire
sur l’Egypte, p. 243.) These real possessions, and some naval
inroads of Trajan, (Peripl. p. 14, 15,) are magnified by history
and medals into the Roman conquest of Arabia. * Note: On the
ruins of Petra, see the travels of Messrs. Irby and Mangles, and
of Leon de Laborde.—M.]
25 (return) [ Niebuhr (Description de l’Arabie, p. 302, 303,
329-331) affords the most recent and authentic intelligence of
the Turkish empire in Arabia. * Note: Niebuhr’s, notwithstanding
the multitude of later travellers, maintains its ground, as the
classical work on Arabia.—M.]
26 (return) [ Diodorus Siculus (tom. ii. l. xix. p. 390-393,
edit. Wesseling) has clearly exposed the freedom of the
Nabathaean Arabs, who resisted the arms of Antigonus and his
son.]
27 (return) [ Strabo, l. xvi. p. 1127-1129. Plin. Hist. Natur.
vi. 32. Aelius Gallus landed near Medina, and marched near a
thousand miles into the part of Yemen between Mareb and the
Ocean. The non ante devictis Sabeae regibus, (Od. i. 29,) and the
intacti Arabum thesanri (Od. iii. 24) of Horace, attest the
virgin purity of Arabia.]
28 (return) [ See the imperfect history of Yemen in Pocock,
Specimen, p. 55-66, of Hira, p. 66-74, of Gassan, p. 75-78, as
far as it could be known or preserved in the time of ignorance. *
Note: Compare the Hist. Yemanae, published by Johannsen at Bonn
1880 particularly the translator’s preface.—M.]
29 (return) [ They are described by Menander, (Excerpt. Legation
p. 149,) Procopius, (de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 17, 19, l. ii. c.
10,) and, in the most lively colors, by Ammianus Marcellinus, (l.
xiv. c. 4,) who had spoken of them as early as the reign of
Marcus.]
30 (return) [ The name which, used by Ptolemy and Pliny in a more
confined, by Ammianus and Procopius in a larger, sense, has been
derived, ridiculously, from Sarah, the wife of Abraham, obscurely
from the village of Saraka, (Stephan. de Urbibus,) more plausibly
from the Arabic words, which signify a thievish character, or
Oriental situation, (Hottinger, Hist. Oriental. l. i. c. i. p. 7,
8. Pocock, Specimen, p. 33, 35. Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom.
iv. p. 567.) Yet the last and most popular of these etymologies
is refuted by Ptolemy, (Arabia, p. 2, 18, in Hudson, tom. iv.,)
who expressly remarks the western and southern position of the
Saracens, then an obscure tribe on the borders of Egypt. The
appellation cannot therefore allude to any national character;
and, since it was imposed by strangers, it must be found, not in
the Arabic, but in a foreign language. * Note: Dr. Clarke,
(Travels, vol. ii. p. 491,) after expressing contemptuous pity
for Gibbon’s ignorance, derives the word from Zara, Zaara, Sara,
the Desert, whence Saraceni, the children of the Desert. De
Marles adopts the derivation from Sarrik, a robber, (Hist. des
Arabes, vol. i. p. 36, S.L. Martin from Scharkioun, or Sharkun,
Eastern, vol. xi. p. 55.)—M.]
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part II.
The slaves of domestic tyranny may vainly exult in their national
independence: but the Arab is personally free; and he enjoys, in
some degree, the benefits of society, without forfeiting the
prerogatives of nature. In every tribe, superstition, or
gratitude, or fortune, has exalted a particular family above the
heads of their equals. The dignities of sheick and emir
invariably descend in this chosen race; but the order of
succession is loose and precarious; and the most worthy or aged
of the noble kinsmen are preferred to the simple, though
important, office of composing disputes by their advice, and
guiding valor by their example. Even a female of sense and spirit
has been permitted to command the countrymen of Zenobia. 31 The
momentary junction of several tribes produces an army: their more
lasting union constitutes a nation; and the supreme chief, the
emir of emirs, whose banner is displayed at their head, may
deserve, in the eyes of strangers, the honors of the kingly name.
If the Arabian princes abuse their power, they are quickly
punished by the desertion of their subjects, who had been
accustomed to a mild and parental jurisdiction. Their spirit is
free, their steps are unconfined, the desert is open, and the
tribes and families are held together by a mutual and voluntary
compact. The softer natives of Yemen supported the pomp and
majesty of a monarch; but if he could not leave his palace
without endangering his life, 32 the active powers of government
must have been devolved on his nobles and magistrates. The cities
of Mecca and Medina present, in the heart of Asia, the form, or
rather the substance, of a commonwealth. The grandfather of
Mahomet, and his lineal ancestors, appear in foreign and domestic
transactions as the princes of their country; but they reigned,
like Pericles at Athens, or the Medici at Florence, by the
opinion of their wisdom and integrity; their influence was
divided with their patrimony; and the sceptre was transferred
from the uncles of the prophet to a younger branch of the tribe
of Koreish. On solemn occasions they convened the assembly of the
people; and, since mankind must be either compelled or persuaded
to obey, the use and reputation of oratory among the ancient
Arabs is the clearest evidence of public freedom. 33 But their
simple freedom was of a very different cast from the nice and
artificial machinery of the Greek and Roman republics, in which
each member possessed an undivided share of the civil and
political rights of the community. In the more simple state of
the Arabs, the nation is free, because each of her sons disdains
a base submission to the will of a master. His breast is
fortified by the austere virtues of courage, patience, and
sobriety; the love of independence prompts him to exercise the
habits of self-command; and the fear of dishonor guards him from
the meaner apprehension of pain, of danger, and of death. The
gravity and firmness of the mind is conspicuous in his outward
demeanor; his speech is low, weighty, and concise; he is seldom
provoked to laughter; his only gesture is that of stroking his
beard, the venerable symbol of manhood; and the sense of his own
importance teaches him to accost his equals without levity, and
his superiors without awe. 34 The liberty of the Saracens
survived their conquests: the first caliphs indulged the bold and
familiar language of their subjects; they ascended the pulpit to
persuade and edify the congregation; nor was it before the seat
of empire was removed to the Tigris, that the Abbasides adopted
the proud and pompous ceremonial of the Persian and Byzantine
courts.
31 (return) [ Saraceni... mulieres aiunt in eos regnare,
(Expositio totius Mundi, p. 3, in Hudson, tom. iii.) The reign of
Mavia is famous in ecclesiastical story Pocock, Specimen, p. 69,
83.]
32 (return) [ The report of Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, p. 63,
64, in Hudson, tom. i.) Diodorus Siculus, (tom. i. l. iii. c. 47,
p. 215,) and Strabo, (l. xvi. p. 1124.) But I much suspect that
this is one of the popular tales, or extraordinary accidents,
which the credulity of travellers so often transforms into a
fact, a custom, and a law.]
33 (return) [ Non gloriabantur antiquitus Arabes, nisi gladio,
hospite, et eloquentia (Sephadius apud Pocock, Specimen, p. 161,
162.) This gift of speech they shared only with the Persians; and
the sententious Arabs would probably have disdained the simple
and sublime logic of Demosthenes.]
34 (return) [ I must remind the reader that D’Arvieux,
D’Herbelot, and Niebuhr, represent, in the most lively colors,
the manners and government of the Arabs, which are illustrated by
many incidental passages in the Life of Mahomet. * Note: See,
likewise the curious romance of Antar, the most vivid and
authentic picture of Arabian manners.—M.]
In the study of nations and men, we may observe the causes that
render them hostile or friendly to each other, that tend to
narrow or enlarge, to mollify or exasperate, the social
character. The separation of the Arabs from the rest of mankind
has accustomed them to confound the ideas of stranger and enemy;
and the poverty of the land has introduced a maxim of
jurisprudence, which they believe and practise to the present
hour. They pretend, that, in the division of the earth, the rich
and fertile climates were assigned to the other branches of the
human family; and that the posterity of the outlaw Ismael might
recover, by fraud or force, the portion of inheritance of which
he had been unjustly deprived. According to the remark of Pliny,
the Arabian tribes are equally addicted to theft and merchandise;
the caravans that traverse the desert are ransomed or pillaged;
and their neighbors, since the remote times of Job and Sesostris,
35 have been the victims of their rapacious spirit. If a Bedoween
discovers from afar a solitary traveller, he rides furiously
against him, crying, with a loud voice, “Undress thyself, thy
aunt (my wife) is without a garment.” A ready submission entitles
him to mercy; resistance will provoke the aggressor, and his own
blood must expiate the blood which he presumes to shed in
legitimate defence. A single robber, or a few associates, are
branded with their genuine name; but the exploits of a numerous
band assume the character of lawful and honorable war. The temper
of a people thus armed against mankind was doubly inflamed by the
domestic license of rapine, murder, and revenge. In the
constitution of Europe, the right of peace and war is now
confined to a small, and the actual exercise to a much smaller,
list of respectable potentates; but each Arab, with impunity and
renown, might point his javelin against the life of his
countrymen. The union of the nation consisted only in a vague
resemblance of language and manners; and in each community, the
jurisdiction of the magistrate was mute and impotent. Of the time
of ignorance which preceded Mahomet, seventeen hundred battles 36
are recorded by tradition: hostility was imbittered with the
rancor of civil faction; and the recital, in prose or verse, of
an obsolete feud, was sufficient to rekindle the same passions
among the descendants of the hostile tribes. In private life
every man, at least every family, was the judge and avenger of
his own cause. The nice sensibility of honor, which weighs the
insult rather than the injury, sheds its deadly venom on the
quarrels of the Arabs: the honor of their women, and of their
beards, is most easily wounded; an indecent action, a
contemptuous word, can be expiated only by the blood of the
offender; and such is their patient inveteracy, that they expect
whole months and years the opportunity of revenge. A fine or
compensation for murder is familiar to the Barbarians of every
age: but in Arabia the kinsmen of the dead are at liberty to
accept the atonement, or to exercise with their own hands the law
of retaliation. The refined malice of the Arabs refuses even the
head of the murderer, substitutes an innocent for the guilty
person, and transfers the penalty to the best and most
considerable of the race by whom they have been injured. If he
falls by their hands, they are exposed, in their turn, to the
danger of reprisals, the interest and principal of the bloody
debt are accumulated: the individuals of either family lead a
life of malice and suspicion, and fifty years may sometimes
elapse before the account of vengeance be finally settled. 37
This sanguinary spirit, ignorant of pity or forgiveness, has been
moderated, however, by the maxims of honor, which require in
every private encounter some decent equality of age and strength,
of numbers and weapons. An annual festival of two, perhaps of
four, months, was observed by the Arabs before the time of
Mahomet, during which their swords were religiously sheathed both
in foreign and domestic hostility; and this partial truce is more
strongly expressive of the habits of anarchy and warfare. 38
35 (return) [ Observe the first chapter of Job, and the long wall
of 1500 stadia which Sesostris built from Pelusium to Heliopolis,
(Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. i. p. 67.) Under the name of Hycsos,
the shepherd kings, they had formerly subdued Egypt, (Marsham,
Canon. Chron. p. 98-163) &c.) * Note: This origin of the Hycsos,
though probable, is by no means so certain here is some reason
for supposing them Scythians.—M]
36 (return) [ Or, according to another account, 1200,
(D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 75: ) the two historians
who wrote of the Ayam al Arab, the battles of the Arabs, lived in
the 9th and 10th century. The famous war of Dahes and Gabrah was
occasioned by two horses, lasted forty years, and ended in a
proverb, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 48.)]
37 (return) [ The modern theory and practice of the Arabs in the
revenge of murder are described by Niebuhr, (Description, p.
26-31.) The harsher features of antiquity may be traced in the
Koran, c. 2, p. 20, c. 17, p. 230, with Sale’s Observations.]
38 (return) [ Procopius (de Bell. Persic. l. i. c. 16) places the
two holy months about the summer solstice. The Arabians
consecrate four months of the year—the first, seventh, eleventh,
and twelfth; and pretend, that in a long series of ages the truce
was infringed only four or six times, (Sale’s Preliminary
Discourse, p. 147-150, and Notes on the ixth chapter of the
Koran, p. 154, &c. Casiri, Bibliot. Hispano-Arabica, tom. ii. p.
20, 21.)]
But the spirit of rapine and revenge was attempered by the milder
influence of trade and literature. The solitary peninsula is
encompassed by the most civilized nations of the ancient world;
the merchant is the friend of mankind; and the annual caravans
imported the first seeds of knowledge and politeness into the
cities, and even the camps of the desert. Whatever may be the
pedigree of the Arabs, their language is derived from the same
original stock with the Hebrew, the Syriac, and the Chaldaean
tongues; the independence of the tribes was marked by their
peculiar dialects; 39 but each, after their own, allowed a just
preference to the pure and perspicuous idiom of Mecca. In Arabia,
as well as in Greece, the perfection of language outstripped the
refinement of manners; and her speech could diversify the
fourscore names of honey, the two hundred of a serpent, the five
hundred of a lion, the thousand of a sword, at a time when this
copious dictionary was intrusted to the memory of an illiterate
people. The monuments of the Homerites were inscribed with an
obsolete and mysterious character; but the Cufic letters, the
groundwork of the present alphabet, were invented on the banks of
the Euphrates; and the recent invention was taught at Mecca by a
stranger who settled in that city after the birth of Mahomet. The
arts of grammar, of metre, and of rhetoric, were unknown to the
freeborn eloquence of the Arabians; but their penetration was
sharp, their fancy luxuriant, their wit strong and sententious,
40 and their more elaborate compositions were addressed with
energy and effect to the minds of their hearers. The genius and
merit of a rising poet was celebrated by the applause of his own
and the kindred tribes. A solemn banquet was prepared, and a
chorus of women, striking their tymbals, and displaying the pomp
of their nuptials, sung in the presence of their sons and
husbands the felicity of their native tribe; that a champion had
now appeared to vindicate their rights; that a herald had raised
his voice to immortalize their renown. The distant or hostile
tribes resorted to an annual fair, which was abolished by the
fanaticism of the first Moslems; a national assembly that must
have contributed to refine and harmonize the Barbarians. Thirty
days were employed in the exchange, not only of corn and wine,
but of eloquence and poetry. The prize was disputed by the
generous emulation of the bards; the victorious performance was
deposited in the archives of princes and emirs; and we may read
in our own language, the seven original poems which were
inscribed in letters of gold, and suspended in the temple of
Mecca. 41 The Arabian poets were the historians and moralists of
the age; and if they sympathized with the prejudices, they
inspired and crowned the virtues, of their countrymen. The
indissoluble union of generosity and valor was the darling theme
of their song; and when they pointed their keenest satire against
a despicable race, they affirmed, in the bitterness of reproach,
that the men knew not how to give, nor the women to deny. 42 The
same hospitality, which was practised by Abraham, and celebrated
by Homer, is still renewed in the camps of the Arabs. The
ferocious Bedoweens, the terror of the desert, embrace, without
inquiry or hesitation, the stranger who dares to confide in their
honor and to enter their tent. His treatment is kind and
respectful: he shares the wealth, or the poverty, of his host;
and, after a needful repose, he is dismissed on his way, with
thanks, with blessings, and perhaps with gifts. The heart and
hand are more largely expanded by the wants of a brother or a
friend; but the heroic acts that could deserve the public
applause, must have surpassed the narrow measure of discretion
and experience. A dispute had arisen, who, among the citizens of
Mecca, was entitled to the prize of generosity; and a successive
application was made to the three who were deemed most worthy of
the trial. Abdallah, the son of Abbas, had undertaken a distant
journey, and his foot was in the stirrup when he heard the voice
of a suppliant, “O son of the uncle of the apostle of God, I am a
traveller, and in distress!” He instantly dismounted to present
the pilgrim with his camel, her rich caparison, and a purse of
four thousand pieces of gold, excepting only the sword, either
for its intrinsic value, or as the gift of an honored kinsman.
The servant of Kais informed the second suppliant that his master
was asleep: but he immediately added, “Here is a purse of seven
thousand pieces of gold, (it is all we have in the house,) and
here is an order, that will entitle you to a camel and a slave;”
the master, as soon as he awoke, praised and enfranchised his
faithful steward, with a gentle reproof, that by respecting his
slumbers he had stinted his bounty. The third of these heroes,
the blind Arabah, at the hour of prayer, was supporting his steps
on the shoulders of two slaves. “Alas!” he replied, “my coffers
are empty! but these you may sell; if you refuse, I renounce
them.” At these words, pushing away the youths, he groped along
the wall with his staff.
The character of Hatem is the perfect model of Arabian virtue: 43
he was brave and liberal, an eloquent poet, and a successful
robber; forty camels were roasted at his hospitable feast; and at
the prayer of a suppliant enemy he restored both the captives and
the spoil. The freedom of his countrymen disdained the laws of
justice; they proudly indulged the spontaneous impulse of pity
and benevolence.
39 (return) [ Arrian, in the second century, remarks (in Periplo
Maris Erythraei, p. 12) the partial or total difference of the
dialects of the Arabs. Their language and letters are copiously
treated by Pocock, (Specimen, p. 150-154,) Casiri, (Bibliot.
Hispano-Arabica, tom. i. p. 1, 83, 292, tom. ii. p. 25, &c.,) and
Niebuhr, (Description de l’Arabie, p. 72-36) I pass slightly; I
am not fond of repeating words like a parrot.]
40 (return) [ A familiar tale in Voltaire’s Zadig (le Chien et le
Cheval) is related, to prove the natural sagacity of the Arabs,
(D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 120, 121. Gagnier, Vie de
Mahomet, tom. i. p. 37-46: ) but D’Arvieux, or rather La Roque,
(Voyage de Palestine, p. 92,) denies the boasted superiority of
the Bedoweens. The one hundred and sixty-nine sentences of Ali
(translated by Ockley, London, 1718) afford a just and favorable
specimen of Arabian wit. * Note: Compare the Arabic proverbs
translated by Burckhardt. London. 1830—M.]
41 (return) [ Pocock (Specimen, p. 158-161) and Casiri (Bibliot.
Hispano-Arabica, tom. i. p. 48, 84, &c., 119, tom. ii. p. 17,
&c.) speak of the Arabian poets before Mahomet; the seven poems
of the Caaba have been published in English by Sir William Jones;
but his honorable mission to India has deprived us of his own
notes, far more interesting than the obscure and obsolete text.]
42 (return) [ Sale’s Preliminary Discourse, p. 29, 30]
43 (return) [ D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 458. Gagnier, Vie
de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 118. Caab and Hesnus (Pocock, Specimen,
p. 43, 46, 48) were likewise conspicuous for their liberality;
and the latter is elegantly praised by an Arabian poet: “Videbis
eum cum accesseris exultantem, ac si dares illi quod ab illo
petis.” * Note: See the translation of the amusing Persian
romance of Hatim Tai, by Duncan Forbes, Esq., among the works
published by the Oriental Translation Fund.—M.]
The religion of the Arabs, 44 as well as of the Indians,
consisted in the worship of the sun, the moon, and the fixed
stars; a primitive and specious mode of superstition. The bright
luminaries of the sky display the visible image of a Deity: their
number and distance convey to a philosophic, or even a vulgar,
eye, the idea of boundless space: the character of eternity is
marked on these solid globes, that seem incapable of corruption
or decay: the regularity of their motions may be ascribed to a
principle of reason or instinct; and their real, or imaginary,
influence encourages the vain belief that the earth and its
inhabitants are the object of their peculiar care. The science of
astronomy was cultivated at Babylon; but the school of the Arabs
was a clear firmament and a naked plain. In their nocturnal
marches, they steered by the guidance of the stars: their names,
and order, and daily station, were familiar to the curiosity and
devotion of the Bedoween; and he was taught by experience to
divide, in twenty-eight parts, the zodiac of the moon, and to
bless the constellations who refreshed, with salutary rains, the
thirst of the desert. The reign of the heavenly orbs could not be
extended beyond the visible sphere; and some metaphysical powers
were necessary to sustain the transmigration of souls and the
resurrection of bodies: a camel was left to perish on the grave,
that he might serve his master in another life; and the
invocation of departed spirits implies that they were still
endowed with consciousness and power. I am ignorant, and I am
careless, of the blind mythology of the Barbarians; of the local
deities, of the stars, the air, and the earth, of their sex or
titles, their attributes or subordination. Each tribe, each
family, each independent warrior, created and changed the rites
and the object of his fantastic worship; but the nation, in every
age, has bowed to the religion, as well as to the language, of
Mecca. The genuine antiquity of the Caaba ascends beyond the
Christian aera; in describing the coast of the Red Sea, the Greek
historian Diodorus 45 has remarked, between the Thamudites and
the Sabaeans, a famous temple, whose superior sanctity was
revered by all the Arabians; the linen or silken veil, which is
annually renewed by the Turkish emperor, was first offered by a
pious king of the Homerites, who reigned seven hundred years
before the time of Mahomet. 46 A tent, or a cavern, might suffice
for the worship of the savages, but an edifice of stone and clay
has been erected in its place; and the art and power of the
monarchs of the East have been confined to the simplicity of the
original model. 47 A spacious portico encloses the quadrangle of
the Caaba; a square chapel, twenty-four cubits long, twenty-three
broad, and twenty-seven high: a door and a window admit the
light; the double roof is supported by three pillars of wood; a
spout (now of gold) discharges the rain-water, and the well
Zemzen is protected by a dome from accidental pollution. The
tribe of Koreish, by fraud and force, had acquired the custody of
the Caaba: the sacerdotal office devolved through four lineal
descents to the grandfather of Mahomet; and the family of the
Hashemites, from whence he sprung, was the most respectable and
sacred in the eyes of their country. 48 The precincts of Mecca
enjoyed the rights of sanctuary; and, in the last month of each
year, the city and the temple were crowded with a long train of
pilgrims, who presented their vows and offerings in the house of
God. The same rites which are now accomplished by the faithful
Mussulman, were invented and practised by the superstition of the
idolaters. At an awful distance they cast away their garments:
seven times, with hasty steps, they encircled the Caaba, and
kissed the black stone: seven times they visited and adored the
adjacent mountains; seven times they threw stones into the valley
of Mina; and the pilgrimage was achieved, as at the present hour,
by a sacrifice of sheep and camels, and the burial of their hair
and nails in the consecrated ground. Each tribe either found or
introduced in the Caaba their domestic worship: the temple was
adorned, or defiled, with three hundred and sixty idols of men,
eagles, lions, and antelopes; and most conspicuous was the statue
of Hebal, of red agate, holding in his hand seven arrows, without
heads or feathers, the instruments and symbols of profane
divination. But this statue was a monument of Syrian arts: the
devotion of the ruder ages was content with a pillar or a tablet;
and the rocks of the desert were hewn into gods or altars, in
imitation of the black stone 49 of Mecca, which is deeply tainted
with the reproach of an idolatrous origin. From Japan to Peru,
the use of sacrifice has universally prevailed; and the votary
has expressed his gratitude, or fear, by destroying or consuming,
in honor of the gods, the dearest and most precious of their
gifts. The life of a man 50 is the most precious oblation to
deprecate a public calamity: the altars of Phoenicia and Egypt,
of Rome and Carthage, have been polluted with human gore: the
cruel practice was long preserved among the Arabs; in the third
century, a boy was annually sacrificed by the tribe of the
Dumatians; 51 and a royal captive was piously slaughtered by the
prince of the Saracens, the ally and soldier of the emperor
Justinian. 52 A parent who drags his son to the altar, exhibits
the most painful and sublime effort of fanaticism: the deed, or
the intention, was sanctified by the example of saints and
heroes; and the father of Mahomet himself was devoted by a rash
vow, and hardly ransomed for the equivalent of a hundred camels.
In the time of ignorance, the Arabs, like the Jews and Egyptians,
abstained from the taste of swine’s flesh; 53 they circumcised 54
their children at the age of puberty: the same customs, without
the censure or the precept of the Koran, have been silently
transmitted to their posterity and proselytes. It has been
sagaciously conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged the
stubborn prejudices of his countrymen. It is more simple to
believe that he adhered to the habits and opinions of his youth,
without foreseeing that a practice congenial to the climate of
Mecca might become useless or inconvenient on the banks of the
Danube or the Volga.
44 (return) [ Whatever can now be known of the idolatry of the
ancient Arabians may be found in Pocock, (Specimen, p. 89-136,
163, 164.) His profound erudition is more clearly and concisely
interpreted by Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 14-24;) and
Assemanni (Bibliot. Orient tom. iv. p. 580-590) has added some
valuable remarks.]
45 (return) [ (Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. iii. p. 211.) The
character and position are so correctly apposite, that I am
surprised how this curious passage should have been read without
notice or application. Yet this famous temple had been overlooked
by Agatharcides, (de Mari Rubro, p. 58, in Hudson, tom. i.,) whom
Diodorus copies in the rest of the description. Was the Sicilian
more knowing than the Egyptian? Or was the Caaba built between
the years of Rome 650 and 746, the dates of their respective
histories? (Dodwell, in Dissert. ad tom. i. Hudson, p. 72.
Fabricius, Bibliot. Graec. tom. ii. p. 770.) * Note: Mr. Forster
(Geography of Arabia, vol. ii. p. 118, et seq.) has raised an
objection, as I think, fatal to this hypothesis of Gibbon. The
temple, situated in the country of the Banizomeneis, was not
between the Thamudites and the Sabaeans, but higher up than the
coast inhabited by the former. Mr. Forster would place it as far
north as Moiiah. I am not quite satisfied that this will agree
with the whole description of Diodorus—M. 1845.]
46 (return) [ Pocock, Specimen, p. 60, 61. From the death of
Mahomet we ascend to 68, from his birth to 129, years before the
Christian aera. The veil or curtain, which is now of silk and
gold, was no more than a piece of Egyptian linen, (Abulfeda, in
Vit. Mohammed. c. 6, p. 14.)]
47 (return) [ The original plan of the Caaba (which is servilely
copied in Sale, the Universal History, &c.) was a Turkish
draught, which Reland (de Religione Mohammedica, p. 113-123) has
corrected and explained from the best authorities. For the
description and legend of the Caaba, consult Pocock, (Specimen,
p. 115-122,) the Bibliotheque Orientale of D’Herbelot, (Caaba,
Hagir, Zemzem, &c.,) and Sale (Preliminary Discourse, p.
114-122.)]
48 (return) [ Cosa, the fifth ancestor of Mahomet, must have
usurped the Caaba A.D. 440; but the story is differently told by
Jannabi, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 65-69,) and by
Abulfeda, (in Vit. Moham. c. 6, p. 13.)]
49 (return) [ In the second century, Maximus of Tyre attributes
to the Arabs the worship of a stone, (Dissert. viii. tom. i. p.
142, edit. Reiske;) and the reproach is furiously reechoed by the
Christians, (Clemens Alex. in Protreptico, p. 40. Arnobius contra
Gentes, l. vi. p. 246.) Yet these stones were no other than of
Syria and Greece, so renowned in sacred and profane antiquity,
(Euseb. Praep. Evangel. l. i. p. 37. Marsham, Canon. Chron. p.
54-56.)]
50 (return) [ The two horrid subjects are accurately discussed by
the learned Sir John Marsham, (Canon. Chron. p. 76-78, 301-304.)
Sanchoniatho derives the Phoenician sacrifices from the example
of Chronus; but we are ignorant whether Chronus lived before, or
after, Abraham, or indeed whether he lived at all.]
51 (return) [ The reproach of Porphyry; but he likewise imputes
to the Roman the same barbarous custom, which, A. U. C. 657, had
been finally abolished. Dumaetha, Daumat al Gendai, is noticed by
Ptolemy (Tabul. p. 37, Arabia, p. 9-29) and Abulfeda, (p. 57,)
and may be found in D’Anville’s maps, in the mid-desert between
Chaibar and Tadmor.]
52 (return) [ Prcoopius, (de Bell. Persico, l. i. c. 28,)
Evagrius, (l. vi. c. 21,) and Pocock, (Specimen, p. 72, 86,)
attest the human sacrifices of the Arabs in the vith century. The
danger and escape of Abdallah is a tradition rather than a fact,
(Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 82-84.)]
53 (return) [ Suillis carnibus abstinent, says Solinus,
(Polyhistor. c. 33,) who copies Pliny (l. viii. c. 68) in the
strange supposition, that hogs can not live in Arabia. The
Egyptians were actuated by a natural and superstitious horror for
that unclean beast, (Marsham, Canon. p. 205.) The old Arabians
likewise practised, post coitum, the rite of ablution, (Herodot.
l. i. c. 80,) which is sanctified by the Mahometan law, (Reland,
p. 75, &c., Chardin, or rather the Mollah of Shah Abbas, tom. iv.
p. 71, &c.)]
54 (return) [ The Mahometan doctors are not fond of the subject;
yet they hold circumcision necessary to salvation, and even
pretend that Mahomet was miraculously born without a foreskin,
(Pocock, Specimen, p. 319, 320. Sale’s Preliminary Discourse, p.
106, 107.)]
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part III.
Arabia was free: the adjacent kingdoms were shaken by the storms
of conquest and tyranny, and the persecuted sects fled to the
happy land where they might profess what they thought, and
practise what they professed. The religions of the Sabians and
Magians, of the Jews and Christians, were disseminated from the
Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. In a remote period of antiquity,
Sabianism was diffused over Asia by the science of the Chaldaeans
55 and the arms of the Assyrians. From the observations of two
thousand years, the priests and astronomers of Babylon 56 deduced
the eternal laws of nature and providence. They adored the seven
gods or angels, who directed the course of the seven planets, and
shed their irresistible influence on the earth. The attributes of
the seven planets, with the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the
twenty-four constellations of the northern and southern
hemisphere, were represented by images and talismans; the seven
days of the week were dedicated to their respective deities; the
Sabians prayed thrice each day; and the temple of the moon at
Haran was the term of their pilgrimage. 57 But the flexible
genius of their faith was always ready either to teach or to
learn: in the tradition of the creation, the deluge, and the
patriarchs, they held a singular agreement with their Jewish
captives; they appealed to the secret books of Adam, Seth, and
Enoch; and a slight infusion of the gospel has transformed the
last remnant of the Polytheists into the Christians of St. John,
in the territory of Bassora. 58 The altars of Babylon were
overturned by the Magians; but the injuries of the Sabians were
revenged by the sword of Alexander; Persia groaned above five
hundred years under a foreign yoke; and the purest disciples of
Zoroaster escaped from the contagion of idolatry, and breathed
with their adversaries the freedom of the desert. 59 Seven
hundred years before the death of Mahomet, the Jews were settled
in Arabia; and a far greater multitude was expelled from the Holy
Land in the wars of Titus and Hadrian. The industrious exiles
aspired to liberty and power: they erected synagogues in the
cities, and castles in the wilderness, and their Gentile converts
were confounded with the children of Israel, whom they resembled
in the outward mark of circumcision. The Christian missionaries
were still more active and successful: the Catholics asserted
their universal reign; the sects whom they oppressed,
successively retired beyond the limits of the Roman empire; the
Marcionites and Manichaeans dispersed their fantastic opinions
and apocryphal gospels; the churches of Yemen, and the princes of
Hira and Gassan, were instructed in a purer creed by the Jacobite
and Nestorian bishops. 60 The liberty of choice was presented to
the tribes: each Arab was free to elect or to compose his private
religion: and the rude superstition of his house was mingled with
the sublime theology of saints and philosophers. A fundamental
article of faith was inculcated by the consent of the learned
strangers; the existence of one supreme God who is exalted above
the powers of heaven and earth, but who has often revealed
himself to mankind by the ministry of his angels and prophets,
and whose grace or justice has interrupted, by seasonable
miracles, the order of nature. The most rational of the Arabs
acknowledged his power, though they neglected his worship; 61 and
it was habit rather than conviction that still attached them to
the relics of idolatry. The Jews and Christians were the people
of the Book; the Bible was already translated into the Arabic
language, 62 and the volume of the Old Testament was accepted by
the concord of these implacable enemies. In the story of the
Hebrew patriarchs, the Arabs were pleased to discover the fathers
of their nation. They applauded the birth and promises of Ismael;
revered the faith and virtue of Abraham; traced his pedigree and
their own to the creation of the first man, and imbibed, with
equal credulity, the prodigies of the holy text, and the dreams
and traditions of the Jewish rabbis.
55 (return) [ Diodorus Siculus (tom. i. l. ii. p. 142-145) has
cast on their religion the curious but superficial glance of a
Greek. Their astronomy would be far more valuable: they had
looked through the telescope of reason, since they could doubt
whether the sun were in the number of the planets or of the fixed
stars.]
56 (return) [ Simplicius, (who quotes Porphyry,) de Coelo, l. ii.
com. xlvi p. 123, lin. 18, apud Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 474,
who doubts the fact, because it is adverse to his systems. The
earliest date of the Chaldaean observations is the year 2234
before Christ. After the conquest of Babylon by Alexander, they
were communicated at the request of Aristotle, to the astronomer
Hipparchus. What a moment in the annals of science!]
57 (return) [ Pocock, (Specimen, p. 138-146,) Hottinger, (Hist.
Orient. p. 162-203,) Hyde, (de Religione Vet. Persarum, p. 124,
128, &c.,) D’Herbelot, (Sabi, p. 725, 726,) and Sale,
(Preliminary Discourse, p. 14, 15,) rather excite than gratify
our curiosity; and the last of these writers confounds Sabianism
with the primitive religion of the Arabs.]
58 (return) [ D’Anville (l’Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 130-137) will
fix the position of these ambiguous Christians; Assemannus
(Bibliot. Oriental. tom. iv. p. 607-614) may explain their
tenets. But it is a slippery task to ascertain the creed of an
ignorant people afraid and ashamed to disclose their secret
traditions. * Note: The Codex Nasiraeus, their sacred book, has
been published by Norberg whose researches contain almost all
that is known of this singular people. But their origin is almost
as obscure as ever: if ancient, their creed has been so corrupted
with mysticism and Mahometanism, that its native lineaments are
very indistinct.—M.]
59 (return) [ The Magi were fixed in the province of Bhrein,
(Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 114,) and mingled with the
old Arabians, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 146-150.)]
60 (return) [ The state of the Jews and Christians in Arabia is
described by Pocock from Sharestani, &c., (Specimen, p. 60, 134,
&c.,) Hottinger, (Hist. Orient. p. 212-238,) D’Herbelot,
(Bibliot. Orient. p. 474-476,) Basnage, (Hist. des Juifs, tom.
vii. p. 185, tom. viii. p. 280,) and Sale, (Preliminary
Discourse, p. 22, &c., 33, &c.)]
61 (return) [ In their offerings, it was a maxim to defraud God
for the profit of the idol, not a more potent, but a more
irritable, patron, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 108, 109.)]
62 (return) [ Our versions now extant, whether Jewish or
Christian, appear more recent than the Koran; but the existence
of a prior translation may be fairly inferred,—1. From the
perpetual practice of the synagogue of expounding the Hebrew
lesson by a paraphrase in the vulgar tongue of the country; 2.
From the analogy of the Armenian, Persian, Aethiopic versions,
expressly quoted by the fathers of the fifth century, who assert
that the Scriptures were translated into all the Barbaric
languages, (Walton, Prolegomena ad Biblia Polyglot, p. 34, 93-97.
Simon, Hist. Critique du V. et du N. Testament, tom. i. p. 180,
181, 282-286, 293, 305, 306, tom. iv. p. 206.)]
The base and plebeian origin of Mahomet is an unskilful calumny
of the Christians, 63 who exalt instead of degrading the merit of
their adversary. His descent from Ismael was a national privilege
or fable; but if the first steps of the pedigree 64 are dark and
doubtful, he could produce many generations of pure and genuine
nobility: he sprung from the tribe of Koreish and the family of
Hashem, the most illustrious of the Arabs, the princes of Mecca,
and the hereditary guardians of the Caaba. The grandfather of
Mahomet was Abdol Motalleb, the son of Hashem, a wealthy and
generous citizen, who relieved the distress of famine with the
supplies of commerce. Mecca, which had been fed by the liberality
of the father, was saved by the courage of the son. The kingdom
of Yemen was subject to the Christian princes of Abyssinia; their
vassal Abrahah was provoked by an insult to avenge the honor of
the cross; and the holy city was invested by a train of elephants
and an army of Africans. A treaty was proposed; and, in the first
audience, the grandfather of Mahomet demanded the restitution of
his cattle. “And why,” said Abrahah, “do you not rather implore
my clemency in favor of your temple, which I have threatened to
destroy?” “Because,” replied the intrepid chief, “the cattle is
my own; the Caaba belongs to the gods, and they will defend their
house from injury and sacrilege.” The want of provisions, or the
valor of the Koreish, compelled the Abyssinians to a disgraceful
retreat: their discomfiture has been adorned with a miraculous
flight of birds, who showered down stones on the heads of the
infidels; and the deliverance was long commemorated by the aera
of the elephant. 65 The glory of Abdol Motalleb was crowned with
domestic happiness; his life was prolonged to the age of one
hundred and ten years; and he became the father of six daughters
and thirteen sons. His best beloved Abdallah was the most
beautiful and modest of the Arabian youth; and in the first
night, when he consummated his marriage with Amina, 651 of the
noble race of the Zahrites, two hundred virgins are said to have
expired of jealousy and despair. Mahomet, or more properly
Mohammed, the only son of Abdallah and Amina, was born at Mecca,
four years after the death of Justinian, and two months after the
defeat of the Abyssinians, 66 whose victory would have introduced
into the Caaba the religion of the Christians. In his early
infancy, he was deprived of his father, his mother, and his
grandfather; his uncles were strong and numerous; and, in the
division of the inheritance, the orphan’s share was reduced to
five camels and an Aethiopian maid-servant. At home and abroad,
in peace and war, Abu Taleb, the most respectable of his uncles,
was the guide and guardian of his youth; in his twenty-fifth
year, he entered into the service of Cadijah, a rich and noble
widow of Mecca, who soon rewarded his fidelity with the gift of
her hand and fortune. The marriage contract, in the simple style
of antiquity, recites the mutual love of Mahomet and Cadijah;
describes him as the most accomplished of the tribe of Koreish;
and stipulates a dowry of twelve ounces of gold and twenty
camels, which was supplied by the liberality of his uncle. 67 By
this alliance, the son of Abdallah was restored to the station of
his ancestors; and the judicious matron was content with his
domestic virtues, till, in the fortieth year of his age, 68 he
assumed the title of a prophet, and proclaimed the religion of
the Koran.
63 (return) [ In eo conveniunt omnes, ut plebeio vilique genere
ortum, &c, (Hottinger, Hist. Orient. p. 136.) Yet Theophanes, the
most ancient of the Greeks, and the father of many a lie,
confesses that Mahomet was of the race of Ismael, (Chronograph.
p. 277.)]
64 (return) [ Abulfeda (in Vit. Mohammed. c. 1, 2) and Gagnier
(Vie de Mahomet, p. 25-97) describe the popular and approved
genealogy of the prophet. At Mecca, I would not dispute its
authenticity: at Lausanne, I will venture to observe, 1. That
from Ismael to Mahomet, a period of 2500 years, they reckon
thirty, instead of seventy five, generations: 2. That the modern
Bedoweens are ignorant of their history, and careless of their
pedigree, (Voyage de D’Arvieux p. 100, 103.) * Note: The most
orthodox Mahometans only reckon back the ancestry of the prophet
for twenty generations, to Adnan. Weil, Mohammed der Prophet, p.
1.—M. 1845.]
65 (return) [ The seed of this history, or fable, is contained in
the cvth chapter of the Koran; and Gagnier (in Praefat. ad Vit.
Moham. p. 18, &c.) has translated the historical narrative of
Abulfeda, which may be illustrated from D’Herbelot (Bibliot.
Orientale, p. 12) and Pocock, (Specimen, p. 64.) Prideaux (Life
of Mahomet, p. 48) calls it a lie of the coinage of Mahomet; but
Sale, (Koran, p. 501-503,) who is half a Mussulman, attacks the
inconsistent faith of the Doctor for believing the miracles of
the Delphic Apollo. Maracci (Alcoran, tom. i. part ii. p. 14,
tom. ii. p. 823) ascribes the miracle to the devil, and extorts
from the Mahometans the confession, that God would not have
defended against the Christians the idols of the Caaba. * Note:
Dr. Weil says that the small-pox broke out in the army of
Abrahah, but he does not give his authority, p. 10.—M. 1845.]
651 (return) [ Amina, or Emina, was of Jewish birth. V. Hammer,
Geschichte der Assass. p. 10.—M.]
66 (return) [ The safest aeras of Abulfeda, (in Vit. c. i. p. 2,)
of Alexander, or the Greeks, 882, of Bocht Naser, or Nabonassar,
1316, equally lead us to the year 569. The old Arabian calendar
is too dark and uncertain to support the Benedictines, (Art. de
Verifer les Dates, p. 15,) who, from the day of the month and
week, deduce a new mode of calculation, and remove the birth of
Mahomet to the year of Christ 570, the 10th of November. Yet this
date would agree with the year 882 of the Greeks, which is
assigned by Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 5) and Abulpharagius,
(Dynast. p. 101, and Errata, Pocock’s version.) While we refine
our chronology, it is possible that the illiterate prophet was
ignorant of his own age. * Note: The date of the birth of Mahomet
is not yet fixed with precision. It is only known from Oriental
authors that he was born on a Monday, the 10th Reby 1st, the
third month of the Mahometan year; the year 40 or 42 of Chosroes
Nushirvan, king of Persia; the year 881 of the Seleucidan aera;
the year 1316 of the aera of Nabonassar. This leaves the point
undecided between the years 569, 570, 571, of J. C. See the
Memoir of M. Silv. de Sacy, on divers events in the history of
the Arabs before Mahomet, Mem. Acad. des Loscript. vol. xlvii. p.
527, 531. St. Martin, vol. xi. p. 59.—M. ——Dr. Weil decides on
A.D. 571. Mahomet died in 632, aged 63; but the Arabs reckoned
his life by lunar years, which reduces his life nearly to 61 (p.
21.)—M. 1845]
67 (return) [ I copy the honorable testimony of Abu Taleb to his
family and nephew. Laus Dei, qui nos a stirpe Abrahami et semine
Ismaelis constituit, et nobis regionem sacram dedit, et nos
judices hominibus statuit. Porro Mohammed filius Abdollahi
nepotis mei (nepos meus) quo cum ex aequo librabitur e
Koraishidis quispiam cui non praeponderaturus est, bonitate et
excellentia, et intellectu et gloria, et acumine etsi opum inops
fuerit, (et certe opes umbra transiens sunt et depositum quod
reddi debet,) desiderio Chadijae filiae Chowailedi tenetur, et
illa vicissim ipsius, quicquid autem dotis vice petieritis, ego
in me suscipiam, (Pocock, Specimen, e septima parte libri Ebn
Hamduni.)]
68 (return) [ The private life of Mahomet, from his birth to his
mission, is preserved by Abulfeda, (in Vit. c. 3-7,) and the
Arabian writers of genuine or apocryphal note, who are alleged by
Hottinger, (Hist. Orient. p. 204-211) Maracci, (tom. i. p.
10-14,) and Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 97-134.)]
According to the tradition of his companions, Mahomet 69 was
distinguished by the beauty of his person, an outward gift which
is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.
Before he spoke, the orator engaged on his side the affections of
a public or private audience. They applauded his commanding
presence, his majestic aspect, his piercing eye, his gracious
smile, his flowing beard, his countenance that painted every
sensation of the soul, and his gestures that enforced each
expression of the tongue. In the familiar offices of life he
scrupulously adhered to the grave and ceremonious politeness of
his country: his respectful attention to the rich and powerful
was dignified by his condescension and affability to the poorest
citizens of Mecca: the frankness of his manner concealed the
artifice of his views; and the habits of courtesy were imputed to
personal friendship or universal benevolence. His memory was
capacious and retentive; his wit easy and social; his imagination
sublime; his judgment clear, rapid, and decisive. He possessed
the courage both of thought and action; and, although his designs
might gradually expand with his success, the first idea which he
entertained of his divine mission bears the stamp of an original
and superior genius. The son of Abdallah was educated in the
bosom of the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect of
Arabia; and the fluency of his speech was corrected and enhanced
by the practice of discreet and seasonable silence. With these
powers of eloquence, Mahomet was an illiterate Barbarian: his
youth had never been instructed in the arts of reading and
writing; 70 the common ignorance exempted him from shame or
reproach, but he was reduced to a narrow circle of existence, and
deprived of those faithful mirrors, which reflect to our mind the
minds of sages and heroes. Yet the book of nature and of man was
open to his view; and some fancy has been indulged in the
political and philosophical observations which are ascribed to
the Arabian traveller. 71 He compares the nations and the regions
of the earth; discovers the weakness of the Persian and Roman
monarchies; beholds, with pity and indignation, the degeneracy of
the times; and resolves to unite under one God and one king the
invincible spirit and primitive virtues of the Arabs. Our more
accurate inquiry will suggest, that, instead of visiting the
courts, the camps, the temples, of the East, the two journeys of
Mahomet into Syria were confined to the fairs of Bostra and
Damascus; that he was only thirteen years of age when he
accompanied the caravan of his uncle; and that his duty compelled
him to return as soon as he had disposed of the merchandise of
Cadijah. In these hasty and superficial excursions, the eye of
genius might discern some objects invisible to his grosser
companions; some seeds of knowledge might be cast upon a fruitful
soil; but his ignorance of the Syriac language must have checked
his curiosity; and I cannot perceive, in the life or writings of
Mahomet, that his prospect was far extended beyond the limits of
the Arabian world. From every region of that solitary world, the
pilgrims of Mecca were annually assembled, by the calls of
devotion and commerce: in the free concourse of multitudes, a
simple citizen, in his native tongue, might study the political
state and character of the tribes, the theory and practice of the
Jews and Christians. Some useful strangers might be tempted, or
forced, to implore the rights of hospitality; and the enemies of
Mahomet have named the Jew, the Persian, and the Syrian monk,
whom they accuse of lending their secret aid to the composition
of the Koran. 72 Conversation enriches the understanding, but
solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work
denotes the hand of a single artist. From his earliest youth
Mahomet was addicted to religious contemplation; each year,
during the month of Ramadan, he withdrew from the world, and from
the arms of Cadijah: in the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca,
73 he consulted the spirit of fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is
not in the heavens, but in the mind of the prophet. The faith
which, under the name of Islam, he preached to his family and
nation, is compounded of an eternal truth, and a necessary
fiction, That there is only one God, and that Mahomet is the
apostle of God.
69 (return) [ Abulfeda, in Vit. c. lxv. lxvi. Gagnier, Vie de
Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 272-289. The best traditions of the person
and conversation of the prophet are derived from Ayesha, Ali, and
Abu Horaira, (Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 267. Ockley’s Hist. of the
Saracens, vol. ii. p. 149,) surnamed the Father of a Cat, who
died in the year 59 of the Hegira. * Note: Compare, likewise, the
new Life of Mahomet (Mohammed der prophet) by Dr. Weil,
(Stuttgart, 1843.) Dr. Weil has a new tradition, that Mahomet was
at one time a shepherd. This assimilation to the life of Moses,
instead of giving probability to the story, as Dr. Weil suggests,
makes it more suspicious. Note, p. 34.—M. 1845.]
70 (return) [ Those who believe that Mahomet could read or write
are incapable of reading what is written with another pen, in the
Suras, or chapters of the Koran, vii. xxix. xcvi. These texts,
and the tradition of the Sonna, are admitted, without doubt, by
Abulfeda, (in Vit. vii.,) Gagnier, (Not. ad Abulfed. p. 15,)
Pocock, (Specimen, p. 151,) Reland, (de Religione Mohammedica, p.
236,) and Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 42.) Mr. White, almost
alone, denies the ignorance, to accuse the imposture, of the
prophet. His arguments are far from satisfactory. Two short
trading journeys to the fairs of Syria were surely not sufficient
to infuse a science so rare among the citizens of Mecca: it was
not in the cool, deliberate act of treaty, that Mahomet would
have dropped the mask; nor can any conclusion be drawn from the
words of disease and delirium. The lettered youth, before he
aspired to the prophetic character, must have often exercised, in
private life, the arts of reading and writing; and his first
converts, of his own family, would have been the first to detect
and upbraid his scandalous hypocrisy, (White’s Sermons, p. 203,
204, Notes, p. xxxvi.—xxxviii.) * Note: (Academ. des Inscript. I.
p. 295) has observed that the text of the seveth Sura implies
that Mahomet could read, the tradition alone denies it, and,
according to Dr. Weil, (p. 46,) there is another reading of the
tradition, that “he could not read well.” Dr. Weil is not quite
so successful in explaining away Sura xxix. It means, he thinks
that he had not read any books, from which he could have
borrowed.—M. 1845.]
71 (return) [ The count de Boulainvilliers (Vie de Mahomet, p.
202-228) leads his Arabian pupil, like the Telemachus of Fenelon,
or the Cyrus of Ramsay. His journey to the court of Persia is
probably a fiction nor can I trace the origin of his exclamation,
“Les Grecs sont pour tant des hommes.” The two Syrian journeys
are expressed by almost all the Arabian writers, both Mahometans
and Christians, (Gagnier Abulfed. p. 10.)]
72 (return) [ I am not at leisure to pursue the fables or
conjectures which name the strangers accused or suspected by the
infidels of Mecca, (Koran, c. 16, p. 223, c. 35, p. 297, with
Sale’s Remarks. Prideaux’s Life of Mahomet, p. 22-27. Gagnier,
Not. ad Abulfed. p. 11, 74. Maracci, tom. ii. p. 400.) Even
Prideaux has observed, that the transaction must have been
secret, and that the scene lay in the heart of Arabia.]
73 (return) [ Abulfeda in Vit. c. 7, p. 15. Gagnier, tom. i. p.
133, 135. The situation of Mount Hera is remarked by Abulfeda
(Geograph. Arab p. 4.) Yet Mahomet had never read of the cave of
Egeria, ubi nocturnae Numa constituebat amicae, of the Idaean
Mount, where Minos conversed with Jove, &c.]
It is the boast of the Jewish apologists, that while the learned
nations of antiquity were deluded by the fables of polytheism,
their simple ancestors of Palestine preserved the knowledge and
worship of the true God. The moral attributes of Jehovah may not
easily be reconciled with the standard of human virtue: his
metaphysical qualities are darkly expressed; but each page of the
Pentateuch and the Prophets is an evidence of his power: the
unity of his name is inscribed on the first table of the law; and
his sanctuary was never defiled by any visible image of the
invisible essence. After the ruin of the temple, the faith of the
Hebrew exiles was purified, fixed, and enlightened, by the
spiritual devotion of the synagogue; and the authority of Mahomet
will not justify his perpetual reproach, that the Jews of Mecca
or Medina adored Ezra as the son of God. 74 But the children of
Israel had ceased to be a people; and the religions of the world
were guilty, at least in the eyes of the prophet, of giving sons,
or daughters, or companions, to the supreme God. In the rude
idolatry of the Arabs, the crime is manifest and audacious: the
Sabians are poorly excused by the preeminence of the first
planet, or intelligence, in their celestial hierarchy; and in the
Magian system the conflict of the two principles betrays the
imperfection of the conqueror. The Christians of the seventh
century had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of Paganism:
their public and private vows were addressed to the relics and
images that disgraced the temples of the East: the throne of the
Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs, and saints, and
angels, the objects of popular veneration; and the Collyridian
heretics, who flourished in the fruitful soil of Arabia, invested
the Virgin Mary with the name and honors of a goddess. 75 The
mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation appear to contradict the
principle of the divine unity. In their obvious sense, they
introduce three equal deities, and transform the man Jesus into
the substance of the Son of God: 76 an orthodox commentary will
satisfy only a believing mind: intemperate curiosity and zeal had
torn the veil of the sanctuary; and each of the Oriental sects
was eager to confess that all, except themselves, deserved the
reproach of idolatry and polytheism. The creed of Mahomet is free
from suspicion or ambiguity; and the Koran is a glorious
testimony to the unity of God. The prophet of Mecca rejected the
worship of idols and men, of stars and planets, on the rational
principle that whatever rises must set, that whatever is born
must die, that whatever is corruptible must decay and perish. 77
In the Author of the universe, his rational enthusiasm confessed
and adored an infinite and eternal being, without form or place,
without issue or similitude, present to our most secret thoughts,
existing by the necessity of his own nature, and deriving from
himself all moral and intellectual perfection. These sublime
truths, thus announced in the language of the prophet, 78 are
firmly held by his disciples, and defined with metaphysical
precision by the interpreters of the Koran. A philosophic theist
might subscribe the popular creed of the Mahometans; 79 a creed
too sublime, perhaps, for our present faculties. What object
remains for the fancy, or even the understanding, when we have
abstracted from the unknown substance all ideas of time and
space, of motion and matter, of sensation and reflection? The
first principle of reason and revolution was confirmed by the
voice of Mahomet: his proselytes, from India to Morocco, are
distinguished by the name of Unitarians; and the danger of
idolatry has been prevented by the interdiction of images. The
doctrine of eternal decrees and absolute predestination is
strictly embraced by the Mahometans; and they struggle, with the
common difficulties, how to reconcile the prescience of God with
the freedom and responsibility of man; how to explain the
permission of evil under the reign of infinite power and infinite
goodness.
74 (return) [ Koran, c. 9, p. 153. Al Beidawi, and the other
commentators quoted by Sale, adhere to the charge; but I do not
understand that it is colored by the most obscure or absurd
tradition of the Talmud.]
75 (return) [ Hottinger, Hist. Orient. p. 225-228. The
Collyridian heresy was carried from Thrace to Arabia by some
women, and the name was borrowed from the cake, which they
offered to the goddess. This example, that of Beryllus bishop of
Bostra, (Euseb. Hist. Eccles. l. vi. c. 33,) and several others,
may excuse the reproach, Arabia haerese haersewn ferax.]
76 (return) [ The three gods in the Koran (c. 4, p. 81, c. 5, p.
92) are obviously directed against our Catholic mystery: but the
Arabic commentators understand them of the Father, the Son, and
the Virgin Mary, an heretical Trinity, maintained, as it is said,
by some Barbarians at the Council of Nice, (Eutych. Annal. tom.
i. p. 440.) But the existence of the Marianites is denied by the
candid Beausobre, (Hist. de Manicheisme, tom. i. p. 532;) and he
derives the mistake from the word Roxah, the Holy Ghost, which in
some Oriental tongues is of the feminine gender, and is
figuratively styled the mother of Christ in the Gospel of the
Nazarenes.]
77 (return) [ This train of thought is philosophically
exemplified in the character of Abraham, who opposed in Chaldaea
the first introduction of idolatry, (Koran, c. 6, p. 106.
D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 13.)]
78 (return) [ See the Koran, particularly the second, (p. 30,)
the fifty-seventh, (p. 437,) the fifty-eighth (p. 441) chapters,
which proclaim the omnipotence of the Creator.]
79 (return) [ The most orthodox creeds are translated by Pocock,
(Specimen, p. 274, 284-292,) Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, vol.
ii. p. lxxxii.—xcv.,) Reland, (de Religion. Moham. l. i. p.
7-13,) and Chardin, (Voyages en Perse, tom. iv. p. 4-28.) The
great truth, that God is without similitude, is foolishly
criticized by Maracci, (Alcoran, tom. i. part iii. p. 87-94,)
because he made man after his own image.]
The God of nature has written his existence on all his works, and
his law in the heart of man. To restore the knowledge of the one,
and the practice of the other, has been the real or pretended aim
of the prophets of every age: the liberality of Mahomet allowed
to his predecessors the same credit which he claimed for himself;
and the chain of inspiration was prolonged from the fall of Adam
to the promulgation of the Koran. 80 During that period, some
rays of prophetic light had been imparted to one hundred and
twenty-four thousand of the elect, discriminated by their
respective measure of virtue and grace; three hundred and
thirteen apostles were sent with a special commission to recall
their country from idolatry and vice; one hundred and four
volumes have been dictated by the Holy Spirit; and six
legislators of transcendent brightness have announced to mankind
the six successive revelations of various rites, but of one
immutable religion. The authority and station of Adam, Noah,
Abraham, Moses, Christ, and Mahomet, rise in just gradation above
each other; but whosoever hates or rejects any one of the
prophets is numbered with the infidels. The writings of the
patriarchs were extant only in the apocryphal copies of the
Greeks and Syrians: 81 the conduct of Adam had not entitled him
to the gratitude or respect of his children; the seven precepts
of Noah were observed by an inferior and imperfect class of the
proselytes of the synagogue; 82 and the memory of Abraham was
obscurely revered by the Sabians in his native land of Chaldaea:
of the myriads of prophets, Moses and Christ alone lived and
reigned; and the remnant of the inspired writings was comprised
in the books of the Old and the New Testament. The miraculous
story of Moses is consecrated and embellished in the Koran; 83
and the captive Jews enjoy the secret revenge of imposing their
own belief on the nations whose recent creeds they deride. For
the author of Christianity, the Mahometans are taught by the
prophet to entertain a high and mysterious reverence. 84 “Verily,
Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, is the apostle of God, and his
word, which he conveyed unto Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from
him; honorable in this world, and in the world to come, and one
of those who approach near to the presence of God.” 85 The
wonders of the genuine and apocryphal gospels 86 are profusely
heaped on his head; and the Latin church has not disdained to
borrow from the Koran the immaculate conception 87 of his virgin
mother. Yet Jesus was a mere mortal; and, at the day of judgment,
his testimony will serve to condemn both the Jews, who reject him
as a prophet, and the Christians, who adore him as the Son of
God. The malice of his enemies aspersed his reputation, and
conspired against his life; but their intention only was guilty;
a phantom or a criminal was substituted on the cross; and the
innocent saint was translated to the seventh heaven. 88 During
six hundred years the gospel was the way of truth and salvation;
but the Christians insensibly forgot both the laws and example of
their founder; and Mahomet was instructed by the Gnostics to
accuse the church, as well as the synagogue, of corrupting the
integrity of the sacred text. 89 The piety of Moses and of Christ
rejoiced in the assurance of a future prophet, more illustrious
than themselves: the evangelical promise of the Paraclete, or
Holy Ghost, was prefigured in the name, and accomplished in the
person, of Mahomet, 90 the greatest and the last of the apostles
of God.
80 (return) [ Reland, de Relig. Moham. l. i. p. 17-47. Sale’s
Preliminary Discourse, p. 73-76. Voyage de Chardin, tom. iv. p.
28-37, and 37-47, for the Persian addition, “Ali is the vicar of
God!” Yet the precise number of the prophets is not an article of
faith.]
81 (return) [ For the apocryphal books of Adam, see Fabricius,
Codex Pseudepigraphus V. T. p. 27-29; of Seth, p. 154-157; of
Enoch, p. 160-219. But the book of Enoch is consecrated, in some
measure, by the quotation of the apostle St. Jude; and a long
legendary fragment is alleged by Syncellus and Scaliger. * Note:
The whole book has since been recovered in the Ethiopic
language,—and has been edited and translated by Archbishop
Lawrence, Oxford, 1881—M.]
82 (return) [ The seven precepts of Noah are explained by
Marsham, (Canon Chronicus, p. 154-180,) who adopts, on this
occasion, the learning and credulity of Selden.]
83 (return) [ The articles of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, &c., in
the Bibliotheque of D’Herbelot, are gayly bedecked with the
fanciful legends of the Mahometans, who have built on the
groundwork of Scripture and the Talmud.]
84 (return) [ Koran, c. 7, p. 128, &c., c. 10, p. 173, &c.
D’Herbelot, p. 647, &c.]
85 (return) [ Koran, c. 3, p. 40, c. 4. p. 80. D’Herbelot, p.
399, &c.]
86 (return) [ See the Gospel of St. Thomas, or of the Infancy, in
the Codex Apocryphus N. T. of Fabricius, who collects the various
testimonies concerning it, (p. 128-158.) It was published in
Greek by Cotelier, and in Arabic by Sike, who thinks our present
copy more recent than Mahomet. Yet his quotations agree with the
original about the speech of Christ in his cradle, his living
birds of clay, &c. (Sike, c. i. p. 168, 169, c. 36, p. 198, 199,
c. 46, p. 206. Cotelier, c. 2, p. 160, 161.)]
87 (return) [ It is darkly hinted in the Koran, (c. 3, p. 39,)
and more clearly explained by the tradition of the Sonnites,
(Sale’s Note, and Maracci, tom. ii. p. 112.) In the xiith
century, the immaculate conception was condemned by St. Bernard
as a presumptuous novelty, (Fra Paolo, Istoria del Concilio di
Trento, l. ii.)]
88 (return) [ See the Koran, c. 3, v. 53, and c. 4, v. 156, of
Maracci’s edition. Deus est praestantissimus dolose agentium (an
odd praise)... nec crucifixerunt eum, sed objecta est eis
similitudo; an expression that may suit with the system of the
Docetes; but the commentators believe (Maracci, tom. ii. p.
113-115, 173. Sale, p. 42, 43, 79) that another man, a friend or
an enemy, was crucified in the likeness of Jesus; a fable which
they had read in the Gospel of St. Barnabus, and which had been
started as early as the time of Irenaeus, by some Ebionite
heretics, (Beausobre, Hist. du Manicheisme, tom. ii. p. 25,
Mosheim. de Reb. Christ. p. 353.)]
89 (return) [ This charge is obscurely urged in the Koran, (c. 3,
p. 45;) but neither Mahomet, nor his followers, are sufficiently
versed in languages and criticism to give any weight or color to
their suspicions. Yet the Arians and Nestorians could relate some
stories, and the illiterate prophet might listen to the bold
assertions of the Manichaeans. See Beausobre, tom. i. p.
291-305.]
90 (return) [ Among the prophecies of the Old and New Testament,
which are perverted by the fraud or ignorance of the Mussulmans,
they apply to the prophet the promise of the Paraclete, or
Comforter, which had been already usurped by the Montanists and
Manichaeans, (Beausobre, Hist. Critique du Manicheisme, tom. i.
p. 263, &c.;) and the easy change of letters affords the
etymology of the name of Mohammed, (Maracci, tom. i. part i. p.
15-28.)]
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part IV.
The communication of ideas requires a similitude of thought and
language: the discourse of a philosopher would vibrate without
effect on the ear of a peasant; yet how minute is the distance of
their understandings, if it be compared with the contact of an
infinite and a finite mind, with the word of God expressed by the
tongue or the pen of a mortal! The inspiration of the Hebrew
prophets, of the apostles and evangelists of Christ, might not be
incompatible with the exercise of their reason and memory; and
the diversity of their genius is strongly marked in the style and
composition of the books of the Old and New Testament. But
Mahomet was content with a character, more humble, yet more
sublime, of a simple editor; the substance of the Koran, 91
according to himself or his disciples, is uncreated and eternal;
subsisting in the essence of the Deity, and inscribed with a pen
of light on the table of his everlasting decrees. A paper copy,
in a volume of silk and gems, was brought down to the lowest
heaven by the angel Gabriel, who, under the Jewish economy, had
indeed been despatched on the most important errands; and this
trusty messenger successively revealed the chapters and verses to
the Arabian prophet. Instead of a perpetual and perfect measure
of the divine will, the fragments of the Koran were produced at
the discretion of Mahomet; each revelation is suited to the
emergencies of his policy or passion; and all contradiction is
removed by the saving maxim, that any text of Scripture is
abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage. The word of God,
and of the apostle, was diligently recorded by his disciples on
palm-leaves and the shoulder-bones of mutton; and the pages,
without order or connection, were cast into a domestic chest, in
the custody of one of his wives. Two years after the death of
Mahomet, the sacred volume was collected and published by his
friend and successor Abubeker: the work was revised by the caliph
Othman, in the thirtieth year of the Hegira; and the various
editions of the Koran assert the same miraculous privilege of a
uniform and incorruptible text. In the spirit of enthusiasm or
vanity, the prophet rests the truth of his mission on the merit
of his book; audaciously challenges both men and angels to
imitate the beauties of a single page; and presumes to assert
that God alone could dictate this incomparable performance. 92
This argument is most powerfully addressed to a devout Arabian,
whose mind is attuned to faith and rapture; whose ear is
delighted by the music of sounds; and whose ignorance is
incapable of comparing the productions of human genius. 93 The
harmony and copiousness of style will not reach, in a version,
the European infidel: he will peruse with impatience the endless
incoherent rhapsody of fable, and precept, and declamation, which
seldom excites a sentiment or an idea, which sometimes crawls in
the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds. The divine
attributes exalt the fancy of the Arabian missionary; but his
loftiest strains must yield to the sublime simplicity of the book
of Job, composed in a remote age, in the same country, and in the
same language. 94 If the composition of the Koran exceed the
faculties of a man to what superior intelligence should we
ascribe the Iliad of Homer, or the Philippics of Demosthenes? In
all religions, the life of the founder supplies the silence of
his written revelation: the sayings of Mahomet were so many
lessons of truth; his actions so many examples of virtue; and the
public and private memorials were preserved by his wives and
companions. At the end of two hundred years, the Sonna, or oral
law, was fixed and consecrated by the labors of Al Bochari, who
discriminated seven thousand two hundred and seventy-five genuine
traditions, from a mass of three hundred thousand reports, of a
more doubtful or spurious character. Each day the pious author
prayed in the temple of Mecca, and performed his ablutions with
the water of Zemzem: the pages were successively deposited on the
pulpit and the sepulchre of the apostle; and the work has been
approved by the four orthodox sects of the Sonnites. 95
91 (return) [ For the Koran, see D’Herbelot, p. 85-88. Maracci,
tom. i. in Vit. Mohammed. p. 32-45. Sale, Preliminary Discourse,
p. 58-70.]
92 (return) [ Koran, c. 17, v. 89. In Sale, p. 235, 236. In
Maracci, p. 410. * Note: Compare Von Hammer Geschichte der
Assassinen p. 11.-M.]
93 (return) [ Yet a sect of Arabians was persuaded, that it might
be equalled or surpassed by a human pen, (Pocock, Specimen, p.
221, &c.;) and Maracci (the polemic is too hard for the
translator) derides the rhyming affectation of the most applauded
passage, (tom. i. part ii. p. 69-75.)]
94 (return) [ Colloquia (whether real or fabulous) in media
Arabia atque ab Arabibus habita, (Lowth, de Poesi Hebraeorum.
Praelect. xxxii. xxxiii. xxxiv, with his German editor,
Michaelis, Epimetron iv.) Yet Michaelis (p. 671-673) has detected
many Egyptian images, the elephantiasis, papyrus, Nile,
crocodile, &c. The language is ambiguously styled
Arabico-Hebraea. The resemblance of the sister dialects was much
more visible in their childhood, than in their mature age,
(Michaelis, p. 682. Schultens, in Praefat. Job.) * Note: The age
of the book of Job is still and probably will still be disputed.
Rosenmuller thus states his own opinion: “Certe serioribus
reipublicae temporibus assignandum esse librum, suadere videtur
ad Chaldaismum vergens sermo.” Yet the observations of
Kosegarten, which Rosenmuller has given in a note, and common
reason, suggest that this Chaldaism may be the native form of a
much earlier dialect; or the Chaldaic may have adopted the
poetical archaisms of a dialect, differing from, but not less
ancient than, the Hebrew. See Rosenmuller, Proleg. on Job, p. 41.
The poetry appears to me to belong to a much earlier period.—M.]
95 (return) [ Ali Bochari died A. H. 224. See D’Herbelot, p. 208,
416, 827. Gagnier, Not. ad Abulfed. c. 19, p. 33.]
The mission of the ancient prophets, of Moses and of Jesus had
been confirmed by many splendid prodigies; and Mahomet was
repeatedly urged, by the inhabitants of Mecca and Medina, to
produce a similar evidence of his divine legation; to call down
from heaven the angel or the volume of his revelation, to create
a garden in the desert, or to kindle a conflagration in the
unbelieving city. As often as he is pressed by the demands of the
Koreish, he involves himself in the obscure boast of vision and
prophecy, appeals to the internal proofs of his doctrine, and
shields himself behind the providence of God, who refuses those
signs and wonders that would depreciate the merit of faith, and
aggravate the guilt of infidelity But the modest or angry tone of
his apologies betrays his weakness and vexation; and these
passages of scandal established, beyond suspicion, the integrity
of the Koran. 96 The votaries of Mahomet are more assured than
himself of his miraculous gifts; and their confidence and
credulity increase as they are farther removed from the time and
place of his spiritual exploits. They believe or affirm that
trees went forth to meet him; that he was saluted by stones; that
water gushed from his fingers; that he fed the hungry, cured the
sick, and raised the dead; that a beam groaned to him; that a
camel complained to him; that a shoulder of mutton informed him
of its being poisoned; and that both animate and inanimate nature
were equally subject to the apostle of God. 97 His dream of a
nocturnal journey is seriously described as a real and corporeal
transaction. A mysterious animal, the Borak, conveyed him from
the temple of Mecca to that of Jerusalem: with his companion
Gabriel he successively ascended the seven heavens, and received
and repaid the salutations of the patriarchs, the prophets, and
the angels, in their respective mansions. Beyond the seventh
heaven, Mahomet alone was permitted to proceed; he passed the
veil of unity, approached within two bow-shots of the throne, and
felt a cold that pierced him to the heart, when his shoulder was
touched by the hand of God. After this familiar, though important
conversation, he again descended to Jerusalem, remounted the
Borak, returned to Mecca, and performed in the tenth part of a
night the journey of many thousand years. 98 According to another
legend, the apostle confounded in a national assembly the
malicious challenge of the Koreish. His resistless word split
asunder the orb of the moon: the obedient planet stooped from her
station in the sky, accomplished the seven revolutions round the
Caaba, saluted Mahomet in the Arabian tongue, and, suddenly
contracting her dimensions, entered at the collar, and issued
forth through the sleeve, of his shirt. 99 The vulgar are amused
with these marvellous tales; but the gravest of the Mussulman
doctors imitate the modesty of their master, and indulge a
latitude of faith or interpretation. 100 They might speciously
allege, that in preaching the religion it was needless to violate
the harmony of nature; that a creed unclouded with mystery may be
excused from miracles; and that the sword of Mahomet was not less
potent than the rod of Moses.
96 (return) [ See, more remarkably, Koran, c. 2, 6, 12, 13, 17.
Prideaux (Life of Mahomet, p. 18, 19) has confounded the
impostor. Maracci, with a more learned apparatus, has shown that
the passages which deny his miracles are clear and positive,
(Alcoran, tom. i. part ii. p. 7-12,) and those which seem to
assert them are ambiguous and insufficient, (p. 12-22.)]
97 (return) [ See the Specimen Hist. Arabum, the text of
Abulpharagius, p. 17, the notes of Pocock, p. 187-190.
D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 76, 77. Voyages de
Chardin, tom. iv. p. 200-203. Maracci (Alcoran, tom. i. p. 22-64)
has most laboriously collected and confuted the miracles and
prophecies of Mahomet, which, according to some writers, amount
to three thousand.]
98 (return) [ The nocturnal journey is circumstantially related
by Abulfeda (in Vit. Mohammed, c. 19, p. 33,) who wishes to think
it a vision; by Prideaux, (p. 31-40,) who aggravates the
absurdities; and by Gagnier (tom. i. p. 252-343,) who declares,
from the zealous Al Jannabi, that to deny this journey, is to
disbelieve the Koran. Yet the Koran without naming either heaven,
or Jerusalem, or Mecca, has only dropped a mysterious hint: Laus
illi qui transtulit servum suum ab oratorio Haram ad oratorium
remotissimum, (Koran, c. 17, v. 1; in Maracci, tom. ii. p. 407;
for Sale’s version is more licentious.) A slender basis for the
aerial structure of tradition.]
99 (return) [ In the prophetic style, which uses the present or
past for the future, Mahomet had said, Appropinquavit hora, et
scissa est luna, (Koran, c. 54, v. 1; in Maracci, tom. ii. p.
688.) This figure of rhetoric has been converted into a fact,
which is said to be attested by the most respectable
eye-witnesses, (Maracci, tom. ii. p. 690.) The festival is still
celebrated by the Persians, (Chardin, tom. iv. p. 201;) and the
legend is tediously spun out by Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. i.
p. 183-234,) on the faith, as it should seem, of the credulous Al
Jannabi. Yet a Mahometan doctor has arraigned the credit of the
principal witness, (apud Pocock, Specimen, p. 187;) the best
interpreters are content with the simple sense of the Koran. (Al
Beidawi, apud Hottinger, Hist. Orient. l. ii. p. 302;) and the
silence of Abulfeda is worthy of a prince and a philosopher. *
Note: Compare Hamaker Notes to Inc. Auct. Lib. de Exped.
Memphides, p. 62—M.]
100 (return) [ Abulpharagius, in Specimen Hist. Arab. p. 17; and
his scepticism is justified in the notes of Pocock, p. 190-194,
from the purest authorities.]
The polytheist is oppressed and distracted by the variety of
superstition: a thousand rites of Egyptian origin were interwoven
with the essence of the Mosaic law; and the spirit of the gospel
had evaporated in the pageantry of the church. The prophet of
Mecca was tempted by prejudice, or policy, or patriotism, to
sanctify the rites of the Arabians, and the custom of visiting
the holy stone of the Caaba. But the precepts of Mahomet himself
inculcates a more simple and rational piety: prayer, fasting, and
alms, are the religious duties of a Mussulman; and he is
encouraged to hope, that prayer will carry him half way to God,
fasting will bring him to the door of his palace, and alms will
gain him admittance. 101 I. According to the tradition of the
nocturnal journey, the apostle, in his personal conference with
the Deity, was commanded to impose on his disciples the daily
obligation of fifty prayers. By the advice of Moses, he applied
for an alleviation of this intolerable burden; the number was
gradually reduced to five; without any dispensation of business
or pleasure, or time or place: the devotion of the faithful is
repeated at daybreak, at noon, in the afternoon, in the evening,
and at the first watch of the night; and in the present decay of
religious fervor, our travellers are edified by the profound
humility and attention of the Turks and Persians. Cleanliness is
the key of prayer: the frequent lustration of the hands, the
face, and the body, which was practised of old by the Arabs, is
solemnly enjoined by the Koran; and a permission is formally
granted to supply with sand the scarcity of water. The words and
attitudes of supplication, as it is performed either sitting, or
standing, or prostrate on the ground, are prescribed by custom or
authority; but the prayer is poured forth in short and fervent
ejaculations; the measure of zeal is not exhausted by a tedious
liturgy; and each Mussulman for his own person is invested with
the character of a priest. Among the theists, who reject the use
of images, it has been found necessary to restrain the wanderings
of the fancy, by directing the eye and the thought towards a
kebla, or visible point of the horizon. The prophet was at first
inclined to gratify the Jews by the choice of Jerusalem; but he
soon returned to a more natural partiality; and five times every
day the eyes of the nations at Astracan, at Fez, at Delhi, are
devoutly turned to the holy temple of Mecca. Yet every spot for
the service of God is equally pure: the Mahometans indifferently
pray in their chamber or in the street. As a distinction from the
Jews and Christians, the Friday in each week is set apart for the
useful institution of public worship: the people is assembled in
the mosch; and the imam, some respectable elder, ascends the
pulpit, to begin the prayer and pronounce the sermon. But the
Mahometan religion is destitute of priesthood or sacrifice; and
the independent spirit of fanaticism looks down with contempt on
the ministers and the slaves of superstition. 1011
II. The voluntary 102 penance of the ascetics, the torment and
glory of their lives, was odious to a prophet who censured in his
companions a rash vow of abstaining from flesh, and women, and
sleep; and firmly declared, that he would suffer no monks in his
religion. 103 Yet he instituted, in each year, a fast of thirty
days; and strenuously recommended the observance as a discipline
which purifies the soul and subdues the body, as a salutary
exercise of obedience to the will of God and his apostle. During
the month of Ramadan, from the rising to the setting of the sun,
the Mussulman abstains from eating, and drinking, and women, and
baths, and perfumes; from all nourishment that can restore his
strength, from all pleasure that can gratify his senses. In the
revolution of the lunar year, the Ramadan coincides, by turns,
with the winter cold and the summer heat; and the patient martyr,
without assuaging his thirst with a drop of water, must expect
the close of a tedious and sultry day. The interdiction of wine,
peculiar to some orders of priests or hermits, is converted by
Mahomet alone into a positive and general law; 104 and a
considerable portion of the globe has abjured, at his command,
the use of that salutary, though dangerous, liquor. These painful
restraints are, doubtless, infringed by the libertine, and eluded
by the hypocrite; but the legislator, by whom they are enacted,
cannot surely be accused of alluring his proselytes by the
indulgence of their sensual appetites. III. The charity of the
Mahometans descends to the animal creation; and the Koran
repeatedly inculcates, not as a merit, but as a strict and
indispensable duty, the relief of the indigent and unfortunate.
Mahomet, perhaps, is the only lawgiver who has defined the
precise measure of charity: the standard may vary with the degree
and nature of property, as it consists either in money, in corn
or cattle, in fruits or merchandise; but the Mussulman does not
accomplish the law, unless he bestows a tenth of his revenue; and
if his conscience accuses him of fraud or extortion, the tenth,
under the idea of restitution, is enlarged to a fifth. 105
Benevolence is the foundation of justice, since we are forbid to
injure those whom we are bound to assist. A prophet may reveal
the secrets of heaven and of futurity; but in his moral precepts
he can only repeat the lessons of our own hearts.
101 (return) [ The most authentic account of these precepts,
pilgrimage, prayer, fasting, alms, and ablutions, is extracted
from the Persian and Arabian theologians by Maracci, (Prodrom.
part iv. p. 9-24,) Reland, (in his excellent treatise de
Religione Mohammedica, Utrecht, 1717, p. 67-123,) and Chardin,
(Voyages in Perse, tom. iv. p. 47-195.) Marace is a partial
accuser; but the jeweller, Chardin, had the eyes of a
philosopher; and Reland, a judicious student, had travelled over
the East in his closet at Utrecht. The xivth letter of Tournefort
(Voyage du Levont, tom. ii. p. 325-360, in octavo) describes what
he had seen of the religion of the Turks.]
1011 (return) [ Such is Mahometanism beyond the precincts of the
Holy City. But Mahomet retained, and the Koran sanctions, (Sale’s
Koran, c. 5, in inlt. c. 22, vol. ii. p. 171, 172,) the sacrifice
of sheep and camels (probably according to the old Arabian rites)
at Mecca; and the pilgrims complete their ceremonial with
sacrifices, sometimes as numerous and costly as those of King
Solomon. Compare note, vol. iv. c. xxiii. p. 96, and Forster’s
Mahometanism Unveiled, vol. i. p. 420. This author quotes the
questionable authority of Benjamin of Tudela, for the sacrifice
of a camel by the caliph at Bosra; but sacrifice undoubtedly
forms no part of the ordinary Mahometan ritual; nor will the
sanctity of the caliph, as the earthly representative of the
prophet, bear any close analogy to the priesthood of the Mosaic
or Gentila religions.—M.]
102 (return) [ Mahomet (Sale’s Koran, c. 9, p. 153) reproaches
the Christians with taking their priests and monks for their
lords, besides God. Yet Maracci (Prodromus, part iii. p. 69, 70)
excuses the worship, especially of the pope, and quotes, from the
Koran itself, the case of Eblis, or Satan, who was cast from
heaven for refusing to adore Adam.]
103 (return) [ Koran, c. 5, p. 94, and Sale’s note, which refers
to the authority of Jallaloddin and Al Beidawi. D’Herbelot
declares, that Mahomet condemned la vie religieuse; and that the
first swarms of fakirs, dervises, &c., did not appear till after
the year 300 of the Hegira, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 292, 718.)]
104 (return) [ See the double prohibition, (Koran, c. 2, p. 25,
c. 5, p. 94;) the one in the style of a legislator, the other in
that of a fanatic. The public and private motives of Mahomet are
investigated by Prideaux (Life of Mahomet, p. 62-64) and Sale,
(Preliminary Discourse, p. 124.)]
105 (return) [ The jealousy of Maracci (Prodromus, part iv. p.
33) prompts him to enumerate the more liberal alms of the
Catholics of Rome. Fifteen great hospitals are open to many
thousand patients and pilgrims; fifteen hundred maidens are
annually portioned; fifty-six charity schools are founded for
both sexes; one hundred and twenty confraternities relieve the
wants of their brethren, &c. The benevolence of London is still
more extensive; but I am afraid that much more is to be ascribed
to the humanity, than to the religion, of the people.]
The two articles of belief, and the four practical duties, of
Islam, are guarded by rewards and punishments; and the faith of
the Mussulman is devoutly fixed on the event of the judgment and
the last day. The prophet has not presumed to determine the
moment of that awful catastrophe, though he darkly announces the
signs, both in heaven and earth, which will precede the universal
dissolution, when life shall be destroyed, and the order of
creation shall be confounded in the primitive chaos. At the blast
of the trumpet, new worlds will start into being: angels, genii,
and men will arise from the dead, and the human soul will again
be united to the body. The doctrine of the resurrection was first
entertained by the Egyptians; 106 and their mummies were
embalmed, their pyramids were constructed, to preserve the
ancient mansion of the soul, during a period of three thousand
years. But the attempt is partial and unavailing; and it is with
a more philosophic spirit that Mahomet relies on the omnipotence
of the Creator, whose word can reanimate the breathless clay, and
collect the innumerable atoms, that no longer retain their form
or substance. 107 The intermediate state of the soul it is hard
to decide; and those who most firmly believe her immaterial
nature, are at a loss to understand how she can think or act
without the agency of the organs of sense.
106 (return) [ See Herodotus (l. ii. c. 123) and our learned
countryman Sir John Marsham, (Canon. Chronicus, p. 46.) The same
writer (p. 254-274) is an elaborate sketch of the infernal
regions, as they were painted by the fancy of the Egyptians and
Greeks, of the poets and philosophers of antiquity.]
107 (return) [ The Koran (c. 2, p. 259, &c.; of Sale, p. 32; of
Maracci, p. 97) relates an ingenious miracle, which satisfied the
curiosity, and confirmed the faith, of Abraham.]
The reunion of the soul and body will be followed by the final
judgment of mankind; and in his copy of the Magian picture, the
prophet has too faithfully represented the forms of proceeding,
and even the slow and successive operations, of an earthly
tribunal. By his intolerant adversaries he is upbraided for
extending, even to themselves, the hope of salvation, for
asserting the blackest heresy, that every man who believes in
God, and accomplishes good works, may expect in the last day a
favorable sentence. Such rational indifference is ill adapted to
the character of a fanatic; nor is it probable that a messenger
from heaven should depreciate the value and necessity of his own
revelation. In the idiom of the Koran, 108 the belief of God is
inseparable from that of Mahomet: the good works are those which
he has enjoined, and the two qualifications imply the profession
of Islam, to which all nations and all sects are equally invited.
Their spiritual blindness, though excused by ignorance and
crowned with virtue, will be scourged with everlasting torments;
and the tears which Mahomet shed over the tomb of his mother for
whom he was forbidden to pray, display a striking contrast of
humanity and enthusiasm. 109 The doom of the infidels is common:
the measure of their guilt and punishment is determined by the
degree of evidence which they have rejected, by the magnitude of
the errors which they have entertained: the eternal mansions of
the Christians, the Jews, the Sabians, the Magians, and
idolaters, are sunk below each other in the abyss; and the lowest
hell is reserved for the faithless hypocrites who have assumed
the mask of religion. After the greater part of mankind has been
condemned for their opinions, the true believers only will be
judged by their actions. The good and evil of each Mussulman will
be accurately weighed in a real or allegorical balance; and a
singular mode of compensation will be allowed for the payment of
injuries: the aggressor will refund an equivalent of his own good
actions, for the benefit of the person whom he has wronged; and
if he should be destitute of any moral property, the weight of
his sins will be loaded with an adequate share of the demerits of
the sufferer. According as the shares of guilt or virtue shall
preponderate, the sentence will be pronounced, and all, without
distinction, will pass over the sharp and perilous bridge of the
abyss; but the innocent, treading in the footsteps of Mahomet,
will gloriously enter the gates of paradise, while the guilty
will fall into the first and mildest of the seven hells. The term
of expiation will vary from nine hundred to seven thousand years;
but the prophet has judiciously promised, that all his disciples,
whatever may be their sins, shall be saved, by their own faith
and his intercession from eternal damnation. It is not surprising
that superstition should act most powerfully on the fears of her
votaries, since the human fancy can paint with more energy the
misery than the bliss of a future life. With the two simple
elements of darkness and fire, we create a sensation of pain,
which may be aggravated to an infinite degree by the idea of
endless duration. But the same idea operates with an opposite
effect on the continuity of pleasure; and too much of our present
enjoyments is obtained from the relief, or the comparison, of
evil. It is natural enough that an Arabian prophet should dwell
with rapture on the groves, the fountains, and the rivers of
paradise; but instead of inspiring the blessed inhabitants with a
liberal taste for harmony and science, conversation and
friendship, he idly celebrates the pearls and diamonds, the robes
of silk, palaces of marble, dishes of gold, rich wines,
artificial dainties, numerous attendants, and the whole train of
sensual and costly luxury, which becomes insipid to the owner,
even in the short period of this mortal life. Seventy-two Houris,
or black-eyed girls, of resplendent beauty, blooming youth,
virgin purity, and exquisite sensibility, will be created for the
use of the meanest believer; a moment of pleasure will be
prolonged to a thousand years; and his faculties will be
increased a hundred fold, to render him worthy of his felicity.
Notwithstanding a vulgar prejudice, the gates of heaven will be
open to both sexes; but Mahomet has not specified the male
companions of the female elect, lest he should either alarm the
jealousy of their former husbands, or disturb their felicity, by
the suspicion of an everlasting marriage. This image of a carnal
paradise has provoked the indignation, perhaps the envy, of the
monks: they declaim against the impure religion of Mahomet; and
his modest apologists are driven to the poor excuse of figures
and allegories. But the sounder and more consistent party adhere
without shame, to the literal interpretation of the Koran:
useless would be the resurrection of the body, unless it were
restored to the possession and exercise of its worthiest
faculties; and the union of sensual and intellectual enjoyment is
requisite to complete the happiness of the double animal, the
perfect man. Yet the joys of the Mahometan paradise will not be
confined to the indulgence of luxury and appetite; and the
prophet has expressly declared that all meaner happiness will be
forgotten and despised by the saints and martyrs, who shall be
admitted to the beatitude of the divine vision. 110
108 (return) [ The candid Reland has demonstrated, that Mahomet
damns all unbelievers, (de Religion. Moham. p. 128-142;) that
devils will not be finally saved, (p. 196-199;) that paradise
will not solely consist of corporeal delights, (p. 199-205;) and
that women’s souls are immortal. (p. 205-209.)]
109 (return) [ A Beidawi, apud Sale. Koran, c. 9, p. 164. The
refusal to pray for an unbelieving kindred is justified,
according to Mahomet, by the duty of a prophet, and the example
of Abraham, who reprobated his own father as an enemy of God. Yet
Abraham (he adds, c. 9, v. 116. Maracci, tom. ii. p. 317) fuit
sane pius, mitis.]
110 (return) [ For the day of judgment, hell, paradise, &c.,
consult the Koran, (c. 2, v. 25, c. 56, 78, &c.;) with Maracci’s
virulent, but learned, refutation, (in his notes, and in the
Prodromus, part iv. p. 78, 120, 122, &c.;) D’Herbelot,
(Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 368, 375;) Reland, (p. 47-61;) and
Sale, (p. 76-103.) The original ideas of the Magi are darkly and
doubtfully explored by their apologist, Dr. Hyde, (Hist.
Religionis Persarum, c. 33, p. 402-412, Oxon. 1760.) In the
article of Mahomet, Bayle has shown how indifferently wit and
philosophy supply the absence of genuine information.]
The first and most arduous conquests of Mahomet 111 were those of
his wife, his servant, his pupil, and his friend; 112 since he
presented himself as a prophet to those who were most conversant
with his infirmities as a man. Yet Cadijah believed the words,
and cherished the glory, of her husband; the obsequious and
affectionate Zeid was tempted by the prospect of freedom; the
illustrious Ali, the son of Abu Taleb, embraced the sentiments of
his cousin with the spirit of a youthful hero; and the wealth,
the moderation, the veracity of Abubeker confirmed the religion
of the prophet whom he was destined to succeed. By his
persuasion, ten of the most respectable citizens of Mecca were
introduced to the private lessons of Islam; they yielded to the
voice of reason and enthusiasm; they repeated the fundamental
creed, “There is but one God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God;”
and their faith, even in this life, was rewarded with riches and
honors, with the command of armies and the government of
kingdoms. Three years were silently employed in the conversion of
fourteen proselytes, the first-fruits of his mission; but in the
fourth year he assumed the prophetic office, and resolving to
impart to his family the light of divine truth, he prepared a
banquet, a lamb, as it is said, and a bowl of milk, for the
entertainment of forty guests of the race of Hashem. “Friends and
kinsmen,” said Mahomet to the assembly, “I offer you, and I alone
can offer, the most precious of gifts, the treasures of this
world and of the world to come. God has commanded me to call you
to his service. Who among you will support my burden? Who among
you will be my companion and my vizier?” 113 No answer was
returned, till the silence of astonishment, and doubt, and
contempt, was at length broken by the impatient courage of Ali, a
youth in the fourteenth year of his age. “O prophet, I am the
man: whosoever rises against thee, I will dash out his teeth,
tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his belly. O prophet, I
will be thy vizier over them.” Mahomet accepted his offer with
transport, and Abu Taled was ironically exhorted to respect the
superior dignity of his son. In a more serious tone, the father
of Ali advised his nephew to relinquish his impracticable design.
“Spare your remonstrances,” replied the intrepid fanatic to his
uncle and benefactor; “if they should place the sun on my right
hand, and the moon on my left, they should not divert me from my
course.” He persevered ten years in the exercise of his mission;
and the religion which has overspread the East and the West
advanced with a slow and painful progress within the walls of
Mecca. Yet Mahomet enjoyed the satisfaction of beholding the
increase of his infant congregation of Unitarians, who revered
him as a prophet, and to whom he seasonably dispensed the
spiritual nourishment of the Koran. The number of proselytes may
be esteemed by the absence of eighty-three men and eighteen
women, who retired to Aethiopia in the seventh year of his
mission; and his party was fortified by the timely conversion of
his uncle Hamza, and of the fierce and inflexible Omar, who
signalized in the cause of Islam the same zeal, which he had
exerted for its destruction. Nor was the charity of Mahomet
confined to the tribe of Koreish, or the precincts of Mecca: on
solemn festivals, in the days of pilgrimage, he frequented the
Caaba, accosted the strangers of every tribe, and urged, both in
private converse and public discourse, the belief and worship of
a sole Deity. Conscious of his reason and of his weakness, he
asserted the liberty of conscience, and disclaimed the use of
religious violence: 114 but he called the Arabs to repentance,
and conjured them to remember the ancient idolaters of Ad and
Thamud, whom the divine justice had swept away from the face of
the earth. 115
111 (return) [ Before I enter on the history of the prophet, it
is incumbent on me to produce my evidence. The Latin, French, and
English versions of the Koran are preceded by historical
discourses, and the three translators, Maracci, (tom. i. p.
10-32,) Savary, (tom. i. p. 1-248,) and Sale, (Preliminary
Discourse, p. 33-56,) had accurately studied the language and
character of their author. Two professed Lives of Mahomet have
been composed by Dr. Prideaux (Life of Mahomet, seventh edition,
London, 1718, in octavo) and the count de Boulainvilliers, (Vie
de Mahomed, Londres, 1730, in octavo: ) but the adverse wish of
finding an impostor or a hero, has too often corrupted the
learning of the doctor and the ingenuity of the count. The
article in D’Herbelot (Bibliot. Orient. p. 598-603) is chiefly
drawn from Novairi and Mirkond; but the best and most authentic
of our guides is M. Gagnier, a Frenchman by birth, and professor
at Oxford of the Oriental tongues. In two elaborate works,
(Ismael Abulfeda de Vita et Rebus gestis Mohammedis, &c. Latine
vertit, Praefatione et Notis illustravit Johannes Gagnier, Oxon.
1723, in folio. La Vie de Mahomet traduite et compilee de
l’Alcoran, des Traditions Authentiques de la Sonna et des
meilleurs Auteurs Arabes; Amsterdam, 1748, 3 vols. in 12mo.,) he
has interpreted, illustrated, and supplied the Arabic text of
Abulfeda and Al Jannabi; the first, an enlightened prince who
reigned at Hamah, in Syria, A.D. 1310-1332, (see Gagnier Praefat.
ad Abulfed.;) the second, a credulous doctor, who visited Mecca
A.D. 1556. (D’Herbelot, p. 397. Gagnier, tom. iii. p. 209, 210.)
These are my general vouchers, and the inquisitive reader may
follow the order of time, and the division of chapters. Yet I
must observe that both Abulfeda and Al Jannabi are modern
historians, and that they cannot appeal to any writers of the
first century of the Hegira. * Note: A new Life, by Dr. Weil,
(Stuttgart. 1843,) has added some few traditions unknown in
Europe. Of Dr. Weil’s Arabic scholarship, which professes to
correct many errors in Gagnier, in Maracci, and in M. von Hammer,
I am no judge. But it is remarkable that he does not seem
acquainted with the passage of Tabari, translated by Colonel Vans
Kennedy, in the Bombay Transactions, (vol. iii.,) the earliest
and most important addition made to the traditionary Life of
Mahomet. I am inclined to think Colonel Vans Kennedy’s
appreciation of the prophet’s character, which may be overlooked
in a criticism on Voltaire’s Mahomet, the most just which I have
ever read. The work of Dr. Weil appears to me most valuable in
its dissection and chronological view of the Koran.—M. 1845]
112 (return) [ After the Greeks, Prideaux (p. 8) discloses the
secret doubts of the wife of Mahomet. As if he had been a privy
counsellor of the prophet, Boulainvilliers (p. 272, &c.) unfolds
the sublime and patriotic views of Cadijah and the first
disciples.]
113 (return) [ Vezirus, portitor, bajulus, onus ferens; and this
plebeian name was transferred by an apt metaphor to the pillars
of the state, (Gagnier, Not. ad Abulfed. p. 19.) I endeavor to
preserve the Arabian idiom, as far as I can feel it myself in a
Latin or French translation.]
114 (return) [ The passages of the Koran in behalf of toleration
are strong and numerous: c. 2, v. 257, c. 16, 129, c. 17, 54, c.
45, 15, c. 50, 39, c. 88, 21, &c., with the notes of Maracci and
Sale. This character alone may generally decide the doubts of the
learned, whether a chapter was revealed at Mecca or Medina.]
115 (return) [ See the Koran, (passim, and especially c. 7, p.
123, 124, &c.,) and the tradition of the Arabs, (Pocock,
Specimen, p. 35-37.) The caverns of the tribe of Thamud, fit for
men of the ordinary stature, were shown in the midway between
Medina and Damascus. (Abulfed Arabiae Descript. p. 43, 44,) and
may be probably ascribed to the Throglodytes of the primitive
world, (Michaelis, ad Lowth de Poesi Hebraeor. p. 131-134.
Recherches sur les Egyptiens, tom. ii. p. 48, &c.)]
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part V.
The people of Mecca were hardened in their unbelief by
superstition and envy. The elders of the city, the uncles of the
prophet, affected to despise the presumption of an orphan, the
reformer of his country: the pious orations of Mahomet in the
Caaba were answered by the clamors of Abu Taleb. “Citizens and
pilgrims, listen not to the tempter, hearken not to his impious
novelties. Stand fast in the worship of Al Lata and Al Uzzah.”
Yet the son of Abdallah was ever dear to the aged chief: and he
protected the fame and person of his nephew against the assaults
of the Koreishites, who had long been jealous of the preeminence
of the family of Hashem. Their malice was colored with the
pretence of religion: in the age of Job, the crime of impiety was
punished by the Arabian magistrate; 116 and Mahomet was guilty of
deserting and denying the national deities. But so loose was the
policy of Mecca, that the leaders of the Koreish, instead of
accusing a criminal, were compelled to employ the measures of
persuasion or violence. They repeatedly addressed Abu Taleb in
the style of reproach and menace. “Thy nephew reviles our
religion; he accuses our wise forefathers of ignorance and folly;
silence him quickly, lest he kindle tumult and discord in the
city. If he persevere, we shall draw our swords against him and
his adherents, and thou wilt be responsible for the blood of thy
fellow-citizens.” The weight and moderation of Abu Taleb eluded
the violence of religious faction; the most helpless or timid of
the disciples retired to Aethiopia, and the prophet withdrew
himself to various places of strength in the town and country. As
he was still supported by his family, the rest of the tribe of
Koreish engaged themselves to renounce all intercourse with the
children of Hashem, neither to buy nor sell, neither to marry not
to give in marriage, but to pursue them with implacable enmity,
till they should deliver the person of Mahomet to the justice of
the gods. The decree was suspended in the Caaba before the eyes
of the nation; the messengers of the Koreish pursued the
Mussulman exiles in the heart of Africa: they besieged the
prophet and his most faithful followers, intercepted their water,
and inflamed their mutual animosity by the retaliation of
injuries and insults. A doubtful truce restored the appearances
of concord till the death of Abu Taleb abandoned Mahomet to the
power of his enemies, at the moment when he was deprived of his
domestic comforts by the loss of his faithful and generous
Cadijah. Abu Sophian, the chief of the branch of Ommiyah,
succeeded to the principality of the republic of Mecca. A zealous
votary of the idols, a mortal foe of the line of Hashem, he
convened an assembly of the Koreishites and their allies, to
decide the fate of the apostle. His imprisonment might provoke
the despair of his enthusiasm; and the exile of an eloquent and
popular fanatic would diffuse the mischief through the provinces
of Arabia. His death was resolved; and they agreed that a sword
from each tribe should be buried in his heart, to divide the
guilt of his blood, and baffle the vengeance of the Hashemites.
An angel or a spy revealed their conspiracy; and flight was the
only resource of Mahomet. 117 At the dead of night, accompanied
by his friend Abubeker, he silently escaped from his house: the
assassins watched at the door; but they were deceived by the
figure of Ali, who reposed on the bed, and was covered with the
green vestment of the apostle. The Koreish respected the piety of
the heroic youth; but some verses of Ali, which are still extant,
exhibit an interesting picture of his anxiety, his tenderness,
and his religious confidence. Three days Mahomet and his
companion were concealed in the cave of Thor, at the distance of
a league from Mecca; and in the close of each evening, they
received from the son and daughter of Abubeker a secret supply of
intelligence and food. The diligence of the Koreish explored
every haunt in the neighborhood of the city: they arrived at the
entrance of the cavern; but the providential deceit of a spider’s
web and a pigeon’s nest is supposed to convince them that the
place was solitary and inviolate. “We are only two,” said the
trembling Abubeker. “There is a third,” replied the prophet; “it
is God himself.” No sooner was the pursuit abated than the two
fugitives issued from the rock, and mounted their camels: on the
road to Medina, they were overtaken by the emissaries of the
Koreish; they redeemed themselves with prayers and promises from
their hands. In this eventful moment, the lance of an Arab might
have changed the history of the world. The flight of the prophet
from Mecca to Medina has fixed the memorable aera of the Hegira,
118 which, at the end of twelve centuries, still discriminates
the lunar years of the Mahometan nations. 119
116 (return) [ In the time of Job, the crime of impiety was
punished by the Arabian magistrate, (c. 21, v. 26, 27, 28.) I
blush for a respectable prelate (de Poesi Hebraeorum, p. 650,
651, edit. Michaelis; and letter of a late professor in the
university of Oxford, p. 15-53,) who justifies and applauds this
patriarchal inquisition.]
117 (return) [ D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 445. He quotes a
particular history of the flight of Mahomet.]
118 (return) [ The Hegira was instituted by Omar, the second
caliph, in imitation of the aera of the martyrs of the
Christians, (D’Herbelot, p. 444;) and properly commenced
sixty-eight days before the flight of Mahomet, with the first of
Moharren, or first day of that Arabian year which coincides with
Friday, July 16th, A.D. 622, (Abulfeda, Vit Moham, c. 22, 23, p.
45-50; and Greaves’s edition of Ullug Beg’s Epochae Arabum, &c.,
c. 1, p. 8, 10, &c.) * Note: Chronologists dispute between the
15th and 16th of July. St. Martin inclines to the 8th, ch. xi. p.
70.—M.]
119 (return) [ Mahomet’s life, from his mission to the Hegira,
may be found in Abulfeda (p. 14-45) and Gagnier, (tom. i. p.
134-251, 342-383.) The legend from p. 187-234 is vouched by Al
Jannabi, and disdained by Abulfeda.]
The religion of the Koran might have perished in its cradle, had
not Medina embraced with faith and reverence the holy outcasts of
Mecca. Medina, or the city, known under the name of Yathreb,
before it was sanctified by the throne of the prophet, was
divided between the tribes of the Charegites and the Awsites,
whose hereditary feud was rekindled by the slightest
provocations: two colonies of Jews, who boasted a sacerdotal
race, were their humble allies, and without converting the Arabs,
they introduced the taste of science and religion, which
distinguished Medina as the city of the Book. Some of her noblest
citizens, in a pilgrimage to the Canaba, were converted by the
preaching of Mahomet; on their return, they diffused the belief
of God and his prophet, and the new alliance was ratified by
their deputies in two secret and nocturnal interviews on a hill
in the suburbs of Mecca. In the first, ten Charegites and two
Awsites united in faith and love, protested, in the name of their
wives, their children, and their absent brethren, that they would
forever profess the creed, and observe the precepts, of the
Koran. The second was a political association, the first vital
spark of the empire of the Saracens. 120 Seventy-three men and
two women of Medina held a solemn conference with Mahomet, his
kinsman, and his disciples; and pledged themselves to each other
by a mutual oath of fidelity. They promised, in the name of the
city, that if he should be banished, they would receive him as a
confederate, obey him as a leader, and defend him to the last
extremity, like their wives and children. “But if you are
recalled by your country,” they asked with a flattering anxiety,
“will you not abandon your new allies?” “All things,” replied
Mahomet with a smile, “are now common between us; your blood is
as my blood, your ruin as my ruin. We are bound to each other by
the ties of honor and interest. I am your friend, and the enemy
of your foes.” “But if we are killed in your service, what,”
exclaimed the deputies of Medina, “will be our reward?”
“Paradise,” replied the prophet. “Stretch forth thy hand.” He
stretched it forth, and they reiterated the oath of allegiance
and fidelity. Their treaty was ratified by the people, who
unanimously embraced the profession of Islam; they rejoiced in
the exile of the apostle, but they trembled for his safety, and
impatiently expected his arrival. After a perilous and rapid
journey along the sea-coast, he halted at Koba, two miles from
the city, and made his public entry into Medina, sixteen days
after his flight from Mecca. Five hundred of the citizens
advanced to meet him; he was hailed with acclamations of loyalty
and devotion; Mahomet was mounted on a she-camel, an umbrella
shaded his head, and a turban was unfurled before him to supply
the deficiency of a standard. His bravest disciples, who had been
scattered by the storm, assembled round his person; and the
equal, though various, merit of the Moslems was distinguished by
the names of Mohagerians and Ansars, the fugitives of Mecca, and
the auxiliaries of Medina. To eradicate the seeds of jealousy,
Mahomet judiciously coupled his principal followers with the
rights and obligations of brethren; and when Ali found himself
without a peer, the prophet tenderly declared, that he would be
the companion and brother of the noble youth. The expedient was
crowned with success; the holy fraternity was respected in peace
and war, and the two parties vied with each other in a generous
emulation of courage and fidelity. Once only the concord was
slightly ruffled by an accidental quarrel: a patriot of Medina
arraigned the insolence of the strangers, but the hint of their
expulsion was heard with abhorrence; and his own son most eagerly
offered to lay at the apostle’s feet the head of his father.
120 (return) [ The triple inauguration of Mahomet is described by
Abulfeda (p. 30, 33, 40, 86) and Gagnier, (tom. i. p. 342, &c.,
349, &c., tom. ii. p. 223 &c.)]
From his establishment at Medina, Mahomet assumed the exercise of
the regal and sacerdotal office; and it was impious to appeal
from a judge whose decrees were inspired by the divine wisdom. A
small portion of ground, the patrimony of two orphans, was
acquired by gift or purchase; 121 on that chosen spot he built a
house and a mosch, more venerable in their rude simplicity than
the palaces and temples of the Assyrian caliphs. His seal of
gold, or silver, was inscribed with the apostolic title; when he
prayed and preached in the weekly assembly, he leaned against the
trunk of a palm-tree; and it was long before he indulged himself
in the use of a chair or pulpit of rough timber. 122 After a
reign of six years, fifteen hundred Moslems, in arms and in the
field, renewed their oath of allegiance; and their chief repeated
the assurance of protection till the death of the last member, or
the final dissolution of the party. It was in the same camp that
the deputy of Mecca was astonished by the attention of the
faithful to the words and looks of the prophet, by the eagerness
with which they collected his spittle, a hair that dropped on the
ground, the refuse water of his lustrations, as if they
participated in some degree of the prophetic virtue. “I have
seen,” said he, “the Chosroes of Persia and the Caesar of Rome,
but never did I behold a king among his subjects like Mahomet
among his companions.” The devout fervor of enthusiasm acts with
more energy and truth than the cold and formal servility of
courts.
121 (return) [ Prideaux (Life of Mahomet, p. 44) reviles the
wickedness of the impostor, who despoiled two poor orphans, the
sons of a carpenter; a reproach which he drew from the Disputatio
contra Saracenos, composed in Arabic before the year 1130; but
the honest Gagnier (ad Abulfed. p. 53) has shown that they were
deceived by the word Al Nagjar, which signifies, in this place,
not an obscure trade, but a noble tribe of Arabs. The desolate
state of the ground is described by Abulfeda; and his worthy
interpreter has proved, from Al Bochari, the offer of a price;
from Al Jannabi, the fair purchase; and from Ahmeq Ben Joseph,
the payment of the money by the generous Abubeker On these
grounds the prophet must be honorably acquitted.]
122 (return) [ Al Jannabi (apud Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 246, 324)
describes the seal and pulpit, as two venerable relics of the
apostle of God; and the portrait of his court is taken from
Abulfeda, (c. 44, p. 85.)]
In the state of nature, every man has a right to defend, by force
of arms, his person and his possessions; to repel, or even to
prevent, the violence of his enemies, and to extend his
hostilities to a reasonable measure of satisfaction and
retaliation. In the free society of the Arabs, the duties of
subject and citizen imposed a feeble restraint; and Mahomet, in
the exercise of a peaceful and benevolent mission, had been
despoiled and banished by the injustice of his countrymen. The
choice of an independent people had exalted the fugitive of Mecca
to the rank of a sovereign; and he was invested with the just
prerogative of forming alliances, and of waging offensive or
defensive war. The imperfection of human rights was supplied and
armed by the plenitude of divine power: the prophet of Medina
assumed, in his new revelations, a fiercer and more sanguinary
tone, which proves that his former moderation was the effect of
weakness: 123 the means of persuasion had been tried, the season
of forbearance was elapsed, and he was now commanded to propagate
his religion by the sword, to destroy the monuments of idolatry,
and, without regarding the sanctity of days or months, to pursue
the unbelieving nations of the earth. The same bloody precepts,
so repeatedly inculcated in the Koran, are ascribed by the author
to the Pentateuch and the Gospel. But the mild tenor of the
evangelic style may explain an ambiguous text, that Jesus did not
bring peace on the earth, but a sword: his patient and humble
virtues should not be confounded with the intolerant zeal of
princes and bishops, who have disgraced the name of his
disciples. In the prosecution of religious war, Mahomet might
appeal with more propriety to the example of Moses, of the
Judges, and the kings of Israel. The military laws of the Hebrews
are still more rigid than those of the Arabian legislator. 124
The Lord of hosts marched in person before the Jews: if a city
resisted their summons, the males, without distinction, were put
to the sword: the seven nations of Canaan were devoted to
destruction; and neither repentance nor conversion, could shield
them from the inevitable doom, that no creature within their
precincts should be left alive. 1241 The fair option of
friendship, or submission, or battle, was proposed to the enemies
of Mahomet. If they professed the creed of Islam, they were
admitted to all the temporal and spiritual benefits of his
primitive disciples, and marched under the same banner to extend
the religion which they had embraced. The clemency of the prophet
was decided by his interest: yet he seldom trampled on a
prostrate enemy; and he seems to promise, that on the payment of
a tribute, the least guilty of his unbelieving subjects might be
indulged in their worship, or at least in their imperfect faith.
In the first months of his reign he practised the lessons of holy
warfare, and displayed his white banner before the gates of
Medina: the martial apostle fought in person at nine battles or
sieges; 125 and fifty enterprises of war were achieved in ten
years by himself or his lieutenants. The Arab continued to unite
the professions of a merchant and a robber; and his petty
excursions for the defence or the attack of a caravan insensibly
prepared his troops for the conquest of Arabia. The distribution
of the spoil was regulated by a divine law: 126 the whole was
faithfully collected in one common mass: a fifth of the gold and
silver, the prisoners and cattle, the movables and immovables,
was reserved by the prophet for pious and charitable uses; the
remainder was shared in adequate portions by the soldiers who had
obtained the victory or guarded the camp: the rewards of the
slain devolved to their widows and orphans; and the increase of
cavalry was encouraged by the allotment of a double share to the
horse and to the man. From all sides the roving Arabs were
allured to the standard of religion and plunder: the apostle
sanctified the license of embracing the female captives as their
wives or concubines, and the enjoyment of wealth and beauty was a
feeble type of the joys of paradise prepared for the valiant
martyrs of the faith. “The sword,” says Mahomet, “is the key of
heaven and of hell; a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a
night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting
or prayer: whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven: at
the day of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion,
and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of his limbs shall be
supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim.” The intrepid souls
of the Arabs were fired with enthusiasm: the picture of the
invisible world was strongly painted on their imagination; and
the death which they had always despised became an object of hope
and desire. The Koran inculcates, in the most absolute sense, the
tenets of fate and predestination, which would extinguish both
industry and virtue, if the actions of man were governed by his
speculative belief. Yet their influence in every age has exalted
the courage of the Saracens and Turks. The first companions of
Mahomet advanced to battle with a fearless confidence: there is
no danger where there is no chance: they were ordained to perish
in their beds; or they were safe and invulnerable amidst the
darts of the enemy. 127
123 (return) [ The viiith and ixth chapters of the Koran are the
loudest and most vehement; and Maracci (Prodromus, part iv. p.
59-64) has inveighed with more justice than discretion against
the double dealing of the impostor.]
124 (return) [ The xth and xxth chapters of Deuteronomy, with the
practical comments of Joshua, David, &c., are read with more awe
than satisfaction by the pious Christians of the present age. But
the bishops, as well as the rabbis of former times, have beat the
drum-ecclesiastic with pleasure and success. (Sale’s Preliminary
Discourse, p. 142, 143.)]
1241 (return) [ The editor’s opinions on this subject may be read
in the History of the Jews vol. i. p. 137.—M]
125 (return) [ Abulfeda, in Vit. Moham. p. 156. The private
arsenal of the apostle consisted of nine swords, three lances,
seven pikes or half-pikes, a quiver and three bows, seven
cuirasses, three shields, and two helmets, (Gagnier, tom. iii. p.
328-334,) with a large white standard, a black banner, (p. 335,)
twenty horses, (p. 322, &c.) Two of his martial sayings are
recorded by tradition, (Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 88, 334.)]
126 (return) [ The whole subject de jure belli Mohammedanorum is
exhausted in a separate dissertation by the learned Reland,
(Dissertationes Miscellaneae, tom. iii. Dissertat. x. p. 3-53.)]
127 (return) [ The doctrine of absolute predestination, on which
few religions can reproach each other, is sternly exposed in the
Koran, (c. 3, p. 52, 53, c. 4, p. 70, &c., with the notes of
Sale, and c. 17, p. 413, with those of Maracci.) Reland (de
Relig. Moham. p. 61-64) and Sale (Prelim. Discourse, p. 103)
represent the opinions of the doctors, and our modern travellers
the confidence, the fading confidence, of the Turks]
Perhaps the Koreish would have been content with the dight of
Mahomet, had they not been provoked and alarmed by the vengeance
of an enemy, who could intercept their Syrian trade as it passed
and repassed through the territory of Medina. Abu Sophian
himself, with only thirty or forty followers, conducted a wealthy
caravan of a thousand camels; the fortune or dexterity of his
march escaped the vigilance of Mahomet; but the chief of the
Koreish was informed that the holy robbers were placed in ambush
to await his return. He despatched a messenger to his brethren of
Mecca, and they were roused, by the fear of losing their
merchandise and their provisions, unless they hastened to his
relief with the military force of the city. The sacred band of
Mahomet was formed of three hundred and thirteen Moslems, of whom
seventy-seven were fugitives, and the rest auxiliaries; they
mounted by turns a train of seventy camels, (the camels of
Yathreb were formidable in war;) but such was the poverty of his
first disciples, that only two could appear on horseback in the
field. 128 In the fertile and famous vale of Beder, 129 three
stations from Medina, he was informed by his scouts of the
caravan that approached on one side; of the Koreish, one hundred
horse, eight hundred and fifty foot, who advanced on the other.
After a short debate, he sacrificed the prospect of wealth to the
pursuit of glory and revenge, and a slight intrenchment was
formed, to cover his troops, and a stream of fresh water, that
glided through the valley. “O God,” he exclaimed, as the numbers
of the Koreish descended from the hills, “O God, if these are
destroyed, by whom wilt thou be worshipped on the earth?—Courage,
my children; close your ranks; discharge your arrows, and the day
is your own.” At these words he placed himself, with Abubeker, on
a throne or pulpit, 130 and instantly demanded the succor of
Gabriel and three thousand angels. His eye was fixed on the field
of battle: the Mussulmans fainted and were pressed: in that
decisive moment the prophet started from his throne, mounted his
horse, and cast a handful of sand into the air: “Let their faces
be covered with confusion.” Both armies heard the thunder of his
voice: their fancy beheld the angelic warriors: 131 the Koreish
trembled and fled: seventy of the bravest were slain; and seventy
captives adorned the first victory of the faithful. The dead
bodies of the Koreish were despoiled and insulted: two of the
most obnoxious prisoners were punished with death; and the ransom
of the others, four thousand drams of silver, compensated in some
degree the escape of the caravan. But it was in vain that the
camels of Abu Sophian explored a new road through the desert and
along the Euphrates: they were overtaken by the diligence of the
Mussulmans; and wealthy must have been the prize, if twenty
thousand drams could be set apart for the fifth of the apostle.
The resentment of the public and private loss stimulated Abu
Sophian to collect a body of three thousand men, seven hundred of
whom were armed with cuirasses, and two hundred were mounted on
horseback; three thousand camels attended his march; and his wife
Henda, with fifteen matrons of Mecca, incessantly sounded their
timbrels to animate the troops, and to magnify the greatness of
Hobal, the most popular deity of the Caaba. The standard of God
and Mahomet was upheld by nine hundred and fifty believers: the
disproportion of numbers was not more alarming than in the field
of Beder; and their presumption of victory prevailed against the
divine and human sense of the apostle. The second battle was
fought on Mount Ohud, six miles to the north of Medina; 132 the
Koreish advanced in the form of a crescent; and the right wing of
cavalry was led by Caled, the fiercest and most successful of the
Arabian warriors. The troops of Mahomet were skilfully posted on
the declivity of the hill; and their rear was guarded by a
detachment of fifty archers. The weight of their charge impelled
and broke the centre of the idolaters: but in the pursuit they
lost the advantage of their ground: the archers deserted their
station: the Mussulmans were tempted by the spoil, disobeyed
their general, and disordered their ranks. The intrepid Caled,
wheeling his cavalry on their flank and rear, exclaimed, with a
loud voice, that Mahomet was slain. He was indeed wounded in the
face with a javelin: two of his teeth were shattered with a
stone; yet, in the midst of tumult and dismay, he reproached the
infidels with the murder of a prophet; and blessed the friendly
hand that stanched his blood, and conveyed him to a place of
safety. Seventy martyrs died for the sins of the people; they
fell, said the apostle, in pairs, each brother embracing his
lifeless companion; 133 their bodies were mangled by the inhuman
females of Mecca; and the wife of Abu Sophian tasted the entrails
of Hamza, the uncle of Mahomet. They might applaud their
superstition, and satiate their fury; but the Mussulmans soon
rallied in the field, and the Koreish wanted strength or courage
to undertake the siege of Medina. It was attacked the ensuing
year by an army of ten thousand enemies; and this third
expedition is variously named from the nations, which marched
under the banner of Abu Sophian, from the ditch which was drawn
before the city, and a camp of three thousand Mussulmans. The
prudence of Mahomet declined a general engagement: the valor of
Ali was signalized in single combat; and the war was protracted
twenty days, till the final separation of the confederates. A
tempest of wind, rain, and hail, overturned their tents: their
private quarrels were fomented by an insidious adversary; and the
Koreish, deserted by their allies, no longer hoped to subvert the
throne, or to check the conquests, of their invincible exile. 134
128 (return) [ Al Jannabi (apud Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 9) allows
him seventy or eighty horse; and on two other occasions, prior to
the battle of Ohud, he enlists a body of thirty (p. 10) and of
500 (p. 66) troopers. Yet the Mussulmans, in the field of Ohud,
had no more than two horses, according to the better sense of
Abulfeda, (in Vit. Moham. c. xxxi. p. 65.) In the Stony province,
the camels were numerous; but the horse appears to have been less
numerous than in the Happy or the Desert Arabia.]
129 (return) [ Bedder Houneene, twenty miles from Medina, and
forty from Mecca, is on the high road of the caravan of Egypt;
and the pilgrims annually commemorate the prophet’s victory by
illuminations, rockets, &c. Shaw’s Travels, p. 477.]
130 (return) [ The place to which Mahomet retired during the
action is styled by Gagnier (in Abulfeda, c. 27, p. 58. Vie de
Mahomet, tom. ii. p. 30, 33) Umbraculum, une loge de bois avec
une porte. The same Arabic word is rendered by Reiske (Annales
Moslemici Abulfedae, p. 23) by Solium, Suggestus editior; and the
difference is of the utmost moment for the honor both of the
interpreter and of the hero. I am sorry to observe the pride and
acrimony with which Reiske chastises his fellow-laborer. Saepi
sic vertit, ut integrae paginae nequeant nisi una litura corrigi
Arabice non satis callebat, et carebat judicio critico. J. J.
Reiske, Prodidagmata ad Hagji Chalisae Tabulas, p. 228, ad
calcero Abulfedae Syriae Tabulae; Lipsiae, 1766, in 4to.]
131 (return) [ The loose expressions of the Koran (c. 3, p. 124,
125, c. 8, p. 9) allow the commentators to fluctuate between the
numbers of 1000, 3000, or 9000 angels; and the smallest of these
might suffice for the slaughter of seventy of the Koreish,
(Maracci, Alcoran, tom. ii. p. 131.) Yet the same scholiasts
confess that this angelic band was not visible to any mortal eye,
(Maracci, p. 297.) They refine on the words (c. 8, 16) “not thou,
but God,” &c. (D’Herbelot. Bibliot. Orientale p. 600, 601.)]
132 (return) [ Geograph. Nubiensis, p. 47.]
133 (return) [ In the iiid chapter of the Koran, (p. 50-53) with
Sale’s notes, the prophet alleges some poor excuses for the
defeat of Ohud. * Note: Dr. Weil has added some curious
circumstances, which he gives as on good traditional authority,
on the rescue of Mahomet. The prophet was attacked by Ubeijj Ibn
Challaf, whom he struck on the neck with a mortal wound. This was
the only time, it is added, that Mahomet personally engaged in
battle. (p. 128.)—M. 1845.]
134 (return) [ For the detail of the three Koreish wars, of
Beder, of Ohud, and of the ditch, peruse Abulfeda, (p. 56-61,
64-69, 73-77,) Gagnier (tom. i. p. 23-45, 70-96, 120-139,) with
the proper articles of D’Herbelot, and the abridgments of Elmacin
(Hist. Saracen. p. 6, 7) and Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 102.)]
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part VI.
The choice of Jerusalem for the first kebla of prayer discovers
the early propensity of Mahomet in favor of the Jews; and happy
would it have been for their temporal interest, had they
recognized, in the Arabian prophet, the hope of Israel and the
promised Messiah. Their obstinacy converted his friendship into
implacable hatred, with which he pursued that unfortunate people
to the last moment of his life; and in the double character of an
apostle and a conqueror, his persecution was extended to both
worlds. 135 The Kainoka dwelt at Medina under the protection of
the city; he seized the occasion of an accidental tumult, and
summoned them to embrace his religion, or contend with him in
battle. “Alas!” replied the trembling Jews, “we are ignorant of
the use of arms, but we persevere in the faith and worship of our
fathers; why wilt thou reduce us to the necessity of a just
defence?” The unequal conflict was terminated in fifteen days;
and it was with extreme reluctance that Mahomet yielded to the
importunity of his allies, and consented to spare the lives of
the captives. But their riches were confiscated, their arms
became more effectual in the hands of the Mussulmans; and a
wretched colony of seven hundred exiles was driven, with their
wives and children, to implore a refuge on the confines of Syria.
The Nadhirites were more guilty, since they conspired, in a
friendly interview, to assassinate the prophet. He besieged their
castle, three miles from Medina; but their resolute defence
obtained an honorable capitulation; and the garrison, sounding
their trumpets and beating their drums, was permitted to depart
with the honors of war. The Jews had excited and joined the war
of the Koreish: no sooner had the nations retired from the ditch,
than Mahomet, without laying aside his armor, marched on the same
day to extirpate the hostile race of the children of Koraidha.
After a resistance of twenty-five days, they surrendered at
discretion. They trusted to the intercession of their old allies
of Medina; they could not be ignorant that fanaticism obliterates
the feelings of humanity. A venerable elder, to whose judgment
they appealed, pronounced the sentence of their death; seven
hundred Jews were dragged in chains to the market-place of the
city; they descended alive into the grave prepared for their
execution and burial; and the apostle beheld with an inflexible
eye the slaughter of his helpless enemies. Their sheep and camels
were inherited by the Mussulmans: three hundred cuirasses, five
hundred pikes, a thousand lances, composed the most useful
portion of the spoil. Six days’ journey to the north-east of
Medina, the ancient and wealthy town of Chaibar was the seat of
the Jewish power in Arabia: the territory, a fertile spot in the
desert, was covered with plantations and cattle, and protected by
eight castles, some of which were esteemed of impregnable
strength. The forces of Mahomet consisted of two hundred horse
and fourteen hundred foot: in the succession of eight regular and
painful sieges they were exposed to danger, and fatigue, and
hunger; and the most undaunted chiefs despaired of the event. The
apostle revived their faith and courage by the example of Ali, on
whom he bestowed the surname of the Lion of God: perhaps we may
believe that a Hebrew champion of gigantic stature was cloven to
the chest by his irresistible cimeter; but we cannot praise the
modesty of romance, which represents him as tearing from its
hinges the gate of a fortress and wielding the ponderous buckler
in his left hand. 136 After the reduction of the castles, the
town of Chaibar submitted to the yoke. The chief of the tribe was
tortured, in the presence of Mahomet, to force a confession of
his hidden treasure: the industry of the shepherds and husbandmen
was rewarded with a precarious toleration: they were permitted,
so long as it should please the conqueror, to improve their
patrimony, in equal shares, for his emolument and their own.
Under the reign of Omar, the Jews of Chaibar were transported to
Syria; and the caliph alleged the injunction of his dying master;
that one and the true religion should be professed in his native
land of Arabia. 137
135 (return) [ The wars of Mahomet against the Jewish tribes of
Kainoka, the Nadhirites, Koraidha, and Chaibar, are related by
Abulfeda (p. 61, 71, 77, 87, &c.) and Gagnier, (tom. ii. p.
61-65, 107-112, 139-148, 268-294.)]
136 (return) [ Abu Rafe, the servant of Mahomet, is said to
affirm that he himself, and seven other men, afterwards tried,
without success, to move the same gate from the ground,
(Abulfeda, p. 90.) Abu Rafe was an eye-witness, but who will be
witness for Abu Rafe?]
137 (return) [ The banishment of the Jews is attested by Elmacin
(Hist. Saracen, p. 9) and the great Al Zabari, (Gagnier, tom. ii.
p. 285.) Yet Niebuhr (Description de l’Arabie, p. 324) believes
that the Jewish religion, and Karaite sect, are still professed
by the tribe of Chaibar; and that, in the plunder of the
caravans, the disciples of Moses are the confederates of those of
Mahomet.]
Five times each day the eyes of Mahomet were turned towards
Mecca, 138 and he was urged by the most sacred and powerful
motives to revisit, as a conqueror, the city and the temple from
whence he had been driven as an exile. The Caaba was present to
his waking and sleeping fancy: an idle dream was translated into
vision and prophecy; he unfurled the holy banner; and a rash
promise of success too hastily dropped from the lips of the
apostle. His march from Medina to Mecca displayed the peaceful
and solemn pomp of a pilgrimage: seventy camels, chosen and
bedecked for sacrifice, preceded the van; the sacred territory
was respected; and the captives were dismissed without ransom to
proclaim his clemency and devotion. But no sooner did Mahomet
descend into the plain, within a day’s journey of the city, than
he exclaimed, “They have clothed themselves with the skins of
tigers:” the numbers and resolution of the Koreish opposed his
progress; and the roving Arabs of the desert might desert or
betray a leader whom they had followed for the hopes of spoil.
The intrepid fanatic sunk into a cool and cautious politician: he
waived in the treaty his title of apostle of God; concluded with
the Koreish and their allies a truce of ten years; engaged to
restore the fugitives of Mecca who should embrace his religion;
and stipulated only, for the ensuing year, the humble privilege
of entering the city as a friend, and of remaining three days to
accomplish the rites of the pilgrimage. A cloud of shame and
sorrow hung on the retreat of the Mussulmans, and their
disappointment might justly accuse the failure of a prophet who
had so often appealed to the evidence of success. The faith and
hope of the pilgrims were rekindled by the prospect of Mecca:
their swords were sheathed; 1381 seven times in the footsteps of
the apostle they encompassed the Caaba: the Koreish had retired
to the hills, and Mahomet, after the customary sacrifice,
evacuated the city on the fourth day. The people was edified by
his devotion; the hostile chiefs were awed, or divided, or
seduced; and both Kaled and Amrou, the future conquerors of Syria
and Egypt, most seasonably deserted the sinking cause of
idolatry. The power of Mahomet was increased by the submission of
the Arabian tribes; ten thousand soldiers were assembled for the
conquest of Mecca; and the idolaters, the weaker party, were
easily convicted of violating the truce. Enthusiasm and
discipline impelled the march, and preserved the secret till the
blaze of ten thousand fires proclaimed to the astonished Koreish
the design, the approach, and the irresistible force of the
enemy. The haughty Abu Sophian presented the keys of the city,
admired the variety of arms and ensigns that passed before him in
review; observed that the son of Abdallah had acquired a mighty
kingdom, and confessed, under the cimeter of Omar, that he was
the apostle of the true God. The return of Marius and Scylla was
stained with the blood of the Romans: the revenge of Mahomet was
stimulated by religious zeal, and his injured followers were
eager to execute or to prevent the order of a massacre. Instead
of indulging their passions and his own, 139 the victorious exile
forgave the guilt, and united the factions, of Mecca. His troops,
in three divisions, marched into the city: eight-and-twenty of
the inhabitants were slain by the sword of Caled; eleven men and
six women were proscribed by the sentence of Mahomet; but he
blamed the cruelty of his lieutenant; and several of the most
obnoxious victims were indebted for their lives to his clemency
or contempt. The chiefs of the Koreish were prostrate at his
feet. “What mercy can you expect from the man whom you have
wronged?” “We confide in the generosity of our kinsman.” “And you
shall not confide in vain: begone! you are safe, you are free”
The people of Mecca deserved their pardon by the profession of
Islam; and after an exile of seven years, the fugitive missionary
was enthroned as the prince and prophet of his native country.
140 But the three hundred and sixty idols of the Caaba were
ignominiously broken: the house of God was purified and adorned:
as an example to future times, the apostle again fulfilled the
duties of a pilgrim; and a perpetual law was enacted that no
unbeliever should dare to set his foot on the territory of the
holy city. 141
138 (return) [ The successive steps of the reduction of Mecca are
related by Abulfeda (p. 84-87, 97-100, 102-111) and Gagnier,
(tom. ii. p. 202-245, 309-322, tom. iii. p. 1-58,) Elmacin,
(Hist. Saracen. p. 8, 9, 10,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 103.)]
1381 (return) [ This peaceful entrance into Mecca took place,
according to the treaty the following year. Weil, p. 202—M.
1845.]
139 (return) [ After the conquest of Mecca, the Mahomet of
Voltaire imagines and perpetuates the most horrid crimes. The
poet confesses, that he is not supported by the truth of history,
and can only allege, que celui qui fait la guerre a sa patrie au
nom de Dieu, est capable de tout, (Oeuvres de Voltaire, tom. xv.
p. 282.) The maxim is neither charitable nor philosophic; and
some reverence is surely due to the fame of heroes and the
religion of nations. I am informed that a Turkish ambassador at
Paris was much scandalized at the representation of this
tragedy.]
140 (return) [ The Mahometan doctors still dispute, whether Mecca
was reduced by force or consent, (Abulfeda, p. 107, et Gagnier ad
locum;) and this verbal controversy is of as much moment as our
own about William the Conqueror.]
141 (return) [ In excluding the Christians from the peninsula of
Arabia, the province of Hejaz, or the navigation of the Red Sea,
Chardin (Voyages en Perse, tom. iv. p. 166) and Reland
(Dissertat. Miscell. tom. iii. p. 61) are more rigid than the
Mussulmans themselves. The Christians are received without
scruple into the ports of Mocha, and even of Gedda; and it is
only the city and precincts of Mecca that are inaccessible to the
profane, (Niebuhr, Description de l’Arabie, p. 308, 309, Voyage
en Arabie, tom. i. p. 205, 248, &c.)]
The conquest of Mecca determined the faith and obedience of the
Arabian tribes; 142 who, according to the vicissitudes of
fortune, had obeyed, or disregarded, the eloquence or the arms of
the prophet. Indifference for rites and opinions still marks the
character of the Bedoweens; and they might accept, as loosely as
they hold, the doctrine of the Koran. Yet an obstinate remnant
still adhered to the religion and liberty of their ancestors, and
the war of Honain derived a proper appellation from the idols,
whom Mahomet had vowed to destroy, and whom the confederates of
Tayef had sworn to defend. 143 Four thousand Pagans advanced with
secrecy and speed to surprise the conqueror: they pitied and
despised the supine negligence of the Koreish, but they depended
on the wishes, and perhaps the aid, of a people who had so lately
renounced their gods, and bowed beneath the yoke of their enemy.
The banners of Medina and Mecca were displayed by the prophet; a
crowd of Bedoweens increased the strength or numbers of the army,
and twelve thousand Mussulmans entertained a rash and sinful
presumption of their invincible strength. They descended without
precaution into the valley of Honain: the heights had been
occupied by the archers and slingers of the confederates; their
numbers were oppressed, their discipline was confounded, their
courage was appalled, and the Koreish smiled at their impending
destruction. The prophet, on his white mule, was encompassed by
the enemies: he attempted to rush against their spears in search
of a glorious death: ten of his faithful companions interposed
their weapons and their breasts; three of these fell dead at his
feet: “O my brethren,” he repeatedly cried, with sorrow and
indignation, “I am the son of Abdallah, I am the apostle of
truth! O man, stand fast in the faith! O God, send down thy
succor!” His uncle Abbas, who, like the heroes of Homer, excelled
in the loudness of his voice, made the valley resound with the
recital of the gifts and promises of God: the flying Moslems
returned from all sides to the holy standard; and Mahomet
observed with pleasure that the furnace was again rekindled: his
conduct and example restored the battle, and he animated his
victorious troops to inflict a merciless revenge on the authors
of their shame. From the field of Honain, he marched without
delay to the siege of Tayef, sixty miles to the south-east of
Mecca, a fortress of strength, whose fertile lands produce the
fruits of Syria in the midst of the Arabian desert. A friendly
tribe, instructed (I know not how) in the art of sieges, supplied
him with a train of battering-rams and military engines, with a
body of five hundred artificers. But it was in vain that he
offered freedom to the slaves of Tayef; that he violated his own
laws by the extirpation of the fruit-trees; that the ground was
opened by the miners; that the breach was assaulted by the
troops. After a siege of twenty-days, the prophet sounded a
retreat; but he retreated with a song of devout triumph, and
affected to pray for the repentance and safety of the unbelieving
city. The spoils of this fortunate expedition amounted to six
thousand captives, twenty-four thousand camels, forty thousand
sheep, and four thousand ounces of silver: a tribe who had fought
at Hoinan redeemed their prisoners by the sacrifice of their
idols; but Mahomet compensated the loss, by resigning to the
soldiers his fifth of the plunder, and wished, for their sake,
that he possessed as many head of cattle as there were trees in
the province of Tehama. Instead of chastising the disaffection of
the Koreish, he endeavored to cut out their tongues, (his own
expression,) and to secure their attachment by a superior measure
of liberality: Abu Sophian alone was presented with three hundred
camels and twenty ounces of silver; and Mecca was sincerely
converted to the profitable religion of the Koran.
142 (return) [ Abulfeda, p. 112-115. Gagnier, tom. iii. p. 67-88.
D’Herbelot, Mohammed.]
143 (return) [ The siege of Tayef, division of the spoil, &c.,
are related by Abulfeda (p. 117-123) and Gagnier, (tom. iii. p.
88-111.) It is Al Jannabi who mentions the engines and engineers
of the tribe of Daws. The fertile spot of Tayef was supposed to
be a piece of the land of Syria detached and dropped in the
general deluge]
The fugitives and auxiliaries complained, that they who had borne
the burden were neglected in the season of victory “Alas!”
replied their artful leader, “suffer me to conciliate these
recent enemies, these doubtful proselytes, by the gift of some
perishable goods. To your guard I intrust my life and fortunes.
You are the companions of my exile, of my kingdom, of my
paradise.” He was followed by the deputies of Tayef, who dreaded
the repetition of a siege. “Grant us, O apostle of God! a truce
of three years, with the toleration of our ancient worship.” “Not
a month, not an hour.” “Excuse us at least from the obligation of
prayer.” “Without prayer religion is of no avail.” They submitted
in silence: their temples were demolished, and the same sentence
of destruction was executed on all the idols of Arabia. His
lieutenants, on the shores of the Red Sea, the Ocean, and the
Gulf of Persia, were saluted by the acclamations of a faithful
people; and the ambassadors, who knelt before the throne of
Medina, were as numerous (says the Arabian proverb) as the dates
that fall from the maturity of a palm-tree. The nation submitted
to the God and the sceptre of Mahomet: the opprobrious name of
tribute was abolished: the spontaneous or reluctant oblations of
arms and tithes were applied to the service of religion; and one
hundred and fourteen thousand Moslems accompanied the last
pilgrimage of the apostle. 144
144 (return) [ The last conquests and pilgrimage of Mahomet are
contained in Abulfeda, (p. 121, 133,) Gagnier, (tom. iii. p.
119-219,) Elmacin, (p. 10, 11,) Abulpharagius, (p. 103.) The ixth
of the Hegira was styled the Year of Embassies, (Gagnier, Not. ad
Abulfed. p. 121.)]
When Heraclius returned in triumph from the Persian war, he
entertained, at Emesa, one of the ambassadors of Mahomet, who
invited the princes and nations of the earth to the profession of
Islam. On this foundation the zeal of the Arabians has supposed
the secret conversion of the Christian emperor: the vanity of the
Greeks has feigned a personal visit of the prince of Medina, who
accepted from the royal bounty a rich domain, and a secure
retreat, in the province of Syria. 145 But the friendship of
Heraclius and Mahomet was of short continuance: the new religion
had inflamed rather than assuaged the rapacious spirit of the
Saracens, and the murder of an envoy afforded a decent pretence
for invading, with three thousand soldiers, the territory of
Palestine, that extends to the eastward of the Jordan. The holy
banner was intrusted to Zeid; and such was the discipline or
enthusiasm of the rising sect, that the noblest chiefs served
without reluctance under the slave of the prophet. On the event
of his decease, Jaafar and Abdallah were successively substituted
to the command; and if the three should perish in the war, the
troops were authorized to elect their general. The three leaders
were slain in the battle of Muta, 146 the first military action,
which tried the valor of the Moslems against a foreign enemy.
Zeid fell, like a soldier, in the foremost ranks: the death of
Jaafar was heroic and memorable: he lost his right hand: he
shifted the standard to his left: the left was severed from his
body: he embraced the standard with his bleeding stumps, till he
was transfixed to the ground with fifty honorable wounds. 1461
“Advance,” cried Abdallah, who stepped into the vacant place,
“advance with confidence: either victory or paradise is our own.”
The lance of a Roman decided the alternative; but the falling
standard was rescued by Caled, the proselyte of Mecca: nine
swords were broken in his hand; and his valor withstood and
repulsed the superior numbers of the Christians. In the nocturnal
council of the camp he was chosen to command: his skilful
evolutions of the ensuing day secured either the victory or the
retreat of the Saracens; and Caled is renowned among his brethren
and his enemies by the glorious appellation of the Sword of God.
In the pulpit, Mahomet described, with prophetic rapture, the
crowns of the blessed martyrs; but in private he betrayed the
feelings of human nature: he was surprised as he wept over the
daughter of Zeid: “What do I see?” said the astonished votary.
“You see,” replied the apostle, “a friend who is deploring the
loss of his most faithful friend.” After the conquest of Mecca,
the sovereign of Arabia affected to prevent the hostile
preparations of Heraclius; and solemnly proclaimed war against
the Romans, without attempting to disguise the hardships and
dangers of the enterprise. 147 The Moslems were discouraged: they
alleged the want of money, or horses, or provisions; the season
of harvest, and the intolerable heat of the summer: “Hell is much
hotter,” said the indignant prophet. He disdained to compel their
service: but on his return he admonished the most guilty, by an
excommunication of fifty days. Their desertion enhanced the merit
of Abubeker, Othman, and the faithful companions who devoted
their lives and fortunes; and Mahomet displayed his banner at the
head of ten thousand horse and twenty thousand foot. Painful
indeed was the distress of the march: lassitude and thirst were
aggravated by the scorching and pestilential winds of the desert:
ten men rode by turns on one camel; and they were reduced to the
shameful necessity of drinking the water from the belly of that
useful animal. In the mid-way, ten days’ journey from Medina and
Damascus, they reposed near the grove and fountain of Tabuc.
Beyond that place Mahomet declined the prosecution of the war: he
declared himself satisfied with the peaceful intentions, he was
more probably daunted by the martial array, of the emperor of the
East. But the active and intrepid Caled spread around the terror
of his name; and the prophet received the submission of the
tribes and cities, from the Euphrates to Ailah, at the head of
the Red Sea. To his Christian subjects, Mahomet readily granted
the security of their persons, the freedom of their trade, the
property of their goods, and the toleration of their worship. 148
The weakness of their Arabian brethren had restrained them from
opposing his ambition; the disciples of Jesus were endeared to
the enemy of the Jews; and it was the interest of a conqueror to
propose a fair capitulation to the most powerful religion of the
earth.
145 (return) [ Compare the bigoted Al Jannabi (apud Gagnier, tom.
ii. p. 232-255) with the no less bigoted Greeks, Theophanes, (p.
276-227,) Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 86,) and Cedrenus, (p.
421.)]
146 (return) [ For the battle of Muta, and its consequences, see
Abulfeda (p 100-102) and Gagnier, (tom. ii. p. 327-343.).]
1461 (return) [ To console the afflicted relatives of his kinsman
Jauffer, he (Mahomet) represented that, in Paradise, in exchange
for the arms which he had lost, he had been furnished with a pair
of wings, resplendent with the blushing glories of the ruby, and
with which he was become the inseparable companion of the
archangal Gabriel, in his volitations through the regions of
eternal bliss. Hence, in the catalogue of the martyrs, he has
been denominated Jauffer teyaur, the winged Jauffer. Price,
Chronological Retrospect of Mohammedan History, vol. i. p. 5.-M.]
147 (return) [ The expedition of Tabuc is recorded by our
ordinary historians Abulfeda (Vit. Moham. p. 123-127) and
Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 147-163: ) but we have the
advantage of appealing to the original evidence of the Koran, (c.
9, p. 154, 165,) with Sale’s learned and rational notes.]
148 (return) [ The Diploma securitatis Ailensibus is attested by
Ahmed Ben Joseph, and the author Libri Splendorum, (Gagnier, Not.
ad Abulfe dam, p. 125;) but Abulfeda himself, as well as Elmacin,
(Hist. Saracen. p. 11,) though he owns Mahomet’s regard for the
Christians, (p 13,) only mentions peace and tribute. In the year
1630, Sionita published at Paris the text and version of
Mahomet’s patent in favor of the Christians; which was admitted
and reprobated by the opposite taste of Salmasius and Grotius,
(Bayle, Mahomet, Rem. Aa.) Hottinger doubts of its authenticity,
(Hist. Orient. p. 237;) Renaudot urges the consent of the
Mohametans, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 169;) but Mosheim (Hist.
Eccles. p. 244) shows the futility of their opinion and inclines
to believe it spurious. Yet Abulpharagius quotes the impostor’s
treaty with the Nestorian patriarch, (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient.
tom. ii. p. 418;) but Abulpharagius was primate of the
Jacobites.]
Till the age of sixty-three years, the strength of Mahomet was
equal to the temporal and spiritual fatigues of his mission. His
epileptic fits, an absurd calumny of the Greeks, would be an
object of pity rather than abhorrence; 149 but he seriously
believed that he was poisoned at Chaibar by the revenge of a
Jewish female. 150 During four years, the health of the prophet
declined; his infirmities increased; but his mortal disease was a
fever of fourteen days, which deprived him by intervals of the
use of reason. As soon as he was conscious of his danger, he
edified his brethren by the humility of his virtue or penitence.
“If there be any man,” said the apostle from the pulpit, “whom I
have unjustly scourged, I submit my own back to the lash of
retaliation. Have I aspersed the reputation of a Mussulman? let
him proclaim my thoughts in the face of the congregation. Has any
one been despoiled of his goods? the little that I possess shall
compensate the principal and the interest of the debt.” “Yes,”
replied a voice from the crowd, “I am entitled to three drams of
silver.” Mahomet heard the complaint, satisfied the demand, and
thanked his creditor for accusing him in this world rather than
at the day of judgment. He beheld with temperate firmness the
approach of death; enfranchised his slaves (seventeen men, as
they are named, and eleven women;) minutely directed the order of
his funeral, and moderated the lamentations of his weeping
friends, on whom he bestowed the benediction of peace. Till the
third day before his death, he regularly performed the function
of public prayer: the choice of Abubeker to supply his place,
appeared to mark that ancient and faithful friend as his
successor in the sacerdotal and regal office; but he prudently
declined the risk and envy of a more explicit nomination. At a
moment when his faculties were visibly impaired, he called for
pen and ink to write, or, more properly, to dictate, a divine
book, the sum and accomplishment of all his revelations: a
dispute arose in the chamber, whether he should be allowed to
supersede the authority of the Koran; and the prophet was forced
to reprove the indecent vehemence of his disciples. If the
slightest credit may be afforded to the traditions of his wives
and companions, he maintained, in the bosom of his family, and to
the last moments of his life, the dignity 1501 of an apostle, and
the faith of an enthusiast; described the visits of Gabriel, who
bade an everlasting farewell to the earth, and expressed his
lively confidence, not only of the mercy, but of the favor, of
the Supreme Being. In a familiar discourse he had mentioned his
special prerogative, that the angel of death was not allowed to
take his soul till he had respectfully asked the permission of
the prophet. The request was granted; and Mahomet immediately
fell into the agony of his dissolution: his head was reclined on
the lap of Ayesha, the best beloved of all his wives; he fainted
with the violence of pain; recovering his spirits, he raised his
eyes towards the roof of the house, and, with a steady look,
though a faltering voice, uttered the last broken, though
articulate, words: “O God!..... pardon my sins....... Yes, ......
I come,...... among my fellow-citizens on high;” and thus
peaceably expired on a carpet spread upon the floor. An
expedition for the conquest of Syria was stopped by this mournful
event; the army halted at the gates of Medina; the chiefs were
assembled round their dying master. The city, more especially the
house, of the prophet, was a scene of clamorous sorrow of silent
despair: fanaticism alone could suggest a ray of hope and
consolation. “How can he be dead, our witness, our intercessor,
our mediator, with God? By God he is not dead: like Moses and
Jesus, he is wrapped in a holy trance, and speedily will he
return to his faithful people.” The evidence of sense was
disregarded; and Omar, unsheathing his cimeter, threatened to
strike off the heads of the infidels, who should dare to affirm
that the prophet was no more. The tumult was appeased by the
weight and moderation of Abubeker. “Is it Mahomet,” said he to
Omar and the multitude, “or the God of Mahomet, whom you worship?
The God of Mahomet liveth forever; but the apostle was a mortal
like ourselves, and according to his own prediction, he has
experienced the common fate of mortality.” He was piously
interred by the hands of his nearest kinsman, on the same spot on
which he expired: 151 Medina has been sanctified by the death and
burial of Mahomet; and the innumerable pilgrims of Mecca often
turn aside from the way, to bow, in voluntary devotion, 152
before the simple tomb of the prophet. 153
149 (return) [ The epilepsy, or falling-sickness, of Mahomet is
asserted by Theophanes, Zonaras, and the rest of the Greeks; and
is greedily swallowed by the gross bigotry of Hottinger, (Hist.
Orient. p. 10, 11,) Prideaux, (Life of Mahomet, p. 12,) and
Maracci, (tom. ii. Alcoran, p. 762, 763.) The titles (the
wrapped-up, the covered) of two chapters of the Koran, (73, 74)
can hardly be strained to such an interpretation: the silence,
the ignorance of the Mahometan commentators, is more conclusive
than the most peremptory denial; and the charitable side is
espoused by Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, tom. i. p. 301,)
Gagnier, (ad Abulfedam, p. 9. Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 118,)
and Sale, (Koran, p. 469-474.) * Note: Dr Weil believes in the
epilepsy, and adduces strong evidence for it; and surely it may
be believed, in perfect charity; and that the prophet’s visions
were connected, as they appear to have been, with these fits. I
have little doubt that he saw and believed these visions, and
visions they were. Weil, p. 43.—M. 1845.]
150 (return) [ This poison (more ignominious since it was offered
as a test of his prophetic knowledge) is frankly confessed by his
zealous votaries, Abulfeda (p. 92) and Al Jannabi, (apud Gagnier,
tom. ii. p. 286-288.)]
1501 (return) [ Major Price, who writes with the authority of one
widely conversant with the original sources of Eastern knowledge,
and in a very candid tone, takes a very different view of the
prophet’s death. “In tracing the circumstances of Mahommed’s
illness, we look in vain for any proofs of that meek and heroic
firmness which might be expected to dignify and embellish the
last moments of the apostle of God. On some occasions he betrayed
such want of fortitude, such marks of childish impatience, as are
in general to be found in men only of the most ordinary stamp;
and such as extorted from his wife Ayesha, in particular, the
sarcastic remark, that in herself, or any of her family, a
similar demeanor would long since have incurred his severe
displeasure. * * * He said that the acuteness and violence of his
sufferings were necessarily in the proportion of those honors
with which it had ever pleased the hand of Omnipotence to
distinguish its peculiar favorites.” Price, vol. i. p. 13.—M]
151 (return) [ The Greeks and Latins have invented and propagated
the vulgar and ridiculous story, that Mahomet’s iron tomb is
suspended in the air at Mecca, (Laonicus Chalcondyles, de Rebus
Turcicis, l. iii. p. 66,) by the action of equal and potent
loadstones, (Dictionnaire de Bayle, Mahomet, Rem. Ee. Ff.)
Without any philosophical inquiries, it may suffice, that, 1. The
prophet was not buried at Mecca; and, 2. That his tomb at Medina,
which has been visited by millions, is placed on the ground,
(Reland, de Relig. Moham. l. ii. c. 19, p. 209-211. Gagnier, Vie
de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 263-268.) * Note: According to the
testimony of all the Eastern authors, Mahomet died on Monday the
12th Reby 1st, in the year 11 of the Hegira, which answers in
reality to the 8th June, 632, of J. C. We find in Ockley (Hist.
of Saracens) that it was on Monday the 6th June, 632. This is a
mistake; for the 6th June of that year was a Saturday, not a
Monday; the 8th June, therefore, was a Monday. It is easy to
discover that the lunar year, in this calculation has been
confounded with the solar. St. Martin vol. xi. p. 186.—M.]
152 (return) [ Al Jannabi enumerates (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii.
p. 372-391) the multifarious duties of a pilgrim who visits the
tombs of the prophet and his companions; and the learned casuist
decides, that this act of devotion is nearest in obligation and
merit to a divine precept. The doctors are divided which, of
Mecca or Medina, be the most excellent, (p. 391-394.)]
153 (return) [ The last sickness, death, and burial of Mahomet,
are described by Abulfeda and Gagnier, (Vit. Moham. p. 133-142.
—Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p. 220-271.) The most private and
interesting circumstances were originally received from Ayesha,
Ali, the sons of Abbas, &c.; and as they dwelt at Medina, and
survived the prophet many years, they might repeat the pious tale
to a second or third generation of pilgrims.]
At the conclusion of the life of Mahomet, it may perhaps be
expected, that I should balance his faults and virtues, that I
should decide whether the title of enthusiast or impostor more
properly belongs to that extraordinary man. Had I been intimately
conversant with the son of Abdallah, the task would still be
difficult, and the success uncertain: at the distance of twelve
centuries, I darkly contemplate his shade through a cloud of
religious incense; and could I truly delineate the portrait of an
hour, the fleeting resemblance would not equally apply to the
solitary of Mount Hera, to the preacher of Mecca, and to the
conqueror of Arabia. The author of a mighty revolution appears to
have been endowed with a pious and contemplative disposition: so
soon as marriage had raised him above the pressure of want, he
avoided the paths of ambition and avarice; and till the age of
forty he lived with innocence, and would have died without a
name. The unity of God is an idea most congenial to nature and
reason; and a slight conversation with the Jews and Christians
would teach him to despise and detest the idolatry of Mecca. It
was the duty of a man and a citizen to impart the doctrine of
salvation, to rescue his country from the dominion of sin and
error. The energy of a mind incessantly bent on the same object,
would convert a general obligation into a particular call; the
warm suggestions of the understanding or the fancy would be felt
as the inspirations of Heaven; the labor of thought would expire
in rapture and vision; and the inward sensation, the invisible
monitor, would be described with the form and attributes of an
angel of God. 154 From enthusiasm to imposture, the step is
perilous and slippery: the daemon of Socrates 155 affords a
memorable instance, how a wise man may deceive himself, how a
good man may deceive others, how the conscience may slumber in a
mixed and middle state between self-illusion and voluntary fraud.
Charity may believe that the original motives of Mahomet were
those of pure and genuine benevolence; but a human missionary is
incapable of cherishing the obstinate unbelievers who reject his
claims despise his arguments, and persecute his life; he might
forgive his personal adversaries, he may lawfully hate the
enemies of God; the stern passions of pride and revenge were
kindled in the bosom of Mahomet, and he sighed, like the prophet
of Nineveh, for the destruction of the rebels whom he had
condemned. The injustice of Mecca and the choice of Medina,
transformed the citizen into a prince, the humble preacher into
the leader of armies; but his sword was consecrated by the
example of the saints; and the same God who afflicts a sinful
world with pestilence and earthquakes, might inspire for their
conversion or chastisement the valor of his servants. In the
exercise of political government, he was compelled to abate of
the stern rigor of fanaticism, to comply in some measure with the
prejudices and passions of his followers, and to employ even the
vices of mankind as the instruments of their salvation. The use
of fraud and perfidy, of cruelty and injustice, were often
subservient to the propagation of the faith; and Mahomet
commanded or approved the assassination of the Jews and idolaters
who had escaped from the field of battle. By the repetition of
such acts, the character of Mahomet must have been gradually
stained; and the influence of such pernicious habits would be
poorly compensated by the practice of the personal and social
virtues which are necessary to maintain the reputation of a
prophet among his sectaries and friends. Of his last years,
ambition was the ruling passion; and a politician will suspect,
that he secretly smiled (the victorious impostor!) at the
enthusiasm of his youth, and the credulity of his proselytes. 156
A philosopher will observe, that their credulity and his success
would tend more strongly to fortify the assurance of his divine
mission, that his interest and religion were inseparably
connected, and that his conscience would be soothed by the
persuasion, that he alone was absolved by the Deity from the
obligation of positive and moral laws. If he retained any vestige
of his native innocence, the sins of Mahomet may be allowed as an
evidence of his sincerity. In the support of truth, the arts of
fraud and fiction may be deemed less criminal; and he would have
started at the foulness of the means, had he not been satisfied
of the importance and justice of the end. Even in a conqueror or
a priest, I can surprise a word or action of unaffected humanity;
and the decree of Mahomet, that, in the sale of captives, the
mothers should never be separated from their children, may
suspend, or moderate, the censure of the historian. 157
154 (return) [ The Christians, rashly enough, have assigned to
Mahomet a tame pigeon, that seemed to descend from heaven and
whisper in his ear. As this pretended miracle is urged by
Grotius, (de Veritate Religionis Christianae,) his Arabic
translator, the learned Pocock, inquired of him the names of his
authors; and Grotius confessed, that it is unknown to the
Mahometans themselves. Lest it should provoke their indignation
and laughter, the pious lie is suppressed in the Arabic version;
but it has maintained an edifying place in the numerous editions
of the Latin text, (Pocock, Specimen, Hist. Arabum, p. 186, 187.
Reland, de Religion. Moham. l. ii. c. 39, p. 259-262.)]
155 (return) [ (Plato, in Apolog. Socrat. c. 19, p. 121, 122,
edit. Fischer.) The familiar examples, which Socrates urges in
his Dialogue with Theages, (Platon. Opera, tom. i. p. 128, 129,
edit. Hen. Stephan.) are beyond the reach of human foresight; and
the divine inspiration of the philosopher is clearly taught in
the Memorabilia of Xenophon. The ideas of the most rational
Platonists are expressed by Cicero, (de Divinat. i. 54,) and in
the xivth and xvth Dissertations of Maximus of Tyre, (p. 153-172,
edit. Davis.)]
156 (return) [ In some passage of his voluminous writings,
Voltaire compares the prophet, in his old age, to a fakir, “qui
detache la chaine de son cou pour en donner sur les oreilles a
ses confreres.”]
157 (return) [ Gagnier relates, with the same impartial pen, this
humane law of the prophet, and the murders of Caab, and Sophian,
which he prompted and approved, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. ii. p. 69,
97, 208.)]
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part VII.
The good sense of Mahomet 158 despised the pomp of royalty: the
apostle of God submitted to the menial offices of the family: he
kindled the fire, swept the floor, milked the ewes, and mended
with his own hands his shoes and his woollen garment. Disdaining
the penance and merit of a hermit, he observed, without effort or
vanity, the abstemious diet of an Arab and a soldier. On solemn
occasions he feasted his companions with rustic and hospitable
plenty; but in his domestic life, many weeks would elapse without
a fire being kindled on the hearth of the prophet. The
interdiction of wine was confirmed by his example; his hunger was
appeased with a sparing allowance of barley-bread: he delighted
in the taste of milk and honey; but his ordinary food consisted
of dates and water. Perfumes and women were the two sensual
enjoyments which his nature required, and his religion did not
forbid; and Mahomet affirmed, that the fervor of his devotion was
increased by these innocent pleasures. The heat of the climate
inflames the blood of the Arabs; and their libidinous complexion
has been noticed by the writers of antiquity. 159 Their
incontinence was regulated by the civil and religious laws of the
Koran: their incestuous alliances were blamed; the boundless
license of polygamy was reduced to four legitimate wives or
concubines; their rights both of bed and of dowry were equitably
determined; the freedom of divorce was discouraged, adultery was
condemned as a capital offence; and fornication, in either sex,
was punished with a hundred stripes. 160 Such were the calm and
rational precepts of the legislator: but in his private conduct,
Mahomet indulged the appetites of a man, and abused the claims of
a prophet. A special revelation dispensed him from the laws which
he had imposed on his nation: the female sex, without reserve,
was abandoned to his desires; and this singular prerogative
excited the envy, rather than the scandal, the veneration, rather
than the envy, of the devout Mussulmans. If we remember the seven
hundred wives and three hundred concubines of the wise Solomon,
we shall applaud the modesty of the Arabian, who espoused no more
than seventeen or fifteen wives; eleven are enumerated who
occupied at Medina their separate apartments round the house of
the apostle, and enjoyed in their turns the favor of his conjugal
society. What is singular enough, they were all widows, excepting
only Ayesha, the daughter of Abubeker. She was doubtless a
virgin, since Mahomet consummated his nuptials (such is the
premature ripeness of the climate) when she was only nine years
of age. The youth, the beauty, the spirit of Ayesha, gave her a
superior ascendant: she was beloved and trusted by the prophet;
and, after his death, the daughter of Abubeker was long revered
as the mother of the faithful. Her behavior had been ambiguous
and indiscreet: in a nocturnal march she was accidentally left
behind; and in the morning Ayesha returned to the camp with a
man. The temper of Mahomet was inclined to jealousy; but a divine
revelation assured him of her innocence: he chastised her
accusers, and published a law of domestic peace, that no woman
should be condemned unless four male witnesses had seen her in
the act of adultery. 161 In his adventures with Zeineb, the wife
of Zeid, and with Mary, an Egyptian captive, the amorous prophet
forgot the interest of his reputation. At the house of Zeid, his
freedman and adopted son, he beheld, in a loose undress, the
beauty of Zeineb, and burst forth into an ejaculation of devotion
and desire. The servile, or grateful, freedman understood the
hint, and yielded without hesitation to the love of his
benefactor. But as the filial relation had excited some doubt and
scandal, the angel Gabriel descended from heaven to ratify the
deed, to annul the adoption, and gently to reprove the apostle
for distrusting the indulgence of his God. One of his wives,
Hafna, the daughter of Omar, surprised him on her own bed, in the
embraces of his Egyptian captive: she promised secrecy and
forgiveness, he swore that he would renounce the possession of
Mary. Both parties forgot their engagements; and Gabriel again
descended with a chapter of the Koran, to absolve him from his
oath, and to exhort him freely to enjoy his captives and
concubines, without listening to the clamors of his wives. In a
solitary retreat of thirty days, he labored, alone with Mary, to
fulfil the commands of the angel. When his love and revenge were
satiated, he summoned to his presence his eleven wives,
reproached their disobedience and indiscretion, and threatened
them with a sentence of divorce, both in this world and in the
next; a dreadful sentence, since those who had ascended the bed
of the prophet were forever excluded from the hope of a second
marriage. Perhaps the incontinence of Mahomet may be palliated by
the tradition of his natural or preternatural gifts; 162 he
united the manly virtue of thirty of the children of Adam: and
the apostle might rival the thirteenth labor 163 of the Grecian
Hercules. 164 A more serious and decent excuse may be drawn from
his fidelity to Cadijah. During the twenty-four years of their
marriage, her youthful husband abstained from the right of
polygamy, and the pride or tenderness of the venerable matron was
never insulted by the society of a rival. After her death, he
placed her in the rank of the four perfect women, with the sister
of Moses, the mother of Jesus, and Fatima, the best beloved of
his daughters. “Was she not old?” said Ayesha, with the insolence
of a blooming beauty; “has not God given you a better in her
place?” “No, by God,” said Mahomet, with an effusion of honest
gratitude, “there never can be a better! She believed in me when
men despised me; she relieved my wants, when I was poor and
persecuted by the world.” 165
158 (return) [ For the domestic life of Mahomet, consult Gagnier,
and the corresponding chapters of Abulfeda; for his diet, (tom.
iii. p. 285-288;) his children, (p. 189, 289;) his wives, (p.
290-303;) his marriage with Zeineb, (tom. ii. p. 152-160;) his
amour with Mary, (p. 303-309;) the false accusation of Ayesha,
(p. 186-199.) The most original evidence of the three last
transactions is contained in the xxivth, xxxiiid, and lxvith
chapters of the Koran, with Sale’s Commentary. Prideaux (Life of
Mahomet, p. 80-90) and Maracci (Prodrom. Alcoran, part iv. p.
49-59) have maliciously exaggerated the frailties of Mahomet.]
159 (return) [ Incredibile est quo ardore apud eos in Venerem
uterque solvitur sexus, (Ammian. Marcellin. l. xiv. c. 4.)]
160 (return) [ Sale (Preliminary Discourse, p. 133-137) has
recapitulated the laws of marriage, divorce, &c.; and the curious
reader of Selden’s Uror Hebraica will recognize many Jewish
ordinances.]
161 (return) [ In a memorable case, the Caliph Omar decided that
all presumptive evidence was of no avail; and that all the four
witnesses must have actually seen stylum in pyxide, (Abulfedae
Annales Moslemici, p. 71, vers. Reiske.)]
162 (return) [ Sibi robur ad generationem, quantum triginta viri
habent, inesse jacteret: ita ut unica hora posset undecim
foeminis satisfacere, ut ex Arabum libris refert Stus. Petrus
Paschasius, c. 2., (Maracci, Prodromus Alcoran, p. iv. p. 55. See
likewise Observations de Belon, l. iii. c. 10, fol. 179, recto.)
Al Jannabi (Gagnier, tom. iii. p. 287) records his own testimony,
that he surpassed all men in conjugal vigor; and Abulfeda
mentions the exclamation of Ali, who washed the body after his
death, “O propheta, certe penis tuus coelum versus erectus est,”
in Vit. Mohammed, p. 140.]
163 (return) [ I borrow the style of a father of the church,
(Greg. Nazianzen, Orat. iii. p. 108.)]
164 (return) [ The common and most glorious legend includes, in a
single night the fifty victories of Hercules over the virgin
daughters of Thestius, (Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. l. iv. p. 274.
Pausanias, l. ix. p. 763. Statius Sylv. l. i. eleg. iii. v. 42.)
But Athenaeus allows seven nights, (Deipnosophist, l. xiii. p.
556,) and Apollodorus fifty, for this arduous achievement of
Hercules, who was then no more than eighteen years of age,
(Bibliot. l. ii. c. 4, p. 111, cum notis Heyne, part i. p. 332.)]
165 (return) [ Abulfeda in Vit. Moham. p. 12, 13, 16, 17, cum
Notis Gagnier]
In the largest indulgence of polygamy, the founder of a religion
and empire might aspire to multiply the chances of a numerous
posterity and a lineal succession. The hopes of Mahomet were
fatally disappointed. The virgin Ayesha, and his ten widows of
mature age and approved fertility, were barren in his potent
embraces. The four sons of Cadijah died in their infancy. Mary,
his Egyptian concubine, was endeared to him by the birth of
Ibrahim. At the end of fifteen months the prophet wept over his
grave; but he sustained with firmness the raillery of his
enemies, and checked the adulation or credulity of the Moslems,
by the assurance that an eclipse of the sun was not occasioned by
the death of the infant. Cadijah had likewise given him four
daughters, who were married to the most faithful of his
disciples: the three eldest died before their father; but Fatima,
who possessed his confidence and love, became the wife of her
cousin Ali, and the mother of an illustrious progeny. The merit
and misfortunes of Ali and his descendants will lead me to
anticipate, in this place, the series of the Saracen caliphs, a
title which describes the commanders of the faithful as the
vicars and successors of the apostle of God. 166
166 (return) [ This outline of the Arabian history is drawn from
the Bibliotheque Orientale of D’Herbelot, (under the names of
Aboubecre, Omar Othman, Ali, &c.;) from the Annals of Abulfeda,
Abulpharagius, and Elmacin, (under the proper years of the
Hegira,) and especially from Ockley’s History of the Saracens,
(vol. i. p. 1-10, 115-122, 229, 249, 363-372, 378-391, and almost
the whole of the second volume.) Yet we should weigh with caution
the traditions of the hostile sects; a stream which becomes still
more muddy as it flows farther from the source. Sir John Chardin
has too faithfully copied the fables and errors of the modern
Persians, (Voyages, tom. ii. p. 235-250, &c.)]
The birth, the alliance, the character of Ali, which exalted him
above the rest of his countrymen, might justify his claim to the
vacant throne of Arabia. The son of Abu Taleb was, in his own
right, the chief of the family of Hashem, and the hereditary
prince or guardian of the city and temple of Mecca. The light of
prophecy was extinct; but the husband of Fatima might expect the
inheritance and blessing of her father: the Arabs had sometimes
been patient of a female reign; and the two grandsons of the
prophet had often been fondled in his lap, and shown in his
pulpit as the hope of his age, and the chief of the youth of
paradise. The first of the true believers might aspire to march
before them in this world and in the next; and if some were of a
graver and more rigid cast, the zeal and virtue of Ali were never
outstripped by any recent proselyte. He united the qualifications
of a poet, a soldier, and a saint: his wisdom still breathes in a
collection of moral and religious sayings; 167 and every
antagonist, in the combats of the tongue or of the sword, was
subdued by his eloquence and valor. From the first hour of his
mission to the last rites of his funeral, the apostle was never
forsaken by a generous friend, whom he delighted to name his
brother, his vicegerent, and the faithful Aaron of a second
Moses. The son of Abu Taleb was afterwards reproached for
neglecting to secure his interest by a solemn declaration of his
right, which would have silenced all competition, and sealed his
succession by the decrees of Heaven. But the unsuspecting hero
confided in himself: the jealousy of empire, and perhaps the fear
of opposition, might suspend the resolutions of Mahomet; and the
bed of sickness was besieged by the artful Ayesha, the daughter
of Abubeker, and the enemy of Ali. 1671
167 (return) [ Ockley (at the end of his second volume) has given
an English version of 169 sentences, which he ascribes, with some
hesitation, to Ali, the son of Abu Taleb. His preface is colored
by the enthusiasm of a translator; yet these sentences delineate
a characteristic, though dark, picture of human life.]
1671 (return) [ Gibbon wrote chiefly from the Arabic or Sunnite
account of these transactions, the only sources accessible at the
time when he composed his History. Major Price, writing from
Persian authorities, affords us the advantage of comparing
throughout what may be fairly considered the Shiite Version. The
glory of Ali is the constant burden of their strain. He was
destined, and, according to some accounts, designated, for the
caliphate by the prophet; but while the others were fiercely
pushing their own interests, Ali was watching the remains of
Mahomet with pious fidelity. His disinterested magnanimity, on
each separate occasion, declined the sceptre, and gave the noble
example of obedience to the appointed caliph. He is described, in
retirement, on the throne, and in the field of battle, as
transcendently pious, magnanimous, valiant, and humane. He lost
his empire through his excess of virtue and love for the faithful
his life through his confidence in God, and submission to the
decrees of fate. Compare the curious account of this apathy in
Price, chapter ii. It is to be regretted, I must add, that Major
Price has contented himself with quoting the names of the Persian
works which he follows, without any account of their character,
age, and authority.—M.]
The silence and death of the prophet restored the liberty of the
people; and his companions convened an assembly to deliberate on
the choice of his successor. The hereditary claim and lofty
spirit of Ali were offensive to an aristocracy of elders,
desirous of bestowing and resuming the sceptre by a free and
frequent election: the Koreish could never be reconciled to the
proud preeminence of the line of Hashem; the ancient discord of
the tribes was rekindled, the fugitives of Mecca and the
auxiliaries of Medina asserted their respective merits; and the
rash proposal of choosing two independent caliphs would have
crushed in their infancy the religion and empire of the Saracens.
The tumult was appeased by the disinterested resolution of Omar,
who, suddenly renouncing his own pretensions, stretched forth his
hand, and declared himself the first subject of the mild and
venerable Abubeker. 1672 The urgency of the moment, and the
acquiescence of the people, might excuse this illegal and
precipitate measure; but Omar himself confessed from the pulpit,
that if any Mulsulman should hereafter presume to anticipate the
suffrage of his brethren, both the elector and the elected would
be worthy of death. 168 After the simple inauguration of
Abubeker, he was obeyed in Medina, Mecca, and the provinces of
Arabia: the Hashemites alone declined the oath of fidelity; and
their chief, in his own house, maintained, above six months, a
sullen and independent reserve; without listening to the threats
of Omar, who attempted to consume with fire the habitation of the
daughter of the apostle. The death of Fatima, and the decline of
his party, subdued the indignant spirit of Ali: he condescended
to salute the commander of the faithful, accepted his excuse of
the necessity of preventing their common enemies, and wisely
rejected his courteous offer of abdicating the government of the
Arabians. After a reign of two years, the aged caliph was
summoned by the angel of death. In his testament, with the tacit
approbation of his companions, he bequeathed the sceptre to the
firm and intrepid virtue of Omar. “I have no occasion,” said the
modest candidate, “for the place.” “But the place has occasion
for you,” replied Abubeker; who expired with a fervent prayer,
that the God of Mahomet would ratify his choice, and direct the
Mussulmans in the way of concord and obedience. The prayer was
not ineffectual, since Ali himself, in a life of privacy and
prayer, professed to revere the superior worth and dignity of his
rival; who comforted him for the loss of empire, by the most
flattering marks of confidence and esteem. In the twelfth year of
his reign, Omar received a mortal wound from the hand of an
assassin: he rejected with equal impartiality the names of his
son and of Ali, refused to load his conscience with the sins of
his successor, and devolved on six of the most respectable
companions the arduous task of electing a commander of the
faithful. On this occasion, Ali was again blamed by his friends
169 for submitting his right to the judgment of men, for
recognizing their jurisdiction by accepting a place among the six
electors. He might have obtained their suffrage, had he deigned
to promise a strict and servile conformity, not only to the Koran
and tradition, but likewise to the determinations of two seniors.
170 With these limitations, Othman, the secretary of Mahomet,
accepted the government; nor was it till after the third caliph,
twenty-four years after the death of the prophet, that Ali was
invested, by the popular choice, with the regal and sacerdotal
office. The manners of the Arabians retained their primitive
simplicity, and the son of Abu Taleb despised the pomp and vanity
of this world. At the hour of prayer, he repaired to the mosch of
Medina, clothed in a thin cotton gown, a coarse turban on his
head, his slippers in one hand, and his bow in the other, instead
of a walking-staff. The companions of the prophet, and the chiefs
of the tribes, saluted their new sovereign, and gave him their
right hands as a sign of fealty and allegiance.
1672 (return) [ Abubeker, the father of the virgin Ayesha. St.
Martin, vol. XL, p. 88—M.]
168 (return) [ Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 5, 6,)
from an Arabian Ms., represents Ayesha as adverse to the
substitution of her father in the place of the apostle. This
fact, so improbable in itself, is unnoticed by Abulfeda, Al
Jannabi, and Al Bochari, the last of whom quotes the tradition of
Ayesha herself, (Vit. Mohammed, p. 136 Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii.
p. 236.)]
169 (return) [ Particularly by his friend and cousin Abdallah,
the son of Abbas, who died A.D. 687, with the title of grand
doctor of the Moslems. In Abulfeda he recapitulates the important
occasions in which Ali had neglected his salutary advice, (p. 76,
vers. Reiske;) and concludes, (p. 85,) O princeps fidelium,
absque controversia tu quidem vere fortis es, at inops boni
consilii, et rerum gerendarum parum callens.]
170 (return) [ I suspect that the two seniors (Abulpharagius, p.
115. Ockley, tom. i. p. 371,) may signify not two actual
counsellors, but his two predecessors, Abubeker and Omar.]
The mischiefs that flow from the contests of ambition are usually
confined to the times and countries in which they have been
agitated. But the religious discord of the friends and enemies of
Ali has been renewed in every age of the Hegira, and is still
maintained in the immortal hatred of the Persians and Turks. 171
The former, who are branded with the appellation of Shiites or
sectaries, have enriched the Mahometan creed with a new article
of faith; and if Mahomet be the apostle, his companion Ali is the
vicar, of God. In their private converse, in their public
worship, they bitterly execrate the three usurpers who
intercepted his indefeasible right to the dignity of Imam and
Caliph; and the name of Omar expresses in their tongue the
perfect accomplishment of wickedness and impiety. 172 The
Sonnites, who are supported by the general consent and orthodox
tradition of the Mussulmans, entertain a more impartial, or at
least a more decent, opinion. They respect the memory of
Abubeker, Omar, Othman, and Ali, the holy and legitimate
successors of the prophet. But they assign the last and most
humble place to the husband of Fatima, in the persuasion that the
order of succession was determined by the decrees of sanctity.
173 An historian who balances the four caliphs with a hand
unshaken by superstition, will calmly pronounce that their
manners were alike pure and exemplary; that their zeal was
fervent, and probably sincere; and that, in the midst of riches
and power, their lives were devoted to the practice of moral and
religious duties. But the public virtues of Abubeker and Omar,
the prudence of the first, the severity of the second, maintained
the peace and prosperity of their reigns. The feeble temper and
declining age of Othman were incapable of sustaining the weight
of conquest and empire. He chose, and he was deceived; he
trusted, and he was betrayed: the most deserving of the faithful
became useless or hostile to his government, and his lavish
bounty was productive only of ingratitude and discontent. The
spirit of discord went forth in the provinces: their deputies
assembled at Medina; and the Charegites, the desperate fanatics
who disclaimed the yoke of subordination and reason, were
confounded among the free-born Arabs, who demanded the redress of
their wrongs and the punishment of their oppressors. From Cufa,
from Bassora, from Egypt, from the tribes of the desert, they
rose in arms, encamped about a league from Medina, and despatched
a haughty mandate to their sovereign, requiring him to execute
justice, or to descend from the throne. His repentance began to
disarm and disperse the insurgents; but their fury was rekindled
by the arts of his enemies; and the forgery of a perfidious
secretary was contrived to blast his reputation and precipitate
his fall. The caliph had lost the only guard of his predecessors,
the esteem and confidence of the Moslems: during a siege of six
weeks his water and provisions were intercepted, and the feeble
gates of the palace were protected only by the scruples of the
more timorous rebels. Forsaken by those who had abused his
simplicity, the hopeless and venerable caliph expected the
approach of death: the brother of Ayesha marched at the head of
the assassins; and Othman, with the Koran in his lap, was pierced
with a multitude of wounds. 1731 A tumultuous anarchy of five
days was appeased by the inauguration of Ali: his refusal would
have provoked a general massacre. In this painful situation he
supported the becoming pride of the chief of the Hashemites;
declared that he had rather serve than reign; rebuked the
presumption of the strangers; and required the formal, if not the
voluntary, assent of the chiefs of the nation. He has never been
accused of prompting the assassin of Omar; though Persia
indiscreetly celebrates the festival of that holy martyr. The
quarrel between Othman and his subjects was assuaged by the early
mediation of Ali; and Hassan, the eldest of his sons, was
insulted and wounded in the defence of the caliph. Yet it is
doubtful whether the father of Hassan was strenuous and sincere
in his opposition to the rebels; and it is certain that he
enjoyed the benefit of their crime. The temptation was indeed of
such magnitude as might stagger and corrupt the most obdurate
virtue. The ambitious candidate no longer aspired to the barren
sceptre of Arabia; the Saracens had been victorious in the East
and West; and the wealthy kingdoms of Persia, Syria, and Egypt
were the patrimony of the commander of the faithful.
171 (return) [ The schism of the Persians is explained by all our
travellers of the last century, especially in the iid and ivth
volumes of their master, Chardin. Niebuhr, though of inferior
merit, has the advantage of writing so late as the year 1764,
(Voyages en Arabie, &c., tom. ii. p. 208-233,) since the
ineffectual attempt of Nadir Shah to change the religion of the
nation, (see his Persian History translated into French by Sir
William Jones, tom. ii. p. 5, 6, 47, 48, 144-155.)]
172 (return) [ Omar is the name of the devil; his murderer is a
saint. When the Persians shoot with the bow, they frequently cry,
“May this arrow go to the heart of Omar!” (Voyages de Chardin,
tom. ii. p 239, 240, 259, &c.)]
173 (return) [ This gradation of merit is distinctly marked in a
creed illustrated by Reland, (de Relig. Mohamm. l. i. p. 37;) and
a Sonnite argument inserted by Ockley, (Hist. of the Saracens,
tom. ii. p. 230.) The practice of cursing the memory of Ali was
abolished, after forty years, by the Ommiades themselves,
(D’Herbelot, p. 690;) and there are few among the Turks who
presume to revile him as an infidel, (Voyages de Chardin, tom.
iv. p. 46.)]
1731 (return) [ Compare Price, p. 180.—M.]
Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.—Part VIII.
A life of prayer and contemplation had not chilled the martial
activity of Ali; but in a mature age, after a long experience of
mankind, he still betrayed in his conduct the rashness and
indiscretion of youth. 1732 In the first days of his reign, he
neglected to secure, either by gifts or fetters, the doubtful
allegiance of Telha and Zobeir, two of the most powerful of the
Arabian chiefs. They escaped from Medina to Mecca, and from
thence to Bassora; erected the standard of revolt; and usurped
the government of Irak, or Assyria, which they had vainly
solicited as the reward of their services. The mask of patriotism
is allowed to cover the most glaring inconsistencies; and the
enemies, perhaps the assassins, of Othman now demanded vengeance
for his blood. They were accompanied in their flight by Ayesha,
the widow of the prophet, who cherished, to the last hour of her
life, an implacable hatred against the husband and the posterity
of Fatima. The most reasonable Moslems were scandalized, that the
mother of the faithful should expose in a camp her person and
character; 1733 but the superstitious crowd was confident that
her presence would sanctify the justice, and assure the success,
of their cause. At the head of twenty thousand of his loyal
Arabs, and nine thousand valiant auxiliaries of Cufa, the caliph
encountered and defeated the superior numbers of the rebels under
the walls of Bassora. 1734 Their leaders, Telha and Zobeir, 1735
were slain in the first battle that stained with civil blood the
arms of the Moslems. 1736 After passing through the ranks to
animate the troops, Ayesha had chosen her post amidst the dangers
of the field. In the heat of the action, seventy men, who held
the bridle of her camel, were successively killed or wounded; and
the cage or litter, in which she sat, was stuck with javelins and
darts like the quills of a porcupine. The venerable captive
sustained with firmness the reproaches of the conqueror, and was
speedily dismissed to her proper station at the tomb of Mahomet,
with the respect and tenderness that was still due to the widow
of the apostle. 1737 After this victory, which was styled the Day
of the Camel, Ali marched against a more formidable adversary;
against Moawiyah, the son of Abu Sophian, who had assumed the
title of caliph, and whose claim was supported by the forces of
Syria and the interest of the house of Ommiyah. From the passage
of Thapsacus, the plain of Siffin 174 extends along the western
bank of the Euphrates. On this spacious and level theatre, the
two competitors waged a desultory war of one hundred and ten
days. In the course of ninety actions or skirmishes, the loss of
Ali was estimated at twenty-five, that of Moawiyah at forty-five,
thousand soldiers; and the list of the slain was dignified with
the names of five-and-twenty veterans who had fought at Beder
under the standard of Mahomet. In this sanguinary contest the
lawful caliph displayed a superior character of valor and
humanity. 1741 His troops were strictly enjoined to await the
first onset of the enemy, to spare their flying brethren, and to
respect the bodies of the dead, and the chastity of the female
captives. He generously proposed to save the blood of the Moslems
by a single combat; but his trembling rival declined the
challenge as a sentence of inevitable death. The ranks of the
Syrians were broken by the charge of a hero who was mounted on a
piebald horse, and wielded with irresistible force his ponderous
and two-edged sword. As often as he smote a rebel, he shouted the
Allah Acbar, “God is victorious!” and in the tumult of a
nocturnal battle, he was heard to repeat four hundred times that
tremendous exclamation. The prince of Damascus already meditated
his flight; but the certain victory was snatched from the grasp
of Ali by the disobedience and enthusiasm of his troops. Their
conscience was awed by the solemn appeal to the books of the
Koran which Moawiyah exposed on the foremost lances; and Ali was
compelled to yield to a disgraceful truce and an insidious
compromise. He retreated with sorrow and indignation to Cufa; his
party was discouraged; the distant provinces of Persia, of Yemen,
and of Egypt, were subdued or seduced by his crafty rival; and
the stroke of fanaticism, which was aimed against the three
chiefs of the nation, was fatal only to the cousin of Mahomet. In
the temple of Mecca, three Charegites or enthusiasts discoursed
of the disorders of the church and state: they soon agreed, that
the deaths of Ali, of Moawiyah, and of his friend Amrou, the
viceroy of Egypt, would restore the peace and unity of religion.
Each of the assassins chose his victim, poisoned his dagger,
devoted his life, and secretly repaired to the scene of action.
Their resolution was equally desperate: but the first mistook the
person of Amrou, and stabbed the deputy who occupied his seat;
the prince of Damascus was dangerously hurt by the second; the
lawful caliph, in the mosch of Cufa, received a mortal wound from
the hand of the third. He expired in the sixty-third year of his
age, and mercifully recommended to his children, that they would
despatch the murderer by a single stroke. 1742 The sepulchre of
Ali 175 was concealed from the tyrants of the house of Ommiyah;
176 but in the fourth age of the Hegira, a tomb, a temple, a
city, arose near the ruins of Cufa. 177 Many thousands of the
Shiites repose in holy ground at the feet of the vicar of God;
and the desert is vivified by the numerous and annual visits of
the Persians, who esteem their devotion not less meritorious than
the pilgrimage of Mecca.
1732 (return) [ Ali had determined to supersede all the
lieutenants in the different provinces. Price, p. 191. Compare,
on the conduct of Telha and Zobeir, p. 193—M.]
1733 (return) [ See the very curious circumstances which took
place before and during her flight. Price, p. 196.—M.]
1734 (return) [ The reluctance of Ali to shed the blood of true
believers is strikingly described by Major Price’s Persian
historians. Price, p. 222.—M.]
1735 (return) [ See (in Price) the singular adventures of Zobeir.
He was murdered after having abandoned the army of the
insurgents. Telha was about to do the same, when his leg was
pierced with an arrow by one of his own party The wound was
mortal. Price, p. 222.—M.]
1736 (return) [ According to Price, two hundred and eighty of the
Benni Beianziel alone lost a right hand in this service, (p.
225.)—M]
1737 (return) [ She was escorted by a guard of females disguised
as soldiers. When she discovered this, Ayesha was as much
gratified by the delicacy of the arrangement, as she had been
offended by the familiar approach of so many men. Price, p.
229.—M.]
174 (return) [ The plain of Siffin is determined by D’Anville
(l’Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 29) to be the Campus Barbaricus of
Procopius.]
1741 (return) [ The Shiite authors have preserved a noble
instance of Ali’s magnanimity. The superior generalship of
Moawiyah had cut off the army of Ali from the Euphrates; his
soldiers were perishing from want of water. Ali sent a message to
his rival to request free access to the river, declaring that
under the same circumstances he would not allow any of the
faithful, though his adversaries, to perish from thirst. After
some debate, Moawiyah determined to avail himself of the
advantage of his situation, and to reject the demand of Ali. The
soldiers of Ali became desperate; forced their way through that
part of the hostile army which commanded the river, and in their
turn entirely cut off the troops of Moawiyah from the water.
Moawiyah was reduced to make the same supplication to Ali. The
generous caliph instantly complied; and both armies, with their
cattle enjoyed free and unmolested access to the river. Price,
vol. i. p. 268, 272—M.]
1742 (return) [ His son Hassan was recognized as caliph in Arabia
and Irak; but voluntarily abdicated the throne, after six or
seven months, in favor of Moawiyah St. Martin, vol. xi. p
375.—M.]
175 (return) [ Abulfeda, a moderate Sonnite, relates the
different opinions concerning the burial of Ali, but adopts the
sepulchre of Cufa, hodie fama numeroque religiose frequentantium
celebratum. This number is reckoned by Niebuhr to amount annually
to 2000 of the dead, and 5000 of the living, (tom. ii. p. 208,
209.)]
176 (return) [ All the tyrants of Persia, from Adhad el Dowlat
(A.D. 977, D’Herbelot, p. 58, 59, 95) to Nadir Shah, (A.D. 1743,
Hist. de Nadir Shah, tom. ii. p. 155,) have enriched the tomb of
Ali with the spoils of the people. The dome is copper, with a
bright and massy gilding, which glitters to the sun at the
distance of many a mile.]
177 (return) [ The city of Meshed Ali, five or six miles from the
ruins of Cufa, and one hundred and twenty to the south of Bagdad,
is of the size and form of the modern Jerusalem. Meshed Hosein,
larger and more populous, is at the distance of thirty miles.]
The persecutors of Mahomet usurped the inheritance of his
children; and the champions of idolatry became the supreme heads
of his religion and empire. The opposition of Abu Sophian had
been fierce and obstinate; his conversion was tardy and
reluctant; his new faith was fortified by necessity and interest;
he served, he fought, perhaps he believed; and the sins of the
time of ignorance were expiated by the recent merits of the
family of Ommiyah. Moawiyah, the son of Abu Sophian, and of the
cruel Henda, was dignified, in his early youth, with the office
or title of secretary of the prophet: the judgment of Omar
intrusted him with the government of Syria; and he administered
that important province above forty years, either in a
subordinate or supreme rank. Without renouncing the fame of valor
and liberality, he affected the reputation of humanity and
moderation: a grateful people was attached to their benefactor;
and the victorious Moslems were enriched with the spoils of
Cyprus and Rhodes. The sacred duty of pursuing the assassins of
Othman was the engine and pretence of his ambition. The bloody
shirt of the martyr was exposed in the mosch of Damascus: the
emir deplored the fate of his injured kinsman; and sixty thousand
Syrians were engaged in his service by an oath of fidelity and
revenge. Amrou, the conqueror of Egypt, himself an army, was the
first who saluted the new monarch, and divulged the dangerous
secret, that the Arabian caliphs might be created elsewhere than
in the city of the prophet. 178 The policy of Moawiyah eluded the
valor of his rival; and, after the death of Ali, he negotiated
the abdication of his son Hassan, whose mind was either above or
below the government of the world, and who retired without a sigh
from the palace of Cufa to an humble cell near the tomb of his
grandfather. The aspiring wishes of the caliph were finally
crowned by the important change of an elective to an hereditary
kingdom. Some murmurs of freedom or fanaticism attested the
reluctance of the Arabs, and four citizens of Medina refused the
oath of fidelity; but the designs of Moawiyah were conducted with
vigor and address; and his son Yezid, a feeble and dissolute
youth, was proclaimed as the commander of the faithful and the
successor of the apostle of God.
178 (return) [ I borrow, on this occasion, the strong sense and
expression of Tacitus, (Hist. i. 4: ) Evulgato imperii arcano
posse imperatorem alni quam Romae fieri.]
A familiar story is related of the benevolence of one of the sons
of Ali. In serving at table, a slave had inadvertently dropped a
dish of scalding broth on his master: the heedless wretch fell
prostrate, to deprecate his punishment, and repeated a verse of
the Koran: “Paradise is for those who command their anger: “—“I
am not angry: “—“and for those who pardon offences: “—“I pardon
your offence: “—“and for those who return good for evil: “—”I
give you your liberty and four hundred pieces of silver.” With an
equal measure of piety, Hosein, the younger brother of Hassan,
inherited a remnant of his father’s spirit, and served with honor
against the Christians in the siege of Constantinople. The
primogeniture of the line of Hashem, and the holy character of
grandson of the apostle, had centred in his person, and he was at
liberty to prosecute his claim against Yezid, the tyrant of
Damascus, whose vices he despised, and whose title he had never
deigned to acknowledge. A list was secretly transmitted from Cufa
to Medina, of one hundred and forty thousand Moslems, who
professed their attachment to his cause, and who were eager to
draw their swords so soon as he should appear on the banks of the
Euphrates. Against the advice of his wisest friends, he resolved
to trust his person and family in the hands of a perfidious
people. He traversed the desert of Arabia with a timorous retinue
of women and children; but as he approached the confines of Irak
he was alarmed by the solitary or hostile face of the country,
and suspected either the defection or ruin of his party. His
fears were just: Obeidollah, the governor of Cufa, had
extinguished the first sparks of an insurrection; and Hosein, in
the plain of Kerbela, was encompassed by a body of five thousand
horse, who intercepted his communication with the city and the
river. He might still have escaped to a fortress in the desert,
that had defied the power of Caesar and Chosroes, and confided in
the fidelity of the tribe of Tai, which would have armed ten
thousand warriors in his defence.
In a conference with the chief of the enemy, he proposed the
option of three honorable conditions: that he should be allowed
to return to Medina, or be stationed in a frontier garrison
against the Turks, or safely conducted to the presence of Yezid.
But the commands of the caliph, or his lieutenant, were stern and
absolute; and Hosein was informed that he must either submit as a
captive and a criminal to the commander of the faithful, or
expect the consequences of his rebellion. “Do you think,” replied
he, “to terrify me with death?” And, during the short respite of
a night, 1781 he prepared with calm and solemn resignation to
encounter his fate. He checked the lamentations of his sister
Fatima, who deplored the impending ruin of his house. “Our
trust,” said Hosein, “is in God alone. All things, both in heaven
and earth, must perish and return to their Creator. My brother,
my father, my mother, were better than me, and every Mussulman
has an example in the prophet.” He pressed his friends to consult
their safety by a timely flight: they unanimously refused to
desert or survive their beloved master: and their courage was
fortified by a fervent prayer and the assurance of paradise. On
the morning of the fatal day, he mounted on horseback, with his
sword in one hand and the Koran in the other: his generous band
of martyrs consisted only of thirty-two horse and forty foot; but
their flanks and rear were secured by the tent-ropes, and by a
deep trench which they had filled with lighted fagots, according
to the practice of the Arabs. The enemy advanced with reluctance,
and one of their chiefs deserted, with thirty followers, to claim
the partnership of inevitable death. In every close onset, or
single combat, the despair of the Fatimites was invincible; but
the surrounding multitudes galled them from a distance with a
cloud of arrows, and the horses and men were successively slain;
a truce was allowed on both sides for the hour of prayer; and the
battle at length expired by the death of the last companions of
Hosein. Alone, weary, and wounded, he seated himself at the door
of his tent. As he tasted a drop of water, he was pierced in the
mouth with a dart; and his son and nephew, two beautiful youths,
were killed in his arms. He lifted his hands to heaven; they were
full of blood; and he uttered a funeral prayer for the living and
the dead. In a transport of despair his sister issued from the
tent, and adjured the general of the Cufians, that he would not
suffer Hosein to be murdered before his eyes: a tear trickled
down his venerable beard; and the boldest of his soldiers fell
back on every side as the dying hero threw himself among them.
The remorseless Shamer, a name detested by the faithful,
reproached their cowardice; and the grandson of Mahomet was slain
with three-and-thirty strokes of lances and swords. After they
had trampled on his body, they carried his head to the castle of
Cufa, and the inhuman Obeidollah struck him on the mouth with a
cane: “Alas,” exclaimed an aged Mussulman, “on these lips have I
seen the lips of the apostle of God!” In a distant age and
climate, the tragic scene of the death of Hosein will awaken the
sympathy of the coldest reader. 179 1791 On the annual festival
of his martyrdom, in the devout pilgrimage to his sepulchre, his
Persian votaries abandon their souls to the religious frenzy of
sorrow and indignation. 180
1781 (return) [ According to Major Price’s authorities a much
longer time elapsed (p. 198 &c.)—M.]
179 (return) [ I have abridged the interesting narrative of
Ockley, (tom. ii. p. 170-231.) It is long and minute: but the
pathetic, almost always, consists in the detail of little
circumstances.]
1791 (return) [ The account of Hosein’s death, in the Persian
Tarikh Tebry, is much longer; in some circumstances, more
pathetic, than that of Ockley, followed by Gibbon. His family,
after his defenders were all slain, perished in succession before
his eyes. They had been cut off from the water, and suffered all
the agonies of thirst. His eldest son, Ally Akbar, after ten
different assaults on the enemy, in each of which he slew two or
three, complained bitterly of his sufferings from heat and
thirst. “His father arose, and introducing his own tongue within
the parched lips of his favorite child, thus endeavored to
alleviate his sufferings by the only means of which his enemies
had not yet been able to deprive him.” Ally was slain and cut to
pieces in his sight: this wrung from him his first and only cry;
then it was that his sister Zeyneb rushed from the tent. The
rest, including his nephew, fell in succession. Hosein’s horse
was wounded—he fell to the ground. The hour of prayer, between
noon and sunset, had arrived; the Imaun began the religious
duties:—as Hosein prayed, he heard the cries of his infant child
Abdallah, only twelve months old. The child was, at his desire,
placed on his bosom: as he wept over it, it was transfixed by an
arrow. Hosein dragged himself to the Euphrates: as he slaked his
burning thirst, his mouth was pierced by an arrow: he drank his
own blood. Wounded in four-and-thirty places, he still gallantly
resisted. A soldier named Zeraiah gave the fatal wound: his head
was cut off by Ziliousheng. Price, p. 402, 410.—M.]
180 (return) [ Niebuhr the Dane (Voyages en Arabie, &c., tom. ii.
p. 208, &c.) is, perhaps, the only European traveller who has
dared to visit Meshed Ali and Meshed Hosein. The two sepulchres
are in the hands of the Turks, who tolerate and tax the devotion
of the Persian heretics. The festival of the death of Hosein is
amply described by Sir John Chardin, a traveller whom I have
often praised.]
When the sisters and children of Ali were brought in chains to
the throne of Damascus, the caliph was advised to extirpate the
enmity of a popular and hostile race, whom he had injured beyond
the hope of reconciliation. But Yezid preferred the councils of
mercy; and the mourning family was honorably dismissed to mingle
their tears with their kindred at Medina. The glory of martyrdom
superseded the right of primogeniture; and the twelve imams, 181
or pontiffs, of the Persian creed, are Ali, Hassan, Hosein, and
the lineal descendants of Hosein to the ninth generation. Without
arms, or treasures, or subjects, they successively enjoyed the
veneration of the people, and provoked the jealousy of the
reigning caliphs: their tombs, at Mecca or Medina, on the banks
of the Euphrates, or in the province of Chorasan, are still
visited by the devotion of their sect. Their names were often the
pretence of sedition and civil war; but these royal saints
despised the pomp of the world: submitted to the will of God and
the injustice of man; and devoted their innocent lives to the
study and practice of religion. The twelfth and last of the
Imams, conspicuous by the title of Mahadi, or the Guide,
surpassed the solitude and sanctity of his predecessors. He
concealed himself in a cavern near Bagdad: the time and place of
his death are unknown; and his votaries pretend that he still
lives, and will appear before the day of judgment to overthrow
the tyranny of Dejal, or the Antichrist. 182 In the lapse of two
or three centuries, the posterity of Abbas, the uncle of Mahomet,
had multiplied to the number of thirty-three thousand: 183 the
race of Ali might be equally prolific: the meanest individual was
above the first and greatest of princes; and the most eminent
were supposed to excel the perfection of angels. But their
adverse fortune, and the wide extent of the Mussulman empire,
allowed an ample scope for every bold and artful imposture, who
claimed affinity with the holy seed: the sceptre of the
Almohades, in Spain and Africa; of the Fatimites, in Egypt and
Syria; 184 of the Sultans of Yemen; and of the Sophis of Persia;
185 has been consecrated by this vague and ambiguous title. Under
their reigns it might be dangerous to dispute the legitimacy of
their birth; and one of the Fatimite caliphs silenced an
indiscreet question by drawing his cimeter: “This,” said Moez,
“is my pedigree; and these,” casting a handful of gold to his
soldiers,—“and these are my kindred and my children.” In the
various conditions of princes, or doctors, or nobles, or
merchants, or beggars, a swarm of the genuine or fictitious
descendants of Mahomet and Ali is honored with the appellation of
sheiks, or sherifs, or emirs. In the Ottoman empire they are
distinguished by a green turban; receive a stipend from the
treasury; are judged only by their chief; and, however debased by
fortune or character, still assert the proud preeminence of their
birth. A family of three hundred persons, the pure and orthodox
branch of the caliph Hassan, is preserved without taint or
suspicion in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and still
retains, after the revolutions of twelve centuries, the custody
of the temple, and the sovereignty of their native land. The fame
and merit of Mahomet would ennoble a plebeian race, and the
ancient blood of the Koreish transcends the recent majesty of the
kings of the earth. 186
181 (return) [ The general article of Imam, in D’Herbelot’s
Bibliotheque, will indicate the succession; and the lives of the
twelve are given under their respective names.]
182 (return) [ The name of Antichrist may seem ridiculous, but
the Mahometans have liberally borrowed the fables of every
religion, (Sale’s Preliminary Discourse, p. 80, 82.) In the royal
stable of Ispahan, two horses were always kept saddled, one for
the Mahadi himself, the other for his lieutenant, Jesus the son
of Mary.]
183 (return) [ In the year of the Hegira 200, (A.D. 815.) See
D’Herbelot, p. 146]
184 (return) [ D’Herbelot, p. 342. The enemies of the Fatimites
disgraced them by a Jewish origin. Yet they accurately deduced
their genealogy from Jaafar, the sixth Imam; and the impartial
Abulfeda allows (Annal. Moslem. p. 230) that they were owned by
many, qui absque controversia genuini sunt Alidarum, homines
propaginum suae gentis exacte callentes. He quotes some lines
from the celebrated Scherif or Rahdi, Egone humilitatem induam in
terris hostium? (I suspect him to be an Edrissite of Sicily,) cum
in Aegypto sit Chalifa de gente Alii, quocum ego communem habeo
patrem et vindicem.]
185 (return) [ The kings of Persia in the last century are
descended from Sheik Sefi, a saint of the xivth century, and
through him, from Moussa Cassem, the son of Hosein, the son of
Ali, (Olearius, p. 957. Chardin, tom. iii. p. 288.) But I cannot
trace the intermediate degrees in any genuine or fabulous
pedigree. If they were truly Fatimites, they might draw their
origin from the princes of Mazanderan, who reigned in the ixth
century, (D’Herbelot, p. 96.)]
186 (return) [ The present state of the family of Mahomet and Ali
is most accurately described by Demetrius Cantemir (Hist. of the
Othmae Empire, p. 94) and Niebuhr, (Description de l’Arabie, p.
9-16, 317 &c.) It is much to be lamented, that the Danish
traveller was unable to purchase the chronicles of Arabia.]
The talents of Mahomet are entitled to our applause; but his
success has, perhaps, too strongly attracted our admiration. Are
we surprised that a multitude of proselytes should embrace the
doctrine and the passions of an eloquent fanatic? In the heresies
of the church, the same seduction has been tried and repeated
from the time of the apostles to that of the reformers. Does it
seem incredible that a private citizen should grasp the sword and
the sceptre, subdue his native country, and erect a monarchy by
his victorious arms? In the moving picture of the dynasties of
the East, a hundred fortunate usurpers have arisen from a baser
origin, surmounted more formidable obstacles, and filled a larger
scope of empire and conquest. Mahomet was alike instructed to
preach and to fight; and the union of these opposite qualities,
while it enhanced his merit, contributed to his success: the
operation of force and persuasion, of enthusiasm and fear,
continually acted on each other, till every barrier yielded to
their irresistible power. His voice invited the Arabs to freedom
and victory, to arms and rapine, to the indulgence of their
darling passions in this world and the other: the restraints
which he imposed were requisite to establish the credit of the
prophet, and to exercise the obedience of the people; and the
only objection to his success was his rational creed of the unity
and perfections of God. It is not the propagation, but the
permanency, of his religion, that deserves our wonder: the same
pure and perfect impression which he engraved at Mecca and
Medina, is preserved, after the revolutions of twelve centuries,
by the Indian, the African, and the Turkish proselytes of the
Koran. If the Christian apostles, St. Peter or St. Paul, could
return to the Vatican, they might possibly inquire the name of
the Deity who is worshipped with such mysterious rites in that
magnificent temple: at Oxford or Geneva, they would experience
less surprise; but it might still be incumbent on them to peruse
the catechism of the church, and to study the orthodox
commentators on their own writings and the words of their Master.
But the Turkish dome of St. Sophia, with an increase of splendor
and size, represents the humble tabernacle erected at Medina by
the hands of Mahomet. The Mahometans have uniformly withstood the
temptation of reducing the object of their faith and devotion to
a level with the senses and imagination of man. “I believe in one
God, and Mahomet the apostle of God,” is the simple and
invariable profession of Islam. The intellectual image of the
Deity has never been degraded by any visible idol; the honors of
the prophet have never transgressed the measure of human virtue;
and his living precepts have restrained the gratitude of his
disciples within the bounds of reason and religion. The votaries
of Ali have, indeed, consecrated the memory of their hero, his
wife, and his children; and some of the Persian doctors pretend
that the divine essence was incarnate in the person of the Imams;
but their superstition is universally condemned by the Sonnites;
and their impiety has afforded a seasonable warning against the
worship of saints and martyrs. The metaphysical questions on the
attributes of God, and the liberty of man, have been agitated in
the schools of the Mahometans, as well as in those of the
Christians; but among the former they have never engaged the
passions of the people, or disturbed the tranquillity of the
state. The cause of this important difference may be found in the
separation or union of the regal and sacerdotal characters. It
was the interest of the caliphs, the successors of the prophet
and commanders of the faithful, to repress and discourage all
religious innovations: the order, the discipline, the temporal
and spiritual ambition of the clergy, are unknown to the Moslems;
and the sages of the law are the guides of their conscience and
the oracles of their faith. From the Atlantic to the Ganges, the
Koran is acknowledged as the fundamental code, not only of
theology, but of civil and criminal jurisprudence; and the laws
which regulate the actions and the property of mankind are
guarded by the infallible and immutable sanction of the will of
God. This religious servitude is attended with some practical
disadvantage; the illiterate legislator had been often misled by
his own prejudices and those of his country; and the institutions
of the Arabian desert may be ill adapted to the wealth and
numbers of Ispahan and Constantinople. On these occasions, the
Cadhi respectfully places on his head the holy volume, and
substitutes a dexterous interpretation more apposite to the
principles of equity, and the manners and policy of the times.
His beneficial or pernicious influence on the public happiness is
the last consideration in the character of Mahomet. The most
bitter or most bigoted of his Christian or Jewish foes will
surely allow that he assumed a false commission to inculcate a
salutary doctrine, less perfect only than their own. He piously
supposed, as the basis of his religion, the truth and sanctity of
their prior revolutions, the virtues and miracles of their
founders. The idols of Arabia were broken before the throne of
God; the blood of human victims was expiated by prayer, and
fasting, and alms, the laudable or innocent arts of devotion; and
his rewards and punishments of a future life were painted by the
images most congenial to an ignorant and carnal generation.
Mahomet was, perhaps, incapable of dictating a moral and
political system for the use of his countrymen: but he breathed
among the faithful a spirit of charity and friendship;
recommended the practice of the social virtues; and checked, by
his laws and precepts, the thirst of revenge, and the oppression
of widows and orphans. The hostile tribes were united in faith
and obedience, and the valor which had been idly spent in
domestic quarrels was vigorously directed against a foreign
enemy. Had the impulse been less powerful, Arabia, free at home
and formidable abroad, might have flourished under a succession
of her native monarchs. Her sovereignty was lost by the extent
and rapidity of conquest. The colonies of the nation were
scattered over the East and West, and their blood was mingled
with the blood of their converts and captives. After the reign of
three caliphs, the throne was transported from Medina to the
valley of Damascus and the banks of the Tigris; the holy cities
were violated by impious war; Arabia was ruled by the rod of a
subject, perhaps of a stranger; and the Bedoweens of the desert,
awakening from their dream of dominion, resumed their old and
solitary independence. 187
187 (return) [ The writers of the Modern Universal History (vols.
i. and ii.) have compiled, in 850 folio pages, the life of
Mahomet and the annals of the caliphs. They enjoyed the advantage
of reading, and sometimes correcting, the Arabic text; yet,
notwithstanding their high-sounding boasts, I cannot find, after
the conclusion of my work, that they have afforded me much (if
any) additional information. The dull mass is not quickened by a
spark of philosophy or taste; and the compilers indulge the
criticism of acrimonious bigotry against Boulainvilliers, Sale,
Gagnier, and all who have treated Mahomet with favor, or even
justice.]
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part I.
The Conquest Of Persia, Syria, Egypt, Africa, And Spain, By The
Arabs Or Saracens.—Empire Of The Caliphs, Or Successors Of
Mahomet.—State Of The Christians, &c., Under Their Government.
The revolution of Arabia had not changed the character of the
Arabs: the death of Mahomet was the signal of independence; and
the hasty structure of his power and religion tottered to its
foundations. A small and faithful band of his primitive disciples
had listened to his eloquence, and shared his distress; had fled
with the apostle from the persecution of Mecca, or had received
the fugitive in the walls of Medina. The increasing myriads, who
acknowledged Mahomet as their king and prophet, had been
compelled by his arms, or allured by his prosperity. The
polytheists were confounded by the simple idea of a solitary and
invisible God; the pride of the Christians and Jews disdained the
yoke of a mortal and contemporary legislator. The habits of faith
and obedience were not sufficiently confirmed; and many of the
new converts regretted the venerable antiquity of the law of
Moses, or the rites and mysteries of the Catholic church; or the
idols, the sacrifices, the joyous festivals, of their Pagan
ancestors. The jarring interests and hereditary feuds of the
Arabian tribes had not yet coalesced in a system of union and
subordination; and the Barbarians were impatient of the mildest
and most salutary laws that curbed their passions, or violated
their customs. They submitted with reluctance to the religious
precepts of the Koran, the abstinence from wine, the fast of the
Ramadan, and the daily repetition of five prayers; and the alms
and tithes, which were collected for the treasury of Medina,
could be distinguished only by a name from the payment of a
perpetual and ignominious tribute. The example of Mahomet had
excited a spirit of fanaticism or imposture, and several of his
rivals presumed to imitate the conduct, and defy the authority,
of the living prophet. At the head of the fugitives and
auxiliaries, the first caliph was reduced to the cities of Mecca,
Medina, and Tayef; and perhaps the Koreish would have restored
the idols of the Caaba, if their levity had not been checked by a
seasonable reproof. “Ye men of Mecca, will ye be the last to
embrace, and the first to abandon, the religion of Islam?” After
exhorting the Moslems to confide in the aid of God and his
apostle, Abubeker resolved, by a vigorous attack, to prevent the
junction of the rebels. The women and children were safely lodged
in the cavities of the mountains: the warriors, marching under
eleven banners, diffused the terror of their arms; and the
appearance of a military force revived and confirmed the loyalty
of the faithful. The inconstant tribes accepted, with humble
repentance, the duties of prayer, and fasting, and alms; and,
after some examples of success and severity, the most daring
apostates fell prostrate before the sword of the Lord and of
Caled. In the fertile province of Yemanah, 1 between the Red Sea
and the Gulf of Persia, in a city not inferior to Medina itself,
a powerful chief (his name was Moseilama) had assumed the
character of a prophet, and the tribe of Hanifa listened to his
voice. A female prophetess 1111 was attracted by his reputation;
the decencies of words and actions were spurned by these
favorites of Heaven; 2 and they employed several days in mystic
and amorous converse. An obscure sentence of his Koran, or book,
is yet extant; 3 and in the pride of his mission, Moseilama
condescended to offer a partition of the earth. The proposal was
answered by Mahomet with contempt; but the rapid progress of the
impostor awakened the fears of his successor: forty thousand
Moslems were assembled under the standard of Caled; and the
existence of their faith was resigned to the event of a decisive
battle. 3111 In the first action they were repulsed by the loss
of twelve hundred men; but the skill and perseverance of their
general prevailed; their defeat was avenged by the slaughter of
ten thousand infidels; and Moseilama himself was pierced by an
Aethiopian slave with the same javelin which had mortally wounded
the uncle of Mahomet. The various rebels of Arabia without a
chief or a cause, were speedily suppressed by the power and
discipline of the rising monarchy; and the whole nation again
professed, and more steadfastly held, the religion of the Koran.
The ambition of the caliphs provided an immediate exercise for
the restless spirit of the Saracens: their valor was united in
the prosecution of a holy war; and their enthusiasm was equally
confirmed by opposition and victory.
1 (return) [ See the description of the city and country of Al
Yamanah, in Abulfeda, Descript. Arabiae, p. 60, 61. In the xiiith
century, there were some ruins, and a few palms; but in the
present century, the same ground is occupied by the visions and
arms of a modern prophet, whose tenets are imperfectly known,
(Niebuhr, Description de l’Arabie, p. 296-302.)]
1111 (return) [ This extraordinary woman was a Christian; she was
at the head of a numerous and flourishing sect; Moseilama
professed to recognize her inspiration. In a personal interview
he proposed their marriage and the union of their sects. The
handsome person, the impassioned eloquence, and the arts of
Moseilama, triumphed over the virtue of the prophetesa who was
rejected with scorn by her lover, and by her notorious unchastity
ost her influence with her own followers. Gibbon, with that
propensity too common, especially in his later volumes, has
selected only the grosser part of this singular adventure.—M.]
2 (return) [ The first salutation may be transcribed, but cannot
be translated. It was thus that Moseilama said or sung:—
Surge tandem itaque strenue permolenda; nam stratus tibi thorus est.
Aut in propatulo tentorio si velis, aut in abditiore cubiculo si
malis; Aut supinam te humi exporrectam fustigabo, si velis, Aut si
malis manibus pedibusque nixam. Aut si velis ejus (Priapi) gemino
triente aut si malis totus veniam. Imo, totus venito, O Apostole Dei,
clamabat foemina. Id ipsum, dicebat Moseilama, mihi quoque suggessit
Deus.
The prophetess Segjah, after the fall of her lover, returned to
idolatry; but under the reign of Moawiyah, she became a
Mussulman, and died at Bassora, (Abulfeda, Annal. vers. Reiske,
p. 63.)]
3 (return) [ See this text, which demonstrates a God from the
work of generation, in Abulpharagius (Specimen Hist. Arabum, p.
13, and Dynast. p. 103) and Abulfeda, (Annal. p. 63.)]
3111 (return) [ Compare a long account of this battle in Price,
p. 42.—M.]
From the rapid conquests of the Saracens a presumption will
naturally arise, that the caliphs 311 commanded in person the
armies of the faithful, and sought the crown of martyrdom in the
foremost ranks of the battle. The courage of Abubeker, 4 Omar, 5
and Othman, 6 had indeed been tried in the persecution and wars
of the prophet; and the personal assurance of paradise must have
taught them to despise the pleasures and dangers of the present
world. But they ascended the throne in a venerable or mature age;
and esteemed the domestic cares of religion and justice the most
important duties of a sovereign. Except the presence of Omar at
the siege of Jerusalem, their longest expeditions were the
frequent pilgrimage from Medina to Mecca; and they calmly
received the tidings of victory as they prayed or preached before
the sepulchre of the prophet. The austere and frugal measure of
their lives was the effect of virtue or habit, and the pride of
their simplicity insulted the vain magnificence of the kings of
the earth. When Abubeker assumed the office of caliph, he
enjoined his daughter Ayesha to take a strict account of his
private patrimony, that it might be evident whether he were
enriched or impoverished by the service of the state. He thought
himself entitled to a stipend of three pieces of gold, with the
sufficient maintenance of a single camel and a black slave; but
on the Friday of each week he distributed the residue of his own
and the public money, first to the most worthy, and then to the
most indigent, of the Moslems. The remains of his wealth, a
coarse garment, and five pieces of gold, were delivered to his
successor, who lamented with a modest sigh his own inability to
equal such an admirable model. Yet the abstinence and humility of
Omar were not inferior to the virtues of Abubeker: his food
consisted of barley bread or dates; his drink was water; he
preached in a gown that was torn or tattered in twelve places;
and the Persian satrap, who paid his homage to the conqueror,
found him asleep among the beggars on the steps of the mosch of
Medina. Oeeconomy is the source of liberality, and the increase
of the revenue enabled Omar to establish a just and perpetual
reward for the past and present services of the faithful.
Careless of his own emolument, he assigned to Abbas, the uncle of
the prophet, the first and most ample allowance of twenty-five
thousand drachms or pieces of silver. Five thousand were allotted
to each of the aged warriors, the relics of the field of Beder;
and the last and meanest of the companions of Mahomet was
distinguished by the annual reward of three thousand pieces. One
thousand was the stipend of the veterans who had fought in the
first battles against the Greeks and Persians; and the decreasing
pay, as low as fifty pieces of silver, was adapted to the
respective merit and seniority of the soldiers of Omar. Under his
reign, and that of his predecessor, the conquerors of the East
were the trusty servants of God and the people; the mass of the
public treasure was consecrated to the expenses of peace and war;
a prudent mixture of justice and bounty maintained the discipline
of the Saracens, and they united, by a rare felicity, the
despatch and execution of despotism with the equal and frugal
maxims of a republican government. The heroic courage of Ali, 7
the consummate prudence of Moawiyah, 8 excited the emulation of
their subjects; and the talents which had been exercised in the
school of civil discord were more usefully applied to propagate
the faith and dominion of the prophet. In the sloth and vanity of
the palace of Damascus, the succeeding princes of the house of
Ommiyah were alike destitute of the qualifications of statesmen
and of saints. 9 Yet the spoils of unknown nations were
continually laid at the foot of their throne, and the uniform
ascent of the Arabian greatness must be ascribed to the spirit of
the nation rather than the abilities of their chiefs. A large
deduction must be allowed for the weakness of their enemies. The
birth of Mahomet was fortunately placed in the most degenerate
and disorderly period of the Persians, the Romans, and the
Barbarians of Europe: the empires of Trajan, or even of
Constantine or Charlemagne, would have repelled the assault of
the naked Saracens, and the torrent of fanaticism might have been
obscurely lost in the sands of Arabia.
311 (return) [ In Arabic, “successors.” V. Hammer Geschichte der
Assas. p. 14—M.]
4 (return) [ His reign in Eutychius, tom. ii. p. 251. Elmacin, p.
18. Abulpharagius, p. 108. Abulfeda, p. 60. D’Herbelot, p. 58.]
5 (return) [ His reign in Eutychius, p. 264. Elmacin, p. 24.
Abulpharagius, p. 110. Abulfeda, p. 66. D’Herbelot, p. 686.]
6 (return) [ His reign in Eutychius, p. 323. Elmacin, p. 36.
Abulpharagius, p. 115. Abulfeda, p. 75. D’Herbelot, p. 695.]
7 (return) [ His reign in Eutychius, p. 343. Elmacin, p. 51.
Abulpharagius, p. 117. Abulfeda, p. 83. D’Herbelot, p. 89.]
8 (return) [ His reign in Eutychius, p. 344. Elmacin, p. 54.
Abulpharagius, p. 123. Abulfeda, p. 101. D’Herbelot, p. 586.]
9 (return) [ Their reigns in Eutychius, tom. ii. p. 360-395.
Elmacin, p. 59-108. Abulpharagius, Dynast. ix. p. 124-139.
Abulfeda, p. 111-141. D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 691,
and the particular articles of the Ommiades.]
In the victorious days of the Roman republic, it had been the aim
of the senate to confine their councils and legions to a single
war, and completely to suppress a first enemy before they
provoked the hostilities of a second. These timid maxims of
policy were disdained by the magnanimity or enthusiasm of the
Arabian caliphs. With the same vigor and success they invaded the
successors of Augustus and those of Artaxerxes; and the rival
monarchies at the same instant became the prey of an enemy whom
they had been so long accustomed to despise. In the ten years of
the administration of Omar, the Saracens reduced to his obedience
thirty-six thousand cities or castles, destroyed four thousand
churches or temples of the unbelievers, and edified fourteen
hundred moschs for the exercise of the religion of Mahomet. One
hundred years after his flight from Mecca, the arms and the reign
of his successors extended from India to the Atlantic Ocean, over
the various and distant provinces, which may be comprised under
the names of, I. Persia; II. Syria; III. Egypt; IV. Africa; and,
V. Spain. Under this general division, I shall proceed to unfold
these memorable transactions; despatching with brevity the remote
and less interesting conquests of the East, and reserving a
fuller narrative for those domestic countries which had been
included within the pale of the Roman empire. Yet I must excuse
my own defects by a just complaint of the blindness and
insufficiency of my guides. The Greeks, so loquacious in
controversy, have not been anxious to celebrate the triumphs of
their enemies. 10 After a century of ignorance, the first annals
of the Mussulmans were collected in a great measure from the
voice of tradition. 11 Among the numerous productions of Arabic
and Persian literature, 12 our interpreters have selected the
imperfect sketches of a more recent age. 13 The art and genius of
history have ever been unknown to the Asiatics; 14 they are
ignorant of the laws of criticism; and our monkish chronicle of
the same period may be compared to their most popular works,
which are never vivified by the spirit of philosophy and freedom.
The Oriental library of a Frenchman 15 would instruct the most
learned mufti of the East; and perhaps the Arabs might not find
in a single historian so clear and comprehensive a narrative of
their own exploits as that which will be deduced in the ensuing
sheets.
10 (return) [ For the viith and viiith century, we have scarcely
any original evidence of the Byzantine historians, except the
chronicles of Theophanes (Theophanis Confessoris Chronographia,
Gr. et Lat. cum notis Jacobi Goar. Paris, 1665, in folio) and the
Abridgment of Nicephorus, (Nicephori Patriarchae C. P. Breviarium
Historicum, Gr. et Lat. Paris, 1648, in folio,) who both lived in
the beginning of the ixth century, (see Hanckius de Scriptor.
Byzant. p. 200-246.) Their contemporary, Photius, does not seem
to be more opulent. After praising the style of Nicephorus, he
adds, and only complains of his extreme brevity, (Phot. Bibliot.
Cod. lxvi. p. 100.) Some additions may be gleaned from the more
recent histories of Cedrenus and Zonaras of the xiith century.]
11 (return) [ Tabari, or Al Tabari, a native of Taborestan, a
famous Imam of Bagdad, and the Livy of the Arabians, finished his
general history in the year of the Hegira 302, (A.D. 914.) At the
request of his friends, he reduced a work of 30,000 sheets to a
more reasonable size. But his Arabic original is known only by
the Persian and Turkish versions. The Saracenic history of Ebn
Amid, or Elmacin, is said to be an abridgment of the great
Tabari, (Ockley’s Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii. preface, p.
xxxix. and list of authors, D’Herbelot, p. 866, 870, 1014.)]
12 (return) [ Besides the list of authors framed by Prideaux,
(Life of Mahomet, p. 179-189,) Ockley, (at the end of his second
volume,) and Petit de la Croix, (Hist. de Gengiscan, p. 525-550,)
we find in the Bibliotheque Orientale Tarikh, a catalogue of two
or three hundred histories or chronicles of the East, of which
not more than three or four are older than Tabari. A lively
sketch of Oriental literature is given by Reiske, (in his
Prodidagmata ad Hagji Chalifae librum memorialem ad calcem
Abulfedae Tabulae Syriae, Lipsiae, 1776;) but his project and the
French version of Petit de la Croix (Hist. de Timur Bec, tom. i.
preface, p. xlv.) have fallen to the ground.]
13 (return) [ The particular historians and geographers will be
occasionally introduced. The four following titles represent the
Annals which have guided me in this general narrative. 1. Annales
Eutychii, Patriarchoe Alexandrini, ab Edwardo Pocockio, Oxon.
1656, 2 vols. in 4to. A pompous edition of an indifferent author,
translated by Pocock to gratify the Presbyterian prejudices of
his friend Selden. 2. Historia Saracenica Georgii Elmacini, opera
et studio Thomae Erpenii, in 4to., Lugd. Batavorum, 1625. He is
said to have hastily translated a corrupt Ms., and his version is
often deficient in style and sense. 3. Historia compendiosa
Dynastiarum a Gregorio Abulpharagio, interprete Edwardo Pocockio,
in 4to., Oxon. 1663. More useful for the literary than the civil
history of the East. 4. Abulfedoe Annales Moslemici ad Ann.
Hegiroe ccccvi. a Jo. Jac. Reiske, in 4to., Lipsioe, 1754. The
best of our chronicles, both for the original and version, yet
how far below the name of Abulfeda! We know that he wrote at
Hamah in the xivth century. The three former were Christians of
the xth, xiith, and xiiith centuries; the two first, natives of
Egypt; a Melchite patriarch, and a Jacobite scribe.]
14 (return) [ M. D. Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. pref. p.
xix. xx.) has characterized, with truth and knowledge, the two
sorts of Arabian historians—the dry annalist, and the tumid and
flowery orator.]
15 (return) [ Bibliotheque Orientale, par M. D’Herbelot, in
folio, Paris, 1697. For the character of the respectable author,
consult his friend Thevenot, (Voyages du Levant, part i. chap.
1.) His work is an agreeable miscellany, which must gratify every
taste; but I never can digest the alphabetical order; and I find
him more satisfactory in the Persian than the Arabic history. The
recent supplement from the papers of Mm. Visdelou, and Galland,
(in folio, La Haye, 1779,) is of a different cast, a medley of
tales, proverbs, and Chinese antiquities.]
I. In the first year of the first caliph, his lieutenant Caled,
the Sword of God, and the scourge of the infidels, advanced to
the banks of the Euphrates, and reduced the cities of Anbar and
Hira. Westward of the ruins of Babylon, a tribe of sedentary
Arabs had fixed themselves on the verge of the desert; and Hira
was the seat of a race of kings who had embraced the Christian
religion, and reigned above six hundred years under the shadow of
the throne of Persia. 16 The last of the Mondars 1611 was
defeated and slain by Caled; his son was sent a captive to
Medina; his nobles bowed before the successor of the prophet; the
people was tempted by the example and success of their
countrymen; and the caliph accepted as the first-fruits of
foreign conquest an annual tribute of seventy thousand pieces of
gold. The conquerors, and even their historians, were astonished
by the dawn of their future greatness: “In the same year,” says
Elmacin, “Caled fought many signal battles: an immense multitude
of the infidels was slaughtered; and spoils infinite and
innumerable were acquired by the victorious Moslems.” 17 But the
invincible Caled was soon transferred to the Syrian war: the
invasion of the Persian frontier was conducted by less active or
less prudent commanders: the Saracens were repulsed with loss in
the passage of the Euphrates; and, though they chastised the
insolent pursuit of the Magians, their remaining forces still
hovered in the desert of Babylon. 1711
16 (return) [ Pocock will explain the chronology, (Specimen Hist.
Arabum, p. 66-74,) and D’Anville the geography, (l’Euphrate, et
le Tigre, p. 125,) of the dynasty of the Almondars. The English
scholar understood more Arabic than the mufti of Aleppo, (Ockley,
vol. ii. p. 34: ) the French geographer is equally at home in
every age and every climate of the world.]
1611 (return) [ Eichhorn and Silvestre de Sacy have written on
the obscure history of the Mondars.—M.]
17 (return) [ Fecit et Chaled plurima in hoc anno praelia, in
quibus vicerunt Muslimi, et infidelium immensa multitudine occisa
spolia infinita et innumera sunt nacti, (Hist. Saracenica, p.
20.) The Christian annalist slides into the national and
compendious term of infidels, and I often adopt (I hope without
scandal) this characteristic mode of expression.]
1711 (return) [ Compare throughout Malcolm, vol. ii. p. 136.—M.]
The indignation and fears of the Persians suspended for a moment
their intestine divisions. By the unanimous sentence of the
priests and nobles, their queen Arzema was deposed; the sixth of
the transient usurpers, who had arisen and vanished in three or
four years since the death of Chosroes, and the retreat of
Heraclius. Her tiara was placed on the head of Yezdegerd, the
grandson of Chosroes; and the same aera, which coincides with an
astronomical period, 18 has recorded the fall of the Sassanian
dynasty and the religion of Zoroaster. 19 The youth and
inexperience of the prince (he was only fifteen years of age)
declined a perilous encounter: the royal standard was delivered
into the hands of his general Rustam; and a remnant of thirty
thousand regular troops was swelled in truth, or in opinion, to
one hundred and twenty thousand subjects, or allies, of the great
king. The Moslems, whose numbers were reenforced from twelve to
thirty thousand, had pitched their camp in the plains of Cadesia:
20 and their line, though it consisted of fewer men, could
produce more soldiers, than the unwieldy host of the infidels. I
shall here observe, what I must often repeat, that the charge of
the Arabs was not, like that of the Greeks and Romans, the effort
of a firm and compact infantry: their military force was chiefly
formed of cavalry and archers; and the engagement, which was
often interrupted and often renewed by single combats and flying
skirmishes, might be protracted without any decisive event to the
continuance of several days. The periods of the battle of Cadesia
were distinguished by their peculiar appellations. The first,
from the well-timed appearance of six thousand of the Syrian
brethren, was denominated the day of succor. The day of
concussion might express the disorder of one, or perhaps of both,
of the contending armies. The third, a nocturnal tumult, received
the whimsical name of the night of barking, from the discordant
clamors, which were compared to the inarticulate sounds of the
fiercest animals. The morning of the succeeding day 2011
determined the fate of Persia; and a seasonable whirlwind drove a
cloud of dust against the faces of the unbelievers. The clangor
of arms was reechoed to the tent of Rustam, who, far unlike the
ancient hero of his name, was gently reclining in a cool and
tranquil shade, amidst the baggage of his camp, and the train of
mules that were laden with gold and silver. On the sound of
danger he started from his couch; but his flight was overtaken by
a valiant Arab, who caught him by the foot, struck off his head,
hoisted it on a lance, and instantly returning to the field of
battle, carried slaughter and dismay among the thickest ranks of
the Persians. The Saracens confess a loss of seven thousand five
hundred men; 2012 and the battle of Cadesia is justly described
by the epithets of obstinate and atrocious. 21 The standard of
the monarchy was overthrown and captured in the field—a leathern
apron of a blacksmith, who in ancient times had arisen the
deliverer of Persia; but this badge of heroic poverty was
disguised, and almost concealed, by a profusion of precious gems.
22 After this victory, the wealthy province of Irak, or Assyria,
submitted to the caliph, and his conquests were firmly
established by the speedy foundation of Bassora, 23 a place which
ever commands the trade and navigation of the Persians. As the
distance of fourscore miles from the Gulf, the Euphrates and
Tigris unite in a broad and direct current, which is aptly styled
the river of the Arabs. In the midway, between the junction and
the mouth of these famous streams, the new settlement was planted
on the western bank: the first colony was composed of eight
hundred Moslems; but the influence of the situation soon reared a
flourishing and populous capital. The air, though excessively
hot, is pure and healthy: the meadows are filled with palm-trees
and cattle; and one of the adjacent valleys has been celebrated
among the four paradises or gardens of Asia. Under the first
caliphs the jurisdiction of this Arabian colony extended over the
southern provinces of Persia: the city has been sanctified by the
tombs of the companions and martyrs; and the vessels of Europe
still frequent the port of Bassora, as a convenient station and
passage of the Indian trade.
18 (return) [ A cycle of 120 years, the end of which an
intercalary month of 30 days supplied the use of our Bissextile,
and restored the integrity of the solar year. In a great
revolution of 1440 years this intercalation was successively
removed from the first to the twelfth month; but Hyde and Freret
are involved in a profound controversy, whether the twelve, or
only eight of these changes were accomplished before the aera of
Yezdegerd, which is unanimously fixed to the 16th of June, A.D.
632. How laboriously does the curious spirit of Europe explore
the darkest and most distant antiquities! (Hyde de Religione
Persarum, c. 14-18, p. 181-211. Freret in the Mem. de l’Academie
des Inscriptions, tom. xvi. p. 233-267.)]
19 (return) [ Nine days after the death of Mahomet (7th June,
A.D. 632) we find the aera of Yezdegerd, (16th June, A.D. 632,)
and his accession cannot be postponed beyond the end of the first
year. His predecessors could not therefore resist the arms of the
caliph Omar; and these unquestionable dates overthrow the
thoughtless chronology of Abulpharagius. See Ockley’s Hist. of
the Saracens, vol. i. p. 130. * Note: The Rezont Uzzuffa (Price,
p. 105) has a strange account of an embassy to Yezdegerd. The
Oriental historians take great delight in these embassies, which
give them an opportunity of displaying their Asiatic
eloquence—M.]
20 (return) [ Cadesia, says the Nubian geographer, (p. 121,) is
in margine solitudinis, 61 leagues from Bagdad, and two stations
from Cufa. Otter (Voyage, tom. i. p. 163) reckons 15 leagues, and
observes, that the place is supplied with dates and water.]
2011 (return) [ The day of cormorants, or according to another
reading the day of reinforcements. It was the night which was
called the night of snarling. Price, p. 114.—M.]
2012 (return) [ According to Malcolm’s authorities, only three
thousand; but he adds “This is the report of Mahomedan
historians, who have a great disposition of the wonderful, in
relating the first actions of the faithful” Vol. i. p. 39.—M.]
21 (return) [ Atrox, contumax, plus semel renovatum, are the
well-chosen expressions of the translator of Abulfeda, (Reiske,
p. 69.)]
22 (return) [ D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 297, 348.]
23 (return) [ The reader may satisfy himself on the subject of
Bassora by consulting the following writers: Geograph, Nubiens.
p. 121. D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 192. D’Anville,
l’Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 130, 133, 145. Raynal, Hist.
Philosophique des deux Indes, tom. ii. p. 92-100. Voyages di
Pietro della Valle, tom. iv. p. 370-391. De Tavernier, tom. i. p.
240-247. De Thevenot, tom. ii. p. 545-584. D Otter, tom. ii. p.
45-78. De Niebuhr, tom. ii. p. 172-199.]
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part II.
After the defeat of Cadesia, a country intersected by rivers and
canals might have opposed an insuperable barrier to the
victorious cavalry; and the walls of Ctesiphon or Madayn, which
had resisted the battering-rams of the Romans, would not have
yielded to the darts of the Saracens. But the flying Persians
were overcome by the belief, that the last day of their religion
and empire was at hand; the strongest posts were abandoned by
treachery or cowardice; and the king, with a part of his family
and treasures, escaped to Holwan at the foot of the Median hills.
In the third month after the battle, Said, the lieutenant of
Omar, passed the Tigris without opposition; the capital was taken
by assault; and the disorderly resistance of the people gave a
keener edge to the sabres of the Moslems, who shouted with
religious transport, “This is the white palace of Chosroes; this
is the promise of the apostle of God!” The naked robbers of the
desert were suddenly enriched beyond the measure of their hope or
knowledge. Each chamber revealed a new treasure secreted with
art, or ostentatiously displayed; the gold and silver, the
various wardrobes and precious furniture, surpassed (says
Abulfeda) the estimate of fancy or numbers; and another historian
defines the untold and almost infinite mass, by the fabulous
computation of three thousands of thousands of thousands of
pieces of gold. 24 Some minute though curious facts represent the
contrast of riches and ignorance. From the remote islands of the
Indian Ocean a large provision of camphire 25 had been imported,
which is employed with a mixture of wax to illuminate the palaces
of the East. Strangers to the name and properties of that
odoriferous gum, the Saracens, mistaking it for salt, mingled the
camphire in their bread, and were astonished at the bitterness of
the taste. One of the apartments of the palace was decorated with
a carpet of silk, sixty cubits in length, and as many in breadth:
a paradise or garden was depictured on the ground: the flowers,
fruits, and shrubs, were imitated by the figures of the gold
embroidery, and the colors of the precious stones; and the ample
square was encircled by a variegated and verdant border. 251 The
Arabian general persuaded his soldiers to relinquish their claim,
in the reasonable hope that the eyes of the caliph would be
delighted with the splendid workmanship of nature and industry.
Regardless of the merit of art, and the pomp of royalty, the
rigid Omar divided the prize among his brethren of Medina: the
picture was destroyed; but such was the intrinsic value of the
materials, that the share of Ali alone was sold for twenty
thousand drams. A mule that carried away the tiara and cuirass,
the belt and bracelets of Chosroes, was overtaken by the
pursuers; the gorgeous trophy was presented to the commander of
the faithful; and the gravest of the companions condescended to
smile when they beheld the white beard, the hairy arms, and
uncouth figure of the veteran, who was invested with the spoils
of the Great King. 26 The sack of Ctesiphon was followed by its
desertion and gradual decay. The Saracens disliked the air and
situation of the place, and Omar was advised by his general to
remove the seat of government to the western side of the
Euphrates. In every age, the foundation and ruin of the Assyrian
cities has been easy and rapid: the country is destitute of stone
and timber; and the most solid structures 27 are composed of
bricks baked in the sun, and joined by a cement of the native
bitumen. The name of Cufa 28 describes a habitation of reeds and
earth; but the importance of the new capital was supported by the
numbers, wealth, and spirit, of a colony of veterans; and their
licentiousness was indulged by the wisest caliphs, who were
apprehensive of provoking the revolt of a hundred thousand
swords: “Ye men of Cufa,” said Ali, who solicited their aid, “you
have been always conspicuous by your valor. You conquered the
Persian king, and scattered his forces, till you had taken
possession of his inheritance.” This mighty conquest was achieved
by the battles of Jalula and Nehavend. After the loss of the
former, Yezdegerd fled from Holwan, and concealed his shame and
despair in the mountains of Farsistan, from whence Cyrus had
descended with his equal and valiant companions. The courage of
the nation survived that of the monarch: among the hills to the
south of Ecbatana or Hamadan, one hundred and fifty thousand
Persians made a third and final stand for their religion and
country; and the decisive battle of Nehavend was styled by the
Arabs the victory of victories. If it be true that the flying
general of the Persians was stopped and overtaken in a crowd of
mules and camels laden with honey, the incident, however slight
and singular, will denote the luxurious impediments of an
Oriental army. 29
24 (return) [ Mente vix potest numerove comprehendi quanta spolia
nostris cesserint. Abulfeda, p. 69. Yet I still suspect, that the
extravagant numbers of Elmacin may be the error, not of the text,
but of the version. The best translators from the Greek, for
instance, I find to be very poor arithmeticians. * Note: Ockley
(Hist. of Saracens, vol. i. p. 230) translates in the same manner
three thousand million of ducats. See Forster’s Mahometanism
Unveiled, vol. ii. p. 462; who makes this innocent doubt of
Gibbon, in which, is to the amount of the plunder, I venture to
concur, a grave charge of inaccuracy and disrespect to the memory
of Erpenius. The Persian authorities of Price (p. 122) make the
booty worth three hundred and thirty millions sterling!—M]
25 (return) [ The camphire-tree grows in China and Japan; but
many hundred weight of those meaner sorts are exchanged for a
single pound of the more precious gum of Borneo and Sumatra,
(Raynal, Hist. Philosoph. tom. i. p. 362-365. Dictionnaire
d’Hist. Naturelle par Bomare Miller’s Gardener’s Dictionary.)
These may be the islands of the first climate from whence the
Arabians imported their camphire (Geograph. Nub. p. 34, 35.
D’Herbelot, p. 232.)]
251 (return) [ Compare Price, p. 122.—M.]
26 (return) [ See Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 376, 377. I
may credit the fact, without believing the prophecy.]
27 (return) [ The most considerable ruins of Assyria are the
tower of Belus, at Babylon, and the hall of Chosroes, at
Ctesiphon: they have been visited by that vain and curious
traveller Pietro della Valle, (tom. i. p. 713-718, 731-735.) *
Note: The best modern account is that of Claudius Rich Esq. Two
Memoirs of Babylon. London, 1818.—M.]
28 (return) [ Consult the article of Coufah in the Bibliotheque
of D’Herbelot ( p. 277, 278,) and the second volume of Ockley’s
History, particularly p. 40 and 153.]
29 (return) [ See the article of Nehavend, in D’Herbelot, p. 667,
668; and Voyages en Turquie et en Perse, par Otter, tom. i. 191.
* Note: Malcolm vol. i. p. 141.—M.]
The geography of Persia is darkly delineated by the Greeks and
Latins; but the most illustrious of her cities appear to be more
ancient than the invasion of the Arabs. By the reduction of
Hamadan and Ispahan, of Caswin, Tauris, and Rei, they gradually
approached the shores of the Caspian Sea: and the orators of
Mecca might applaud the success and spirit of the faithful, who
had already lost sight of the northern bear, and had almost
transcended the bounds of the habitable world. 30 Again, turning
towards the West and the Roman empire, they repassed the Tigris
over the bridge of Mosul, and, in the captive provinces of
Armenia and Mesopotamia, embraced their victorious brethren of
the Syrian army. From the palace of Madayn their Eastern progress
was not less rapid or extensive. They advanced along the Tigris
and the Gulf; penetrated through the passes of the mountains into
the valley of Estachar or Persepolis, and profaned the last
sanctuary of the Magian empire. The grandson of Chosroes was
nearly surprised among the falling columns and mutilated figures;
a sad emblem of the past and present fortune of Persia: 31 he
fled with accelerated haste over the desert of Kirman, implored
the aid of the warlike Segestans, and sought an humble refuge on
the verge of the Turkish and Chinese power. But a victorious army
is insensible of fatigue: the Arabs divided their forces in the
pursuit of a timorous enemy; and the caliph Othman promised the
government of Chorasan to the first general who should enter that
large and populous country, the kingdom of the ancient Bactrians.
The condition was accepted; the prize was deserved; the standard
of Mahomet was planted on the walls of Herat, Merou, and Balch;
and the successful leader neither halted nor reposed till his
foaming cavalry had tasted the waters of the Oxus. In the public
anarchy, the independent governors of the cities and castles
obtained their separate capitulations: the terms were granted or
imposed by the esteem, the prudence, or the compassion, of the
victors; and a simple profession of faith established the
distinction between a brother and a slave. After a noble defence,
Harmozan, the prince or satrap of Ahwaz and Susa, was compelled
to surrender his person and his state to the discretion of the
caliph; and their interview exhibits a portrait of the Arabian
manners. In the presence, and by the command, of Omar, the gay
Barbarian was despoiled of his silken robes embroidered with
gold, and of his tiara bedecked with rubies and emeralds: “Are
you now sensible,” said the conqueror to his naked captive—“are
you now sensible of the judgment of God, and of the different
rewards of infidelity and obedience?” “Alas!” replied Harmozan,
“I feel them too deeply. In the days of our common ignorance, we
fought with the weapons of the flesh, and my nation was superior.
God was then neuter: since he has espoused your quarrel, you have
subverted our kingdom and religion.” Oppressed by this painful
dialogue, the Persian complained of intolerable thirst, but
discovered some apprehension lest he should be killed whilst he
was drinking a cup of water. “Be of good courage,” said the
caliph; “your life is safe till you have drunk this water:” the
crafty satrap accepted the assurance, and instantly dashed the
vase against the ground. Omar would have avenged the deceit, but
his companions represented the sanctity of an oath; and the
speedy conversion of Harmozan entitled him not only to a free
pardon, but even to a stipend of two thousand pieces of gold. The
administration of Persia was regulated by an actual survey of the
people, the cattle, and the fruits of the earth; 32 and this
monument, which attests the vigilance of the caliphs, might have
instructed the philosophers of every age. 33
30 (return) [ It is in such a style of ignorance and wonder that
the Athenian orator describes the Arctic conquests of Alexander,
who never advanced beyond the shores of the Caspian. Aeschines
contra Ctesiphontem, tom. iii. p. 554, edit. Graec. Orator.
Reiske. This memorable cause was pleaded at Athens, Olymp. cxii.
3, (before Christ 330,) in the autumn, (Taylor, praefat. p. 370,
&c.,) about a year after the battle of Arbela; and Alexander, in
the pursuit of Darius, was marching towards Hyrcania and
Bactriana.]
31 (return) [ We are indebted for this curious particular to the
Dynasties of Abulpharagius, p. 116; but it is needless to prove
the identity of Estachar and Persepolis, (D’Herbelot, p. 327;)
and still more needless to copy the drawings and descriptions of
Sir John Chardin, or Corneillo le Bruyn.]
32 (return) [ After the conquest of Persia, Theophanes adds,
(Chronograph p. 283.)]
33 (return) [ Amidst our meagre relations, I must regret that
D’Herbelot has not found and used a Persian translation of
Tabari, enriched, as he says, with many extracts from the native
historians of the Ghebers or Magi, (Bibliotheque Orientale, p.
1014.)]
The flight of Yezdegerd had carried him beyond the Oxus, and as
far as the Jaxartes, two rivers 34 of ancient and modern renown,
which descend from the mountains of India towards the Caspian
Sea. He was hospitably entertained by Takhan, prince of Fargana,
35 a fertile province on the Jaxartes: the king of Samarcand,
with the Turkish tribes of Sogdiana and Scythia, were moved by
the lamentations and promises of the fallen monarch; and he
solicited, by a suppliant embassy, the more solid and powerful
friendship of the emperor of China. 36 The virtuous Taitsong, 37
the first of the dynasty of the Tang may be justly compared with
the Antonines of Rome: his people enjoyed the blessings of
prosperity and peace; and his dominion was acknowledged by
forty-four hordes of the Barbarians of Tartary. His last
garrisons of Cashgar and Khoten maintained a frequent intercourse
with their neighbors of the Jaxartes and Oxus; a recent colony of
Persians had introduced into China the astronomy of the Magi; and
Taitsong might be alarmed by the rapid progress and dangerous
vicinity of the Arabs. The influence, and perhaps the supplies,
of China revived the hopes of Yezdegerd and the zeal of the
worshippers of fire; and he returned with an army of Turks to
conquer the inheritance of his fathers. The fortunate Moslems,
without unsheathing their swords, were the spectators of his ruin
and death. The grandson of Chosroes was betrayed by his servant,
insulted by the seditious inhabitants of Merou, and oppressed,
defeated, and pursued by his Barbarian allies. He reached the
banks of a river, and offered his rings and bracelets for an
instant passage in a miller’s boat. Ignorant or insensible of
royal distress, the rustic replied, that four drams of silver
were the daily profit of his mill, and that he would not suspend
his work unless the loss were repaid. In this moment of
hesitation and delay, the last of the Sassanian kings was
overtaken and slaughtered by the Turkish cavalry, in the
nineteenth year of his unhappy reign. 38 3811 His son Firuz, an
humble client of the Chinese emperor, accepted the station of
captain of his guards; and the Magian worship was long preserved
by a colony of loyal exiles in the province of Bucharia. 3812 His
grandson inherited the regal name; but after a faint and
fruitless enterprise, he returned to China, and ended his days in
the palace of Sigan. The male line of the Sassanides was extinct;
but the female captives, the daughters of Persia, were given to
the conquerors in servitude, or marriage; and the race of the
caliphs and imams was ennobled by the blood of their royal
mothers. 39
34 (return) [ The most authentic accounts of the two rivers, the
Sihon (Jaxartes) and the Gihon, (Oxus,) may be found in Sherif al
Edrisi (Geograph. Nubiens. p. 138,) Abulfeda, (Descript.
Chorasan. in Hudson, tom. iii. p. 23,) Abulghazi Khan, who
reigned on their banks, (Hist. Genealogique des Tatars, p. 32,
57, 766,) and the Turkish Geographer, a MS. in the king of
France’s library, (Examen Critique des Historiens d’Alexandre, p.
194-360.)]
35 (return) [ The territory of Fergana is described by Abulfeda,
p. 76, 77.]
36 (return) [ Eo redegit angustiarum eundem regem exsulem, ut
Turcici regis, et Sogdiani, et Sinensis, auxilia missis literis
imploraret, (Abulfed. Annal. p. 74) The connection of the Persian
and Chinese history is illustrated by Freret (Mem. de l’Academie,
tom. xvi. p. 245-255) and De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p.
54-59,) and for the geography of the borders, tom. ii. p. 1-43.]
37 (return) [ Hist. Sinica, p. 41-46, in the iiid part of the
Relations Curieuses of Thevenot.]
38 (return) [ I have endeavored to harmonize the various
narratives of Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 37,) Abulpharagius,
(Dynast. p. 116,) Abulfeda, (Annal. p. 74, 79,) and D’Herbelot,
(p. 485.) The end of Yezdegerd, was not only unfortunate but
obscure.]
3811 (return) [ The account of Yezdegerd’s death in the Habeib
‘usseyr and Rouzut uzzuffa (Price, p. 162) is much more probable.
On the demand of the few dhirems, he offered to the miller his
sword, and royal girdle, of inesturable value. This awoke the
cupidity of the miller, who murdered him, and threw the body into
the stream.—M.]
3812 (return) [ Firouz died leaving a son called Ni-ni-cha by the
Chinese, probably Narses. Yezdegerd had two sons, Firouz and
Bahram St. Martin, vol. xi. p. 318.—M.]
39 (return) [ The two daughters of Yezdegerd married Hassan, the
son of Ali, and Mohammed, the son of Abubeker; and the first of
these was the father of a numerous progeny. The daughter of
Phirouz became the wife of the caliph Walid, and their son Yezid
derived his genuine or fabulous descent from the Chosroes of
Persia, the Caesars of Rome, and the Chagans of the Turks or
Avars, (D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orientale, p. 96, 487.)]
After the fall of the Persian kingdom, the River Oxus divided the
territories of the Saracens and of the Turks. This narrow
boundary was soon overleaped by the spirit of the Arabs; the
governors of Chorasan extended their successive inroads; and one
of their triumphs was adorned with the buskin of a Turkish queen,
which she dropped in her precipitate flight beyond the hills of
Bochara. 40 But the final conquest of Transoxiana, 41 as well as
of Spain, was reserved for the glorious reign of the inactive
Walid; and the name of Catibah, the camel driver, declares the
origin and merit of his successful lieutenant. While one of his
colleagues displayed the first Mahometan banner on the banks of
the Indus, the spacious regions between the Oxus, the Jaxartes,
and the Caspian Sea, were reduced by the arms of Catibah to the
obedience of the prophet and of the caliph. 42 A tribute of two
millions of pieces of gold was imposed on the infidels; their
idols were burnt or broken; the Mussulman chief pronounced a
sermon in the new mosch of Carizme; after several battles, the
Turkish hordes were driven back to the desert; and the emperors
of China solicited the friendship of the victorious Arabs. To
their industry, the prosperity of the province, the Sogdiana of
the ancients, may in a great measure be ascribed; but the
advantages of the soil and climate had been understood and
cultivated since the reign of the Macedonian kings. Before the
invasion of the Saracens, Carizme, Bochara, and Samarcand were
rich and populous under the yoke of the shepherds of the north.
4211 These cities were surrounded with a double wall; and the
exterior fortification, of a larger circumference, enclosed the
fields and gardens of the adjacent district. The mutual wants of
India and Europe were supplied by the diligence of the Sogdian
merchants; and the inestimable art of transforming linen into
paper has been diffused from the manufacture of Samarcand over
the western world. 43
40 (return) [ It was valued at 2000 pieces of gold, and was the
prize of Obeidollah, the son of Ziyad, a name afterwards infamous
by the murder of Hosein, (Ockley’s History of the Saracens, vol.
ii. p. 142, 143,) His brother Salem was accompanied by his wife,
the first Arabian woman (A.D. 680) who passed the Oxus: she
borrowed, or rather stole, the crown and jewels of the princess
of the Sogdians, (p. 231, 232.)]
41 (return) [ A part of Abulfeda’s geography is translated by
Greaves, inserted in Hudson’s collection of the minor
geographers, (tom. iii.,) and entitled Descriptio Chorasmiae et
Mawaralnahroe, id est, regionum extra fluvium, Oxum, p. 80. The
name of Transoxiana, softer in sound, equivalent in sense, is
aptly used by Petit de la Croix, (Hist. de Gengiscan, &c.,) and
some modern Orientalists, but they are mistaken in ascribing it
to the writers of antiquity.]
42 (return) [ The conquests of Catibah are faintly marked by
Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 84,) D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient.
Catbah, Samarcand Valid.,) and De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom.
i. p. 58, 59.)]
4211 (return) [ The manuscripts Arabian and Persian writers in
the royal library contain very circumstantial details on the
contest between the Persians and Arabians. M. St. Martin declined
this addition to the work of Le Beau, as extending to too great a
length. St. Martin vol. xi. p. 320.—M.]
43 (return) [ A curious description of Samarcand is inserted in
the Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana, tom. i. p. 208, &c. The
librarian Casiri (tom. ii. 9) relates, from credible testimony,
that paper was first imported from China to Samarcand, A. H. 30,
and invented, or rather introduced, at Mecca, A. H. 88. The
Escurial library contains paper Mss. as old as the ivth or vth
century of the Hegira.]
II. No sooner had Abubeker restored the unity of faith and
government, than he despatched a circular letter to the Arabian
tribes. “In the name of the most merciful God, to the rest of the
true believers. Health and happiness, and the mercy and blessing
of God, be upon you. I praise the most high God, and I pray for
his prophet Mahomet. This is to acquaint you, that I intend to
send the true believers into Syria 44 to take it out of the hands
of the infidels. And I would have you know, that the fighting for
religion is an act of obedience to God.” His messengers returned
with the tidings of pious and martial ardor which they had
kindled in every province; and the camp of Medina was
successively filled with the intrepid bands of the Saracens, who
panted for action, complained of the heat of the season and the
scarcity of provisions, and accused with impatient murmurs the
delays of the caliph. As soon as their numbers were complete,
Abubeker ascended the hill, reviewed the men, the horses, and the
arms, and poured forth a fervent prayer for the success of their
undertaking. In person, and on foot, he accompanied the first
day’s march; and when the blushing leaders attempted to dismount,
the caliph removed their scruples by a declaration, that those
who rode, and those who walked, in the service of religion, were
equally meritorious. His instructions 45 to the chiefs of the
Syrian army were inspired by the warlike fanaticism which
advances to seize, and affects to despise, the objects of earthly
ambition. “Remember,” said the successor of the prophet, “that
you are always in the presence of God, on the verge of death, in
the assurance of judgment, and the hope of paradise. Avoid
injustice and oppression; consult with your brethren, and study
to preserve the love and confidence of your troops. When you
fight the battles of the Lord, acquit yourselves like men,
without turning your backs; but let not your victory be stained
with the blood of women or children. Destroy no palm-trees, nor
burn any fields of corn. Cut down no fruit-trees, nor do any
mischief to cattle, only such as you kill to eat. When you make
any covenant or article, stand to it, and be as good as your
word. As you go on, you will find some religious persons who live
retired in monasteries, and propose to themselves to serve God
that way: let them alone, and neither kill them nor destroy their
monasteries: 46 And you will find another sort of people, that
belong to the synagogue of Satan, who have shaven crowns; 47 be
sure you cleave their skulls, and give them no quarter till they
either turn Mahometans or pay tribute.” All profane or frivolous
conversation, all dangerous recollection of ancient quarrels, was
severely prohibited among the Arabs: in the tumult of a camp, the
exercises of religion were assiduously practised; and the
intervals of action were employed in prayer, meditation, and the
study of the Koran. The abuse, or even the use, of wine was
chastised by fourscore strokes on the soles of the feet, and in
the fervor of their primitive zeal, many secret sinners revealed
their fault, and solicited their punishment. After some
hesitation, the command of the Syrian army was delegated to Abu
Obeidah, one of the fugitives of Mecca, and companions of
Mahomet; whose zeal and devotion was assuaged, without being
abated, by the singular mildness and benevolence of his temper.
But in all the emergencies of war, the soldiers demanded the
superior genius of Caled; and whoever might be the choice of the
prince, the Sword of God was both in fact and fame the foremost
leader of the Saracens. He obeyed without reluctance; 4711 he was
consulted without jealousy; and such was the spirit of the man,
or rather of the times, that Caled professed his readiness to
serve under the banner of the faith, though it were in the hands
of a child or an enemy. Glory, and riches, and dominion, were
indeed promised to the victorious Mussulman; but he was carefully
instructed, that if the goods of this life were his only
incitement, they likewise would be his only reward.
44 (return) [ A separate history of the conquest of Syria has
been composed by Al Wakidi, cadi of Bagdad, who was born A.D.
748, and died A.D. 822; he likewise wrote the conquest of Egypt,
of Diarbekir, &c. Above the meagre and recent chronicles of the
Arabians, Al Wakidi has the double merit of antiquity and
copiousness. His tales and traditions afford an artless picture
of the men and the times. Yet his narrative is too often
defective, trifling, and improbable. Till something better shall
be found, his learned and spiritual interpreter (Ockley, in his
History of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 21-342) will not deserve the
petulant animadversion of Reiske, (Prodidagmata ad Magji Chalifae
Tabulas, p. 236.) I am sorry to think that the labors of Ockley
were consummated in a jail, (see his two prefaces to the 1st A.D.
1708, to the 2d, 1718, with the list of authors at the end.) *
Note: M. Hamaker has clearly shown that neither of these works
can be inscribed to Al Wakidi: they are not older than the end of
the xith century or later than the middle of the xivth. Praefat.
in Inc. Auct. LIb. de Expugnatione Memphidis, c. ix. x.—M.]
45 (return) [ The instructions, &c., of the Syrian war are
described by Al Wakidi and Ockley, tom. i. p. 22-27, &c. In the
sequel it is necessary to contract, and needless to quote, their
circumstantial narrative. My obligations to others shall be
noticed.]
46 (return) [ Notwithstanding this precept, M. Pauw (Recherches
sur les Egyptiens, tom. ii. p. 192, edit. Lausanne) represents
the Bedoweens as the implacable enemies of the Christian monks.
For my own part, I am more inclined to suspect the avarice of the
Arabian robbers, and the prejudices of the German philosopher. *
Note: Several modern travellers (Mr. Fazakerley, in Walpole’s
Travels in the East, vol. xi. 371) give very amusing accounts of
the terms on which the monks of Mount Sinai live with the
neighboring Bedoweens. Such, probably, was their relative state
in older times, wherever the Arab retained his Bedoween
habits.—M.]
47 (return) [ Even in the seventh century, the monks were
generally laymen: They wore their hair long and dishevelled, and
shaved their heads when they were ordained priests. The circular
tonsure was sacred and mysterious; it was the crown of thorns;
but it was likewise a royal diadem, and every priest was a king,
&c., (Thomassin, Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. i. p. 721-758,
especially p. 737, 738.)]
4711 (return) [ Compare Price, p. 90.—M.]
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part III.
One of the fifteen provinces of Syria, the cultivated lands to
the eastward of the Jordan, had been decorated by Roman vanity
with the name of _Arabia_; and the first arms of the Saracens
were justified by the semblance of a national right. The country
was enriched by the various benefits of trade; by the vigilance
of the emperors it was covered with a line of forts; and the
populous cities of Gerasa, Philadelphia, and Bosra, were secure,
at least from a surprise, by the solid structure of their walls.
The last of these cities was the eighteenth station from Medina:
the road was familiar to the caravans of Hejaz and Irak, who
annually visited this plenteous market of the province and the
desert: the perpetual jealousy of the Arabs had trained the
inhabitants to arms; and twelve thousand horse could sally from
the gates of Bosra, an appellation which signifies, in the Syriac
language, a strong tower of defence. Encouraged by their first
success against the open towns and flying parties of the borders,
a detachment of four thousand Moslems presumed to summon and
attack the fortress of Bosra. They were oppressed by the numbers
of the Syrians; they were saved by the presence of Caled, with
fifteen hundred horse: he blamed the enterprise, restored the
battle, and rescued his friend, the venerable Serjabil, who had
vainly invoked the unity of God and the promises of the apostle.
After a short repose, the Moslems performed their ablutions with
sand instead of water; and the morning prayer was recited by
Caled before they mounted on horseback. Confident in their
strength, the people of Bosra threw open their gates, drew their
forces into the plain, and swore to die in the defence of their
religion. But a religion of peace was incapable of withstanding
the fanatic cry of “Fight, fight! Paradise, paradise!” that
reechoed in the ranks of the Saracens; and the uproar of the
town, the ringing of bells, and the exclamations of the priests
and monks increased the dismay and disorder of the Christians.
With the loss of two hundred and thirty men, the Arabs remained
masters of the field; and the ramparts of Bosra, in expectation
of human or divine aid, were crowded with holy crosses and
consecrated banners. The governor Romanus had recommended an
early submission: despised by the people, and degraded from his
office, he still retained the desire and opportunity of revenge.
In a nocturnal interview, he informed the enemy of a
subterraneous passage from his house under the wall of the city;
the son of the caliph, with a hundred volunteers, were committed
to the faith of this new ally, and their successful intrepidity
gave an easy entrance to their companions. After Caled had
imposed the terms of servitude and tribute, the apostate or
convert avowed in the assembly of the people his meritorious
treason: “I renounce your society,” said Romanus, “both in this
world and the world to come. And I deny him that was crucified,
and whosoever worships him. And I choose God for my Lord, Islam
for my faith, Mecca for my temple, the Moslems for my brethren,
and Mahomet for my prophet; who was sent to lead us into the
right way, and to exalt the true religion in spite of those who
join partners with God.”
The conquest of Bosra, four days’ journey from Damascus,
encouraged the Arabs to besiege the ancient capital of Syria. At
some distance from the walls, they encamped among the groves and
fountains of that delicious territory, and the usual option of
the Mahometan faith, of tribute or of war, was proposed to the
resolute citizens, who had been lately strengthened by a
reenforcement of five thousand Greeks. In the decline, as in the
infancy, of the military art, a hostile defiance was frequently
offered and accepted by the generals themselves: many a lance was
shivered in the plain of Damascus, and the personal prowess of
Caled was signalized in the first sally of the besieged. After an
obstinate combat, he had overthrown and made prisoner one of the
Christian leaders, a stout and worthy antagonist. He instantly
mounted a fresh horse, the gift of the governor of Palmyra, and
pushed forwards to the front of the battle. “Repose yourself for
a moment,” said his friend Derar, “and permit me to supply your
place: you are fatigued with fighting with this dog.” “O Dear!”
replied the indefatigable Saracen, “we shall rest in the world to
come. He that labors to-day shall rest to-morrow.” With the same
unabated ardor, Caled answered, encountered, and vanquished a
second champion; and the heads of his two captives who refused to
abandon their religion were indignantly hurled into the midst of
the city. The event of some general and partial actions reduced
the Damascenes to a closer defence: but a messenger, whom they
dropped from the walls, returned with the promise of speedy and
powerful succor, and their tumultuous joy conveyed the
intelligence to the camp of the Arabs. After some debate, it was
resolved by the generals to raise, or rather to suspend, the
siege of Damascus, till they had given battle to the forces of
the emperor. In the retreat, Caled would have chosen the more
perilous station of the rear-guard; he modestly yielded to the
wishes of Abu Obeidah. But in the hour of danger he flew to the
rescue of his companion, who was rudely pressed by a sally of six
thousand horse and ten thousand foot, and few among the
Christians could relate at Damascus the circumstances of their
defeat. The importance of the contest required the junction of
the Saracens, who were dispersed on the frontiers of Syria and
Palestine; and I shall transcribe one of the circular mandates
which was addressed to Amrou, the future conqueror of Egypt. “In
the name of the most merciful God: from Caled to Amrou, health
and happiness. Know that thy brethren the Moslems design to march
to Aiznadin, where there is an army of seventy thousand Greeks,
who purpose to come against us, _that they may extinguish the
light of God with their mouths; but God preserveth his light in
spite of the infidels_. As soon therefore as this letter of mine
shall be delivered to thy hands, come with those that are with
thee to Aiznadin, where thou shalt find us if it please the most
high God.” The summons was cheerfully obeyed, and the forty-five
thousand Moslems, who met on the same day, on the same spot
ascribed to the blessing of Providence the effects of their
activity and zeal.
About four years after the triumph of the Persian war, the repose
of Heraclius and the empire was again disturbed by a new enemy,
the power of whose religion was more strongly felt, than it was
clearly understood, by the Christians of the East. In his palace
of Constantinople or Antioch, he was awakened by the invasion of
Syria, the loss of Bosra, and the danger of Damascus. An army of
seventy thousand veterans, or new levies, was assembled at Hems
or Emesa, under the command of his general Werdan: and these
troops consisting chiefly of cavalry, might be indifferently
styled either Syrians, or Greeks, or Romans: _Syrians_, from the
place of their birth or warfare; _Greeks_ from the religion and
language of their sovereign; and _Romans_, from the proud
appellation which was still profaned by the successors of
Constantine. On the plain of Aiznadin, as Werdan rode on a white
mule decorated with gold chains, and surrounded with ensigns and
standards, he was surprised by the near approach of a fierce and
naked warrior, who had undertaken to view the state of the enemy.
The adventurous valor of Derar was inspired, and has perhaps been
adorned, by the enthusiasm of his age and country. The hatred of
the Christians, the love of spoil, and the contempt of danger,
were the ruling passions of the audacious Saracen; and the
prospect of instant death could never shake his religious
confidence, or ruffle the calmness of his resolution, or even
suspend the frank and martial pleasantry of his humor. In the
most hopeless enterprises, he was bold, and prudent, and
fortunate: after innumerable hazards, after being thrice a
prisoner in the hands of the infidels, he still survived to
relate the achievements, and to enjoy the rewards, of the Syrian
conquest. On this occasion, his single lance maintained a flying
fight against thirty Romans, who were detached by Werdan; and,
after killing or unhorsing seventeen of their number, Derar
returned in safety to his applauding brethren. When his rashness
was mildly censured by the general, he excused himself with the
simplicity of a soldier. “Nay,” said Derar, “I did not begin
first: but they came out to take me, and I was afraid that God
should see me turn my back: and indeed I fought in good earnest,
and without doubt God assisted me against them; and had I not
been apprehensive of disobeying your orders, I should not have
come away as I did; and I perceive already that they will fall
into our hands.” In the presence of both armies, a venerable
Greek advanced from the ranks with a liberal offer of peace; and
the departure of the Saracens would have been purchased by a gift
to each soldier, of a turban, a robe, and a piece of gold; ten
robes and a hundred pieces to their leader; one hundred robes and
a thousand pieces to the caliph. A smile of indignation expressed
the refusal of Caled. “Ye Christian dogs, you know your option;
the Koran, the tribute, or the sword. We are a people whose
delight is in war, rather than in peace: and we despise your
pitiful alms, since we shall be speedily masters of your wealth,
your families, and your persons.” Notwithstanding this apparent
disdain, he was deeply conscious of the public danger: those who
had been in Persia, and had seen the armies of Chosroes confessed
that they never beheld a more formidable array. From the
superiority of the enemy, the artful Saracen derived a fresh
incentive of courage: “You see before you,” said he, “the united
force of the Romans; you cannot hope to escape, but you may
conquer Syria in a single day. The event depends on your
discipline and patience. Reserve yourselves till the evening. It
was in the evening that the Prophet was accustomed to vanquish.”
During two successive engagements, his temperate firmness
sustained the darts of the enemy, and the murmurs of his troops.
At length, when the spirits and quivers of the adverse line were
almost exhausted, Caled gave the signal of onset and victory. The
remains of the Imperial army fled to Antioch, or Cæsarea, or
Damascus; and the death of four hundred and seventy Moslems was
compensated by the opinion that they had sent to hell above fifty
thousand of the infidels. The spoil was inestimable; many banners
and crosses of gold and silver, precious stones, silver and gold
chains, and innumerable suits of the richest armor and apparel.
The general distribution was postponed till Damascus should be
taken; but the seasonable supply of arms became the instrument of
new victories. The glorious intelligence was transmitted to the
throne of the caliph; and the Arabian tribes, the coldest or most
hostile to the prophet’s mission, were eager and importunate to
share the harvest of Syria.
The sad tidings were carried to Damascus by the speed of grief
and terror; and the inhabitants beheld from their walls the
return of the heroes of Aiznadin. Amrou led the van at the head
of nine thousand horse: the bands of the Saracens succeeded each
other in formidable review; and the rear was closed by Caled in
person, with the standard of the black eagle. To the activity of
Derar he intrusted the commission of patrolling round the city
with two thousand horse, of scouring the plain, and of
intercepting all succor or intelligence. The rest of the Arabian
chiefs were fixed in their respective stations before the seven
gates of Damascus; and the siege was renewed with fresh vigor and
confidence. The art, the labor, the military engines, of the
Greeks and Romans are seldom to be found in the simple, though
successful, operations of the Saracens: it was sufficient for
them to invest a city with arms, rather than with trenches; to
repel the allies of the besieged; to attempt a stratagem or an
assault; or to expect the progress of famine and discontent.
Damascus would have acquiesced in the trial of Aiznadin, as a
final and peremptory sentence between the emperor and the caliph;
her courage was rekindled by the example and authority of Thomas,
a noble Greek, illustrious in a private condition by the alliance
of Heraclius. The tumult and illumination of the night proclaimed
the design of the morning sally; and the Christian hero, who
affected to despise the enthusiasm of the Arabs, employed the
resource of a similar superstition. At the principal gate, in the
sight of both armies, a lofty crucifix was erected; the bishop,
with his clergy, accompanied the march, and laid the volume of
the New Testament before the image of Jesus; and the contending
parties were scandalized or edified by a prayer that the Son of
God would defend his servants and vindicate his truth. The battle
raged with incessant fury; and the dexterity of Thomas, an
incomparable archer, was fatal to the boldest Saracens, till
their death was revenged by a female heroine. The wife of Aban,
who had followed him to the holy war, embraced her expiring
husband. “Happy,” said she, “happy art thou, my dear: thou art
gone to thy Lord, who first joined us together, and then parted
us asunder. I will revenge thy death, and endeavor to the utmost
of my power to come to the place where thou art, because I love
thee. Henceforth shall no man ever touch me more, for I have
dedicated myself to the service of God.” Without a groan, without
a tear, she washed the corpse of her husband, and buried him with
the usual rites. Then grasping the manly weapons, which in her
native land she was accustomed to wield, the intrepid widow of
Aban sought the place where his murderer fought in the thickest
of the battle. Her first arrow pierced the hand of his
standard-bearer; her second wounded Thomas in the eye; and the
fainting Christians no longer beheld their ensign or their
leader. Yet the generous champion of Damascus refused to withdraw
to his palace: his wound was dressed on the rampart; the fight
was continued till the evening; and the Syrians rested on their
arms. In the silence of the night, the signal was given by a
stroke on the great bell; the gates were thrown open, and each
gate discharged an impetuous column on the sleeping camp of the
Saracens. Caled was the first in arms: at the head of four
hundred horse he flew to the post of danger, and the tears
trickled down his iron cheeks, as he uttered a fervent
ejaculation; “O God, who never sleepest, look upon they servants,
and do not deliver them into the hands of their enemies.” The
valor and victory of Thomas were arrested by the presence of the
_Sword of God_; with the knowledge of the peril, the Moslems
recovered their ranks, and charged the assailants in the flank
and rear. After the loss of thousands, the Christian general
retreated with a sigh of despair, and the pursuit of the Saracens
was checked by the military engines of the rampart.
After a siege of seventy days, the patience, and perhaps the
provisions, of the Damascenes were exhausted; and the bravest of
their chiefs submitted to the hard dictates of necessity. In the
occurrences of peace and war, they had been taught to dread the
fierceness of Caled, and to revere the mild virtues of Abu
Obeidah. At the hour of midnight, one hundred chosen deputies of
the clergy and people were introduced to the tent of that
venerable commander. He received and dismissed them with
courtesy. They returned with a written agreement, on the faith of
a companion of Mahomet, that all hostilities should cease; that
the voluntary emigrants might depart in safety, with as much as
they could carry away of their effects; and that the tributary
subjects of the caliph should enjoy their lands and houses, with
the use and possession of seven churches. On these terms, the
most respectable hostages, and the gate nearest to his camp, were
delivered into his hands: his soldiers imitated the moderation of
their chief; and he enjoyed the submissive gratitude of a people
whom he had rescued from destruction. But the success of the
treaty had relaxed their vigilance, and in the same moment the
opposite quarter of the city was betrayed and taken by assault. A
party of a hundred Arabs had opened the eastern gate to a more
inexorable foe. “No quarter,” cried the rapacious and sanguinary
Caled, “no quarter to the enemies of the Lord:” his trumpets
sounded, and a torrent of Christian blood was poured down the
streets of Damascus. When he reached the church of St. Mary, he
was astonished and provoked by the peaceful aspect of his
companions; their swords were in the scabbard, and they were
surrounded by a multitude of priests and monks. Abu Obeidah
saluted the general: “God,” said he, “has delivered the city into
my hands by way of surrender, and has saved the believers the
trouble of fighting.” “And am I not,” replied the indignant
Caled, “am I not the lieutenant of the commander of the faithful?
Have I not taken the city by storm? The unbelievers shall perish
by the sword. Fall on.” The hungry and cruel Arabs would have
obeyed the welcome command; and Damascus was lost, if the
benevolence of Abu Obeidah had not been supported by a decent and
dignified firmness. Throwing himself between the trembling
citizens and the most eager of the Barbarians, he adjured them,
by the holy name of God, to respect his promise, to suspend their
fury, and to wait the determination of their chiefs. The chiefs
retired into the church of St. Mary; and after a vehement debate,
Caled submitted in some measure to the reason and authority of
his colleague; who urged the sanctity of a covenant, the
advantage as well as the honor which the Moslems would derive
from the punctual performance of their word, and the obstinate
resistance which they must encounter from the distrust and
despair of the rest of the Syrian cities. It was agreed that the
sword should be sheathed, that the part of Damascus which had
surrendered to Abu Obeidah, should be immediately entitled to the
benefit of his capitulation, and that the final decision should
be referred to the justice and wisdom of the caliph. A large
majority of the people accepted the terms of toleration and
tribute; and Damascus is still peopled by twenty thousand
Christians. But the valiant Thomas, and the free-born patriots
who had fought under his banner, embraced the alternative of
poverty and exile. In the adjacent meadow, a numerous encampment
was formed of priests and laymen, of soldiers and citizens, of
women and children: they collected, with haste and terror, their
most precious movables; and abandoned, with loud lamentations, or
silent anguish, their native homes, and the pleasant banks of the
Pharpar. The inflexible soul of Caled was not touched by the
spectacle of their distress: he disputed with the Damascenes the
property of a magazine of corn; endeavored to exclude the
garrison from the benefit of the treaty; consented, with
reluctance, that each of the fugitives should arm himself with a
sword, or a lance, or a bow; and sternly declared, that, after a
respite of three days, they might be pursued and treated as the
enemies of the Moslems.
The passion of a Syrian youth completed the ruin of the exiles of
Damascus. A nobleman of the city, of the name of Jonas, was
betrothed to a wealthy maiden; but her parents delayed the
consummation of his nuptials, and their daughter was persuaded to
escape with the man whom she had chosen. They corrupted the
nightly watchmen of the gate Keisan; the lover, who led the way,
was encompassed by a squadron of Arabs; but his exclamation in
the Greek tongue, “The bird is taken,” admonished his mistress to
hasten her return. In the presence of Caled, and of death, the
unfortunate Jonas professed his belief in one God and his apostle
Mahomet; and continued, till the season of his martyrdom, to
discharge the duties of a brave and sincere Mussulman. When the
city was taken, he flew to the monastery, where Eudocia had taken
refuge; but the lover was forgotten; the apostate was scorned;
she preferred her religion to her country; and the justice of
Caled, though deaf to mercy, refused to detain by force a male or
female inhabitant of Damascus. Four days was the general confined
to the city by the obligation of the treaty, and the urgent cares
of his new conquest. His appetite for blood and rapine would have
been extinguished by the hopeless computation of time and
distance; but he listened to the importunities of Jonas, who
assured him that the weary fugitives might yet be overtaken. At
the head of four thousand horse, in the disguise of Christian
Arabs, Caled undertook the pursuit. They halted only for the
moments of prayer; and their guide had a perfect knowledge of the
country. For a long way the footsteps of the Damascenes were
plain and conspicuous: they vanished on a sudden; but the
Saracens were comforted by the assurance that the caravan had
turned aside into the mountains, and must speedily fall into
their hands. In traversing the ridges of the Libanus, they
endured intolerable hardships, and the sinking spirits of the
veteran fanatics were supported and cheered by the unconquerable
ardor of a lover. From a peasant of the country, they were
informed that the emperor had sent orders to the colony of exiles
to pursue without delay the road of the sea-coast, and of
Constantinople, apprehensive, perhaps, that the soldiers and
people of Antioch might be discouraged by the sight and the story
of their sufferings. The Saracens were conducted through the
territories of Gabala and Laodicea, at a cautious distance from
the walls of the cities; the rain was incessant, the night was
dark, a single mountain separated them from the Roman army; and
Caled, ever anxious for the safety of his brethren, whispered an
ominous dream in the ear of his companion. With the dawn of day,
the prospect again cleared, and they saw before them, in a
pleasant valley, the tents of Damascus. After a short interval of
repose and prayer, Caled divided his cavalry into four squadrons,
committing the first to his faithful Derar, and reserving the
last for himself. They successively rushed on the promiscuous
multitude, insufficiently provided with arms, and already
vanquished by sorrow and fatigue. Except a captive, who was
pardoned and dismissed, the Arabs enjoyed the satisfaction of
believing that not a Christian of either sex escaped the edge of
their cimeters. The gold and silver of Damascus was scattered
over the camp, and a royal wardrobe of three hundred load of silk
might clothe an army of naked Barbarians. In the tumult of the
battle, Jonas sought and found the object of his pursuit: but her
resentment was inflamed by the last act of his perfidy; and as
Eudocia struggled in his hateful embraces, she struck a dagger to
her heart. Another female, the widow of Thomas, and the real or
supposed daughter of Heraclius, was spared and released without a
ransom; but the generosity of Caled was the effect of his
contempt; and the haughty Saracen insulted, by a message of
defiance, the throne of the Cæsars. Caled had penetrated above a
hundred and fifty miles into the heart of the Roman province: he
returned to Damascus with the same secrecy and speed On the
accession of Omar, the _Sword of God_ was removed from the
command; but the caliph, who blamed the rashness, was compelled
to applaud the vigor and conduct, of the enterprise.
Another expedition of the conquerors of Damascus will equally
display their avidity and their contempt for the riches of the
present world. They were informed that the produce and
manufactures of the country were annually collected in the fair
of Abyla, 64 about thirty miles from the city; that the cell of a
devout hermit was visited at the same time by a multitude of
pilgrims; and that the festival of trade and superstition would
be ennobled by the nuptials of the daughter of the governor of
Tripoli. Abdallah, the son of Jaafar, a glorious and holy martyr,
undertook, with a banner of five hundred horse, the pious and
profitable commission of despoiling the infidels. As he
approached the fair of Abyla, he was astonished by the report of
this mighty concourse of Jews and Christians, Greeks, and
Armenians, of natives of Syria and of strangers of Egypt, to the
number of ten thousand, besides a guard of five thousand horse
that attended the person of the bride. The Saracens paused: “For
my own part,” said Abdallah, “I dare not go back: our foes are
many, our danger is great, but our reward is splendid and secure,
either in this life or in the life to come. Let every man,
according to his inclination, advance or retire.” Not a Mussulman
deserted his standard. “Lead the way,” said Abdallah to his
Christian guide, “and you shall see what the companions of the
prophet can perform.” They charged in five squadrons; but after
the first advantage of the surprise, they were encompassed and
almost overwhelmed by the multitude of their enemies; and their
valiant band is fancifully compared to a white spot in the skin
of a black camel. 65 About the hour of sunset, when their weapons
dropped from their hands, when they panted on the verge of
eternity, they discovered an approaching cloud of dust; they
heard the welcome sound of the tecbir, 66 and they soon perceived
the standard of Caled, who flew to their relief with the utmost
speed of his cavalry. The Christians were broken by his attack,
and slaughtered in their flight, as far as the river of Tripoli.
They left behind them the various riches of the fair; the
merchandises that were exposed for sale, the money that was
brought for purchase, the gay decorations of the nuptials, and
the governor’s daughter, with forty of her female attendants.
The fruits, provisions, and furniture, the money, plate, and
jewels, were diligently laden on the backs of horses, asses, and
mules; and the holy robbers returned in triumph to Damascus. The
hermit, after a short and angry controversy with Caled, declined
the crown of martyrdom, and was left alive in the solitary scene
of blood and devastation.
64 (return) [ Dair Abil Kodos. After retrenching the last word,
the epithet, holy, I discover the Abila of Lysanias between
Damascus and Heliopolis: the name (Abil signifies a vineyard)
concurs with the situation to justify my conjecture, (Reland,
Palestin. tom. i. p 317, tom. ii. p. 526, 527.)]
65 (return) [ I am bolder than Mr. Ockley, (vol. i. p. 164,) who
dares not insert this figurative expression in the text, though
he observes in a marginal note, that the Arabians often borrow
their similes from that useful and familiar animal. The reindeer
may be equally famous in the songs of the Laplanders.]
66 (return) [ We hear the tecbir; so the Arabs call Their shout
of onset, when with loud appeal They challenge heaven, as if
demanding conquest. This word, so formidable in their holy wars,
is a verb active, (says Ockley in his index,) of the second
conjugation, from Kabbara, which signifies saying Alla Acbar, God
is most mighty!]
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part IV.
Syria, 67 one of the countries that have been improved by the
most early cultivation, is not unworthy of the preference. 68 The
heat of the climate is tempered by the vicinity of the sea and
mountains, by the plenty of wood and water; and the produce of a
fertile soil affords the subsistence, and encourages the
propagation, of men and animals. From the age of David to that of
Heraclius, the country was overspread with ancient and
flourishing cities: the inhabitants were numerous and wealthy;
and, after the slow ravage of despotism and superstition, after
the recent calamities of the Persian war, Syria could still
attract and reward the rapacious tribes of the desert. A plain,
of ten days’ journey, from Damascus to Aleppo and Antioch, is
watered, on the western side, by the winding course of the
Orontes. The hills of Libanus and Anti-Libanus are planted from
north to south, between the Orontes and the Mediterranean; and
the epithet of hollow (Coelesyria) was applied to a long and
fruitful valley, which is confined in the same direction, by the
two ridges of snowy mountains. 69 Among the cities, which are
enumerated by Greek and Oriental names in the geography and
conquest of Syria, we may distinguish Emesa or Hems, Heliopolis
or Baalbec, the former as the metropolis of the plain, the latter
as the capital of the valley. Under the last of the Caesars, they
were strong and populous; the turrets glittered from afar: an
ample space was covered with public and private buildings; and
the citizens were illustrious by their spirit, or at least by
their pride; by their riches, or at least by their luxury. In the
days of Paganism, both Emesa and Heliopolis were addicted to the
worship of Baal, or the sun; but the decline of their
superstition and splendor has been marked by a singular variety
of fortune. Not a vestige remains of the temple of Emesa, which
was equalled in poetic style to the summits of Mount Libanus, 70
while the ruins of Baalbec, invisible to the writers of
antiquity, excite the curiosity and wonder of the European
traveller. 71 The measure of the temple is two hundred feet in
length, and one hundred in breadth: the front is adorned with a
double portico of eight columns; fourteen may be counted on
either side; and each column, forty-five feet in height, is
composed of three massy blocks of stone or marble. The
proportions and ornaments of the Corinthian order express the
architecture of the Greeks: but as Baalbec has never been the
seat of a monarch, we are at a loss to conceive how the expense
of these magnificent structures could be supplied by private or
municipal liberality. 72 From the conquest of Damascus the
Saracens proceeded to Heliopolis and Emesa: but I shall decline
the repetition of the sallies and combats which have been already
shown on a larger scale. In the prosecution of the war, their
policy was not less effectual than their sword. By short and
separate truces they dissolved the union of the enemy; accustomed
the Syrians to compare their friendship with their enmity;
familiarized the idea of their language, religion, and manners;
and exhausted, by clandestine purchase, the magazines and
arsenals of the cities which they returned to besiege. They
aggravated the ransom of the more wealthy, or the more obstinate;
and Chalcis alone was taxed at five thousand ounces of gold, five
thousand ounces of silver, two thousand robes of silk, and as
many figs and olives as would load five thousand asses. But the
terms of truce or capitulation were faithfully observed; and the
lieutenant of the caliph, who had promised not to enter the walls
of the captive Baalbec, remained tranquil and immovable in his
tent till the jarring factions solicited the interposition of a
foreign master. The conquest of the plain and valley of Syria was
achieved in less than two years. Yet the commander of the
faithful reproved the slowness of their progress; and the
Saracens, bewailing their fault with tears of rage and
repentance, called aloud on their chiefs to lead them forth to
fight the battles of the Lord. In a recent action, under the
walls of Emesa, an Arabian youth, the cousin of Caled, was heard
aloud to exclaim, “Methinks I see the black-eyed girls looking
upon me; one of whom, should she appear in this world, all
mankind would die for love of her. And I see in the hand of one
of them a handkerchief of green silk, and a cap of precious
stones, and she beckons me, and calls out, Come hither quickly,
for I love thee.” With these words, charging the Christians, he
made havoc wherever he went, till, observed at length by the
governor of Hems, he was struck through with a javelin.
67 (return) [ In the Geography of Abulfeda, the description of
Syria, his native country, is the most interesting and authentic
portion. It was published in Arabic and Latin, Lipsiae, 1766, in
quarto, with the learned notes of Kochler and Reiske, and some
extracts of geography and natural history from Ibn Ol Wardii.
Among the modern travels, Pocock’s Description of the East (of
Syria and Mesopotamia, vol. ii. p. 88-209) is a work of superior
learning and dignity; but the author too often confounds what he
had seen and what he had read.]
68 (return) [ The praises of Dionysius are just and lively.
Syria, (in Periegesi, v. 902, in tom. iv. Geograph. Minor.
Hudson.) In another place he styles the country differently, (v.
898.) This poetical geographer lived in the age of Augustus, and
his description of the world is illustrated by the Greek
commentary of Eustathius, who paid the same compliment to Homer
and Dionysius, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. l. iv. c. 2, tom. iii. p.
21, &c.)]
69 (return) [ The topography of the Libanus and Anti-Libanus is
excellently described by the learning and sense of Reland,
(Palestin. tom. i. p. 311-326)]
70 (return) [
—Emesae fastigia celsa renident. Nam diffusa solo latus explicat; ac
subit auras Turribus in coelum nitentibus: incola claris Cor studiis
acuit... Denique flammicomo devoti pectora soli Vitam agitant.
Libanus frondosa cacumina turget. Et tamen his certant celsi fastigia
templi.
These verses of the Latin version of Rufus Avienus are wanting in
the Greek original of Dionysius; and since they are likewise
unnoticed by Eustathius, I must, with Fabricius, (Bibliot. Latin.
tom. iii. p. 153, edit. Ernesti,) and against Salmasius, (ad
Vopiscum, p. 366, 367, in Hist. August.,) ascribed them to the
fancy, rather than the Mss., of Avienus.]
71 (return) [ I am much better satisfied with Maundrell’s slight
octavo, (Journey, p. 134-139), than with the pompous folio of Dr.
Pocock, (Description of the East, vol. ii. p. 106-113;) but every
preceding account is eclipsed by the magnificent description and
drawings of Mm. Dawkins and Wood, who have transported into
England the ruins of Pamyra and Baalbec.]
72 (return) [ The Orientals explain the prodigy by a
never-failing expedient. The edifices of Baalbec were constructed
by the fairies or the genii, (Hist. de Timour Bec, tom. iii. l.
v. c. 23, p. 311, 312. Voyage d’Otter, tom. i. p. 83.) With less
absurdity, but with equal ignorance, Abulfeda and Ibn Chaukel
ascribe them to the Sabaeans or Aadites Non sunt in omni Syria
aedificia magnificentiora his, (Tabula Syria p. 108.)]
It was incumbent on the Saracens to exert the full powers of
their valor and enthusiasm against the forces of the emperor, who
was taught, by repeated losses, that the rovers of the desert had
undertaken, and would speedily achieve, a regular and permanent
conquest. From the provinces of Europe and Asia, fourscore
thousand soldiers were transported by sea and land to Antioch and
Caesarea: the light troops of the army consisted of sixty
thousand Christian Arabs of the tribe of Gassan. Under the banner
of Jabalah, the last of their princes, they marched in the van;
and it was a maxim of the Greeks, that for the purpose of cutting
diamond, a diamond was the most effectual. Heraclius withheld his
person from the dangers of the field; but his presumption, or
perhaps his despondency, suggested a peremptory order, that the
fate of the province and the war should be decided by a single
battle. The Syrians were attached to the standard of Rome and of
the cross: but the noble, the citizen, the peasant, were
exasperated by the injustice and cruelty of a licentious host,
who oppressed them as subjects, and despised them as strangers
and aliens. 73 A report of these mighty preparations was conveyed
to the Saracens in their camp of Emesa, and the chiefs, though
resolved to fight, assembled a council: the faith of Abu Obeidah
would have expected on the same spot the glory of martyrdom; the
wisdom of Caled advised an honorable retreat to the skirts of
Palestine and Arabia, where they might await the succors of their
friends, and the attack of the unbelievers. A speedy messenger
soon returned from the throne of Medina, with the blessings of
Omar and Ali, the prayers of the widows of the prophet, and a
reenforcement of eight thousand Moslems. In their way they
overturned a detachment of Greeks, and when they joined at Yermuk
the camp of their brethren, they found the pleasing intelligence,
that Caled had already defeated and scattered the Christian Arabs
of the tribe of Gassan. In the neighborhood of Bosra, the springs
of Mount Hermon descend in a torrent to the plain of Decapolis,
or ten cities; and the Hieromax, a name which has been corrupted
to Yermuk, is lost, after a short course, in the Lake of
Tiberias. 74 The banks of this obscure stream were illustrated by
a long and bloody encounter. 7411 On this momentous occasion, the
public voice, and the modesty of Abu Obeidah, restored the
command to the most deserving of the Moslems. Caled assumed his
station in the front, his colleague was posted in the rear, that
the disorder of the fugitive might be checked by his venerable
aspect, and the sight of the yellow banner which Mahomet had
displayed before the walls of Chaibar. The last line was occupied
by the sister of Derar, with the Arabian women who had enlisted
in this holy war, who were accustomed to wield the bow and the
lance, and who in a moment of captivity had defended, against the
uncircumcised ravishers, their chastity and religion. 75 The
exhortation of the generals was brief and forcible: “Paradise is
before you, the devil and hell-fire in your rear.” Yet such was
the weight of the Roman cavalry, that the right wing of the Arabs
was broken and separated from the main body. Thrice did they
retreat in disorder, and thrice were they driven back to the
charge by the reproaches and blows of the women. In the intervals
of action, Abu Obeidah visited the tents of his brethren,
prolonged their repose by repeating at once the prayers of two
different hours, bound up their wounds with his own hands, and
administered the comfortable reflection, that the infidels
partook of their sufferings without partaking of their reward.
Four thousand and thirty of the Moslems were buried in the field
of battle; and the skill of the Armenian archers enabled seven
hundred to boast that they had lost an eye in that meritorious
service. The veterans of the Syrian war acknowledged that it was
the hardest and most doubtful of the days which they had seen.
But it was likewise the most decisive: many thousands of the
Greeks and Syrians fell by the swords of the Arabs; many were
slaughtered, after the defeat, in the woods and mountains; many,
by mistaking the ford, were drowned in the waters of the Yermuk;
and however the loss may be magnified, 76 the Christian writers
confess and bewail the bloody punishment of their sins. 77
Manuel, the Roman general, was either killed at Damascus, or took
refuge in the monastery of Mount Sinai. An exile in the Byzantine
court, Jabalah lamented the manners of Arabia, and his unlucky
preference of the Christian cause. 78 He had once inclined to the
profession of Islam; but in the pilgrimage of Mecca, Jabalah was
provoked to strike one of his brethren, and fled with amazement
from the stern and equal justice of the caliph. These victorious
Saracens enjoyed at Damascus a month of pleasure and repose: the
spoil was divided by the discretion of Abu Obeidah: an equal
share was allotted to a soldier and to his horse, and a double
portion was reserved for the noble coursers of the Arabian breed.
73 (return) [ I have read somewhere in Tacitus, or Grotius,
Subjectos habent tanquam suos, viles tanquam alienos. Some Greek
officers ravished the wife, and murdered the child, of their
Syrian landlord; and Manuel smiled at his undutiful complaint.]
74 (return) [ See Reland, Palestin. tom. i. p. 272, 283, tom. ii.
p. 773, 775. This learned professor was equal to the task of
describing the Holy Land, since he was alike conversant with
Greek and Latin, with Hebrew and Arabian literature. The Yermuk,
or Hieromax, is noticed by Cellarius (Geograph. Antiq. tom. ii.
p. 392) and D’Anville, (Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 185.)
The Arabs, and even Abulfeda himself, do not seem to recognize
the scene of their victory.]
7411 (return) [ Compare Price, p. 79. The army of the Romans is
swoller to 400,000 men of which 70,000 perished.—M.]
75 (return) [ These women were of the tribe of the Hamyarites,
who derived their origin from the ancient Amalekites. Their
females were accustomed to ride on horseback, and to fight like
the Amazons of old, (Ockley, vol. i. p. 67.)]
76 (return) [ We killed of them, says Abu Obeidah to the caliph,
one hundred and fifty thousand, and made prisoners forty
thousand, (Ockley vol. i. p. 241.) As I cannot doubt his
veracity, nor believe his computation, I must suspect that the
Arabic historians indulge themselves in the practice of comparing
speeches and letters for their heroes.]
77 (return) [ After deploring the sins of the Christians,
Theophanes, adds, (Chronograph. p. 276,) does he mean Aiznadin?
His account is brief and obscure, but he accuses the numbers of
the enemy, the adverse wind, and the cloud of dust. (Chronograph.
p. 280.)]
78 (return) [ See Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 70, 71,) who
transcribes the poetical complaint of Jabalah himself, and some
panegyrical strains of an Arabian poet, to whom the chief of
Gassan sent from Constantinople a gift of five hundred pieces of
gold by the hands of the ambassador of Omar.]
After the battle of Yermuk, the Roman army no longer appeared in
the field; and the Saracens might securely choose, among the
fortified towns of Syria, the first object of their attack. They
consulted the caliph whether they should march to Caesarea or
Jerusalem; and the advice of Ali determined the immediate siege
of the latter. To a profane eye, Jerusalem was the first or
second capital of Palestine; but after Mecca and Medina, it was
revered and visited by the devout Moslems, as the temple of the
Holy Land which had been sanctified by the revelation of Moses,
of Jesus, and of Mahomet himself. The son of Abu Sophian was sent
with five thousand Arabs to try the first experiment of surprise
or treaty; but on the eleventh day, the town was invested by the
whole force of Abu Obeidah. He addressed the customary summons to
the chief commanders and people of Aelia. 79
79 (return) [ In the name of the city, the profane prevailed over
the sacred Jerusalem was known to the devout Christians, (Euseb.
de Martyr Palest. c xi.;) but the legal and popular appellation
of Aelia (the colony of Aelius Hadrianus) has passed from the
Romans to the Arabs. (Reland, Palestin. tom. i. p. 207, tom. ii.
p. 835. D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, Cods, p. 269, Ilia,
p. 420.) The epithet of Al Cods, the Holy, is used as the proper
name of Jerusalem.]
“Health and happiness to every one that follows the right way! We
require of you to testify that there is but one God, and that
Mahomet is his apostle. If you refuse this, consent to pay
tribute, and be under us forthwith. Otherwise I shall bring men
against you who love death better than you do the drinking of
wine or eating hog’s flesh. Nor will I ever stir from you, if it
please God, till I have destroyed those that fight for you, and
made slaves of your children.” But the city was defended on every
side by deep valleys and steep ascents; since the invasion of
Syria, the walls and towers had been anxiously restored; the
bravest of the fugitives of Yermuk had stopped in the nearest
place of refuge; and in the defence of the sepulchre of Christ,
the natives and strangers might feel some sparks of the
enthusiasm, which so fiercely glowed in the bosoms of the
Saracens. The siege of Jerusalem lasted four months; not a day
was lost without some action of sally or assault; the military
engines incessantly played from the ramparts; and the inclemency
of the winter was still more painful and destructive to the
Arabs. The Christians yielded at length to the perseverance of
the besiegers. The patriarch Sophronius appeared on the walls,
and by the voice of an interpreter demanded a conference. 7911
After a vain attempt to dissuade the lieutenant of the caliph
from his impious enterprise, he proposed, in the name of the
people, a fair capitulation, with this extraordinary clause, that
the articles of security should be ratified by the authority and
presence of Omar himself. The question was debated in the council
of Medina; the sanctity of the place, and the advice of Ali,
persuaded the caliph to gratify the wishes of his soldiers and
enemies; and the simplicity of his journey is more illustrious
than the royal pageants of vanity and oppression. The conqueror
of Persia and Syria was mounted on a red camel, which carried,
besides his person, a bag of corn, a bag of dates, a wooden dish,
and a leathern bottle of water. Wherever he halted, the company,
without distinction, was invited to partake of his homely fare,
and the repast was consecrated by the prayer and exhortation of
the commander of the faithful. 80 But in this expedition or
pilgrimage, his power was exercised in the administration of
justice: he reformed the licentious polygamy of the Arabs,
relieved the tributaries from extortion and cruelty, and
chastised the luxury of the Saracens, by despoiling them of their
rich silks, and dragging them on their faces in the dirt. When he
came within sight of Jerusalem, the caliph cried with a loud
voice, “God is victorious. O Lord, give us an easy conquest!”
and, pitching his tent of coarse hair, calmly seated himself on
the ground. After signing the capitulation, he entered the city
without fear or precaution; and courteously discoursed with the
patriarch concerning its religious antiquities. 81 Sophronius
bowed before his new master, and secretly muttered, in the words
of Daniel, “The abomination of desolation is in the holy place.”
82 At the hour of prayer they stood together in the church of the
resurrection; but the caliph refused to perform his devotions,
and contented himself with praying on the steps of the church of
Constantine. To the patriarch he disclosed his prudent and
honorable motive. “Had I yielded,” said Omar, “to your request,
the Moslems of a future age would have infringed the treaty under
color of imitating my example.” By his command the ground of the
temple of Solomon was prepared for the foundation of a mosch; 83
and, during a residence of ten days, he regulated the present and
future state of his Syrian conquests. Medina might be jealous,
lest the caliph should be detained by the sanctity of Jerusalem
or the beauty of Damascus; her apprehensions were dispelled by
his prompt and voluntary return to the tomb of the apostle. 84
7911 (return) [ See the explanation of this in Price, with the
prophecy which was hereby fulfilled, p 85.—M]
80 (return) [ The singular journey and equipage of Omar are
described (besides Ockley, vol. i. p. 250) by Murtadi,
(Merveilles de l’Egypte, p. 200-202.)]
81 (return) [ The Arabs boast of an old prophecy preserved at
Jerusalem, and describing the name, the religion, and the person
of Omar, the future conqueror. By such arts the Jews are said to
have soothed the pride of their foreign masters, Cyrus and
Alexander, (Joseph. Ant. Jud. l. xi c. 1, 8, p. 447, 579-582.)]
82 (return) [ Theophan. Chronograph. p. 281. This prediction,
which had already served for Antiochus and the Romans, was again
refitted for the present occasion, by the economy of Sophronius,
one of the deepest theologians of the Monothelite controversy.]
83 (return) [ According to the accurate survey of D’Anville,
(Dissertation sun l’ancienne Jerusalem, p. 42-54,) the mosch of
Omar, enlarged and embellished by succeeding caliphs, covered the
ground of the ancient temple, (says Phocas,) a length of 215, a
breadth of 172, toises. The Nubian geographer declares, that this
magnificent structure was second only in size and beauty to the
great mosch of Cordova, (p. 113,) whose present state Mr.
Swinburne has so elegantly represented, (Travels into Spain, p.
296-302.)]
84 (return) [ Of the many Arabic tarikhs or chronicles of
Jerusalem, (D’Herbelot, p. 867,) Ockley found one among the
Pocock Mss. of Oxford, (vol. i. p. 257,) which he has used to
supply the defective narrative of Al Wakidi.]
To achieve what yet remained of the Syrian war the caliph had
formed two separate armies; a chosen detachment, under Amrou and
Yezid, was left in the camp of Palestine; while the larger
division, under the standard of Abu Obeidah and Caled, marched
away to the north against Antioch and Aleppo. The latter of
these, the Beraea of the Greeks, was not yet illustrious as the
capital of a province or a kingdom; and the inhabitants, by
anticipating their submission and pleading their poverty,
obtained a moderate composition for their lives and religion. But
the castle of Aleppo, 85 distinct from the city, stood erect on a
lofty artificial mound; the sides were sharpened to a precipice,
and faced with free-stone; and the breadth of the ditch might be
filled with water from the neighboring springs. After the loss of
three thousand men, the garrison was still equal to the defence;
and Youkinna, their valiant and hereditary chief, had murdered
his brother, a holy monk, for daring to pronounce the name of
peace. In a siege of four or five months, the hardest of the
Syrian war, great numbers of the Saracens were killed and
wounded: their removal to the distance of a mile could not seduce
the vigilance of Youkinna; nor could the Christians be terrified
by the execution of three hundred captives, whom they beheaded
before the castle wall. The silence, and at length the
complaints, of Abu Obeidah informed the caliph that their hope
and patience were consumed at the foot of this impregnable
fortress. “I am variously affected,” replied Omar, “by the
difference of your success; but I charge you by no means to raise
the siege of the castle. Your retreat would diminish the
reputation of our arms, and encourage the infidels to fall upon
you on all sides. Remain before Aleppo till God shall determine
the event, and forage with your horse round the adjacent
country.” The exhortation of the commander of the faithful was
fortified by a supply of volunteers from all the tribes of
Arabia, who arrived in the camp on horses or camels. Among these
was Dames, of a servile birth, but of gigantic size and intrepid
resolution. The forty-seventh day of his service he proposed,
with only thirty men, to make an attempt on the castle. The
experience and testimony of Caled recommended his offer; and Abu
Obeidah admonished his brethren not to despise the baser origin
of Dames, since he himself, could he relinquish the public care,
would cheerfully serve under the banner of the slave. His design
was covered by the appearance of a retreat; and the camp of the
Saracens was pitched about a league from Aleppo. The thirty
adventurers lay in ambush at the foot of the hill; and Dames at
length succeeded in his inquiries, though he was provoked by the
ignorance of his Greek captives. “God curse these dogs,” said the
illiterate Arab; “what a strange barbarous language they speak!”
At the darkest hour of the night, he scaled the most accessible
height, which he had diligently surveyed, a place where the
stones were less entire, or the slope less perpendicular, or the
guard less vigilant. Seven of the stoutest Saracens mounted on
each other’s shoulders, and the weight of the column was
sustained on the broad and sinewy back of the gigantic slave. The
foremost in this painful ascent could grasp and climb the lowest
part of the battlements; they silently stabbed and cast down the
sentinels; and the thirty brethren, repeating a pious
ejaculation, “O apostle of God, help and deliver us!” were
successively drawn up by the long folds of their turbans. With
bold and cautious footsteps, Dames explored the palace of the
governor, who celebrated, in riotous merriment, the festival of
his deliverance. From thence, returning to his companions, he
assaulted on the inside the entrance of the castle. They
overpowered the guard, unbolted the gate, let down the
drawbridge, and defended the narrow pass, till the arrival of
Caled, with the dawn of day, relieved their danger and assured
their conquest. Youkinna, a formidable foe, became an active and
useful proselyte; and the general of the Saracens expressed his
regard for the most humble merit, by detaining the army at Aleppo
till Dames was cured of his honorable wounds. The capital of
Syria was still covered by the castle of Aazaz and the iron
bridge of the Orontes. After the loss of those important posts,
and the defeat of the last of the Roman armies, the luxury of
Antioch 86 trembled and obeyed. Her safety was ransomed with
three hundred thousand pieces of gold; but the throne of the
successors of Alexander, the seat of the Roman government of the
East, which had been decorated by Caesar with the titles of free,
and holy, and inviolate was degraded under the yoke of the
caliphs to the secondary rank of a provincial town. 87
85 (return) [ The Persian historian of Timur (tom. iii. l. v. c.
21, p. 300) describes the castle of Aleppo as founded on a rock
one hundred cubits in height; a proof, says the French
translator, that he had never visited the place. It is now in the
midst of the city, of no strength with a single gate; the circuit
is about 500 or 600 paces, and the ditch half full of stagnant
water, (Voyages de Tavernier, tom. i. p. 149 Pocock, vol. ii.
part i. p. 150.) The fortresses of the East are contemptible to a
European eye.]
86 (return) [ The date of the conquest of Antioch by the Arabs is
of some importance. By comparing the years of the world in the
chronography of Theophanes with the years of the Hegira in the
history of Elmacin, we shall determine, that it was taken between
January 23d and September 1st of the year of Christ 638, (Pagi,
Critica, in Baron. Annal. tom. ii. p. 812, 813.) Al Wakidi
(Ockley, vol. i. p. 314) assigns that event to Tuesday, August
21st, an inconsistent date; since Easter fell that year on April
5th, the 21st of August must have been a Friday, (see the Tables
of the Art de Verifier les Dates.)]
87 (return) [ His bounteous edict, which tempted the grateful
city to assume the victory of Pharsalia for a perpetual aera, is
given. John Malala, in Chron. p. 91, edit. Venet. We may
distinguish his authentic information of domestic facts from his
gross ignorance of general history.]
In the life of Heraclius, the glories of the Persian war are
clouded on either hand by the disgrace and weakness of his more
early and his later days. When the successors of Mahomet
unsheathed the sword of war and religion, he was astonished at
the boundless prospect of toil and danger; his nature was
indolent, nor could the infirm and frigid age of the emperor be
kindled to a second effort. The sense of shame, and the
importunities of the Syrians, prevented the hasty departure from
the scene of action; but the hero was no more; and the loss of
Damascus and Jerusalem, the bloody fields of Aiznadin and Yermuk,
may be imputed in some degree to the absence or misconduct of the
sovereign. Instead of defending the sepulchre of Christ, he
involved the church and state in a metaphysical controversy for
the unity of his will; and while Heraclius crowned the offspring
of his second nuptials, he was tamely stripped of the most
valuable part of their inheritance. In the cathedral of Antioch,
in the presence of the bishops, at the foot of the crucifix, he
bewailed the sins of the prince and people; but his confession
instructed the world, that it was vain, and perhaps impious, to
resist the judgment of God. The Saracens were invincible in fact,
since they were invincible in opinion; and the desertion of
Youkinna, his false repentance and repeated perfidy, might
justify the suspicion of the emperor, that he was encompassed by
traitors and apostates, who conspired to betray his person and
their country to the enemies of Christ. In the hour of adversity,
his superstition was agitated by the omens and dreams of a
falling crown; and after bidding an eternal farewell to Syria, he
secretly embarked with a few attendants, and absolved the faith
of his subjects. 88 Constantine, his eldest son, had been
stationed with forty thousand men at Caesarea, the civil
metropolis of the three provinces of Palestine. But his private
interest recalled him to the Byzantine court; and, after the
flight of his father, he felt himself an unequal champion to the
united force of the caliph. His vanguard was boldly attacked by
three hundred Arabs and a thousand black slaves, who, in the
depth of winter, had climbed the snowy mountains of Libanus, and
who were speedily followed by the victorious squadrons of Caled
himself. From the north and south the troops of Antioch and
Jerusalem advanced along the sea-shore till their banners were
joined under the walls of the Phoenician cities: Tripoli and Tyre
were betrayed; and a fleet of fifty transports, which entered
without distrust the captive harbors, brought a seasonable supply
of arms and provisions to the camp of the Saracens. Their labors
were terminated by the unexpected surrender of Caesarea: the
Roman prince had embarked in the night; 89 and the defenceless
citizens solicited their pardon with an offering of two hundred
thousand pieces of gold. The remainder of the province, Ramlah,
Ptolemais or Acre, Sichem or Neapolis, Gaza, Ascalon, Berytus,
Sidon, Gabala, Laodicea, Apamea, Hierapolis, no longer presumed
to dispute the will of the conqueror; and Syria bowed under the
sceptre of the caliphs seven hundred years after Pompey had
despoiled the last of the Macedonian kings. 90
88 (return) [ See Ockley, (vol. i. p. 308, 312,) who laughs at
the credulity of his author. When Heraclius bade farewell to
Syria, Vale Syria et ultimum vale, he prophesied that the Romans
should never reenter the province till the birth of an
inauspicious child, the future scourge of the empire. Abulfeda,
p. 68. I am perfectly ignorant of the mystic sense, or nonsense,
of this prediction.]
89 (return) [ In the loose and obscure chronology of the times, I
am guided by an authentic record, (in the book of ceremonies of
Constantine Porphyrogenitus,) which certifies that, June 4, A.D.
638, the emperor crowned his younger son Heraclius, in the
presence of his eldest, Constantine, and in the palace of
Constantinople; that January 1, A.D. 639, the royal procession
visited the great church, and on the 4th of the same month, the
hippodrome.]
90 (return) [ Sixty-five years before Christ, Syria Pontusque
monumenta sunt Cn. Pompeii virtutis, (Vell. Patercul. ii. 38,)
rather of his fortune and power: he adjudged Syria to be a Roman
province, and the last of the Seleucides were incapable of
drawing a sword in the defence of their patrimony (see the
original texts collected by Usher, Annal. p. 420)]
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part V.
The sieges and battles of six campaigns had consumed many
thousands of the Moslems. They died with the reputation and the
cheerfulness of martyrs; and the simplicity of their faith may be
expressed in the words of an Arabian youth, when he embraced, for
the last time, his sister and mother: “It is not,” said he, “the
delicacies of Syria, or the fading delights of this world, that
have prompted me to devote my life in the cause of religion. But
I seek the favor of God and his apostle; and I have heard, from
one of the companions of the prophet, that the spirits of the
martyrs will be lodged in the crops of green birds, who shall
taste the fruits, and drink of the rivers, of paradise. Farewell,
we shall meet again among the groves and fountains which God has
provided for his elect.” The faithful captives might exercise a
passive and more arduous resolution; and a cousin of Mahomet is
celebrated for refusing, after an abstinence of three days, the
wine and pork, the only nourishment that was allowed by the
malice of the infidels. The frailty of some weaker brethren
exasperated the implacable spirit of fanaticism; and the father
of Amer deplored, in pathetic strains, the apostasy and damnation
of a son, who had renounced the promises of God, and the
intercession of the prophet, to occupy, with the priests and
deacons, the lowest mansions of hell. The more fortunate Arabs,
who survived the war and persevered in the faith, were restrained
by their abstemious leader from the abuse of prosperity. After a
refreshment of three days, Abu Obeidah withdrew his troops from
the pernicious contagion of the luxury of Antioch, and assured
the caliph that their religion and virtue could only be preserved
by the hard discipline of poverty and labor. But the virtue of
Omar, however rigorous to himself, was kind and liberal to his
brethren. After a just tribute of praise and thanksgiving, he
dropped a tear of compassion; and sitting down on the ground,
wrote an answer, in which he mildly censured the severity of his
lieutenant: “God,” said the successor of the prophet, “has not
forbidden the use of the good things of this worl to faithful
men, and such as have performed good works. Therefore you ought
to have given them leave to rest themselves, and partake freely
of those good things which the country affordeth. If any of the
Saracens have no family in Arabia, they may marry in Syria; and
whosoever of them wants any female slaves, he may purchase as
many as he hath occasion for.” The conquerors prepared to use, or
to abuse, this gracious permission; but the year of their triumph
was marked by a mortality of men and cattle; and twenty-five
thousand Saracens were snatched away from the possession of
Syria. The death of Abu Obeidah might be lamented by the
Christians; but his brethren recollected that he was one of the
ten elect whom the prophet had named as the heirs of paradise. 91
Caled survived his brethren about three years: and the tomb of
the Sword of God is shown in the neighborhood of Emesa. His
valor, which founded in Arabia and Syria the empire of the
caliphs, was fortified by the opinion of a special providence;
and as long as he wore a cap, which had been blessed by Mahomet,
he deemed himself invulnerable amidst the darts of the infidels.
9111
91 (return) [ Abulfeda, Annal. Moslem. p. 73. Mahomet could
artfully vary the praises of his disciples. Of Omar he was
accustomed to say, that if a prophet could arise after himself,
it would be Omar; and that in a general calamity, Omar would be
accepted by the divine justice, (Ockley, vol. i. p. 221.)]
9111 (return) [ Khaled, according to the Rouzont Uzzuffa, (Price,
p. 90,) after having been deprived of his ample share of the
plunder of Syria by the jealousy of Omar, died, possessed only of
his horse, his arms, and a single slave. Yet Omar was obliged to
acknowledge to his lamenting parent. that never mother had
produced a son like Khaled.—M.]
The place of the first conquerors was supplied by a new
generation of their children and countrymen: Syria became the
seat and support of the house of Ommiyah; and the revenue, the
soldiers, the ships of that powerful kingdom were consecrated to
enlarge on every side the empire of the caliphs. But the Saracens
despise a superfluity of fame; and their historians scarcely
condescend to mention the subordinate conquests which are lost in
the splendor and rapidity of their victorious career.
To the north of Syria, they passed Mount Taurus, and reduced to
their obedience the province of Cilicia, with its capital Tarsus,
the ancient monument of the Assyrian kings. Beyond a second ridge
of the same mountains, they spread the flame of war, rather than
the light of religion, as far as the shores of the Euxine, and
the neighborhood of Constantinople. To the east they advanced to
the banks and sources of the Euphrates and Tigris: 92 the long
disputed barrier of Rome and Persia was forever confounded; the
walls of Edessa and Amida, of Dara and Nisibis, which had
resisted the arms and engines of Sapor or Nushirvan, were
levelled in the dust; and the holy city of Abgarus might vainly
produce the epistle or the image of Christ to an unbelieving
conqueror. To the west the Syrian kingdom is bounded by the sea:
and the ruin of Aradus, a small island or peninsula on the coast,
was postponed during ten years. But the hills of Libanus abounded
in timber; the trade of Phoenicia was populous in mariners; and a
fleet of seventeen hundred barks was equipped and manned by the
natives of the desert. The Imperial navy of the Romans fled
before them from the Pamphylian rocks to the Hellespont; but the
spirit of the emperor, a grandson of Heraclius, had been subdued
before the combat by a dream and a pun. 93 The Saracens rode
masters of the sea; and the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, and the
Cyclades, were successively exposed to their rapacious visits.
Three hundred years before the Christian aera, the memorable
though fruitless siege of Rhodes 94 by Demetrius had furnished
that maritime republic with the materials and the subject of a
trophy. A gigantic statue of Apollo, or the sun, seventy cubits
in height, was erected at the entrance of the harbor, a monument
of the freedom and the arts of Greece. After standing fifty-six
years, the colossus of Rhodes was overthrown by an earthquake;
but the massy trunk, and huge fragments, lay scattered eight
centuries on the ground, and are often described as one of the
wonders of the ancient world. They were collected by the
diligence of the Saracens, and sold to a Jewish merchant of
Edessa, who is said to have laden nine hundred camels with the
weight of the brass metal; an enormous weight, though we should
include the hundred colossal figures, 95 and the three thousand
statues, which adorned the prosperity of the city of the sun.
92 (return) [ Al Wakidi had likewise written a history of the
conquest of Diarbekir, or Mesopotamia, (Ockley, at the end of the
iid vol.,) which our interpreters do not appear to have seen. The
Chronicle of Dionysius of Telmar, the Jacobite patriarch, records
the taking of Edessa A.D. 637, and of Dara A.D. 641, (Asseman.
Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 103;) and the attentive may glean
some doubtful information from the Chronography of Theophanes,
(p. 285-287.) Most of the towns of Mesopotamia yielded by
surrender, (Abulpharag. p. 112.) * Note: It has been published in
Arabic by M. Ewald St. Martin, vol. xi p 248; but its
authenticity is doubted.—M.]
93 (return) [ He dreamt that he was at Thessalonica, a harmless
and unmeaning vision; but his soothsayer, or his cowardice,
understood the sure omen of a defeat concealed in that
inauspicious word, Give to another the victory, (Theoph. p. 286.
Zonaras, tom. ii. l. xiv. p. 88.)]
94 (return) [ Every passage and every fact that relates to the
isle, the city, and the colossus of Rhodes, are compiled in the
laborious treatise of Meursius, who has bestowed the same
diligence on the two larger islands of the Crete and Cyprus. See,
in the iiid vol. of his works, the Rhodus of Meursius, (l. i. c.
15, p. 715-719.) The Byzantine writers, Theophanes and
Constantine, have ignorantly prolonged the term to 1360 years,
and ridiculously divide the weight among 30,000 camels.]
95 (return) [ Centum colossi alium nobilitaturi locum, says
Pliny, with his usual spirit. Hist. Natur. xxxiv. 18.]
III. The conquest of Egypt may be explained by the character of
the victorious Saracen, one of the first of his nation, in an age
when the meanest of the brethren was exalted above his nature by
the spirit of enthusiasm. The birth of Amrou was at once base and
illustrious; his mother, a notorious prostitute, was unable to
decide among five of the Koreish; but the proof of resemblance
adjudged the child to Aasi, the oldest of her lovers. 96 The
youth of Amrou was impelled by the passions and prejudices of his
kindred: his poetic genius was exercised in satirical verses
against the person and doctrine of Mahomet; his dexterity was
employed by the reigning faction to pursue the religious exiles
who had taken refuge in the court of the Aethiopian king. 97 Yet
he returned from this embassy a secret proselyte; his reason or
his interest determined him to renounce the worship of idols; he
escaped from Mecca with his friend Caled; and the prophet of
Medina enjoyed at the same moment the satisfaction of embracing
the two firmest champions of his cause. The impatience of Amrou
to lead the armies of the faithful was checked by the reproof of
Omar, who advised him not to seek power and dominion, since he
who is a subject to-day, may be a prince to-morrow. Yet his merit
was not overlooked by the two first successors of Mahomet; they
were indebted to his arms for the conquest of Palestine; and in
all the battles and sieges of Syria, he united with the temper of
a chief the valor of an adventurous soldier. In a visit to
Medina, the caliph expressed a wish to survey the sword which had
cut down so many Christian warriors; the son of Aasi unsheathed a
short and ordinary cimeter; and as he perceived the surprise of
Omar, “Alas,” said the modest Saracen, “the sword itself, without
the arm of its master, is neither sharper nor more weighty than
the sword of Pharezdak the poet.” 98 After the conquest of Egypt,
he was recalled by the jealousy of the caliph Othman; but in the
subsequent troubles, the ambition of a soldier, a statesman, and
an orator, emerged from a private station. His powerful support,
both in council and in the field, established the throne of the
Ommiades; the administration and revenue of Egypt were restored
by the gratitude of Moawiyah to a faithful friend who had raised
himself above the rank of a subject; and Amrou ended his days in
the palace and city which he had founded on the banks of the
Nile. His dying speech to his children is celebrated by the
Arabians as a model of eloquence and wisdom: he deplored the
errors of his youth but if the penitent was still infected by the
vanity of a poet, he might exaggerate the venom and mischief of
his impious compositions. 99
96 (return) [ We learn this anecdote from a spirited old woman,
who reviled to their faces, the caliph and his friend. She was
encouraged by the silence of Amrou and the liberality of
Moawiyah, (Abulfeda, Annal Moslem. p. 111.)]
97 (return) [ Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. ii. p. 46, &c., who
quotes the Abyssinian history, or romance of Abdel Balcides. Yet
the fact of the embassy and ambassador may be allowed.]
98 (return) [ This saying is preserved by Pocock, (Not. ad Carmen
Tograi, p 184,) and justly applauded by Mr. Harris,
(Philosophical Arrangements, p. 850.)]
99 (return) [ For the life and character of Amrou, see Ockley
(Hist. of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 28, 63, 94, 328, 342, 344, and
to the end of the volume; vol. ii. p. 51, 55, 57, 74, 110-112,
162) and Otter, (Mem. de l’Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxi.
p. 131, 132.) The readers of Tacitus may aptly compare Vespasian
and Mucianus with Moawiyah and Amrou. Yet the resemblance is
still more in the situation, than in the characters, of the men.]
From his camp in Palestine, Amrou had surprised or anticipated
the caliph’s leave for the invasion of Egypt. 100 The magnanimous
Omar trusted in his God and his sword, which had shaken the
thrones of Chosroes and Caesar: but when he compared the slender
force of the Moslems with the greatness of the enterprise, he
condemned his own rashness, and listened to his timid companions.
The pride and the greatness of Pharaoh were familiar to the
readers of the Koran; and a tenfold repetition of prodigies had
been scarcely sufficient to effect, not the victory, but the
flight, of six hundred thousand of the children of Israel: the
cities of Egypt were many and populous; their architecture was
strong and solid; the Nile, with its numerous branches, was alone
an insuperable barrier; and the granary of the Imperial city
would be obstinately defended by the Roman powers. In this
perplexity, the commander of the faithful resigned himself to the
decision of chance, or, in his opinion, of Providence. At the
head of only four thousand Arabs, the intrepid Amrou had marched
away from his station of Gaza when he was overtaken by the
messenger of Omar. “If you are still in Syria,” said the
ambiguous mandate, “retreat without delay; but if, at the receipt
of this epistle, you have already reached the frontiers of Egypt,
advance with confidence, and depend on the succor of God and of
your brethren.” The experience, perhaps the secret intelligence,
of Amrou had taught him to suspect the mutability of courts; and
he continued his march till his tents were unquestionably pitched
on Egyptian ground. He there assembled his officers, broke the
seal, perused the epistle, gravely inquired the name and
situation of the place, and declared his ready obedience to the
commands of the caliph. After a siege of thirty days, he took
possession of Farmah or Pelusium; and that key of Egypt, as it
has been justly named, unlocked the entrance of the country as
far as the ruins of Heliopolis and the neighborhood of the modern
Cairo.
100 (return) [ Al Wakidi had likewise composed a separate history
of the conquest of Egypt, which Mr. Ockley could never procure;
and his own inquiries (vol. i. 344-362) have added very little to
the original text of Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 296-323,
vers. Pocock,) the Melchite patriarch of Alexandria, who lived
three hundred years after the revolution.]
On the Western side of the Nile, at a small distance to the east
of the Pyramids, at a small distance to the south of the Delta,
Memphis, one hundred and fifty furlongs in circumference,
displayed the magnificence of ancient kings. Under the reign of
the Ptolemies and Caesars, the seat of government was removed to
the sea-coast; the ancient capital was eclipsed by the arts and
opulence of Alexandria; the palaces, and at length the temples,
were reduced to a desolate and ruinous condition: yet, in the age
of Augustus, and even in that of Constantine, Memphis was still
numbered among the greatest and most populous of the provincial
cities. 101 The banks of the Nile, in this place of the breadth
of three thousand feet, were united by two bridges of sixty and
of thirty boats, connected in the middle stream by the small
island of Rouda, which was covered with gardens and habitations.
102 The eastern extremity of the bridge was terminated by the
town of Babylon and the camp of a Roman legion, which protected
the passage of the river and the second capital of Egypt. This
important fortress, which might fairly be described as a part of
Memphis or Misrah, was invested by the arms of the lieutenant of
Omar: a reenforcement of four thousand Saracens soon arrived in
his camp; and the military engines, which battered the walls, may
be imputed to the art and labor of his Syrian allies. Yet the
siege was protracted to seven months; and the rash invaders were
encompassed and threatened by the inundation of the Nile. 103
Their last assault was bold and successful: they passed the
ditch, which had been fortified with iron spikes, applied their
scaling ladders, entered the fortress with the shout of “God is
victorious!” and drove the remnant of the Greeks to their boats
and the Isle of Rouda. The spot was afterwards recommended to the
conqueror by the easy communication with the gulf and the
peninsula of Arabia; the remains of Memphis were deserted; the
tents of the Arabs were converted into permanent habitations; and
the first mosch was blessed by the presence of fourscore
companions of Mahomet. 104 A new city arose in their camp, on the
eastward bank of the Nile; and the contiguous quarters of Babylon
and Fostat are confounded in their present decay by the
appellation of old Misrah, or Cairo, of which they form an
extensive suburb. But the name of Cairo, the town of victory,
more strictly belongs to the modern capital, which was founded in
the tenth century by the Fatimite caliphs. 105 It has gradually
receded from the river; but the continuity of buildings may be
traced by an attentive eye from the monuments of Sesostris to
those of Saladin. 106
101 (return) [ Strabo, an accurate and attentive spectator,
observes of Heliopolis, (Geograph. l. xvii. p. 1158;) but of
Memphis he notices, however, the mixture of inhabitants, and the
ruin of the palaces. In the proper Egypt, Ammianus enumerates
Memphis among the four cities, maximis urbibus quibus provincia
nitet, (xxii. 16;) and the name of Memphis appears with
distinction in the Roman Itinerary and episcopal lists.]
102 (return) [ These rare and curious facts, the breadth (2946
feet) and the bridge of the Nile, are only to be found in the
Danish traveller and the Nubian geographer, (p. 98.)]
103 (return) [ From the month of April, the Nile begins
imperceptibly to rise; the swell becomes strong and visible in
the moon after the summer solstice, (Plin. Hist. Nat. v. 10,) and
is usually proclaimed at Cairo on St. Peter’s day, (June 29.) A
register of thirty successive years marks the greatest height of
the waters between July 25 and August 18, (Maillet, Description
de l’Egypte, lettre xi. p. 67, &c. Pocock’s Description of the
East, vol. i. p. 200. Shaw’s Travels, p. 383.)]
104 (return) [ Murtadi, Merveilles de l’Egypte, 243, 259. He
expatiates on the subject with the zeal and minuteness of a
citizen and a bigot, and his local traditions have a strong air
of truth and accuracy.]
105 (return) [ D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 233.]
106 (return) [ The position of New and of Old Cairo is well
known, and has been often described. Two writers, who were
intimately acquainted with ancient and modern Egypt, have fixed,
after a learned inquiry, the city of Memphis at Gizeh, directly
opposite the Old Cairo, (Sicard, Nouveaux Memoires des Missions
du Levant, tom. vi. p. 5, 6. Shaw’s Observations and Travels, p.
296-304.) Yet we may not disregard the authority or the arguments
of Pocock, (vol. i. p. 25-41,) Niebuhr, (Voyage, tom. i. p.
77-106,) and above all, of D’Anville, (Description de l’Egypte,
p. 111, 112, 130-149,) who have removed Memphis towards the
village of Mohannah, some miles farther to the south. In their
heat, the disputants have forgot that the ample space of a
metropolis covers and annihilates the far greater part of the
controversy.]
Yet the Arabs, after a glorious and profitable enterprise, must
have retreated to the desert, had they not found a powerful
alliance in the heart of the country. The rapid conquest of
Alexander was assisted by the superstition and revolt of the
natives: they abhorred their Persian oppressors, the disciples of
the Magi, who had burnt the temples of Egypt, and feasted with
sacrilegious appetite on the flesh of the god Apis. 107 After a
period of ten centuries, the same revolution was renewed by a
similar cause; and in the support of an incomprehensible creed,
the zeal of the Coptic Christians was equally ardent. I have
already explained the origin and progress of the Monophysite
controversy, and the persecution of the emperors, which converted
a sect into a nation, and alienated Egypt from their religion and
government. The Saracens were received as the deliverers of the
Jacobite church; and a secret and effectual treaty was opened
during the siege of Memphis between a victorious army and a
people of slaves. A rich and noble Egyptian, of the name of
Mokawkas, had dissembled his faith to obtain the administration
of his province: in the disorders of the Persian war he aspired
to independence: the embassy of Mahomet ranked him among princes;
but he declined, with rich gifts and ambiguous compliments, the
proposal of a new religion. 108 The abuse of his trust exposed
him to the resentment of Heraclius: his submission was delayed by
arrogance and fear; and his conscience was prompted by interest
to throw himself on the favor of the nation and the support of
the Saracens. In his first conference with Amrou, he heard
without indignation the usual option of the Koran, the tribute,
or the sword. “The Greeks,” replied Mokawkas, “are determined to
abide the determination of the sword; but with the Greeks I
desire no communion, either in this world or in the next, and I
abjure forever the Byzantine tyrant, his synod of Chalcedon, and
his Melchite slaves. For myself and my brethren, we are resolved
to live and die in the profession of the gospel and unity of
Christ. It is impossible for us to embrace the revelations of
your prophet; but we are desirous of peace, and cheerfully submit
to pay tribute and obedience to his temporal successors.” The
tribute was ascertained at two pieces of gold for the head of
every Christian; but old men, monks, women, and children, of both
sexes, under sixteen years of age, were exempted from this
personal assessment: the Copts above and below Memphis swore
allegiance to the caliph, and promised a hospitable entertainment
of three days to every Mussulman who should travel through their
country. By this charter of security, the ecclesiastical and
civil tyranny of the Melchites was destroyed: 109 the anathemas
of St. Cyril were thundered from every pulpit; and the sacred
edifices, with the patrimony of the church, were restored to the
national communion of the Jacobites, who enjoyed without
moderation the moment of triumph and revenge. At the pressing
summons of Amrou, their patriarch Benjamin emerged from his
desert; and after the first interview, the courteous Arab
affected to declare that he had never conversed with a Christian
priest of more innocent manners and a more venerable aspect. 110
In the march from Memphis to Alexandria, the lieutenant of Omar
intrusted his safety to the zeal and gratitude of the Egyptians:
the roads and bridges were diligently repaired; and in every step
of his progress, he could depend on a constant supply of
provisions and intelligence. The Greeks of Egypt, whose numbers
could scarcely equal a tenth of the natives, were overwhelmed by
the universal defection: they had ever been hated, they were no
longer feared: the magistrate fled from his tribunal, the bishop
from his altar; and the distant garrisons were surprised or
starved by the surrounding multitudes. Had not the Nile afforded
a safe and ready conveyance to the sea, not an individual could
have escaped, who by birth, or language, or office, or religion,
was connected with their odious name.
107 (return) [ See Herodotus, l. iii. c. 27, 28, 29. Aelian,
Hist. Var. l. iv. c. 8. Suidas in, tom. ii. p. 774. Diodor.
Sicul. tom. ii. l. xvii. p. 197, edit. Wesseling. Says the last
of these historians.]
108 (return) [ Mokawkas sent the prophet two Coptic damsels, with
two maids and one eunuch, an alabaster vase, an ingot of pure
gold, oil, honey, and the finest white linen of Egypt, with a
horse, a mule, and an ass, distinguished by their respective
qualifications. The embassy of Mahomet was despatched from Medina
in the seventh year of the Hegira, (A.D. 628.) See Gagnier, (Vie
de Mahomet, tom. ii. p. 255, 256, 303,) from Al Jannabi.]
109 (return) [ The praefecture of Egypt, and the conduct of the
war, had been trusted by Heraclius to the patriarch Cyrus,
(Theophan. p. 280, 281.) “In Spain,” said James II., “do you not
consult your priests?” “We do,” replied the Catholic ambassador,
“and our affairs succeed accordingly.” I know not how to relate
the plans of Cyrus, of paying tribute without impairing the
revenue, and of converting Omar by his marriage with the
Emperor’s daughter, (Nicephor. Breviar. p. 17, 18.)]
110 (return) [ See the life of Benjamin, in Renaudot, (Hist.
Patriarch. Alexandrin. p. 156-172,) who has enriched the conquest
of Egypt with some facts from the Arabic text of Severus the
Jacobite historian]
By the retreat of the Greeks from the provinces of Upper Egypt, a
considerable force was collected in the Island of Delta; the
natural and artificial channels of the Nile afforded a succession
of strong and defensible posts; and the road to Alexandria was
laboriously cleared by the victory of the Saracens in
two-and-twenty days of general or partial combat. In their annals
of conquest, the siege of Alexandria 111 is perhaps the most
arduous and important enterprise. The first trading city in the
world was abundantly replenished with the means of subsistence
and defence. Her numerous inhabitants fought for the dearest of
human rights, religion and property; and the enmity of the
natives seemed to exclude them from the common benefit of peace
and toleration. The sea was continually open; and if Heraclius
had been awake to the public distress, fresh armies of Romans and
Barbarians might have been poured into the harbor to save the
second capital of the empire. A circumference of ten miles would
have scattered the forces of the Greeks, and favored the
stratagems of an active enemy; but the two sides of an oblong
square were covered by the sea and the Lake Maraeotis, and each
of the narrow ends exposed a front of no more than ten furlongs.
The efforts of the Arabs were not inadequate to the difficulty of
the attempt and the value of the prize. From the throne of
Medina, the eyes of Omar were fixed on the camp and city: his
voice excited to arms the Arabian tribes and the veterans of
Syria; and the merit of a holy war was recommended by the
peculiar fame and fertility of Egypt. Anxious for the ruin or
expulsion of their tyrants, the faithful natives devoted their
labors to the service of Amrou: some sparks of martial spirit
were perhaps rekindled by the example of their allies; and the
sanguine hopes of Mokawkas had fixed his sepulchre in the church
of St. John of Alexandria. Eutychius the patriarch observes, that
the Saracens fought with the courage of lions: they repulsed the
frequent and almost daily sallies of the besieged, and soon
assaulted in their turn the walls and towers of the city. In
every attack, the sword, the banner of Amrou, glittered in the
van of the Moslems. On a memorable day, he was betrayed by his
imprudent valor: his followers who had entered the citadel were
driven back; and the general, with a friend and slave, remained a
prisoner in the hands of the Christians. When Amrou was conducted
before the praefect, he remembered his dignity, and forgot his
situation: a lofty demeanor, and resolute language, revealed the
lieutenant of the caliph, and the battle-axe of a soldier was
already raised to strike off the head of the audacious captive.
His life was saved by the readiness of his slave, who instantly
gave his master a blow on the face, and commanded him, with an
angry tone, to be silent in the presence of his superiors. The
credulous Greek was deceived: he listened to the offer of a
treaty, and his prisoners were dismissed in the hope of a more
respectable embassy, till the joyful acclamations of the camp
announced the return of their general, and insulted the folly of
the infidels. At length, after a siege of fourteen months, 112
and the loss of three-and-twenty thousand men, the Saracens
prevailed: the Greeks embarked their dispirited and diminished
numbers, and the standard of Mahomet was planted on the walls of
the capital of Egypt. “I have taken,” said Amrou to the caliph,
“the great city of the West. It is impossible for me to enumerate
the variety of its riches and beauty; and I shall content myself
with observing, that it contains four thousand palaces, four
thousand baths, four hundred theatres or places of amusement,
twelve thousand shops for the sale of vegetable food, and forty
thousand tributary Jews. The town has been subdued by force of
arms, without treaty or capitulation, and the Moslems are
impatient to seize the fruits of their victory.” 113 The
commander of the faithful rejected with firmness the idea of
pillage, and directed his lieutenant to reserve the wealth and
revenue of Alexandria for the public service and the propagation
of the faith: the inhabitants were numbered; a tribute was
imposed, the zeal and resentment of the Jacobites were curbed,
and the Melchites who submitted to the Arabian yoke were indulged
in the obscure but tranquil exercise of their worship. The
intelligence of this disgraceful and calamitous event afflicted
the declining health of the emperor; and Heraclius died of a
dropsy about seven weeks after the loss of Alexandria. 114 Under
the minority of his grandson, the clamors of a people, deprived
of their daily sustenance, compelled the Byzantine court to
undertake the recovery of the capital of Egypt. In the space of
four years, the harbor and fortifications of Alexandria were
twice occupied by a fleet and army of Romans. They were twice
expelled by the valor of Amrou, who was recalled by the domestic
peril from the distant wars of Tripoli and Nubia. But the
facility of the attempt, the repetition of the insult, and the
obstinacy of the resistance, provoked him to swear, that if a
third time he drove the infidels into the sea, he would render
Alexandria as accessible on all sides as the house of a
prostitute. Faithful to his promise, he dismantled several parts
of the walls and towers; but the people was spared in the
chastisement of the city, and the mosch of Mercy was erected on
the spot where the victorious general had stopped the fury of his
troops.
111 (return) [ The local description of Alexandria is perfectly
ascertained by the master hand of the first of geographers,
(D’Anville, Memoire sur l’Egypte, p. 52-63;) but we may borrow
the eyes of the modern travellers, more especially of Thevenot,
(Voyage au Levant, part i. p. 381-395,) Pocock, (vol. i. p.
2-13,) and Niebuhr, (Voyage en Arabie, tom. i. p. 34-43.) Of the
two modern rivals, Savary and Volmey, the one may amuse, the
other will instruct.]
112 (return) [ Both Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 319) and
Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 28) concur in fixing the taking of
Alexandria to Friday of the new moon of Moharram of the twentieth
year of the Hegira, (December 22, A.D. 640.) In reckoning
backwards fourteen months spent before Alexandria, seven months
before Babylon, &c., Amrou might have invaded Egypt about the end
of the year 638; but we are assured that he entered the country
the 12th of Bayni, 6th of June, (Murtadi, Merveilles de l’Egypte,
p. 164. Severus, apud Renaudot, p. 162.) The Saracen, and
afterwards Lewis IX. of France, halted at Pelusium, or Damietta,
during the season of the inundation of the Nile.]
113 (return) [ Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 316, 319.]
114 (return) [ Notwithstanding some inconsistencies of Theophanes
and Cedrenus, the accuracy of Pagi (Critica, tom. ii. p. 824) has
extracted from Nicephorus and the Chronicon Orientale the true
date of the death of Heraclius, February 11th, A.D. 641, fifty
days after the loss of Alexandria. A fourth of that time was
sufficient to convey the intelligence.]
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part VI.
I should deceive the expectation of the reader, if I passed in
silence the fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described
by the learned Abulpharagius. The spirit of Amrou was more
curious and liberal than that of his brethren, and in his leisure
hours, the Arabian chief was pleased with the conversation of
John, the last disciple of Ammonius, and who derived the surname
of Philoponus from his laborious studies of grammar and
philosophy. 115 Emboldened by this familiar intercourse,
Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in his
opinion, contemptible in that of the Barbarians—the royal
library, which alone, among the spoils of Alexandria, had not
been appropriated by the visit and the seal of the conqueror.
Amrou was inclined to gratify the wish of the grammarian, but his
rigid integrity refused to alienate the minutest object without
the consent of the caliph; and the well-known answer of Omar was
inspired by the ignorance of a fanatic. “If these writings of the
Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless, and need not
be preserved: if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to
be destroyed.” The sentence was executed with blind obedience:
the volumes of paper or parchment were distributed to the four
thousand baths of the city; and such was their incredible
multitude, that six months were barely sufficient for the
consumption of this precious fuel. Since the Dynasties of
Abulpharagius 116 have been given to the world in a Latin
version, the tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every
scholar, with pious indignation, has deplored the irreparable
shipwreck of the learning, the arts, and the genius, of
antiquity. For my own part, I am strongly tempted to deny both
the fact and the consequences. 1161 The fact is indeed
marvellous. “Read and wonder!” says the historian himself: and
the solitary report of a stranger who wrote at the end of six
hundred years on the confines of Media, is overbalanced by the
silence of two annalist of a more early date, both Christians,
both natives of Egypt, and the most ancient of whom, the
patriarch Eutychius, has amply described the conquest of
Alexandria. 117 The rigid sentence of Omar is repugnant to the
sound and orthodox precept of the Mahometan casuists they
expressly declare, that the religious books of the Jews and
Christians, which are acquired by the right of war, should never
be committed to the flames; and that the works of profane
science, historians or poets, physicians or philosophers, may be
lawfully applied to the use of the faithful. 118 A more
destructive zeal may perhaps be attributed to the first
successors of Mahomet; yet in this instance, the conflagration
would have speedily expired in the deficiency of materials. I
should not recapitulate the disasters of the Alexandrian library,
the involuntary flame that was kindled by Caesar in his own
defence, 119 or the mischievous bigotry of the Christians, who
studied to destroy the monuments of idolatry. 120 But if we
gradually descend from the age of the Antonines to that of
Theodosius, we shall learn from a chain of contemporary
witnesses, that the royal palace and the temple of Serapis no
longer contained the four, or the seven, hundred thousand
volumes, which had been assembled by the curiosity and
magnificence of the Ptolemies. 121 Perhaps the church and seat of
the patriarchs might be enriched with a repository of books; but
if the ponderous mass of Arian and Monophysite controversy were
indeed consumed in the public baths, 122 a philosopher may allow,
with a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of
mankind. I sincerely regret the more valuable libraries which
have been involved in the ruin of the Roman empire; but when I
seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of ignorance, and
the calamities of war, our treasures, rather than our losses, are
the objects of my surprise. Many curious and interesting facts
are buried in oblivion: the three great historians of Rome have
been transmitted to our hands in a mutilated state, and we are
deprived of many pleasing compositions of the lyric, iambic, and
dramatic poetry of the Greeks. Yet we should gratefully remember,
that the mischances of time and accident have spared the classic
works to which the suffrage of antiquity 123 had adjudged the
first place of genius and glory: the teachers of ancient
knowledge, who are still extant, had perused and compared the
writings of their predecessors; 124 nor can it fairly be presumed
that any important truth, any useful discovery in art or nature,
has been snatched away from the curiosity of modern ages.
115 (return) [ Many treatises of this lover of labor are still
extant, but for readers of the present age, the printed and
unpublished are nearly in the same predicament. Moses and
Aristotle are the chief objects of his verbose commentaries, one
of which is dated as early as May 10th, A.D. 617, (Fabric.
Bibliot. Graec. tom. ix. p. 458-468.) A modern, (John Le Clerc,)
who sometimes assumed the same name was equal to old Philoponus
in diligence, and far superior in good sense and real knowledge.]
116 (return) [ Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 114, vers. Pocock. Audi
quid factum sit et mirare. It would be endless to enumerate the
moderns who have wondered and believed, but I may distinguish
with honor the rational scepticism of Renaudot, (Hist. Alex.
Patriarch, p. 170: ) historia... habet aliquid ut Arabibus
familiare est.]
1161 (return) [ Since this period several new Mahometan
authorities have been adduced to support the authority of
Abulpharagius. That of, I. Abdollatiph by Professor White: II. Of
Makrizi; I have seen a Ms. extract from this writer: III. Of Ibn
Chaledun: and after them Hadschi Chalfa. See Von Hammer,
Geschichte der Assassinen, p. 17. Reinhard, in a German
Dissertation, printed at Gottingen, 1792, and St. Croix, (Magasin
Encyclop. tom. iv. p. 433,) have examined the question. Among
Oriental scholars, Professor White, M. St. Martin, Von Hammer.
and Silv. de Sacy, consider the fact of the burning the library,
by the command of Omar, beyond question. Compare St. Martin’s
note. vol. xi. p. 296. A Mahometan writer brings a similar charge
against the Crusaders. The library of Tripoli is said to have
contained the incredible number of three millions of volumes. On
the capture of the city, Count Bertram of St. Giles, entering the
first room, which contained nothing but the Koran, ordered the
whole to be burnt, as the works of the false prophet of Arabia.
See Wilken. Gesch der Kreux zuge, vol. ii. p. 211.—M.]
117 (return) [ This curious anecdote will be vainly sought in the
annals of Eutychius, and the Saracenic history of Elmacin. The
silence of Abulfeda, Murtadi, and a crowd of Moslems, is less
conclusive from their ignorance of Christian literature.]
118 (return) [ See Reland, de Jure Militari Mohammedanorum, in
his iiid volume of Dissertations, p. 37. The reason for not
burning the religious books of the Jews or Christians, is derived
from the respect that is due to the name of God.]
119 (return) [ Consult the collections of Frensheim (Supplement.
Livian, c. 12, 43) and Usher, (Anal. p. 469.) Livy himself had
styled the Alexandrian library, elegantiae regum curaeque
egregium opus; a liberal encomium, for which he is pertly
criticized by the narrow stoicism of Seneca, (De Tranquillitate
Animi, c. 9,) whose wisdom, on this occasion, deviates into
nonsense.]
120 (return) [ See this History, vol. iii. p. 146.]
121 (return) [ Aulus Gellius, (Noctes Atticae, vi. 17,) Ammianus
Marcellinua, (xxii. 16,) and Orosius, (l. vi. c. 15.) They all
speak in the past tense, and the words of Ammianus are remarkably
strong: fuerunt Bibliothecae innumerabiles; et loquitum
monumentorum veterum concinens fides, &c.]
122 (return) [ Renaudot answers for versions of the Bible,
Hexapla, Catenoe Patrum, Commentaries, &c., (p. 170.) Our
Alexandrian Ms., if it came from Egypt, and not from
Constantinople or Mount Athos, (Wetstein, Prolegom. ad N. T. p.
8, &c.,) might possibly be among them.]
123 (return) [ I have often perused with pleasure a chapter of
Quintilian, (Institut. Orator. x. i.,) in which that judicious
critic enumerates and appreciates the series of Greek and Latin
classics.]
124 (return) [ Such as Galen, Pliny, Aristotle, &c. On this
subject Wotton (Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, p.
85-95) argues, with solid sense, against the lively exotic
fancies of Sir William Temple. The contempt of the Greeks for
Barbaric science would scarcely admit the Indian or Aethiopic
books into the library of Alexandria; nor is it proved that
philosophy has sustained any real loss from their exclusion.]
In the administration of Egypt, 125 Amrou balanced the demands of
justice and policy; the interest of the people of the law, who
were defended by God; and of the people of the alliance, who were
protected by man. In the recent tumult of conquest and
deliverance, the tongue of the Copts and the sword of the Arabs
were most adverse to the tranquillity of the province. To the
former, Amrou declared, that faction and falsehood would be
doubly chastised; by the punishment of the accusers, whom he
should detest as his personal enemies, and by the promotion of
their innocent brethren, whom their envy had labored to injure
and supplant. He excited the latter by the motives of religion
and honor to sustain the dignity of their character, to endear
themselves by a modest and temperate conduct to God and the
caliph, to spare and protect a people who had trusted to their
faith, and to content themselves with the legitimate and splendid
rewards of their victory. In the management of the revenue, he
disapproved the simple but oppressive mode of a capitation, and
preferred with reason a proportion of taxes deducted on every
branch from the clear profits of agriculture and commerce. A
third part of the tribute was appropriated to the annual repairs
of the dikes and canals, so essential to the public welfare.
Under his administration, the fertility of Egypt supplied the
dearth of Arabia; and a string of camels, laden with corn and
provisions, covered almost without an interval the long road from
Memphis to Medina. 126 But the genius of Amrou soon renewed the
maritime communication which had been attempted or achieved by
the Pharaohs the Ptolemies, or the Caesars; and a canal, at least
eighty miles in length, was opened from the Nile to the Red Sea.
1261 This inland navigation, which would have joined the
Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, was soon discontinued as
useless and dangerous: the throne was removed from Medina to
Damascus, and the Grecian fleets might have explored a passage to
the holy cities of Arabia. 127
125 (return) [ This curious and authentic intelligence of Murtadi
(p. 284-289) has not been discovered either by Mr. Ockley, or by
the self-sufficient compilers of the Modern Universal History.]
126 (return) [ Eutychius, Annal. tom. ii. p. 320. Elmacin, Hist.
Saracen. p. 35.]
1261 (return) [ Many learned men have doubted the existence of a
communication by water between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean
by the Nile. Yet the fact is positively asserted by the ancients.
Diodorus Siculus (l. i. p. 33) speaks of it in the most distinct
manner as existing in his time. So, also, Strabo, (l. xvii. p.
805.) Pliny (vol. vi. p. 29) says that the canal which united the
two seas was navigable, (alveus navigabilis.) The indications
furnished by Ptolemy and by the Arabic historian, Makrisi, show
that works were executed under the reign of Hadrian to repair the
canal and extend the navigation; it then received the name of the
River of Trajan Lucian, (in his Pseudomantis, p. 44,) says that
he went by water from Alexandria to Clysma, on the Red Sea.
Testimonies of the 6th and of the 8th century show that the
communication was not interrupted at that time. See the French
translation of Strabo, vol. v. p. 382. St. Martin vol. xi. p.
299.—M.]
127 (return) [ On these obscure canals, the reader may try to
satisfy himself from D’Anville, (Mem. sur l’Egypte, p. 108-110,
124, 132,) and a learned thesis, maintained and printed at
Strasburg in the year 1770, (Jungendorum marium fluviorumque
molimina, p. 39-47, 68-70.) Even the supine Turks have agitated
the old project of joining the two seas. (Memoires du Baron de
Tott, tom. iv.)]
Of his new conquest, the caliph Omar had an imperfect knowledge
from the voice of fame and the legends of the Koran. He requested
that his lieutenant would place before his eyes the realm of
Pharaoh and the Amalekites; and the answer of Amrou exhibits a
lively and not unfaithful picture of that singular country. 128
“O commander of the faithful, Egypt is a compound of black earth
and green plants, between a pulverized mountain and a red sand.
The distance from Syene to the sea is a month’s journey for a
horseman. Along the valley descends a river, on which the
blessing of the Most High reposes both in the evening and
morning, and which rises and falls with the revolutions of the
sun and moon. When the annual dispensation of Providence unlocks
the springs and fountains that nourish the earth, the Nile rolls
his swelling and sounding waters through the realm of Egypt: the
fields are overspread by the salutary flood; and the villages
communicate with each other in their painted barks. The retreat
of the inundation deposits a fertilizing mud for the reception of
the various seeds: the crowds of husbandmen who blacken the land
may be compared to a swarm of industrious ants; and their native
indolence is quickened by the lash of the task-master, and the
promise of the flowers and fruits of a plentiful increase. Their
hope is seldom deceived; but the riches which they extract from
the wheat, the barley, and the rice, the legumes, the
fruit-trees, and the cattle, are unequally shared between those
who labor and those who possess. According to the vicissitudes of
the seasons, the face of the country is adorned with a silver
wave, a verdant emerald, and the deep yellow of a golden
harvest.” 129 Yet this beneficial order is sometimes interrupted;
and the long delay and sudden swell of the river in the first
year of the conquest might afford some color to an edifying
fable. It is said, that the annual sacrifice of a virgin 130 had
been interdicted by the piety of Omar; and that the Nile lay
sullen and inactive in his shallow bed, till the mandate of the
caliph was cast into the obedient stream, which rose in a single
night to the height of sixteen cubits. The admiration of the
Arabs for their new conquest encouraged the license of their
romantic spirit. We may read, in the gravest authors, that Egypt
was crowded with twenty thousand cities or villages: 131 that,
exclusive of the Greeks and Arabs, the Copts alone were found, on
the assessment, six millions of tributary subjects, 132 or twenty
millions of either sex, and of every age: that three hundred
millions of gold or silver were annually paid to the treasury of
the caliphs. 133 Our reason must be startled by these extravagant
assertions; and they will become more palpable, if we assume the
compass and measure the extent of habitable ground: a valley from
the tropic to Memphis seldom broader than twelve miles, and the
triangle of the Delta, a flat surface of two thousand one hundred
square leagues, compose a twelfth part of the magnitude of
France. 134 A more accurate research will justify a more
reasonable estimate. The three hundred millions, created by the
error of a scribe, are reduced to the decent revenue of four
millions three hundred thousand pieces of gold, of which nine
hundred thousand were consumed by the pay of the soldiers. 135
Two authentic lists, of the present and of the twelfth century,
are circumscribed within the respectable number of two thousand
seven hundred villages and towns. 136 After a long residence at
Cairo, a French consul has ventured to assign about four millions
of Mahometans, Christians, and Jews, for the ample, though not
incredible, scope of the population of Egypt. 137
128 (return) [ A small volume, des Merveilles, &c., de l’Egypte,
composed in the xiiith century by Murtadi of Cairo, and
translated from an Arabic Ms. of Cardinal Mazarin, was published
by Pierre Vatier, Paris, 1666. The antiquities of Egypt are wild
and legendary; but the writer deserves credit and esteem for his
account of the conquest and geography of his native country, (see
the correspondence of Amrou and Omar, p. 279-289.)]
129 (return) [ In a twenty years’ residence at Cairo, the consul
Maillet had contemplated that varying scene, the Nile, (lettre
ii. particularly p. 70, 75;) the fertility of the land, (lettre
ix.) From a college at Cambridge, the poetic eye of Gray had seen
the same objects with a keener glance:—
What wonder in the sultry climes that spread,
Where Nile, redundant o’er his summer bed,
From his broad bosom life and verdure flings,
And broods o’er Egypt with his watery wings:
If with adventurous oar, and ready sail,
The dusky people drive before the gale:
Or on frail floats to neighboring cities ride.
That rise and glitter o’er the ambient tide.
(Mason’s Works and Memoirs of Gray, p. 199, 200.)]
130 (return) [ Murtadi, p. 164-167. The reader will not easily
credit a human sacrifice under the Christian emperors, or a
miracle of the successors of Mahomet.]
131 (return) [ Maillet, Description de l’Egypte, p. 22. He
mentions this number as the common opinion; and adds, that the
generality of these villages contain two or three thousand
persons, and that many of them are more populous than our large
cities.]
132 (return) [ Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 308, 311. The twenty
millions are computed from the following data: one twelfth of
mankind above sixty, one third below sixteen, the proportion of
men to women as seventeen or sixteen, (Recherches sur la
Population de la France, p. 71, 72.) The president Goguet
(Origine des Arts, &c., tom. iii. p. 26, &c.) Bestows
twenty-seven millions on ancient Egypt, because the seventeen
hundred companions of Sesostris were born on the same day.]
133 (return) [ Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 218; and this gross
lump is swallowed without scruple by D’Herbelot, (Bibliot.
Orient. p. 1031,) Ar. buthnot, (Tables of Ancient Coins, p. 262,)
and De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 135.) They might
allege the not less extravagant liberality of Appian in favor of
the Ptolemies (in praefat.) of seventy four myriads, 740,000
talents, an annual income of 185, or near 300 millions of pounds
sterling, according as we reckon by the Egyptian or the
Alexandrian talent, (Bernard, de Ponderibus Antiq. p. 186.)]
134 (return) [ See the measurement of D’Anville, (Mem. sur
l’Egypte, p. 23, &c.) After some peevish cavils, M. Pauw
(Recherches sur les Egyptiens, tom. i. p. 118-121) can only
enlarge his reckoning to 2250 square leagues.]
135 (return) [ Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexand. p. 334, who
calls the common reading or version of Elmacin, error librarii.
His own emendation, of 4,300,000 pieces, in the ixth century,
maintains a probable medium between the 3,000,000 which the Arabs
acquired by the conquest of Egypt, (idem, p. 168.) and the
2,400,000 which the sultan of Constantinople levied in the last
century, (Pietro della Valle, tom. i. p. 352 Thevenot, part i. p.
824.) Pauw (Recherches, tom. ii. p. 365-373) gradually raises the
revenue of the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, and the Caesars, from six
to fifteen millions of German crowns.]
136 (return) [ The list of Schultens (Index Geograph. ad calcem
Vit. Saladin. p. 5) contains 2396 places; that of D’Anville,
(Mem. sur l’Egypte, p. 29,) from the divan of Cairo, enumerates
2696.]
137 (return) [ See Maillet, (Description de l’Egypte, p. 28,) who
seems to argue with candor and judgment. I am much better
satisfied with the observations than with the reading of the
French consul. He was ignorant of Greek and Latin literature, and
his fancy is too much delighted with the fictions of the Arabs.
Their best knowledge is collected by Abulfeda, (Descript. Aegypt.
Arab. et Lat. a Joh. David Michaelis, Gottingae, in 4to., 1776;)
and in two recent voyages into Egypt, we are amused by Savary,
and instructed by Volney. I wish the latter could travel over the
globe.]
IV. The conquest of Africa, from the Nile to the Atlantic Ocean,
138 was first attempted by the arms of the caliph Othman.
The pious design was approved by the companions of Mahomet and
the chiefs of the tribes; and twenty thousand Arabs marched from
Medina, with the gifts and the blessing of the commander of the
faithful. They were joined in the camp of Memphis by twenty
thousand of their countrymen; and the conduct of the war was
intrusted to Abdallah, 139 the son of Said and the foster-brother
of the caliph, who had lately supplanted the conqueror and
lieutenant of Egypt. Yet the favor of the prince, and the merit
of his favorite, could not obliterate the guilt of his apostasy.
The early conversion of Abdallah, and his skilful pen, had
recommended him to the important office of transcribing the
sheets of the Koran: he betrayed his trust, corrupted the text,
derided the errors which he had made, and fled to Mecca to escape
the justice, and expose the ignorance, of the apostle. After the
conquest of Mecca, he fell prostrate at the feet of Mahomet; his
tears, and the entreaties of Othman, extorted a reluctant pardon;
but the prophet declared that he had so long hesitated, to allow
time for some zealous disciple to avenge his injury in the blood
of the apostate. With apparent fidelity and effective merit, he
served the religion which it was no longer his interest to
desert: his birth and talents gave him an honorable rank among
the Koreish; and, in a nation of cavalry, Abdallah was renowned
as the boldest and most dexterous horseman of Arabia. At the head
of forty thousand Moslems, he advanced from Egypt into the
unknown countries of the West. The sands of Barca might be
impervious to a Roman legion but the Arabs were attended by their
faithful camels; and the natives of the desert beheld without
terror the familiar aspect of the soil and climate. After a
painful march, they pitched their tents before the walls of
Tripoli, 140 a maritime city in which the name, the wealth, and
the inhabitants of the province had gradually centred, and which
now maintains the third rank among the states of Barbary. A
reenforcement of Greeks was surprised and cut in pieces on the
sea-shore; but the fortifications of Tripoli resisted the first
assaults; and the Saracens were tempted by the approach of the
praefect Gregory 141 to relinquish the labors of the siege for
the perils and the hopes of a decisive action. If his standard
was followed by one hundred and twenty thousand men, the regular
bands of the empire must have been lost in the naked and
disorderly crowd of Africans and Moors, who formed the strength,
or rather the numbers, of his host. He rejected with indignation
the option of the Koran or the tribute; and during several days
the two armies were fiercely engaged from the dawn of light to
the hour of noon, when their fatigue and the excessive heat
compelled them to seek shelter and refreshment in their
respective camps. The daughter of Gregory, a maid of incomparable
beauty and spirit, is said to have fought by his side: from her
earliest youth she was trained to mount on horseback, to draw the
bow, and to wield the cimeter; and the richness of her arms and
apparel were conspicuous in the foremost ranks of the battle. Her
hand, with a hundred thousand pieces of gold, was offered for the
head of the Arabian general, and the youths of Africa were
excited by the prospect of the glorious prize. At the pressing
solicitation of his brethren, Abdallah withdrew his person from
the field; but the Saracens were discouraged by the retreat of
their leader, and the repetition of these equal or unsuccessful
conflicts.
138 (return) [ My conquest of Africa is drawn from two French
interpreters of Arabic literature, Cardonne (Hist. de l’Afrique
et de l’Espagne sous la Domination des Arabes, tom. i. p. 8-55)
and Otter, (Hist. de l’Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxi. p.
111-125, and 136.) They derive their principal information from
Novairi, who composed, A.D. 1331 an Encyclopaedia in more than
twenty volumes. The five general parts successively treat of, 1.
Physics; 2. Man; 3. Animals; 4. Plants; and, 5. History; and the
African affairs are discussed in the vith chapter of the vth
section of this last part, (Reiske, Prodidagmata ad Hagji
Chalifae Tabulas, p. 232-234.) Among the older historians who are
quoted by Navairi we may distinguish the original narrative of a
soldier who led the van of the Moslems.]
139 (return) [ See the history of Abdallah, in Abulfeda (Vit.
Mohammed. p. 108) and Gagnier, (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii.
45-48.)]
140 (return) [ The province and city of Tripoli are described by
Leo Africanus (in Navigatione et Viaggi di Ramusio, tom. i.
Venetia, 1550, fol. 76, verso) and Marmol, (Description de
l’Afrique, tom. ii. p. 562.) The first of these writers was a
Moor, a scholar, and a traveller, who composed or translated his
African geography in a state of captivity at Rome, where he had
assumed the name and religion of Pope Leo X. In a similar
captivity among the Moors, the Spaniard Marmol, a soldier of
Charles V., compiled his Description of Africa, translated by
D’Ablancourt into French, (Paris, 1667, 3 vols. in 4to.) Marmol
had read and seen, but he is destitute of the curious and
extensive observation which abounds in the original work of Leo
the African.]
141 (return) [ Theophanes, who mentions the defeat, rather than
the death, of Gregory. He brands the praefect with the name: he
had probably assumed the purple, (Chronograph. p. 285.)]
A noble Arabian, who afterwards became the adversary of Ali, and
the father of a caliph, had signalized his valor in Egypt, and
Zobeir 142 was the first who planted the scaling-ladder against
the walls of Babylon. In the African war he was detached from the
standard of Abdallah. On the news of the battle, Zobeir, with
twelve companions, cut his way through the camp of the Greeks,
and pressed forwards, without tasting either food or repose, to
partake of the dangers of his brethren. He cast his eyes round
the field: “Where,” said he, “is our general?” “In his tent.” “Is
the tent a station for the general of the Moslems?” Abdallah
represented with a blush the importance of his own life, and the
temptation that was held forth by the Roman praefect. “Retort,”
said Zobeir, “on the infidels their ungenerous attempt. Proclaim
through the ranks that the head of Gregory shall be repaid with
his captive daughter, and the equal sum of one hundred thousand
pieces of gold.” To the courage and discretion of Zobeir the
lieutenant of the caliph intrusted the execution of his own
stratagem, which inclined the long-disputed balance in favor of
the Saracens. Supplying by activity and artifice the deficiency
of numbers, a part of their forces lay concealed in their tents,
while the remainder prolonged an irregular skirmish with the
enemy till the sun was high in the heavens. On both sides they
retired with fainting steps: their horses were unbridled, their
armor was laid aside, and the hostile nations prepared, or seemed
to prepare, for the refreshment of the evening, and the encounter
of the ensuing day. On a sudden the charge was sounded; the
Arabian camp poured forth a swarm of fresh and intrepid warriors;
and the long line of the Greeks and Africans was surprised,
assaulted, overturned, by new squadrons of the faithful, who, to
the eye of fanaticism, might appear as a band of angels
descending from the sky. The praefect himself was slain by the
hand of Zobeir: his daughter, who sought revenge and death, was
surrounded and made prisoner; and the fugitives involved in their
disaster the town of Sufetula, to which they escaped from the
sabres and lances of the Arabs. Sufetula was built one hundred
and fifty miles to the south of Carthage: a gentle declivity is
watered by a running stream, and shaded by a grove of
juniper-trees; and, in the ruins of a triumpha arch, a portico,
and three temples of the Corinthian order, curiosity may yet
admire the magnificence of the Romans. 143 After the fall of this
opulent city, the provincials and Barbarians implored on all
sides the mercy of the conqueror. His vanity or his zeal might be
flattered by offers of tribute or professions of faith: but his
losses, his fatigues, and the progress of an epidemical disease,
prevented a solid establishment; and the Saracens, after a
campaign of fifteen months, retreated to the confines of Egypt,
with the captives and the wealth of their African expedition. The
caliph’s fifth was granted to a favorite, on the nominal payment
of five hundred thousand pieces of gold; 144 but the state was
doubly injured by this fallacious transaction, if each
foot-soldier had shared one thousand, and each horseman three
thousand, pieces, in the real division of the plunder. The author
of the death of Gregory was expected to have claimed the most
precious reward of the victory: from his silence it might be
presumed that he had fallen in the battle, till the tears and
exclamations of the praefect’s daughter at the sight of Zobeir
revealed the valor and modesty of that gallant soldier. The
unfortunate virgin was offered, and almost rejected as a slave,
by her father’s murderer, who coolly declared that his sword was
consecrated to the service of religion; and that he labored for a
recompense far above the charms of mortal beauty, or the riches
of this transitory life. A reward congenial to his temper was the
honorable commission of announcing to the caliph Othman the
success of his arms. The companions the chiefs, and the people,
were assembled in the mosch of Medina, to hear the interesting
narrative of Zobeir; and as the orator forgot nothing except the
merit of his own counsels and actions, the name of Abdallah was
joined by the Arabians with the heroic names of Caled and Amrou.
145
142 (return) [ See in Ockley (Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii. p.
45) the death of Zobeir, which was honored with the tears of Ali,
against whom he had rebelled. His valor at the siege of Babylon,
if indeed it be the same person, is mentioned by Eutychius,
(Annal. tom. ii. p. 308)]
143 (return) [ Shaw’s Travels, p. 118, 119.]
144 (return) [ Mimica emptio, says Abulfeda, erat haec, et mira
donatio; quandoquidem Othman, ejus nomine nummos ex aerario prius
ablatos aerario praestabat, (Annal. Moslem. p. 78.) Elmacin (in
his cloudy version, p. 39) seems to report the same job. When the
Arabs be sieged the palace of Othman, it stood high in their
catalogue of grievances.`]
145 (return) [ Theophan. Chronograph. p. 235 edit. Paris. His
chronology is loose and inaccurate.]
[A. D. 665-689.] The western conquests of the Saracens were
suspended near twenty years, till their dissensions were composed
by the establishment of the house of Ommiyah; and the caliph
Moawiyah was invited by the cries of the Africans themselves. The
successors of Heraclius had been informed of the tribute which
they had been compelled to stipulate with the Arabs; but instead
of being moved to pity and relieve their distress, they imposed,
as an equivalent or a fine, a second tribute of a similar amount.
The ears of the zantine ministers were shut against the
complaints of their poverty and ruin their despair was reduced to
prefer the dominion of a single master; and the extortions of the
patriarch of Carthage, who was invested with civil and military
power, provoked the sectaries, and even the Catholics, of the
Roman province to abjure the religion as well as the authority of
their tyrants. The first lieutenant of Moawiyah acquired a just
renown, subdued an important city, defeated an army of thirty
thousand Greeks, swept away fourscore thousand captives, and
enriched with their spoils the bold adventurers of Syria and
Egypt.146 But the title of conqueror of Africa is more justly due
to his successor Akbah. He marched from Damascus at the head of
ten thousand of the bravest Arabs; and the genuine force of the
Moslems was enlarged by the doubtful aid and conversion of many
thousand Barbarians. It would be difficult, nor is it necessary,
to trace the accurate line of the progress of Akbah. The interior
regions have been peopled by the Orientals with fictitious armies
and imaginary citadels. In the warlike province of Zab or
Numidia, fourscore thousand of the natives might assemble in
arms; but the number of three hundred and sixty towns is
incompatible with the ignorance or decay of husbandry;147 and a
circumference of three leagues will not be justified by the ruins
of Erbe or Lambesa, the ancient metropolis of that inland
country. As we approach the seacoast, the well-known titles of
Bugia,148 and Tangier149 define the more certain limits of the
Saracen victories. A remnant of trade still adheres to the
commodious harbour of Bugia, which, in a more prosperous age, is
said to have contained about twenty thousand houses; and the
plenty of iron which is dug from the adjacent mountains might
have supplied a braver people with the instruments of defence.
The remote position and venerable antiquity of Tingi, or Tangier,
have been decorated by the Greek and Arabian fables; but the
figurative expressions of the latter, that the walls were
constructed of brass, and that the roofs were covered with gold
and silver, may be interpreted as the emblems of strength and
opulence.
146 (return) [ Theophanes (in Chronograph. p. 293.) inserts the
vague rumours that might reach Constantinople, of the western
conquests of the Arabs; and I learn from Paul Warnefrid, deacon
of Aquileia (de Gestis Langobard. 1. v. c. 13), that at this time
they sent a fleet from Alexandria into the Sicilian and African
seas.]
147 (return) [ See Novairi (apud Otter, p. 118), Leo Africanus
(fol. 81, verso), who reckoned only cinque citta e infinite
casal, Marmol (Description de l’Afrique, tom. iii. p. 33,) and
Shaw (Travels, p. 57, 65-68)]
148 (return) [ Leo African. fol. 58, verso, 59, recto. Marmol,
tom. ii. p. 415. Shaw, p. 43]
149 (return) [ Leo African. fol. 52. Marmol, tom. ii. p. 228.]
The province of Mauritania Tingitana,150 which assumed the name
of the capital had been imperfectly discovered and settled by the
Romans; the five colonies were confined to a narrow pale, and the
more southern parts were seldom explored except by the agents of
luxury, who searched the forests for ivory and the citron
wood,151 and the shores of the ocean for the purple shellfish.
The fearless Akbah plunged into the heart of the country,
traversed the wilderness in which his successors erected the
splendid capitals of Fez and Morocco,152 and at length penetrated
to the verge of the Atlantic and the great desert. The river Suz
descends from the western sides of mount Atlas, fertilizes, like
the Nile, the adjacent soil, and falls into the sea at a moderate
distance from the Canary, or adjacent islands. Its banks were
inhabited by the last of the Moors, a race of savages, without
laws, or discipline, or religion: they were astonished by the
strange and irresistible terrors of the Oriental arms; and as
they possessed neither gold nor silver, the richest spoil was the
beauty of the female captives, some of whom were afterward sold
for a thousand pieces of gold. The career, though not the zeal,
of Akbah was checked by the prospect of a boundless ocean. He
spurred his horse into the waves, and raising his eyes to heaven,
exclaimed with the tone of a fanatic: “Great God! if my course
were not stopped by this sea, I would still go on, to the unknown
kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of thy holy name, and
putting to the sword the rebellious nations who worship another
gods than thee.” 153 Yet this Mahometan Alexander, who sighed for
new worlds, was unable to preserve his recent conquests. By the
universal defection of the Greeks and Africans he was recalled
from the shores of the Atlantic, and the surrounding multitudes
left him only the resource of an honourable death. The last scene
was dignified by an example of national virtue. An ambitious
chief, who had disputed the command and failed in the attempt,
was led about as a prisoner in the camp of the Arabian general.
The insurgents had trusted to his discontent and revenge; he
disdained their offers and revealed their designs. In the hour of
danger, the grateful Akbah unlocked his fetters, and advised him
to retire; he chose to die under the banner of his rival.
Embracing as friends and martyrs, they unsheathed their
scimeters, broke their scabbards, and maintained an obstinate
combat, till they fell by each other’s side on the last of their
slaughtered countrymen. The third general or governor of Africa,
Zuheir, avenged and encountered the fate of his predecessor. He
vanquished the natives in many battles; he was overthrown by a
powerful army, which Constantinople had sent to the relief of
Carthage.
150 (return) [ Regio ignobilis, et vix quicquam illustre sortita,
parvis oppidis habitatur, parva flumina emittit, solo quam viris
meleor et segnitie gentis obscura. Pomponius Mela, i. 5, iii. 10.
Mela deserves the more credit, since his own Phoenician ancestors
had migrated from Tingitana to Spain (see, in ii. 6, a passage of
that geographer so cruelly tortured by Salmasius, Isaac Vossius,
and the most virulent of critics, James Gronovius). He lived at
the time of the final reduction of that country by the emperor
Claudius: yet almost thirty years afterward, Pliny (Hist. Nat. v.
i.) complains of his authors, to lazy to inquire, too proud to
confess their ignorance of that wild and remote province.]
151 (return) [ The foolish fashion of this citron wood prevailed
at Rome among the men, as much as the taste for pearls among the
women. A round board or table, four or five feet in diameter,
sold for the price of an estate (latefundii taxatione), eight,
ten, or twelve thousand pounds sterling (Plin. Hist. Natur. xiii.
29). I conceive that I must not confound the tree citrus, with
that of the fruit citrum. But I am not botanist enough to define
the former (it is like the wild cypress) by the vulgar or
Linnaean name; nor will I decide whether the citrum be the orange
or the lemon. Salmasius appears to exhaust the subject, but he
too often involves himself in the web of his disorderly
erudition. (Flinian. Exercitat. tom. ii. p 666, &c.)]
152 (return) [ Leo African. fol. 16, verso. Marmol, tom. ii. p.
28. This province, the first scene of the exploits and greatness
of the cherifs is often mentioned in the curious history of that
dynasty at the end of the third volume of Marmol, Description de
l’Afrique. The third vol. of The Recherches Historiques sur les
Maures (lately published at Paris) illustrates the history and
geography of the kingdoms of Fez and Morocco.]
153 (return) [ Otter (p. 119,) has given the strong tone of
fanaticism to this exclamation, which Cardonne (p. 37,) has
softened to a pious wish of preaching the Koran. Yet they had
both the same text of Novairi before their eyes.]
[A. D. 670-675.] It had been the frequent practice of the Moorish
tribes to join the invaders, to share the plunder, to profess the
faith, and to revolt in their savage state of independence and
idolatry, on the first retreat or misfortune of the Moslems. The
prudence of Akbah had proposed to found an Arabian colony in the
heart of Africa; a citadel that might curb the levity of the
Barbarians, a place of refuge to secure, against the accidents of
war, the wealth and the families of the Saracens. With this view,
and under the modest title of the station of a caravan, he
planted this colony in the fiftieth year of the Hegira. In its
present decay, Cairoan154 still holds the second rank in the
kingdom of Tunis, from which it is distant about fifty miles to
the south;155 its inland situation, twelve miles westward of the
sea, has protected the city from the Greek and Sicilian fleets.
When the wild beasts and serpents were extirpated, when the
forest, or rather wilderness, was cleared, the vestiges of a
Roman town were discovered in a sandy plain: the vegetable food
of Cairoan is brought from afar; and the scarcity of springs
constrains the inhabitants to collect in cisterns and reservoirs
a precarious supply of rain water. These obstacles were subdued
by the industry of Akbah; he traced a circumference of three
thousand and six hundred paces, which he encompassed with a brick
wall; in the space of five years, the governor’s palace was
surrounded with a sufficient number of private habitations; a
spacious mosque was supported by five hundred columns of granite,
porphyry, and Numidian marble; and Cairoan became the seat of
learning as well as of empire. But these were the glories of a
later age; the new colony was shaken by the successive defeats of
Akbah and Zuheir, and the western expeditions were again
interrupted by the civil discord of the Arabian monarchy. The son
of the valiant Zobeir maintained a war of twelve years, a siege
of seven months against the house of Ommiyah. Abdallah was said
to unite the fierceness of the lion with the subtlety of the fox;
but if he inherited the courage, he was devoid of the generosity,
of his father.156
[A. D. 692-698.] The return of domestic peace allowed the caliph
Abdalmalek to resume the conquest of Africa; the standard was
delivered to Hassan governor of Egypt, and the revenue of that
kingdom, with an army of forty thousand men, was consecrated to
the important service. In the vicissitudes of war, the interior
provinces had been alternately won and lost by the Saracens. But
the seacoast still remained in the hands of the Greeks; the
predecessors of Hassan had respected the name and fortifications
of Carthage; and the number of its defenders was recruited by the
fugitives of Cabes and Tripoli. The arms of Hassan were bolder
and more fortunate: he reduced and pillaged the metropolis of
Africa; and the mention of scaling-ladders may justify the
suspicion, that he anticipated, by a sudden assault, the more
tedious operations of a regular siege. But the joy of the
conquerors was soon disturbed by the appearance of the Christian
succours. The praefect and patrician John, a general of
experience and renown, embarked at Constantinople the forces of
the Eastern empire;157 they were joined by the ships and soldiers
of Sicily, and a powerful reinforcement of Goths158 was obtained
from the fears and religion of the Spanish monarch.
154 (return) [ The foundation of Cairoan is mentioned by Ockley
(Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 129, 130); and the situation,
mosque, &c. of the city are described by Leo Africanus (fol. 75),
Marmol (tom. ii. p. 532), and Shaw (p. 115).]
155 (return) [ A portentous, though frequent mistake, has been
the confounding, from a slight similitude of name, the Cyrene of
the Greeks, and the Cairoan of the Arabs, two cities which are
separated by an interval of a thousand miles along the seacoast.
The great Thuanus has not escaped this fault, the less excusable
as it is connected with a formal and elaborate description of
Africa (Historiar. l. vii. c. 2, in tom. i. p. 240, edit.
Buckley).]
156 (return) [ Besides the Arabic Chronicles of Abulfeda,
Elmacin, and Abulpharagius, under the lxxiiid year of the Hegira,
we may consult nd’Herbelot (Bibliot. Orient. p. 7,) and Ockley
(Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii. p. 339-349). The latter has
given the last and pathetic dialogue between Abdallah and his
mother; but he has forgot a physical effect of her grief for his
death, the return, at the age of ninety, and fatal consequences
of her menses.]
157 (return) [ The patriarch of Constantinople, with Theophanes
(Chronograph. p. 309,) have slightly mentioned this last attempt
for the relief or Africa. Pagi (Critica, tom. iii. p. 129. 141,)
has nicely ascertained the chronology by a strict comparison of
the Arabic and Byzantine historians, who often disagree both in
time and fact. See likewise a note of Otter (p. 121).]
158 (return) [ Dove s’erano ridotti i nobili Romani e i Gotti;
and afterward, i Romani suggirono e i Gotti lasciarono
Carthagine. (Leo African. for. 72, recto) I know not from what
Arabic writer the African derived his Goths; but the fact, though
new, is so interesting and so probable, that I will accept it on
the slightest authority.]
The weight of the confederate navy broke the chain that guarded
the entrance of the harbour; the Arabs retired to Cairoan, or
Tripoli; the Christians landed; the citizens hailed the ensign of
the cross, and the winter was idly wasted in the dream of victory
or deliverance. But Africa was irrecoverably lost: the zeal and
resentment of the commander of the faithful159 prepared in the
ensuing spring a more numerous armament by sea and land; and the
patrician in his turn was compelled to evacuate the post and
fortifications of Carthage. A second battle was fought in the
neighbourhood of Utica; and the Greeks and Goths were again
defeated; and their timely embarkation saved them from the sword
of Hassan, who had invested the slight and insufficient rampart
of their camp. Whatever yet remained of Carthage was delivered to
the flames, and the colony of Dido160 and Cesar lay desolate
above two hundred years, till a part, perhaps a twentieth, of the
old circumference was repeopled by the first of the Fatimite
caliphs. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, the second
capital of the West was represented by a mosque, a college
without students, twenty-five or thirty shops, and the huts of
five hundred peasants, who, in their abject poverty, displayed
the arrogance of the Punic senators. Even that paltry village was
swept away by the Spaniards whom Charles the Fifth had stationed
in the fortress of the Goletta. The ruins of Carthage have
perished; and the place might be unknown if some broken arches of
an aqueduct did not guide the footsteps of the inquisitive
traveller.161
[A. D. 698-709.] The Greeks were expelled, but the Arabians were
not yet masters of the country. In the interior provinces the
Moors or Berbers,162 so feeble under the first Cesars, so
formidable to the Byzantine princes, maintained a disorderly
resistance to the religion and power of the successors of
Mahomet. Under the standard of their queen Cahina, the
independent tribes acquired some degree of union and discipline;
and as the Moors respected in their females the character of a
prophetess, they attacked the invaders with an enthusiasm similar
to their own. The veteran bands of Hassan were inadequate to the
defence of Africa: the conquests of an age were lost in a single
day; and the Arabian chief, overwhelmed by the torrent, retired
to the confines of Egypt, and expected, five years, the promised
succours of the caliph. After the retreat of the Saracens, the
victorious prophetess assembled the Moorish chiefs, and
recommended a measure of strange and savage policy. “Our cities,”
said she, “and the gold and silver which they contain,
perpetually attract the arms of the Arabs. These vile metals are
not the objects of OUR ambition; we content ourselves with the
simple productions of the earth. Let us destroy these cities; let
us bury in their ruins those pernicious treasures; and when the
avarice of our foes shall be destitute of temptation, perhaps
they will cease to disturb the tranquillity of a warlike people.”
The proposal was accepted with unanimous applause. From Tangier
to Tripoli the buildings, or at least the fortifications, were
demolished, the fruit-trees were cut down, the means of
subsistence were extirpated, a fertile and populous garden was
changed into a desert, and the historians of a more recent period
could discern the frequent traces of the prosperity and
devastation of their ancestors.
159 (return) [ This commander is styled by Nicephorus, ———— a
vague though not improper definition of the caliph. Theophanes
introduces the strange appellation of —————, which his
interpreter Goar explains by Vizir Azem. They may approach the
truth, in assigning the active part to the minister, rather than
the prince; but they forget that the Ommiades had only a kaleb,
or secretary, and that the office of Vizir was not revived or
instituted till the 132d year of the Hegira (d’Herbelot, 912).]
160 (return) [ According to Solinus (1.27, p. 36, edit. Salmas),
the Carthage of Dido stood either 677 or 737 years; a various
reading, which proceeds from the difference of MSS. or editions
(Salmas, Plinian. Exercit tom i. p. 228) The former of these
accounts, which gives 823 years before Christ, is more consistent
with the well-weighed testimony of Velleius Paterculus: but the
latter is preferred by our chronologists (Marsham, Canon. Chron.
p. 398,) as more agreeable to the Hebrew and Syrian annals.]
161 (return) [ Leo African. fo1. 71, verso; 72, recto. Marmol,
tom. ii. p.445-447. Shaw, p.80.]
162 (return) [ The history of the word Barbar may be classed
under four periods, 1. In the time of Homer, when the Greeks and
Asiatics might probably use a common idiom, the imitative sound
of Barbar was applied to the ruder tribes, whose pronunciation
was most harsh, whose grammar was most defective. 2. From the
time, at least, of Herodotus, it was extended to all the nations
who were strangers to the language and manners of the Greeks. 3.
In the age, of Plautus, the Romans submitted to the insult
(Pompeius Festus, l. ii. p. 48, edit. Dacier), and freely gave
themselves the name of Barbarians. They insensibly claimed an
exemption for Italy, and her subject provinces; and at length
removed the disgraceful appellation to the savage or hostile
nations beyond the pale of the empire. 4. In every sense, it was
due to the Moors; the familiar word was borrowed from the Latin
Provincials by the Arabian conquerors, and has justly settled as
a local denomination (Barbary) along the northern coast of
Africa.]
Such is the tale of the modern Arabians. Yet I strongly suspect
that their ignorance of antiquity, the love of the marvellous,
and the fashion of extolling the philosophy of Barbarians, has
induced them to describe, as one voluntary act, the calamities of
three hundred years since the first fury of the Donatists and
Vandals. In the progress of the revolt, Cahina had most probably
contributed her share of destruction; and the alarm of universal
ruin might terrify and alienate the cities that had reluctantly
yielded to her unworthy yoke. They no longer hoped, perhaps they
no longer wished, the return of their Byzantine sovereigns: their
present servitude was not alleviated by the benefits of order and
justice; and the most zealous Catholic must prefer the imperfect
truths of the Koran to the blind and rude idolatry of the Moors.
The general of the Saracens was again received as the saviour of
the province; the friends of civil society conspired against the
savages of the land; and the royal prophetess was slain in the
first battle which overturned the baseless fabric of her
superstition and empire. The same spirit revived under the
successor of Hassan; it was finally quelled by the activity of
Musa and his two sons; but the number of the rebels may be
presumed from that of three hundred thousand captives; sixty
thousand of whom, the caliph’s fifth, were sold for the profit of
thee public treasury. Thirty thousand of the Barbarian youth were
enlisted in the troops; and the pious labours of Musa to
inculcate the knowledge and practice of the Koran, accustomed the
Africans to obey the apostle of God and the commander of the
faithful. In their climate and government, their diet and
habitation, the wandering Moors resembled the Bedoweens of the
desert. With the religion, they were proud to adopt the language,
name, and origin of Arabs: the blood of the strangers and natives
was insensibly mingled; and from the Euphrates to the Atlantic
the same nation might seem to be diffused over the sandy plains
of Asia and Africa. Yet I will not deny that fifty thousand tents
of pure Arabians might be transported over the Nile, and
scattered through the Lybian desert: and I am not ignorant that
five of the Moorish tribes still retain their barbarous idiom,
with the appellation and character of white Africans.163
[A. D. 709.] V. In the progress of conquest from the north and
south, the Goths and the Saracens encountered each other on the
confines of Europe and Africa. In the opinion of the latter, the
difference of religion is a reasonable ground of enmity and
warfare.164 As early as the time of Othman165 their piratical
squadrons had ravaged the coast of Andalusia;166 nor had they
forgotten the relief of Carthage by the Gothic succours. In that
age, as well as in the present, the kings of Spain were possessed
of the fortress of Ceuta; one of the columns of Hercules, which
is divided by a narrow strait from the opposite pillar or point
of Europe. A small portion of Mauritania was still wanting to the
African conquest; but Musa, in the pride of victory, was repulsed
from the walls of Ceuta, by the vigilance and courage of count
Julian, the general of the Goths. From his disappointment and
perplexity, Musa was relieved by an unexpected message of the
Christian chief, who offered his place, his person, and his
sword, to the successors of Mahomet, and solicited the
disgraceful honour of introducing their arms into the heart of
Spain.167
163 (return) [ The first book of Leo Africanus, and the
observations of Dr. Shaw (p. 220. 223. 227. 247, &c.) will throw
some light on the roving tribes of Barbary, of Arabian or Moorish
descent. But Shaw had seen these savages with distant terror; and
Leo, a captive in the Vatican, appears to have lost more of his
Arabic, than he could acquire of Greek or Roman, learning. Many
of his gross mistakes might be detected in the first period of
the Mahometan history.]
164 (return) [ In a conference with a prince of the Greeks, Amrou
observed that their religion was different; upon which score it
was lawful for brothers to quarrel. Ockley’s History of the
Saracens, vol. i. p. 328.]
165 (return) [ Abulfeda, Annal. Moslem. p 78, vers. Reiske.]
166 (return) [ The name of Andalusia is applied by the Arabs not
only to the modern province, but to the whole peninsula of Spain
(Geograph. Nub. p. 151, d’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 114,
115). The etymology has been most improbably deduced from
Vandalusia, country of the Vandals. (d’Anville Etats de l’Europe,
p. 146, 147, &c.) But the Handalusia of Casiri, which signifies,
in Arabic, the region of the evening, of the West, in a word, the
Hesperia of the Greeks, is perfectly apposite. (Bibliot.
Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 327, &c.)]
167 (return) [ The fall and resurrection of the Gothic monarchy
are related by Mariana (tom. l. p. 238-260, l. vi. c. 19-26, l.
vii. c. 1, 2). That historian has infused into his noble work
(Historic de Rebus Hispaniae, libri xxx. Hagae Comitum 1733, in
four volumes, folio, with the continuation of Miniana), the style
and spirit of a Roman classic; and after the twelfth century, his
knowledge and judgment may be safely trusted. But the Jesuit is
not exempt from the prejudices of his order; he adopts and
adorns, like his rival Buchanan, the most absurd of the national
legends; he is too careless of criticism and chronology, and
supplies, from a lively fancy, the chasms of historical evidence.
These chasms are large and frequent; Roderic archbishop of
Toledo, the father of the Spanish history, lived five hundred
years after the conquest of the Arabs; and the more early
accounts are comprised in some meagre lines of the blind
chronicles of Isidore of Badajoz (Pacensis,) and of Alphonso III.
king of Leon, which I have seen only in the Annals of Pagi.]
If we inquire into the cause of this treachery, the Spaniards
will repeat the popular story of his daughter Cava;168 of a
virgin who was seduced, or ravished, by her sovereign; of a
father who sacrificed his religion and country to the thirst of
revenge. The passions of princes have often been licentious and
destructive; but this well-known tale, romantic in itself, is
indifferently supported by external evidence; and the history of
Spain will suggest some motives of interest and policy more
congenial to the breast of a veteran statesman.169 After the
decease or deposition of Witiza, his two sons were supplanted by
the ambition of Roderic, a noble Goth, whose father, the duke or
governor of a province, had fallen a victim to the preceding
tyranny. The monarchy was still elective; but the sons of Witiza,
educated on the steps of the throne, were impatient of a private
station. Their resentment was the more dangerous, as it was
varnished with the dissimulation of courts: their followers were
excited by the remembrance of favours and the promise of a
revolution: and their uncle Oppas, archbishop of Toledo and
Seville, was the first person in the church, and the second in
the state. It is probable that Julian was involved in the
disgrace of the unsuccessful faction, that he had little to hope
and much to fear from the new reign; and that the imprudent king
could not forget or forgive the injuries which Roderic and his
family had sustained. The merit and influence of the count
rendered him a useful or formidable subject: his estates were
ample, his followers bold and numerous, and it was too fatally
shown that, by his Andalusian and Mauritanian commands, he held
in his hands the keys of the Spanish monarchy. Too feeble,
however, to meet his sovereign in arms, he sought the aid of a
foreign power; and his rash invitation of the Moors and Arabs
produced the calamities of eight hundred years. In his epistles,
or in a personal interview, he revealed the wealth and nakedness
of his country; the weakness of an unpopular prince; the
degeneracy of an effeminate people. The Goths were no longer the
victorious Barbarians, who had humbled the pride of Rome,
despoiled the queen of nations, and penetrated from the Danube to
the Atlantic ocean. Secluded from the world by the Pyrenean
mountains, the successors of Alaric had slumbered in a long
peace: the walls of the city were mouldered into dust: the youth
had abandoned the exercise of arms; and the presumption of their
ancient renown would expose them in a field of battle to the
first assault of the invaders. The ambitious Saracen was fired by
the ease and importance of the attempt; but the execution was
delayed till he had consulted the commander of the faithful; and
his messenger returned with the permission of Walid to annex the
unknown kingdoms of the West to the religion and throne of the
caliphs. In his residence of Tangier, Musa, with secrecy and
caution, continued his correspondence and hastened his
preparations. But the remorse of the conspirators was soothed by
the fallacious assurance that he should content himself with the
glory and spoil, without aspiring to establish the Moslems beyond
the sea that separates Africa from Europe.170
168 (return) [ Le viol (says Voltaire) est aussi difficile a
faire qu’a prouver. Des Eveques se seroient ils lignes pour une
fille? (Hist. Generale, c. xxvi.) His argument is not logically
conclusive.]
169 (return) [ In the story of Cava, Mariana (I. vi. c. 21, p.
241, 242,) seems to vie with the Lucretia of Livy. Like the
ancients, he seldom quotes; and the oldest testimony of Baronius
(Annal. Eccles. A.D. 713, No. 19), that of Lucus Tudensis, a
Gallician deacon of the thirteenth century, only says, Cava quam
pro concubina utebatur.]
170 (return) [ The Orientals, Elmacin, Abulpharagins, Abolfeda,
pass over the conquest of Spain in silence, or with a single
word. The text of Novairi, and the other Arabian writers, is
represented, though with some foreign alloy, by M. de Cardonne
(Hist. de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne sous la Domination des
Arabes, Paris, 1765, 3 vols. 12mo. tom. i. p. 55-114), and more
concisely by M. de Guignes (Hist. des Hune. tom. i. p. 347-350).
The librarian of the Escurial has not satisfied my hopes: yet he
appears to have searched with diligence his broken materials; and
the history of the conquest is illustrated by some valuable
fragments of the genuine Razis (who wrote at. Corduba, A. H.
300), of Ben Hazil, &c. See Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p.
32. 105, 106. 182. 252. 315-332. On this occasion, the industry
of Pagi has been aided by the Arabic learning of his friend the
Abbe de Longuerue, and to their joint labours I am deeply
indebted.]
[A. D. 710.] Before Musa would trust an army of the faithful to
the traitors and infidels of a foreign land, he made a less
dangerous trial of their strength and veracity. One hundred Arabs
and four hundred Africans, passed over, in four vessels, from
Tangier or Ceuta; the place of their descent on the opposite
shore of the strait, is marked by the name of Tarif their chief;
and the date of this memorable event171 is fixed to the month of
Ramandan, of the ninety-first year of the Hegira, to the month of
July, seven hundred and forty-eight years from the Spanish era of
Cesar,172 seven hundred and ten after the birth of Christ. From
their first station, they marched eighteen miles through a hilly
country to the castle and town of Julian;173 on which (it is
still called Algezire) they bestowed the name of the Green
Island, from a verdant cape that advances into the sea. Their
hospitable entertainment, the Christians who joined their
standard, their inroad into a fertile and unguarded province, the
richness of their spoil and the safety of their return, announced
to their brethren the most favourable omens of victory. In the
ensuing spring, five thousand veterans and volunteers were
embarked under the command of Tarik, a dauntless and skilful
soldier, who surpassed the expectation of his chief; and the
necessary transports were provided by the industry of their too
faithful ally. The Saracens landed174 at the pillar or point of
Europe; the corrupt and familiar appellation of Gibraltar (Gebel
el Tarik) describes the mountain of Tarik; and the intrenchments
of his camp were the first outline of those fortifications,
which, in the hands of our countrymen, have resisted the art and
power of the house of Bourbon. The adjacent governors informed
the court of Toledo of the descent and progress of the Arabs; and
the defeat of his lieutenant Edeco, who had been commanded to
seize and bind the presumptuous strangers, admonished Roderic of
the magnitude of the danger. At the royal summons, the dukes and
counts, the bishops and nobles of the Gothic monarchy assembled
at the head of their followers; and the title of king of the
Romans, which is employed by an Arabic historian, may be excused
by the close affinity of language, religion, and manners, between
the nations of Spain. His army consisted of ninety or a hundred
thousand men: a formidable power, if their fidelity and
discipline had been adequate to their numbers. The troops of
Tarik had been augmented to twelve thousand Saracens; but the
Christian malcontents were attracted by the influence of Julian,
and a crowd of Africans most greedily tasted the temporal
blessings of the Koran. In the neighbourhood of Cadiz, the town
of Xeres175 has been illustrated by the encounter which
determined the fate of the kingdom; the stream of the Guadalete,
which falls into the bay, divided the two camps, and marked the
advancing and retreating skirmishes of three successive and
bloody days.
171 (return) [ A mistake of Roderic of Toledo, in comparing the
lunar years of the Hegira with the Julian years of the Era, has
determined Baronius, Mariana, and the crowd of Spanish
historians, to place the first invasion in the year 713, and the
battle of Xeres in November, 714. This anachronism of three years
has been detected by the more correct industry of modern
chronologists, above all, of Pagi (Critics, tom. iii. p. 164.
171-174), who have restored the genuine state of the revolution.
At the present time, an Arabian scholar, like Cardonne, who
adopts the ancient error (tom. i. p. 75), is inexcusably ignorant
or careless.]
172 (return) [ The Era of Cesar, which in Spain was in legal and
popular use till the xivth century, begins thirty-eight years
before the birth of Christ. I would refer the origin to the
general peace by sea and land, which confirmed the power and
partition of the triumvirs. (Dion. Cassius, l. xlviii. p. 547.
553. Appian de Bell. Civil. l. v. p. 1034, edit. fol.) Spain was
a province of Cesar Octavian; and Tarragona, which raised the
first temple to Augustus (Tacit Annal. i. 78), might borrow from
the orientals this mode of flattery.]
173 (return) [ The road, the country, the old castle of count
Julian, and the superstitious belief of the Spaniards of hidden
treasures, &c. are described by Pere Labat (Voyages en Espagne et
en Italie, tom i. p. 207-217), with his usual pleasantry.]
174 (return) [ The Nubian geographer (p. 154,) explains the
topography of the war; but it is highly incredible that the
lieutenant of Musa should execute the desperate and useless
measure of burning his ships.]
175 (return) [ Xeres (the Roman colony of Asta Regia) is only two
leagues from Cadiz. In the xvith century It was a granary of
corn; and the wine of Xeres is familiar to the nations of Europe
(Lud. Nonii Hispania, c. 13, p. 54-56, a work of correct and
concise knowledge; d’Anville, Etats de l’Europe &c p 154).]
On the fourth day, the two armies joined a more serious and
decisive issue; but Alaric would have blushed at the sight of his
unworthy successor, sustaining on his head a diadem of pearls,
encumbered with a flowing robe of gold and silken embroidery, and
reclining on a litter, or car of ivory, drawn by two white mules.
Notwithstanding the valour of the Saracens, they fainted under
the weight of multitudes, and the plain of Xeres was overspread
with sixteen thousand of their dead bodies. “My brethren,” said
Tarik to his surviving companions, “the enemy is before you, the
sea is behind; whither would ye fly? Follow your general I am
resolved either to lose my life, or to trample on the prostrate
king of the Romans.” Besides the resource of despair, he confided
in the secret correspondence and nocturnal interviews of count
Julian, with the sons and the brother of Witiza. The two princes
and the archbishop of Toledo occupied the most important post;
their well-timed defection broke the ranks of the Christians;
each warrior was prompted by fear or suspicion to consult his
personal safety; and the remains of the Gothic army were
scattered or destroyed to the flight and pursuit of the three
following days. Amidst the general disorder, Roderic started from
his car, and mounted Orelia, the fleetest of his Horses; but he
escaped from a soldier’s death to perish more ignobly in the
waters of the Boetis or Guadalquiver. His diadem, his robes, and
his courser, were found on the bank; but as the body of the
Gothic prince was lost in the waves, the pride and ignorance of
the caliph must have been gratified with some meaner head, which
was exposed in triumph before the palace of Damascus. “And such,”
continues a valiant historian of the Arabs, “is the fate of those
kings who withdraw themselves from a field of battle.” 176
[A. D. 711.] Count Julian had plunged so deep into guilt and
infamy, that his only hope was in the ruin of his country. After
the battle of Xeres he recommended the most effectual measures to
the victorious Saracens. “The king of the Goths is slain; their
princes are fled before you, the army is routed, the nation is
astonished. Secure with sufficient detachments the cities of
Boetica; but in person and without delay, march to the royal city
of Toledo, and allow not the distracted Christians either time or
tranquillity for the election of a new monarch.” Tarik listened
to his advice. A Roman captive and proselyte, who had been
enfranchised by the caliph himself, assaulted Cordova with seven
hundred horse: he swam the river, surprised the town, and drove
the Christians into the great church, where they defended
themselves above three months. Another detachment reduced the
seacoast of Boetica, which in the last period of the Moorish
power has comprised in a narrow space the populous kingdom of
Grenada. The march of Tarik from the Boetis to the Tagus,177 was
directed through the Sierra Morena, that separates Andalusia and
Castille, till he appeared in arms under the walls of Toledo.178
The most zealous of the Catholics had escaped with the relics of
their saints; and if the gates were shut, it was only till the
victor had subscribed a fair and reasonable capitulation. The
voluntary exiles were allowed to depart with their effects; seven
churches were appropriated to the Christian worship; the
archbishop and his clergy were at liberty to exercise their
functions, the monks to practise or neglect their penance; and
the Goths and Romans were left in all civil or criminal cases to
the subordinate jurisdiction of their own laws and magistrates.
But if the justice of Tarik protected the Christians, his
gratitude and policy rewarded the Jews, to whose secret or open
aid he was indebted for his most important acquisitions.
Persecuted by the kings and synods of Spain, who had often
pressed the alternative of banishment or baptism, that outcast
nation embraced the moment of revenge: the comparison of their
past and present state was the pledge of their fidelity; and the
alliance between the disciples of Moses and those of Mahomet, was
maintained till the final era of their common expulsion.
176 (return) [ Id sane infortunii regibus pedem ex acie
referentibus saepe contingit. Den Hazil of Grenada, in Bibliot.
Arabico-Hispana. tom. ii. p. 337. Some credulous Spaniards
believe that king Roderic, or Rodrigo, escaped to a hermit’s
cell; and others, that he was cast alive into a tub full of
serpents, from whence he exclaimed with a lamentable voice, “they
devour the part with which I have so grievously sinned.” (Don
Quixote, part ii. l. iii. c. 1.)]
177 (return) [ The direct road from Corduba to Toledo was
measured by Mr. Swinburne’s mules in 72 1/2 hours: but a larger
computation must be adopted for the slow and devious marches of
an army. The Arabs traversed the province of La Mancha, which the
pen of Cervantes has transformed into classic ground to the
reader of every nation.]
178 (return) [ The antiquities of Toledo, Urbs Parva in the Punic
wars, Urbs Regia in the sixth century, are briefly described by
Nonius (Hispania, c. 59, p. 181-136). He borrows from Roderic the
fatale palatium of Moorish portraits; but modestly insinuates,
that it was no more than a Roman amphitheatre.]
From the royal seat of Toledo, the Arabian leader spread his
conquests to the north, over the modern realms of Castille and
Leon; but it is heedless to enumerate the cities that yielded on
his approach, or again to describe the table of emerald,179
transported from the East by the Romans, acquired by the Goths
among the spoils of Rome, and presented by the Arabs to the
throne of Damascus. Beyond the Asturian mountains, the maritime
town of Gijon was the term180 of the lieutenant of Musa, who had
performed with the speed of a traveller, his victorious march of
seven hundred miles, from the rock of Gibraltar to the bay of
Biscay. The failure of land compelled him to retreat: and he was
recalled to Toledo, to excuse his presumption of subduing a
kingdom in the absence of his general. Spain, which in a more
savage and disorderly state, had resisted, two hundred years, the
arms of the Romans, was overrun in a few months by those of the
Saracens; and such was the eagerness of submission and treaty,
that the governor of Cordova is recorded as the only chief who
fell, without conditions, a prisoner into their hands. The cause
of the Goths had been irrevocably judged in the field of Xeres;
and in the national dismay, each part of the monarchy declined a
contest with the antagonist who had vanquished the united
strength of the whole.181 That strength had been wasted by two
successive seasons of famine and pestilence; and the governors,
who were impatient to surrender, might exaggerate the difficulty
of collecting the provisions of a siege. To disarm the
Christians, superstition likewise contributed her terrors: and
the subtle Arab encouraged the report of dreams, omens, and
prophecies, and of the portraits of the destined conquerors of
Spain, that were discovered on the breaking open an apartment of
the royal palace. Yet a spark of the vital flame was still alive;
some invincible fugitives preferred a life of poverty and freedom
in the Asturian valleys; the hardy mountaineers repulsed the
slaves of the caliph; and the sword of Pelagius has been
transformed into the sceptre of the Catholic kings.182
179 (return) [ In the Historia Arabum (c. 9, p. 17, ad calcem
Elmacin), Roderic of Toledo describes the emerald tables, and
inserts the name of Medinat Ahneyda in Arabic words and letters.
He appears to be conversant with the Mahometan writers; but I
cannot agree with M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 350)
that he had read and transcribed Novairi; because he was dead a
hundred years before Novairi composed his history. This mistake
is founded on a still grosser error. M. de Guignes confounds the
governed historian Roderic Ximines, archbishop of Toledo, in the
xiiith century, with cardinal Ximines, who governed Spain in the
beginning of the xvith, and was the subject, not the author, of
historical compositions.]
180 (return) [ Tarik might have inscribed on the last rock, the
boast of Regnard and his companions in their Lapland journey,
“Hic tandem stetimus, nobis ubi defuit orbis.”]
181 (return) [ Such was the argument of the traitor Oppas, and
every chief to whom it was addressed did not answer with the
spirit of Pelagius; Omnis Hispania dudum sub uno regimine
Gothorum, omnis exercitus Hispaniae in uno congregatus
Ismaelitarum non valuit sustinere impetum. Chron. Alphonsi Regis,
apud Pagi, tom. iii. p. 177.]
182 (return) [ The revival of tire Gothic kingdom in the Asturias
is distinctly though concisely noticed by d’Anville (Etats de
l’Europe, p. 159)]
Chapter LI: Conquests By The Arabs.—Part VII.
On the intelligence of this rapid success, the applause of Musa
degenerated into envy; and he began, not to complain, but to
fear, that Tarik would leave him nothing to subdue. At the head
of ten thousand Arabs and eight thousand Africans, he passed over
in person from Mauritania to Spain: the first of his companions
were the noblest of the Koreish; his eldest son was left in the
command of Africa; the three younger brethren were of an age and
spirit to second the boldest enterprises of their father. At his
landing in Algezire, he was respectfully entertained by Count
Julian, who stifled his inward remorse, and testified, both in
words and actions, that the victory of the Arabs had not impaired
his attachment to their cause. Some enemies yet remained for the
sword of Musa. The tardy repentance of the Goths had compared
their own numbers and those of the invaders; the cities from
which the march of Tarik had declined considered themselves as
impregnable; and the bravest patriots defended the fortifications
of Seville and Merida. They were successively besieged and
reduced by the labor of Musa, who transported his camp from the
Boetis to the Anas, from the Guadalquivir to the Guadiana. When
he beheld the works of Roman magnificence, the bridge, the
aqueducts, the triumphal arches, and the theatre, of the ancient
metropolis of Lusitania, “I should imagine,” said he to his four
companions, “that the human race must have united their art and
power in the foundation of this city: happy is the man who shall
become its master!” He aspired to that happiness, but the
Emeritans sustained on this occasion the honor of their descent
from the veteran legionaries of Augustus 183 Disdaining the
confinement of their walls, they gave battle to the Arabs on the
plain; but an ambuscade rising from the shelter of a quarry, or a
ruin, chastised their indiscretion, and intercepted their return.
The wooden turrets of assault were rolled forwards to the foot of
the rampart; but the defence of Merida was obstinate and long;
and the castle of the martyrs was a perpetual testimony of the
losses of the Moslems. The constancy of the besieged was at
length subdued by famine and despair; and the prudent victor
disguised his impatience under the names of clemency and esteem.
The alternative of exile or tribute was allowed; the churches
were divided between the two religions; and the wealth of those
who had fallen in the siege, or retired to Gallicia, was
confiscated as the reward of the faithful. In the midway between
Merida and Toledo, the lieutenant of Musa saluted the vicegerent
of the caliph, and conducted him to the palace of the Gothic
kings. Their first interview was cold and formal: a rigid account
was exacted of the treasures of Spain: the character of Tarik was
exposed to suspicion and obloquy; and the hero was imprisoned,
reviled, and ignominiously scourged by the hand, or the command,
of Musa. Yet so strict was the discipline, so pure the zeal, or
so tame the spirit, of the primitive Moslems, that, after this
public indignity, Tarik could serve and be trusted in the
reduction of the Tarragonest province. A mosch was erected at
Saragossa, by the liberality of the Koreish: the port of
Barcelona was opened to the vessels of Syria; and the Goths were
pursued beyond the Pyrenaean mountains into their Gallic province
of Septimania or Languedoc. 184 In the church of St. Mary at
Carcassone, Musa found, but it is improbable that he left, seven
equestrian statues of massy silver; and from his term or column
of Narbonne, he returned on his footsteps to the Gallician and
Lusitanian shores of the ocean. During the absence of the father,
his son Abdelaziz chastised the insurgents of Seville, and
reduced, from Malaga to Valentia, the sea-coast of the
Mediterranean: his original treaty with the discreet and valiant
Theodemir 185 will represent the manners and policy of the times.
“The conditions of peace agreed and sworn between Abdelaziz, the
son of Musa, the son of Nassir, and Theodemir prince of the
Goths. In the name of the most merciful God, Abdelaziz makes
peace on these conditions: that Theodemir shall not be disturbed
in his principality; nor any injury be offered to the life or
property, the wives and children, the religion and temples, of
the Christians: that Theodemir shall freely deliver his seven
1851 cities, Orihuela, Valentola, Alicanti Mola, Vacasora,
Bigerra, (now Bejar,) Ora, (or Opta,) and Lorca: that he shall
not assist or entertain the enemies of the caliph, but shall
faithfully communicate his knowledge of their hostile designs:
that himself, and each of the Gothic nobles, shall annually pay
one piece of gold, four measures of wheat, as many of barley,
with a certain proportion of honey, oil, and vinegar; and that
each of their vassals shall be taxed at one moiety of the said
imposition. Given the fourth of Regeb, in the year of the Hegira
ninety-four, and subscribed with the names of four Mussulman
witnesses.” 186 Theodemir and his subjects were treated with
uncommon lenity; but the rate of tribute appears to have
fluctuated from a tenth to a fifth, according to the submission
or obstinacy of the Christians. 187 In this revolution, many
partial calamities were inflicted by the carnal or religious
passions of the enthusiasts: some churches were profaned by the
new worship: some relics or images were confounded with idols:
the rebels were put to the sword; and one town (an obscure place
between Cordova and Seville) was razed to its foundations. Yet if
we compare the invasion of Spain by the Goths, or its recovery by
the kings of Castile and Arragon, we must applaud the moderation
and discipline of the Arabian conquerors.
183 (return) [ The honorable relics of the Cantabrian war (Dion
Cassius, l. liii p. 720) were planted in this metropolis of
Lusitania, perhaps of Spain, (submittit cui tota suos Hispania
fasces.) Nonius (Hispania, c. 31, p. 106-110) enumerates the
ancient structures, but concludes with a sigh: Urbs haec olim
nobilissima ad magnam incolarum infrequentiam delapsa est, et
praeter priscae claritatis ruinas nihil ostendit.]
184 (return) [ Both the interpreters of Novairi, De Guignes
(Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 349) and Cardonne, (Hist. de
l’Afrique et de l’Espagne, tom. i. p. 93, 94, 104, 135,) lead
Musa into the Narbonnese Gaul. But I find no mention of this
enterprise, either in Roderic of Toledo, or the Mss. of the
Escurial, and the invasion of the Saracens is postponed by a
French chronicle till the ixth year after the conquest of Spain,
A.D. 721, (Pagi, Critica, tom. iii. p. 177, 195. Historians of
France, tom. iii.) I much question whether Musa ever passed the
Pyrenees.]
185 (return) [ Four hundred years after Theodemir, his
territories of Murcia and Carthagena retain in the Nubian
geographer Edrisi (p, 154, 161) the name of Tadmir, (D’Anville,
Etats de l’Europe, p. 156. Pagi, tom. iii. p. 174.) In the
present decay of Spanish agriculture, Mr. Swinburne (Travels into
Spain, p. 119) surveyed with pleasure the delicious valley from
Murcia to Orihuela, four leagues and a half of the finest corn
pulse, lucerne, oranges, &c.]
1851 (return) [ Gibbon has made eight cities: in Conde’s
translation Bigera does not appear.—M.]
186 (return) [ See the treaty in Arabic and Latin, in the
Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 105, 106. It is signed
the 4th of the month of Regeb, A. H. 94, the 5th of April, A.D.
713; a date which seems to prolong the resistance of Theodemir,
and the government of Musa.]
187 (return) [ From the history of Sandoval, p. 87. Fleury (Hist.
Eccles. tom. ix. p. 261) has given the substance of another
treaty concluded A Ae. C. 782, A.D. 734, between an Arabian chief
and the Goths and Romans, of the territory of Conimbra in
Portugal. The tax of the churches is fixed at twenty-five pounds
of gold; of the monasteries, fifty; of the cathedrals, one
hundred; the Christians are judged by their count, but in capital
cases he must consult the alcaide. The church doors must be shut,
and they must respect the name of Mahomet. I have not the
original before me; it would confirm or destroy a dark suspicion,
that the piece has been forged to introduce the immunity of a
neighboring convent.]
The exploits of Musa were performed in the evening of life,
though he affected to disguise his age by coloring with a red
powder the whiteness of his beard. But in the love of action and
glory, his breast was still fired with the ardor of youth; and
the possession of Spain was considered only as the first step to
the monarchy of Europe. With a powerful armament by sea and land,
he was preparing to repass the Pyrenees, to extinguish in Gaul
and Italy the declining kingdoms of the Franks and Lombards, and
to preach the unity of God on the altar of the Vatican. From
thence, subduing the Barbarians of Germany, he proposed to follow
the course of the Danube from its source to the Euxine Sea, to
overthrow the Greek or Roman empire of Constantinople, and
returning from Europe to Asia, to unite his new acquisitions with
Antioch and the provinces of Syria. 188 But his vast enterprise,
perhaps of easy execution, must have seemed extravagant to vulgar
minds; and the visionary conqueror was soon reminded of his
dependence and servitude. The friends of Tarik had effectually
stated his services and wrongs: at the court of Damascus, the
proceedings of Musa were blamed, his intentions were suspected,
and his delay in complying with the first invitation was
chastised by a harsher and more peremptory summons. An intrepid
messenger of the caliph entered his camp at Lugo in Gallicia, and
in the presence of the Saracens and Christians arrested the
bridle of his horse. His own loyalty, or that of his troops,
inculcated the duty of obedience: and his disgrace was alleviated
by the recall of his rival, and the permission of investing with
his two governments his two sons, Abdallah and Abdelaziz. His
long triumph from Ceuta to Damascus displayed the spoils of
Africa and the treasures of Spain: four hundred Gothic nobles,
with gold coronets and girdles, were distinguished in his train;
and the number of male and female captives, selected for their
birth or beauty, was computed at eighteen, or even at thirty,
thousand persons. As soon as he reached Tiberias in Palestine, he
was apprised of the sickness and danger of the caliph, by a
private message from Soliman, his brother and presumptive heir;
who wished to reserve for his own reign the spectacle of victory.
Had Walid recovered, the delay of Musa would have been criminal:
he pursued his march, and found an enemy on the throne. In his
trial before a partial judge against a popular antagonist, he was
convicted of vanity and falsehood; and a fine of two hundred
thousand pieces of gold either exhausted his poverty or proved
his rapaciousness. The unworthy treatment of Tarik was revenged
by a similar indignity; and the veteran commander, after a public
whipping, stood a whole day in the sun before the palace gate,
till he obtained a decent exile, under the pious name of a
pilgrimage to Mecca. The resentment of the caliph might have been
satiated with the ruin of Musa; but his fears demanded the
extirpation of a potent and injured family. A sentence of death
was intimated with secrecy and speed to the trusty servants of
the throne both in Africa and Spain; and the forms, if not the
substance, of justice were superseded in this bloody execution.
In the mosch or palace of Cordova, Abdelaziz was slain by the
swords of the conspirators; they accused their governor of
claiming the honors of royalty; and his scandalous marriage with
Egilona, the widow of Roderic, offended the prejudices both of
the Christians and Moslems. By a refinement of cruelty, the head
of the son was presented to the father, with an insulting
question, whether he acknowledged the features of the rebel? “I
know his features,” he exclaimed with indignation: “I assert his
innocence; and I imprecate the same, a juster fate, against the
authors of his death.” The age and despair of Musa raised him
above the power of kings; and he expired at Mecca of the anguish
of a broken heart. His rival was more favorably treated: his
services were forgiven; and Tarik was permitted to mingle with
the crowd of slaves. 189 I am ignorant whether Count Julian was
rewarded with the death which he deserved indeed, though not from
the hands of the Saracens; but the tale of their ingratitude to
the sons of Witiza is disproved by the most unquestionable
evidence. The two royal youths were reinstated in the private
patrimony of their father; but on the decease of Eba, the elder,
his daughter was unjustly despoiled of her portion by the
violence of her uncle Sigebut. The Gothic maid pleaded her cause
before the caliph Hashem, and obtained the restitution of her
inheritance; but she was given in marriage to a noble Arabian,
and their two sons, Isaac and Ibrahim, were received in Spain
with the consideration that was due to their origin and riches.
188 (return) [ This design, which is attested by several Arabian
historians, (Cardonne, tom. i. p. 95, 96,) may be compared with
that of Mithridates, to march from the Crimaea to Rome; or with
that of Caesar, to conquer the East, and return home by the
North; and all three are perhaps surpassed by the real and
successful enterprise of Hannibal.]
189 (return) [ I much regret our loss, or my ignorance, of two
Arabic works of the viiith century, a Life of Musa, and a poem on
the exploits of Tarik. Of these authentic pieces, the former was
composed by a grandson of Musa, who had escaped from the massacre
of his kindred; the latter, by the vizier of the first
Abdalrahman, caliph of Spain, who might have conversed with some
of the veterans of the conqueror, (Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom.
ii. p. 36, 139.)]
A province is assimilated to the victorious state by the
introduction of strangers and the imitative spirit of the
natives; and Spain, which had been successively tinctured with
Punic, and Roman, and Gothic blood, imbibed, in a few
generations, the name and manners of the Arabs. The first
conquerors, and the twenty successive lieutenants of the caliphs,
were attended by a numerous train of civil and military
followers, who preferred a distant fortune to a narrow home: the
private and public interest was promoted by the establishment of
faithful colonies; and the cities of Spain were proud to
commemorate the tribe or country of their Eastern progenitors.
The victorious though motley bands of Tarik and Musa asserted, by
the name of Spaniards, their original claim of conquest; yet they
allowed their brethren of Egypt to share their establishments of
Murcia and Lisbon. The royal legion of Damascus was planted at
Cordova; that of Emesa at Seville; that of Kinnisrin or Chalcis
at Jaen; that of Palestine at Algezire and Medina Sidonia. The
natives of Yemen and Persia were scattered round Toledo and the
inland country, and the fertile seats of Grenada were bestowed on
ten thousand horsemen of Syria and Irak, the children of the
purest and most noble of the Arabian tribes. 190 A spirit of
emulation, sometimes beneficial, more frequently dangerous, was
nourished by these hereditary factions. Ten years after the
conquest, a map of the province was presented to the caliph: the
seas, the rivers, and the harbors, the inhabitants and cities,
the climate, the soil, and the mineral productions of the earth.
191 In the space of two centuries, the gifts of nature were
improved by the agriculture, 192 the manufactures, and the
commerce, of an industrious people; and the effects of their
diligence have been magnified by the idleness of their fancy. The
first of the Ommiades who reigned in Spain solicited the support
of the Christians; and in his edict of peace and protection, he
contents himself with a modest imposition of ten thousand ounces
of gold, ten thousand pounds of silver, ten thousand horses, as
many mules, one thousand cuirasses, with an equal number of
helmets and lances. 193 The most powerful of his successors
derived from the same kingdom the annual tribute of twelve
millions and forty-five thousand dinars or pieces of gold, about
six millions of sterling money; 194 a sum which, in the tenth
century, most probably surpassed the united revenues of the
Christians monarchs. His royal seat of Cordova contained six
hundred moschs, nine hundred baths, and two hundred thousand
houses; he gave laws to eighty cities of the first, to three
hundred of the second and third order; and the fertile banks of
the Guadalquivir were adorned with twelve thousand villages and
hamlets. The Arabs might exaggerate the truth, but they created
and they describe the most prosperous aera of the riches, the
cultivation, and the populousness of Spain. 195
190 (return) [ Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. ii. p. 32, 252. The
former of these quotations is taken from a Biographia Hispanica,
by an Arabian of Valentia, (see the copious Extracts of Casiri,
tom. ii. p. 30-121;) and the latter from a general Chronology of
the Caliphs, and of the African and Spanish Dynasties, with a
particular History of the kingdom of Grenada, of which Casiri has
given almost an entire version, (Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom.
ii. p. 177-319.) The author, Ebn Khateb, a native of Grenada, and
a contemporary of Novairi and Abulfeda, (born A.D. 1313, died
A.D. 1374,) was an historian, geographer, physician, poet, &c.,
(tom. ii. p. 71, 72.)]
191 (return) [ Cardonne, Hist. de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne, tom.
i. p. 116, 117.]
192 (return) [ A copious treatise of husbandry, by an Arabian of
Seville, in the xiith century, is in the Escurial library, and
Casiri had some thoughts of translating it. He gives a list of
the authors quoted, Arabs as well as Greeks, Latins, &c.; but it
is much if the Andalusian saw these strangers through the medium
of his countryman Columella, (Casiri, Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana,
tom. i. p. 323-338.)]
193 (return) [ Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 104. Casiri
translates the original testimony of the historian Rasis, as it
is alleged in the Arabic Biographia Hispanica, pars ix. But I am
most exceedingly surprised at the address, Principibus
caeterisque Christianis, Hispanis suis Castellae. The name of
Castellae was unknown in the viiith century; the kingdom was not
erected till the year 1022, a hundred years after the time of
Rasis, (Bibliot. tom. ii. p. 330,) and the appellation was always
expressive, not of a tributary province, but of a line of castles
independent of the Moorish yoke, (D’Anville, Etats de l’Europe,
p. 166-170.) Had Casiri been a critic, he would have cleared a
difficulty, perhaps of his own making.]
194 (return) [ Cardonne, tom. i. p. 337, 338. He computes the
revenue at 130,000,000 of French livres. The entire picture of
peace and prosperity relieves the bloody uniformity of the
Moorish annals.]
195 (return) [ I am happy enough to possess a splendid and
interesting work which has only been distributed in presents by
the court of Madrid Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana Escurialensis,
opera et studio Michaelis Casiri, Syro Maronitoe. Matriti, in
folio, tomus prior, 1760, tomus posterior, 1770. The execution of
this work does honor to the Spanish press; the Mss., to the
number of MDCCCLI., are judiciously classed by the editor, and
his copious extracts throw some light on the Mahometan literature
and history of Spain. These relics are now secure, but the task
has been supinely delayed, till, in the year 1671, a fire
consumed the greatest part of the Escurial library, rich in the
spoils of Grenada and Morocco. * Note: Compare the valuable work
of Conde, Historia de la Dominacion de las Arabes en Espana.
Madrid, 1820.—M.]
The wars of the Moslems were sanctified by the prophet; but among
the various precepts and examples of his life, the caliphs
selected the lessons of toleration that might tend to disarm the
resistance of the unbelievers. Arabia was the temple and
patrimony of the God of Mahomet; but he beheld with less jealousy
and affection the nations of the earth. The polytheists and
idolaters, who were ignorant of his name, might be lawfully
extirpated by his votaries; 196 but a wise policy supplied the
obligation of justice; and after some acts of intolerant zeal,
the Mahometan conquerors of Hindostan have spared the pagodas of
that devout and populous country. The disciples of Abraham, of
Moses, and of Jesus, were solemnly invited to accept the more
perfect revelation of Mahomet; but if they preferred the payment
of a moderate tribute, they were entitled to the freedom of
conscience and religious worship. 197 In a field of battle the
forfeit lives of the prisoners were redeemed by the profession of
Islam; the females were bound to embrace the religion of their
masters, and a race of sincere proselytes was gradually
multiplied by the education of the infant captives. But the
millions of African and Asiatic converts, who swelled the native
band of the faithful Arabs, must have been allured, rather than
constrained, to declare their belief in one God and the apostle
of God. By the repetition of a sentence and the loss of a
foreskin, the subject or the slave, the captive or the criminal,
arose in a moment the free and equal companion of the victorious
Moslems. Every sin was expiated, every engagement was dissolved:
the vow of celibacy was superseded by the indulgence of nature;
the active spirits who slept in the cloister were awakened by the
trumpet of the Saracens; and in the convulsion of the world,
every member of a new society ascended to the natural level of
his capacity and courage. The minds of the multitude were tempted
by the invisible as well as temporal blessings of the Arabian
prophet; and charity will hope that many of his proselytes
entertained a serious conviction of the truth and sanctity of his
revelation. In the eyes of an inquisitive polytheist, it must
appear worthy of the human and the divine nature. More pure than
the system of Zoroaster, more liberal than the law of Moses, the
religion of Mahomet might seem less inconsistent with reason than
the creed of mystery and superstition, which, in the seventh
century, disgraced the simplicity of the gospel.
196 (return) [ The Harbii, as they are styled, qui tolerari
nequeunt, are, 1. Those who, besides God, worship the sun, moon,
or idols. 2. Atheists, Utrique, quamdiu princeps aliquis inter
Mohammedanos superest, oppugnari debent donec religionem
amplectantur, nec requies iis concedenda est, nec pretium
acceptandum pro obtinenda conscientiae libertate, (Reland,
Dissertat. x. de Jure Militari Mohammedan. tom. iii. p. 14;) a
rigid theory!]
197 (return) [ The distinction between a proscribed and a
tolerated sect, between the Harbii and the people of the Book,
the believers in some divine revelation, is correctly defined in
the conversation of the caliph Al Mamum with the idolaters or
Sabaeans of Charrae, (Hottinger, Hist. Orient. p. 107, 108.)]
In the extensive provinces of Persia and Africa, the national
religion has been eradicated by the Mahometan faith. The
ambiguous theology of the Magi stood alone among the sects of the
East; but the profane writings of Zoroaster 198 might, under the
reverend name of Abraham, be dexterously connected with the chain
of divine revelation. Their evil principle, the daemon Ahriman,
might be represented as the rival, or as the creature, of the God
of light. The temples of Persia were devoid of images; but the
worship of the sun and of fire might be stigmatized as a gross
and criminal idolatry. 199 The milder sentiment was consecrated
by the practice of Mahomet 200 and the prudence of the caliphs;
the Magians or Ghebers were ranked with the Jews and Christians
among the people of the written law; 201 and as late as the third
century of the Hegira, the city of Herat will afford a lively
contrast of private zeal and public toleration. 202 Under the
payment of an annual tribute, the Mahometan law secured to the
Ghebers of Herat their civil and religious liberties: but the
recent and humble mosch was overshadowed by the antique splendor
of the adjoining temple of fire. A fanatic Imam deplored, in his
sermons, the scandalous neighborhood, and accused the weakness or
indifference of the faithful. Excited by his voice, the people
assembled in tumult; the two houses of prayer were consumed by
the flames, but the vacant ground was immediately occupied by the
foundations of a new mosch. The injured Magi appealed to the
sovereign of Chorasan; he promised justice and relief; when,
behold! four thousand citizens of Herat, of a grave character and
mature age, unanimously swore that the idolatrous fane had never
existed; the inquisition was silenced and their conscience was
satisfied (says the historian Mirchond 203 with this holy and
meritorious perjury. 204 But the greatest part of the temples of
Persia were ruined by the insensible and general desertion of
their votaries.
It was insensible, since it is not accompanied with any memorial
of time or place, of persecution or resistance. It was general,
since the whole realm, from Shiraz to Samarcand, imbibed the
faith of the Koran; and the preservation of the native tongue
reveals the descent of the Mahometans of Persia. 205 In the
mountains and deserts, an obstinate race of unbelievers adhered
to the superstition of their fathers; and a faint tradition of
the Magian theology is kept alive in the province of Kirman,
along the banks of the Indus, among the exiles of Surat, and in
the colony which, in the last century, was planted by Shaw Abbas
at the gates of Ispahan. The chief pontiff has retired to Mount
Elbourz, eighteen leagues from the city of Yezd: the perpetual
fire (if it continues to burn) is inaccessible to the profane;
but his residence is the school, the oracle, and the pilgrimage
of the Ghebers, whose hard and uniform features attest the
unmingled purity of their blood. Under the jurisdiction of their
elders, eighty thousand families maintain an innocent and
industrious life: their subsistence is derived from some curious
manufactures and mechanic trades; and they cultivate the earth
with the fervor of a religious duty. Their ignorance withstood
the despotism of Shaw Abbas, who demanded with threats and
tortures the prophetic books of Zoroaster; and this obscure
remnant of the Magians is spared by the moderation or contempt of
their present sovereigns. 206
198 (return) [ The Zend or Pazend, the bible of the Ghebers, is
reckoned by themselves, or at least by the Mahometans, among the
ten books which Abraham received from heaven; and their religion
is honorably styled the religion of Abraham, (D’Herblot, Bibliot.
Orient. p. 701; Hyde, de Religione veterum Persarum, c, iii. p.
27, 28, &c.) I much fear that we do not possess any pure and free
description of the system of Zoroaster. 1981 Dr. Prideaux
(Connection, vol. i. p. 300, octavo) adopts the opinion, that he
had been the slave and scholar of some Jewish prophet in the
captivity of Babylon. Perhaps the Persians, who have been the
masters of the Jews, would assert the honor, a poor honor, of
being their masters.]
1981 (return) [ Whatever the real age of the Zendavesta,
published by Anquetil du Perron, whether of the time of Ardeschir
Babeghan, according to Mr. Erskine, or of much higher antiquity,
it may be considered, I conceive, both a “pure and a free,”
though imperfect, description of Zoroastrianism; particularly
with the illustrations of the original translator, and of the
German Kleuker—M.]
199 (return) [ The Arabian Nights, a faithful and amusing picture
of the Oriental world, represent in the most odious colors of the
Magians, or worshippers of fire, to whom they attribute the
annual sacrifice of a Mussulman. The religion of Zoroaster has
not the least affinity with that of the Hindoos, yet they are
often confounded by the Mahometans; and the sword of Timour was
sharpened by this mistake, (Hist. de Timour Bec, par Cherefeddin
Ali Yezdi, l. v.)]
200 (return) [ Vie de Mahomet, par Gagnier, (tom. iii. p. 114,
115.)]
201 (return) [ Hae tres sectae, Judaei, Christiani, et qui inter
Persas Magorum institutis addicti sunt, populi libri dicuntur,
(Reland, Dissertat. tom. iii. p. 15.) The caliph Al Mamun
confirms this honorable distinction in favor of the three sects,
with the vague and equivocal religion of the Sabaeans, under
which the ancient polytheists of Charrae were allowed to shelter
their idolatrous worship, (Hottinger, Hist. Orient p. 167, 168.)]
202 (return) [ This singular story is related by D’Herbelot,
(Bibliot. Orient. p 448, 449,) on the faith of Khondemir, and by
Mirchond himself, (Hist priorum Regum Persarum, &c., p. 9, 10,
not. p. 88, 89.)]
203 (return) [ Mirchond, (Mohammed Emir Khoondah Shah,) a native
of Herat, composed in the Persian language a general history of
the East, from the creation to the year of the Hegira 875, (A.D.
1471.) In the year 904 (A.D. 1498) the historian obtained the
command of a princely library, and his applauded work, in seven
or twelve parts, was abbreviated in three volumes by his son
Khondemir, A. H. 927, A.D. 1520. The two writers, most accurately
distinguished by Petit de la Croix, (Hist. de Genghizcan, p.537,
538, 544, 545,) are loosely confounded by D’Herbelot, (p. 358,
410, 994, 995: ) but his numerous extracts, under the improper
name of Khondemir, belong to the father rather than the son. The
historian of Genghizcan refers to a Ms. of Mirchond, which he
received from the hands of his friend D’Herbelot himself. A
curious fragment (the Taherian and Soffarian Dynasties) has been
lately published in Persic and Latin, (Viennae, 1782, in 4to.,
cum notis Bernard de Jenisch;) and the editor allows us to hope
for a continuation of Mirchond.]
204 (return) [ Quo testimonio boni se quidpiam praestitisse
opinabantur. Yet Mirchond must have condemned their zeal, since
he approved the legal toleration of the Magi, cui (the fire
temple) peracto singulis annis censu uti sacra Mohammedis lege
cautum, ab omnibus molestiis ac oneribus libero esse licuit.]
205 (return) [ The last Magian of name and power appears to be
Mardavige the Dilemite, who, in the beginning of the 10th
century, reigned in the northern provinces of Persia, near the
Caspian Sea, (D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 355.) But his
soldiers and successors, the Bowides either professed or embraced
the Mahometan faith; and under their dynasty (A.D. 933-1020) I
should say the fall of the religion of Zoroaster.]
206 (return) [ The present state of the Ghebers in Persia is
taken from Sir John Chardin, not indeed the most learned, but the
most judicious and inquisitive of our modern travellers, (Voyages
en Perse, tom. ii. p. 109, 179-187, in 4to.) His brethren, Pietro
della Valle, Olearius, Thevenot, Tavernier, &c., whom I have
fruitlessly searched, had neither eyes nor attention for this
interesting people.]
The Northern coast of Africa is the only land in which the light
of the gospel, after a long and perfect establishment, has been
totally extinguished. The arts, which had been taught by Carthage
and Rome, were involved in a cloud of ignorance; the doctrine of
Cyprian and Augustin was no longer studied. Five hundred
episcopal churches were overturned by the hostile fury of the
Donatists, the Vandals, and the Moors. The zeal and numbers of
the clergy declined; and the people, without discipline, or
knowledge, or hope, submissively sunk under the yoke of the
Arabian prophet. Within fifty years after the expulsion of the
Greeks, a lieutenant of Africa informed the caliph that the
tribute of the infidels was abolished by their conversion; 207
and, though he sought to disguise his fraud and rebellion, his
specious pretence was drawn from the rapid and extensive progress
of the Mahometan faith. In the next age, an extraordinary mission
of five bishops was detached from Alexandria to Cairoan. They
were ordained by the Jacobite patriarch to cherish and revive the
dying embers of Christianity: 208 but the interposition of a
foreign prelate, a stranger to the Latins, an enemy to the
Catholics, supposes the decay and dissolution of the African
hierarchy. It was no longer the time when the successor of St.
Cyprian, at the head of a numerous synod, could maintain an equal
contest with the ambition of the Roman pontiff. In the eleventh
century, the unfortunate priest who was seated on the ruins of
Carthage implored the arms and the protection of the Vatican; and
he bitterly complains that his naked body had been scourged by
the Saracens, and that his authority was disputed by the four
suffragans, the tottering pillars of his throne. Two epistles of
Gregory the Seventh 209 are destined to soothe the distress of
the Catholics and the pride of a Moorish prince. The pope assures
the sultan that they both worship the same God, and may hope to
meet in the bosom of Abraham; but the complaint that three
bishops could no longer be found to consecrate a brother,
announces the speedy and inevitable ruin of the episcopal order.
The Christians of Africa and Spain had long since submitted to
the practice of circumcision and the legal abstinence from wine
and pork; and the name of Mozarabes 210 (adoptive Arabs) was
applied to their civil or religious conformity. 211 About the
middle of the twelfth century, the worship of Christ and the
succession of pastors were abolished along the coast of Barbary,
and in the kingdoms of Cordova and Seville, of Valencia and
Grenada. 212 The throne of the Almohades, or Unitarians, was
founded on the blindest fanaticism, and their extraordinary rigor
might be provoked or justified by the recent victories and
intolerant zeal of the princes of Sicily and Castille, of Arragon
and Portugal. The faith of the Mozarabes was occasionally revived
by the papal missionaries; and, on the landing of Charles the
Fifth, some families of Latin Christians were encouraged to rear
their heads at Tunis and Algiers. But the seed of the gospel was
quickly eradicated, and the long province from Tripoli to the
Atlantic has lost all memory of the language and religion of
Rome. 213
207 (return) [ The letter of Abdoulrahman, governor or tyrant of
Africa, to the caliph Aboul Abbas, the first of the Abbassides,
is dated A. H. 132 Cardonne, (Hist. de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne,
tom. i. p. 168.)]
208 (return) [ Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 66. Renaudot, Hist.
Patriarch. Alex. p. 287, 288.]
209 (return) [ Among the Epistles of the Popes, see Leo IX.
epist. 3; Gregor. VII. l. i. epist. 22, 23, l. iii. epist. 19,
20, 21; and the criticisms of Pagi, (tom. iv. A.D. 1053, No. 14,
A.D. 1073, No. 13,) who investigates the name and family of the
Moorish prince, with whom the proudest of the Roman pontiffs so
politely corresponds.]
210 (return) [ Mozarabes, or Mostarabes, adscititii, as it is
interpreted in Latin, (Pocock, Specimen Hist. Arabum, p. 39, 40.
Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. ii. p. 18.) The Mozarabic liturgy,
the ancient ritual of the church of Toledo, has been attacked by
the popes, and exposed to the doubtful trials of the sword and of
fire, (Marian. Hist. Hispan. tom. i. l. ix. c. 18, p. 378.) It
was, or rather it is, in the Latin tongue; yet in the xith
century it was found necessary (A. Ae. C. 1687, A.D. 1039) to
transcribe an Arabic version of the canons of the councils of
Spain, (Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 547,) for the use of the
bishops and clergy in the Moorish kingdoms.]
211 (return) [ About the middle of the xth century, the clergy of
Cordova was reproached with this criminal compliance, by the
intrepid envoy of the Emperor Otho I., (Vit. Johan. Gorz, in
Secul. Benedict. V. No. 115, apud Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xii.
p. 91.)]
212 (return) [ Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. A.D. 1149, No. 8, 9. He
justly observes, that when Seville, &c., were retaken by
Ferdinand of Castille, no Christians, except captives, were found
in the place; and that the Mozarabic churches of Africa and
Spain, described by James a Vitriaco, A.D. 1218, (Hist. Hierosol.
c. 80, p. 1095, in Gest. Dei per Francos,) are copied from some
older book. I shall add, that the date of the Hegira 677 (A.D.
1278) must apply to the copy, not the composition, of a treatise
of a jurisprudence, which states the civil rights of the
Christians of Cordova, (Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 471;) and
that the Jews were the only dissenters whom Abul Waled, king of
Grenada, (A.D. 1313,) could either discountenance or tolerate,
(tom. ii. p. 288.)]
213 (return) [ Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 288. Leo
Africanus would have flattered his Roman masters, could he have
discovered any latent relics of the Christianity of Africa.]
After the revolution of eleven centuries, the Jews and Christians
of the Turkish empire enjoy the liberty of conscience which was
granted by the Arabian caliphs. During the first age of the
conquest, they suspected the loyalty of the Catholics, whose name
of Melchites betrayed their secret attachment to the Greek
emperor, while the Nestorians and Jacobites, his inveterate
enemies, approved themselves the sincere and voluntary friends of
the Mahometan government. 214 Yet this partial jealousy was
healed by time and submission; the churches of Egypt were shared
with the Catholics; 215 and all the Oriental sects were included
in the common benefits of toleration. The rank, the immunities,
the domestic jurisdiction of the patriarchs, the bishops, and the
clergy, were protected by the civil magistrate: the learning of
individuals recommended them to the employments of secretaries
and physicians: they were enriched by the lucrative collection of
the revenue; and their merit was sometimes raised to the command
of cities and provinces. A caliph of the house of Abbas was heard
to declare that the Christians were most worthy of trust in the
administration of Persia. “The Moslems,” said he, “will abuse
their present fortune; the Magians regret their fallen greatness;
and the Jews are impatient for their approaching deliverance.”
216 But the slaves of despotism are exposed to the alternatives
of favor and disgrace. The captive churches of the East have been
afflicted in every age by the avarice or bigotry of their rulers;
and the ordinary and legal restraints must be offensive to the
pride, or the zeal, of the Christians. 217 About two hundred
years after Mahomet, they were separated from their
fellow-subjects by a turban or girdle of a less honorable color;
instead of horses or mules. they were condemned to ride on asses,
in the attitude of women. Their public and private building were
measured by a diminutive standard; in the streets or the baths it
is their duty to give way or bow down before the meanest of the
people; and their testimony is rejected, if it may tend to the
prejudice of a true believer. The pomp of processions, the sound
of bells or of psalmody, is interdicted in their worship; a
decent reverence for the national faith is imposed on their
sermons and conversations; and the sacrilegious attempt to enter
a mosch, or to seduce a Mussulman, will not be suffered to escape
with impunity. In a time, however, of tranquillity and justice,
the Christians have never been compelled to renounce the Gospel,
or to embrace the Koran; but the punishment of death is inflicted
upon the apostates who have professed and deserted the law of
Mahomet. The martyrs of Cordova provoked the sentence of the
cadhi, by the public confession of their inconstancy, or their
passionate invectives against the person and religion of the
prophet. 218
214 (return) [ Absit (said the Catholic to the vizier of Bagdad)
ut pari loco habeas Nestorianos, quorum praeter Arabas nullus
alius rex est, et Graecos quorum reges amovendo Arabibus bello
non desistunt, &c. See in the Collections of Assemannus (Bibliot.
Orient. tom. iv. p. 94-101) the state of the Nestorians under the
caliphs. That of the Jacobites is more concisely exposed in the
Preliminary Dissertation of the second volume of Assemannus.]
215 (return) [ Eutych. Annal. tom. ii. p. 384, 387, 388.
Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 205, 206, 257, 332. A taint
of the Monothelite heresy might render the first of these Greek
patriarchs less loyal to the emperors and less obnoxious to the
Arabs.]
216 (return) [ Motadhed, who reigned from A.D. 892 to 902. The
Magians still held their name and rank among the religions of the
empire, (Assemanni, Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 97.)]
217 (return) [ Reland explains the general restraints of the
Mahometan policy and jurisprudence, (Dissertat. tom. iii. p.
16-20.) The oppressive edicts of the caliph Motawakkel, (A.D.
847-861,) which are still in force, are noticed by Eutychius,
(Annal. tom. ii. p. 448,) and D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p.
640.) A persecution of the caliph Omar II. is related, and most
probably magnified, by the Greek Theophanes (Chron p. 334.)]
218 (return) [ The martyrs of Cordova (A.D. 850, &c.) are
commemorated and justified by St. Eulogius, who at length fell a
victim himself. A synod, convened by the caliph, ambiguously
censured their rashness. The moderate Fleury cannot reconcile
their conduct with the discipline of antiquity, toutefois
l’autorite de l’eglise, &c. (Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. x. p.
415-522, particularly p. 451, 508, 509.) Their authentic acts
throw a strong, though transient, light on the Spanish church in
the ixth century.]
At the end of the first century of the Hegira, the caliphs were
the most potent and absolute monarchs of the globe. Their
prerogative was not circumscribed, either in right or in fact, by
the power of the nobles, the freedom of the commons, the
privileges of the church, the votes of a senate, or the memory of
a free constitution. The authority of the companions of Mahomet
expired with their lives; and the chiefs or emirs of the Arabian
tribes left behind, in the desert, the spirit of equality and
independence. The regal and sacerdotal characters were united in
the successors of Mahomet; and if the Koran was the rule of their
actions, they were the supreme judges and interpreters of that
divine book. They reigned by the right of conquest over the
nations of the East, to whom the name of liberty was unknown, and
who were accustomed to applaud in their tyrants the acts of
violence and severity that were exercised at their own expense.
Under the last of the Ommiades, the Arabian empire extended two
hundred days’ journey from east to west, from the confines of
Tartary and India to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. And if we
retrench the sleeve of the robe, as it is styled by their
writers, the long and narrow province of Africa, the solid and
compact dominion from Fargana to Aden, from Tarsus to Surat, will
spread on every side to the measure of four or five months of the
march of a caravan. 219 We should vainly seek the indissoluble
union and easy obedience that pervaded the government of Augustus
and the Antonines; but the progress of the Mahometan religion
diffused over this ample space a general resemblance of manners
and opinions. The language and laws of the Koran were studied
with equal devotion at Samarcand and Seville: the Moor and the
Indian embraced as countrymen and brothers in the pilgrimage of
Mecca; and the Arabian language was adopted as the popular idiom
in all the provinces to the westward of the Tigris. 220
219 (return) [ See the article Eslamiah, (as we say Christendom,)
in the Bibliotheque Orientale, (p. 325.) This chart of the
Mahometan world is suited by the author, Ebn Alwardi, to the year
of the Hegira 385 (A.D. 995.) Since that time, the losses in
Spain have been overbalanced by the conquests in India, Tartary,
and the European Turkey.]
220 (return) [ The Arabic of the Koran is taught as a dead
language in the college of Mecca. By the Danish traveller, this
ancient idiom is compared to the Latin; the vulgar tongue of
Hejaz and Yemen to the Italian; and the Arabian dialects of
Syria, Egypt, Africa, &c., to the Provencal, Spanish, and
Portuguese, (Niebuhr, Description de l’Arabie, p. 74, &c.)]
Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part I.
The Two Sieges Of Constantinople By The Arabs.—Their Invasion Of
France, And Defeat By Charles Martel.—Civil War Of The Ommiades
And Abbassides.—Learning Of The Arabs.— Luxury Of The
Caliphs.—Naval Enterprises On Crete, Sicily, And Rome.—Decay And
Division Of The Empire Of The Caliphs. —Defeats And Victories Of
The Greek Emperors.
When the Arabs first issued from the desert, they must have been
surprised at the ease and rapidity of their own success. But when
they advanced in the career of victory to the banks of the Indus
and the summit of the Pyrenees; when they had repeatedly tried
the edge of their cimeters and the energy of their faith, they
might be equally astonished that any nation could resist their
invincible arms; that any boundary should confine the dominion of
the successor of the prophet. The confidence of soldiers and
fanatics may indeed be excused, since the calm historian of the
present hour, who strives to follow the rapid course of the
Saracens, must study to explain by what means the church and
state were saved from this impending, and, as it should seem,
from this inevitable, danger. The deserts of Scythia and Sarmatia
might be guarded by their extent, their climate, their poverty,
and the courage of the northern shepherds; China was remote and
inaccessible; but the greatest part of the temperate zone was
subject to the Mahometan conquerors, the Greeks were exhausted by
the calamities of war and the loss of their fairest provinces,
and the Barbarians of Europe might justly tremble at the
precipitate fall of the Gothic monarchy. In this inquiry I shall
unfold the events that rescued our ancestors of Britain, and our
neighbors of Gaul, from the civil and religious yoke of the
Koran; that protected the majesty of Rome, and delayed the
servitude of Constantinople; that invigorated the defence of the
Christians, and scattered among their enemies the seeds of
division and decay.
Forty-six years after the flight of Mahomet from Mecca, his
disciples appeared in arms under the walls of Constantinople. 1
They were animated by a genuine or fictitious saying of the
prophet, that, to the first army which besieged the city of the
Caesars, their sins were forgiven: the long series of Roman
triumphs would be meritoriously transferred to the conquerors of
New Rome; and the wealth of nations was deposited in this
well-chosen seat of royalty and commerce. No sooner had the
caliph Moawiyah suppressed his rivals and established his throne,
than he aspired to expiate the guilt of civil blood, by the
success and glory of this holy expedition; 2 his preparations by
sea and land were adequate to the importance of the object; his
standard was intrusted to Sophian, a veteran warrior, but the
troops were encouraged by the example and presence of Yezid, the
son and presumptive heir of the commander of the faithful. The
Greeks had little to hope, nor had their enemies any reason of
fear, from the courage and vigilance of the reigning emperor, who
disgraced the name of Constantine, and imitated only the
inglorious years of his grandfather Heraclius. Without delay or
opposition, the naval forces of the Saracens passed through the
unguarded channel of the Hellespont, which even now, under the
feeble and disorderly government of the Turks, is maintained as
the natural bulwark of the capital. 3 The Arabian fleet cast
anchor, and the troops were disembarked near the palace of
Hebdomon, seven miles from the city. During many days, from the
dawn of light to the evening, the line of assault was extended
from the golden gate to the eastern promontory and the foremost
warriors were impelled by the weight and effort of the succeeding
columns. But the besiegers had formed an insufficient estimate of
the strength and resources of Constantinople. The solid and lofty
walls were guarded by numbers and discipline: the spirit of the
Romans was rekindled by the last danger of their religion and
empire: the fugitives from the conquered provinces more
successfully renewed the defence of Damascus and Alexandria; and
the Saracens were dismayed by the strange and prodigious effects
of artificial fire. This firm and effectual resistance diverted
their arms to the more easy attempt of plundering the European
and Asiatic coasts of the Propontis; and, after keeping the sea
from the month of April to that of September, on the approach of
winter they retreated fourscore miles from the capital, to the
Isle of Cyzicus, in which they had established their magazine of
spoil and provisions. So patient was their perseverance, or so
languid were their operations, that they repeated in the six
following summers the same attack and retreat, with a gradual
abatement of hope and vigor, till the mischances of shipwreck and
disease, of the sword and of fire, compelled them to relinquish
the fruitless enterprise. They might bewail the loss, or
commemorate the martyrdom, of thirty thousand Moslems, who fell
in the siege of Constantinople; and the solemn funeral of Abu
Ayub, or Job, excited the curiosity of the Christians themselves.
That venerable Arab, one of the last of the companions of
Mahomet, was numbered among the ansars, or auxiliaries, of
Medina, who sheltered the head of the flying prophet. In his
youth he fought, at Beder and Ohud, under the holy standard: in
his mature age he was the friend and follower of Ali; and the
last remnant of his strength and life was consumed in a distant
and dangerous war against the enemies of the Koran. His memory
was revered; but the place of his burial was neglected and
unknown, during a period of seven hundred and eighty years, till
the conquest of Constantinople by Mahomet the Second. A
seasonable vision (for such are the manufacture of every
religion) revealed the holy spot at the foot of the walls and the
bottom of the harbor; and the mosch of Ayub has been deservedly
chosen for the simple and martial inauguration of the Turkish
sultans. 4
1 (return) [ Theophanes places the seven years of the siege of
Constantinople in the year of our Christian aera, 673 (of the
Alexandrian 665, Sept. 1,) and the peace of the Saracens, four
years afterwards; a glaring inconsistency! which Petavius, Goar,
and Pagi, (Critica, tom. iv. p. 63, 64,) have struggled to
remove. Of the Arabians, the Hegira 52 (A.D. 672, January 8) is
assigned by Elmacin, the year 48 (A.D. 688, Feb. 20) by Abulfeda,
whose testimony I esteem the most convenient and credible.]
2 (return) [ For this first siege of Constantinople, see
Nicephorus, (Breviar. p. 21, 22;) Theophanes, (Chronograph. p.
294;) Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 437;) Zonaras, (Hist. tom. ii. l.
xiv. p. 89;) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 56, 57;) Abulfeda,
(Annal. Moslem. p. 107, 108, vers. Reiske;) D’Herbelot, (Bibliot.
Orient. Constantinah;) Ockley’s History of the Saracens, vol. ii.
p. 127, 128.]
3 (return) [ The state and defence of the Dardanelles is exposed
in the Memoirs of the Baron de Tott, (tom. iii. p. 39-97,) who
was sent to fortify them against the Russians. From a principal
actor, I should have expected more accurate details; but he seems
to write for the amusement, rather than the instruction, of his
reader. Perhaps, on the approach of the enemy, the minister of
Constantine was occupied, like that of Mustapha, in finding two
Canary birds who should sing precisely the same note.]
4 (return) [ Demetrius Cantemir’s Hist. of the Othman Empire, p.
105, 106. Rycaut’s State of the Ottoman Empire, p. 10, 11.
Voyages of Thevenot, part i. p. 189. The Christians, who suppose
that the martyr Abu Ayub is vulgarly confounded with the
patriarch Job, betray their own ignorance rather than that of the
Turks.]
The event of the siege revived, both in the East and West, the
reputation of the Roman arms, and cast a momentary shade over the
glories of the Saracens. The Greek ambassador was favorably
received at Damascus, a general council of the emirs or Koreish:
a peace, or truce, of thirty years was ratified between the two
empires; and the stipulation of an annual tribute, fifty horses
of a noble breed, fifty slaves, and three thousand pieces of
gold, degraded the majesty of the commander of the faithful. 5
The aged caliph was desirous of possessing his dominions, and
ending his days in tranquillity and repose: while the Moors and
Indians trembled at his name, his palace and city of Damascus was
insulted by the Mardaites, or Maronites, of Mount Libanus, the
firmest barrier of the empire, till they were disarmed and
transplanted by the suspicious policy of the Greeks. 6 After the
revolt of Arabia and Persia, the house of Ommiyah was reduced to
the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt: their distress and fear enforced
their compliance with the pressing demands of the Christians; and
the tribute was increased to a slave, a horse, and a thousand
pieces of gold, for each of the three hundred and sixty-five days
of the solar year. But as soon as the empire was again united by
the arms and policy of Abdalmalek, he disclaimed a badge of
servitude not less injurious to his conscience than to his pride;
he discontinued the payment of the tribute; and the resentment of
the Greeks was disabled from action by the mad tyranny of the
second Justinian, the just rebellion of his subjects, and the
frequent change of his antagonists and successors. 7 Till the
reign of Abdalmalek, the Saracens had been content with the free
possession of the Persian and Roman treasures, in the coins of
Chosroes and Caesar. By the command of that caliph, a national
mint was established, both for silver and gold, and the
inscription of the Dinar, though it might be censured by some
timorous casuists, proclaimed the unity of the God of Mahomet. 8
Under the reign of the caliph Walid, the Greek language and
characters were excluded from the accounts of the public revenue.
9 If this change was productive of the invention or familiar use
of our present numerals, the Arabic or Indian ciphers, as they
are commonly styled, a regulation of office has promoted the most
important discoveries of arithmetic, algebra, and the
mathematical sciences. 10
5 (return) [ Theophanes, though a Greek, deserves credit for
these tributes, (Chronograph. p. 295, 296, 300, 301,) which are
confirmed, with some variation, by the Arabic History of
Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 128, vers. Pocock.)]
6 (return) [ The censure of Theophanes is just and pointed,
(Chronograph. p. 302, 303.) The series of these events may be
traced in the Annals of Theophanes, and in the Abridgment of the
patriarch Nicephorus, p. 22, 24.]
7 (return) [ These domestic revolutions are related in a clear
and natural style, in the second volume of Ockley’s History of
the Saracens, p. 253-370. Besides our printed authors, he draws
his materials from the Arabic Mss. of Oxford, which he would have
more deeply searched had he been confined to the Bodleian library
instead of the city jail a fate how unworthy of the man and of
his country!]
8 (return) [ Elmacin, who dates the first coinage A. H. 76, A.D.
695, five or six years later than the Greek historians, has
compared the weight of the best or common gold dinar to the
drachm or dirhem of Egypt, (p. 77,) which may be equal to two
pennies (48 grains) of our Troy weight, (Hooper’s Inquiry into
Ancient Measures, p. 24-36,) and equivalent to eight shillings of
our sterling money. From the same Elmacin and the Arabian
physicians, some dinars as high as two dirhems, as low as half a
dirhem, may be deduced. The piece of silver was the dirhem, both
in value and weight; but an old, though fair coin, struck at
Waset, A. H. 88, and preserved in the Bodleian library, wants
four grains of the Cairo standard, (see the Modern Universal
History, tom. i. p. 548 of the French translation.) * Note: Up to
this time the Arabs had used the Roman or the Persian coins or
had minted others which resembled them. Nevertheless, it has been
admitted of late years, that the Arabians, before this epoch, had
caused coin to be minted, on which, preserving the Roman or the
Persian dies, they added Arabian names or inscriptions. Some of
these exist in different collections. We learn from Makrizi, an
Arabian author of great learning and judgment, that in the year
18 of the Hegira, under the caliphate of Omar, the Arabs had
coined money of this description. The same author informs us that
the caliph Abdalmalek caused coins to be struck representing
himself with a sword by his side. These types, so contrary to the
notions of the Arabs, were disapproved by the most influential
persons of the time, and the caliph substituted for them, after
the year 76 of the Hegira, the Mahometan coins with which we are
acquainted. Consult, on the question of Arabic numismatics, the
works of Adler, of Fraehn, of Castiglione, and of Marsden, who
have treated at length this interesting point of historic
antiquities. See, also, in the Journal Asiatique, tom. ii. p.
257, et seq., a paper of M. Silvestre de Sacy, entitled Des
Monnaies des Khalifes avant l’An 75 de l’Hegire. See, also the
translation of a German paper on the Arabic medals of the
Chosroes, by M. Fraehn. in the same Journal Asiatique tom. iv. p.
331-347. St. Martin, vol. xii. p. 19, —M.]
9 (return) [ Theophan. Chronograph. p. 314. This defect, if it
really existed, must have stimulated the ingenuity of the Arabs
to invent or borrow.]
10 (return) [ According to a new, though probable, notion,
maintained by M de Villoison, (Anecdota Graeca, tom. ii. p.
152-157,) our ciphers are not of Indian or Arabic invention. They
were used by the Greek and Latin arithmeticians long before the
age of Boethius. After the extinction of science in the West,
they were adopted by the Arabic versions from the original Mss.,
and restored to the Latins about the xith century. * Note:
Compare, on the Introduction of the Arabic numerals, Hallam’s
Introduction to the Literature of Europe, p. 150, note, and the
authors quoted therein.—M.]
Whilst the caliph Walid sat idle on the throne of Damascus,
whilst his lieutenants achieved the conquest of Transoxiana and
Spain, a third army of Saracens overspread the provinces of Asia
Minor, and approached the borders of the Byzantine capital. But
the attempt and disgrace of the second siege was reserved for his
brother Soliman, whose ambition appears to have been quickened by
a more active and martial spirit. In the revolutions of the Greek
empire, after the tyrant Justinian had been punished and avenged,
an humble secretary, Anastasius or Artemius, was promoted by
chance or merit to the vacant purple. He was alarmed by the sound
of war; and his ambassador returned from Damascus with the
tremendous news, that the Saracens were preparing an armament by
sea and land, such as would transcend the experience of the past,
or the belief of the present age. The precautions of Anastasius
were not unworthy of his station, or of the impending danger. He
issued a peremptory mandate, that all persons who were not
provided with the means of subsistence for a three years’ siege
should evacuate the city: the public granaries and arsenals were
abundantly replenished; the walls were restored and strengthened;
and the engines for casting stones, or darts, or fire, were
stationed along the ramparts, or in the brigantines of war, of
which an additional number was hastily constructed. To prevent is
safer, as well as more honorable, than to repel, an attack; and a
design was meditated, above the usual spirit of the Greeks, of
burning the naval stores of the enemy, the cypress timber that
had been hewn in Mount Libanus, and was piled along the sea-shore
of Phoenicia, for the service of the Egyptian fleet. This
generous enterprise was defeated by the cowardice or treachery of
the troops, who, in the new language of the empire, were styled
of the Obsequian Theme. 11 They murdered their chief, deserted
their standard in the Isle of Rhodes, dispersed themselves over
the adjacent continent, and deserved pardon or reward by
investing with the purple a simple officer of the revenue. The
name of Theodosius might recommend him to the senate and people;
but, after some months, he sunk into a cloister, and resigned, to
the firmer hand of Leo the Isaurian, the urgent defence of the
capital and empire. The most formidable of the Saracens,
Moslemah, the brother of the caliph, was advancing at the head of
one hundred and twenty thousand Arabs and Persians, the greater
part mounted on horses or camels; and the successful sieges of
Tyana, Amorium, and Pergamus, were of sufficient duration to
exercise their skill and to elevate their hopes. At the
well-known passage of Abydus, on the Hellespont, the Mahometan
arms were transported, for the first time, 1111 from Asia to
Europe. From thence, wheeling round the Thracian cities of the
Propontis, Moslemah invested Constantinople on the land side,
surrounded his camp with a ditch and rampart, prepared and
planted his engines of assault, and declared, by words and
actions, a patient resolution of expecting the return of
seed-time and harvest, should the obstinacy of the besieged prove
equal to his own. 1112 The Greeks would gladly have ransomed
their religion and empire, by a fine or assessment of a piece of
gold on the head of each inhabitant of the city; but the liberal
offer was rejected with disdain, and the presumption of Moslemah
was exalted by the speedy approach and invincible force of the
natives of Egypt and Syria. They are said to have amounted to
eighteen hundred ships: the number betrays their inconsiderable
size; and of the twenty stout and capacious vessels, whose
magnitude impeded their progress, each was manned with no more
than one hundred heavy-armed soldiers. This huge armada proceeded
on a smooth sea, and with a gentle gale, towards the mouth of the
Bosphorus; the surface of the strait was overshadowed, in the
language of the Greeks, with a moving forest, and the same fatal
night had been fixed by the Saracen chief for a general assault
by sea and land. To allure the confidence of the enemy, the
emperor had thrown aside the chain that usually guarded the
entrance of the harbor; but while they hesitated whether they
should seize the opportunity, or apprehend the snare, the
ministers of destruction were at hand. The fire-ships of the
Greeks were launched against them; the Arabs, their arms, and
vessels, were involved in the same flames; the disorderly
fugitives were dashed against each other or overwhelmed in the
waves; and I no longer find a vestige of the fleet, that had
threatened to extirpate the Roman name. A still more fatal and
irreparable loss was that of the caliph Soliman, who died of an
indigestion, 12 in his camp near Kinnisrin or Chalcis in Syria,
as he was preparing to lead against Constantinople the remaining
forces of the East. The brother of Moslemah was succeeded by a
kinsman and an enemy; and the throne of an active and able prince
was degraded by the useless and pernicious virtues of a bigot.
1211 While he started and satisfied the scruples of a blind
conscience, the siege was continued through the winter by the
neglect, rather than by the resolution of the caliph Omar. 13 The
winter proved uncommonly rigorous: above a hundred days the
ground was covered with deep snow, and the natives of the sultry
climes of Egypt and Arabia lay torpid and almost lifeless in
their frozen camp. They revived on the return of spring; a second
effort had been made in their favor; and their distress was
relieved by the arrival of two numerous fleets, laden with corn,
and arms, and soldiers; the first from Alexandria, of four
hundred transports and galleys; the second of three hundred and
sixty vessels from the ports of Africa. But the Greek fires were
again kindled; and if the destruction was less complete, it was
owing to the experience which had taught the Moslems to remain at
a safe distance, or to the perfidy of the Egyptian mariners, who
deserted with their ships to the emperor of the Christians. The
trade and navigation of the capital were restored; and the
produce of the fisheries supplied the wants, and even the luxury,
of the inhabitants. But the calamities of famine and disease were
soon felt by the troops of Moslemah, and as the former was
miserably assuaged, so the latter was dreadfully propagated, by
the pernicious nutriment which hunger compelled them to extract
from the most unclean or unnatural food. The spirit of conquest,
and even of enthusiasm, was extinct: the Saracens could no longer
struggle, beyond their lines, either single or in small parties,
without exposing themselves to the merciless retaliation of the
Thracian peasants.
An army of Bulgarians was attracted from the Danube by the gifts
and promises of Leo; and these savage auxiliaries made some
atonement for the evils which they had inflicted on the empire,
by the defeat and slaughter of twenty-two thousand Asiatics. A
report was dexterously scattered, that the Franks, the unknown
nations of the Latin world, were arming by sea and land in the
defence of the Christian cause, and their formidable aid was
expected with far different sensations in the camp and city. At
length, after a siege of thirteen months, 14 the hopeless
Moslemah received from the caliph the welcome permission of
retreat. 1411 The march of the Arabian cavalry over the
Hellespont and through the provinces of Asia, was executed
without delay or molestation; but an army of their brethren had
been cut in pieces on the side of Bithynia, and the remains of
the fleet were so repeatedly damaged by tempest and fire, that
only five galleys entered the port of Alexandria to relate the
tale of their various and almost incredible disasters. 15
11 (return) [ In the division of the Themes, or provinces
described by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, (de Thematibus, l. i.
p. 9, 10,) the Obsequium, a Latin appellation of the army and
palace, was the fourth in the public order. Nice was the
metropolis, and its jurisdiction extended from the Hellespont
over the adjacent parts of Bithynia and Phrygia, (see the two
maps prefixed by Delisle to the Imperium Orientale of Banduri.)]
1111 (return) [ Compare page 274. It is singular that Gibbon
should thus contradict himself in a few pages. By his own account
this was the second time.—M.]
1112 (return) [ The account of this siege in the Tarikh Tebry is
a very unfavorable specimen of Asiatic history, full of absurd
fables, and written with total ignorance of the circumstances of
time and place. Price, vol. i. p. 498—M.]
12 (return) [ The caliph had emptied two baskets of eggs and of
figs, which he swallowed alternately, and the repast was
concluded with marrow and sugar. In one of his pilgrimages to
Mecca, Soliman ate, at a single meal, seventy pomegranates, a
kid, six fowls, and a huge quantity of the grapes of Tayef. If
the bill of fare be correct, we must admire the appetite, rather
than the luxury, of the sovereign of Asia, (Abulfeda, Annal.
Moslem. p. 126.) * Note: The Tarikh Tebry ascribes the death of
Soliman to a pleurisy. The same gross gluttony in which Soliman
indulged, though not fatal to the life, interfered with the
military duties, of his brother Moslemah. Price, vol. i. p.
511.—M.]
1211 (return) [ Major Price’s estimate of Omar’s character is
much more favorable. Among a race of sanguinary tyrants, Omar was
just and humane. His virtues as well as his bigotry were
active.—M.]
13 (return) [ See the article of Omar Ben Abdalaziz, in the
Bibliotheque Orientale, (p. 689, 690,) praeferens, says Elmacin,
(p. 91,) religionem suam rebus suis mundanis. He was so desirous
of being with God, that he would not have anointed his ear (his
own saying) to obtain a perfect cure of his last malady. The
caliph had only one shirt, and in an age of luxury, his annual
expense was no more than two drachms, (Abulpharagius, p. 131.)
Haud diu gavisus eo principe fuit urbis Muslemus, (Abulfeda, p.
127.)]
14 (return) [ Both Nicephorus and Theophanes agree that the siege
of Constantinople was raised the 15th of August, (A.D. 718;) but
as the former, our best witness, affirms that it continued
thirteen months, the latter must be mistaken in supposing that it
began on the same day of the preceding year. I do not find that
Pagi has remarked this inconsistency.]
1411 (return) [ The Tarikh Tebry embellishes the retreat of
Moslemah with some extraordinary and incredible circumstances.
Price, p. 514.—M.]
15 (return) [ In the second siege of Constantinople, I have
followed Nicephorus, (Brev. p. 33-36,) Theophanes, (Chronograph,
p. 324-334,) Cedrenus, (Compend. p. 449-452,) Zonaras, (tom. ii.
p. 98-102,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen, p. 88,) Abulfeda, (Annal.
Moslem. p. 126,) and Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 130,) the most
satisfactory of the Arabs.]
In the two sieges, the deliverance of Constantinople may be
chiefly ascribed to the novelty, the terrors, and the real
efficacy of the Greek fire. 16 The important secret of
compounding and directing this artificial flame was imparted by
Callinicus, a native of Heliopolis in Syria, who deserted from
the service of the caliph to that of the emperor. 17 The skill of
a chemist and engineer was equivalent to the succor of fleets and
armies; and this discovery or improvement of the military art was
fortunately reserved for the distressful period, when the
degenerate Romans of the East were incapable of contending with
the warlike enthusiasm and youthful vigor of the Saracens. The
historian who presumes to analyze this extraordinary composition
should suspect his own ignorance and that of his Byzantine
guides, so prone to the marvellous, so careless, and, in this
instance, so jealous of the truth. From their obscure, and
perhaps fallacious, hints it should seem that the principal
ingredient of the Greek fire was the naphtha, 18 or liquid
bitumen, a light, tenacious, and inflammable oil, 19 which
springs from the earth, and catches fire as soon as it comes in
contact with the air. The naphtha was mingled, I know not by what
methods or in what proportions, with sulphur and with the pitch
that is extracted from evergreen firs. 20 From this mixture,
which produced a thick smoke and a loud explosion, proceeded a
fierce and obstinate flame, which not only rose in perpendicular
ascent, but likewise burnt with equal vehemence in descent or
lateral progress; instead of being extinguished, it was nourished
and quickened by the element of water; and sand, urine, or
vinegar, were the only remedies that could damp the fury of this
powerful agent, which was justly denominated by the Greeks the
liquid, or the maritime, fire. For the annoyance of the enemy, it
was employed with equal effect, by sea and land, in battles or in
sieges. It was either poured from the rampart in large boilers,
or launched in red-hot balls of stone and iron, or darted in
arrows and javelins, twisted round with flax and tow, which had
deeply imbibed the inflammable oil; sometimes it was deposited in
fire-ships, the victims and instruments of a more ample revenge,
and was most commonly blown through long tubes of copper which
were planted on the prow of a galley, and fancifully shaped into
the mouths of savage monsters, that seemed to vomit a stream of
liquid and consuming fire. This important art was preserved at
Constantinople, as the palladium of the state: the galleys and
artillery might occasionally be lent to the allies of Rome; but
the composition of the Greek fire was concealed with the most
jealous scruple, and the terror of the enemies was increased and
prolonged by their ignorance and surprise. In the treaties of the
administration of the empire, the royal author 21 suggests the
answers and excuses that might best elude the indiscreet
curiosity and importunate demands of the Barbarians. They should
be told that the mystery of the Greek fire had been revealed by
an angel to the first and greatest of the Constantines, with a
sacred injunction, that this gift of Heaven, this peculiar
blessing of the Romans, should never be communicated to any
foreign nation; that the prince and the subject were alike bound
to religious silence under the temporal and spiritual penalties
of treason and sacrilege; and that the impious attempt would
provoke the sudden and supernatural vengeance of the God of the
Christians. By these precautions, the secret was confined, above
four hundred years, to the Romans of the East; and at the end of
the eleventh century, the Pisans, to whom every sea and every art
were familiar, suffered the effects, without understanding the
composition, of the Greek fire. It was at length either
discovered or stolen by the Mahometans; and, in the holy wars of
Syria and Egypt, they retorted an invention, contrived against
themselves, on the heads of the Christians. A knight, who
despised the swords and lances of the Saracens, relates, with
heartfelt sincerity, his own fears, and those of his companions,
at the sight and sound of the mischievous engine that discharged
a torrent of the Greek fire, the feu Gregeois, as it is styled by
the more early of the French writers. It came flying through the
air, says Joinville, 22 like a winged long-tailed dragon, about
the thickness of a hogshead, with the report of thunder and the
velocity of lightning; and the darkness of the night was
dispelled by this deadly illumination. The use of the Greek, or,
as it might now be called, of the Saracen fire, was continued to
the middle of the fourteenth century, 23 when the scientific or
casual compound of nitre, sulphur, and charcoal, effected a new
revolution in the art of war and the history of mankind. 24
16 (return) [ Our sure and indefatigable guide in the middle ages
and Byzantine history, Charles du Fresne du Cange, has treated in
several places of the Greek fire, and his collections leave few
gleanings behind. See particularly Glossar. Med. et Infim.
Graecitat. p. 1275, sub voce. Glossar. Med. et Infim. Latinitat.
Ignis Groecus. Observations sur Villehardouin, p. 305, 306.
Observations sur Joinville, p. 71, 72.]
17 (return) [ Theophanes styles him, (p. 295.) Cedrenus (p. 437)
brings this artist from (the ruins of) Heliopolis in Egypt; and
chemistry was indeed the peculiar science of the Egyptians.]
18 (return) [ The naphtha, the oleum incendiarium of the history
of Jerusalem, (Gest. Dei per Francos, p. 1167,) the Oriental
fountain of James de Vitry, (l. iii. c. 84,) is introduced on
slight evidence and strong probability. Cinanmus (l. vi. p. 165)
calls the Greek fire: and the naphtha is known to abound between
the Tigris and the Caspian Sea. According to Pliny, (Hist. Natur.
ii. 109,) it was subservient to the revenge of Medea, and in
either etymology, (Procop. de Bell. Gothic. l. iv. c. 11,) may
fairly signify this liquid bitumen. * Note: It is remarkable that
the Syrian historian Michel gives the name of naphtha to the
newly-invented Greek fire, which seems to indicate that this
substance formed the base of the destructive compound. St.
Martin, tom. xi. p. 420.—M.]
19 (return) [ On the different sorts of oils and bitumens, see
Dr. Watson’s (the present bishop of Llandaff’s) Chemical Essays,
vol. iii. essay i., a classic book, the best adapted to infuse
the taste and knowledge of chemistry. The less perfect ideas of
the ancients may be found in Strabo (Geograph. l. xvi. p. 1078)
and Pliny, (Hist. Natur. ii. 108, 109.) Huic (Naphthae) magna
cognatio est ignium, transiliuntque protinus in eam undecunque
visam. Of our travellers I am best pleased with Otter, (tom. i.
p. 153, 158.)]
20 (return) [ Anna Comnena has partly drawn aside the curtain.
(Alexiad. l. xiii. p. 383.) Elsewhere (l. xi. p. 336) she
mentions the property of burning. Leo, in the xixth chapter of
his Tactics, (Opera Meursii, tom. vi. p. 843, edit. Lami,
Florent. 1745,) speaks of the new invention. These are genuine
and Imperial testimonies.]
21 (return) [ Constantin. Porphyrogenit. de Administrat. Imperii,
c. xiii. p. 64, 65.]
22 (return) [ Histoire de St. Louis, p. 39. Paris, 1668, p. 44.
Paris, de l’Imprimerie Royale, 1761. The former of these editions
is precious for the observations of Ducange; the latter for the
pure and original text of Joinville. We must have recourse to
that text to discover, that the feu Gregeois was shot with a pile
or javelin, from an engine that acted like a sling.]
23 (return) [ The vanity, or envy, of shaking the established
property of Fame, has tempted some moderns to carry gunpowder
above the xivth, (see Sir William Temple, Dutens, &c.,) and the
Greek fire above the viith century, (see the Saluste du President
des Brosses, tom. ii. p. 381.) But their evidence, which precedes
the vulgar aera of the invention, is seldom clear or
satisfactory, and subsequent writers may be suspected of fraud or
credulity. In the earliest sieges, some combustibles of oil and
sulphur have been used, and the Greek fire has some affinities
with gunpowder both in its nature and effects: for the antiquity
of the first, a passage of Procopius, (de Bell. Goth. l. iv. c.
11,) for that of the second, some facts in the Arabic history of
Spain, (A.D. 1249, 1312, 1332. Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. ii. p.
6, 7, 8,) are the most difficult to elude.]
24 (return) [ That extraordinary man, Friar Bacon, reveals two of
the ingredients, saltpetre and sulphur, and conceals the third in
a sentence of mysterious gibberish, as if he dreaded the
consequences of his own discovery, (Biog. Brit. vol. i. p. 430,
new edition.)]
Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part II.
Constantinople and the Greek fire might exclude the Arabs from
the eastern entrance of Europe; but in the West, on the side of
the Pyrenees, the provinces of Gaul were threatened and invaded
by the conquerors of Spain. 25 The decline of the French monarchy
invited the attack of these insatiate fanatics. The descendants
of Clovis had lost the inheritance of his martial and ferocious
spirit; and their misfortune or demerit has affixed the epithet
of lazy to the last kings of the Merovingian race. 26 They
ascended the throne without power, and sunk into the grave
without a name. A country palace, in the neighborhood of
Compiegne 27 was allotted for their residence or prison: but each
year, in the month of March or May, they were conducted in a
wagon drawn by oxen to the assembly of the Franks, to give
audience to foreign ambassadors, and to ratify the acts of the
mayor of the palace. That domestic officer was become the
minister of the nation and the master of the prince. A public
employment was converted into the patrimony of a private family:
the elder Pepin left a king of mature years under the
guardianship of his own widow and her child; and these feeble
regents were forcibly dispossessed by the most active of his
bastards. A government, half savage and half corrupt, was almost
dissolved; and the tributary dukes, and provincial counts, and
the territorial lords, were tempted to despise the weakness of
the monarch, and to imitate the ambition of the mayor. Among
these independent chiefs, one of the boldest and most successful
was Eudes, duke of Aquitain, who in the southern provinces of
Gaul usurped the authority, and even the title of king. The
Goths, the Gascons, and the Franks, assembled under the standard
of this Christian hero: he repelled the first invasion of the
Saracens; and Zama, lieutenant of the caliph, lost his army and
his life under the walls of Thoulouse. The ambition of his
successors was stimulated by revenge; they repassed the Pyrenees
with the means and the resolution of conquest. The advantageous
situation which had recommended Narbonne 28 as the first Roman
colony, was again chosen by the Moslems: they claimed the
province of Septimania or Languedoc as a just dependence of the
Spanish monarchy: the vineyards of Gascony and the city of
Bourdeaux were possessed by the sovereign of Damascus and
Samarcand; and the south of France, from the mouth of the Garonne
to that of the Rhone, assumed the manners and religion of Arabia.
25 (return) [ For the invasion of France and the defeat of the
Arabs by Charles Martel, see the Historia Arabum (c. 11, 12, 13,
14) of Roderic Ximenes, archbishop of Toledo, who had before him
the Christian chronicle of Isidore Pacensis, and the Mahometan
history of Novairi. The Moslems are silent or concise in the
account of their losses; but M Cardonne (tom. i. p. 129, 130,
131) has given a pure and simple account of all that he could
collect from Ibn Halikan, Hidjazi, and an anonymous writer. The
texts of the chronicles of France, and lives of saints, are
inserted in the Collection of Bouquet, (tom. iii.,) and the
Annals of Pagi, who (tom. iii. under the proper years) has
restored the chronology, which is anticipated six years in the
Annals of Baronius. The Dictionary of Bayle (Abderame and Munuza)
has more merit for lively reflection than original research.]
26 (return) [ Eginhart, de Vita Caroli Magni, c. ii. p. 13-78,
edit. Schmink, Utrecht, 1711. Some modern critics accuse the
minister of Charlemagne of exaggerating the weakness of the
Merovingians; but the general outline is just, and the French
reader will forever repeat the beautiful lines of Boileau’s
Lutrin.]
27 (return) [ Mamaccae, on the Oyse, between Compiegne and Noyon,
which Eginhart calls perparvi reditus villam, (see the notes, and
the map of ancient France for Dom. Bouquet’s Collection.)
Compendium, or Compiegne, was a palace of more dignity, (Hadrian.
Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 152,) and that laughing
philosopher, the Abbe Galliani, (Dialogues sur le Commerce des
Bleds,) may truly affirm, that it was the residence of the rois
tres Chretiens en tres chevelus.]
28 (return) [ Even before that colony, A. U. C. 630, (Velleius
Patercul. i. 15,) In the time of Polybius, (Hist. l. iii. p. 265,
edit. Gronov.) Narbonne was a Celtic town of the first eminence,
and one of the most northern places of the known world,
(D’Anville, Notice de l’Ancienne Gaule, p. 473.)]
But these narrow limits were scorned by the spirit of Abdalraman,
or Abderame, who had been restored by the caliph Hashem to the
wishes of the soldiers and people of Spain. That veteran and
daring commander adjudged to the obedience of the prophet
whatever yet remained of France or of Europe; and prepared to
execute the sentence, at the head of a formidable host, in the
full confidence of surmounting all opposition either of nature or
of man. His first care was to suppress a domestic rebel, who
commanded the most important passes of the Pyrenees: Manuza, a
Moorish chief, had accepted the alliance of the duke of Aquitain;
and Eudes, from a motive of private or public interest, devoted
his beauteous daughter to the embraces of the African
misbeliever. But the strongest fortresses of Cerdagne were
invested by a superior force; the rebel was overtaken and slain
in the mountains; and his widow was sent a captive to Damascus,
to gratify the desires, or more probably the vanity, of the
commander of the faithful. From the Pyrenees, Abderame proceeded
without delay to the passage of the Rhone and the siege of Arles.
An army of Christians attempted the relief of the city: the tombs
of their leaders were yet visible in the thirteenth century; and
many thousands of their dead bodies were carried down the rapid
stream into the Mediterranean Sea. The arms of Abderame were not
less successful on the side of the ocean. He passed without
opposition the Garonne and Dordogne, which unite their waters in
the Gulf of Bourdeaux; but he found, beyond those rivers, the
camp of the intrepid Eudes, who had formed a second army and
sustained a second defeat, so fatal to the Christians, that,
according to their sad confession, God alone could reckon the
number of the slain. The victorious Saracen overran the provinces
of Aquitain, whose Gallic names are disguised, rather than lost,
in the modern appellations of Perigord, Saintonge, and Poitou:
his standards were planted on the walls, or at least before the
gates, of Tours and of Sens; and his detachments overspread the
kingdom of Burgundy as far as the well-known cities of Lyons and
Besançon. The memory of these devastations (for Abderame did not
spare the country or the people) was long preserved by tradition;
and the invasion of France by the Moors or Mahometans affords the
groundwork of those fables, which have been so wildly disfigured
in the romances of chivalry, and so elegantly adorned by the
Italian muse. In the decline of society and art, the deserted
cities could supply a slender booty to the Saracens; their
richest spoil was found in the churches and monasteries, which
they stripped of their ornaments and delivered to the flames: and
the tutelar saints, both Hilary of Poitiers and Martin of Tours,
forgot their miraculous powers in the defence of their own
sepulchres. 29 A victorious line of march had been prolonged
above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of
the Loire; the repetition of an equal space would have carried
the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of
Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or
Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a
naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the
interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of
Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people
the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet. 30
29 (return) [ With regard to the sanctuary of St. Martin of
Tours, Roderic Ximenes accuses the Saracens of the deed. Turonis
civitatem, ecclesiam et palatia vastatione et incendio simili
diruit et consumpsit. The continuator of Fredegarius imputes to
them no more than the intention. Ad domum beatissimi Martini
evertendam destinant. At Carolus, &c. The French annalist was
more jealous of the honor of the saint.]
30 (return) [ Yet I sincerely doubt whether the Oxford mosch
would have produced a volume of controversy so elegant and
ingenious as the sermons lately preached by Mr. White, the Arabic
professor, at Mr. Bampton’s lecture. His observations on the
character and religion of Mahomet are always adapted to his
argument, and generally founded in truth and reason. He sustains
the part of a lively and eloquent advocate; and sometimes rises
to the merit of an historian and philosopher.]
From such calamities was Christendom delivered by the genius and
fortune of one man. Charles, the illegitimate son of the elder
Pepin, was content with the titles of mayor or duke of the
Franks; but he deserved to become the father of a line of kings.
In a laborious administration of twenty-four years, he restored
and supported the dignity of the throne, and the rebels of
Germany and Gaul were successively crushed by the activity of a
warrior, who, in the same campaign, could display his banner on
the Elbe, the Rhone, and the shores of the ocean. In the public
danger he was summoned by the voice of his country; and his
rival, the duke of Aquitain, was reduced to appear among the
fugitives and suppliants. “Alas!” exclaimed the Franks, “what a
misfortune! what an indignity! We have long heard of the name and
conquests of the Arabs: we were apprehensive of their attack from
the East; they have now conquered Spain, and invade our country
on the side of the West. Yet their numbers, and (since they have
no buckler) their arms, are inferior to our own.” “If you follow
my advice,” replied the prudent mayor of the palace, “you will
not interrupt their march, nor precipitate your attack. They are
like a torrent, which it is dangerous to stem in its career. The
thirst of riches, and the consciousness of success, redouble
their valor, and valor is of more avail than arms or numbers. Be
patient till they have loaded themselves with the encumbrance of
wealth. The possession of wealth will divide their councils and
assure your victory.” This subtile policy is perhaps a refinement
of the Arabian writers; and the situation of Charles will suggest
a more narrow and selfish motive of procrastination—the secret
desire of humbling the pride and wasting the provinces of the
rebel duke of Aquitain. It is yet more probable, that the delays
of Charles were inevitable and reluctant. A standing army was
unknown under the first and second race; more than half the
kingdom was now in the hands of the Saracens: according to their
respective situation, the Franks of Neustria and Austrasia were
to conscious or too careless of the impending danger; and the
voluntary aids of the Gepidae and Germans were separated by a
long interval from the standard of the Christian general. No
sooner had he collected his forces, than he sought and found the
enemy in the centre of France, between Tours and Poitiers. His
well-conducted march was covered with a range of hills, and
Abderame appears to have been surprised by his unexpected
presence. The nations of Asia, Africa, and Europe, advanced with
equal ardor to an encounter which would change the history of the
world. In the six first days of desultory combat, the horsemen
and archers of the East maintained their advantage: but in the
closer onset of the seventh day, the Orientals were oppressed by
the strength and stature of the Germans, who, with stout hearts
and iron hands, 31 asserted the civil and religious freedom of
their posterity. The epithet of Martel, the Hammer, which has
been added to the name of Charles, is expressive of his weighty
and irresistible strokes: the valor of Eudes was excited by
resentment and emulation; and their companions, in the eye of
history, are the true Peers and Paladins of French chivalry.
After a bloody field, in which Abderame was slain, the Saracens,
in the close of the evening, retired to their camp. In the
disorder and despair of the night, the various tribes of Yemen
and Damascus, of Africa and Spain, were provoked to turn their
arms against each other: the remains of their host were suddenly
dissolved, and each emir consulted his safety by a hasty and
separate retreat. At the dawn of the day, the stillness of a
hostile camp was suspected by the victorious Christians: on the
report of their spies, they ventured to explore the riches of the
vacant tents; but if we except some celebrated relics, a small
portion of the spoil was restored to the innocent and lawful
owners. The joyful tidings were soon diffused over the Catholic
world, and the monks of Italy could affirm and believe that three
hundred and fifty, or three hundred and seventy-five, thousand of
the Mahometans had been crushed by the hammer of Charles, 32
while no more than fifteen hundred Christians were slain in the
field of Tours. But this incredible tale is sufficiently
disproved by the caution of the French general, who apprehended
the snares and accidents of a pursuit, and dismissed his German
allies to their native forests.
The inactivity of a conqueror betrays the loss of strength and
blood, and the most cruel execution is inflicted, not in the
ranks of battle, but on the backs of a flying enemy. Yet the
victory of the Franks was complete and final; Aquitain was
recovered by the arms of Eudes; the Arabs never resumed the
conquest of Gaul, and they were soon driven beyond the Pyrenees
by Charles Martel and his valiant race. 33 It might have been
expected that the savior of Christendom would have been
canonized, or at least applauded, by the gratitude of the clergy,
who are indebted to his sword for their present existence. But in
the public distress, the mayor of the palace had been compelled
to apply the riches, or at least the revenues, of the bishops and
abbots, to the relief of the state and the reward of the
soldiers. His merits were forgotten, his sacrilege alone was
remembered, and, in an epistle to a Carlovingian prince, a Gallic
synod presumes to declare that his ancestor was damned; that on
the opening of his tomb, the spectators were affrighted by a
smell of fire and the aspect of a horrid dragon; and that a saint
of the times was indulged with a pleasant vision of the soul and
body of Charles Martel, burning, to all eternity, in the abyss of
hell. 34
31 (return) [ Gens Austriae membrorum pre-eminentia valida, et
gens Germana corde et corpore praestantissima, quasi in ictu
oculi, manu ferrea, et pectore arduo, Arabes extinxerunt,
(Roderic. Toletan. c. xiv.)]
32 (return) [ These numbers are stated by Paul Warnefrid, the
deacon of Aquileia, (de Gestis Langobard. l. vi. p. 921, edit.
Grot.,) and Anastasius, the librarian of the Roman church, (in
Vit. Gregorii II.,) who tells a miraculous story of three
consecrated sponges, which rendered invulnerable the French
soldiers, among whom they had been shared It should seem, that in
his letters to the pope, Eudes usurped the honor of the victory,
from which he is chastised by the French annalists, who, with
equal falsehood, accuse him of inviting the Saracens.]
33 (return) [ Narbonne, and the rest of Septimania, was recovered
by Pepin the son of Charles Martel, A.D. 755, (Pagi, Critica,
tom. iii. p. 300.) Thirty-seven years afterwards, it was pillaged
by a sudden inroad of the Arabs, who employed the captives in the
construction of the mosch of Cordova, (De Guignes, Hist. des
Huns, tom. i. p. 354.)]
34 (return) [ This pastoral letter, addressed to Lewis the
Germanic, the grandson of Charlemagne, and most probably composed
by the pen of the artful Hincmar, is dated in the year 858, and
signed by the bishops of the provinces of Rheims and Rouen,
(Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 741. Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. x.
p. 514-516.) Yet Baronius himself, and the French critics, reject
with contempt this episcopal fiction.]
The loss of an army, or a province, in the Western world, was
less painful to the court of Damascus, than the rise and progress
of a domestic competitor. Except among the Syrians, the caliphs
of the house of Ommiyah had never been the objects of the public
favor. The life of Mahomet recorded their perseverance in
idolatry and rebellion: their conversion had been reluctant,
their elevation irregular and factious, and their throne was
cemented with the most holy and noble blood of Arabia. The best
of their race, the pious Omar, was dissatisfied with his own
title: their personal virtues were insufficient to justify a
departure from the order of succession; and the eyes and wishes
of the faithful were turned towards the line of Hashem, and the
kindred of the apostle of God. Of these the Fatimites were either
rash or pusillanimous; but the descendants of Abbas cherished,
with courage and discretion, the hopes of their rising fortunes.
From an obscure residence in Syria, they secretly despatched
their agents and missionaries, who preached in the Eastern
provinces their hereditary indefeasible right; and Mohammed, the
son of Ali, the son of Abdallah, the son of Abbas, the uncle of
the prophet, gave audience to the deputies of Chorasan, and
accepted their free gift of four hundred thousand pieces of gold.
After the death of Mohammed, the oath of allegiance was
administered in the name of his son Ibrahim to a numerous band of
votaries, who expected only a signal and a leader; and the
governor of Chorasan continued to deplore his fruitless
admonitions and the deadly slumber of the caliphs of Damascus,
till he himself, with all his adherents, was driven from the city
and palace of Meru, by the rebellious arms of Abu Moslem. 35 That
maker of kings, the author, as he is named, of the call of the
Abbassides, was at length rewarded for his presumption of merit
with the usual gratitude of courts. A mean, perhaps a foreign,
extraction could not repress the aspiring energy of Abu Moslem.
Jealous of his wives, liberal of his wealth, prodigal of his own
blood and of that of others, he could boast with pleasure, and
possibly with truth, that he had destroyed six hundred thousand
of his enemies; and such was the intrepid gravity of his mind and
countenance, that he was never seen to smile except on a day of
battle. In the visible separation of parties, the green was
consecrated to the Fatimites; the Ommiades were distinguished by
the white; and the black, as the most adverse, was naturally
adopted by the Abbassides. Their turbans and garments were
stained with that gloomy color: two black standards, on pike
staves nine cubits long, were borne aloft in the van of Abu
Moslem; and their allegorical names of the night and the shadow
obscurely represented the indissoluble union and perpetual
succession of the line of Hashem. From the Indus to the
Euphrates, the East was convulsed by the quarrel of the white and
the black factions: the Abbassides were most frequently
victorious; but their public success was clouded by the personal
misfortune of their chief. The court of Damascus, awakening from
a long slumber, resolved to prevent the pilgrimage of Mecca,
which Ibrahim had undertaken with a splendid retinue, to
recommend himself at once to the favor of the prophet and of the
people. A detachment of cavalry intercepted his march and
arrested his person; and the unhappy Ibrahim, snatched away from
the promise of untasted royalty, expired in iron fetters in the
dungeons of Haran. His two younger brothers, Saffah 3511 and
Almansor, eluded the search of the tyrant, and lay concealed at
Cufa, till the zeal of the people and the approach of his Eastern
friends allowed them to expose their persons to the impatient
public. On Friday, in the dress of a caliph, in the colors of the
sect, Saffah proceeded with religious and military pomp to the
mosch: ascending the pulpit, he prayed and preached as the lawful
successor of Mahomet; and after his departure, his kinsmen bound
a willing people by an oath of fidelity. But it was on the banks
of the Zab, and not in the mosch of Cufa, that this important
controversy was determined. Every advantage appeared to be on the
side of the white faction: the authority of established
government; an army of a hundred and twenty thousand soldiers,
against a sixth part of that number; and the presence and merit
of the caliph Mervan, the fourteenth and last of the house of
Ommiyah. Before his accession to the throne, he had deserved, by
his Georgian warfare, the honorable epithet of the ass of
Mesopotamia; 36 and he might have been ranked amongst the
greatest princes, had not, says Abulfeda, the eternal order
decreed that moment for the ruin of his family; a decree against
which all human fortitude and prudence must struggle in vain. The
orders of Mervan were mistaken, or disobeyed: the return of his
horse, from which he had dismounted on a necessary occasion,
impressed the belief of his death; and the enthusiasm of the
black squadrons was ably conducted by Abdallah, the uncle of his
competitor. After an irretrievab defeat, the caliph escaped to
Mosul; but the colors of the Abbassides were displayed from the
rampart; he suddenly repassed the Tigris, cast a melancholy look
on his palace of Haran, crossed the Euphrates, abandoned the
fortifications of Damascus, and, without halting in Palestine,
pitched his last and fatal camp at Busir, on the banks of the
Nile. 37 His speed was urged by the incessant diligence of
Abdallah, who in every step of the pursuit acquired strength and
reputation: the remains of the white faction were finally
vanquished in Egypt; and the lance, which terminated the life and
anxiety of Mervan, was not less welcome perhaps to the
unfortunate than to the victorious chief. The merciless
inquisition of the conqueror eradicated the most distant branches
of the hostile race: their bones were scattered, their memory was
accursed, and the martyrdom of Hossein was abundantly revenged on
the posterity of his tyrants. Fourscore of the Ommiades, who had
yielded to the faith or clemency of their foes, were invited to a
banquet at Damascus. The laws of hospitality were violated by a
promiscuous massacre: the board was spread over their fallen
bodies; and the festivity of the guests was enlivened by the
music of their dying groans. By the event of the civil war, the
dynasty of the Abbassides was firmly established; but the
Christians only could triumph in the mutual hatred and common
loss of the disciples of Mahomet. 38
35 (return) [ The steed and the saddle which had carried any of
his wives were instantly killed or burnt, lest they should
afterwards be mounted by a male. Twelve hundred mules or camels
were required for his kitchen furniture; and the daily
consumption amounted to three thousand cakes, a hundred sheep,
besides oxen, poultry, &c., (Abul pharagius, Hist. Dynast. p.
140.)]
3511 (return) [ He is called Abdullah or Abul Abbas in the Tarikh
Tebry. Price vol. i. p. 600. Saffah or Saffauh (the Sanguinary)
was a name which be required after his bloody reign, (vol. ii. p.
1.)—M.]
36 (return) [ Al Hemar. He had been governor of Mesopotamia, and
the Arabic proverb praises the courage of that warlike breed of
asses who never fly from an enemy. The surname of Mervan may
justify the comparison of Homer, (Iliad, A. 557, &c.,) and both
will silence the moderns, who consider the ass as a stupid and
ignoble emblem, (D’Herbelot, Bibliot. Orient. p. 558.)]
37 (return) [ Four several places, all in Egypt, bore the name of
Busir, or Busiris, so famous in Greek fable. The first, where
Mervan was slain was to the west of the Nile, in the province of
Fium, or Arsinoe; the second in the Delta, in the Sebennytic
nome; the third near the pyramids; the fourth, which was
destroyed by Dioclesian, (see above, vol. ii. p. 130,) in the
Thebais. I shall here transcribe a note of the learned and
orthodox Michaelis: Videntur in pluribus Aegypti superioris
urbibus Busiri Coptoque arma sumpsisse Christiani, libertatemque
de religione sentiendi defendisse, sed succubuisse quo in bello
Coptus et Busiris diruta, et circa Esnam magna strages edita.
Bellum narrant sed causam belli ignorant scriptores Byzantini,
alioqui Coptum et Busirim non rebellasse dicturi, sed causam
Christianorum suscepturi, (Not. 211, p. 100.) For the geography
of the four Busirs, see Abulfeda, (Descript. Aegypt. p. 9, vers.
Michaelis, Gottingae, 1776, in 4to.,) Michaelis, (Not. 122-127,
p. 58-63,) and D’Anville, (Memoire sua l’Egypte, p. 85, 147,
205.)]
38 (return) [ See Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 136-145,)
Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 392, vers. Pocock,) Elmacin,
(Hist. Saracen. p. 109-121,) Abulpharagius, (Hist. Dynast. p.
134-140,) Roderic of Toledo, (Hist. Arabum, c. xviii. p. 33,)
Theophanes, (Chronograph. p. 356, 357, who speaks of the
Abbassides) and the Bibliotheque of D’Herbelot, in the articles
Ommiades, Abbassides, Moervan, Ibrahim, Saffah, Abou Moslem.]
Yet the thousands who were swept away by the sword of war might
have been speedily retrieved in the succeeding generation, if the
consequences of the revolution had not tended to dissolve the
power and unity of the empire of the Saracens. In the
proscription of the Ommiades, a royal youth of the name of
Abdalrahman alone escaped the rage of his enemies, who hunted the
wandering exile from the banks of the Euphrates to the valleys of
Mount Atlas. His presence in the neighborhood of Spain revived
the zeal of the white faction. The name and cause of the
Abbassides had been first vindicated by the Persians: the West
had been pure from civil arms; and the servants of the abdicated
family still held, by a precarious tenure, the inheritance of
their lands and the offices of government. Strongly prompted by
gratitude, indignation, and fear, they invited the grandson of
the caliph Hashem to ascend the throne of his ancestors; and, in
his desperate condition, the extremes of rashness and prudence
were almost the same. The acclamations of the people saluted his
landing on the coast of Andalusia: and, after a successful
struggle, Abdalrahman established the throne of Cordova, and was
the father of the Ommiades of Spain, who reigned above two
hundred and fifty years from the Atlantic to the Pyrenees. 39 He
slew in battle a lieutenant of the Abbassides, who had invaded
his dominions with a fleet and army: the head of Ala, in salt and
camphire, was suspended by a daring messenger before the palace
of Mecca; and the caliph Almansor rejoiced in his safety, that he
was removed by seas and lands from such a formidable adversary.
Their mutual designs or declarations of offensive war evaporated
without effect; but instead of opening a door to the conquest of
Europe, Spain was dissevered from the trunk of the monarchy,
engaged in perpetual hostility with the East, and inclined to
peace and friendship with the Christian sovereigns of
Constantinople and France. The example of the Ommiades was
imitated by the real or fictitious progeny of Ali, the Edrissites
of Mauritania, and the more powerful fatimites of Africa and
Egypt. In the tenth century, the chair of Mahomet was disputed by
three caliphs or commanders of the faithful, who reigned at
Bagdad, Cairoan, and Cordova, excommunicating each other, and
agreed only in a principle of discord, that a sectary is more
odious and criminal than an unbeliever. 40
39 (return) [ For the revolution of Spain, consult Roderic of
Toledo, (c. xviii. p. 34, &c.,) the Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana,
(tom. ii. p. 30, 198,) and Cardonne, (Hist. de l’Afrique et de
l’Espagne, tom. i. p. 180-197, 205, 272, 323, &c.)]
40 (return) [ I shall not stop to refute the strange errors and
fancies of Sir William Temple (his Works, vol. iii. p. 371-374,
octavo edition) and Voltaire (Histoire Generale, c. xxviii. tom.
ii. p. 124, 125, edition de Lausanne) concerning the division of
the Saracen empire. The mistakes of Voltaire proceeded from the
want of knowledge or reflection; but Sir William was deceived by
a Spanish impostor, who has framed an apocryphal history of the
conquest of Spain by the Arabs.]
Mecca was the patrimony of the line of Hashem, yet the Abbassides
were never tempted to reside either in the birthplace or the city
of the prophet. Damascus was disgraced by the choice, and
polluted with the blood, of the Ommiades; and, after some
hesitation, Almansor, the brother and successor of Saffah, laid
the foundations of Bagdad, 41 the Imperial seat of his posterity
during a reign of five hundred years. 42 The chosen spot is on
the eastern bank of the Tigris, about fifteen miles above the
ruins of Modain: the double wall was of a circular form; and such
was the rapid increase of a capital, now dwindled to a provincial
town, that the funeral of a popular saint might be attended by
eight hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women of Bagdad and
the adjacent villages. In this city of peace, 43 amidst the
riches of the East, the Abbassides soon disdained the abstinence
and frugality of the first caliphs, and aspired to emulate the
magnificence of the Persian kings. After his wars and buildings,
Almansor left behind him in gold and silver about thirty millions
sterling: 44 and this treasure was exhausted in a few years by
the vices or virtues of his children. His son Mahadi, in a single
pilgrimage to Mecca, expended six millions of dinars of gold. A
pious and charitable motive may sanctify the foundation of
cisterns and caravanseras, which he distributed along a measured
road of seven hundred miles; but his train of camels, laden with
snow, could serve only to astonish the natives of Arabia, and to
refresh the fruits and liquors of the royal banquet. 45 The
courtiers would surely praise the liberality of his grandson
Almamon, who gave away four fifths of the income of a province, a
sum of two millions four hundred thousand gold dinars, before he
drew his foot from the stirrup. At the nuptials of the same
prince, a thousand pearls of the largest size were showered on
the head of the bride, 46 and a lottery of lands and houses
displayed the capricious bounty of fortune. The glories of the
court were brightened, rather than impaired, in the decline of
the empire, and a Greek ambassador might admire, or pity, the
magnificence of the feeble Moctader. “The caliph’s whole army,”
says the historian Abulfeda, “both horse and foot, was under
arms, which together made a body of one hundred and sixty
thousand men. His state officers, the favorite slaves, stood near
him in splendid apparel, their belts glittering with gold and
gems. Near them were seven thousand eunuchs, four thousand of
them white, the remainder black. The porters or door-keepers were
in number seven hundred. Barges and boats, with the most superb
decorations, were seen swimming upon the Tigris. Nor was the
palace itself less splendid, in which were hung up thirty-eight
thousand pieces of tapestry, twelve thousand five hundred of
which were of silk embroidered with gold. The carpets on the
floor were twenty-two thousand. A hundred lions were brought out,
with a keeper to each lion. 47 Among the other spectacles of rare
and stupendous luxury was a tree of gold and silver spreading
into eighteen large branches, on which, and on the lesser boughs,
sat a variety of birds made of the same precious metals, as well
as the leaves of the tree. While the machinery affected
spontaneous motions, the several birds warbled their natural
harmony. Through this scene of magnificence, the Greek ambassador
was led by the vizier to the foot of the caliph’s throne.” 48 In
the West, the Ommiades of Spain supported, with equal pomp, the
title of commander of the faithful. Three miles from Cordova, in
honor of his favorite sultana, the third and greatest of the
Abdalrahmans constructed the city, palace, and gardens of Zehra.
Twenty-five years, and above three millions sterling, were
employed by the founder: his liberal taste invited the artists of
Constantinople, the most skilful sculptors and architects of the
age; and the buildings were sustained or adorned by twelve
hundred columns of Spanish and African, of Greek and Italian
marble. The hall of audience was incrusted with gold and pearls,
and a great basin in the centre was surrounded with the curious
and costly figures of birds and quadrupeds. In a lofty pavilion
of the gardens, one of these basins and fountains, so delightful
in a sultry climate, was replenished not with water, but with the
purest quicksilver. The seraglio of Abdalrahman, his wives,
concubines, and black eunuchs, amounted to six thousand three
hundred persons: and he was attended to the field by a guard of
twelve thousand horse, whose belts and cimeters were studded with
gold. 49
41 (return) [ The geographer D’Anville, (l’Euphrate et le Tigre,
p. 121-123,) and the Orientalist D’Herbelot, (Bibliotheque, p.
167, 168,) may suffice for the knowledge of Bagdad. Our
travellers, Pietro della Valle, (tom. i. p. 688-698,) Tavernier,
(tom. i. p. 230-238,) Thevenot, (part ii. p. 209-212,) Otter,
(tom. i. p. 162-168,) and Niebuhr, (Voyage en Arabie, tom. ii. p.
239-271,) have seen only its decay; and the Nubian geographer,
(p. 204,) and the travelling Jew, Benjamin of Tuleda
(Itinerarium, p. 112-123, a Const. l’Empereur, apud Elzevir,
1633,) are the only writers of my acquaintance, who have known
Bagdad under the reign of the Abbassides.]
42 (return) [ The foundations of Bagdad were laid A. H. 145, A.D.
762. Mostasem, the last of the Abbassides, was taken and put to
death by the Tartars, A. H. 656, A.D. 1258, the 20th of
February.]
43 (return) [ Medinat al Salem, Dar al Salem. Urbs pacis, or, as
it is more neatly compounded by the Byzantine writers,
(Irenopolis.) There is some dispute concerning the etymology of
Bagdad, but the first syllable is allowed to signify a garden in
the Persian tongue; the garden of Dad, a Christian hermit, whose
cell had been the only habitation on the spot.]
44 (return) [ Reliquit in aerario sexcenties millies mille
stateres. et quater et vicies millies mille aureos aureos.
Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 126. I have reckoned the gold pieces
at eight shillings, and the proportion to the silver as twelve to
one. But I will never answer for the numbers of Erpenius; and the
Latins are scarcely above the savages in the language of
arithmetic.]
45 (return) [ D’Herbelot, p. 530. Abulfeda, p. 154. Nivem Meccam
apportavit, rem ibi aut nunquam aut rarissime visam.]
46 (return) [ Abulfeda (p. 184, 189) describes the splendor and
liberality of Almamon. Milton has alluded to this Oriental
custom:—
Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand,
Showers on her kings Barbaric pearls and gold.
I have used the modern word lottery to express the word of the
Roman emperors, which entitled to some prize the person who
caught them, as they were thrown among the crowd.]
47 (return) [ When Bell of Antermony (Travels, vol. i. p. 99)
accompanied the Russian ambassador to the audience of the
unfortunate Shah Hussein of Persia, two lions were introduced, to
denote the power of the king over the fiercest animals.]
48 (return) [ Abulfeda, p. 237. D’Herbelot, p. 590. This embassy
was received at Bagdad, A. H. 305, A.D. 917. In the passage of
Abulfeda, I have used, with some variations, the English
translation of the learned and amiable Mr. Harris of Salisbury,
(Philological Enquiries p. 363, 364.)]
49 (return) [ Cardonne, Histoire de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne,
tom. i. p. 330-336. A just idea of the taste and architecture of
the Arabians of Spain may be conceived from the description and
plates of the Alhambra of Grenada, (Swinburne’s Travels, p.
171-188.)]
Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part III.
In a private condition, our desires are perpetually repressed by
poverty and subordination; but the lives and labors of millions
are devoted to the service of a despotic prince, whose laws are
blindly obeyed, and whose wishes are instantly gratified. Our
imagination is dazzled by the splendid picture; and whatever may
be the cool dictates of reason, there are few among us who would
obstinately refuse a trial of the comforts and the cares of
royalty. It may therefore be of some use to borrow the experience
of the same Abdalrahman, whose magnificence has perhaps excited
our admiration and envy, and to transcribe an authentic memorial
which was found in the closet of the deceased caliph. “I have now
reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my
subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies.
Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call,
nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my
felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days
of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot: they
amount to Fourteen:—O man! place not thy confidence in this
present world!” 50 The luxury of the caliphs, so useless to their
private happiness, relaxed the nerves, and terminated the
progress, of the Arabian empire. Temporal and spiritual conquest
had been the sole occupation of the first successors of Mahomet;
and after supplying themselves with the necessaries of life, the
whole revenue was scrupulously devoted to that salutary work. The
Abbassides were impoverished by the multitude of their wants, and
their contempt of oeconomy. Instead of pursuing the great object
of ambition, their leisure, their affections, the powers of their
mind, were diverted by pomp and pleasure: the rewards of valor
were embezzled by women and eunuchs, and the royal camp was
encumbered by the luxury of the palace. A similar temper was
diffused among the subjects of the caliph. Their stern enthusiasm
was softened by time and prosperity. they sought riches in the
occupations of industry, fame in the pursuits of literature, and
happiness in the tranquillity of domestic life. War was no longer
the passion of the Saracens; and the increase of pay, the
repetition of donatives, were insufficient to allure the
posterity of those voluntary champions who had crowded to the
standard of Abubeker and Omar for the hopes of spoil and of
paradise.
50 (return) [ Cardonne, tom. i. p. 329, 330. This confession, the
complaints of Solomon of the vanity of this world, (read Prior’s
verbose but eloquent poem,) and the happy ten days of the emperor
Seghed, (Rambler, No. 204, 205,) will be triumphantly quoted by
the detractors of human life. Their expectations are commonly
immoderate, their estimates are seldom impartial. If I may speak
of myself, (the only person of whom I can speak with certainty,)
my happy hours have far exceeded, and far exceed, the scanty
numbers of the caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add,
that many of them are due to the pleasing labor of the present
composition.]
Under the reign of the Ommiades, the studies of the Moslems were
confined to the interpretation of the Koran, and the eloquence
and poetry of their native tongue. A people continually exposed
to the dangers of the field must esteem the healing powers of
medicine, or rather of surgery; but the starving physicians of
Arabia murmured a complaint that exercise and temperance deprived
them of the greatest part of their practice. 51 After their civil
and domestic wars, the subjects of the Abbassides, awakening from
this mental lethargy, found leisure and felt curiosity for the
acquisition of profane science. This spirit was first encouraged
by the caliph Almansor, who, besides his knowledge of the
Mahometan law, had applied himself with success to the study of
astronomy. But when the sceptre devolved to Almamon, the seventh
of the Abbassides, he completed the designs of his grandfather,
and invited the muses from their ancient seats. His ambassadors
at Constantinople, his agents in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt,
collected the volumes of Grecian science; at his command they
were translated by the most skilful interpreters into the Arabic
language: his subjects were exhorted assiduously to peruse these
instructive writings; and the successor of Mahomet assisted with
pleasure and modesty at the assemblies and disputations of the
learned. “He was not ignorant,” says Abulpharagius, “that they
are the elect of God, his best and most useful servants, whose
lives are devoted to the improvement of their rational faculties.
The mean ambition of the Chinese or the Turks may glory in the
industry of their hands or the indulgence of their brutal
appetites. Yet these dexterous artists must view, with hopeless
emulation, the hexagons and pyramids of the cells of a beehive:
52 these fortitudinous heroes are awed by the superior fierceness
of the lions and tigers; and in their amorous enjoyments they are
much inferior to the vigor of the grossest and most sordid
quadrupeds. The teachers of wisdom are the true luminaries and
legislators of a world, which, without their aid, would again
sink in ignorance and barbarism.” 53 The zeal and curiosity of
Almamon were imitated by succeeding princes of the line of Abbas:
their rivals, the Fatimites of Africa and the Ommiades of Spain,
were the patrons of the learned, as well as the commanders of the
faithful; the same royal prerogative was claimed by their
independent emirs of the provinces; and their emulation diffused
the taste and the rewards of science from Samarcand and Bochara
to Fez and Cordova. The vizier of a sultan consecrated a sum of
two hundred thousand pieces of gold to the foundation of a
college at Bagdad, which he endowed with an annual revenue of
fifteen thousand dinars. The fruits of instruction were
communicated, perhaps at different times, to six thousand
disciples of every degree, from the son of the noble to that of
the mechanic: a sufficient allowance was provided for the
indigent scholars; and the merit or industry of the professors
was repaid with adequate stipends. In every city the productions
of Arabic literature were copied and collected by the curiosity
of the studious and the vanity of the rich. A private doctor
refused the invitation of the sultan of Bochara, because the
carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels.
The royal library of the Fatimites consisted of one hundred
thousand manuscripts, elegantly transcribed and splendidly bound,
which were lent, without jealousy or avarice, to the students of
Cairo. Yet this collection must appear moderate, if we can
believe that the Ommiades of Spain had formed a library of six
hundred thousand volumes, forty-four of which were employed in
the mere catalogue. Their capital, Cordova, with the adjacent
towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, had given birth to more
than three hundred writers, and above seventy public libraries
were opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom. The age of
Arabian learning continued about five hundred years, till the
great eruption of the Moguls, and was coeval with the darkest and
most slothful period of European annals; but since the sun of
science has arisen in the West, it should seem that the Oriental
studies have languished and declined. 54
51 (return) [ The Guliston (p. 29) relates the conversation of
Mahomet and a physician, (Epistol. Renaudot. in Fabricius,
Bibliot. Graec. tom. i. p. 814.) The prophet himself was skilled
in the art of medicine; and Gagnier (Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii. p.
394-405) has given an extract of the aphorisms which are extant
under his name.]
52 (return) [ See their curious architecture in Reaumur (Hist.
des Insectes, tom. v. Memoire viii.) These hexagons are closed by
a pyramid; the angles of the three sides of a similar pyramid,
such as would accomplish the given end with the smallest quantity
possible of materials, were determined by a mathematician, at
109] degrees 26 minutes for the larger, 70 degrees 34 minutes for
the smaller. The actual measure is 109 degrees 28 minutes, 70
degrees 32 minutes. Yet this perfect harmony raises the work at
the expense of the artist he bees are not masters of transcendent
geometry.]
53 (return) [ Saed Ebn Ahmed, cadhi of Toledo, who died A. H.
462, A.D. 069, has furnished Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 160) with
this curious passage, as well as with the text of Pocock’s
Specimen Historiae Arabum. A number of literary anecdotes of
philosophers, physicians, &c., who have flourished under each
caliph, form the principal merit of the Dynasties of
Abulpharagius.]
54 (return) [ These literary anecdotes are borrowed from the
Bibliotheca Arabico-Hispana, (tom. ii. p. 38, 71, 201, 202,) Leo
Africanus, (de Arab. Medicis et Philosophis, in Fabric. Bibliot.
Graec. tom. xiii. p. 259-293, particularly p. 274,) and Renaudot,
(Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 274, 275, 536, 537,) besides the
chronological remarks of Abulpharagius.]
In the libraries of the Arabians, as in those of Europe, the far
greater part of the innumerable volumes were possessed only of
local value or imaginary merit. 55 The shelves were crowded with
orators and poets, whose style was adapted to the taste and
manners of their countrymen; with general and partial histories,
which each revolving generation supplied with a new harvest of
persons and events; with codes and commentaries of jurisprudence,
which derived their authority from the law of the prophet; with
the interpreters of the Koran, and orthodox tradition; and with
the whole theological tribe, polemics, mystics, scholastics, and
moralists, the first or the last of writers, according to the
different estimates of sceptics or believers. The works of
speculation or science may be reduced to the four classes of
philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and physic. The sages of
Greece were translated and illustrated in the Arabic language,
and some treatises, now lost in the original, have been recovered
in the versions of the East, 56 which possessed and studied the
writings of Aristotle and Plato, of Euclid and Apollonius, of
Ptolemy, Hippocrates, and Galen. 57 Among the ideal systems which
have varied with the fashion of the times, the Arabians adopted
the philosophy of the Stagirite, alike intelligible or alike
obscure for the readers of every age. Plato wrote for the
Athenians, and his allegorical genius is too closely blended with
the language and religion of Greece. After the fall of that
religion, the Peripatetics, emerging from their obscurity,
prevailed in the controversies of the Oriental sects, and their
founder was long afterwards restored by the Mahometans of Spain
to the Latin schools. 58 The physics, both of the Academy and the
Lycaeum, as they are built, not on observation, but on argument,
have retarded the progress of real knowledge. The metaphysics of
infinite, or finite, spirit, have too often been enlisted in the
service of superstition. But the human faculties are fortified by
the art and practice of dialectics; the ten predicaments of
Aristotle collect and methodize our ideas, 59 and his syllogism
is the keenest weapon of dispute. It was dexterously wielded in
the schools of the Saracens, but as it is more effectual for the
detection of error than for the investigation of truth, it is not
surprising that new generations of masters and disciples should
still revolve in the same circle of logical argument. The
mathematics are distinguished by a peculiar privilege, that, in
the course of ages, they may always advance, and can never
recede. But the ancient geometry, if I am not misinformed, was
resumed in the same state by the Italians of the fifteenth
century; and whatever may be the origin of the name, the science
of algebra is ascribed to the Grecian Diophantus by the modest
testimony of the Arabs themselves. 60 They cultivated with more
success the sublime science of astronomy, which elevates the mind
of man to disdain his diminutive planet and momentary existence.
The costly instruments of observation were supplied by the caliph
Almamon, and the land of the Chaldaeans still afforded the same
spacious level, the same unclouded horizon. In the plains of
Sinaar, and a second time in those of Cufa, his mathematicians
accurately measured a degree of the great circle of the earth,
and determined at twenty-four thousand miles the entire
circumference of our globe. 61 From the reign of the Abbassides
to that of the grandchildren of Tamerlane, the stars, without the
aid of glasses, were diligently observed; and the astronomical
tables of Bagdad, Spain, and Samarcand, 62 correct some minute
errors, without daring to renounce the hypothesis of Ptolemy,
without advancing a step towards the discovery of the solar
system. In the Eastern courts, the truths of science could be
recommended only by ignorance and folly, and the astronomer would
have been disregarded, had he not debased his wisdom or honesty
by the vain predictions of astrology. 63 But in the science of
medicine, the Arabians have been deservedly applauded. The names
of Mesua and Geber, of Razis and Avicenna, are ranked with the
Grecian masters; in the city of Bagdad, eight hundred and sixty
physicians were licensed to exercise their lucrative profession:
64 in Spain, the life of the Catholic princes was intrusted to
the skill of the Saracens, 65 and the school of Salerno, their
legitimate offspring, revived in Italy and Europe the precepts of
the healing art. 66 The success of each professor must have been
influenced by personal and accidental causes; but we may form a
less fanciful estimate of their general knowledge of anatomy, 67
botany, 68 and chemistry, 69 the threefold basis of their theory
and practice. A superstitious reverence for the dead confined
both the Greeks and the Arabians to the dissection of apes and
quadrupeds; the more solid and visible parts were known in the
time of Galen, and the finer scrutiny of the human frame was
reserved for the microscope and the injections of modern artists.
Botany is an active science, and the discoveries of the torrid
zone might enrich the herbal of Dioscorides with two thousand
plants. Some traditionary knowledge might be secreted in the
temples and monasteries of Egypt; much useful experience had been
acquired in the practice of arts and manufactures; but the
science of chemistry owes its origin and improvement to the
industry of the Saracens. They first invented and named the
alembic for the purposes of distillation, analyzed the substances
of the three kingdoms of nature, tried the distinction and
affinities of alcalis and acids, and converted the poisonous
minerals into soft and salutary medicines. But the most eager
search of Arabian chemistry was the transmutation of metals, and
the elixir of immortal health: the reason and the fortunes of
thousands were evaporated in the crucibles of alchemy, and the
consummation of the great work was promoted by the worthy aid of
mystery, fable, and superstition.
55 (return) [ The Arabic catalogue of the Escurial will give a
just idea of the proportion of the classes. In the library of
Cairo, the Mss of astronomy and medicine amounted to 6500, with
two fair globes, the one of brass, the other of silver, (Bibliot.
Arab. Hisp. tom. i. p. 417.)]
56 (return) [ As, for instance, the fifth, sixth, and seventh
books (the eighth is still wanting) of the Conic Sections of
Apollonius Pergaeus, which were printed from the Florence Ms.
1661, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. ii. p. 559.) Yet the fifth
book had been previously restored by the mathematical divination
of Viviani, (see his Eloge in Fontenelle, tom. v. p. 59, &c.)]
57 (return) [ The merit of these Arabic versions is freely
discussed by Renaudot, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. i. p.
812-816,) and piously defended by Casiri, (Bibliot. Arab.
Hispana, tom. i. p. 238-240.) Most of the versions of Plato,
Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, &c., are ascribed to Honain, a
physician of the Nestorian sect, who flourished at Bagdad in the
court of the caliphs, and died A.D. 876. He was at the head of a
school or manufacture of translations, and the works of his sons
and disciples were published under his name. See Abulpharagius,
(Dynast. p. 88, 115, 171-174, and apud Asseman. Bibliot. Orient.
tom. ii. p. 438,) D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 456,)
Asseman. (Bibliot. Orient. tom. iii. p. 164,) and Casiri,
(Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 238, &c. 251, 286-290, 302,
304, &c.)]
58 (return) [ See Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 181, 214,
236, 257, 315, 388, 396, 438, &c.]
59 (return) [ The most elegant commentary on the Categories or
Predicaments of Aristotle may be found in the Philosophical
Arrangements of Mr. James Harris, (London, 1775, in octavo,) who
labored to revive the studies of Grecian literature and
philosophy.]
60 (return) [ Abulpharagius, Dynast. p. 81, 222. Bibliot. Arab.
Hisp. tom. i. p. 370, 371. In quem (says the primate of the
Jacobites) si immiserit selector, oceanum hoc in genere
(algebrae) inveniet. The time of Diophantus of Alexandria is
unknown; but his six books are still extant, and have been
illustrated by the Greek Planudes and the Frenchman Meziriac,
(Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. iv. p. 12-15.)]
61 (return) [ Abulfeda (Annal. Moslem. p. 210, 211, vers. Reiske)
describes this operation according to Ibn Challecan, and the best
historians. This degree most accurately contains 200,000 royal or
Hashemite cubits which Arabia had derived from the sacred and
legal practice both of Palestine and Egypt. This ancient cubit is
repeated 400 times in each basis of the great pyramid, and seems
to indicate the primitive and universal measures of the East. See
the Metrologie of the laborions. M. Paucton, p. 101-195.]
62 (return) [ See the Astronomical Tables of Ulugh Begh, with the
preface of Dr. Hyde in the first volume of his Syntagma
Dissertationum, Oxon. 1767.]
63 (return) [ The truth of astrology was allowed by Albumazar,
and the best of the Arabian astronomers, who drew their most
certain predictions, not from Venus and Mercury, but from Jupiter
and the sun, (Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 161-163.) For the state and
science of the Persian astronomers, see Chardin, (Voyages en
Perse, tom. iii. p. 162-203.)]
64 (return) [ Bibliot. Arabico-Hispana, tom. i. p. 438. The
original relates a pleasant tale of an ignorant, but harmless,
practitioner.]
65 (return) [ In the year 956, Sancho the Fat, king of Leon, was
cured by the physicians of Cordova, (Mariana, l. viii. c. 7, tom.
i. p. 318.)]
66 (return) [ The school of Salerno, and the introduction of the
Arabian sciences into Italy, are discussed with learning and
judgment by Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. iii.
p. 932-940) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii. p.
119-127.)]
67 (return) [ See a good view of the progress of anatomy in
Wotton, (Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, p. 208-256.)
His reputation has been unworthily depreciated by the wits in the
controversy of Boyle and Bentley.]
68 (return) [ Bibliot. Arab. Hispana, tom. i. p. 275. Al Beithar,
of Malaga, their greatest botanist, had travelled into Africa,
Persia, and India.]
69 (return) [ Dr. Watson, (Elements of Chemistry, vol. i. p. 17,
&c.) allows the original merit of the Arabians. Yet he quotes the
modest confession of the famous Geber of the ixth century,
(D’Herbelot, p. 387,) that he had drawn most of his science,
perhaps the transmutation of metals, from the ancient sages.
Whatever might be the origin or extent of their knowledge, the
arts of chemistry and alchemy appear to have been known in Egypt
at least three hundred years before Mahomet, (Wotton’s
Reflections, p. 121-133. Pauw, Recherches sur les Egyptiens et
les Chinois, tom. i. p. 376-429.) * Note: Mr. Whewell (Hist. of
Inductive Sciences, vol. i. p. 336) rejects the claim of the
Arabians as inventors of the science of chemistry. “The formation
and realization of the notions of analysis and affinity were
important steps in chemical science; which, as I shall hereafter
endeavor to show it remained for the chemists of Europe to make
at a much later period.”—M.]
But the Moslems deprived themselves of the principal benefits of
a familiar intercourse with Greece and Rome, the knowledge of
antiquity, the purity of taste, and the freedom of thought.
Confident in the riches of their native tongue, the Arabians
disdained the study of any foreign idiom. The Greek interpreters
were chosen among their Christian subjects; they formed their
translations, sometimes on the original text, more frequently
perhaps on a Syriac version; and in the crowd of astronomers and
physicians, there is no example of a poet, an orator, or even an
historian, being taught to speak the language of the Saracens. 70
The mythology of Homer would have provoked the abhorrence of
those stern fanatics: they possessed in lazy ignorance the
colonies of the Macedonians, and the provinces of Carthage and
Rome: the heroes of Plutarch and Livy were buried in oblivion;
and the history of the world before Mahomet was reduced to a
short legend of the patriarchs, the prophets, and the Persian
kings. Our education in the Greek and Latin schools may have
fixed in our minds a standard of exclusive taste; and I am not
forward to condemn the literature and judgment of nations, of
whose language I am ignorant. Yet I know that the classics have
much to teach, and I believe that the Orientals have much to
learn; the temperate dignity of style, the graceful proportions
of art, the forms of visible and intellectual beauty, the just
delineation of character and passion, the rhetoric of narrative
and argument, the regular fabric of epic and dramatic poetry. 71
The influence of truth and reason is of a less ambiguous
complexion. The philosophers of Athens and Rome enjoyed the
blessings, and asserted the rights, of civil and religious
freedom. Their moral and political writings might have gradually
unlocked the fetters of Eastern despotism, diffused a liberal
spirit of inquiry and toleration, and encouraged the Arabian
sages to suspect that their caliph was a tyrant, and their
prophet an impostor. 72 The instinct of superstition was alarmed
by the introduction even of the abstract sciences; and the more
rigid doctors of the law condemned the rash and pernicious
curiosity of Almamon. 73 To the thirst of martyrdom, the vision
of paradise, and the belief of predestination, we must ascribe
the invincible enthusiasm of the prince and people. And the sword
of the Saracens became less formidable when their youth was drawn
away from the camp to the college, when the armies of the
faithful presumed to read and to reflect. Yet the foolish vanity
of the Greeks was jealous of their studies, and reluctantly
imparted the sacred fire to the Barbarians of the East. 74
70 (return) [ Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 26, 148) mentions a
Syriac version of Homer’s two poems, by Theophilus, a Christian
Maronite of Mount Libanus, who professed astronomy at Roha or
Edessa towards the end of the viiith century. His work would be a
literary curiosity. I have read somewhere, but I do not believe,
that Plutarch’s Lives were translated into Turkish for the use of
Mahomet the Second.]
71 (return) [ I have perused, with much pleasure, Sir William
Jones’s Latin Commentary on Asiatic Poetry, (London, 1774, in
octavo,) which was composed in the youth of that wonderful
linguist. At present, in the maturity of his taste and judgment,
he would perhaps abate of the fervent, and even partial, praise
which he has bestowed on the Orientals.]
72 (return) [ Among the Arabian philosophers, Averroes has been
accused of despising the religions of the Jews, the Christians,
and the Mahometans, (see his article in Bayle’s Dictionary.) Each
of these sects would agree, that in two instances out of three,
his contempt was reasonable.]
73 (return) [ D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque, Orientale, p. 546.]
74 (return) [ Cedrenus, p. 548, who relates how manfully the
emperor refused a mathematician to the instances and offers of
the caliph Almamon. This absurd scruple is expressed almost in
the same words by the continuator of Theophanes, (Scriptores post
Theophanem, p. 118.)]
In the bloody conflict of the Ommiades and Abbassides, the Greeks
had stolen the opportunity of avenging their wrongs and enlarging
their limits. But a severe retribution was exacted by Mohadi, the
third caliph of the new dynasty, who seized, in his turn, the
favorable opportunity, while a woman and a child, Irene and
Constantine, were seated on the Byzantine throne. An army of
ninety-five thousand Persians and Arabs was sent from the Tigris
to the Thracian Bosphorus, under the command of Harun, 75 or
Aaron, the second son of the commander of the faithful. His
encampment on the opposite heights of Chrysopolis, or Scutari,
informed Irene, in her palace of Constantinople, of the loss of
her troops and provinces. With the consent or connivance of their
sovereign, her ministers subscribed an ignominious peace; and the
exchange of some royal gifts could not disguise the annual
tribute of seventy thousand dinars of gold, which was imposed on
the Roman empire. The Saracens had too rashly advanced into the
midst of a distant and hostile land: their retreat was solicited
by the promise of faithful guides and plentiful markets; and not
a Greek had courage to whisper, that their weary forces might be
surrounded and destroyed in their necessary passage between a
slippery mountain and the River Sangarius. Five years after this
expedition, Harun ascended the throne of his father and his elder
brother; the most powerful and vigorous monarch of his race,
illustrious in the West, as the ally of Charlemagne, and familiar
to the most childish readers, as the perpetual hero of the
Arabian tales. His title to the name of Al Rashid (the Just) is
sullied by the extirpation of the generous, perhaps the innocent,
Barmecides; yet he could listen to the complaint of a poor widow
who had been pillaged by his troops, and who dared, in a passage
of the Koran, to threaten the inattentive despot with the
judgment of God and posterity. His court was adorned with luxury
and science; but, in a reign of three-and-twenty years, Harun
repeatedly visited his provinces from Chorasan to Egypt; nine
times he performed the pilgrimage of Mecca; eight times he
invaded the territories of the Romans; and as often as they
declined the payment of the tribute, they were taught to feel
that a month of depredation was more costly than a year of
submission. But when the unnatural mother of Constantine was
deposed and banished, her successor, Nicephorus, resolved to
obliterate this badge of servitude and disgrace. The epistle of
the emperor to the caliph was pointed with an allusion to the
game of chess, which had already spread from Persia to Greece.
“The queen (he spoke of Irene) considered you as a rook, and
herself as a pawn. That pusillanimous female submitted to pay a
tribute, the double of which she ought to have exacted from the
Barbarians. Restore therefore the fruits of your injustice, or
abide the determination of the sword.” At these words the
ambassadors cast a bundle of swords before the foot of the
throne. The caliph smiled at the menace, and drawing his cimeter,
samsamah, a weapon of historic or fabulous renown, he cut asunder
the feeble arms of the Greeks, without turning the edge, or
endangering the temper, of his blade. He then dictated an epistle
of tremendous brevity: “In the name of the most merciful God,
Harun al Rashid, commander of the faithful, to Nicephorus, the
Roman dog. I have read thy letter, O thou son of an unbelieving
mother. Thou shalt not hear, thou shalt behold, my reply.” It was
written in characters of blood and fire on the plains of Phrygia;
and the warlike celerity of the Arabs could only be checked by
the arts of deceit and the show of repentance.
The triumphant caliph retired, after the fatigues of the
campaign, to his favorite palace of Racca on the Euphrates: 76
but the distance of five hundred miles, and the inclemency of the
season, encouraged his adversary to violate the peace. Nicephorus
was astonished by the bold and rapid march of the commander of
the faithful, who repassed, in the depth of winter, the snows of
Mount Taurus: his stratagems of policy and war were exhausted;
and the perfidious Greek escaped with three wounds from a field
of battle overspread with forty thousand of his subjects. Yet the
emperor was ashamed of submission, and the caliph was resolved on
victory. One hundred and thirty-five thousand regular soldiers
received pay, and were inscribed in the military roll; and above
three hundred thousand persons of every denomination marched
under the black standard of the Abbassides. They swept the
surface of Asia Minor far beyond Tyana and Ancyra, and invested
the Pontic Heraclea, 77 once a flourishing state, now a paltry
town; at that time capable of sustaining, in her antique walls, a
month’s siege against the forces of the East. The ruin was
complete, the spoil was ample; but if Harun had been conversant
with Grecian story, he would have regretted the statue of
Hercules, whose attributes, the club, the bow, the quiver, and
the lion’s hide, were sculptured in massy gold. The progress of
desolation by sea and land, from the Euxine to the Isle of
Cyprus, compelled the emperor Nicephorus to retract his haughty
defiance. In the new treaty, the ruins of Heraclea were left
forever as a lesson and a trophy; and the coin of the tribute was
marked with the image and superscription of Harun and his three
sons. 78 Yet this plurality of lords might contribute to remove
the dishonor of the Roman name. After the death of their father,
the heirs of the caliph were involved in civil discord, and the
conqueror, the liberal Almamon, was sufficiently engaged in the
restoration of domestic peace and the introduction of foreign
science.
75 (return) [ See the reign and character of Harun Al Rashid, in
the Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 431-433, under his proper title;
and in the relative articles to which M. D’Herbelot refers. That
learned collector has shown much taste in stripping the Oriental
chronicles of their instructive and amusing anecdotes.]
76 (return) [ For the situation of Racca, the old Nicephorium,
consult D’Anville, (l’Euphrate et le Tigre, p. 24-27.) The
Arabian Nights represent Harun al Rashid as almost stationary in
Bagdad. He respected the royal seat of the Abbassides: but the
vices of the inhabitants had driven him from the city, (Abulfed.
Annal. p. 167.)]
77 (return) [ M. de Tournefort, in his coasting voyage from
Constantinople to Trebizond, passed a night at Heraclea or
Eregri. His eye surveyed the present state, his reading collected
the antiquities, of the city (Voyage du Levant, tom. iii. lettre
xvi. p. 23-35.) We have a separate history of Heraclea in the
fragments of Memnon, which are preserved by Photius.]
78 (return) [ The wars of Harun al Rashid against the Roman
empire are related by Theophanes, (p. 384, 385, 391, 396, 407,
408.) Zonaras, (tom. iii. l. xv. p. 115, 124,) Cedrenus, (p. 477,
478,) Eutycaius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 407,) Elmacin, (Hist.
Saracen. p. 136, 151, 152,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 147, 151,)
and Abulfeda, (p. 156, 166-168.)]
Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part IV.
Under the reign of Almamon at Bagdad, of Michael the Stammerer at
Constantinople, the islands of Crete 79 and Sicily were subdued
by the Arabs. The former of these conquests is disdained by their
own writers, who were ignorant of the fame of Jupiter and Minos,
but it has not been overlooked by the Byzantine historians, who
now begin to cast a clearer light on the affairs of their own
times. 80 A band of Andalusian volunteers, discontented with the
climate or government of Spain, explored the adventures of the
sea; but as they sailed in no more than ten or twenty galleys,
their warfare must be branded with the name of piracy. As the
subjects and sectaries of the white party, they might lawfully
invade the dominions of the black caliphs. A rebellious faction
introduced them into Alexandria; 81 they cut in pieces both
friends and foes, pillaged the churches and the moschs, sold
above six thousand Christian captives, and maintained their
station in the capital of Egypt, till they were oppressed by the
forces and the presence of Almamon himself. From the mouth of the
Nile to the Hellespont, the islands and sea-coasts both of the
Greeks and Moslems were exposed to their depredations; they saw,
they envied, they tasted the fertility of Crete, and soon
returned with forty galleys to a more serious attack. The
Andalusians wandered over the land fearless and unmolested; but
when they descended with their plunder to the sea-shore, their
vessels were in flames, and their chief, Abu Caab, confessed
himself the author of the mischief. Their clamors accused his
madness or treachery. “Of what do you complain?” replied the
crafty emir. “I have brought you to a land flowing with milk and
honey. Here is your true country; repose from your toils, and
forget the barren place of your nativity.” “And our wives and
children?” “Your beauteous captives will supply the place of your
wives, and in their embraces you will soon become the fathers of
a new progeny.” The first habitation was their camp, with a ditch
and rampart, in the Bay of Suda; but an apostate monk led them to
a more desirable position in the eastern parts; and the name of
Candax, their fortress and colony, has been extended to the whole
island, under the corrupt and modern appellation of Candia. The
hundred cities of the age of Minos were diminished to thirty; and
of these, only one, most probably Cydonia, had courage to retain
the substance of freedom and the profession of Christianity. The
Saracens of Crete soon repaired the loss of their navy; and the
timbers of Mount Ida were launched into the main. During a
hostile period of one hundred and thirty-eight years, the princes
of Constantinople attacked these licentious corsairs with
fruitless curses and ineffectual arms.
79 (return) [ The authors from whom I have learned the most of
the ancient and modern state of Crete, are Belon, (Observations,
&c., c. 3-20, Paris, 1555,) Tournefort, (Voyage du Levant, tom.
i. lettre ii. et iii.,) and Meursius, (Creta, in his works, tom.
iii. p. 343-544.) Although Crete is styled by Homer, by
Dionysius, I cannot conceive that mountainous island to surpass,
or even to equal, in fertility the greater part of Spain.]
80 (return) [ The most authentic and circumstantial intelligence
is obtained from the four books of the Continuation of
Theophanes, compiled by the pen or the command of Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, with the Life of his father Basil, the
Macedonian, (Scriptores post Theophanem, p. 1-162, a Francisc.
Combefis, Paris, 1685.) The loss of Crete and Sicily is related,
l. ii. p. 46-52. To these we may add the secondary evidence of
Joseph Genesius, (l. ii. p. 21, Venet. 1733,) George Cedrenus,
(Compend. p. 506-508,) and John Scylitzes Curopalata, (apud
Baron. Annal. Eccles. A.D. 827, No. 24, &c.) But the modern
Greeks are such notorious plagiaries, that I should only quote a
plurality of names.]
81 (return) [ Renaudot (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 251-256,
268-270) had described the ravages of the Andalusian Arabs in
Egypt, but has forgot to connect them with the conquest of
Crete.]
The loss of Sicily 82 was occasioned by an act of superstitious
rigor. An amorous youth, who had stolen a nun from her cloister,
was sentenced by the emperor to the amputation of his tongue.
Euphemius appealed to the reason and policy of the Saracens of
Africa; and soon returned with the Imperial purple, a fleet of
one hundred ships, and an army of seven hundred horse and ten
thousand foot. They landed at Mazara near the ruins of the
ancient Selinus; but after some partial victories, Syracuse 83
was delivered by the Greeks, the apostate was slain before her
walls, and his African friends were reduced to the necessity of
feeding on the flesh of their own horses. In their turn they were
relieved by a powerful reenforcement of their brethren of
Andalusia; the largest and western part of the island was
gradually reduced, and the commodious harbor of Palermo was
chosen for the seat of the naval and military power of the
Saracens. Syracuse preserved about fifty years the faith which
she had sworn to Christ and to Caesar. In the last and fatal
siege, her citizens displayed some remnant of the spirit which
had formerly resisted the powers of Athens and Carthage. They
stood above twenty days against the battering-rams and
catapultoe, the mines and tortoises of the besiegers; and the
place might have been relieved, if the mariners of the Imperial
fleet had not been detained at Constantinople in building a
church to the Virgin Mary. The deacon Theodosius, with the bishop
and clergy, was dragged in chains from the altar to Palermo, cast
into a subterraneous dungeon, and exposed to the hourly peril of
death or apostasy. His pathetic, and not inelegant, complaint may
be read as the epitaph of his country. 84 From the Roman conquest
to this final calamity, Syracuse, now dwindled to the primitive
Isle of Ortygea, had insensibly declined. Yet the relics were
still precious; the plate of the cathedral weighed five thousand
pounds of silver; the entire spoil was computed at one million of
pieces of gold, (about four hundred thousand pounds sterling,)
and the captives must outnumber the seventeen thousand
Christians, who were transported from the sack of Tauromenium
into African servitude. In Sicily, the religion and language of
the Greeks were eradicated; and such was the docility of the
rising generation, that fifteen thousand boys were circumcised
and clothed on the same day with the son of the Fatimite caliph.
The Arabian squadrons issued from the harbors of Palermo,
Biserta, and Tunis; a hundred and fifty towns of Calabria and
Campania were attacked and pillaged; nor could the suburbs of
Rome be defended by the name of the Caesars and apostles. Had the
Mahometans been united, Italy must have fallen an easy and
glorious accession to the empire of the prophet. But the caliphs
of Bagdad had lost their authority in the West; the Aglabites and
Fatimites usurped the provinces of Africa, their emirs of Sicily
aspired to independence; and the design of conquest and dominion
was degraded to a repetition of predatory inroads. 85
82 (return) [ Theophanes, l. ii. p. 51. This history of the loss
of Sicily is no longer extant. Muratori (Annali d’ Italia, tom.
vii. p. 719, 721, &c.) has added some circumstances from the
Italian chronicles.]
83 (return) [ The splendid and interesting tragedy of Tancrede
would adapt itself much better to this epoch, than to the date
(A.D. 1005) which Voltaire himself has chosen. But I must gently
reproach the poet for infusing into the Greek subjects the spirit
of modern knights and ancient republicans.]
84 (return) [ The narrative or lamentation of Theodosius is
transcribed and illustrated by Pagi, (Critica, tom. iii. p. 719,
&c.) Constantine Porphyrogenitus (in Vit. Basil, c. 69, 70, p.
190-192) mentions the loss of Syracuse and the triumph of the
demons.]
85 (return) [ The extracts from the Arabic histories of Sicily
are given in Abulfeda, (Annal’ Moslem. p. 271-273,) and in the
first volume of Muratori’s Scriptores Rerum Italicarum. M. de
Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 363, 364) has added some
important facts.]
In the sufferings of prostrate Italy, the name of Rome awakens a
solemn and mournful recollection. A fleet of Saracens from the
African coast presumed to enter the mouth of the Tyber, and to
approach a city which even yet, in her fallen state, was revered
as the metropolis of the Christian world. The gates and ramparts
were guarded by a trembling people; but the tombs and temples of
St. Peter and St. Paul were left exposed in the suburbs of the
Vatican and of the Ostian way. Their invisible sanctity had
protected them against the Goths, the Vandals, and the Lombards;
but the Arabs disdained both the gospel and the legend; and their
rapacious spirit was approved and animated by the precepts of the
Koran. The Christian idols were stripped of their costly
offerings; a silver altar was torn away from the shrine of St.
Peter; and if the bodies or the buildings were left entire, their
deliverance must be imputed to the haste, rather than the
scruples, of the Saracens. In their course along the Appian way,
they pillaged Fundi and besieged Gayeta; but they had turned
aside from the walls of Rome, and by their divisions, the Capitol
was saved from the yoke of the prophet of Mecca. The same danger
still impended on the heads of the Roman people; and their
domestic force was unequal to the assault of an African emir.
They claimed the protection of their Latin sovereign; but the
Carlovingian standard was overthrown by a detachment of the
Barbarians: they meditated the restoration of the Greek emperors;
but the attempt was treasonable, and the succor remote and
precarious. 86 Their distress appeared to receive some
aggravation from the death of their spiritual and temporal chief;
but the pressing emergency superseded the forms and intrigues of
an election; and the unanimous choice of Pope Leo the Fourth 87
was the safety of the church and city. This pontiff was born a
Roman; the courage of the first ages of the republic glowed in
his breast; and, amidst the ruins of his country, he stood erect,
like one of the firm and lofty columns that rear their heads
above the fragments of the Roman forum. The first days of his
reign were consecrated to the purification and removal of relics,
to prayers and processions, and to all the solemn offices of
religion, which served at least to heal the imagination, and
restore the hopes, of the multitude. The public defence had been
long neglected, not from the presumption of peace, but from the
distress and poverty of the times. As far as the scantiness of
his means and the shortness of his leisure would allow, the
ancient walls were repaired by the command of Leo; fifteen
towers, in the most accessible stations, were built or renewed;
two of these commanded on either side of the Tyber; and an iron
chain was drawn across the stream to impede the ascent of a
hostile navy. The Romans were assured of a short respite by the
welcome news, that the siege of Gayeta had been raised, and that
a part of the enemy, with their sacrilegious plunder, had
perished in the waves.
86 (return) [ One of the most eminent Romans (Gratianus, magister
militum et Romani palatii superista) was accused of declaring,
Quia Franci nihil nobis boni faciunt, neque adjutorium praebent,
sed magis quae nostra sunt violenter tollunt. Quare non advocamus
Graecos, et cum eis foedus pacis componentes, Francorum regem et
gentem de nostro regno et dominatione expellimus? Anastasius in
Leone IV. p. 199.]
87 (return) [ Voltaire (Hist. Generale, tom. ii. c. 38, p. 124)
appears to be remarkably struck with the character of Pope Leo
IV. I have borrowed his general expression, but the sight of the
forum has furnished me with a more distinct and lively image.]
But the storm, which had been delayed, soon burst upon them with
redoubled violence. The Aglabite, 88 who reigned in Africa, had
inherited from his father a treasure and an army: a fleet of
Arabs and Moors, after a short refreshment in the harbors of
Sardinia, cast anchor before the mouth of the Tyber, sixteen
miles from the city: and their discipline and numbers appeared to
threaten, not a transient inroad, but a serious design of
conquest and dominion. But the vigilance of Leo had formed an
alliance with the vassals of the Greek empire, the free and
maritime states of Gayeta, Naples, and Amalfi; and in the hour of
danger, their galleys appeared in the port of Ostia under the
command of Caesarius, the son of the Neapolitan duke, a noble and
valiant youth, who had already vanquished the fleets of the
Saracens. With his principal companions, Caesarius was invited to
the Lateran palace, and the dexterous pontiff affected to inquire
their errand, and to accept with joy and surprise their
providential succor. The city bands, in arms, attended their
father to Ostia, where he reviewed and blessed his generous
deliverers. They kissed his feet, received the communion with
martial devotion, and listened to the prayer of Leo, that the
same God who had supported St. Peter and St. Paul on the waves of
the sea, would strengthen the hands of his champions against the
adversaries of his holy name. After a similar prayer, and with
equal resolution, the Moslems advanced to the attack of the
Christian galleys, which preserved their advantageous station
along the coast. The victory inclined to the side of the allies,
when it was less gloriously decided in their favor by a sudden
tempest, which confounded the skill and courage of the stoutest
mariners. The Christians were sheltered in a friendly harbor,
while the Africans were scattered and dashed in pieces among the
rocks and islands of a hostile shore. Those who escaped from
shipwreck and hunger neither found, nor deserved, mercy at the
hands of their implacable pursuers. The sword and the gibbet
reduced the dangerous multitude of captives; and the remainder
was more usefully employed, to restore the sacred edifices which
they had attempted to subvert. The pontiff, at the head of the
citizens and allies, paid his grateful devotion at the shrines of
the apostles; and, among the spoils of this naval victory,
thirteen Arabian bows of pure and massy silver were suspended
round the altar of the fishermen of Galilee. The reign of Leo the
Fourth was employed in the defence and ornament of the Roman
state. The churches were renewed and embellished: near four
thousand pounds of silver were consecrated to repair the losses
of St. Peter; and his sanctuary was decorated with a plate of
gold of the weight of two hundred and sixteen pounds, embossed
with the portraits of the pope and emperor, and encircled with a
string of pearls. Yet this vain magnificence reflects less glory
on the character of Leo than the paternal care with which he
rebuilt the walls of Horta and Ameria; and transported the
wandering inhabitants of Centumcellae to his new foundation of
Leopolis, twelve miles from the sea-shore. 89 By his liberality,
a colony of Corsicans, with their wives and children, was planted
in the station of Porto, at the mouth of the Tyber: the falling
city was restored for their use, the fields and vineyards were
divided among the new settlers: their first efforts were assisted
by a gift of horses and cattle; and the hardy exiles, who
breathed revenge against the Saracens, swore to live and die
under the standard of St. Peter. The nations of the West and
North who visited the threshold of the apostles had gradually
formed the large and populous suburb of the Vatican, and their
various habitations were distinguished, in the language of the
times, as the schools of the Greeks and Goths, of the Lombards
and Saxons. But this venerable spot was still open to
sacrilegious insult: the design of enclosing it with walls and
towers exhausted all that authority could command, or charity
would supply: and the pious labor of four years was animated in
every season, and at every hour, by the presence of the
indefatigable pontiff. The love of fame, a generous but worldly
passion, may be detected in the name of the Leonine city, which
he bestowed on the Vatican; yet the pride of the dedication was
tempered with Christian penance and humility. The boundary was
trod by the bishop and his clergy, barefoot, in sackcloth and
ashes; the songs of triumph were modulated to psalms and
litanies; the walls were besprinkled with holy water; and the
ceremony was concluded with a prayer, that, under the guardian
care of the apostles and the angelic host, both the old and the
new Rome might ever be preserved pure, prosperous, and
impregnable. 90
88 (return) [ De Guignes, Hist. Generale des Huns, tom. i. p.
363, 364. Cardonne, Hist. de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne, sous la
Domination des Arabs, tom. ii. p. 24, 25. I observe, and cannot
reconcile, the difference of these writers in the succession of
the Aglabites.]
89 (return) [ Beretti (Chorographia Italiae Medii Evi, p. 106,
108) has illustrated Centumcellae, Leopolis, Civitas Leonina, and
the other places of the Roman duchy.]
90 (return) [ The Arabs and the Greeks are alike silent
concerning the invasion of Rome by the Africans. The Latin
chronicles do not afford much instruction, (see the Annals of
Baronius and Pagi.) Our authentic and contemporary guide for the
popes of the ixth century is Anastasius, librarian of the Roman
church. His Life of Leo IV, contains twenty-four pages, (p.
175-199, edit. Paris;) and if a great part consist of
superstitious trifles, we must blame or command his hero, who was
much oftener in a church than in a camp.]
The emperor Theophilus, son of Michael the Stammerer, was one of
the most active and high-spirited princes who reigned at
Constantinople during the middle age. In offensive or defensive
war, he marched in person five times against the Saracens,
formidable in his attack, esteemed by the enemy in his losses and
defeats. In the last of these expeditions he penetrated into
Syria, and besieged the obscure town of Sozopetra; the casual
birthplace of the caliph Motassem, whose father Harun was
attended in peace or war by the most favored of his wives and
concubines. The revolt of a Persian impostor employed at that
moment the arms of the Saracen, and he could only intercede in
favor of a place for which he felt and acknowledged some degree
of filial affection. These solicitations determined the emperor
to wound his pride in so sensible a part. Sozopetra was levelled
with the ground, the Syrian prisoners were marked or mutilated
with ignominious cruelty, and a thousand female captives were
forced away from the adjacent territory. Among these a matron of
the house of Abbas invoked, in an agony of despair, the name of
Motassem; and the insults of the Greeks engaged the honor of her
kinsman to avenge his indignity, and to answer her appeal. Under
the reign of the two elder brothers, the inheritance of the
youngest had been confined to Anatolia, Armenia, Georgia, and
Circassia; this frontier station had exercised his military
talents; and among his accidental claims to the name of Octonary,
91 the most meritorious are the eight battles which he gained or
fought against the enemies of the Koran. In this personal
quarrel, the troops of Irak, Syria, and Egypt, were recruited
from the tribes of Arabia and the Turkish hordes; his cavalry
might be numerous, though we should deduct some myriads from the
hundred and thirty thousand horses of the royal stables; and the
expense of the armament was computed at four millions sterling,
or one hundred thousand pounds of gold. From Tarsus, the place of
assembly, the Saracens advanced in three divisions along the high
road of Constantinople: Motassem himself commanded the centre,
and the vanguard was given to his son Abbas, who, in the trial of
the first adventures, might succeed with the more glory, or fail
with the least reproach. In the revenge of his injury, the caliph
prepared to retaliate a similar affront. The father of Theophilus
was a native of Amorium 92 in Phrygia: the original seat of the
Imperial house had been adorned with privileges and monuments;
and, whatever might be the indifference of the people,
Constantinople itself was scarcely of more value in the eyes of
the sovereign and his court. The name of Amorium was inscribed on
the shields of the Saracens; and their three armies were again
united under the walls of the devoted city. It had been proposed
by the wisest counsellors, to evacuate Amorium, to remove the
inhabitants, and to abandon the empty structures to the vain
resentment of the Barbarians. The emperor embraced the more
generous resolution of defending, in a siege and battle, the
country of his ancestors. When the armies drew near, the front of
the Mahometan line appeared to a Roman eye more closely planted
with spears and javelins; but the event of the action was not
glorious on either side to the national troops. The Arabs were
broken, but it was by the swords of thirty thousand Persians, who
had obtained service and settlement in the Byzantine empire. The
Greeks were repulsed and vanquished, but it was by the arrows of
the Turkish cavalry; and had not their bowstrings been damped and
relaxed by the evening rain, very few of the Christians could
have escaped with the emperor from the field of battle. They
breathed at Dorylaeum, at the distance of three days; and
Theophilus, reviewing his trembling squadrons, forgave the common
flight both of the prince and people. After this discovery of his
weakness, he vainly hoped to deprecate the fate of Amorium: the
inexorable caliph rejected with contempt his prayers and
promises; and detained the Roman ambassadors to be the witnesses
of his great revenge. They had nearly been the witnesses of his
shame. The vigorous assaults of fifty-five days were encountered
by a faithful governor, a veteran garrison, and a desperate
people; and the Saracens must have raised the siege, if a
domestic traitor had not pointed to the weakest part of the wall,
a place which was decorated with the statues of a lion and a
bull. The vow of Motassem was accomplished with unrelenting
rigor: tired, rather than satiated, with destruction, he returned
to his new palace of Samara, in the neighborhood of Bagdad, while
the unfortunate 93 Theophilus implored the tardy and doubtful aid
of his Western rival the emperor of the Franks. Yet in the siege
of Amorium about seventy thousand Moslems had perished: their
loss had been revenged by the slaughter of thirty thousand
Christians, and the sufferings of an equal number of captives,
who were treated as the most atrocious criminals. Mutual
necessity could sometimes extort the exchange or ransom of
prisoners: 94 but in the national and religious conflict of the
two empires, peace was without confidence, and war without mercy.
Quarter was seldom given in the field; those who escaped the edge
of the sword were condemned to hopeless servitude, or exquisite
torture; and a Catholic emperor relates, with visible
satisfaction, the execution of the Saracens of Crete, who were
flayed alive, or plunged into caldrons of boiling oil. 95 To a
point of honor Motassem had sacrificed a flourishing city, two
hundred thousand lives, and the property of millions. The same
caliph descended from his horse, and dirtied his robe, to relieve
the distress of a decrepit old man, who, with his laden ass, had
tumbled into a ditch. On which of these actions did he reflect
with the most pleasure, when he was summoned by the angel of
death? 96
91 (return) [ The same number was applied to the following
circumstance in the life of Motassem: he was the eight of the
Abbassides; he reigned eight years, eight months, and eight days;
left eight sons, eight daughters, eight thousand slaves, eight
millions of gold.]
92 (return) [ Amorium is seldom mentioned by the old geographers,
and to tally forgotten in the Roman Itineraries. After the vith
century, it became an episcopal see, and at length the metropolis
of the new Galatia, (Carol. Scto. Paulo, Geograph. Sacra, p.
234.) The city rose again from its ruins, if we should read
Ammeria, not Anguria, in the text of the Nubian geographer. (p.
236.)]
93 (return) [ In the East he was styled, (Continuator Theophan.
l. iii. p. 84;) but such was the ignorance of the West, that his
ambassadors, in public discourse, might boldly narrate, de
victoriis, quas adversus exteras bellando gentes coelitus fuerat
assecutus, (Annalist. Bertinian. apud Pagi, tom. iii. p. 720.)]
94 (return) [ Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 167, 168) relates one of
these singular transactions on the bridge of the River Lamus in
Cilicia, the limit of the two empires, and one day’s journey
westward of Tarsus, (D’Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p.
91.) Four thousand four hundred and sixty Moslems, eight hundred
women and children, one hundred confederates, were exchanged for
an equal number of Greeks. They passed each other in the middle
of the bridge, and when they reached their respective friends,
they shouted Allah Acbar, and Kyrie Eleison. Many of the
prisoners of Amorium were probably among them, but in the same
year, (A. H. 231,) the most illustrious of them, the forty two
martyrs, were beheaded by the caliph’s order.]
95 (return) [ Constantin. Porphyrogenitus, in Vit. Basil. c. 61,
p. 186. These Saracens were indeed treated with peculiar severity
as pirates and renegadoes.]
96 (return) [ For Theophilus, Motassem, and the Amorian war, see
the Continuator of Theophanes, (l. iii. p. 77-84,) Genesius (l.
iii. p. 24-34.) Cedrenus, (p. 528-532,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen,
p. 180,) Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 165, 166,) Abulfeda, (Annal.
Moslem. p. 191,) D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 639, 640.)]
With Motassem, the eighth of the Abbassides, the glory of his
family and nation expired. When the Arabian conquerors had spread
themselves over the East, and were mingled with the servile
crowds of Persia, Syria, and Egypt, they insensibly lost the
freeborn and martial virtues of the desert. The courage of the
South is the artificial fruit of discipline and prejudice; the
active power of enthusiasm had decayed, and the mercenary forces
of the caliphs were recruited in those climates of the North, of
which valor is the hardy and spontaneous production. Of the Turks
97 who dwelt beyond the Oxus and Jaxartes, the robust youths,
either taken in war or purchased in trade, were educated in the
exercises of the field, and the profession of the Mahometan
faith. The Turkish guards stood in arms round the throne of their
benefactor, and their chiefs usurped the dominion of the palace
and the provinces. Motassem, the first author of this dangerous
example, introduced into the capital above fifty thousand Turks:
their licentious conduct provoked the public indignation, and the
quarrels of the soldiers and people induced the caliph to retire
from Bagdad, and establish his own residence and the camp of his
Barbarian favorites at Samara on the Tigris, about twelve leagues
above the city of Peace. 98 His son Motawakkel was a jealous and
cruel tyrant: odious to his subjects, he cast himself on the
fidelity of the strangers, and these strangers, ambitious and
apprehensive, were tempted by the rich promise of a revolution.
At the instigation, or at least in the cause of his son, they
burst into his apartment at the hour of supper, and the caliph
was cut into seven pieces by the same swords which he had
recently distributed among the guards of his life and throne. To
this throne, yet streaming with a father’s blood, Montasser was
triumphantly led; but in a reign of six months, he found only the
pangs of a guilty conscience. If he wept at the sight of an old
tapestry which represented the crime and punishment of the son of
Chosroes, if his days were abridged by grief and remorse, we may
allow some pity to a parricide, who exclaimed, in the bitterness
of death, that he had lost both this world and the world to come.
After this act of treason, the ensigns of royalty, the garment
and walking-staff of Mahomet, were given and torn away by the
foreign mercenaries, who in four years created, deposed, and
murdered, three commanders of the faithful. As often as the Turks
were inflamed by fear, or rage, or avarice, these caliphs were
dragged by the feet, exposed naked to the scorching sun, beaten
with iron clubs, and compelled to purchase, by the abdication of
their dignity, a short reprieve of inevitable fate. 99 At length,
however, the fury of the tempest was spent or diverted: the
Abbassides returned to the less turbulent residence of Bagdad;
the insolence of the Turks was curbed with a firmer and more
skilful hand, and their numbers were divided and destroyed in
foreign warfare. But the nations of the East had been taught to
trample on the successors of the prophet; and the blessings of
domestic peace were obtained by the relaxation of strength and
discipline. So uniform are the mischiefs of military despotism,
that I seem to repeat the story of the praetorians of Rome. 100
97 (return) [ M. de Guignes, who sometimes leaps, and sometimes
stumbles, in the gulf between Chinese and Mahometan story, thinks
he can see, that these Turks are the Hoei-ke, alias the Kao-tche,
or high-wagons; that they were divided into fifteen hordes, from
China and Siberia to the dominions of the caliphs and Samanides,
&c., (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p. 1-33, 124-131.)]
98 (return) [ He changed the old name of Sumera, or Samara, into
the fanciful title of Sermen-rai, that which gives pleasure at
first sight, (D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 808.
D’Anville, l’Euphrate et le Tigre p. 97, 98.)]
99 (return) [ Take a specimen, the death of the caliph Motaz:
Correptum pedibus pertrahunt, et sudibus probe permulcant, et
spoliatum laceris vestibus in sole collocant, prae cujus acerrimo
aestu pedes alternos attollebat et demittebat. Adstantium aliquis
misero colaphos continuo ingerebat, quos ille objectis manibus
avertere studebat..... Quo facto traditus tortori fuit, totoque
triduo cibo potuque prohibitus..... Suffocatus, &c. (Abulfeda, p.
206.) Of the caliph Mohtadi, he says, services ipsi perpetuis
ictibus contundebant, testiculosque pedibus conculcabant, (p.
208.)]
100 (return) [ See under the reigns of Motassem, Motawakkel,
Montasser, Mostain, Motaz, Mohtadi, and Motamed, in the
Bibliotheque of D’Herbelot, and the now familiar Annals of
Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda.]
While the flame of enthusiasm was damped by the business, the
pleasure, and the knowledge, of the age, it burnt with
concentrated heat in the breasts of the chosen few, the congenial
spirits, who were ambitious of reigning either in this world or
in the next. How carefully soever the book of prophecy had been
sealed by the apostle of Mecca, the wishes, and (if we may
profane the word) even the reason, of fanaticism might believe
that, after the successive missions of Adam, Noah, Abraham,
Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet, the same God, in the fulness of time,
would reveal a still more perfect and permanent law. In the two
hundred and seventy-seventh year of the Hegira, and in the
neighborhood of Cufa, an Arabian preacher, of the name of
Carmath, assumed the lofty and incomprehensible style of the
Guide, the Director, the Demonstration, the Word, the Holy Ghost,
the Camel, the Herald of the Messiah, who had conversed with him
in a human shape, and the representative of Mohammed the son of
Ali, of St. John the Baptist, and of the angel Gabriel. In his
mystic volume, the precepts of the Koran were refined to a more
spiritual sense: he relaxed the duties of ablution, fasting, and
pilgrimage; allowed the indiscriminate use of wine and forbidden
food; and nourished the fervor of his disciples by the daily
repetition of fifty prayers. The idleness and ferment of the
rustic crowd awakened the attention of the magistrates of Cufa; a
timid persecution assisted the progress of the new sect; and the
name of the prophet became more revered after his person had been
withdrawn from the world. His twelve apostles dispersed
themselves among the Bedoweens, “a race of men,” says Abulfeda,
“equally devoid of reason and of religion;” and the success of
their preaching seemed to threaten Arabia with a new revolution.
The Carmathians were ripe for rebellion, since they disclaimed
the title of the house of Abbas, and abhorred the worldly pomp of
the caliphs of Bagdad. They were susceptible of discipline, since
they vowed a blind and absolute submission to their Imam, who was
called to the prophetic office by the voice of God and the
people. Instead of the legal tithes, he claimed the fifth of
their substance and spoil; the most flagitious sins were no more
than the type of disobedience; and the brethren were united and
concealed by an oath of secrecy. After a bloody conflict, they
prevailed in the province of Bahrein, along the Persian Gulf: far
and wide, the tribes of the desert were subject to the sceptre,
or rather to the sword of Abu Said and his son Abu Taher; and
these rebellious imams could muster in the field a hundred and
seven thousand fanatics. The mercenaries of the caliph were
dismayed at the approach of an enemy who neither asked nor
accepted quarter; and the difference between, them in fortitude
and patience, is expressive of the change which three centuries
of prosperity had effected in the character of the Arabians. Such
troops were discomfited in every action; the cities of Racca and
Baalbec, of Cufa and Bassora, were taken and pillaged; Bagdad was
filled with consternation; and the caliph trembled behind the
veils of his palace. In a daring inroad beyond the Tigris, Abu
Taher advanced to the gates of the capital with no more than five
hundred horse. By the special order of Moctader, the bridges had
been broken down, and the person or head of the rebel was
expected every hour by the commander of the faithful. His
lieutenant, from a motive of fear or pity, apprised Abu Taher of
his danger, and recommended a speedy escape. “Your master,” said
the intrepid Carmathian to the messenger, “is at the head of
thirty thousand soldiers: three such men as these are wanting in
his host:” at the same instant, turning to three of his
companions, he commanded the first to plunge a dagger into his
breast, the second to leap into the Tigris, and the third to cast
himself headlong down a precipice. They obeyed without a murmur.
“Relate,” continued the imam, “what you have seen: before the
evening your general shall be chained among my dogs.” Before the
evening, the camp was surprised, and the menace was executed. The
rapine of the Carmathians was sanctified by their aversion to the
worship of Mecca: they robbed a caravan of pilgrims, and twenty
thousand devout Moslems were abandoned on the burning sands to a
death of hunger and thirst. Another year they suffered the
pilgrims to proceed without interruption; but, in the festival of
devotion, Abu Taher stormed the holy city, and trampled on the
most venerable relics of the Mahometan faith. Thirty thousand
citizens and strangers were put to the sword; the sacred
precincts were polluted by the burial of three thousand dead
bodies; the well of Zemzem overflowed with blood; the golden
spout was forced from its place; the veil of the Caaba was
divided among these impious sectaries; and the black stone, the
first monument of the nation, was borne away in triumph to their
capital. After this deed of sacrilege and cruelty, they continued
to infest the confines of Irak, Syria, and Egypt: but the vital
principle of enthusiasm had withered at the root. Their scruples,
or their avarice, again opened the pilgrimage of Mecca, and
restored the black stone of the Caaba; and it is needless to
inquire into what factions they were broken, or by whose swords
they were finally extirpated. The sect of the Carmathians may be
considered as the second visible cause of the decline and fall of
the empire of the caliphs. 101
101 (return) [ For the sect of the Carmathians, consult Elmacin,
(Hist. Sara cen, p. 219, 224, 229, 231, 238, 241, 243,)
Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 179-182,) Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p.
218, 219, &c., 245, 265, 274.) and D’Herbelot, (Bibliotheque
Orientale, p. 256-258, 635.) I find some inconsistencies of
theology and chronology, which it would not be easy nor of much
importance to reconcile. * Note: Compare Von Hammer, Geschichte
der Assassinen, p. 44, &c.—M.]
Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.—Part V.
The third and most obvious cause was the weight and magnitude of
the empire itself. The caliph Almamon might proudly assert, that
it was easier for him to rule the East and the West, than to
manage a chess-board of two feet square: 102 yet I suspect that
in both those games he was guilty of many fatal mistakes; and I
perceive, that in the distant provinces the authority of the
first and most powerful of the Abbassides was already impaired.
The analogy of despotism invests the representative with the full
majesty of the prince; the division and balance of powers might
relax the habits of obedience, might encourage the passive
subject to inquire into the origin and administration of civil
government. He who is born in the purple is seldom worthy to
reign; but the elevation of a private man, of a peasant, perhaps,
or a slave, affords a strong presumption of his courage and
capacity. The viceroy of a remote kingdom aspires to secure the
property and inheritance of his precarious trust; the nations
must rejoice in the presence of their sovereign; and the command
of armies and treasures are at once the object and the instrument
of his ambition. A change was scarcely visible as long as the
lieutenants of the caliph were content with their vicarious
title; while they solicited for themselves or their sons a
renewal of the Imperial grant, and still maintained on the coin
and in the public prayers the name and prerogative of the
commander of the faithful. But in the long and hereditary
exercise of power, they assumed the pride and attributes of
royalty; the alternative of peace or war, of reward or
punishment, depended solely on their will; and the revenues of
their government were reserved for local services or private
magnificence. Instead of a regular supply of men and money, the
successors of the prophet were flattered with the ostentatious
gift of an elephant, or a cast of hawks, a suit of silk hangings,
or some pounds of musk and amber. 103
102 (return) [ Hyde, Syntagma Dissertat. tom. ii. p. 57, in Hist.
Shahiludii.]
103 (return) [ The dynasties of the Arabian empire may be studied
in the Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and Abulfeda, under the
proper years, in the dictionary of D’Herbelot, under the proper
names. The tables of M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. i.)
exhibit a general chronology of the East, interspersed with some
historical anecdotes; but his attachment to national blood has
sometimes confounded the order of time and place.]
After the revolt of Spain from the temporal and spiritual
supremacy of the Abbassides, the first symptoms of disobedience
broke forth in the province of Africa. Ibrahim, the son of Aglab,
the lieutenant of the vigilant and rigid Harun, bequeathed to the
dynasty of the Aglabites the inheritance of his name and power.
The indolence or policy of the caliphs dissembled the injury and
loss, and pursued only with poison the founder of the Edrisites,
104 who erected the kingdom and city of Fez on the shores of the
Western ocean. 105 In the East, the first dynasty was that of the
Taherites; 106 the posterity of the valiant Taher, who, in the
civil wars of the sons of Harun, had served with too much zeal
and success the cause of Almamon, the younger brother. He was
sent into honorable exile, to command on the banks of the Oxus;
and the independence of his successors, who reigned in Chorasan
till the fourth generation, was palliated by their modest and
respectful demeanor, the happiness of their subjects and the
security of their frontier. They were supplanted by one of those
adventures so frequent in the annals of the East, who left his
trade of a brazier (from whence the name of Soffarides) for the
profession of a robber. In a nocturnal visit to the treasure of
the prince of Sistan, Jacob, the son of Leith, stumbled over a
lump of salt, which he unwarily tasted with his tongue. Salt,
among the Orientals, is the symbol of hospitality, and the pious
robber immediately retired without spoil or damage. The discovery
of this honorable behavior recommended Jacob to pardon and trust;
he led an army at first for his benefactor, at last for himself,
subdued Persia, and threatened the residence of the Abbassides.
On his march towards Bagdad, the conqueror was arrested by a
fever. He gave audience in bed to the ambassador of the caliph;
and beside him on a table were exposed a naked cimeter, a crust
of brown bread, and a bunch of onions. “If I die,” said he, “your
master is delivered from his fears. If I live, this must
determine between us. If I am vanquished, I can return without
reluctance to the homely fare of my youth.” From the height where
he stood, the descent would not have been so soft or harmless: a
timely death secured his own repose and that of the caliph, who
paid with the most lavish concessions the retreat of his brother
Amrou to the palaces of Shiraz and Ispahan. The Abbassides were
too feeble to contend, too proud to forgive: they invited the
powerful dynasty of the Samanides, who passed the Oxus with ten
thousand horse so poor, that their stirrups were of wood: so
brave, that they vanquished the Soffarian army, eight times more
numerous than their own. The captive Amrou was sent in chains, a
grateful offering to the court of Bagdad; and as the victor was
content with the inheritance of Transoxiana and Chorasan, the
realms of Persia returned for a while to the allegiance of the
caliphs. The provinces of Syria and Egypt were twice dismembered
by their Turkish slaves of the race of Toulon and Ilkshid. 107
These Barbarians, in religion and manners the countrymen of
Mahomet, emerged from the bloody factions of the palace to a
provincial command and an independent throne: their names became
famous and formidable in their time; but the founders of these
two potent dynasties confessed, either in words or actions, the
vanity of ambition. The first on his death-bed implored the mercy
of God to a sinner, ignorant of the limits of his own power: the
second, in the midst of four hundred thousand soldiers and eight
thousand slaves, concealed from every human eye the chamber where
he attempted to sleep. Their sons were educated in the vices of
kings; and both Egypt and Syria were recovered and possessed by
the Abbassides during an interval of thirty years. In the decline
of their empire, Mesopotamia, with the important cities of Mosul
and Aleppo, was occupied by the Arabian princes of the tribe of
Hamadan. The poets of their court could repeat without a blush,
that nature had formed their countenances for beauty, their
tongues for eloquence, and their hands for liberality and valor:
but the genuine tale of the elevation and reign of the
Hamadanites exhibits a scene of treachery, murder, and parricide.
At the same fatal period, the Persian kingdom was again usurped
by the dynasty of the Bowides, by the sword of three brothers,
who, under various names, were styled the support and columns of
the state, and who, from the Caspian Sea to the ocean, would
suffer no tyrants but themselves. Under their reign, the language
and genius of Persia revived, and the Arabs, three hundred and
four years after the death of Mahomet, were deprived of the
sceptre of the East.
104 (return) [ The Aglabites and Edrisites are the professed
subject of M. de Cardonne, (Hist. de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne
sous la Domination des Arabes, tom. ii. p. 1-63.)]
105 (return) [ To escape the reproach of error, I must criticize
the inaccuracies of M. de Guignes (tom. i. p. 359) concerning the
Edrisites. 1. The dynasty and city of Fez could not be founded in
the year of the Hegira 173, since the founder was a posthumous
child of a descendant of Ali, who fled from Mecca in the year
168. 2. This founder, Edris, the son of Edris, instead of living
to the improbable age of 120 years, A. H. 313, died A. H. 214, in
the prime of manhood. 3. The dynasty ended A. H. 307,
twenty-three years sooner than it is fixed by the historian of
the Huns. See the accurate Annals of Abulfeda p. 158, 159, 185,
238.]
106 (return) [ The dynasties of the Taherites and Soffarides,
with the rise of that of the Samanines, are described in the
original history and Latin version of Mirchond: yet the most
interesting facts had already been drained by the diligence of M.
D’Herbelot.]
107 (return) [ M. de Guignes (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p.
124-154) has exhausted the Toulunides and Ikshidites of Egypt,
and thrown some light on the Carmathians and Hamadanites.]
Rahadi, the twentieth of the Abbassides, and the thirty-ninth of
the successors of Mahomet, was the last who deserved the title of
commander of the faithful; 108 the last (says Abulfeda) who spoke
to the people, or conversed with the learned; the last who, in
the expense of his household, represented the wealth and
magnificence of the ancient caliphs. After him, the lords of the
Eastern world were reduced to the most abject misery, and exposed
to the blows and insults of a servile condition. The revolt of
the provinces circumscribed their dominions within the walls of
Bagdad: but that capital still contained an innumerable
multitude, vain of their past fortune, discontented with their
present state, and oppressed by the demands of a treasury which
had formerly been replenished by the spoil and tribute of
nations. Their idleness was exercised by faction and controversy.
Under the mask of piety, the rigid followers of Hanbal 109
invaded the pleasures of domestic life, burst into the houses of
plebeians and princes, the wine, broke the instruments, beat the
musicians, and dishonored, with infamous suspicions, the
associates of every handsome youth. In each profession, which
allowed room for two persons, the one was a votary, the other an
antagonist, of Ali; and the Abbassides were awakened by the
clamorous grief of the sectaries, who denied their title, and
cursed their progenitors. A turbulent people could only be
repressed by a military force; but who could satisfy the avarice
or assert the discipline of the mercenaries themselves? The
African and the Turkish guards drew their swords against each
other, and the chief commanders, the emirs al Omra, 110
imprisoned or deposed their sovereigns, and violated the
sanctuary of the mosch and harem. If the caliphs escaped to the
camp or court of any neighboring prince, their deliverance was a
change of servitude, till they were prompted by despair to invite
the Bowides, the sultans of Persia, who silenced the factions of
Bagdad by their irresistible arms. The civil and military powers
were assumed by Moezaldowlat, the second of the three brothers,
and a stipend of sixty thousand pounds sterling was assigned by
his generosity for the private expense of the commander of the
faithful. But on the fortieth day, at the audience of the
ambassadors of Chorasan, and in the presence of a trembling
multitude, the caliph was dragged from his throne to a dungeon,
by the command of the stranger, and the rude hands of his
Dilamites. His palace was pillaged, his eyes were put out, and
the mean ambition of the Abbassides aspired to the vacant station
of danger and disgrace. In the school of adversity, the luxurious
caliphs resumed the grave and abstemious virtues of the primitive
times. Despoiled of their armor and silken robes, they fasted,
they prayed, they studied the Koran and the tradition of the
Sonnites: they performed, with zeal and knowledge, the functions
of their ecclesiastical character. The respect of nations still
waited on the successors of the apostle, the oracles of the law
and conscience of the faithful; and the weakness or division of
their tyrants sometimes restored the Abbassides to the
sovereignty of Bagdad. But their misfortunes had been imbittered
by the triumph of the Fatimites, the real or spurious progeny of
Ali. Arising from the extremity of Africa, these successful
rivals extinguished, in Egypt and Syria, both the spiritual and
temporal authority of the Abbassides; and the monarch of the Nile
insulted the humble pontiff on the banks of the Tigris.
108 (return) [ Hic est ultimus chalifah qui multum atque saepius
pro concione peroraret.... Fuit etiam ultimus qui otium cum
eruditis et facetis hominibus fallere hilariterque agere soleret.
Ultimus tandem chalifarum cui sumtus, stipendia, reditus, et
thesauri, culinae, caeteraque omnis aulica pompa priorum
chalifarum ad instar comparata fuerint. Videbimus enim paullo
post quam indignis et servilibius ludibriis exagitati, quam ad
humilem fortunam altimumque contemptum abjecti fuerint hi quondam
potentissimi totius terrarum Orientalium orbis domini. Abulfed.
Annal. Moslem. p. 261. I have given this passage as the manner
and tone of Abulfeda, but the cast of Latin eloquence belongs
more properly to Reiske. The Arabian historian (p. 255, 257,
261-269, 283, &c.) has supplied me with the most interesting
facts of this paragraph.]
109 (return) [ Their master, on a similar occasion, showed
himself of a more indulgent and tolerating spirit. Ahmed Ebn
Hanbal, the head of one of the four orthodox sects, was born at
Bagdad A. H. 164, and died there A. H. 241. He fought and
suffered in the dispute concerning the creation of the Koran.]
110 (return) [ The office of vizier was superseded by the emir al
Omra, Imperator Imperatorum, a title first instituted by Radhi,
and which merged at length in the Bowides and Seljukides:
vectigalibus, et tributis, et curiis per omnes regiones
praefecit, jussitque in omnibus suggestis nominis ejus in
concionibus mentionem fieri, (Abulpharagius, Dynart. p 199.) It
is likewise mentioned by Elmacin, (p. 254, 255.)]
In the declining age of the caliphs, in the century which elapsed
after the war of Theophilus and Motassem, the hostile
transactions of the two nations were confined to some inroads by
sea and land, the fruits of their close vicinity and indelible
hatred. But when the Eastern world was convulsed and broken, the
Greeks were roused from their lethargy by the hopes of conquest
and revenge. The Byzantine empire, since the accession of the
Basilian race, had reposed in peace and dignity; and they might
encounter with their entire strength the front of some petty
emir, whose rear was assaulted and threatened by his national
foes of the Mahometan faith. The lofty titles of the morning
star, and the death of the Saracens, 111 were applied in the
public acclamations to Nicephorus Phocas, a prince as renowned in
the camp, as he was unpopular in the city. In the subordinate
station of great domestic, or general of the East, he reduced the
Island of Crete, and extirpated the nest of pirates who had so
long defied, with impunity, the majesty of the empire. 112 His
military genius was displayed in the conduct and success of the
enterprise, which had so often failed with loss and dishonor. The
Saracens were confounded by the landing of his troops on safe and
level bridges, which he cast from the vessels to the shore. Seven
months were consumed in the siege of Candia; the despair of the
native Cretans was stimulated by the frequent aid of their
brethren of Africa and Spain; and after the massy wall and double
ditch had been stormed by the Greeks a hopeless conflict was
still maintained in the streets and houses of the city. 1121 The
whole island was subdued in the capital, and a submissive people
accepted, without resistance, the baptism of the conqueror. 113
Constantinople applauded the long-forgotten pomp of a triumph;
but the Imperial diadem was the sole reward that could repay the
services, or satisfy the ambition, of Nicephorus.
111 (return) [ Liutprand, whose choleric temper was imbittered by
his uneasy situation, suggests the names of reproach and contempt
more applicable to Nicephorus than the vain titles of the Greeks,
Ecce venit stella matutina, surgit Eous, reverberat obtutu solis
radios, pallida Saracenorum mors, Nicephorus.]
112 (return) [ Notwithstanding the insinuation of Zonaras, &c.,
(tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 197,) it is an undoubted fact, that Crete
was completely and finally subdued by Nicephorus Phocas, (Pagi,
Critica, tom. iii. p. 873-875. Meursius, Creta, l. iii. c. 7,
tom. iii. p. 464, 465.)]
1121 (return) [ The Acroases of Theodorus, de expugnatione
Cretae, miserable iambics, relate the whole campaign. Whoever
would fairly estimate the merit of the poetic deacon, may read
the description of the slinging a jackass into the famishing
city. The poet is in a transport at the wit of the general, and
revels in the luxury of antithesis. Theodori Acroases, lib. iii.
172, in Niebuhr’s Byzant. Hist.—M.]
113 (return) [ A Greek Life of St. Nicon the Armenian was found
in the Sforza library, and translated into Latin by the Jesuit
Sirmond, for the use of Cardinal Baronius. This contemporary
legend casts a ray of light on Crete and Peloponnesus in the 10th
century. He found the newly-recovered island, foedis detestandae
Agarenorum superstitionis vestigiis adhuc plenam ac refertam....
but the victorious missionary, perhaps with some carnal aid, ad
baptismum omnes veraeque fidei disciplinam pepulit. Ecclesiis per
totam insulam aedificatis, &c., (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 961.)]
After the death of the younger Romanus, the fourth in lineal
descent of the Basilian race, his widow Theophania successively
married Nicephorus Phocas and his assassin John Zimisces, the two
heroes of the age. They reigned as the guardians and colleagues
of her infant sons; and the twelve years of their military
command form the most splendid period of the Byzantine annals.
The subjects and confederates, whom they led to war, appeared, at
least in the eyes of an enemy, two hundred thousand strong; and
of these about thirty thousand were armed with cuirasses: 114 a
train of four thousand mules attended their march; and their
evening camp was regularly fortified with an enclosure of iron
spikes. A series of bloody and undecisive combats is nothing more
than an anticipation of what would have been effected in a few
years by the course of nature; but I shall briefly prosecute the
conquests of the two emperors from the hills of Cappadocia to the
desert of Bagdad. The sieges of Mopsuestia and Tarsus, in
Cilicia, first exercised the skill and perseverance of their
troops, on whom, at this moment, I shall not hesitate to bestow
the name of Romans. In the double city of Mopsuestia, which is
divided by the River Sarus, two hundred thousand Moslems were
predestined to death or slavery, 115 a surprising degree of
population, which must at least include the inhabitants of the
dependent districts. They were surrounded and taken by assault;
but Tarsus was reduced by the slow progress of famine; and no
sooner had the Saracens yielded on honorable terms than they were
mortified by the distant and unprofitable view of the naval
succors of Egypt. They were dismissed with a safe-conduct to the
confines of Syria: a part of the old Christians had quietly lived
under their dominion; and the vacant habitations were replenished
by a new colony. But the mosch was converted into a stable; the
pulpit was delivered to the flames; many rich crosses of gold and
gems, the spoils of Asiatic churches, were made a grateful
offering to the piety or avarice of the emperor; and he
transported the gates of Mopsuestia and Tarsus, which were fixed
in the walls of Constantinople, an eternal monument of his
victory. After they had forced and secured the narrow passes of
Mount Amanus, the two Roman princes repeatedly carried their arms
into the heart of Syria. Yet, instead of assaulting the walls of
Antioch, the humanity or superstition of Nicephorus appeared to
respect the ancient metropolis of the East: he contented himself
with drawing round the city a line of circumvallation; left a
stationary army; and instructed his lieutenant to expect, without
impatience, the return of spring. But in the depth of winter, in
a dark and rainy night, an adventurous subaltern, with three
hundred soldiers, approached the rampart, applied his
scaling-ladders, occupied two adjacent towers, stood firm against
the pressure of multitudes, and bravely maintained his post till
he was relieved by the tardy, though effectual, support of his
reluctant chief. The first tumult of slaughter and rapine
subsided; the reign of Caesar and of Christ was restored; and the
efforts of a hundred thousand Saracens, of the armies of Syria
and the fleets of Africa, were consumed without effect before the
walls of Antioch. The royal city of Aleppo was subject to
Seifeddowlat, of the dynasty of Hamadan, who clouded his past
glory by the precipitate retreat which abandoned his kingdom and
capital to the Roman invaders. In his stately palace, that stood
without the walls of Aleppo, they joyfully seized a
well-furnished magazine of arms, a stable of fourteen hundred
mules, and three hundred bags of silver and gold. But the walls
of the city withstood the strokes of their battering-rams: and
the besiegers pitched their tents on the neighboring mountain of
Jaushan. Their retreat exasperated the quarrel of the townsmen
and mercenaries; the guard of the gates and ramparts was
deserted; and while they furiously charged each other in the
market-place, they were surprised and destroyed by the sword of a
common enemy. The male sex was exterminated by the sword; ten
thousand youths were led into captivity; the weight of the
precious spoil exceeded the strength and number of the beasts of
burden; the superfluous remainder was burnt; and, after a
licentious possession of ten days, the Romans marched away from
the naked and bleeding city. In their Syrian inroads they
commanded the husbandmen to cultivate their lands, that they
themselves, in the ensuing season, might reap the benefit; more
than a hundred cities were reduced to obedience; and eighteen
pulpits of the principal moschs were committed to the flames to
expiate the sacrilege of the disciples of Mahomet. The classic
names of Hierapolis, Apamea, and Emesa, revive for a moment in
the list of conquest: the emperor Zimisces encamped in the
paradise of Damascus, and accepted the ransom of a submissive
people; and the torrent was only stopped by the impregnable
fortress of Tripoli, on the sea-coast of Phoenicia. Since the
days of Heraclius, the Euphrates, below the passage of Mount
Taurus, had been impervious, and almost invisible, to the Greeks.
The river yielded a free passage to the victorious Zimisces; and
the historian may imitate the speed with which he overran the
once famous cities of Samosata, Edessa, Martyropolis, Amida, 116
and Nisibis, the ancient limit of the empire in the neighborhood
of the Tigris. His ardor was quickened by the desire of grasping
the virgin treasures of Ecbatana, 117 a well-known name, under
which the Byzantine writer has concealed the capital of the
Abbassides. The consternation of the fugitives had already
diffused the terror of his name; but the fancied riches of Bagdad
had already been dissipated by the avarice and prodigality of
domestic tyrants. The prayers of the people, and the stern
demands of the lieutenant of the Bowides, required the caliph to
provide for the defence of the city. The helpless Mothi replied,
that his arms, his revenues, and his provinces, had been torn
from his hands, and that he was ready to abdicate a dignity which
he was unable to support. The emir was inexorable; the furniture
of the palace was sold; and the paltry price of forty thousand
pieces of gold was instantly consumed in private luxury. But the
apprehensions of Bagdad were relieved by the retreat of the
Greeks: thirst and hunger guarded the desert of Mesopotamia; and
the emperor, satiated with glory, and laden with Oriental spoils,
returned to Constantinople, and displayed, in his triumph, the
silk, the aromatics, and three hundred myriads of gold and
silver. Yet the powers of the East had been bent, not broken, by
this transient hurricane. After the departure of the Greeks, the
fugitive princes returned to their capitals; the subjects
disclaimed their involuntary oaths of allegiance; the Moslems
again purified their temples, and overturned the idols of the
saints and martyrs; the Nestorians and Jacobites preferred a
Saracen to an orthodox master; and the numbers and spirit of the
Melchites were inadequate to the support of the church and state.
Of these extensive conquests, Antioch, with the cities of Cilicia
and the Isle of Cyprus, was alone restored, a permanent and
useful accession to the Roman empire. 118
114 (return) [ Elmacin, Hist. Saracen. p. 278, 279. Liutprand was
disposed to depreciate the Greek power, yet he owns that
Nicephorus led against Assyria an army of eighty thousand men.]
115 (return) [ Ducenta fere millia hominum numerabat urbs
(Abulfeda, Annal. Moslem. p. 231) of Mopsuestia, or Masifa,
Mampsysta, Mansista, Mamista, as it is corruptly, or perhaps more
correctly, styled in the middle ages, (Wesseling, Itinerar. p.
580.) Yet I cannot credit this extreme populousness a few years
after the testimony of the emperor Leo, (Tactica, c. xviii. in
Meursii Oper. tom. vi. p. 817.)]
116 (return) [ The text of Leo the deacon, in the corrupt names
of Emeta and Myctarsim, reveals the cities of Amida and
Martyropolis, (Mia farekin. See Abulfeda, Geograph. p. 245, vers.
Reiske.) Of the former, Leo observes, urbus munita et illustris;
of the latter, clara atque conspicua opibusque et pecore,
reliquis ejus provinciis urbibus atque oppidis longe praestans.]
117 (return) [ Ut et Ecbatana pergeret Agarenorumque regiam
everteret.... aiunt enim urbium quae usquam sunt ac toto orbe
existunt felicissimam esse auroque ditissimam, (Leo Diacon. apud
Pagium, tom. iv. p. 34.) This splendid description suits only
with Bagdad, and cannot possibly apply either to Hamadan, the
true Ecbatana, (D’Anville, Geog. Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 237,) or
Tauris, which has been commonly mistaken for that city. The name
of Ecbatana, in the same indefinite sense, is transferred by a
more classic authority (Cicero pro Lego Manilia, c. 4) to the
royal seat of Mithridates, king of Pontus.]
118 (return) [ See the Annals of Elmacin, Abulpharagius, and
Abulfeda, from A. H. 351 to A. H. 361; and the reigns of
Nicephorus Phocas and John Zimisces, in the Chronicles of Zonaras
(tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 199—l. xvii. 215) and Cedrenus, (Compend. p.
649-684.) Their manifold defects are partly supplied by the Ms.
history of Leo the deacon, which Pagi obtained from the
Benedictines, and has inserted almost entire, in a Latin version,
(Critica, tom. iii. p. 873, tom. iv. 37.) * Note: The whole
original work of Leo the Deacon has been published by Hase, and
is inserted in the new edition of the Byzantine historians. M
Lassen has added to the Arabian authorities of this period some
extracts from Kemaleddin’s account of the treaty for the
surrender of Aleppo.—M.]
Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.—Part I.
Fate Of The Eastern Empire In The Tenth Century.—Extent And
Division.—Wealth And Revenue.—Palace Of Constantinople.— Titles
And Offices.—Pride And Power Of The Emperors.— Tactics Of The
Greeks, Arabs, And Franks.—Loss Of The Latin Tongue.—Studies And
Solitude Of The Greeks.
A ray of historic light seems to beam from the darkness of the
tenth century. We open with curiosity and respect the royal
volumes of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, 1 which he composed at a
mature age for the instruction of his son, and which promise to
unfold the state of the eastern empire, both in peace and war,
both at home and abroad. In the first of these works he minutely
describes the pompous ceremonies of the church and palace of
Constantinople, according to his own practice, and that of his
predecessors. 2 In the second, he attempts an accurate survey of
the provinces, the themes, as they were then denominated, both of
Europe and Asia. 3 The system of Roman tactics, the discipline
and order of the troops, and the military operations by land and
sea, are explained in the third of these didactic collections,
which may be ascribed to Constantine or his father Leo. 4 In the
fourth, of the administration of the empire, he reveals the
secrets of the Byzantine policy, in friendly or hostile
intercourse with the nations of the earth. The literary labors of
the age, the practical systems of law, agriculture, and history,
might redound to the benefit of the subject and the honor of the
Macedonian princes. The sixty books of the Basilics, 5 the code
and pandects of civil jurisprudence, were gradually framed in the
three first reigns of that prosperous dynasty. The art of
agriculture had amused the leisure, and exercised the pens, of
the best and wisest of the ancients; and their chosen precepts
are comprised in the twenty books of the Geoponics 6 of
Constantine. At his command, the historical examples of vice and
virtue were methodized in fifty-three books, 7 and every citizen
might apply, to his contemporaries or himself, the lesson or the
warning of past times. From the august character of a legislator,
the sovereign of the East descends to the more humble office of a
teacher and a scribe; and if his successors and subjects were
regardless of his paternal cares, we may inherit and enjoy the
everlasting legacy.
1 (return) [ The epithet of Porphyrogenitus, born in the purple,
is elegantly defined by Claudian:— Ardua privatos nescit fortuna
Penates; Et regnum cum luce dedit. Cognata potestas Excepit Tyrio
venerabile pignus in ostro.
And Ducange, in his Greek and Latin Glossaries, produces many
passages expressive of the same idea.]
2 (return) [ A splendid Ms. of Constantine, de Caeremoniis Aulae
et Ecclesiae Byzantinae, wandered from Constantinople to Buda,
Frankfort, and Leipsic, where it was published in a splendid
edition by Leich and Reiske, (A.D. 1751, in folio,) with such
lavish praise as editors never fail to bestow on the worthy or
worthless object of their toil.]
3 (return) [ See, in the first volume of Banduri’s Imperium
Orientale, Constantinus de Thematibus, p. 1-24, de Administrando
Imperio, p. 45-127, edit. Venet. The text of the old edition of
Meursius is corrected from a Ms. of the royal library of Paris,
which Isaac Casaubon had formerly seen, (Epist. ad Polybium, p.
10,) and the sense is illustrated by two maps of William
Deslisle, the prince of geographers till the appearance of the
greater D’Anville.]
4 (return) [ The Tactics of Leo and Constantine are published
with the aid of some new Mss. in the great edition of the works
of Meursius, by the learned John Lami, (tom. vi. p. 531-920,
1211-1417, Florent. 1745,) yet the text is still corrupt and
mutilated, the version is still obscure and faulty. The Imperial
library of Vienna would afford some valuable materials to a new
editor, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 369, 370.)]
5 (return) [ On the subject of the Basilics, Fabricius, (Bibliot.
Graec. tom. xii. p. 425-514,) and Heineccius, (Hist. Juris
Romani, p. 396-399,) and Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli,
tom. i. p. 450-458,) as historical civilians, may be usefully
consulted: xli. books of this Greek code have been published,
with a Latin version, by Charles Annibal Frabrottus, (Paris,
1647,) in seven tomes in folio; iv. other books have been since
discovered, and are inserted in Gerard Meerman’s Novus Thesaurus
Juris Civ. et Canon. tom. v. Of the whole work, the sixty books,
John Leunclavius has printed, (Basil, 1575,) an eclogue or
synopsis. The cxiii. novels, or new laws, of Leo, may be found in
the Corpus Juris Civilis.]
6 (return) [ I have used the last and best edition of the
Geoponics, (by Nicolas Niclas, Leipsic, 1781, 2 vols. in octavo.)
I read in the preface, that the same emperor restored the
long-forgotten systems of rhetoric and philosophy; and his two
books of Hippiatrica, or Horse-physic, were published at Paris,
1530, in folio, (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. vi. p. 493-500.)]
7 (return) [ Of these LIII. books, or titles, only two have been
preserved and printed, de Legationibus (by Fulvius Ursinus,
Antwerp, 1582, and Daniel Hoeschelius, August. Vindel. 1603) and
de Virtutibus et Vitiis, (by Henry Valesius, or de Valois, Paris,
1634.)]
A closer survey will indeed reduce the value of the gift, and the
gratitude of posterity: in the possession of these Imperial
treasures we may still deplore our poverty and ignorance; and the
fading glories of their authors will be obliterated by
indifference or contempt. The Basilics will sink to a broken
copy, a partial and mutilated version, in the Greek language, of
the laws of Justinian; but the sense of the old civilians is
often superseded by the influence of bigotry: and the absolute
prohibition of divorce, concubinage, and interest for money,
enslaves the freedom of trade and the happiness of private life.
In the historical book, a subject of Constantine might admire the
inimitable virtues of Greece and Rome: he might learn to what a
pitch of energy and elevation the human character had formerly
aspired. But a contrary effect must have been produced by a new
edition of the lives of the saints, which the great logothete, or
chancellor of the empire, was directed to prepare; and the dark
fund of superstition was enriched by the fabulous and florid
legends of Simon the Metaphrast. 8 The merits and miracles of the
whole calendar are of less account in the eyes of a sage, than
the toil of a single husbandman, who multiplies the gifts of the
Creator, and supplies the food of his brethren. Yet the royal
authors of the Geoponics were more seriously employed in
expounding the precepts of the destroying art, which had been
taught since the days of Xenophon, 9 as the art of heroes and
kings. But the Tactics of Leo and Constantine are mingled with
the baser alloy of the age in which they lived. It was destitute
of original genius; they implicitly transcribe the rules and
maxims which had been confirmed by victories. It was unskilled in
the propriety of style and method; they blindly confound the most
distant and discordant institutions, the phalanx of Sparta and
that of Macedon, the legions of Cato and Trajan, of Augustus and
Theodosius. Even the use, or at least the importance, of these
military rudiments may be fairly questioned: their general theory
is dictated by reason; but the merit, as well as difficulty,
consists in the application. The discipline of a soldier is
formed by exercise rather than by study: the talents of a
commander are appropriated to those calm, though rapid, minds,
which nature produces to decide the fate of armies and nations:
the former is the habit of a life, the latter the glance of a
moment; and the battles won by lessons of tactics may be numbered
with the epic poems created from the rules of criticism. The book
of ceremonies is a recital, tedious yet imperfect, of the
despicable pageantry which had infected the church and state
since the gradual decay of the purity of the one and the power of
the other. A review of the themes or provinces might promise such
authentic and useful information, as the curiosity of government
only can obtain, instead of traditionary fables on the origin of
the cities, and malicious epigrams on the vices of their
inhabitants. 10 Such information the historian would have been
pleased to record; nor should his silence be condemned if the
most interesting objects, the population of the capital and
provinces, the amount of the taxes and revenues, the numbers of
subjects and strangers who served under the Imperial standard,
have been unnoticed by Leo the philosopher, and his son
Constantine. His treatise of the public administration is stained
with the same blemishes; yet it is discriminated by peculiar
merit; the antiquities of the nations may be doubtful or
fabulous; but the geography and manners of the Barbaric world are
delineated with curious accuracy. Of these nations, the Franks
alone were qualified to observe in their turn, and to describe,
the metropolis of the East. The ambassador of the great Otho, a
bishop of Cremona, has painted the state of Constantinople about
the middle of the tenth century: his style is glowing, his
narrative lively, his observation keen; and even the prejudices
and passions of Liutprand are stamped with an original character
of freedom and genius. 11 From this scanty fund of foreign and
domestic materials, I shall investigate the form and substance of
the Byzantine empire; the provinces and wealth, the civil
government and military force, the character and literature, of
the Greeks in a period of six hundred years, from the reign of
Heraclius to his successful invasion of the Franks or Latins.
8 (return) [ The life and writings of Simon Metaphrastes are
described by Hankius, (de Scriptoribus Byzant. p. 418-460.) This
biographer of the saints indulged himself in a loose paraphrase
of the sense or nonsense of more ancient acts. His Greek rhetoric
is again paraphrased in the Latin version of Surius, and scarcely
a thread can be now visible of the original texture.]
9 (return) [ According to the first book of the Cyropaedia,
professors of tactics, a small part of the science of war, were
already instituted in Persia, by which Greece must be understood.
A good edition of all the Scriptores Tactici would be a task not
unworthy of a scholar. His industry might discover some new Mss.,
and his learning might illustrate the military history of the
ancients. But this scholar should be likewise a soldier; and
alas! Quintus Icilius is no more. * Note: M. Guichardt, author of
Memoires Militaires sur les Grecs et sur les Romains. See
Gibbon’s Extraits Raisonnees de mes Lectures, Misc. Works vol. v.
p. 219.—M]
10 (return) [ After observing that the demerit of the
Cappadocians rose in proportion to their rank and riches, he
inserts a more pointed epigram, which is ascribed to Demodocus.
The sting is precisely the same with the French epigram against
Freron: Un serpent mordit Jean Freron—Eh bien? Le serpent en
mourut. But as the Paris wits are seldom read in the Anthology, I
should be curious to learn, through what channel it was conveyed
for their imitation, (Constantin. Porphyrogen. de Themat. c. ii.
Brunck Analect. Graec. tom. ii. p. 56. Brodaei Anthologia, l. ii.
p. 244.)]
11 (return) [ The Legatio Liutprandi Episcopi Cremonensis ad
Nicephorum Phocam is inserted in Muratori, Scriptores Rerum
Italicarum, tom. ii. pars i.]
After the final division between the sons of Theodosius, the
swarms of Barbarians from Scythia and Germany over-spread the
provinces and extinguished the empire of ancient Rome. The
weakness of Constantinople was concealed by extent of dominion:
her limits were inviolate, or at least entire; and the kingdom of
Justinian was enlarged by the splendid acquisition of Africa and
Italy. But the possession of these new conquests was transient
and precarious; and almost a moiety of the Eastern empire was
torn away by the arms of the Saracens. Syria and Egypt were
oppressed by the Arabian caliphs; and, after the reduction of
Africa, their lieutenants invaded and subdued the Roman province
which had been changed into the Gothic monarchy of Spain. The
islands of the Mediterranean were not inaccessible to their naval
powers; and it was from their extreme stations, the harbors of
Crete and the fortresses of Cilicia, that the faithful or rebel
emirs insulted the majesty of the throne and capital. The
remaining provinces, under the obedience of the emperors, were
cast into a new mould; and the jurisdiction of the presidents,
the consulars, and the counts were superseded by the institution
of the themes, 12 or military governments, which prevailed under
the successors of Heraclius, and are described by the pen of the
royal author. Of the twenty-nine themes, twelve in Europe and
seventeen in Asia, the origin is obscure, the etymology doubtful
or capricious: the limits were arbitrary and fluctuating; but
some particular names, that sound the most strangely to our ear,
were derived from the character and attributes of the troops that
were maintained at the expense, and for the guard, of the
respective divisions. The vanity of the Greek princes most
eagerly grasped the shadow of conquest and the memory of lost
dominion. A new Mesopotamia was created on the western side of
the Euphrates: the appellation and praetor of Sicily were
transferred to a narrow slip of Calabria; and a fragment of the
duchy of Beneventum was promoted to the style and title of the
theme of Lombardy. In the decline of the Arabian empire, the
successors of Constantine might indulge their pride in more solid
advantages. The victories of Nicephorus, John Zimisces, and Basil
the Second, revived the fame, and enlarged the boundaries, of the
Roman name: the province of Cilicia, the metropolis of Antioch,
the islands of Crete and Cyprus, were restored to the allegiance
of Christ and Caesar: one third of Italy was annexed to the
throne of Constantinople: the kingdom of Bulgaria was destroyed;
and the last sovereigns of the Macedonian dynasty extended their
sway from the sources of the Tigris to the neighborhood of Rome.
In the eleventh century, the prospect was again clouded by new
enemies and new misfortunes: the relics of Italy were swept away
by the Norman adventures; and almost all the Asiatic branches
were dissevered from the Roman trunk by the Turkish conquerors.
After these losses, the emperors of the Comnenian family
continued to reign from the Danube to Peloponnesus, and from
Belgrade to Nice, Trebizond, and the winding stream of the
Meander. The spacious provinces of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece,
were obedient to their sceptre; the possession of Cyprus, Rhodes,
and Crete, was accompanied by the fifty islands of the Aegean or
Holy Sea; 13 and the remnant of their empire transcends the
measure of the largest of the European kingdoms.
12 (return) [ See Constantine de Thematibus, in Banduri, tom. i.
p. 1-30. It is used by Maurice (Strata gem. l. ii. c. 2) for a
legion, from whence the name was easily transferred to its post
or province, (Ducange, Gloss. Graec. tom. i. p. 487-488.) Some
etymologies are attempted for the Opiscian, Optimatian,
Thracesian, themes.]
13 (return) [ It is styled by the modern Greeks, from which the
corrupt names of Archipelago, l’Archipel, and the Arches, have
been transformed by geographers and seamen, (D’Anville,
Geographie Ancienne, tom. i. p. 281. Analyse de la Carte de la
Greece, p. 60.) The numbers of monks or caloyers in all the
islands and the adjacent mountain of Athos, (Observations de
Belon, fol. 32, verso,) monte santo, might justify the epithet of
holy, a slight alteration from the original, imposed by the
Dorians, who, in their dialect, gave the figurative name of
goats, to the bounding waves, (Vossius, apud Cellarium, Geograph.
Antiq. tom. i. p. 829.)]
The same princes might assert, with dignity and truth, that of
all the monarchs of Christendom they possessed the greatest city,
14 the most ample revenue, the most flourishing and populous
state. With the decline and fall of the empire, the cities of the
West had decayed and fallen; nor could the ruins of Rome, or the
mud walls, wooden hovels, and narrow precincts of Paris and
London, prepare the Latin stranger to contemplate the situation
and extent of Constantinople, her stately palaces and churches,
and the arts and luxury of an innumerable people. Her treasures
might attract, but her virgin strength had repelled, and still
promised to repel, the audacious invasion of the Persian and
Bulgarian, the Arab and the Russian. The provinces were less
fortunate and impregnable; and few districts, few cities, could
be discovered which had not been violated by some fierce
Barbarian, impatient to despoil, because he was hopeless to
possess. From the age of Justinian the Eastern empire was sinking
below its former level; the powers of destruction were more
active than those of improvement; and the calamities of war were
imbittered by the more permanent evils of civil and
ecclesiastical tyranny. The captive who had escaped from the
Barbarians was often stripped and imprisoned by the ministers of
his sovereign: the Greek superstition relaxed the mind by prayer,
and emaciated the body by fasting; and the multitude of convents
and festivals diverted many hands and many days from the temporal
service of mankind. Yet the subjects of the Byzantine empire were
still the most dexterous and diligent of nations; their country
was blessed by nature with every advantage of soil, climate, and
situation; and, in the support and restoration of the arts, their
patient and peaceful temper was more useful than the warlike
spirit and feudal anarchy of Europe. The provinces that still
adhered to the empire were repeopled and enriched by the
misfortunes of those which were irrecoverably lost. From the yoke
of the caliphs, the Catholics of Syria, Egypt, and Africa retired
to the allegiance of their prince, to the society of their
brethren: the movable wealth, which eludes the search of
oppression, accompanied and alleviated their exile, and
Constantinople received into her bosom the fugitive trade of
Alexandria and Tyre. The chiefs of Armenia and Scythia, who fled
from hostile or religious persecution, were hospitably
entertained: their followers were encouraged to build new cities
and to cultivate waste lands; and many spots, both in Europe and
Asia, preserved the name, the manners, or at least the memory, of
these national colonies. Even the tribes of Barbarians, who had
seated themselves in arms on the territory of the empire, were
gradually reclaimed to the laws of the church and state; and as
long as they were separated from the Greeks, their posterity
supplied a race of faithful and obedient soldiers. Did we possess
sufficient materials to survey the twenty-nine themes of the
Byzantine monarchy, our curiosity might be satisfied with a
chosen example: it is fortunate enough that the clearest light
should be thrown on the most interesting province, and the name
of Peloponnesus will awaken the attention of the classic reader.
14 (return) [ According to the Jewish traveller who had visited
Europe and Asia, Constantinople was equalled only by Bagdad, the
great city of the Ismaelites, (Voyage de Benjamin de Tudele, par
Baratier, tom. l. c. v. p. 46.)]
As early as the eighth century, in the troubled reign of the
Iconoclasts, Greece, and even Peloponnesus, 15 were overrun by
some Sclavonian bands who outstripped the royal standard of
Bulgaria. The strangers of old, Cadmus, and Danaus, and Pelops,
had planted in that fruitful soil the seeds of policy and
learning; but the savages of the north eradicated what yet
remained of their sickly and withered roots. In this irruption,
the country and the inhabitants were transformed; the Grecian
blood was contaminated; and the proudest nobles of Peloponnesus
were branded with the names of foreigners and slaves. By the
diligence of succeeding princes, the land was in some measure
purified from the Barbarians; and the humble remnant was bound by
an oath of obedience, tribute, and military service, which they
often renewed and often violated. The siege of Patras was formed
by a singular concurrence of the Sclavonians of Peloponnesus and
the Saracens of Africa. In their last distress, a pious fiction
of the approach of the praetor of Corinth revived the courage of
the citizens. Their sally was bold and successful; the strangers
embarked, the rebels submitted, and the glory of the day was
ascribed to a phantom or a stranger, who fought in the foremost
ranks under the character of St. Andrew the Apostle. The shrine
which contained his relics was decorated with the trophies of
victory, and the captive race was forever devoted to the service
and vassalage of the metropolitan church of Patras. By the revolt
of two Sclavonian tribes, in the neighborhood of Helos and
Lacedaemon, the peace of the peninsula was often disturbed. They
sometimes insulted the weakness, and sometimes resisted the
oppression, of the Byzantine government, till at length the
approach of their hostile brethren extorted a golden bull to
define the rites and obligations of the Ezzerites and Milengi,
whose annual tribute was defined at twelve hundred pieces of
gold. From these strangers the Imperial geographer has accurately
distinguished a domestic, and perhaps original, race, who, in
some degree, might derive their blood from the much-injured
Helots. The liberality of the Romans, and especially of Augustus,
had enfranchised the maritime cities from the dominion of Sparta;
and the continuance of the same benefit ennobled them with the
title of Eleuthero, or Free-Laconians. 16 In the time of
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, they had acquired the name of
Mainotes, under which they dishonor the claim of liberty by the
inhuman pillage of all that is shipwrecked on their rocky shores.
Their territory, barren of corn, but fruitful of olives, extended
to the Cape of Malea: they accepted a chief or prince from the
Byzantine praetor, and a light tribute of four hundred pieces of
gold was the badge of their immunity, rather than of their
dependence. The freemen of Laconia assumed the character of
Romans, and long adhered to the religion of the Greeks. By the
zeal of the emperor Basil, they were baptized in the faith of
Christ: but the altars of Venus and Neptune had been crowned by
these rustic votaries five hundred years after they were
proscribed in the Roman world. In the theme of Peloponnesus, 17
forty cities were still numbered, and the declining state of
Sparta, Argos, and Corinth, may be suspended in the tenth
century, at an equal distance, perhaps, between their antique
splendor and their present desolation. The duty of military
service, either in person or by substitute, was imposed on the
lands or benefices of the province; a sum of five pieces of gold
was assessed on each of the substantial tenants; and the same
capitation was shared among several heads of inferior value. On
the proclamation of an Italian war, the Peloponnesians excused
themselves by a voluntary oblation of one hundred pounds of gold,
(four thousand pounds sterling,) and a thousand horses with their
arms and trappings. The churches and monasteries furnished their
contingent; a sacrilegious profit was extorted from the sale of
ecclesiastical honors; and the indigent bishop of Leucadia 18 was
made responsible for a pension of one hundred pieces of gold. 19
15 (return) [ Says Constantine, (Thematibus, l. ii. c. vi. p.
25,) in a style as barbarous as the idea, which he confirms, as
usual, by a foolish epigram. The epitomizer of Strabo likewise
observes, (l. vii. p. 98, edit. Hudson. edit. Casaub. 1251;) a
passage which leads Dodwell a weary dance (Geograph, Minor. tom.
ii. dissert. vi. p. 170-191) to enumerate the inroads of the
Sclavi, and to fix the date (A.D. 980) of this petty geographer.]
16 (return) [ Strabon. Geograph. l. viii. p. 562. Pausanius,
Graec. Descriptio, l. c 21, p. 264, 265. Pliny, Hist. Natur. l.
iv. c. 8.]
17 (return) [ Constantin. de Administrando Imperio, l. ii. c. 50,
51, 52.]
18 (return) [ The rock of Leucate was the southern promontory of
his island and diocese. Had he been the exclusive guardian of the
Lover’s Leap so well known to the readers of Ovid (Epist. Sappho)
and the Spectator, he might have been the richest prelate of the
Greek church.]
19 (return) [ Leucatensis mihi juravit episcopus, quotannis
ecclesiam suam debere Nicephoro aureos centum persolvere,
similiter et ceteras plus minusve secundum vires suos, (Liutprand
in Legat. p. 489.)]
But the wealth of the province, and the trust of the revenue,
were founded on the fair and plentiful produce of trade and
manufacturers; and some symptoms of liberal policy may be traced
in a law which exempts from all personal taxes the mariners of
Peloponnesus, and the workmen in parchment and purple. This
denomination may be fairly applied or extended to the
manufacturers of linen, woollen, and more especially of silk: the
two former of which had flourished in Greece since the days of
Homer; and the last was introduced perhaps as early as the reign
of Justinian. These arts, which were exercised at Corinth,
Thebes, and Argos, afforded food and occupation to a numerous
people: the men, women, and children were distributed according
to their age and strength; and, if many of these were domestic
slaves, their masters, who directed the work and enjoyed the
profit, were of a free and honorable condition. The gifts which a
rich and generous matron of Peloponnesus presented to the emperor
Basil, her adopted son, were doubtless fabricated in the Grecian
looms. Danielis bestowed a carpet of fine wool, of a pattern
which imitated the spots of a peacock’s tail, of a magnitude to
overspread the floor of a new church, erected in the triple name
of Christ, of Michael the archangel, and of the prophet Elijah.
She gave six hundred pieces of silk and linen, of various use and
denomination: the silk was painted with the Tyrian dye, and
adorned by the labors of the needle; and the linen was so
exquisitely fine, that an entire piece might be rolled in the
hollow of a cane. 20 In his description of the Greek
manufactures, an historian of Sicily discriminates their price,
according to the weight and quality of the silk, the closeness of
the texture, the beauty of the colors, and the taste and
materials of the embroidery. A single, or even a double or treble
thread was thought sufficient for ordinary sale; but the union of
six threads composed a piece of stronger and more costly
workmanship. Among the colors, he celebrates, with affectation of
eloquence, the fiery blaze of the scarlet, and the softer lustre
of the green. The embroidery was raised either in silk or gold:
the more simple ornament of stripes or circles was surpassed by
the nicer imitation of flowers: the vestments that were
fabricated for the palace or the altar often glittered with
precious stones; and the figures were delineated in strings of
Oriental pearls. 21 Till the twelfth century, Greece alone, of
all the countries of Christendom, was possessed of the insect who
is taught by nature, and of the workmen who are instructed by
art, to prepare this elegant luxury. But the secret had been
stolen by the dexterity and diligence of the Arabs: the caliphs
of the East and West scorned to borrow from the unbelievers their
furniture and apparel; and two cities of Spain, Almeria and
Lisbon, were famous for the manufacture, the use, and, perhaps,
the exportation, of silk. It was first introduced into Sicily by
the Normans; and this emigration of trade distinguishes the
victory of Roger from the uniform and fruitless hostilities of
every age. After the sack of Corinth, Athens, and Thebes, his
lieutenant embarked with a captive train of weavers and
artificers of both sexes, a trophy glorious to their master, and
disgraceful to the Greek emperor. 22 The king of Sicily was not
insensible of the value of the present; and, in the restitution
of the prisoners, he excepted only the male and female
manufacturers of Thebes and Corinth, who labor, says the
Byzantine historian, under a barbarous lord, like the old
Eretrians in the service of Darius. 23 A stately edifice, in the
palace of Palermo, was erected for the use of this industrious
colony; 24 and the art was propagated by their children and
disciples to satisfy the increasing demand of the western world.
The decay of the looms of Sicily may be ascribed to the troubles
of the island, and the competition of the Italian cities. In the
year thirteen hundred and fourteen, Lucca alone, among her sister
republics, enjoyed the lucrative monopoly. 25 A domestic
revolution dispersed the manufacturers to Florence, Bologna,
Venice, Milan, and even the countries beyond the Alps; and
thirteen years after this event the statutes of Modena enjoin the
planting of mulberry-trees, and regulate the duties on raw silk.
26 The northern climates are less propitious to the education of
the silkworm; but the industry of France and England 27 is
supplied and enriched by the productions of Italy and China.
20 (return) [ See Constantine, (in Vit. Basil. c. 74, 75, 76, p.
195, 197, in Script. post Theophanem,) who allows himself to use
many technical or barbarous words: barbarous, says he. Ducange
labors on some: but he was not a weaver.]
21 (return) [ The manufactures of Palermo, as they are described
by Hugo Falcandus, (Hist. Sicula in proem. in Muratori Script.
Rerum Italicarum, tom. v. p. 256,) is a copy of those of Greece.
Without transcribing his declamatory sentences, which I have
softened in the text, I shall observe, that in this passage the
strange word exarentasmata is very properly changed for
exanthemata by Carisius, the first editor Falcandus lived about
the year 1190.]
22 (return) [ Inde ad interiora Graeciae progressi, Corinthum,
Thebas, Athenas, antiqua nobilitate celebres, expugnant; et,
maxima ibidem praeda direpta, opifices etiam, qui sericos pannos
texere solent, ob ignominiam Imperatoris illius, suique principis
gloriam, captivos deducunt. Quos Rogerius, in Palermo Siciliae,
metropoli collocans, artem texendi suos edocere praecepit; et
exhinc praedicta ars illa, prius a Graecis tantum inter
Christianos habita, Romanis patere coepit ingeniis, (Otho
Frisingen. de Gestis Frederici I. l. i. c. 33, in Muratori
Script. Ital. tom. vi. p. 668.) This exception allows the bishop
to celebrate Lisbon and Almeria in sericorum pannorum opificio
praenobilissimae, (in Chron. apud Muratori, Annali d’Italia, tom.
ix. p. 415.)]
23 (return) [ Nicetas in Manuel, l. ii. c. 8. p. 65. He describes
these Greeks as skilled.]
24 (return) [ Hugo Falcandus styles them nobiles officinas. The
Arabs had not introduced silk, though they had planted canes and
made sugar in the plain of Palermo.]
25 (return) [ See the Life of Castruccio Casticani, not by
Machiavel, but by his more authentic biographer Nicholas Tegrimi.
Muratori, who has inserted it in the xith volume of his
Scriptores, quotes this curious passage in his Italian
Antiquities, (tom. i. dissert. xxv. p. 378.)]
26 (return) [ From the Ms. statutes, as they are quoted by
Muratori in his Italian Antiquities, (tom. ii. dissert. xxv. p.
46-48.)]
27 (return) [ The broad silk manufacture was established in
England in the year 1620, (Anderson’s Chronological Deduction,
vol. ii. p. 4: ) but it is to the revocation of the edict of
Nantes that we owe the Spitalfields colony.]
Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.—Part II.
I must repeat the complaint that the vague and scanty memorials
of the times will not afford any just estimate of the taxes, the
revenue, and the resources of the Greek empire. From every
province of Europe and Asia the rivulets of gold and silver
discharged into the Imperial reservoir a copious and perennial
stream. The separation of the branches from the trunk increased
the relative magnitude of Constantinople; and the maxims of
despotism contracted the state to the capital, the capital to the
palace, and the palace to the royal person. A Jewish traveller,
who visited the East in the twelfth century, is lost in his
admiration of the Byzantine riches. “It is here,” says Benjamin
of Tudela, “in the queen of cities, that the tributes of the
Greek empire are annually deposited and the lofty towers are
filled with precious magazines of silk, purple, and gold. It is
said, that Constantinople pays each day to her sovereign twenty
thousand pieces of gold; which are levied on the shops, taverns,
and markets, on the merchants of Persia and Egypt, of Russia and
Hungary, of Italy and Spain, who frequent the capital by sea and
land.” 28 In all pecuniary matters, the authority of a Jew is
doubtless respectable; but as the three hundred and sixty-five
days would produce a yearly income exceeding seven millions
sterling, I am tempted to retrench at least the numerous
festivals of the Greek calendar. The mass of treasure that was
saved by Theodora and Basil the Second will suggest a splendid,
though indefinite, idea of their supplies and resources. The
mother of Michael, before she retired to a cloister, attempted to
check or expose the prodigality of her ungrateful son, by a free
and faithful account of the wealth which he inherited; one
hundred and nine thousand pounds of gold, and three hundred
thousand of silver, the fruits of her own economy and that of her
deceased husband. 29 The avarice of Basil is not less renowned
than his valor and fortune: his victorious armies were paid and
rewarded without breaking into the mass of two hundred thousand
pounds of gold, (about eight millions sterling,) which he had
buried in the subterraneous vaults of the palace. 30 Such
accumulation of treasure is rejected by the theory and practice
of modern policy; and we are more apt to compute the national
riches by the use and abuse of the public credit. Yet the maxims
of antiquity are still embraced by a monarch formidable to his
enemies; by a republic respectable to her allies; and both have
attained their respective ends of military power and domestic
tranquillity.
28 (return) [ Voyage de Benjamin de Tudele, tom. i. c. 5, p.
44-52. The Hebrew text has been translated into French by that
marvellous child Baratier, who has added a volume of crude
learning. The errors and fictions of the Jewish rabbi are not a
sufficient ground to deny the reality of his travels. * Note: I
am inclined, with Buegnot (Les Juifs d’Occident, part iii. p. 101
et seqq.) and Jost (Geschichte der Israeliter, vol. vi. anhang.
p. 376) to consider this work a mere compilation, and to doubt
the reality of the travels.—M.]
29 (return) [ See the continuator of Theophanes, (l. iv. p. 107,)
Cedremis, (p. 544,) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 157.)]
30 (return) [ Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xvii. p. 225,) instead of
pounds, uses the more classic appellation of talents, which, in a
literal sense and strict computation, would multiply sixty fold
the treasure of Basil.]
Whatever might be consumed for the present wants, or reserved for
the future use, of the state, the first and most sacred demand
was for the pomp and pleasure of the emperor, and his discretion
only could define the measure of his private expense. The princes
of Constantinople were far removed from the simplicity of nature;
yet, with the revolving seasons, they were led by taste or
fashion to withdraw to a purer air, from the smoke and tumult of
the capital. They enjoyed, or affected to enjoy, the rustic
festival of the vintage: their leisure was amused by the exercise
of the chase and the calmer occupation of fishing, and in the
summer heats, they were shaded from the sun, and refreshed by the
cooling breezes from the sea. The coasts and islands of Asia and
Europe were covered with their magnificent villas; but, instead
of the modest art which secretly strives to hide itself and to
decorate the scenery of nature, the marble structure of their
gardens served only to expose the riches of the lord, and the
labors of the architect. The successive casualties of inheritance
and forfeiture had rendered the sovereign proprietor of many
stately houses in the city and suburbs, of which twelve were
appropriated to the ministers of state; but the great palace, 31
the centre of the Imperial residence, was fixed during eleven
centuries to the same position, between the hippodrome, the
cathedral of St. Sophia, and the gardens, which descended by many
a terrace to the shores of the Propontis. The primitive edifice
of the first Constantine was a copy, or rival, of ancient Rome;
the gradual improvements of his successors aspired to emulate the
wonders of the old world, 32 and in the tenth century, the
Byzantine palace excited the admiration, at least of the Latins,
by an unquestionable preeminence of strength, size, and
magnificence. 33 But the toil and treasure of so many ages had
produced a vast and irregular pile: each separate building was
marked with the character of the times and of the founder; and
the want of space might excuse the reigning monarch, who
demolished, perhaps with secret satisfaction, the works of his
predecessors. The economy of the emperor Theophilus allowed a
more free and ample scope for his domestic luxury and splendor. A
favorite ambassador, who had astonished the Abbassides themselves
by his pride and liberality, presented on his return the model of
a palace, which the caliph of Bagdad had recently constructed on
the banks of the Tigris. The model was instantly copied and
surpassed: the new buildings of Theophilus 34 were accompanied
with gardens, and with five churches, one of which was
conspicuous for size and beauty: it was crowned with three domes,
the roof of gilt brass reposed on columns of Italian marble, and
the walls were incrusted with marbles of various colors. In the
face of the church, a semicircular portico, of the figure and
name of the Greek sigma, was supported by fifteen columns of
Phrygian marble, and the subterraneous vaults were of a similar
construction. The square before the sigma was decorated with a
fountain, and the margin of the basin was lined and encompassed
with plates of silver. In the beginning of each season, the
basin, instead of water, was replenished with the most exquisite
fruits, which were abandoned to the populace for the
entertainment of the prince. He enjoyed this tumultuous spectacle
from a throne resplendent with gold and gems, which was raised by
a marble staircase to the height of a lofty terrace. Below the
throne were seated the officers of his guards, the magistrates,
the chiefs of the factions of the circus; the inferior steps were
occupied by the people, and the place below was covered with
troops of dancers, singers, and pantomimes. The square was
surrounded by the hall of justice, the arsenal, and the various
offices of business and pleasure; and the purple chamber was
named from the annual distribution of robes of scarlet and purple
by the hand of the empress herself. The long series of the
apartments was adapted to the seasons, and decorated with marble
and porphyry, with painting, sculpture, and mosaics, with a
profusion of gold, silver, and precious stones. His fanciful
magnificence employed the skill and patience of such artists as
the times could afford: but the taste of Athens would have
despised their frivolous and costly labors; a golden tree, with
its leaves and branches, which sheltered a multitude of birds
warbling their artificial notes, and two lions of massy gold, and
of natural size, who looked and roared like their brethren of the
forest. The successors of Theophilus, of the Basilian and
Comnenian dynasties, were not less ambitious of leaving some
memorial of their residence; and the portion of the palace most
splendid and august was dignified with the title of the golden
triclinium. 35 With becoming modesty, the rich and noble Greeks
aspired to imitate their sovereign, and when they passed through
the streets on horseback, in their robes of silk and embroidery,
they were mistaken by the children for kings. 36 A matron of
Peloponnesus, 37 who had cherished the infant fortunes of Basil
the Macedonian, was excited by tenderness or vanity to visit the
greatness of her adopted son. In a journey of five hundred miles
from Patras to Constantinople, her age or indolence declined the
fatigue of a horse or carriage: the soft litter or bed of
Danielis was transported on the shoulders of ten robust slaves;
and as they were relieved at easy distances, a band of three
hundred were selected for the performance of this service. She
was entertained in the Byzantine palace with filial reverence,
and the honors of a queen; and whatever might be the origin of
her wealth, her gifts were not unworthy of the regal dignity. I
have already described the fine and curious manufactures of
Peloponnesus, of linen, silk, and woollen; but the most
acceptable of her presents consisted in three hundred beautiful
youths, of whom one hundred were eunuchs; 38 “for she was not
ignorant,” says the historian, “that the air of the palace is
more congenial to such insects, than a shepherd’s dairy to the
flies of the summer.” During her lifetime, she bestowed the
greater part of her estates in Peloponnesus, and her testament
instituted Leo, the son of Basil, her universal heir. After the
payment of the legacies, fourscore villas or farms were added to
the Imperial domain; and three thousand slaves of Danielis were
enfranchised by their new lord, and transplanted as a colony to
the Italian coast. From this example of a private matron, we may
estimate the wealth and magnificence of the emperors. Yet our
enjoyments are confined by a narrow circle; and, whatsoever may
be its value, the luxury of life is possessed with more innocence
and safety by the master of his own, than by the steward of the
public, fortune.
31 (return) [ For a copious and minute description of the
Imperial palace, see the Constantinop. Christiana (l. ii. c. 4,
p. 113-123) of Ducange, the Tillemont of the middle ages. Never
has laborious Germany produced two antiquarians more laborious
and accurate than these two natives of lively France.]
32 (return) [ The Byzantine palace surpasses the Capitol, the
palace of Pergamus, the Rufinian wood, the temple of Adrian at
Cyzicus, the pyramids, the Pharus, &c., according to an epigram
(Antholog. Graec. l. iv. p. 488, 489. Brodaei, apud Wechel)
ascribed to Julian, ex-praefect of Egypt. Seventy-one of his
epigrams, some lively, are collected in Brunck, (Analect. Graec.
tom. ii. p. 493-510; but this is wanting.]
33 (return) [ Constantinopolitanum Palatium non pulchritudine
solum, verum stiam fortitudine, omnibus quas unquam videram
munitionibus praestat, (Liutprand, Hist. l. v. c. 9, p. 465.)]
34 (return) [ See the anonymous continuator of Theophanes, (p.
59, 61, 86,) whom I have followed in the neat and concise
abstract of Le Beau, (Hint. du Bas Empire, tom. xiv. p. 436,
438.)]
35 (return) [ In aureo triclinio quae praestantior est pars
potentissimus (the usurper Romanus) degens caeteras partes
(filiis) distribuerat, (Liutprand. Hist. l. v. c. 9, p. 469.) For
this last signification of Triclinium see Ducange (Gloss. Graec.
et Observations sur Joinville, p. 240) and Reiske, (ad
Constantinum de Ceremoniis, p. 7.)]
36 (return) [ In equis vecti (says Benjamin of Tudela) regum
filiis videntur persimiles. I prefer the Latin version of
Constantine l’Empereur (p. 46) to the French of Baratier, (tom.
i. p. 49.)]
37 (return) [ See the account of her journey, munificence, and
testament, in the life of Basil, by his grandson Constantine, (p.
74, 75, 76, p. 195-197.)]
38 (return) [ Carsamatium. Graeci vocant, amputatis virilibus et
virga, puerum eunuchum quos Verdunenses mercatores obinmensum
lucrum facere solent et in Hispaniam ducere, (Liutprand, l. vi.
c. 3, p. 470.)—The last abomination of the abominable
slave-trade! Yet I am surprised to find, in the xth century, such
active speculations of commerce in Lorraine.]
In an absolute government, which levels the distinctions of noble
and plebeian birth, the sovereign is the sole fountain of honor;
and the rank, both in the palace and the empire, depends on the
titles and offices which are bestowed and resumed by his
arbitrary will. Above a thousand years, from Vespasian to Alexius
Comnenus, 39 the Caesar was the second person, or at least the
second degree, after the supreme title of Augustus was more
freely communicated to the sons and brothers of the reigning
monarch. To elude without violating his promise to a powerful
associate, the husband of his sister, and, without giving himself
an equal, to reward the piety of his brother Isaac, the crafty
Alexius interposed a new and supereminent dignity. The happy
flexibility of the Greek tongue allowed him to compound the names
of Augustus and Emperor (Sebastos and Autocrator,) and the union
produces the sonorous title of Sebastocrator. He was exalted
above the Caesar on the first step of the throne: the public
acclamations repeated his name; and he was only distinguished
from the sovereign by some peculiar ornaments of the head and
feet. The emperor alone could assume the purple or red buskins,
and the close diadem or tiara, which imitated the fashion of the
Persian kings. 40 It was a high pyramidal cap of cloth or silk,
almost concealed by a profusion of pearls and jewels: the crown
was formed by a horizontal circle and two arches of gold: at the
summit, the point of their intersection, was placed a globe or
cross, and two strings or lappets of pearl depended on either
cheek. Instead of red, the buskins of the Sebastocrator and
Caesar were green; and on their open coronets or crowns, the
precious gems were more sparingly distributed. Beside and below
the Caesar the fancy of Alexius created the Panhypersebastos and
the Protosebastos, whose sound and signification will satisfy a
Grecian ear. They imply a superiority and a priority above the
simple name of Augustus; and this sacred and primitive title of
the Roman prince was degraded to the kinsmen and servants of the
Byzantine court. The daughter of Alexius applauds, with fond
complacency, this artful gradation of hopes and honors; but the
science of words is accessible to the meanest capacity; and this
vain dictionary was easily enriched by the pride of his
successors. To their favorite sons or brothers, they imparted the
more lofty appellation of Lord or Despot, which was illustrated
with new ornaments, and prerogatives, and placed immediately
after the person of the emperor himself. The five titles of, 1.
Despot; 2. Sebastocrator; 3. Caesar; 4. Panhypersebastos; and, 5.
Protosebastos; were usually confined to the princes of his blood:
they were the emanations of his majesty; but as they exercised no
regular functions, their existence was useless, and their
authority precarious.
39 (return) [ See the Alexiad (l. iii. p. 78, 79) of Anna
Comnena, who, except in filial piety, may be compared to
Mademoiselle de Montpensier. In her awful reverence for titles
and forms, she styles her father, the inventor of this royal
art.]
40 (return) [ See Reiske, and Ceremoniale, p. 14, 15. Ducange has
given a learned dissertation on the crowns of Constantinople,
Rome, France, &c., (sur Joinville, xxv. p. 289-303;) but of his
thirty-four models, none exactly tally with Anne’s description.]
But in every monarchy the substantial powers of government must
be divided and exercised by the ministers of the palace and
treasury, the fleet and army. The titles alone can differ; and in
the revolution of ages, the counts and praefects, the praetor and
quaestor, insensibly descended, while their servants rose above
their heads to the first honors of the state. 1. In a monarchy,
which refers every object to the person of the prince, the care
and ceremonies of the palace form the most respectable
department. The Curopalata, 41 so illustrious in the age of
Justinian, was supplanted by the Protovestiare, whose primitive
functions were limited to the custody of the wardrobe. From
thence his jurisdiction was extended over the numerous menials of
pomp and luxury; and he presided with his silver wand at the
public and private audience. 2. In the ancient system of
Constantine, the name of Logothete, or accountant, was applied to
the receivers of the finances: the principal officers were
distinguished as the Logothetes of the domain, of the posts, the
army, the private and public treasure; and the great Logothete,
the supreme guardian of the laws and revenues, is compared with
the chancellor of the Latin monarchies. 42 His discerning eye
pervaded the civil administration; and he was assisted, in due
subordination, by the eparch or praefect of the city, the first
secretary, and the keepers of the privy seal, the archives, and
the red or purple ink which was reserved for the sacred signature
of the emperor alone. 43 The introductor and interpreter of
foreign ambassadors were the great Chiauss 44 and the Dragoman,
45 two names of Turkish origin, and which are still familiar to
the Sublime Porte. 3. From the humble style and service of
guards, the Domestics insensibly rose to the station of generals;
the military themes of the East and West, the legions of Europe
and Asia, were often divided, till the great Domestic was finally
invested with the universal and absolute command of the land
forces. The Protostrator, in his original functions, was the
assistant of the emperor when he mounted on horseback: he
gradually became the lieutenant of the great Domestic in the
field; and his jurisdiction extended over the stables, the
cavalry, and the royal train of hunting and hawking. The
Stratopedarch was the great judge of the camp: the Protospathaire
commanded the guards; the Constable, 46 the great Aeteriarch, and
the Acolyth, were the separate chiefs of the Franks, the
Barbarians, and the Varangi, or English, the mercenary strangers,
who, at the decay of the national spirit, formed the nerve of the
Byzantine armies. 4. The naval powers were under the command of
the great Duke; in his absence they obeyed the great Drungaire of
the fleet; and, in his place, the Emir, or Admiral, a name of
Saracen extraction, 47 but which has been naturalized in all the
modern languages of Europe. Of these officers, and of many more
whom it would be useless to enumerate, the civil and military
hierarchy was framed. Their honors and emoluments, their dress
and titles, their mutual salutations and respective preeminence,
were balanced with more exquisite labor than would have fixed the
constitution of a free people; and the code was almost perfect
when this baseless fabric, the monument of pride and servitude,
was forever buried in the ruins of the empire. 48
41 (return) [ Par exstans curis, solo diademate dispar, Ordine
pro rerum vocitatus Cura-Palati, says the African Corippus, (de
Laudibus Justini, l. i. 136,) and in the same century (the vith)
Cassiodorus represents him, who, virga aurea decoratus, inter
numerosa obsequia primus ante pedes regis incederet (Variar. vii.
5.) But this great officer, (unknown,) exercising no function,
was cast down by the modern Greeks to the xvth rank, (Codin. c.
5, p. 65.)]
42 (return) [ Nicetas (in Manuel, l. vii. c. 1) defines him. Yet
the epithet was added by the elder Andronicus, (Ducange, tom. i.
p. 822, 823.)]
43 (return) [ From Leo I. (A.D. 470) the Imperial ink, which is
still visible on some original acts, was a mixture of vermilion
and cinnabar, or purple. The emperor’s guardians, who shared in
this prerogative, always marked in green ink the indiction and
the month. See the Dictionnaire Diplomatique, (tom. i. p.
511-513) a valuable abridgment.]
44 (return) [ The sultan sent to Alexius, (Anna Comnena, l. vi.
p. 170. Ducange ad loc.;) and Pachymer often speaks, (l. vii. c.
1, l. xii. c. 30, l. xiii. c. 22.) The Chiaoush basha is now at
the head of 700 officers, (Rycaut’s Ottoman Empire, p. 349,
octavo edition.)]
45 (return) [ Tagerman is the Arabic name of an interpreter,
(D’Herbelot, p. 854, 855;), says Codinus, (c. v. No. 70, p. 67.)
See Villehardouin, (No. 96,) Bus, (Epist. iv. p. 338,) and
Ducange, (Observations sur Villehardouin, and Gloss. Graec. et
Latin)]
46 (return) [ A corruption from the Latin Comes stabuli, or the
French Connetable. In a military sense, it was used by the Greeks
in the eleventh century, at least as early as in France.]
47 (return) [ It was directly borrowed from the Normans. In the
xiith century, Giannone reckons the admiral of Sicily among the
great officers.]
48 (return) [ This sketch of honors and offices is drawn from
George Cordinus Curopalata, who survived the taking of
Constantinople by the Turks: his elaborate, though trifling, work
(de Officiis Ecclesiae et Aulae C. P.) has been illustrated by
the notes of Goar, and the three books of Gretser, a learned
Jesuit.]
Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.—Part III.
The most lofty titles, and the most humble postures, which
devotion has applied to the Supreme Being, have been prostituted
by flattery and fear to creatures of the same nature with
ourselves. The mode of adoration, 49 of falling prostrate on the
ground, and kissing the feet of the emperor, was borrowed by
Diocletian from Persian servitude; but it was continued and
aggravated till the last age of the Greek monarchy. Excepting
only on Sundays, when it was waived, from a motive of religious
pride, this humiliating reverence was exacted from all who
entered the royal presence, from the princes invested with the
diadem and purple, and from the ambassadors who represented their
independent sovereigns, the caliphs of Asia, Egypt, or Spain, the
kings of France and Italy, and the Latin emperors of ancient
Rome. In his transactions of business, Liutprand, bishop of
Cremona, 50 asserted the free spirit of a Frank and the dignity
of his master Otho. Yet his sincerity cannot disguise the
abasement of his first audience. When he approached the throne,
the birds of the golden tree began to warble their notes, which
were accompanied by the roarings of the two lions of gold. With
his two companions Liutprand was compelled to bow and to fall
prostrate; and thrice to touch the ground with his forehead. He
arose, but in the short interval, the throne had been hoisted
from the floor to the ceiling, the Imperial figure appeared in
new and more gorgeous apparel, and the interview was concluded in
haughty and majestic silence. In this honest and curious
narrative, the Bishop of Cremona represents the ceremonies of the
Byzantine court, which are still practised in the Sublime Porte,
and which were preserved in the last age by the dukes of Muscovy
or Russia. After a long journey by sea and land, from Venice to
Constantinople, the ambassador halted at the golden gate, till he
was conducted by the formal officers to the hospitable palace
prepared for his reception; but this palace was a prison, and his
jealous keepers prohibited all social intercourse either with
strangers or natives. At his first audience, he offered the gifts
of his master, slaves, and golden vases, and costly armor. The
ostentatious payment of the officers and troops displayed before
his eyes the riches of the empire: he was entertained at a royal
banquet, 51 in which the ambassadors of the nations were
marshalled by the esteem or contempt of the Greeks: from his own
table, the emperor, as the most signal favor, sent the plates
which he had tasted; and his favorites were dismissed with a robe
of honor. 52 In the morning and evening of each day, his civil
and military servants attended their duty in the palace; their
labors were repaid by the sight, perhaps by the smile, of their
lord; his commands were signified by a nod or a sign: but all
earthly greatness stood silent and submissive in his presence. In
his regular or extraordinary processions through the capital, he
unveiled his person to the public view: the rites of policy were
connected with those of religion, and his visits to the principal
churches were regulated by the festivals of the Greek calendar.
On the eve of these processions, the gracious or devout intention
of the monarch was proclaimed by the heralds. The streets were
cleared and purified; the pavement was strewed with flowers; the
most precious furniture, the gold and silver plate, and silken
hangings, were displayed from the windows and balconies, and a
severe discipline restrained and silenced the tumult of the
populace. The march was opened by the military officers at the
head of their troops: they were followed in long order by the
magistrates and ministers of the civil government: the person of
the emperor was guarded by his eunuchs and domestics, and at the
church door he was solemnly received by the patriarch and his
clergy. The task of applause was not abandoned to the rude and
spontaneous voices of the crowd. The most convenient stations
were occupied by the bands of the blue and green factions of the
circus; and their furious conflicts, which had shaken the
capital, were insensibly sunk to an emulation of servitude. From
either side they echoed in responsive melody the praises of the
emperor; their poets and musicians directed the choir, and long
life 53 and victory were the burden of every song. The same
acclamations were performed at the audience, the banquet, and the
church; and as an evidence of boundless sway, they were repeated
in the Latin, 54 Gothic, Persian, French, and even English
language, 55 by the mercenaries who sustained the real or
fictitious character of those nations. By the pen of Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, this science of form and flattery has been
reduced into a pompous and trifling volume, 56 which the vanity
of succeeding times might enrich with an ample supplement. Yet
the calmer reflection of a prince would surely suggest that the
same acclamations were applied to every character and every
reign: and if he had risen from a private rank, he might
remember, that his own voice had been the loudest and most eager
in applause, at the very moment when he envied the fortune, or
conspired against the life, of his predecessor. 57
49 (return) [ The respectful salutation of carrying the hand to
the mouth, ad os, is the root of the Latin word adoro, adorare.
See our learned Selden, (vol. iii. p. 143-145, 942,) in his
Titles of Honor. It seems, from the 1st book of Herodotus, to be
of Persian origin.]
50 (return) [ The two embassies of Liutprand to Constantinople,
all that he saw or suffered in the Greek capital, are pleasantly
described by himself (Hist. l. vi. c. 1-4, p. 469-471. Legatio ad
Nicephorum Phocam, p. 479-489.)]
51 (return) [ Among the amusements of the feast, a boy balanced,
on his forehead, a pike, or pole, twenty-four feet long, with a
cross bar of two cubits a little below the top. Two boys, naked,
though cinctured, (campestrati,) together, and singly, climbed,
stood, played, descended, &c., ita me stupidum reddidit: utrum
mirabilius nescio, (p. 470.) At another repast a homily of
Chrysostom on the Acts of the Apostles was read elata voce non
Latine, (p. 483.)]
52 (return) [ Gala is not improbably derived from Cala, or
Caloat, in Arabic a robe of honor, (Reiske, Not. in Ceremon. p.
84.)]
53 (return) [ It is explained, (Codin, c. 7. Ducange, Gloss.
Graec. tom. i. p. 1199.)]
54 (return) [ (Ceremon. c. 75, p. 215.) The want of the Latin ‘V’
obliged the Greeks to employ their ‘beta’; nor do they regard
quantity. Till he recollected the true language, these strange
sentences might puzzle a professor.]
55 (return) [ (Codin.p. 90.) I wish he had preserved the words,
however corrupt, of their English acclamation.]
56 (return) [ For all these ceremonies, see the professed work of
Constantine Porphyrogenitus with the notes, or rather
dissertations, of his German editors, Leich and Reiske. For the
rank of standing courtiers, p. 80, not. 23, 62; for the
adoration, except on Sundays, p. 95, 240, not. 131; the
processions, p. 2, &c., not. p. 3, &c.; the acclamations passim
not. 25 &c.; the factions and Hippodrome, p. 177-214, not. 9, 93,
&c.; the Gothic games, p. 221, not. 111; vintage, p. 217, not
109: much more information is scattered over the work.]
57 (return) [ Et privato Othoni et nuper eadem dicenti nota
adulatio, (Tacit. Hist. 1,85.)]
The princes of the North, of the nations, says Constantine,
without faith or fame, were ambitious of mingling their blood
with the blood of the Caesars, by their marriage with a royal
virgin, or by the nuptials of their daughters with a Roman
prince. 58 The aged monarch, in his instructions to his son,
reveals the secret maxims of policy and pride; and suggests the
most decent reasons for refusing these insolent and unreasonable
demands. Every animal, says the discreet emperor, is prompted by
the distinction of language, religion, and manners. A just regard
to the purity of descent preserves the harmony of public and
private life; but the mixture of foreign blood is the fruitful
source of disorder and discord. Such had ever been the opinion
and practice of the sage Romans: their jurisprudence proscribed
the marriage of a citizen and a stranger: in the days of freedom
and virtue, a senator would have scorned to match his daughter
with a king: the glory of Mark Antony was sullied by an Egyptian
wife: 59 and the emperor Titus was compelled, by popular censure,
to dismiss with reluctance the reluctant Berenice. 60 This
perpetual interdict was ratified by the fabulous sanction of the
great Constantine. The ambassadors of the nations, more
especially of the unbelieving nations, were solemnly admonished,
that such strange alliances had been condemned by the founder of
the church and city. The irrevocable law was inscribed on the
altar of St. Sophia; and the impious prince who should stain the
majesty of the purple was excluded from the civil and
ecclesiastical communion of the Romans. If the ambassadors were
instructed by any false brethren in the Byzantine history, they
might produce three memorable examples of the violation of this
imaginary law: the marriage of Leo, or rather of his father
Constantine the Fourth, with the daughter of the king of the
Chozars, the nuptials of the granddaughter of Romanus with a
Bulgarian prince, and the union of Bertha of France or Italy with
young Romanus, the son of Constantine Porphyrogenitus himself. To
these objections three answers were prepared, which solved the
difficulty and established the law. I.
The deed and the guilt of Constantine Copronymus were
acknowledged. The Isaurian heretic, who sullied the baptismal
font, and declared war against the holy images, had indeed
embraced a Barbarian wife. By this impious alliance he
accomplished the measure of his crimes, and was devoted to the
just censure of the church and of posterity. II. Romanus could
not be alleged as a legitimate emperor; he was a plebeian
usurper, ignorant of the laws, and regardless of the honor, of
the monarchy. His son Christopher, the father of the bride, was
the third in rank in the college of princes, at once the subject
and the accomplice of a rebellious parent. The Bulgarians were
sincere and devout Christians; and the safety of the empire, with
the redemption of many thousand captives, depended on this
preposterous alliance. Yet no consideration could dispense from
the law of Constantine: the clergy, the senate, and the people,
disapproved the conduct of Romanus; and he was reproached, both
in his life and death, as the author of the public disgrace. III.
For the marriage of his own son with the daughter of Hugo, king
of Italy, a more honorable defence is contrived by the wise
Porphyrogenitus. Constantine, the great and holy, esteemed the
fidelity and valor of the Franks; 61 and his prophetic spirit
beheld the vision of their future greatness. They alone were
excepted from the general prohibition: Hugo, king of France, was
the lineal descendant of Charlemagne; 62 and his daughter Bertha
inherited the prerogatives of her family and nation. The voice of
truth and malice insensibly betrayed the fraud or error of the
Imperial court. The patrimonial estate of Hugo was reduced from
the monarchy of France to the simple county of Arles; though it
was not denied, that, in the confusion of the times, he had
usurped the sovereignty of Provence, and invaded the kingdom of
Italy. His father was a private noble; and if Bertha derived her
female descent from the Carlovingian line, every step was
polluted with illegitimacy or vice. The grandmother of Hugo was
the famous Valdrada, the concubine, rather than the wife, of the
second Lothair; whose adultery, divorce, and second nuptials, had
provoked against him the thunders of the Vatican. His mother, as
she was styled, the great Bertha, was successively the wife of
the count of Arles and of the marquis of Tuscany: France and
Italy were scandalized by her gallantries; and, till the age of
threescore, her lovers, of every degree, were the zealous
servants of her ambition. The example of maternal incontinence
was copied by the king of Italy; and the three favorite
concubines of Hugo were decorated with the classic names of
Venus, Juno, and Semele. 63 The daughter of Venus was granted to
the solicitations of the Byzantine court: her name of Bertha was
changed to that of Eudoxia; and she was wedded, or rather
betrothed, to young Romanus, the future heir of the empire of the
East. The consummation of this foreign alliance was suspended by
the tender age of the two parties; and, at the end of five years,
the union was dissolved by the death of the virgin spouse. The
second wife of the emperor Romanus was a maiden of plebeian, but
of Roman, birth; and their two daughters, Theophano and Anne,
were given in marriage to the princes of the earth. The eldest
was bestowed, as the pledge of peace, on the eldest son of the
great Otho, who had solicited this alliance with arms and
embassies. It might legally be questioned how far a Saxon was
entitled to the privilege of the French nation; but every scruple
was silenced by the fame and piety of a hero who had restored the
empire of the West. After the death of her father-in-law and
husband, Theophano governed Rome, Italy, and Germany, during the
minority of her son, the third Otho; and the Latins have praised
the virtues of an empress, who sacrificed to a superior duty the
remembrance of her country. 64 In the nuptials of her sister
Anne, every prejudice was lost, and every consideration of
dignity was superseded, by the stronger argument of necessity and
fear. A Pagan of the North, Wolodomir, great prince of Russia,
aspired to a daughter of the Roman purple; and his claim was
enforced by the threats of war, the promise of conversion, and
the offer of a powerful succor against a domestic rebel. A victim
of her religion and country, the Grecian princess was torn from
the palace of her fathers, and condemned to a savage reign, and a
hopeless exile on the banks of the Borysthenes, or in the
neighborhood of the Polar circle. 65 Yet the marriage of Anne was
fortunate and fruitful: the daughter of her grandson Joroslaus
was recommended by her Imperial descent; and the king of France,
Henry I., sought a wife on the last borders of Europe and
Christendom. 66
58 (return) [ The xiiith chapter, de Administratione Imperii, may
be explained and rectified by the Familiae Byzantinae of
Ducange.]
59 (return) [ Sequiturque nefas Aegyptia conjux, (Virgil, Aeneid,
viii. 688.) Yet this Egyptian wife was the daughter of a long
line of kings. Quid te mutavit (says Antony in a private letter
to Augustus) an quod reginam ineo? Uxor mea est, (Sueton. in
August. c. 69.) Yet I much question (for I cannot stay to
inquire) whether the triumvir ever dared to celebrate his
marriage either with Roman or Egyptian rites.]
60 (return) [ Berenicem invitus invitam dimisit, (Suetonius in
Tito, c. 7.) Have I observed elsewhere, that this Jewish beauty
was at this time above fifty years of age? The judicious Racine
has most discreetly suppressed both her age and her country.]
61 (return) [ Constantine was made to praise the the Franks, with
whom he claimed a private and public alliance. The French writers
(Isaac Casaubon in Dedicat. Polybii) are highly delighted with
these compliments.]
62 (return) [ Constantine Porphyrogenitus (de Administrat. Imp.
c. 36) exhibits a pedigree and life of the illustrious King Hugo.
A more correct idea may be formed from the Criticism of Pagi, the
Annals of Muratori, and the Abridgment of St. Marc, A.D.
925-946.]
63 (return) [ After the mention of the three goddesses, Luitprand
very naturally adds, et quoniam non rex solus iis abutebatur,
earum nati ex incertis patribus originera ducunt, (Hist. l. iv.
c. 6: ) for the marriage of the younger Bertha, see Hist. l. v.
c. 5; for the incontinence of the elder, dulcis exercipio
Hymenaei, l. ii. c. 15; for the virtues and vices of Hugo, l.
iii. c. 5. Yet it must not be forgot, that the bishop of Cremona
was a lover of scandal.]
64 (return) [ Licet illa Imperatrix Graeca sibi et aliis fuisset
satis utilis, et optima, &c., is the preamble of an inimical
writer, apud Pagi, tom. iv. A.D. 989, No. 3. Her marriage and
principal actions may be found in Muratori, Pagi, and St. Marc,
under the proper years.]
65 (return) [ Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 699. Zonaras, tom. i. p. 221.
Elmacin, Hist. Saracenica, l. iii. c. 6. Nestor apud Levesque,
tom. ii. p. 112 Pagi, Critica, A.D. 987, No. 6: a singular
concourse! Wolodomir and Anne are ranked among the saints of the
Russian church. Yet we know his vices, and are ignorant of her
virtues.]
66 (return) [ Henricus primus duxit uxorem Scythicam, Russam,
filiam regis Jeroslai. An embassy of bishops was sent into
Russia, and the father gratanter filiam cum multis donis misit.
This event happened in the year 1051. See the passages of the
original chronicles in Bouquet’s Historians of France, (tom. xi.
p. 29, 159, 161, 319, 384, 481.) Voltaire might wonder at this
alliance; but he should not have owned his ignorance of the
country, religion, &c., of Jeroslaus—a name so conspicuous in the
Russian annals.]
In the Byzantine palace, the emperor was the first slave of the
ceremonies which he imposed, of the rigid forms which regulated
each word and gesture, besieged him in the palace, and violated
the leisure of his rural solitude. But the lives and fortunes of
millions hung on his arbitrary will; and the firmest minds,
superior to the allurements of pomp and luxury, may be seduced by
the more active pleasure of commanding their equals. The
legislative and executive powers were centred in the person of
the monarch, and the last remains of the authority of the senate
were finally eradicated by Leo the philosopher. 67 A lethargy of
servitude had benumbed the minds of the Greeks: in the wildest
tumults of rebellion they never aspired to the idea of a free
constitution; and the private character of the prince was the
only source and measure of their public happiness. Superstition
rivetted their chains; in the church of St. Sophia he was
solemnly crowned by the patriarch; at the foot of the altar, they
pledged their passive and unconditional obedience to his
government and family. On his side he engaged to abstain as much
as possible from the capital punishments of death and mutilation;
his orthodox creed was subscribed with his own hand, and he
promised to obey the decrees of the seven synods, and the canons
of the holy church. 68 But the assurance of mercy was loose and
indefinite: he swore, not to his people, but to an invisible
judge; and except in the inexpiable guilt of heresy, the
ministers of heaven were always prepared to preach the
indefeasible right, and to absolve the venial transgressions, of
their sovereign. The Greek ecclesiastics were themselves the
subjects of the civil magistrate: at the nod of a tyrant, the
bishops were created, or transferred, or deposed, or punished
with an ignominious death: whatever might be their wealth or
influence, they could never succeed like the Latin clergy in the
establishment of an independent republic; and the patriarch of
Constantinople condemned, what he secretly envied, the temporal
greatness of his Roman brother. Yet the exercise of boundless
despotism is happily checked by the laws of nature and necessity.
In proportion to his wisdom and virtue, the master of an empire
is confined to the path of his sacred and laborious duty. In
proportion to his vice and folly, he drops the sceptre too
weighty for his hands; and the motions of the royal image are
ruled by the imperceptible thread of some minister or favorite,
who undertakes for his private interest to exercise the task of
the public oppression. In some fatal moment, the most absolute
monarch may dread the reason or the caprice of a nation of
slaves; and experience has proved, that whatever is gained in the
extent, is lost in the safety and solidity, of regal power.
67 (return) [ A constitution of Leo the Philosopher (lxxviii.) ne
senatus consulta amplius fiant, speaks the language of naked
despotism.]
68 (return) [ Codinus (de Officiis, c. xvii. p. 120, 121) gives
an idea of this oath so strong to the church, so weak to the
people.]
Whatever titles a despot may assume, whatever claims he may
assert, it is on the sword that he must ultimately depend to
guard him against his foreign and domestic enemies. From the age
of Charlemagne to that of the Crusades, the world (for I overlook
the remote monarchy of China) was occupied and disputed by the
three great empires or nations of the Greeks, the Saracens, and
the Franks. Their military strength may be ascertained by a
comparison of their courage, their arts and riches, and their
obedience to a supreme head, who might call into action all the
energies of the state. The Greeks, far inferior to their rivals
in the first, were superior to the Franks, and at least equal to
the Saracens, in the second and third of these warlike
qualifications.
The wealth of the Greeks enabled them to purchase the service of
the poorer nations, and to maintain a naval power for the
protection of their coasts and the annoyance of their enemies. 69
A commerce of mutual benefit exchanged the gold of Constantinople
for the blood of Sclavonians and Turks, the Bulgarians and
Russians: their valor contributed to the victories of Nicephorus
and Zimisces; and if a hostile people pressed too closely on the
frontier, they were recalled to the defence of their country, and
the desire of peace, by the well-managed attack of a more distant
tribe. 70 The command of the Mediterranean, from the mouth of the
Tanais to the columns of Hercules, was always claimed, and often
possessed, by the successors of Constantine. Their capital was
filled with naval stores and dexterous artificers: the situation
of Greece and Asia, the long coasts, deep gulfs, and numerous
islands, accustomed their subjects to the exercise of navigation;
and the trade of Venice and Amalfi supplied a nursery of seamen
to the Imperial fleet. 71 Since the time of the Peloponnesian and
Punic wars, the sphere of action had not been enlarged; and the
science of naval architecture appears to have declined. The art
of constructing those stupendous machines which displayed three,
or six, or ten, ranges of oars, rising above, or falling behind,
each other, was unknown to the ship-builders of Constantinople,
as well as to the mechanicians of modern days. 72 The Dromones,
73 or light galleys of the Byzantine empire, were content with
two tier of oars; each tier was composed of five-and-twenty
benches; and two rowers were seated on each bench, who plied
their oars on either side of the vessel. To these we must add the
captain or centurion, who, in time of action, stood erect with
his armor-bearer on the poop, two steersmen at the helm, and two
officers at the prow, the one to manage the anchor, the other to
point and play against the enemy the tube of liquid fire. The
whole crew, as in the infancy of the art, performed the double
service of mariners and soldiers; they were provided with
defensive and offensive arms, with bows and arrows, which they
used from the upper deck, with long pikes, which they pushed
through the portholes of the lower tier. Sometimes, indeed, the
ships of war were of a larger and more solid construction; and
the labors of combat and navigation were more regularly divided
between seventy soldiers and two hundred and thirty mariners. But
for the most part they were of the light and manageable size; and
as the Cape of Malea in Peloponnesus was still clothed with its
ancient terrors, an Imperial fleet was transported five miles
over land across the Isthmus of Corinth. 74 The principles of
maritime tactics had not undergone any change since the time of
Thucydides: a squadron of galleys still advanced in a crescent,
charged to the front, and strove to impel their sharp beaks
against the feeble sides of their antagonists. A machine for
casting stones and darts was built of strong timbers, in the
midst of the deck; and the operation of boarding was effected by
a crane that hoisted baskets of armed men. The language of
signals, so clear and copious in the naval grammar of the
moderns, was imperfectly expressed by the various positions and
colors of a commanding flag. In the darkness of the night, the
same orders to chase, to attack, to halt, to retreat, to break,
to form, were conveyed by the lights of the leading galley. By
land, the fire-signals were repeated from one mountain to
another; a chain of eight stations commanded a space of five
hundred miles; and Constantinople in a few hours was apprised of
the hostile motions of the Saracens of Tarsus. 75 Some estimate
may be formed of the power of the Greek emperors, by the curious
and minute detail of the armament which was prepared for the
reduction of Crete. A fleet of one hundred and twelve galleys,
and seventy-five vessels of the Pamphylian style, was equipped in
the capital, the islands of the Aegean Sea, and the seaports of
Asia, Macedonia, and Greece. It carried thirty-four thousand
mariners, seven thousand three hundred and forty soldiers, seven
hundred Russians, and five thousand and eighty-seven Mardaites,
whose fathers had been transplanted from the mountains of
Libanus. Their pay, most probably of a month, was computed at
thirty-four centenaries of gold, about one hundred and thirty-six
thousand pounds sterling. Our fancy is bewildered by the endless
recapitulation of arms and engines, of clothes and linen, of
bread for the men and forage for the horses, and of stores and
utensils of every description, inadequate to the conquest of a
petty island, but amply sufficient for the establishment of a
flourishing colony. 76
69 (return) [ If we listen to the threats of Nicephorus to the
ambassador of Otho, Nec est in mari domino tuo classium numerus.
Navigantium fortitudo mihi soli inest, qui eum classibus
aggrediar, bello maritimas ejus civitates demoliar; et quae
fluminibus sunt vicina redigam in favillam. (Liutprand in Legat.
ad Nicephorum Phocam, in Muratori Scriptores Rerum Italicarum,
tom. ii. pars i. p. 481.) He observes in another place, qui
caeteris praestant Venetici sunt et Amalphitani.]
70 (return) [ Nec ipsa capiet eum (the emperor Otho) in qua ortus
est pauper et pellicea Saxonia: pecunia qua pollemus omnes
nationes super eum invitabimus: et quasi Keramicum confringemus,
(Liutprand in Legat. p. 487.) The two books, de Administrando
Imperio, perpetually inculcate the same policy.]
71 (return) [ The xixth chapter of the Tactics of Leo, (Meurs.
Opera, tom. vi. p. 825-848,) which is given more correct from a
manuscript of Gudius, by the laborious Fabricius, (Bibliot.
Graec. tom. vi. p. 372-379,) relates to the Naumachia, or naval
war.]
72 (return) [ Even of fifteen and sixteen rows of oars, in the
navy of Demetrius Poliorcetes. These were for real use: the forty
rows of Ptolemy Philadelphus were applied to a floating palace,
whose tonnage, according to Dr. Arbuthnot, (Tables of Ancient
Coins, &c., p. 231-236,) is compared as 4 1/2 to 1 with an
English 100 gun ship.]
73 (return) [ The Dromones of Leo, &c., are so clearly described
with two tier of oars, that I must censure the version of
Meursius and Fabricius, who pervert the sense by a blind
attachment to the classic appellation of Triremes. The Byzantine
historians are sometimes guilty of the same inaccuracy.]
74 (return) [ Constantin. Porphyrogen. in Vit. Basil. c. lxi. p.
185. He calmly praises the stratagem; but the sailing round
Peloponnesus is described by his terrified fancy as a
circumnavigation of a thousand miles.]
75 (return) [ The continuator of Theophanes (l. iv. p. 122, 123)
names the successive stations, the castle of Lulum near Tarsus,
Mount Argaeus Isamus, Aegilus, the hill of Mamas, Cyrisus,
Mocilus, the hill of Auxentius, the sun-dial of the Pharus of the
great palace. He affirms that the news were transmitted in an
indivisible moment of time. Miserable amplification, which, by
saying too much, says nothing. How much more forcible and
instructive would have been the definition of three, or six, or
twelve hours!]
76 (return) [ See the Ceremoniale of Constantine Porphyrogenitus,
l. ii. c. 44, p. 176-192. A critical reader will discern some
inconsistencies in different parts of this account; but they are
not more obscure or more stubborn than the establishment and
effectives, the present and fit for duty, the rank and file and
the private, of a modern return, which retain in proper hands the
knowledge of these profitable mysteries.]
The invention of the Greek fire did not, like that of gun powder,
produce a total revolution in the art of war. To these liquid
combustibles the city and empire of Constantine owed their
deliverance; and they were employed in sieges and sea-fights with
terrible effect. But they were either less improved, or less
susceptible of improvement: the engines of antiquity, the
catapultae, balistae, and battering-rams, were still of most
frequent and powerful use in the attack and defence of
fortifications; nor was the decision of battles reduced to the
quick and heavy fire of a line of infantry, whom it were
fruitless to protect with armor against a similar fire of their
enemies. Steel and iron were still the common instruments of
destruction and safety; and the helmets, cuirasses, and shields,
of the tenth century did not, either in form or substance,
essentially differ from those which had covered the companions of
Alexander or Achilles. 77 But instead of accustoming the modern
Greeks, like the legionaries of old, to the constant and easy use
of this salutary weight, their armor was laid aside in light
chariots, which followed the march, till, on the approach of an
enemy, they resumed with haste and reluctance the unusual
encumbrance. Their offensive weapons consisted of swords,
battle-axes, and spears; but the Macedonian pike was shortened a
fourth of its length, and reduced to the more convenient measure
of twelve cubits or feet. The sharpness of the Scythian and
Arabian arrows had been severely felt; and the emperors lament
the decay of archery as a cause of the public misfortunes, and
recommend, as an advice and a command, that the military youth,
till the age of forty, should assiduously practise the exercise
of the bow. 78 The bands, or regiments, were usually three
hundred strong; and, as a medium between the extremes of four and
sixteen, the foot soldiers of Leo and Constantine were formed
eight deep; but the cavalry charged in four ranks, from the
reasonable consideration, that the weight of the front could not
be increased by any pressure of the hindmost horses. If the ranks
of the infantry or cavalry were sometimes doubled, this cautious
array betrayed a secret distrust of the courage of the troops,
whose numbers might swell the appearance of the line, but of whom
only a chosen band would dare to encounter the spears and swords
of the Barbarians. The order of battle must have varied according
to the ground, the object, and the adversary; but their ordinary
disposition, in two lines and a reserve, presented a succession
of hopes and resources most agreeable to the temper as well as
the judgment of the Greeks. 79 In case of a repulse, the first
line fell back into the intervals of the second; and the reserve,
breaking into two divisions, wheeled round the flanks to improve
the victory or cover the retreat. Whatever authority could enact
was accomplished, at least in theory, by the camps and marches,
the exercises and evolutions, the edicts and books, of the
Byzantine monarch. 80 Whatever art could produce from the forge,
the loom, or the laboratory, was abundantly supplied by the
riches of the prince, and the industry of his numerous workmen.
But neither authority nor art could frame the most important
machine, the soldier himself; and if the ceremonies of
Constantine always suppose the safe and triumphal return of the
emperor, 81 his tactics seldom soar above the means of escaping a
defeat, and procrastinating the war. 82 Notwithstanding some
transient success, the Greeks were sunk in their own esteem and
that of their neighbors. A cold hand and a loquacious tongue was
the vulgar description of the nation: the author of the tactics
was besieged in his capital; and the last of the Barbarians, who
trembled at the name of the Saracens, or Franks, could proudly
exhibit the medals of gold and silver which they had extorted
from the feeble sovereign of Constantinople. What spirit their
government and character denied, might have been inspired in some
degree by the influence of religion; but the religion of the
Greeks could only teach them to suffer and to yield. The emperor
Nicephorus, who restored for a moment the discipline and glory of
the Roman name, was desirous of bestowing the honors of martyrdom
on the Christians who lost their lives in a holy war against the
infidels. But this political law was defeated by the opposition
of the patriarch, the bishops, and the principal senators; and
they strenuously urged the canons of St. Basil, that all who were
polluted by the bloody trade of a soldier should be separated,
during three years, from the communion of the faithful. 83
77 (return) [ See the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters, and, in
the Tactics of Leo, with the corresponding passages in those of
Constantine.]
78 (return) [ (Leo, Tactic. p. 581 Constantin. p 1216.) Yet such
were not the maxims of the Greeks and Romans, who despised the
loose and distant practice of archery.]
79 (return) [ Compare the passages of the Tactics, p. 669 and
721, and the xiith with the xviiith chapter.]
80 (return) [ In the preface to his Tactics, Leo very freely
deplores the loss of discipline and the calamities of the times,
and repeats, without scruple, (Proem. p. 537,) the reproaches,
nor does it appear that the same censures were less deserved in
the next generation by the disciples of Constantine.]
81 (return) [ See in the Ceremonial (l. ii. c. 19, p. 353) the
form of the emperor’s trampling on the necks of the captive
Saracens, while the singers chanted, “Thou hast made my enemies
my footstool!” and the people shouted forty times the kyrie
eleison.]
82 (return) [ Leo observes (Tactic. p. 668) that a fair open
battle against any nation whatsoever: the words are strong, and
the remark is true: yet if such had been the opinion of the old
Romans, Leo had never reigned on the shores of the Thracian
Bosphorus.]
83 (return) [ Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 202, 203) and
Cedrenus, (Compend p. 668,) who relate the design of Nicephorus,
most unfortunately apply the epithet to the opposition of the
patriarch.]
These scruples of the Greeks have been compared with the tears of
the primitive Moslems when they were held back from battle; and
this contrast of base superstition and high-spirited enthusiasm,
unfolds to a philosophic eye the history of the rival nations.
The subjects of the last caliphs 84 had undoubtedly degenerated
from the zeal and faith of the companions of the prophet. Yet
their martial creed still represented the Deity as the author of
war: 85 the vital though latent spark of fanaticism still glowed
in the heart of their religion, and among the Saracens, who dwelt
on the Christian borders, it was frequently rekindled to a lively
and active flame. Their regular force was formed of the valiant
slaves who had been educated to guard the person and accompany
the standard of their lord: but the Mussulman people of Syria and
Cilicia, of Africa and Spain, was awakened by the trumpet which
proclaimed a holy war against the infidels. The rich were
ambitious of death or victory in the cause of God; the poor were
allured by the hopes of plunder; and the old, the infirm, and the
women, assumed their share of meritorious service by sending
their substitutes, with arms and horses, into the field. These
offensive and defensive arms were similar in strength and temper
to those of the Romans, whom they far excelled in the management
of the horse and the bow: the massy silver of their belts, their
bridles, and their swords, displayed the magnificence of a
prosperous nation; and except some black archers of the South,
the Arabs disdained the naked bravery of their ancestors. Instead
of wagons, they were attended by a long train of camels, mules,
and asses: the multitude of these animals, whom they bedecked
with flags and streamers, appeared to swell the pomp and
magnitude of their host; and the horses of the enemy were often
disordered by the uncouth figure and odious smell of the camels
of the East. Invincible by their patience of thirst and heat,
their spirits were frozen by a winter’s cold, and the
consciousness of their propensity to sleep exacted the most
rigorous precautions against the surprises of the night. Their
order of battle was a long square of two deep and solid lines;
the first of archers, the second of cavalry. In their engagements
by sea and land, they sustained with patient firmness the fury of
the attack, and seldom advanced to the charge till they could
discern and oppress the lassitude of their foes. But if they were
repulsed and broken, they knew not how to rally or renew the
combat; and their dismay was heightened by the superstitious
prejudice, that God had declared himself on the side of their
enemies. The decline and fall of the caliphs countenanced this
fearful opinion; nor were there wanting, among the Mahometans and
Christians, some obscure prophecies 86 which prognosticated their
alternate defeats. The unity of the Arabian empire was dissolved,
but the independent fragments were equal to populous and powerful
kingdoms; and in their naval and military armaments, an emir of
Aleppo or Tunis might command no despicable fund of skill, and
industry, and treasure. In their transactions of peace and war
with the Saracens, the princes of Constantinople too often felt
that these Barbarians had nothing barbarous in their discipline;
and that if they were destitute of original genius, they had been
endowed with a quick spirit of curiosity and imitation. The model
was indeed more perfect than the copy; their ships, and engines,
and fortifications, were of a less skilful construction; and they
confess, without shame, that the same God who has given a tongue
to the Arabians, had more nicely fashioned the hands of the
Chinese, and the heads of the Greeks. 87
84 (return) [ The xviith chapter of the tactics of the different
nations is the most historical and useful of the whole collection
of Leo. The manners and arms of the Saracens (Tactic. p. 809-817,
and a fragment from the Medicean Ms. in the preface of the vith
volume of Meursius) the Roman emperor was too frequently called
upon to study.]
85 (return) [ Leon. Tactic. p. 809.]
86 (return) [ Liutprand (p. 484, 485) relates and interprets the
oracles of the Greeks and Saracens, in which, after the fashion
of prophecy, the past is clear and historical, the future is
dark, enigmatical, and erroneous. From this boundary of light and
shade an impartial critic may commonly determine the date of the
composition.]
87 (return) [ The sense of this distinction is expressed by
Abulpharagius (Dynast. p. 2, 62, 101;) but I cannot recollect the
passage in which it is conveyed by this lively apothegm.]
Chapter LIII: Fate Of The Eastern Empire.—Part IV.
A name of some German tribes between the Rhine and the Weser had
spread its victorious influence over the greatest part of Gaul,
Germany, and Italy; and the common appellation of Franks 88 was
applied by the Greeks and Arabians to the Christians of the Latin
church, the nations of the West, who stretched beyond their
knowledge to the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. The vast body had
been inspired and united by the soul of Charlemagne; but the
division and degeneracy of his race soon annihilated the Imperial
power, which would have rivalled the Caesars of Byzantium, and
revenged the indignities of the Christian name. The enemies no
longer feared, nor could the subjects any longer trust, the
application of a public revenue, the labors of trade and
manufactures in the military service, the mutual aid of provinces
and armies, and the naval squadrons which were regularly
stationed from the mouth of the Elbe to that of the Tyber. In the
beginning of the tenth century, the family of Charlemagne had
almost disappeared; his monarchy was broken into many hostile and
independent states; the regal title was assumed by the most
ambitious chiefs; their revolt was imitated in a long
subordination of anarchy and discord, and the nobles of every
province disobeyed their sovereign, oppressed their vassals, and
exercised perpetual hostilities against their equals and
neighbors. Their private wars, which overturned the fabric of
government, fomented the martial spirit of the nation. In the
system of modern Europe, the power of the sword is possessed, at
least in fact, by five or six mighty potentates; their operations
are conducted on a distant frontier, by an order of men who
devote their lives to the study and practice of the military art:
the rest of the country and community enjoys in the midst of war
the tranquillity of peace, and is only made sensible of the
change by the aggravation or decrease of the public taxes. In the
disorders of the tenth and eleventh centuries, every peasant was
a soldier, and every village a fortification; each wood or valley
was a scene of murder and rapine; and the lords of each castle
were compelled to assume the character of princes and warriors.
To their own courage and policy they boldly trusted for the
safety of their family, the protection of their lands, and the
revenge of their injuries; and, like the conquerors of a larger
size, they were too apt to transgress the privilege of defensive
war. The powers of the mind and body were hardened by the
presence of danger and necessity of resolution: the same spirit
refused to desert a friend and to forgive an enemy; and, instead
of sleeping under the guardian care of a magistrate, they proudly
disdained the authority of the laws. In the days of feudal
anarchy, the instruments of agriculture and art were converted
into the weapons of bloodshed: the peaceful occupations of civil
and ecclesiastical society were abolished or corrupted; and the
bishop who exchanged his mitre for a helmet, was more forcibly
urged by the manners of the times than by the obligation of his
tenure. 89
88 (return) [ Ex Francis, quo nomine tam Latinos quam Teutones
comprehendit, ludum habuit, (Liutprand in Legat ad Imp.
Nicephorum, p. 483, 484.) This extension of the name may be
confirmed from Constantine (de Administrando Imperio, l. 2, c.
27, 28) and Eutychius, (Annal. tom. i. p. 55, 56,) who both lived
before the Crusades. The testimonies of Abulpharagius (Dynast. p.
69) and Abulfeda (Praefat. ad Geograph.) are more recent]
89 (return) [ On this subject of ecclesiastical and beneficiary
discipline, Father Thomassin, (tom. iii. l. i. c. 40, 45, 46, 47)
may be usefully consulted. A general law of Charlemagne exempted
the bishops from personal service; but the opposite practice,
which prevailed from the ixth to the xvth century, is
countenanced by the example or silence of saints and doctors....
You justify your cowardice by the holy canons, says Ratherius of
Verona; the canons likewise forbid you to whore, and yet—]
The love of freedom and of arms was felt, with conscious pride,
by the Franks themselves, and is observed by the Greeks with some
degree of amazement and terror. “The Franks,” says the emperor
Constantine, “are bold and valiant to the verge of temerity; and
their dauntless spirit is supported by the contempt of danger and
death. In the field and in close onset, they press to the front,
and rush headlong against the enemy, without deigning to compute
either his numbers or their own. Their ranks are formed by the
firm connections of consanguinity and friendship; and their
martial deeds are prompted by the desire of saving or revenging
their dearest companions. In their eyes, a retreat is a shameful
flight; and flight is indelible infamy.” 90 A nation endowed with
such high and intrepid spirit, must have been secure of victory
if these advantages had not been counter-balanced by many weighty
defects. The decay of their naval power left the Greeks and
Saracens in possession of the sea, for every purpose of annoyance
and supply. In the age which preceded the institution of
knighthood, the Franks were rude and unskilful in the service of
cavalry; 91 and in all perilous emergencies, their warriors were
so conscious of their ignorance, that they chose to dismount from
their horses and fight on foot. Unpractised in the use of pikes,
or of missile weapons, they were encumbered by the length of
their swords, the weight of their armor, the magnitude of their
shields, and, if I may repeat the satire of the meagre Greeks, by
their unwieldy intemperance. Their independent spirit disdained
the yoke of subordination, and abandoned the standard of their
chief, if he attempted to keep the field beyond the term of their
stipulation or service. On all sides they were open to the snares
of an enemy less brave but more artful than themselves. They
might be bribed, for the Barbarians were venal; or surprised in
the night, for they neglected the precautions of a close
encampment or vigilant sentinels. The fatigues of a summer’s
campaign exhausted their strength and patience, and they sunk in
despair if their voracious appetite was disappointed of a
plentiful supply of wine and of food. This general character of
the Franks was marked with some national and local shades, which
I should ascribe to accident rather than to climate, but which
were visible both to natives and to foreigners. An ambassador of
the great Otho declared, in the palace of Constantinople, that
the Saxons could dispute with swords better than with pens, and
that they preferred inevitable death to the dishonor of turning
their backs to an enemy. 92 It was the glory of the nobles of
France, that, in their humble dwellings, war and rapine were the
only pleasure, the sole occupation, of their lives. They affected
to deride the palaces, the banquets, the polished manner of the
Italians, who in the estimate of the Greeks themselves had
degenerated from the liberty and valor of the ancient Lombards.
93
90 (return) [ In the xviiith chapter of his Tactics, the emperor
Leo has fairly stated the military vices and virtues of the
Franks (whom Meursius ridiculously translates by Galli) and the
Lombards or Langobards. See likewise the xxvith Dissertation of
Muratori de Antiquitatibus Italiae Medii Aevi.]
91 (return) [ Domini tui milites (says the proud Nicephorus)
equitandi ignari pedestris pugnae sunt inscii: scutorum
magnitudo, loricarum gravitudo, ensium longitudo galearumque
pondus neutra parte pugnare cossinit; ac subridens, impedit,
inquit, et eos gastrimargia, hoc est ventris ingluvies, &c.
Liutprand in Legat. p. 480 481]
92 (return) [ In Saxonia certe scio.... decentius ensibus pugnare
quam calanis, et prius mortem obire quam hostibus terga dare,
(Liutprand, p 482.)]
93 (return) [ Leonis Tactica, c. 18, p. 805. The emperor Leo died
A.D. 911: an historical poem, which ends in 916, and appears to
have been composed in 910, by a native of Venetia, discriminates
in these verses the manners of Italy and France:
—Quid inertia bello
Pectora (Ubertus ait) duris praetenditis armis,
O Itali? Potius vobis sacra pocula cordi;
Saepius et stomachum nitidis laxare saginis
Elatasque domos rutilo fulcire metallo.
Non eadem Gallos similis vel cura remordet:
Vicinas quibus est studium devincere terras,
Depressumque larem spoliis hinc inde coactis
Sustentare—
(Anonym. Carmen Panegyricum de Laudibus Berengarii Augusti, l. n.
in Muratori Script. Rerum Italic. tom. ii. pars i. p. 393.)]
By the well-known edict of Caracalla, his subjects, from Britain
to Egypt, were entitled to the name and privileges of Romans, and
their national sovereign might fix his occasional or permanent
residence in any province of their common country. In the
division of the East and West, an ideal unity was scrupulously
observed, and in their titles, laws, and statutes, the successors
of Arcadius and Honorius announced themselves as the inseparable
colleagues of the same office, as the joint sovereigns of the
Roman world and city, which were bounded by the same limits.
After the fall of the Western monarchy, the majesty of the purple
resided solely in the princes of Constantinople; and of these,
Justinian was the first who, after a divorce of sixty years,
regained the dominion of ancient Rome, and asserted, by the right
of conquest, the august title of Emperor of the Romans. 94 A
motive of vanity or discontent solicited one of his successors,
Constans the Second, to abandon the Thracian Bosphorus, and to
restore the pristine honors of the Tyber: an extravagant project,
(exclaims the malicious Byzantine,) as if he had despoiled a
beautiful and blooming virgin, to enrich, or rather to expose,
the deformity of a wrinkled and decrepit matron. 95 But the sword
of the Lombards opposed his settlement in Italy: he entered Rome
not as a conqueror, but as a fugitive, and, after a visit of
twelve days, he pillaged, and forever deserted, the ancient
capital of the world. 96 The final revolt and separation of Italy
was accomplished about two centuries after the conquests of
Justinian, and from his reign we may date the gradual oblivion of
the Latin tongue. That legislator had composed his Institutes,
his Code, and his Pandects, in a language which he celebrates as
the proper and public style of the Roman government, the
consecrated idiom of the palace and senate of Constantinople, of
the campus and tribunals of the East. 97 But this foreign dialect
was unknown to the people and soldiers of the Asiatic provinces,
it was imperfectly understood by the greater part of the
interpreters of the laws and the ministers of the state. After a
short conflict, nature and habit prevailed over the obsolete
institutions of human power: for the general benefit of his
subjects, Justinian promulgated his novels in the two languages:
the several parts of his voluminous jurisprudence were
successively translated; 98 the original was forgotten, the
version was studied, and the Greek, whose intrinsic merit
deserved indeed the preference, obtained a legal, as well as
popular establishment in the Byzantine monarchy. The birth and
residence of succeeding princes estranged them from the Roman
idiom: Tiberius by the Arabs, 99 and Maurice by the Italians, 100
are distinguished as the first of the Greek Caesars, as the
founders of a new dynasty and empire: the silent revolution was
accomplished before the death of Heraclius; and the ruins of the
Latin speech were darkly preserved in the terms of jurisprudence
and the acclamations of the palace. After the restoration of the
Western empire by Charlemagne and the Othos, the names of Franks
and Latins acquired an equal signification and extent; and these
haughty Barbarians asserted, with some justice, their superior
claim to the language and dominion of Rome. They insulted the
alien of the East who had renounced the dress and idiom of
Romans; and their reasonable practice will justify the frequent
appellation of Greeks. 101 But this contemptuous appellation was
indignantly rejected by the prince and people to whom it was
applied. Whatsoever changes had been introduced by the lapse of
ages, they alleged a lineal and unbroken succession from Augustus
and Constantine; and, in the lowest period of degeneracy and
decay, the name of Romans adhered to the last fragments of the
empire of Constantinople. 102
94 (return) [ Justinian, says the historian Agathias, (l. v. p.
157,). Yet the specific title of Emperor of the Romans was not
used at Constantinople, till it had been claimed by the French
and German emperors of old Rome.]
95 (return) [ Constantine Manasses reprobates this design in his
barbarous verse, and it is confirmed by Theophanes, Zonaras,
Cedrenus, and the Historia Miscella: voluit in urbem Romam
Imperium transferre, (l. xix. p. 157 in tom. i. pars i. of the
Scriptores Rer. Ital. of Muratori.)]
96 (return) [ Paul. Diacon. l. v. c. 11, p. 480. Anastasius in
Vitis Pontificum, in Muratori’s Collection, tom. iii. pars i. p.
141.]
97 (return) [ Consult the preface of Ducange, (ad Gloss, Graec.
Medii Aevi) and the Novels of Justinian, (vii. lxvi.)]
98 (return) [ (Matth. Blastares, Hist. Juris, apud Fabric.
Bibliot. Graec. tom. xii. p. 369.) The Code and Pandects (the
latter by Thalelaeus) were translated in the time of Justinian,
(p. 358, 366.) Theophilus one of the original triumvirs, has left
an elegant, though diffuse, paraphrase of the Institutes. On the
other hand, Julian, antecessor of Constantinople, (A.D. 570,)
cxx. Novellas Graecas eleganti Latinitate donavit (Heineccius,
Hist. J. R. p. 396) for the use of Italy and Africa.]
99 (return) [ Abulpharagius assigns the viith Dynasty to the
Franks or Romans, the viiith to the Greeks, the ixth to the
Arabs. A tempore Augusti Caesaris donec imperaret Tiberius Caesar
spatio circiter annorum 600 fuerunt Imperatores C. P. Patricii,
et praecipua pars exercitus Romani: extra quod, conciliarii,
scribae et populus, omnes Graeci fuerunt: deinde regnum etiam
Graecanicum factum est, (p. 96, vers. Pocock.) The Christian and
ecclesiastical studies of Abulpharagius gave him some advantage
over the more ignorant Moslems.]
100 (return) [ Primus ex Graecorum genere in Imperio confirmatus
est; or according to another Ms. of Paulus Diaconus, (l. iii. c.
15, p. 443,) in Orasorum Imperio.]
101 (return) [ Quia linguam, mores, vestesque mutastis, putavit
Sanctissimus Papa. (an audacious irony,) ita vos (vobis)
displicere Romanorum nomen. His nuncios, rogabant Nicephorum
Imperatorem Graecorum, ut cum Othone Imperatore Romanorum
amicitiam faceret, (Liutprand in Legatione, p. 486.) * Note:
Sicut et vestem. These words follow in the text of Liutprand,
(apud Murat. Script. Ital. tom. ii. p. 486, to which Gibbon
refers.) But with some inaccuracy or confusion, which rarely
occurs in Gibbon’s references, the rest of the quotation, which
as it stands is unintelligible, does not appear—M.]
102 (return) [ By Laonicus Chalcocondyles, who survived the last
siege of Constantinople, the account is thus stated, (l. i. p.
3.) Constantine transplanted his Latins of Italy to a Greek city
of Thrace: they adopted the language and manners of the natives,
who were confounded with them under the name of Romans. The kings
of Constantinople, says the historian.]
While the government of the East was transacted in Latin, the
Greek was the language of literature and philosophy; nor could
the masters of this rich and perfect idiom be tempted to envy the
borrowed learning and imitative taste of their Roman disciples.
After the fall of Paganism, the loss of Syria and Egypt, and the
extinction of the schools of Alexandria and Athens, the studies
of the Greeks insensibly retired to some regular monasteries, and
above all, to the royal college of Constantinople, which was
burnt in the reign of Leo the Isaurian. 103 In the pompous style
of the age, the president of that foundation was named the Sun of
Science: his twelve associates, the professors in the different
arts and faculties, were the twelve signs of the zodiac; a
library of thirty-six thousand five hundred volumes was open to
their inquiries; and they could show an ancient manuscript of
Homer, on a roll of parchment one hundred and twenty feet in
length, the intestines, as it was fabled, of a prodigious
serpent. 104 But the seventh and eight centuries were a period of
discord and darkness: the library was burnt, the college was
abolished, the Iconoclasts are represented as the foes of
antiquity; and a savage ignorance and contempt of letters has
disgraced the princes of the Heraclean and Isaurian dynasties.
105
103 (return) [ See Ducange, (C. P. Christiana, l. ii. p. 150,
151,) who collects the testimonies, not of Theophanes, but at
least of Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xv. p. 104,) Cedrenus, (p. 454,)
Michael Glycas, (p. 281,) Constantine Manasses, (p. 87.) After
refuting the absurd charge against the emperor, Spanheim, (Hist.
Imaginum, p. 99-111,) like a true advocate, proceeds to doubt or
deny the reality of the fire, and almost of the library.]
104 (return) [ According to Malchus, (apud Zonar. l. xiv. p. 53,)
this Homer was burnt in the time of Basiliscus. The Ms. might be
renewed—But on a serpent’s skin? Most strange and incredible!]
105 (return) [ The words of Zonaras, and of Cedrenus, are strong
words, perhaps not ill suited to those reigns.]
In the ninth century we trace the first dawnings of the
restoration of science. 106 After the fanaticism of the Arabs had
subsided, the caliphs aspired to conquer the arts, rather than
the provinces, of the empire: their liberal curiosity rekindled
the emulation of the Greeks, brushed away the dust from their
ancient libraries, and taught them to know and reward the
philosophers, whose labors had been hitherto repaid by the
pleasure of study and the pursuit of truth. The Caesar Bardas,
the uncle of Michael the Third, was the generous protector of
letters, a title which alone has preserved his memory and excused
his ambition. A particle of the treasures of his nephew was
sometimes diverted from the indulgence of vice and folly; a
school was opened in the palace of Magnaura; and the presence of
Bardas excited the emulation of the masters and students. At
their head was the philosopher Leo, archbishop of Thessalonica:
his profound skill in astronomy and the mathematics was admired
by the strangers of the East; and this occult science was
magnified by vulgar credulity, which modestly supposes that all
knowledge superior to its own must be the effect of inspiration
or magic. At the pressing entreaty of the Caesar, his friend, the
celebrated Photius, 107 renounced the freedom of a secular and
studious life, ascended the patriarchal throne, and was
alternately excommunicated and absolved by the synods of the East
and West. By the confession even of priestly hatred, no art or
science, except poetry, was foreign to this universal scholar,
who was deep in thought, indefatigable in reading, and eloquent
in diction. Whilst he exercised the office of protospathaire or
captain of the guards, Photius was sent ambassador to the caliph
of Bagdad. 108 The tedious hours of exile, perhaps of
confinement, were beguiled by the hasty composition of his
Library, a living monument of erudition and criticism. Two
hundred and fourscore writers, historians, orators, philosophers,
theologians, are reviewed without any regular method: he abridges
their narrative or doctrine, appreciates their style and
character, and judges even the fathers of the church with a
discreet freedom, which often breaks through the superstition of
the times. The emperor Basil, who lamented the defects of his own
education, intrusted to the care of Photius his son and
successor, Leo the philosopher; and the reign of that prince and
of his son Constantine Porphyrogenitus forms one of the most
prosperous aeras of the Byzantine literature. By their
munificence the treasures of antiquity were deposited in the
Imperial library; by their pens, or those of their associates,
they were imparted in such extracts and abridgments as might
amuse the curiosity, without oppressing the indolence, of the
public. Besides the Basilics, or code of laws, the arts of
husbandry and war, of feeding or destroying the human species,
were propagated with equal diligence; and the history of Greece
and Rome was digested into fifty-three heads or titles, of which
two only (of embassies, and of virtues and vices) have escaped
the injuries of time. In every station, the reader might
contemplate the image of the past world, apply the lesson or
warning of each page, and learn to admire, perhaps to imitate,
the examples of a brighter period. I shall not expatiate on the
works of the Byzantine Greeks, who, by the assiduous study of the
ancients, have deserved, in some measure, the remembrance and
gratitude of the moderns. The scholars of the present age may
still enjoy the benefit of the philosophical commonplace book of
Stobaeus, the grammatical and historical lexicon of Suidas, the
Chiliads of Tzetzes, which comprise six hundred narratives in
twelve thousand verses, and the commentaries on Homer of
Eustathius, archbishop of Thessalonica, who, from his horn of
plenty, has poured the names and authorities of four hundred
writers. From these originals, and from the numerous tribe of
scholiasts and critics, 109 some estimate may be formed of the
literary wealth of the twelfth century: Constantinople was
enlightened by the genius of Homer and Demosthenes, of Aristotle
and Plato: and in the enjoyment or neglect of our present riches,
we must envy the generation that could still peruse the history
of Theopompus, the orations of Hyperides, the comedies of
Menander, 110 and the odes of Alcaeus and Sappho. The frequent
labor of illustration attests not only the existence, but the
popularity, of the Grecian classics: the general knowledge of the
age may be deduced from the example of two learned females, the
empress Eudocia, and the princess Anna Comnena, who cultivated,
in the purple, the arts of rhetoric and philosophy. 111 The
vulgar dialect of the city was gross and barbarous: a more
correct and elaborate style distinguished the discourse, or at
least the compositions, of the church and palace, which sometimes
affected to copy the purity of the Attic models.
106 (return) [ See Zonaras (l. xvi. p. 160, 161) and Cedrenus,
(p. 549, 550.) Like Friar Bacon, the philosopher Leo has been
transformed by ignorance into a conjurer; yet not so
undeservedly, if he be the author of the oracles more commonly
ascribed to the emperor of the same name. The physics of Leo in
Ms. are in the library of Vienna, (Fabricius, Bibliot. Graec.
tom. vi. p 366, tom. xii. p. 781.) Qui serant!]
107 (return) [ The ecclesiastical and literary character of
Photius is copiously discussed by Hanckius (de Scriptoribus
Byzant. p. 269, 396) and Fabricius.]
108 (return) [ It can only mean Bagdad, the seat of the caliphs
and the relation of his embassy might have been curious and
instructive. But how did he procure his books? A library so
numerous could neither be found at Bagdad, nor transported with
his baggage, nor preserved in his memory. Yet the last, however
incredible, seems to be affirmed by Photius himself. Camusat
(Hist. Critique des Journaux, p. 87-94) gives a good account of
the Myriobiblon.]
109 (return) [ Of these modern Greeks, see the respective
articles in the Bibliotheca Graeca of Fabricius—a laborious work,
yet susceptible of a better method and many improvements; of
Eustathius, (tom. i. p. 289-292, 306-329,) of the Pselli, (a
diatribe of Leo Allatius, ad calcem tom. v., of Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, tom. vi. p. 486-509) of John Stobaeus, (tom.
viii., 665-728,) of Suidas, (tom. ix. p. 620-827,) John Tzetzes,
(tom. xii. p. 245-273.) Mr. Harris, in his Philological
Arrangements, opus senile, has given a sketch of this Byzantine
learning, (p. 287-300.)]
110 (return) [ From the obscure and hearsay evidence, Gerard
Vossius (de Poetis Graecis, c. 6) and Le Clerc (Bibliotheque
Choisie, tom. xix. p. 285) mention a commentary of Michael
Psellus on twenty-four plays of Menander, still extant in Ms. at
Constantinople. Yet such classic studies seem incompatible with
the gravity or dulness of a schoolman, who pored over the
categories, (de Psellis, p. 42;) and Michael has probably been
confounded with Homerus Sellius, who wrote arguments to the
comedies of Menander. In the xth century, Suidas quotes fifty
plays, but he often transcribes the old scholiast of
Aristophanes.]
111 (return) [ Anna Comnena may boast of her Greek style, and
Zonaras her contemporary, but not her flatterer, may add with
truth. The princess was conversant with the artful dialogues of
Plato; and had studied quadrivium of astrology, geometry,
arithmetic, and music, (see he preface to the Alexiad, with
Ducange’s notes)]
In our modern education, the painful though necessary attainment
of two languages, which are no longer living, may consume the
time and damp the ardor of the youthful student. The poets and
orators were long imprisoned in the barbarous dialects of our
Western ancestors, devoid of harmony or grace; and their genius,
without precept or example, was abandoned to the rule and native
powers of their judgment and fancy. But the Greeks of
Constantinople, after purging away the impurities of their vulgar
speech, acquired the free use of their ancient language, the most
happy composition of human art, and a familiar knowledge of the
sublime masters who had pleased or instructed the first of
nations. But these advantages only tend to aggravate the reproach
and shame of a degenerate people. They held in their lifeless
hands the riches of their fathers, without inheriting the spirit
which had created and improved that sacred patrimony: they read,
they praised, they compiled, but their languid souls seemed alike
incapable of thought and action. In the revolution of ten
centuries, not a single discovery was made to exalt the dignity
or promote the happiness of mankind. Not a single idea has been
added to the speculative systems of antiquity, and a succession
of patient disciples became in their turn the dogmatic teachers
of the next servile generation. Not a single composition of
history, philosophy, or literature, has been saved from oblivion
by the intrinsic beauties of style or sentiment, of original
fancy, or even of successful imitation. In prose, the least
offensive of the Byzantine writers are absolved from censure by
their naked and unpresuming simplicity: but the orators, most
eloquent 112 in their own conceit, are the farthest removed from
the models whom they affect to emulate. In every page our taste
and reason are wounded by the choice of gigantic and obsolete
words, a stiff and intricate phraseology, the discord of images,
the childish play of false or unseasonable ornament, and the
painful attempt to elevate themselves, to astonish the reader,
and to involve a trivial meaning in the smoke of obscurity and
exaggeration. Their prose is soaring to the vicious affectation
of poetry: their poetry is sinking below the flatness and
insipidity of prose. The tragic, epic, and lyric muses, were
silent and inglorious: the bards of Constantinople seldom rose
above a riddle or epigram, a panegyric or tale; they forgot even
the rules of prosody; and with the melody of Homer yet sounding
in their ears, they confound all measure of feet and syllables in
the impotent strains which have received the name of political or
city verses. 113 The minds of the Greek were bound in the fetters
of a base and imperious superstition which extends her dominion
round the circle of profane science. Their understandings were
bewildered in metaphysical controversy: in the belief of visions
and miracles, they had lost all principles of moral evidence, and
their taste was vitiated by the homilies of the monks, an absurd
medley of declamation and Scripture. Even these contemptible
studies were no longer dignified by the abuse of superior
talents: the leaders of the Greek church were humbly content to
admire and copy the oracles of antiquity, nor did the schools of
pulpit produce any rivals of the fame of Athanasius and
Chrysostom. 114
112 (return) [ To censure the Byzantine taste. Ducange (Praefat.
Gloss. Graec. p. 17) strings the authorities of Aulus Gellius,
Jerom, Petronius George Hamartolus, Longinus; who give at once
the precept and the example.]
113 (return) [ The versus politici, those common prostitutes, as,
from their easiness, they are styled by Leo Allatius, usually
consist of fifteen syllables. They are used by Constantine
Manasses, John Tzetzes, &c. (Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. iii. p.
i. p. 345, 346, edit. Basil, 1762.)]
114 (return) [ As St. Bernard of the Latin, so St. John
Damascenus in the viiith century is revered as the last father of
the Greek, church.]
In all the pursuits of active and speculative life, the emulation
of states and individuals is the most powerful spring of the
efforts and improvements of mankind. The cities of ancient Greece
were cast in the happy mixture of union and independence, which
is repeated on a larger scale, but in a looser form, by the
nations of modern Europe; the union of language, religion, and
manners, which renders them the spectators and judges of each
other’s merit; 115 the independence of government and interest,
which asserts their separate freedom, and excites them to strive
for preeminence in the career of glory. The situation of the
Romans was less favorable; yet in the early ages of the republic,
which fixed the national character, a similar emulation was
kindled among the states of Latium and Italy; and in the arts and
sciences, they aspired to equal or surpass their Grecian masters.
The empire of the Caesars undoubtedly checked the activity and
progress of the human mind; its magnitude might indeed allow some
scope for domestic competition; but when it was gradually
reduced, at first to the East and at last to Greece and
Constantinople, the Byzantine subjects were degraded to an abject
and languid temper, the natural effect of their solitary and
insulated state. From the North they were oppressed by nameless
tribes of Barbarians, to whom they scarcely imparted the
appellation of men. The language and religion of the more
polished Arabs were an insurmountable bar to all social
intercourse. The conquerors of Europe were their brethren in the
Christian faith; but the speech of the Franks or Latins was
unknown, their manners were rude, and they were rarely connected,
in peace or war, with the successors of Heraclius. Alone in the
universe, the self-satisfied pride of the Greeks was not
disturbed by the comparison of foreign merit; and it is no wonder
if they fainted in the race, since they had neither competitors
to urge their speed, nor judges to crown their victory. The
nations of Europe and Asia were mingled by the expeditions to the
Holy Land; and it is under the Comnenian dynasty that a faint
emulation of knowledge and military virtue was rekindled in the
Byzantine empire.
115 (return) [Hume’s Essays, vol. i. p. 125]
Chapter LIV: Origin And Doctrine Of The Paulicians.—Part I.
Origin And Doctrine Of The Paulicians.—Their Persecution By The
Greek Emperors.—Revolt In Armenia &c.—Transplantation Into
Thrace.—Propagation In The West.—The Seeds, Character, And
Consequences Of The Reformation.
In the profession of Christianity, the variety of national
characters may be clearly distinguished. The natives of Syria and
Egypt abandoned their lives to lazy and contemplative devotion:
Rome again aspired to the dominion of the world; and the wit of
the lively and loquacious Greeks was consumed in the disputes of
metaphysical theology. The incomprehensible mysteries of the
Trinity and Incarnation, instead of commanding their silent
submission, were agitated in vehement and subtile controversies,
which enlarged their faith at the expense, perhaps, of their
charity and reason. From the council of Nice to the end of the
seventh century, the peace and unity of the church was invaded by
these spiritual wars; and so deeply did they affect the decline
and fall of the empire, that the historian has too often been
compelled to attend the synods, to explore the creeds, and to
enumerate the sects, of this busy period of ecclesiastical
annals. From the beginning of the eighth century to the last ages
of the Byzantine empire, the sound of controversy was seldom
heard: curiosity was exhausted, zeal was fatigued, and, in the
decrees of six councils, the articles of the Catholic faith had
been irrevocably defined. The spirit of dispute, however vain and
pernicious, requires some energy and exercise of the mental
faculties; and the prostrate Greeks were content to fast, to
pray, and to believe in blind obedience to the patriarch and his
clergy. During a long dream of superstition, the Virgin and the
Saints, their visions and miracles, their relics and images, were
preached by the monks, and worshipped by the people; and the
appellation of people might be extended, without injustice, to
the first ranks of civil society. At an unseasonable moment, the
Isaurian emperors attempted somewhat rudely to awaken their
subjects: under their influence reason might obtain some
proselytes, a far greater number was swayed by interest or fear;
but the Eastern world embraced or deplored their visible deities,
and the restoration of images was celebrated as the feast of
orthodoxy. In this passive and unanimous state the ecclesiastical
rulers were relieved from the toil, or deprived of the pleasure,
of persecution. The Pagans had disappeared; the Jews were silent
and obscure; the disputes with the Latins were rare and remote
hostilities against a national enemy; and the sects of Egypt and
Syria enjoyed a free toleration under the shadow of the Arabian
caliphs. About the middle of the seventh century, a branch of
Manichaeans was selected as the victims of spiritual tyranny;
their patience was at length exasperated to despair and
rebellion; and their exile has scattered over the West the seeds
of reformation. These important events will justify some inquiry
into the doctrine and story of the Paulicians; 1 and, as they
cannot plead for themselves, our candid criticism will magnify
the good, and abate or suspect the evil, that is reported by
their adversaries.
1 (return) [ The errors and virtues of the Paulicians are
weighed, with his usual judgment and candor, by the learned
Mosheim, (Hist. Ecclesiast. seculum ix. p. 311, &c.) He draws his
original intelligence from Photius (contra Manichaeos, l. i.) and
Peter Siculus, (Hist. Manichaeorum.) The first of these accounts
has not fallen into my hands; the second, which Mosheim prefers,
I have read in a Latin version inserted in the Maxima Bibliotheca
Patrum, (tom. xvi. p. 754-764,) from the edition of the Jesuit
Raderus, (Ingolstadii, 1604, in 4to.) * Note: Compare Hallam’s
Middle Ages, p. 461-471. Mr. Hallam justly observes that this
chapter “appears to be accurate as well as luminous, and is at
least far superior to any modern work on the subject.”—M.]
The Gnostics, who had distracted the infancy, were oppressed by
the greatness and authority, of the church. Instead of emulating
or surpassing the wealth, learning, and numbers of the Catholics,
their obscure remnant was driven from the capitals of the East
and West, and confined to the villages and mountains along the
borders of the Euphrates. Some vestige of the Marcionites may be
detected in the fifth century; 2 but the numerous sects were
finally lost in the odious name of the Manichaeans; and these
heretics, who presumed to reconcile the doctrines of Zoroaster
and Christ, were pursued by the two religions with equal and
unrelenting hatred. Under the grandson of Heraclius, in the
neighborhood of Samosata, more famous for the birth of Lucian
than for the title of a Syrian kingdom, a reformer arose,
esteemed by the Paulicians as the chosen messenger of truth. In
his humble dwelling of Mananalis, Constantine entertained a
deacon, who returned from Syrian captivity, and received the
inestimable gift of the New Testament, which was already
concealed from the vulgar by the prudence of the Greek, and
perhaps of the Gnostic, clergy. 3 These books became the measure
of his studies and the rule of his faith; and the Catholics, who
dispute his interpretation, acknowledge that his text was genuine
and sincere. But he attached himself with peculiar devotion to
the writings and character of St. Paul: the name of the
Paulicians is derived by their enemies from some unknown and
domestic teacher; but I am confident that they gloried in their
affinity to the apostle of the Gentiles. His disciples, Titus,
Timothy, Sylvanus, Tychicus, were represented by Constantine and
his fellow-laborers: the names of the apostolic churches were
applied to the congregations which they assembled in Armenia and
Cappadocia; and this innocent allegory revived the example and
memory of the first ages. In the Gospel, and the Epistles of St.
Paul, his faithful follower investigated the Creed of primitive
Christianity; and, whatever might be the success, a Protestant
reader will applaud the spirit, of the inquiry. But if the
Scriptures of the Paulicians were pure, they were not perfect.
Their founders rejected the two Epistles of St. Peter, 4 the
apostle of the circumcision, whose dispute with their favorite
for the observance of the law could not easily be forgiven. 5
They agreed with their Gnostic brethren in the universal contempt
for the Old Testament, the books of Moses and the prophets, which
have been consecrated by the decrees of the Catholic church. With
equal boldness, and doubtless with more reason, Constantine, the
new Sylvanus, disclaimed the visions, which, in so many bulky and
splendid volumes, had been published by the Oriental sects; 6 the
fabulous productions of the Hebrew patriarchs and the sages of
the East; the spurious gospels, epistles, and acts, which in the
first age had overwhelmed the orthodox code; the theology of
Manes, and the authors of the kindred heresies; and the thirty
generations, or aeons, which had been created by the fruitful
fancy of Valentine. The Paulicians sincerely condemned the memory
and opinions of the Manichaean sect, and complained of the
injustice which impressed that invidious name on the simple
votaries of St. Paul and of Christ.
2 (return) [ In the time of Theodoret, the diocese of Cyrrhus, in
Syria, contained eight hundred villages. Of these, two were
inhabited by Arians and Eunomians, and eight by Marcionites, whom
the laborious bishop reconciled to the Catholic church, (Dupin,
Bibliot. Ecclesiastique, tom. iv. p. 81, 82.)]
3 (return) [ Nobis profanis ista (sacra Evangelia) legere non
licet sed sacerdotibus duntaxat, was the first scruple of a
Catholic when he was advised to read the Bible, (Petr. Sicul. p.
761.)]
4 (return) [ In rejecting the second Epistle of St. Peter, the
Paulicians are justified by some of the most respectable of the
ancients and moderns, (see Wetstein ad loc., Simon, Hist.
Critique du Nouveau Testament, c. 17.) They likewise overlooked
the Apocalypse, (Petr. Sicul. p. 756;) but as such neglect is not
imputed as a crime, the Greeks of the ixth century must have been
careless of the credit and honor of the Revelations.]
5 (return) [ This contention, which has not escaped the malice of
Porphyry, supposes some error and passion in one or both of the
apostles. By Chrysostom, Jerome, and Erasmus, it is represented
as a sham quarrel a pious fraud, for the benefit of the Gentiles
and the correction of the Jews, (Middleton’s Works, vol. ii. p.
1-20.)]
6 (return) [ Those who are curious of this heterodox library, may
consult the researches of Beausobre, (Hist. Critique du
Manicheisme, tom. i. p. 305-437.) Even in Africa, St. Austin
could describe the Manichaean books, tam multi, tam grandes, tam
pretiosi codices, (contra Faust. xiii. 14;) but he adds, without
pity, Incendite omnes illas membranas: and his advice had been
rigorously followed.]
Of the ecclesiastical chain, many links had been broken by the
Paulician reformers; and their liberty was enlarged, as they
reduced the number of masters, at whose voice profane reason must
bow to mystery and miracle. The early separation of the Gnostics
had preceded the establishment of the Catholic worship; and
against the gradual innovations of discipline and doctrine they
were as strongly guarded by habit and aversion, as by the silence
of St. Paul and the evangelists. The objects which had been
transformed by the magic of superstition, appeared to the eyes of
the Paulicians in their genuine and naked colors. An image made
without hands was the common workmanship of a mortal artist, to
whose skill alone the wood and canvas must be indebted for their
merit or value. The miraculous relics were a heap of bones and
ashes, destitute of life or virtue, or of any relation, perhaps,
with the person to whom they were ascribed. The true and
vivifying cross was a piece of sound or rotten timber, the body
and blood of Christ, a loaf of bread and a cup of wine, the gifts
of nature and the symbols of grace. The mother of God was
degraded from her celestial honors and immaculate virginity; and
the saints and angels were no longer solicited to exercise the
laborious office of mediation in heaven, and ministry upon earth.
In the practice, or at least in the theory, of the sacraments,
the Paulicians were inclined to abolish all visible objects of
worship, and the words of the gospel were, in their judgment, the
baptism and communion of the faithful. They indulged a convenient
latitude for the interpretation of Scripture: and as often as
they were pressed by the literal sense, they could escape to the
intricate mazes of figure and allegory. Their utmost diligence
must have been employed to dissolve the connection between the
Old and the New Testament; since they adored the latter as the
oracles of God, and abhorred the former as the fabulous and
absurd invention of men or daemons. We cannot be surprised, that
they should have found in the Gospel the orthodox mystery of the
Trinity: but, instead of confessing the human nature and
substantial sufferings of Christ, they amused their fancy with a
celestial body that passed through the virgin like water through
a pipe; with a fantastic crucifixion, that eluded the vain and
important malice of the Jews. A creed thus simple and spiritual
was not adapted to the genius of the times; 7 and the rational
Christian, who might have been contented with the light yoke and
easy burden of Jesus and his apostles, was justly offended, that
the Paulicians should dare to violate the unity of God, the first
article of natural and revealed religion. Their belief and their
trust was in the Father, of Christ, of the human soul, and of the
invisible world.
But they likewise held the eternity of matter; a stubborn and
rebellious substance, the origin of a second principle of an
active being, who has created this visible world, and exercises
his temporal reign till the final consummation of death and sin.
8 The appearances of moral and physical evil had established the
two principles in the ancient philosophy and religion of the
East; from whence this doctrine was transfused to the various
swarms of the Gnostics. A thousand shades may be devised in the
nature and character of Ahriman, from a rival god to a
subordinate daemon, from passion and frailty to pure and perfect
malevolence: but, in spite of our efforts, the goodness, and the
power, of Ormusd are placed at the opposite extremities of the
line; and every step that approaches the one must recede in equal
proportion from the other. 9
7 (return) [ The six capital errors of the Paulicians are defined
by Peter (p. 756,) with much prejudice and passion.]
8 (return) [ Primum illorum axioma est, duo rerum esse principia;
Deum malum et Deum bonum, aliumque hujus mundi conditorem et
princi pem, et alium futuri aevi, (Petr. Sicul. 765.)]
9 (return) [ Two learned critics, Beausobre (Hist. Critique du
Manicheisme, l. i. iv. v. vi.) and Mosheim, (Institut. Hist.
Eccles. and de Rebus Christianis ante Constantinum, sec. i. ii.
iii.,) have labored to explore and discriminate the various
systems of the Gnostics on the subject of the two principles.]
The apostolic labors of Constantine Sylvanus soon multiplied the
number of his disciples, the secret recompense of spiritual
ambition. The remnant of the Gnostic sects, and especially the
Manichaeans of Armenia, were united under his standard; many
Catholics were converted or seduced by his arguments; and he
preached with success in the regions of Pontus 10 and Cappadocia,
which had long since imbibed the religion of Zoroaster. The
Paulician teachers were distinguished only by their Scriptural
names, by the modest title of Fellow-pilgrims, by the austerity
of their lives, their zeal or knowledge, and the credit of some
extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit. But they were incapable
of desiring, or at least of obtaining, the wealth and honors of
the Catholic prelacy; such anti-Christian pride they bitterly
censured; and even the rank of elders or presbyters was condemned
as an institution of the Jewish synagogue. The new sect was
loosely spread over the provinces of Asia Minor to the westward
of the Euphrates; six of their principal congregations
represented the churches to which St. Paul had addressed his
epistles; and their founder chose his residence in the
neighborhood of Colonia, 11 in the same district of Pontus which
had been celebrated by the altars of Bellona 12 and the miracles
of Gregory. 13 After a mission of twenty-seven years, Sylvanus,
who had retired from the tolerating government of the Arabs, fell
a sacrifice to Roman persecution. The laws of the pious emperors,
which seldom touched the lives of less odious heretics,
proscribed without mercy or disguise the tenets, the books, and
the persons of the Montanists and Manichaeans: the books were
delivered to the flames; and all who should presume to secrete
such writings, or to profess such opinions, were devoted to an
ignominious death. 14 A Greek minister, armed with legal and
military powers, appeared at Colonia to strike the shepherd, and
to reclaim, if possible, the lost sheep. By a refinement of
cruelty, Simeon placed the unfortunate Sylvanus before a line of
his disciples, who were commanded, as the price of their pardon
and the proof of their repentance, to massacre their spiritual
father. They turned aside from the impious office; the stones
dropped from their filial hands, and of the whole number, only
one executioner could be found, a new David, as he is styled by
the Catholics, who boldly overthrew the giant of heresy. This
apostate (Justin was his name) again deceived and betrayed his
unsuspecting brethren, and a new conformity to the acts of St.
Paul may be found in the conversion of Simeon: like the apostle,
he embraced the doctrine which he had been sent to persecute,
renounced his honors and fortunes, and required among the
Paulicians the fame of a missionary and a martyr. They were not
ambitious of martyrdom, 15 but in a calamitous period of one
hundred and fifty years, their patience sustained whatever zeal
could inflict; and power was insufficient to eradicate the
obstinate vegetation of fanaticism and reason. From the blood and
ashes of the first victims, a succession of teachers and
congregations repeatedly arose: amidst their foreign hostilities,
they found leisure for domestic quarrels: they preached, they
disputed, they suffered; and the virtues, the apparent virtues,
of Sergius, in a pilgrimage of thirty-three years, are
reluctantly confessed by the orthodox historians. 16 The native
cruelty of Justinian the Second was stimulated by a pious cause;
and he vainly hoped to extinguish, in a single conflagration, the
name and memory of the Paulicians. By their primitive simplicity,
their abhorrence of popular superstition, the Iconoclast princes
might have been reconciled to some erroneous doctrines; but they
themselves were exposed to the calumnies of the monks, and they
chose to be the tyrants, lest they should be accused as the
accomplices, of the Manichaeans. Such a reproach has sullied the
clemency of Nicephorus, who relaxed in their favor the severity
of the penal statutes, nor will his character sustain the honor
of a more liberal motive. The feeble Michael the First, the rigid
Leo the Armenian, were foremost in the race of persecution; but
the prize must doubtless be adjudged to the sanguinary devotion
of Theodora, who restored the images to the Oriental church. Her
inquisitors explored the cities and mountains of the Lesser Asia,
and the flatterers of the empress have affirmed that, in a short
reign, one hundred thousand Paulicians were extirpated by the
sword, the gibbet, or the flames. Her guilt or merit has perhaps
been stretched beyond the measure of truth: but if the account be
allowed, it must be presumed that many simple Iconoclasts were
punished under a more odious name; and that some who were driven
from the church, unwillingly took refuge in the bosom of heresy.
10 (return) [ The countries between the Euphrates and the Halys
were possessed above 350 years by the Medes (Herodot. l. i. c.
103) and Persians; and the kings of Pontus were of the royal race
of the Achaemenides, (Sallust. Fragment. l. iii. with the French
supplement and notes of the president de Brosses.)]
11 (return) [ Most probably founded by Pompey after the conquest
of Pontus. This Colonia, on the Lycus, above Neo-Caesarea, is
named by the Turks Coulei-hisar, or Chonac, a populous town in a
strong country, (D’Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. ii. p. 34.
Tournefort, Voyage du Levant, tom. iii. lettre xxi. p. 293.)]
12 (return) [ The temple of Bellona, at Comana in Pontus was a
powerful and wealthy foundation, and the high priest was
respected as the second person in the kingdom. As the sacerdotal
office had been occupied by his mother’s family, Strabo (l. xii.
p. 809, 835, 836, 837) dwells with peculiar complacency on the
temple, the worship, and festival, which was twice celebrated
every year. But the Bellona of Pontus had the features and
character of the goddess, not of war, but of love.]
13 (return) [ Gregory, bishop of Neo-Caesarea, (A.D. 240-265,)
surnamed Thaumaturgus, or the Wonder-worker. An hundred years
afterwards, the history or romance of his life was composed by
Gregory of Nyssa, his namesake and countryman, the brother of the
great St. Basil.]
14 (return) [ Hoc caeterum ad sua egregia facinora, divini atque
orthodoxi Imperatores addiderunt, ut Manichaeos Montanosque
capitali puniri sententia juberent, eorumque libros, quocunque in
loco inventi essent, flammis tradi; quod siquis uspiam eosdem
occultasse deprehenderetur, hunc eundem mortis poenae addici,
ejusque bona in fiscum inferri, (Petr. Sicul. p. 759.) What more
could bigotry and persecution desire?]
15 (return) [ It should seem, that the Paulicians allowed
themselves some latitude of equivocation and mental reservation;
till the Catholics discovered the pressing questions, which
reduced them to the alternative of apostasy or martyrdom, (Petr.
Sicul. p. 760.)]
16 (return) [ The persecution is told by Petrus Siculus (p.
579-763) with satisfaction and pleasantry. Justus justa
persolvit. See likewise Cedrenus, (p. 432-435.)]
The most furious and desperate of rebels are the sectaries of a
religion long persecuted, and at length provoked. In a holy cause
they are no longer susceptible of fear or remorse: the justice of
their arms hardens them against the feelings of humanity; and
they revenge their fathers’ wrongs on the children of their
tyrants. Such have been the Hussites of Bohemia and the
Calvinists of France, and such, in the ninth century, were the
Paulicians of Armenia and the adjacent provinces. 17 They were
first awakened to the massacre of a governor and bishop, who
exercised the Imperial mandate of converting or destroying the
heretics; and the deepest recesses of Mount Argaeus protected
their independence and revenge. A more dangerous and consuming
flame was kindled by the persecution of Theodora, and the revolt
of Carbeas, a valiant Paulician, who commanded the guards of the
general of the East. His father had been impaled by the Catholic
inquisitors; and religion, or at least nature, might justify his
desertion and revenge. Five thousand of his brethren were united
by the same motives; they renounced the allegiance of
anti-Christian Rome; a Saracen emir introduced Carbeas to the
caliph; and the commander of the faithful extended his sceptre to
the implacable enemy of the Greeks. In the mountains between
Siwas and Trebizond he founded or fortified the city of Tephrice,
18 which is still occupied by a fierce or licentious people, and
the neighboring hills were covered with the Paulician fugitives,
who now reconciled the use of the Bible and the sword. During
more than thirty years, Asia was afflicted by the calamities of
foreign and domestic war; in their hostile inroads, the disciples
of St. Paul were joined with those of Mahomet; and the peaceful
Christians, the aged parent and tender virgin, who were delivered
into barbarous servitude, might justly accuse the intolerant
spirit of their sovereign. So urgent was the mischief, so
intolerable the shame, that even the dissolute Michael, the son
of Theodora, was compelled to march in person against the
Paulicians: he was defeated under the walls of Samosata; and the
Roman emperor fled before the heretics whom his mother had
condemned to the flames. The Saracens fought under the same
banners, but the victory was ascribed to Carbeas; and the captive
generals, with more than a hundred tribunes, were either released
by his avarice, or tortured by his fanaticism. The valor and
ambition of Chrysocheir, 19 his successor, embraced a wider
circle of rapine and revenge. In alliance with his faithful
Moslems, he boldly penetrated into the heart of Asia; the troops
of the frontier and the palace were repeatedly overthrown; the
edicts of persecution were answered by the pillage of Nice and
Nicomedia, of Ancyra and Ephesus; nor could the apostle St. John
protect from violation his city and sepulchre. The cathedral of
Ephesus was turned into a stable for mules and horses; and the
Paulicians vied with the Saracens in their contempt and
abhorrence of images and relics. It is not unpleasing to observe
the triumph of rebellion over the same despotism which had
disdained the prayers of an injured people. The emperor Basil,
the Macedonian, was reduced to sue for peace, to offer a ransom
for the captives, and to request, in the language of moderation
and charity, that Chrysocheir would spare his fellow-Christians,
and content himself with a royal donative of gold and silver and
silk garments. “If the emperor,” replied the insolent fanatic,
“be desirous of peace, let him abdicate the East, and reign
without molestation in the West. If he refuse, the servants of
the Lord will precipitate him from the throne.” The reluctant
Basil suspended the treaty, accepted the defiance, and led his
army into the land of heresy, which he wasted with fire and
sword. The open country of the Paulicians was exposed to the same
calamities which they had inflicted; but when he had explored the
strength of Tephrice, the multitude of the Barbarians, and the
ample magazines of arms and provisions, he desisted with a sigh
from the hopeless siege. On his return to Constantinople, he
labored, by the foundation of convents and churches, to secure
the aid of his celestial patrons, of Michael the archangel and
the prophet Elijah; and it was his daily prayer that he might
live to transpierce, with three arrows, the head of his impious
adversary. Beyond his expectations, the wish was accomplished:
after a successful inroad, Chrysocheir was surprised and slain in
his retreat; and the rebel’s head was triumphantly presented at
the foot of the throne. On the reception of this welcome trophy,
Basil instantly called for his bow, discharged three arrows with
unerring aim, and accepted the applause of the court, who hailed
the victory of the royal archer. With Chrysocheir, the glory of
the Paulicians faded and withered: 20 on the second expedition of
the emperor, the impregnable Tephrice, was deserted by the
heretics, who sued for mercy or escaped to the borders. The city
was ruined, but the spirit of independence survived in the
mountains: the Paulicians defended, above a century, their
religion and liberty, infested the Roman limits, and maintained
their perpetual alliance with the enemies of the empire and the
gospel.
17 (return) [ Petrus Siculus, (p. 763, 764,) the continuator of
Theophanes, (l. iv. c. 4, p. 103, 104,) Cedrenus, (p. 541, 542,
545,) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. l. xvi. p. 156,) describe the revolt
and exploits of Carbeas and his Paulicians.]
18 (return) [ Otter (Voyage en Turquie et en Perse, tom. ii.) is
probably the only Frank who has visited the independent
Barbarians of Tephrice now Divrigni, from whom he fortunately
escaped in the train of a Turkish officer.]
19 (return) [ In the history of Chrysocheir, Genesius (Chron. p.
67-70, edit. Venet.) has exposed the nakedness of the empire.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus (in Vit. Basil. c. 37-43, p. 166-171)
has displayed the glory of his grandfather. Cedrenus (p. 570-573)
is without their passions or their knowledge.]
20 (return) [ How elegant is the Greek tongue, even in the mouth
of Cedrenus!]
Chapter LIV: Origin And Doctrine Of The Paulicians.—Part II.
About the middle of the eight century, Constantine, surnamed
Copronymus by the worshippers of images, had made an expedition
into Armenia, and found, in the cities of Melitene and
Theodosiopolis, a great number of Paulicians, his kindred
heretics. As a favor, or punishment, he transplanted them from
the banks of the Euphrates to Constantinople and Thrace; and by
this emigration their doctrine was introduced and diffused in
Europe. 21 If the sectaries of the metropolis were soon mingled
with the promiscuous mass, those of the country struck a deep
root in a foreign soil. The Paulicians of Thrace resisted the
storms of persecution, maintained a secret correspondence with
their Armenian brethren, and gave aid and comfort to their
preachers, who solicited, not without success, the infant faith
of the Bulgarians. 22 In the tenth century, they were restored
and multiplied by a more powerful colony, which John Zimisces 23
transported from the Chalybian hills to the valleys of Mount
Haemus. The Oriental clergy who would have preferred the
destruction, impatiently sighed for the absence, of the
Manichaeans: the warlike emperor had felt and esteemed their
valor: their attachment to the Saracens was pregnant with
mischief; but, on the side of the Danube, against the Barbarians
of Scythia, their service might be useful, and their loss would
be desirable. Their exile in a distant land was softened by a
free toleration: the Paulicians held the city of Philippopolis
and the keys of Thrace; the Catholics were their subjects; the
Jacobite emigrants their associates: they occupied a line of
villages and castles in Macedonia and Epirus; and many native
Bulgarians were associated to the communion of arms and heresy.
As long as they were awed by power and treated with moderation,
their voluntary bands were distinguished in the armies of the
empire; and the courage of these dogs, ever greedy of war, ever
thirsty of human blood, is noticed with astonishment, and almost
with reproach, by the pusillanimous Greeks. The same spirit
rendered them arrogant and contumacious: they were easily
provoked by caprice or injury; and their privileges were often
violated by the faithless bigotry of the government and clergy.
In the midst of the Norman war, two thousand five hundred
Manichaeans deserted the standard of Alexius Comnenus, 24 and
retired to their native homes. He dissembled till the moment of
revenge; invited the chiefs to a friendly conference; and
punished the innocent and guilty by imprisonment, confiscation,
and baptism. In an interval of peace, the emperor undertook the
pious office of reconciling them to the church and state: his
winter quarters were fixed at Philippopolis; and the thirteenth
apostle, as he is styled by his pious daughter, consumed whole
days and nights in theological controversy. His arguments were
fortified, their obstinacy was melted, by the honors and rewards
which he bestowed on the most eminent proselytes; and a new city,
surrounded with gardens, enriched with immunities, and dignified
with his own name, was founded by Alexius for the residence of
his vulgar converts. The important station of Philippopolis was
wrested from their hands; the contumacious leaders were secured
in a dungeon, or banished from their country; and their lives
were spared by the prudence, rather than the mercy, of an
emperor, at whose command a poor and solitary heretic was burnt
alive before the church of St. Sophia. 25 But the proud hope of
eradicating the prejudices of a nation was speedily overturned by
the invincible zeal of the Paulicians, who ceased to dissemble or
refused to obey. After the departure and death of Alexius, they
soon resumed their civil and religious laws. In the beginning of
the thirteenth century, their pope or primate (a manifest
corruption) resided on the confines of Bulgaria, Croatia, and
Dalmatia, and governed, by his vicars, the filial congregations
of Italy and France. 26 From that aera, a minute scrutiny might
prolong and perpetuate the chain of tradition. At the end of the
last age, the sect or colony still inhabited the valleys of Mount
Haemus, where their ignorance and poverty were more frequently
tormented by the Greek clergy than by the Turkish government. The
modern Paulicians have lost all memory of their origin; and their
religion is disgraced by the worship of the cross, and the
practice of bloody sacrifice, which some captives have imported
from the wilds of Tartary. 27
21 (return) [ Copronymus transported his heretics; and thus says
Cedrenus, (p. 463,) who has copied the annals of Theophanes.]
22 (return) [ Petrus Siculus, who resided nine months at Tephrice
(A.D. 870) for the ransom of captives, (p. 764,) was informed of
their intended mission, and addressed his preservative, the
Historia Manichaeorum to the new archbishop of the Bulgarians,
(p. 754.)]
23 (return) [ The colony of Paulicians and Jacobites transplanted
by John Zimisces (A.D. 970) from Armenia to Thrace, is mentioned
by Zonaras (tom. ii. l. xvii. p. 209) and Anna Comnena, (Alexiad,
l. xiv. p. 450, &c.)]
24 (return) [ The Alexiad of Anna Comnena (l. v. p. 131, l. vi.
p. 154, 155, l. xiv. p. 450-457, with the Annotations of Ducange)
records the transactions of her apostolic father with the
Manichaeans, whose abominable heresy she was desirous of
refuting.]
25 (return) [ Basil, a monk, and the author of the Bogomiles, a
sect of Gnostics, who soon vanished, (Anna Comnena, Alexiad, l.
xv. p. 486-494 Mosheim, Hist. Ecclesiastica, p. 420.)]
26 (return) [ Matt. Paris, Hist. Major, p. 267. This passage of
our English historian is alleged by Ducange in an excellent note
on Villehardouin (No. 208,) who found the Paulicians at
Philippopolis the friends of the Bulgarians.]
27 (return) [ See Marsigli, Stato Militare dell’ Imperio
Ottomano, p. 24.]
In the West, the first teachers of the Manichaean theology had
been repulsed by the people, or suppressed by the prince. The
favor and success of the Paulicians in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries must be imputed to the strong, though secret,
discontent which armed the most pious Christians against the
church of Rome. Her avarice was oppressive, her despotism odious;
less degenerate perhaps than the Greeks in the worship of saints
and images, her innovations were more rapid and scandalous: she
had rigorously defined and imposed the doctrine of
transubstantiation: the lives of the Latin clergy were more
corrupt, and the Eastern bishops might pass for the successors of
the apostles, if they were compared with the lordly prelates, who
wielded by turns the crosier, the sceptre, and the sword. Three
different roads might introduce the Paulicians into the heart of
Europe. After the conversion of Hungary, the pilgrims who visited
Jerusalem might safely follow the course of the Danube: in their
journey and return they passed through Philippopolis; and the
sectaries, disguising their name and heresy, might accompany the
French or German caravans to their respective countries. The
trade and dominion of Venice pervaded the coast of the Adriatic,
and the hospitable republic opened her bosom to foreigners of
every climate and religion. Under the Byzantine standard, the
Paulicians were often transported to the Greek provinces of Italy
and Sicily: in peace and war, they freely conversed with
strangers and natives, and their opinions were silently
propagated in Rome, Milan, and the kingdoms beyond the Alps. 28
It was soon discovered, that many thousand Catholics of every
rank, and of either sex, had embraced the Manichaean heresy; and
the flames which consumed twelve canons of Orleans was the first
act and signal of persecution. The Bulgarians, 29 a name so
innocent in its origin, so odious in its application, spread
their branches over the face of Europe. United in common hatred
of idolatry and Rome, they were connected by a form of episcopal
and presbyterian government; their various sects were
discriminated by some fainter or darker shades of theology; but
they generally agreed in the two principles, the contempt of the
Old Testament and the denial of the body of Christ, either on the
cross or in the eucharist. A confession of simple worship and
blameless manners is extorted from their enemies; and so high was
their standard of perfection, that the increasing congregations
were divided into two classes of disciples, of those who
practised, and of those who aspired. It was in the country of the
Albigeois, 30 in the southern provinces of France, that the
Paulicians were most deeply implanted; and the same vicissitudes
of martyrdom and revenge which had been displayed in the
neighborhood of the Euphrates, were repeated in the thirteenth
century on the banks of the Rhone. The laws of the Eastern
emperors were revived by Frederic the Second. The insurgents of
Tephrice were represented by the barons and cities of Languedoc:
Pope Innocent III. surpassed the sanguinary fame of Theodora. It
was in cruelty alone that her soldiers could equal the heroes of
the Crusades, and the cruelty of her priests was far excelled by
the founders of the Inquisition; 31 an office more adapted to
confirm, than to refute, the belief of an evil principle. The
visible assemblies of the Paulicians, or Albigeois, were
extirpated by fire and sword; and the bleeding remnant escaped by
flight, concealment, or Catholic conformity. But the invincible
spirit which they had kindled still lived and breathed in the
Western world. In the state, in the church, and even in the
cloister, a latent succession was preserved of the disciples of
St. Paul; who protested against the tyranny of Rome, embraced the
Bible as the rule of faith, and purified their creed from all the
visions of the Gnostic theology. 3111 The struggles of Wickliff
in England, of Huss in Bohemia, were premature and ineffectual;
but the names of Zuinglius, Luther, and Calvin, are pronounced
with gratitude as the deliverers of nations.
28 (return) [ The introduction of the Paulicians into Italy and
France is amply discussed by Muratori (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii
Aevi, tom. v. dissert. lx. p. 81-152) and Mosheim, (p. 379-382,
419-422.) Yet both have overlooked a curious passage of William
the Apulian, who clearly describes them in a battle between the
Greeks and Normans, A.D. 1040, (in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital.
tom. v. p. 256:)
Cum Graecis aderant quidam, quos pessimus error
Fecerat amentes, et ab ipso nomen habebant.
But he is so ignorant of their doctrine as to make them a kind of
Sabellians or Patripassians.]
29 (return) [ Bulgari, Boulgres, Bougres, a national appellation,
has been applied by the French as a term of reproach to usurers
and unnatural sinners. The Paterini, or Patelini, has been made
to signify a smooth and flattering hypocrite, such as l’Avocat
Patelin of that original and pleasant farce, (Ducange, Gloss.
Latinitat. Medii et Infimi Aevi.) The Manichaeans were likewise
named Cathari or the pure, by corruption. Gazari, &c.]
30 (return) [ Of the laws, crusade, and persecution against the
Albigeois, a just, though general, idea is expressed by Mosheim,
(p. 477-481.) The detail may be found in the ecclesiastical
historians, ancient and modern, Catholics and Protestants; and
amongst these Fleury is the most impartial and moderate.]
31 (return) [ The Acts (Liber Sententiarum) of the Inquisition of
Tholouse (A.D. 1307-1323) have been published by Limborch,
(Amstelodami, 1692,) with a previous History of the Inquisition
in general. They deserved a more learned and critical editor. As
we must not calumniate even Satan, or the Holy Office, I will
observe, that of a list of criminals which fills nineteen folio
pages, only fifteen men and four women were delivered to the
secular arm.]
3111 (return) [ The popularity of “Milner’s History of the
Church” with some readers, may make it proper to observe, that
his attempt to exculpate the Paulicians from the charge of
Gnosticism or Manicheism is in direct defiance, if not in
ignorance, of all the original authorities. Gibbon himself, it
appears, was not acquainted with the work of Photius, “Contra
Manicheos Repullulantes,” the first book of which was edited by
Montfaucon, Bibliotheca Coisliniana, pars ii. p. 349, 375, the
whole by Wolf, in his Anecdota Graeca. Hamburg 1722. Compare a
very sensible tract. Letter to Rev. S. R. Maitland, by J G.
Dowling, M. A. London, 1835.—M.]
A philosopher, who calculates the degree of their merit and the
value of their reformation, will prudently ask from what articles
of faith, above or against our reason, they have enfranchised the
Christians; for such enfranchisement is doubtless a benefit so
far as it may be compatible with truth and piety. After a fair
discussion, we shall rather be surprised by the timidity, than
scandalized by the freedom, of our first reformers. 32 With the
Jews, they adopted the belief and defence of all the Hebrew
Scriptures, with all their prodigies, from the garden of Eden to
the visions of the prophet Daniel; and they were bound, like the
Catholics, to justify against the Jews the abolition of a divine
law. In the great mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation the
reformers were severely orthodox: they freely adopted the
theology of the four, or the six first councils; and with the
Athanasian creed, they pronounced the eternal damnation of all
who did not believe the Catholic faith. Transubstantiation, the
invisible change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of
Christ, is a tenet that may defy the power of argument and
pleasantry; but instead of consulting the evidence of their
senses, of their sight, their feeling, and their taste, the first
Protestants were entangled in their own scruples, and awed by the
words of Jesus in the institution of the sacrament. Luther
maintained a corporeal, and Calvin a real, presence of Christ in
the eucharist; and the opinion of Zuinglius, that it is no more
than a spiritual communion, a simple memorial, has slowly
prevailed in the reformed churches. 33 But the loss of one
mystery was amply compensated by the stupendous doctrines of
original sin, redemption, faith, grace, and predestination, which
have been strained from the epistles of St. Paul. These subtile
questions had most assuredly been prepared by the fathers and
schoolmen; but the final improvement and popular use may be
attributed to the first reformers, who enforced them as the
absolute and essential terms of salvation. Hitherto the weight of
supernatural belief inclines against the Protestants; and many a
sober Christian would rather admit that a wafer is God, than that
God is a cruel and capricious tyrant.
32 (return) [ The opinions and proceedings of the reformers are
exposed in the second part of the general history of Mosheim; but
the balance, which he has held with so clear an eye, and so
steady a hand, begins to incline in favor of his Lutheran
brethren.]
33 (return) [ Under Edward VI. our reformation was more bold and
perfect, but in the fundamental articles of the church of
England, a strong and explicit declaration against the real
presence was obliterated in the original copy, to please the
people or the Lutherans, or Queen Elizabeth, (Burnet’s History of
the Reformation, vol. ii. p. 82, 128, 302.)]
Yet the services of Luther and his rivals are solid and
important; and the philosopher must own his obligations to these
fearless enthusiasts. 34 I. By their hands the lofty fabric of
superstition, from the abuse of indulgences to the intercesson of
the Virgin, has been levelled with the ground. Myriads of both
sexes of the monastic profession were restored to the liberty and
labors of social life. A hierarchy of saints and angels, of
imperfect and subordinate deities, were stripped of their
temporal power, and reduced to the enjoyment of celestial
happiness; their images and relics were banished from the church;
and the credulity of the people was no longer nourished with the
daily repetition of miracles and visions. The imitation of
Paganism was supplied by a pure and spiritual worship of prayer
and thanksgiving, the most worthy of man, the least unworthy of
the Deity. It only remains to observe, whether such sublime
simplicity be consistent with popular devotion; whether the
vulgar, in the absence of all visible objects, will not be
inflamed by enthusiasm, or insensibly subside in languor and
indifference. II. The chain of authority was broken, which
restrains the bigot from thinking as he pleases, and the slave
from speaking as he thinks: the popes, fathers, and councils,
were no longer the supreme and infallible judges of the world;
and each Christian was taught to acknowledge no law but the
Scriptures, no interpreter but his own conscience. This freedom,
however, was the consequence, rather than the design, of the
Reformation. The patriot reformers were ambitious of succeeding
the tyrants whom they had dethroned. They imposed with equal
rigor their creeds and confessions; they asserted the right of
the magistrate to punish heretics with death. The pious or
personal animosity of Calvin proscribed in Servetus 35 the guilt
of his own rebellion; 36 and the flames of Smithfield, in which
he was afterwards consumed, had been kindled for the Anabaptists
by the zeal of Cranmer. 37 The nature of the tiger wa s the same,
but he was gradually deprived of his teeth and fangs. A spiritual
and temporal kingdom was possessed by the Roman pontiff; the
Protestant doctors were subjects of an humble rank, without
revenue or jurisdiction. His decrees were consecrated by the
antiquity of the Catholic church: their arguments and disputes
were submitted to the people; and their appeal to private
judgment was accepted beyond their wishes, by curiosity and
enthusiasm. Since the days of Luther and Calvin, a secret
reformation has been silently working in the bosom of the
reformed churches; many weeds of prejudice were eradicated; and
the disciples of Erasmus 38 diffused a spirit of freedom and
moderation. The liberty of conscience has been claimed as a
common benefit, an inalienable right: 39 the free governments of
Holland 40 and England 41 introduced the practice of toleration;
and the narrow allowance of the laws has been enlarged by the
prudence and humanity of the times. In the exercise, the mind has
understood the limits of its powers, and the words and shadows
that might amuse the child can no longer satisfy his manly
reason. The volumes of controversy are overspread with cobwebs:
the doctrine of a Protestant church is far removed from the
knowledge or belief of its private members; and the forms of
orthodoxy, the articles of faith, are subscribed with a sigh, or
a smile, by the modern clergy. Yet the friends of Christianity
are alarmed at the boundless impulse of inquiry and scepticism.
The predictions of the Catholics are accomplished: the web of
mystery is unravelled by the Arminians, Arians, and Socinians,
whose number must not be computed from their separate
congregations; and the pillars of Revelation are shaken by those
men who preserve the name without the substance of religion, who
indulge the license without the temper of philosophy. 42 4211
34 (return) [ “Had it not been for such men as Luther and
myself,” said the fanatic Whiston to Halley the philosopher, “you
would now be kneeling before an image of St. Winifred.”]
35 (return) [ The article of Servet in the Dictionnaire Critique
of Chauffepie is the best account which I have seen of this
shameful transaction. See likewise the Abbe d’Artigny, Nouveaux
Memoires d’Histoire, &c., tom. ii. p. 55-154.]
36 (return) [ I am more deeply scandalized at the single
execution of Servetus, than at the hecatombs which have blazed in
the Auto de Fes of Spain and Portugal. 1. The zeal of Calvin
seems to have been envenomed by personal malice, and perhaps
envy. He accused his adversary before their common enemies, the
judges of Vienna, and betrayed, for his destruction, the sacred
trust of a private correspondence. 2. The deed of cruelty was not
varnished by the pretence of danger to the church or state. In
his passage through Geneva, Servetus was a harmless stranger, who
neither preached, nor printed, nor made proselytes. 3. A Catholic
inquisition yields the same obedience which he requires, but
Calvin violated the golden rule of doing as he would be done by;
a rule which I read in a moral treatise of Isocrates (in Nicocle,
tom. i. p. 93, edit. Battie) four hundred years before the
publication of the Gospel. * Note: Gibbon has not accurately
rendered the sense of this passage, which does not contain the
maxim of charity Do unto others as you would they should do unto
you, but simply the maxim of justice, Do not to others the which
would offend you if they should do it to you.—G.]
37 (return) [ See Burnet, vol. ii. p. 84-86. The sense and
humanity of the young king were oppressed by the authority of the
primate.]
38 (return) [ Erasmus may be considered as the father of rational
theology. After a slumber of a hundred years, it was revived by
the Arminians of Holland, Grotius, Limborch, and Le Clerc; in
England by Chillingworth, the latitudinarians of Cambridge,
(Burnet, Hist. of Own Times, vol. i. p. 261-268, octavo edition.)
Tillotson, Clarke, Hoadley, &c.]
39 (return) [ I am sorry to observe, that the three writers of
the last age, by whom the rights of toleration have been so nobly
defended, Bayle, Leibnitz, and Locke, are all laymen and
philosophers.]
40 (return) [ See the excellent chapter of Sir William Temple on
the Religion of the United Provinces. I am not satisfied with
Grotius, (de Rebus Belgicis, Annal. l. i. p. 13, 14, edit. in
12mo.,) who approves the Imperial laws of persecution, and only
condemns the bloody tribunal of the inquisition.]
41 (return) [ Sir William Blackstone (Commentaries, vol. iv. p.
53, 54) explains the law of England as it was fixed at the
Revolution. The exceptions of Papists, and of those who deny the
Trinity, would still have a tolerable scope for persecution if
the national spirit were not more effectual than a hundred
statutes.]
42 (return) [ I shall recommend to public animadversion two
passages in Dr. Priestley, which betray the ultimate tendency of
his opinions. At the first of these (Hist. of the Corruptions of
Christianity, vol. i. p. 275, 276) the priest, at the second
(vol. ii. p. 484) the magistrate, may tremble!]
4211 (return) [ There is something ludicrous, if it were not
offensive, in Gibbon holding up to “public animadversion” the
opinions of any believer in Christianity, however imperfect his
creed. The observations which the whole of this passage on the
effects of the reformation, in which much truth and justice is
mingled with much prejudice, would suggest, could not possibly be
compressed into a note; and would indeed embrace the whole
religious and irreligious history of the time which has elapsed
since Gibbon wrote.—M.]
Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, The Hungarians And The Russians.—Part
I.
The Bulgarians.—Origin, Migrations, And Settlement Of The
Hungarians.—Their Inroads In The East And West.—The Monarchy Of
Russia.—Geography And Trade.—Wars Of The Russians Against The
Greek Empire.—Conversion Of The Barbarians.
Under the reign of Constantine the grandson of Heraclius, the
ancient barrier of the Danube, so often violated and so often
restored, was irretrievably swept away by a new deluge of
Barbarians. Their progress was favored by the caliphs, their
unknown and accidental auxiliaries: the Roman legions were
occupied in Asia; and after the loss of Syria, Egypt, and Africa,
the Caesars were twice reduced to the danger and disgrace of
defending their capital against the Saracens. If, in the account
of this interesting people, I have deviated from the strict and
original line of my undertaking, the merit of the subject will
hide my transgression, or solicit my excuse. In the East, in the
West, in war, in religion, in science, in their prosperity, and
in their decay, the Arabians press themselves on our curiosity:
the first overthrow of the church and empire of the Greeks may be
imputed to their arms; and the disciples of Mahomet still hold
the civil and religious sceptre of the Oriental world. But the
same labor would be unworthily bestowed on the swarms of savages,
who, between the seventh and the twelfth century, descended from
the plains of Scythia, in transient inroad or perpetual
emigration. 1 Their names are uncouth, their origins doubtful,
their actions obscure, their superstition was blind, their valor
brutal, and the uniformity of their public and private lives was
neither softened by innocence nor refined by policy. The majesty
of the Byzantine throne repelled and survived their disorderly
attacks; the greater part of these Barbarians has disappeared
without leaving any memorial of their existence, and the
despicable remnant continues, and may long continue, to groan
under the dominion of a foreign tyrant. From the antiquities of,
I. Bulgarians, II. Hungarians, and, III. Russians, I shall
content myself with selecting such facts as yet deserve to be
remembered. The conquests of the, IV. Normans, and the monarchy
of the, V. Turks, will naturally terminate in the memorable
Crusades to the Holy Land, and the double fall of the city and
empire of Constantine.
1 (return) [ All the passages of the Byzantine history which
relate to the Barbarians are compiled, methodized, and
transcribed, in a Latin version, by the laborious John Gotthelf
Stritter, in his “Memoriae Populorum, ad Danubium, Pontum
Euxinum, Paludem Maeotidem, Caucasum, Mare Caspium, et inde Magis
ad Septemtriones incolentium.” Petropoli, 1771-1779; in four
tomes, or six volumes, in 4to. But the fashion has not enhanced
the price of these raw materials.]
I. In his march to Italy, Theodoric 2 the Ostrogoth had trampled
on the arms of the Bulgarians. After this defeat, the name and
the nation are lost during a century and a half; and it may be
suspected that the same or a similar appellation was revived by
strange colonies from the Borysthenes, the Tanais, or the Volga.
A king of the ancient Bulgaria, 3 bequeathed to his five sons a
last lesson of moderation and concord. It was received as youth
has ever received the counsels of age and experience: the five
princes buried their father; divided his subjects and cattle;
forgot his advice; separated from each other; and wandered in
quest of fortune till we find the most adventurous in the heart
of Italy, under the protection of the exarch of Ravenna. 4 But
the stream of emigration was directed or impelled towards the
capital. The modern Bulgaria, along the southern banks of the
Danube, was stamped with the name and image which it has retained
to the present hour: the new conquerors successively acquired, by
war or treaty, the Roman provinces of Dardania, Thessaly, and the
two Epirus; 5 the ecclesiastical supremacy was translated from
the native city of Justinian; and, in their prosperous age, the
obscure town of Lychnidus, or Achrida, was honored with the
throne of a king and a patriarch. 6 The unquestionable evidence
of language attests the descent of the Bulgarians from the
original stock of the Sclavonian, or more properly Slavonian,
race; 7 and the kindred bands of Servians, Bosnians, Rascians,
Croatians, Walachians, 8 &c., followed either the standard or the
example of the leading tribe. From the Euxine to the Adriatic, in
the state of captives, or subjects, or allies, or enemies, of the
Greek empire, they overspread the land; and the national
appellation of the slaves 9 has been degraded by chance or malice
from the signification of glory to that of servitude. 10 Among
these colonies, the Chrobatians, 11 or Croats, who now attend the
motions of an Austrian army, are the descendants of a mighty
people, the conquerors and sovereigns of Dalmatia. The maritime
cities, and of these the infant republic of Ragusa, implored the
aid and instructions of the Byzantine court: they were advised by
the magnanimous Basil to reserve a small acknowledgment of their
fidelity to the Roman empire, and to appease, by an annual
tribute, the wrath of these irresistible Barbarians. The kingdom
of Crotia was shared by eleven Zoupans, or feudatory lords; and
their united forces were numbered at sixty thousand horse and one
hundred thousand foot. A long sea-coast, indented with capacious
harbors, covered with a string of islands, and almost in sight of
the Italian shores, disposed both the natives and strangers to
the practice of navigation. The boats or brigantines of the
Croats were constructed after the fashion of the old Liburnians:
one hundred and eighty vessels may excite the idea of a
respectable navy; but our seamen will smile at the allowance of
ten, or twenty, or forty, men for each of these ships of war.
They were gradually converted to the more honorable service of
commerce; yet the Sclavonian pirates were still frequent and
dangerous; and it was not before the close of the tenth century
that the freedom and sovereignty of the Gulf were effectually
vindicated by the Venetian republic. 12 The ancestors of these
Dalmatian kings were equally removed from the use and abuse of
navigation: they dwelt in the White Croatia, in the inland
regions of Silesia and Little Poland, thirty days’ journey,
according to the Greek computation, from the sea of darkness.
2 (return) [ Hist. vol. iv. p. 11.]
3 (return) [ Theophanes, p. 296-299. Anastasius, p. 113.
Nicephorus, C. P. p. 22, 23. Theophanes places the old Bulgaria
on the banks of the Atell or Volga; but he deprives himself of
all geographical credit by discharging that river into the Euxine
Sea.]
4 (return) [ Paul. Diacon. de Gestis Langobard. l. v. c. 29, p.
881, 882. The apparent difference between the Lombard historian
and the above-mentioned Greeks, is easily reconciled by Camillo
Pellegrino (de Ducatu Beneventano, dissert. vii. in the
Scriptores Rerum Ital. (tom. v. p. 186, 187) and Beretti,
(Chorograph. Italiae Medii Aevi, p. 273, &c. This Bulgarian
colony was planted in a vacant district of Samnium, and learned
the Latin, without forgetting their native language.]
5 (return) [ These provinces of the Greek idiom and empire are
assigned to the Bulgarian kingdom in the dispute of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction between the patriarchs of Rome and
Constantinople, (Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 869, No. 75.)]
6 (return) [ The situation and royalty of Lychnidus, or Achrida,
are clearly expressed in Cedrenus, (p. 713.) The removal of an
archbishop or patriarch from Justinianea prima to Lychnidus, and
at length to Ternovo, has produced some perplexity in the ideas
or language of the Greeks, (Nicephorus Gregoras, l. ii. c. 2, p.
14, 15. Thomassin, Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. i. l. i. c. 19,
23;) and a Frenchman (D’Anville) is more accurately skilled in
the geography of their own country, (Hist. de l’Academie des
Inscriptions, tom. xxxi.)]
7 (return) [ Chalcocondyles, a competent judge, affirms the
identity of the language of the Dalmatians, Bosnians, Servians,
Bulgarians, Poles, (de Rebus Turcicis, l. x. p. 283,) and
elsewhere of the Bohemians, (l. ii. p. 38.) The same author has
marked the separate idiom of the Hungarians. * Note: The
Slavonian languages are no doubt Indo-European, though an
original branch of that great family, comprehending the various
dialects named by Gibbon and others. Shafarik, t. 33.—M. 1845.]
8 (return) [ See the work of John Christopher de Jordan, de
Originibus Sclavicis, Vindobonae, 1745, in four parts, or two
volumes in folio. His collections and researches are useful to
elucidate the antiquities of Bohemia and the adjacent countries;
but his plan is narrow, his style barbarous, his criticism
shallow, and the Aulic counsellor is not free from the prejudices
of a Bohemian. * Note: We have at length a profound and
satisfactory work on the Slavonian races. Shafarik, Slawische
Alterthumer. B. 2, Leipzig, 1843.—M. 1845.]
9 (return) [ Jordan subscribes to the well-known and probable
derivation from Slava, laus, gloria, a word of familiar use in
the different dialects and parts of speech, and which forms the
termination of the most illustrious names, (de Originibus
Sclavicis, pars. i. p. 40, pars. iv. p. 101, 102)]
10 (return) [ This conversion of a national into an appellative
name appears to have arisen in the viiith century, in the
Oriental France, where the princes and bishops were rich in
Sclavonian captives, not of the Bohemian, (exclaims Jordan,) but
of Sorabian race. From thence the word was extended to the
general use, to the modern languages, and even to the style of
the last Byzantines, (see the Greek and Latin Glossaries and
Ducange.) The confusion of the Servians with the Latin Servi, was
still more fortunate and familiar, (Constant. Porphyr. de
Administrando, Imperio, c. 32, p. 99.)]
11 (return) [ The emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, most
accurate for his own times, most fabulous for preceding ages,
describes the Sclavonians of Dalmatia, (c. 29-36.)]
12 (return) [ See the anonymous Chronicle of the xith century,
ascribed to John Sagorninus, (p. 94-102,) and that composed in
the xivth by the Doge Andrew Dandolo, (Script. Rerum. Ital. tom.
xii. p. 227-230,) the two oldest monuments of the history of
Venice.]
The glory of the Bulgarians 13 was confined to a narrow scope
both of time and place. In the ninth and tenth centuries, they
reigned to the south of the Danube; but the more powerful nations
that had followed their emigration repelled all return to the
north and all progress to the west. Yet in the obscure catalogue
of their exploits, they might boast an honor which had hitherto
been appropriated to the Goths: that of slaying in battle one of
the successors of Augustus and Constantine. The emperor
Nicephorus had lost his fame in the Arabian, he lost his life in
the Sclavonian, war. In his first operations he advanced with
boldness and success into the centre of Bulgaria, and burnt the
royal court, which was probably no more than an edifice and
village of timber. But while he searched the spoil and refused
all offers of treaty, his enemies collected their spirits and
their forces: the passes of retreat were insuperably barred; and
the trembling Nicephorus was heard to exclaim, “Alas, alas!
unless we could assume the wings of birds, we cannot hope to
escape.” Two days he waited his fate in the inactivity of
despair; but, on the morning of the third, the Bulgarians
surprised the camp, and the Roman prince, with the great officers
of the empire, were slaughtered in their tents. The body of
Valens had been saved from insult; but the head of Nicephorus was
exposed on a spear, and his skull, enchased with gold, was often
replenished in the feasts of victory. The Greeks bewailed the
dishonor of the throne; but they acknowledged the just punishment
of avarice and cruelty. This savage cup was deeply tinctured with
the manners of the Scythian wilderness; but they were softened
before the end of the same century by a peaceful intercourse with
the Greeks, the possession of a cultivated region, and the
introduction of the Christian worship. The nobles of Bulgaria
were educated in the schools and palace of Constantinople; and
Simeon, 14 a youth of the royal line, was instructed in the
rhetoric of Demosthenes and the logic of Aristotle. He
relinquished the profession of a monk for that of a king and
warrior; and in his reign of more than forty years, Bulgaria
assumed a rank among the civilized powers of the earth. The
Greeks, whom he repeatedly attacked, derived a faint consolation
from indulging themselves in the reproaches of perfidy and
sacrilege. They purchased the aid of the Pagan Turks; but Simeon,
in a second battle, redeemed the loss of the first, at a time
when it was esteemed a victory to elude the arms of that
formidable nation. The Servians were overthrown, made captive and
dispersed; and those who visited the country before their
restoration could discover no more than fifty vagrants, without
women or children, who extorted a precarious subsistence from the
chase. On classic ground, on the banks of Achelous, the greeks
were defeated; their horn was broken by the strength of the
Barbaric Hercules. 15 He formed the siege of Constantinople; and,
in a personal conference with the emperor, Simeon imposed the
conditions of peace. They met with the most jealous precautions:
the royal gallery was drawn close to an artificial and
well-fortified platform; and the majesty of the purple was
emulated by the pomp of the Bulgarian. “Are you a Christian?”
said the humble Romanus: “it is your duty to abstain from the
blood of your fellow-Christians. Has the thirst of riches seduced
you from the blessings of peace? Sheathe your sword, open your
hand, and I will satiate the utmost measure of your desires.” The
reconciliation was sealed by a domestic alliance; the freedom of
trade was granted or restored; the first honors of the court were
secured to the friends of Bulgaria, above the ambassadors of
enemies or strangers; 16 and her princes were dignified with the
high and invidious title of Basileus, or emperor. But this
friendship was soon disturbed: after the death of Simeon, the
nations were again in arms; his feeble successors were divided
and extinguished; and, in the beginning of the eleventh century,
the second Basil, who was born in the purple, deserved the
appellation of conqueror of the Bulgarians. His avarice was in
some measure gratified by a treasure of four hundred thousand
pounds sterling, (ten thousand pounds’ weight of gold,) which he
found in the palace of Lychnidus. His cruelty inflicted a cool
and exquisite vengeance on fifteen thousand captives who had been
guilty of the defence of their country. They were deprived of
sight; but to one of each hundred a single eye was left, that he
might conduct his blind century to the presence of their king.
Their king is said to have expired of grief and horror; the
nation was awed by this terrible example; the Bulgarians were
swept away from their settlements, and circumscribed within a
narrow province; the surviving chiefs bequeathed to their
children the advice of patience and the duty of revenge.
13 (return) [ The first kingdom of the Bulgarians may be found,
under the proper dates, in the Annals of Cedrenus and Zonaras.
The Byzantine materials are collected by Stritter, (Memoriae
Populorum, tom. ii. pars ii. p. 441-647;) and the series of their
kings is disposed and settled by Ducange, (Fam. Byzant. p.
305-318.]
14 (return) [ Simeonem semi-Graecum esse aiebant, eo quod a
pueritia Byzantii Demosthenis rhetoricam et Aristotelis
syllogismos didicerat, (Liutprand, l. iii. c. 8.) He says in
another place, Simeon, fortis bella tor, Bulgariae praeerat;
Christianus, sed vicinis Graecis valde inimicus, (l. i. c. 2.)]
15 (return) [—Rigidum fera dextera cornu Dum tenet, infregit,
truncaque a fronte revellit. Ovid (Metamorph. ix. 1-100) has
boldly painted the combat of the river god and the hero; the
native and the stranger.]
16 (return) [ The ambassador of Otho was provoked by the Greek
excuses, cum Christophori filiam Petrus Bulgarorum Vasileus
conjugem duceret, Symphona, id est consonantia scripto juramento
firmata sunt, ut omnium gentium Apostolis, id est nunciis, penes
nos Bulgarorum Apostoli praeponantur, honorentur, diligantur,
(Liutprand in Legatione, p. 482.) See the Ceremoniale of
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, tom. i. p. 82, tom. ii. p. 429, 430,
434, 435, 443, 444, 446, 447, with the annotations of Reiske.]
II. When the black swarm of Hungarians first hung over Europe,
above nine hundred years after the Christian aera, they were
mistaken by fear and superstition for the Gog and Magog of the
Scriptures, the signs and forerunners of the end of the world. 17
Since the introduction of letters, they have explored their own
antiquities with a strong and laudable impulse of patriotic
curiosity. 18 Their rational criticism can no longer be amused
with a vain pedigree of Attila and the Huns; but they complain
that their primitive records have perished in the Tartar war;
that the truth or fiction of their rustic songs is long since
forgotten; and that the fragments of a rude chronicle 19 must be
painfully reconciled with the contemporary though foreign
intelligence of the imperial geographer. 20 Magiar is the
national and oriental denomination of the Hungarians; but, among
the tribes of Scythia, they are distinguished by the Greeks under
the proper and peculiar name of Turks, as the descendants of that
mighty people who had conquered and reigned from China to the
Volga. The Pannonian colony preserved a correspondence of trade
and amity with the eastern Turks on the confines of Persia and
after a separation of three hundred and fifty years, the
missionaries of the king of Hungary discovered and visited their
ancient country near the banks of the Volga. They were hospitably
entertained by a people of Pagans and Savages who still bore the
name of Hungarians; conversed in their native tongue, recollected
a tradition of their long-lost brethren, and listened with
amazement to the marvellous tale of their new kingdom and
religion. The zeal of conversion was animated by the interest of
consanguinity; and one of the greatest of their princes had
formed the generous, though fruitless, design of replenishing the
solitude of Pannonia by this domestic colony from the heart of
Tartary. 21 From this primitive country they were driven to the
West by the tide of war and emigration, by the weight of the more
distant tribes, who at the same time were fugitives and
conquerors. 2111 Reason or fortune directed their course towards
the frontiers of the Roman empire: they halted in the usual
stations along the banks of the great rivers; and in the
territories of Moscow, Kiow, and Moldavia, some vestiges have
been discovered of their temporary residence. In this long and
various peregrination, they could not always escape the dominion
of the stronger; and the purity of their blood was improved or
sullied by the mixture of a foreign race: from a motive of
compulsion, or choice, several tribes of the Chazars were
associated to the standard of their ancient vassals; introduced
the use of a second language; and obtained by their superior
renown the most honorable place in the front of battle. The
military force of the Turks and their allies marched in seven
equal and artificial divisions; each division was formed of
thirty thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven warriors, and the
proportion of women, children, and servants, supposes and
requires at least a million of emigrants. Their public counsels
were directed by seven vayvods, or hereditary chiefs; but the
experience of discord and weakness recommended the more simple
and vigorous administration of a single person. The sceptre,
which had been declined by the modest Lebedias, was granted to
the birth or merit of Almus and his son Arpad, and the authority
of the supreme khan of the Chazars confirmed the engagement of
the prince and people; of the people to obey his commands, of the
prince to consult their happiness and glory.
17 (return) [ A bishop of Wurtzburgh submitted his opinion to a
reverend abbot; but he more gravely decided, that Gog and Magog
were the spiritual persecutors of the church; since Gog signifies
the root, the pride of the Heresiarchs, and Magog what comes from
the root, the propagation of their sects. Yet these men once
commanded the respect of mankind, (Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xi.
p. 594, &c.)]
18 (return) [ The two national authors, from whom I have derived
the mos assistance, are George Pray (Dissertationes and Annales
veterum Hun garorum, &c., Vindobonae, 1775, in folio) and Stephen
Katona, (Hist. Critica Ducum et Regum Hungariae Stirpis
Arpadianae, Paestini, 1778-1781, 5 vols. in octavo.) The first
embraces a large and often conjectural space; the latter, by his
learning, judgment, and perspicuity, deserves the name of a
critical historian. * Note: Compare Engel Geschichte des
Ungrischen Reichs und seiner Neben lander, Halle, 1797, and
Mailath, Geschichte der Magyaren, Wien, 1828. In an appendix to
the latter work will be found a brief abstract of the
speculations (for it is difficult to consider them more) which
have been advanced by the learned, on the origin of the Magyar
and Hungarian names. Compare vol. vi. p. 35, note.—M.]
19 (return) [ The author of this Chronicle is styled the notary
of King Bela. Katona has assigned him to the xiith century, and
defends his character against the hypercriticism of Pray. This
rude annalist must have transcribed some historical records,
since he could affirm with dignity, rejectis falsis fabulis
rusticorum, et garrulo cantu joculatorum. In the xvth century,
these fables were collected by Thurotzius, and embellished by the
Italian Bonfinius. See the Preliminary Discourse in the Hist.
Critica Ducum, p. 7-33.]
20 (return) [ See Constantine de Administrando Imperio, c. 3, 4,
13, 38-42, Katona has nicely fixed the composition of this work
to the years 949, 950, 951, (p. 4-7.) The critical historian (p.
34-107) endeavors to prove the existence, and to relate the
actions, of a first duke Almus the father of Arpad, who is
tacitly rejected by Constantine.]
21 (return) [ Pray (Dissert. p. 37-39, &c.) produces and
illustrates the original passages of the Hungarian missionaries,
Bonfinius and Aeneas Sylvius.]
2111 (return) [ In the deserts to the south-east of Astrakhan
have been found the ruins of a city named Madchar, which proves
the residence of the Hungarians or Magiar in those regions.
Precis de la Geog. Univ. par Malte Brun, vol. i. p. 353.—G.——This
is contested by Klaproth in his Travels, c. xxi. Madschar, (he
states) in old Tartar, means “stone building.” This was a Tartar
city mentioned by the Mahometan writers.—M.]
With this narrative we might be reasonably content, if the
penetration of modern learning had not opened a new and larger
prospect of the antiquities of nations. The Hungarian language
stands alone, and as it were insulated, among the Sclavonian
dialects; but it bears a close and clear affinity to the idioms
of the Fennic race, 22 of an obsolete and savage race, which
formerly occupied the northern regions of Asia and Europe. 2211
The genuine appellation of Ugri or Igours is found on the western
confines of China; 23 their migration to the banks of the Irtish
is attested by Tartar evidence; 24 a similar name and language
are detected in the southern parts of Siberia; 25 and the remains
of the Fennic tribes are widely, though thinly scattered from the
sources of the Oby to the shores of Lapland. 26 The consanguinity
of the Hungarians and Laplanders would display the powerful
energy of climate on the children of a common parent; the lively
contrast between the bold adventurers who are intoxicated with
the wines of the Danube, and the wretched fugitives who are
immersed beneath the snows of the polar circle.
Arms and freedom have ever been the ruling, though too often the
unsuccessful, passion of the Hungarians, who are endowed by
nature with a vigorous constitution of soul and body. 27 Extreme
cold has diminished the stature and congealed the faculties of
the Laplanders; and the arctic tribes, alone among the sons of
men, are ignorant of war, and unconscious of human blood; a happy
ignorance, if reason and virtue were the guardians of their
peace! 28
22 (return) [ Fischer in the Quaestiones Petropolitanae, de
Origine Ungrorum, and Pray, Dissertat. i. ii. iii. &c., have
drawn up several comparative tables of the Hungarian with the
Fennic dialects. The affinity is indeed striking, but the lists
are short; the words are purposely chosen; and I read in the
learned Bayer, (Comment. Academ. Petropol. tom. x. p. 374,) that
although the Hungarian has adopted many Fennic words, (innumeras
voces,) it essentially differs toto genio et natura.]
2211 (return) [ The connection between the Magyar language and
that of the Finns is now almost generally admitted. Klaproth,
Asia Polyglotta, p. 188, &c. Malte Bran, tom. vi. p. 723, &c.—M.]
23 (return) [ In the religion of Turfan, which is clearly and
minutely described by the Chinese Geographers, (Gaubil, Hist. du
Grand Gengiscan, 13; De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. 31,
&c.)]
24 (return) [ Hist. Genealogique des Tartars, par Abulghazi
Bahadur Khan partie ii. p. 90-98.]
25 (return) [ In their journey to Pekin, both Isbrand Ives
(Harris’s Collection of Voyages and Travels, vol. ii. p. 920,
921) and Bell (Travels, vol. i p. 174) found the Vogulitz in the
neighborhood of Tobolsky. By the tortures of the etymological
art, Ugur and Vogul are reduced to the same name; the
circumjacent mountains really bear the appellation of Ugrian; and
of all the Fennic dialects, the Vogulian is the nearest to the
Hungarian, (Fischer, Dissert. i. p. 20-30. Pray. Dissert. ii. p.
31-34.)]
26 (return) [ The eight tribes of the Fennic race are described
in the curious work of M. Leveque, (Hist. des Peuples soumis a la
Domination de la Russie, tom. ii. p. 361-561.)]
27 (return) [ This picture of the Hungarians and Bulgarians is
chiefly drawn from the Tactics of Leo, p. 796-801, and the Latin
Annals, which are alleged by Baronius, Pagi, and Muratori, A.D.
889, &c.]
28 (return) [ Buffon, Hist. Naturelle, tom. v. p. 6, in 12mo.
Gustavus Adolphus attempted, without success, to form a regiment
of Laplanders. Grotius says of these arctic tribes, arma arcus et
pharetra, sed adversus feras, (Annal. l. iv. p. 236;) and
attempts, after the manner of Tacitus, to varnish with philosophy
their brutal ignorance.]
Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, The Hungarians And The Russians.—Part
II.
It is the observation of the Imperial author of the Tactics, 29
that all the Scythian hordes resembled each other in their
pastoral and military life, that they all practised the same
means of subsistence, and employed the same instruments of
destruction. But he adds, that the two nations of Bulgarians and
Hungarians were superior to their brethren, and similar to each
other in the improvements, however rude, of their discipline and
government: their visible likeness determines Leo to confound his
friends and enemies in one common description; and the picture
may be heightened by some strokes from their contemporaries of
the tenth century. Except the merit and fame of military prowess,
all that is valued by mankind appeared vile and contemptible to
these Barbarians, whose native fierceness was stimulated by the
consciousness of numbers and freedom. The tents of the Hungarians
were of leather, their garments of fur; they shaved their hair,
and scarified their faces: in speech they were slow, in action
prompt, in treaty perfidious; and they shared the common reproach
of Barbarians, too ignorant to conceive the importance of truth,
too proud to deny or palliate the breach of their most solemn
engagements. Their simplicity has been praised; yet they
abstained only from the luxury they had never known; whatever
they saw they coveted; their desires were insatiate, and their
sole industry was the hand of violence and rapine. By the
definition of a pastoral nation, I have recalled a long
description of the economy, the warfare, and the government that
prevail in that state of society; I may add, that to fishing, as
well as to the chase, the Hungarians were indebted for a part of
their subsistence; and since they seldom cultivated the ground,
they must, at least in their new settlements, have sometimes
practised a slight and unskilful husbandry. In their emigrations,
perhaps in their expeditions, the host was accompanied by
thousands of sheep and oxen which increased the cloud of
formidable dust, and afforded a constant and wholesale supply of
milk and animal food. A plentiful command of forage was the first
care of the general, and if the flocks and herds were secure of
their pastures, the hardy warrior was alike insensible of danger
and fatigue. The confusion of men and cattle that overspread the
country exposed their camp to a nocturnal surprise, had not a
still wider circuit been occupied by their light cavalry,
perpetually in motion to discover and delay the approach of the
enemy. After some experience of the Roman tactics, they adopted
the use of the sword and spear, the helmet of the soldier, and
the iron breastplate of his steed: but their native and deadly
weapon was the Tartar bow: from the earliest infancy their
children and servants were exercised in the double science of
archery and horsemanship; their arm was strong; their aim was
sure; and in the most rapid career, they were taught to throw
themselves backwards, and to shoot a volley of arrows into the
air. In open combat, in secret ambush, in flight, or pursuit,
they were equally formidable; an appearance of order was
maintained in the foremost ranks, but their charge was driven
forwards by the impatient pressure of succeeding crowds. They
pursued, headlong and rash, with loosened reins and horrific
outcries; but, if they fled, with real or dissembled fear, the
ardor of a pursuing foe was checked and chastised by the same
habits of irregular speed and sudden evolution. In the abuse of
victory, they astonished Europe, yet smarting from the wounds of
the Saracen and the Dane: mercy they rarely asked, and more
rarely bestowed: both sexes if accused is equally inaccessible to
pity, and their appetite for raw flesh might countenance the
popular tale, that they drank the blood, and feasted on the
hearts of the slain. Yet the Hungarians were not devoid of those
principles of justice and humanity, which nature has implanted in
every bosom. The license of public and private injuries was
restrained by laws and punishments; and in the security of an
open camp, theft is the most tempting and most dangerous offence.
Among the Barbarians there were many, whose spontaneous virtue
supplied their laws and corrected their manners, who performed
the duties, and sympathized with the affections, of social life.
29 (return) [ Leo has observed, that the government of the Turks
was monarchical, and that their punishments were rigorous,
(Tactic. p. 896) Rhegino (in Chron. A.D. 889) mentions theft as a
capital crime, and his jurisprudence is confirmed by the original
code of St. Stephen, (A.D. 1016.) If a slave were guilty, he was
chastised, for the first time, with the loss of his nose, or a
fine of five heifers; for the second, with the loss of his ears,
or a similar fine; for the third, with death; which the freeman
did not incur till the fourth offence, as his first penalty was
the loss of liberty, (Katona, Hist. Regum Hungar tom. i. p. 231,
232.)]
After a long pilgrimage of flight or victory, the Turkish hordes
approached the common limits of the French and Byzantine empires.
Their first conquests and final settlements extended on either
side of the Danube above Vienna, below Belgrade, and beyond the
measure of the Roman province of Pannonia, or the modern kingdom
of Hungary. 30 That ample and fertile land was loosely occupied
by the Moravians, a Sclavonian name and tribe, which were driven
by the invaders into the compass of a narrow province.
Charlemagne had stretched a vague and nominal empire as far as
the edge of Transylvania; but, after the failure of his
legitimate line, the dukes of Moravia forgot their obedience and
tribute to the monarchs of Oriental France. The bastard Arnulph
was provoked to invite the arms of the Turks: they rushed through
the real or figurative wall, which his indiscretion had thrown
open; and the king of Germany has been justly reproached as a
traitor to the civil and ecclesiastical society of the
Christians. During the life of Arnulph, the Hungarians were
checked by gratitude or fear; but in the infancy of his son Lewis
they discovered and invaded Bavaria; and such was their Scythian
speed, that in a single day a circuit of fifty miles was stripped
and consumed. In the battle of Augsburgh the Christians
maintained their advantage till the seventh hour of the day, they
were deceived and vanquished by the flying stratagems of the
Turkish cavalry. The conflagration spread over the provinces of
Bavaria, Swabia, and Franconia; and the Hungarians 31 promoted
the reign of anarchy, by forcing the stoutest barons to
discipline their vassals and fortify their castles. The origin of
walled towns is ascribed to this calamitous period; nor could any
distance be secure against an enemy, who, almost at the same
instant, laid in ashes the Helvetian monastery of St. Gall, and
the city of Bremen, on the shores of the northern ocean. Above
thirty years the Germanic empire, or kingdom, was subject to the
ignominy of tribute; and resistance was disarmed by the menace,
the serious and effectual menace of dragging the women and
children into captivity, and of slaughtering the males above the
age of ten years. I have neither power nor inclination to follow
the Hungarians beyond the Rhine; but I must observe with
surprise, that the southern provinces of France were blasted by
the tempest, and that Spain, behind her Pyrenees, was astonished
at the approach of these formidable strangers. 32 The vicinity of
Italy had tempted their early inroads; but from their camp on the
Brenta, they beheld with some terror the apparent strength and
populousness of the new discovered country. They requested leave
to retire; their request was proudly rejected by the Italian
king; and the lives of twenty thousand Christians paid the
forfeit of his obstinacy and rashness. Among the cities of the
West, the royal Pavia was conspicuous in fame and splendor; and
the preeminence of Rome itself was only derived from the relics
of the apostles. The Hungarians appeared; Pavia was in flames;
forty-three churches were consumed; and, after the massacre of
the people, they spared about two hundred wretches who had
gathered some bushels of gold and silver (a vague exaggeration)
from the smoking ruins of their country. In these annual
excursions from the Alps to the neighborhood of Rome and Capua,
the churches, that yet escaped, resounded with a fearful litany:
“O, save and deliver us from the arrows of the Hungarians!” But
the saints were deaf or inexorable; and the torrent rolled
forwards, till it was stopped by the extreme land of Calabria. 33
A composition was offered and accepted for the head of each
Italian subject; and ten bushels of silver were poured forth in
the Turkish camp. But falsehood is the natural antagonist of
violence; and the robbers were defrauded both in the numbers of
the assessment and the standard of the metal. On the side of the
East, the Hungarians were opposed in doubtful conflict by the
equal arms of the Bulgarians, whose faith forbade an alliance
with the Pagans, and whose situation formed the barrier of the
Byzantine empire. The barrier was overturned; the emperor of
Constantinople beheld the waving banners of the Turks; and one of
their boldest warriors presumed to strike a battle-axe into the
golden gate. The arts and treasures of the Greeks diverted the
assault; but the Hungarians might boast, in their retreat, that
they had imposed a tribute on the spirit of Bulgaria and the
majesty of the Caesars. 34 The remote and rapid operations of the
same campaign appear to magnify the power and numbers of the
Turks; but their courage is most deserving of praise, since a
light troop of three or four hundred horse would often attempt
and execute the most daring inroads to the gates of Thessalonica
and Constantinople. At this disastrous aera of the ninth and
tenth centuries, Europe was afflicted by a triple scourge from
the North, the East, and the South: the Norman, the Hungarian,
and the Saracen, sometimes trod the same ground of desolation;
and these savage foes might have been compared by Homer to the
two lions growling over the carcass of a mangled stag. 35
30 (return) [ See Katona, Hist. Ducum Hungar. p. 321-352.]
31 (return) [ Hungarorum gens, cujus omnes fere nationes expertae
saevitium &c., is the preface of Liutprand, (l. i. c. 2,) who
frequently expatiated on the calamities of his own times. See l.
i. c. 5, l. ii. c. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7; l. iii. c. 1, &c., l. v. c.
8, 15, in Legat. p. 485. His colors are glaring but his
chronology must be rectified by Pagi and Muratori.]
32 (return) [ The three bloody reigns of Arpad, Zoltan, and
Toxus, are critically illustrated by Katona, (Hist. Ducum, &c. p.
107-499.) His diligence has searched both natives and foreigners;
yet to the deeds of mischief, or glory, I have been able to add
the destruction of Bremen, (Adam Bremensis, i. 43.)]
33 (return) [ Muratori has considered with patriotic care the
danger and resources of Modena. The citizens besought St.
Geminianus, their patron, to avert, by his intercession, the
rabies, flagellum, &c. Nunc te rogamus, licet servi pessimi, Ab
Ungerorum nos defendas jaculis.The bishop erected walls for the
public defence, not contra dominos serenos, (Antiquitat. Ital.
Med. Aevi, tom. i. dissertat. i. p. 21, 22,) and the song of the
nightly watch is not without elegance or use, (tom. iii. dis. xl.
p. 709.) The Italian annalist has accurately traced the series of
their inroads, (Annali d’ Italia, tom. vii. p. 365, 367, 398,
401, 437, 440, tom. viii. p. 19, 41, 52, &c.)]
34 (return) [ Both the Hungarian and Russian annals suppose, that
they besieged, or attacked, or insulted Constantinople, (Pray,
dissertat. x. p. 239. Katona, Hist. Ducum, p. 354-360;) and the
fact is almost confessed by the Byzantine historians, (Leo
Grammaticus, p. 506. Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 629: ) yet, however
glorious to the nation, it is denied or doubted by the critical
historian, and even by the notary of Bela. Their scepticism is
meritorious; they could not safely transcribe or believe the
rusticorum fabulas: but Katona might have given due attention to
the evidence of Liutprand, Bulgarorum gentem atque daecorum
tributariam fecerant, (Hist. l. ii. c. 4, p. 435.)]
35 (return) [—Iliad, xvi. 756.]
The deliverance of Germany and Christendom was achieved by the
Saxon princes, Henry the Fowler and Otho the Great, who, in two
memorable battles, forever broke the power of the Hungarians. 36
The valiant Henry was roused from a bed of sickness by the
invasion of his country; but his mind was vigorous and his
prudence successful. “My companions,” said he, on the morning of
the combat, “maintain your ranks, receive on your bucklers the
first arrows of the Pagans, and prevent their second discharge by
the equal and rapid career of your lances.” They obeyed and
conquered: and the historical picture of the castle of Merseburgh
expressed the features, or at least the character, of Henry, who,
in an age of ignorance, intrusted to the finer arts the
perpetuity of his name. 37 At the end of twenty years, the
children of the Turks who had fallen by his sword invaded the
empire of his son; and their force is defined, in the lowest
estimate, at one hundred thousand horse. They were invited by
domestic faction; the gates of Germany were treacherously
unlocked; and they spread, far beyond the Rhine and the Meuse,
into the heart of Flanders. But the vigor and prudence of Otho
dispelled the conspiracy; the princes were made sensible that
unless they were true to each other, their religion and country
were irrecoverably lost; and the national powers were reviewed in
the plains of Augsburgh. They marched and fought in eight
legions, according to the division of provinces and tribes; the
first, second, and third, were composed of Bavarians; the fourth,
of Franconians; the fifth, of Saxons, under the immediate command
of the monarch; the sixth and seventh consisted of Swabians; and
the eighth legion, of a thousand Bohemians, closed the rear of
the host. The resources of discipline and valor were fortified by
the arts of superstition, which, on this occasion, may deserve
the epithets of generous and salutary. The soldiers were purified
with a fast; the camp was blessed with the relics of saints and
martyrs; and the Christian hero girded on his side the sword of
Constantine, grasped the invincible spear of Charlemagne, and
waved the banner of St. Maurice, the praefect of the Thebaean
legion. But his firmest confidence was placed in the holy lance,
38 whose point was fashioned of the nails of the cross, and which
his father had extorted from the king of Burgundy, by the threats
of war, and the gift of a province. The Hungarians were expected
in the front; they secretly passed the Lech, a river of Bavaria
that falls into the Danube; turned the rear of the Christian
army; plundered the baggage, and disordered the legion of Bohemia
and Swabia. The battle was restored by the Franconians, whose
duke, the valiant Conrad, was pierced with an arrow as he rested
from his fatigues: the Saxons fought under the eyes of their
king; and his victory surpassed, in merit and importance, the
triumphs of the last two hundred years. The loss of the
Hungarians was still greater in the flight than in the action;
they were encompassed by the rivers of Bavaria; and their past
cruelties excluded them from the hope of mercy. Three captive
princes were hanged at Ratisbon, the multitude of prisoners was
slain or mutilated, and the fugitives, who presumed to appear in
the face of their country, were condemned to everlasting poverty
and disgrace. 39 Yet the spirit of the nation was humbled, and
the most accessible passes of Hungary were fortified with a ditch
and rampart. Adversity suggested the counsels of moderation and
peace: the robbers of the West acquiesced in a sedentary life;
and the next generation was taught, by a discerning prince, that
far more might be gained by multiplying and exchanging the
produce of a fruitful soil. The native race, the Turkish or
Fennic blood, was mingled with new colonies of Scythian or
Sclavonian origin; 40 many thousands of robust and industrious
captives had been imported from all the countries of Europe; 41
and after the marriage of Geisa with a Bavarian princess, he
bestowed honors and estates on the nobles of Germany. 42 The son
of Geisa was invested with the regal title, and the house of
Arpad reigned three hundred years in the kingdom of Hungary. But
the freeborn Barbarians were not dazzled by the lustre of the
diadem, and the people asserted their indefeasible right of
choosing, deposing, and punishing the hereditary servant of the
state.
36 (return) [ They are amply and critically discussed by Katona,
(Hist. Dacum, p. 360-368, 427-470.) Liutprand (l. ii. c. 8, 9) is
the best evidence for the former, and Witichind (Annal. Saxon. l.
iii.) of the latter; but the critical historian will not even
overlook the horn of a warrior, which is said to be preserved at
Jaz-berid.]
37 (return) [ Hunc vero triumphum, tam laude quam memoria dignum,
ad Meresburgum rex in superiori coenaculo domus per Zeus, id est,
picturam, notari praecepit, adeo ut rem veram potius quam
verisimilem videas: a high encomium, (Liutprand, l. ii. c. 9.)
Another palace in Germany had been painted with holy subjects by
the order of Charlemagne; and Muratori may justly affirm, nulla
saecula fuere in quibus pictores desiderati fuerint, (Antiquitat.
Ital. Medii Aevi, tom. ii. dissert. xxiv. p. 360, 361.) Our
domestic claims to antiquity of ignorance and original
imperfection (Mr. Walpole’s lively words) are of a much more
recent date, (Anecdotes of Painting, vol. i. p. 2, &c.)]
38 (return) [ See Baronius, Annal. Eccles. A.D. 929, No. 2-5. The
lance of Christ is taken from the best evidence, Liutprand, (l.
iv. c. 12,) Sigebert, and the Acts of St. Gerard: but the other
military relics depend on the faith of the Gesta Anglorum post
Bedam, l. ii. c. 8.]
39 (return) [ Katona, Hist. Ducum Hungariae, p. 500, &c.]
40 (return) [ Among these colonies we may distinguish, 1. The
Chazars, or Cabari, who joined the Hungarians on their march,
(Constant. de Admin. Imp. c. 39, 40, p. 108, 109.) 2. The
Jazyges, Moravians, and Siculi, whom they found in the land; the
last were perhaps a remnant of the Huns of Attila, and were
intrusted with the guard of the borders. 3. The Russians, who,
like the Swiss in France, imparted a general name to the royal
porters. 4. The Bulgarians, whose chiefs (A.D. 956) were invited,
cum magna multitudine Hismahelitarum. Had any of those
Sclavonians embraced the Mahometan religion? 5. The Bisseni and
Cumans, a mixed multitude of Patzinacites, Uzi, Chazars, &c., who
had spread to the Lower Danube. The last colony of 40,000 Cumans,
A.D. 1239, was received and converted by the kings of Hungary,
who derived from that tribe a new regal appellation, (Pray,
Dissert. vi. vii. p. 109-173. Katona, Hist. Ducum, p. 95-99,
259-264, 476, 479-483, &c.)]
41 (return) [ Christiani autem, quorum pars major populi est, qui
ex omni parte mundi illuc tracti sunt captivi, &c. Such was the
language of Piligrinus, the first missionary who entered Hungary,
A.D. 973. Pars major is strong. Hist. Ducum, p. 517.]
42 (return) [ The fideles Teutonici of Geisa are authenticated in
old charters: and Katona, with his usual industry, has made a
fair estimate of these colonies, which had been so loosely
magnified by the Italian Ranzanus, (Hist. Critic. Ducum. p,
667-681.)]
III. The name of Russians 43 was first divulged, in the ninth
century, by an embassy of Theophilus, emperor of the East, to the
emperor of the West, Lewis, the son of Charlemagne. The Greeks
were accompanied by the envoys of the great duke, or chagan, or
czar, of the Russians. In their journey to Constantinople, they
had traversed many hostile nations; and they hoped to escape the
dangers of their return, by requesting the French monarch to
transport them by sea to their native country. A closer
examination detected their origin: they were the brethren of the
Swedes and Normans, whose name was already odious and formidable
in France; and it might justly be apprehended, that these Russian
strangers were not the messengers of peace, but the emissaries of
war. They were detained, while the Greeks were dismissed; and
Lewis expected a more satisfactory account, that he might obey
the laws of hospitality or prudence, according to the interest of
both empires. 44 This Scandinavian origin of the people, or at
least the princes, of Russia, may be confirmed and illustrated by
the national annals 45 and the general history of the North. The
Normans, who had so long been concealed by a veil of impenetrable
darkness, suddenly burst forth in the spirit of naval and
military enterprise. The vast, and, as it is said, the populous
regions of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, were crowded with
independent chieftains and desperate adventurers, who sighed in
the laziness of peace, and smiled in the agonies of death. Piracy
was the exercise, the trade, the glory, and the virtue, of the
Scandinavian youth. Impatient of a bleak climate and narrow
limits, they started from the banquet, grasped their arms,
sounded their horn, ascended their vessels, and explored every
coast that promised either spoil or settlement. The Baltic was
the first scene of their naval achievements they visited the
eastern shores, the silent residence of Fennic and Sclavonic
tribes, and the primitive Russians of the Lake Ladoga paid a
tribute, the skins of white squirrels, to these strangers, whom
they saluted with the title of Varangians 46 or Corsairs. Their
superiority in arms, discipline, and renown, commanded the fear
and reverence of the natives. In their wars against the more
inland savages, the Varangians condescended to serve as friends
and auxiliaries, and gradually, by choice or conquest, obtained
the dominion of a people whom they were qualified to protect.
Their tyranny was expelled, their valor was again recalled, till
at length Ruric, a Scandinavian chief, became the father of a
dynasty which reigned above seven hundred years. His brothers
extended his influence: the example of service and usurpation was
imitated by his companions in the southern provinces of Russia;
and their establishments, by the usual methods of war and
assassination, were cemented into the fabric of a powerful
monarchy.
43 (return) [ Among the Greeks, this national appellation has a
singular form, as an undeclinable word, of which many fanciful
etymologies have been suggested. I have perused, with pleasure
and profit, a dissertation de Origine Russorum (Comment. Academ.
Petropolitanae, tom. viii. p. 388-436) by Theophilus Sigefrid
Bayer, a learned German, who spent his life and labors in the
service of Russia. A geographical tract of D’Anville, de l’Empire
de Russie, son Origine, et ses Accroissemens, (Paris, 1772, in
12mo.,) has likewise been of use. * Note: The later antiquarians
of Russia and Germany appear to aquiesce in the authority of the
monk Nestor, the earliest annalist of Russia, who derives the
Russians, or Vareques, from Scandinavia. The names of the first
founders of the Russian monarchy are Scandinavian or Norman.
Their language (according to Const. Porphyrog. de Administrat.
Imper. c. 9) differed essentially from the Sclavonian. The author
of the Annals of St. Bertin, who first names the Russians (Rhos)
in the year 839 of his Annals, assigns them Sweden for their
country. So Liutprand calls the Russians the same people as the
Normans. The Fins, Laplanders, and Esthonians, call the Swedes,
to the present day, Roots, Rootsi, Ruotzi, Rootslaue. See
Thunman, Untersuchungen uber der Geschichte des Estlichen
Europaischen Volker, p. 374. Gatterer, Comm. Societ. Regbcient.
Gotting. xiii. p. 126. Schlozer, in his Nestor. Koch. Revolut. de
‘Europe, vol. i. p. 60. Malte-Brun, Geograph. vol. vi. p.
378.—M.]
44 (return) [ See the entire passage (dignum, says Bayer, ut
aureis in tabulis rigatur) in the Annales Bertiniani Francorum,
(in Script. Ital. Muratori, tom. ii. pars i. p. 525,) A.D. 839,
twenty-two years before the aera of Ruric. In the xth century,
Liutprand (Hist. l. v. c. 6) speaks of the Russians and Normans
as the same Aquilonares homines of a red complexion.]
45 (return) [ My knowledge of these annals is drawn from M.
Leveque, Histoire de Russie. Nestor, the first and best of these
ancient annalists, was a monk of Kiow, who died in the beginning
of the xiith century; but his Chronicle was obscure, till it was
published at Petersburgh, 1767, in 4to. Leveque, Hist. de Russie,
tom. i. p. xvi. Coxe’s Travels, vol. ii. p. 184. * Note: The late
M. Schlozer has translated and added a commentary to the Annals
of Nestor; and his work is the mine from which henceforth the
history of the North must be drawn.—G.]
46 (return) [ Theophil. Sig. Bayer de Varagis, (for the name is
differently spelt,) in Comment. Academ. Petropolitanae, tom. iv.
p. 275-311.]
As long as the descendants of Ruric were considered as aliens and
conquerors, they ruled by the sword of the Varangians,
distributed estates and subjects to their faithful captains, and
supplied their numbers with fresh streams of adventurers from the
Baltic coast. 47 But when the Scandinavian chiefs had struck a
deep and permanent root into the soil, they mingled with the
Russians in blood, religion, and language, and the first
Waladimir had the merit of delivering his country from these
foreign mercenaries. They had seated him on the throne; his
riches were insufficient to satisfy their demands; but they
listened to his pleasing advice, that they should seek, not a
more grateful, but a more wealthy, master; that they should
embark for Greece, where, instead of the skins of squirrels, silk
and gold would be the recompense of their service. At the same
time, the Russian prince admonished his Byzantine ally to
disperse and employ, to recompense and restrain, these impetuous
children of the North. Contemporary writers have recorded the
introduction, name, and character, of the Varangians: each day
they rose in confidence and esteem; the whole body was assembled
at Constantinople to perform the duty of guards; and their
strength was recruited by a numerous band of their countrymen
from the Island of Thule. On this occasion, the vague appellation
of Thule is applied to England; and the new Varangians were a
colony of English and Danes who fled from the yoke of the Norman
conqueror. The habits of pilgrimage and piracy had approximated
the countries of the earth; these exiles were entertained in the
Byzantine court; and they preserved, till the last age of the
empire, the inheritance of spotless loyalty, and the use of the
Danish or English tongue. With their broad and double-edged
battle-axes on their shoulders, they attended the Greek emperor
to the temple, the senate, and the hippodrome; he slept and
feasted under their trusty guard; and the keys of the palace, the
treasury, and the capital, were held by the firm and faithful
hands of the Varangians. 48
47 (return) [ Yet, as late as the year 1018, Kiow and Russia were
still guarded ex fugitivorum servorum robore, confluentium et
maxime Danorum. Bayer, who quotes (p. 292) the Chronicle of
Dithmar of Merseburgh, observes, that it was unusual for the
Germans to enlist in a foreign service.]
48 (return) [ Ducange has collected from the original authors the
state and history of the Varangi at Constantinople, (Glossar.
Med. et Infimae Graecitatis, sub voce. Med. et Infimae
Latinitatis, sub voce Vagri. Not. ad Alexiad. Annae Comnenae, p.
256, 257, 258. Notes sur Villehardouin, p. 296-299.) See likewise
the annotations of Reiske to the Ceremoniale Aulae Byzant. of
Constantine, tom. ii. p. 149, 150. Saxo Grammaticus affirms that
they spoke Danish; but Codinus maintains them till the fifteenth
century in the use of their native English.]
In the tenth century, the geography of Scythia was extended far
beyond the limits of ancient knowledge; and the monarchy of the
Russians obtains a vast and conspicuous place in the map of
Constantine. 49 The sons of Ruric were masters of the spacious
province of Wolodomir, or Moscow; and, if they were confined on
that side by the hordes of the East, their western frontier in
those early days was enlarged to the Baltic Sea and the country
of the Prussians. Their northern reign ascended above the
sixtieth degree of latitude over the Hyperborean regions, which
fancy had peopled with monsters, or clouded with eternal
darkness. To the south they followed the course of the
Borysthenes, and approached with that river the neighborhood of
the Euxine Sea. The tribes that dwelt, or wandered, in this ample
circuit were obedient to the same conqueror, and insensibly
blended into the same nation. The language of Russia is a dialect
of the Sclavonian; but in the tenth century, these two modes of
speech were different from each other; and, as the Sclavonian
prevailed in the South, it may be presumed that the original
Russians of the North, the primitive subjects of the Varangian
chief, were a portion of the Fennic race. With the emigration,
union, or dissolution, of the wandering tribes, the loose and
indefinite picture of the Scythian desert has continually
shifted. But the most ancient map of Russia affords some places
which still retain their name and position; and the two capitals,
Novogorod 50 and Kiow, 51 are coeval with the first age of the
monarchy. Novogorod had not yet deserved the epithet of great,
nor the alliance of the Hanseatic League, which diffused the
streams of opulence and the principles of freedom. Kiow could not
yet boast of three hundred churches, an innumerable people, and a
degree of greatness and splendor which was compared with
Constantinople by those who had never seen the residence of the
Caesars. In their origin, the two cities were no more than camps
or fairs, the most convenient stations in which the Barbarians
might assemble for the occasional business of war or trade. Yet
even these assemblies announce some progress in the arts of
society; a new breed of cattle was imported from the southern
provinces; and the spirit of commercial enterprise pervaded the
sea and land, from the Baltic to the Euxine, from the mouth of
the Oder to the port of Constantinople. In the days of idolatry
and barbarism, the Sclavonic city of Julin was frequented and
enriched by the Normans, who had prudently secured a free mart of
purchase and exchange. 52 From this harbor, at the entrance of
the Oder, the corsair, or merchant, sailed in forty-three days to
the eastern shores of the Baltic, the most distant nations were
intermingled, and the holy groves of Curland are said to have
been decorated with Grecian and Spanish gold. 53 Between the sea
and Novogorod an easy intercourse was discovered; in the summer,
through a gulf, a lake, and a navigable river; in the winter
season, over the hard and level surface of boundless snows. From
the neighborhood of that city, the Russians descended the streams
that fall into the Borysthenes; their canoes, of a single tree,
were laden with slaves of every age, furs of every species, the
spoil of their beehives, and the hides of their cattle; and the
whole produce of the North was collected and discharged in the
magazines of Kiow. The month of June was the ordinary season of
the departure of the fleet: the timber of the canoes was framed
into the oars and benches of more solid and capacious boats; and
they proceeded without obstacle down the Borysthenes, as far as
the seven or thirteen ridges of rocks, which traverse the bed,
and precipitate the waters, of the river. At the more shallow
falls it was sufficient to lighten the vessels; but the deeper
cataracts were impassable; and the mariners, who dragged their
vessels and their slaves six miles over land, were exposed in
this toilsome journey to the robbers of the desert. 54 At the
first island below the falls, the Russians celebrated the
festival of their escape: at a second, near the mouth of the
river, they repaired their shattered vessels for the longer and
more perilous voyage of the Black Sea. If they steered along the
coast, the Danube was accessible; with a fair wind they could
reach in thirty-six or forty hours the opposite shores of
Anatolia; and Constantinople admitted the annual visit of the
strangers of the North. They returned at the stated season with a
rich cargo of corn, wine, and oil, the manufactures of Greece,
and the spices of India. Some of their countrymen resided in the
capital and provinces; and the national treaties protected the
persons, effects, and privileges, of the Russian merchant. 55
49 (return) [ The original record of the geography and trade of
Russia is produced by the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus,
(de Administrat. Imperii, c. 2, p. 55, 56, c. 9, p. 59-61, c. 13,
p. 63-67, c. 37, p. 106, c. 42, p. 112, 113,) and illustrated by
the diligence of Bayer, (de Geographia Russiae vicinarumque
Regionum circiter A. C. 948, in Comment. Academ. Petropol. tom.
ix. p. 367-422, tom. x. p. 371-421,) with the aid of the
chronicles and traditions of Russia, Scandinavia, &c.]
50 (return) [ The haughty proverb, “Who can resist God and the
great Novogorod?” is applied by M. Leveque (Hist. de Russie, tom.
i. p. 60) even to the times that preceded the reign of Ruric. In
the course of his history he frequently celebrates this republic,
which was suppressed A.D. 1475, (tom. ii. p. 252-266.) That
accurate traveller Adam Olearius describes (in 1635) the remains
of Novogorod, and the route by sea and land of the Holstein
ambassadors, tom. i. p. 123-129.]
51 (return) [ In hac magna civitate, quae est caput regni, plus
trecentae ecclesiae habentur et nundinae octo, populi etiam
ignota manus (Eggehardus ad A.D. 1018, apud Bayer, tom. ix. p.
412.) He likewise quotes (tom. x. p. 397) the words of the Saxon
annalist, Cujus (Russioe) metropolis est Chive, aemula sceptri
Constantinopolitani, quae est clarissimum decus Graeciae. The
fame of Kiow, especially in the xith century, had reached the
German and Arabian geographers.]
52 (return) [ In Odorae ostio qua Scythicas alluit paludes,
nobilissima civitas Julinum, celeberrimam, Barbaris et Graecis
qui sunt in circuitu, praestans stationem, est sane maxima omnium
quas Europa claudit civitatum, (Adam Bremensis, Hist. Eccles. p.
19;) a strange exaggeration even in the xith century. The trade
of the Baltic, and the Hanseatic League, are carefully treated in
Anderson’s Historical Deduction of Commerce; at least, in our
language, I am not acquainted with any book so satisfactory. *
Note: The book of authority is the “Geschichte des Hanseatischen
Bundes,” by George Sartorius, Gottingen, 1803, or rather the
later edition of that work by M. Lappenberg, 2 vols. 4to.,
Hamburgh, 1830.—M. 1845.]
53 (return) [ According to Adam of Bremen, (de Situ Daniae, p.
58,) the old Curland extended eight days’ journey along the
coast; and by Peter Teutoburgicus, (p. 68, A.D. 1326,) Memel is
defined as the common frontier of Russia, Curland, and Prussia.
Aurum ibi plurimum, (says Adam,) divinis auguribus atque
necromanticis omnes domus sunt plenae.... a toto orbe ibi
responsa petuntur, maxime ab Hispanis (forsan Zupanis, id est
regulis Lettoviae) et Graecis. The name of Greeks was applied to
the Russians even before their conversion; an imperfect
conversion, if they still consulted the wizards of Curland,
(Bayer, tom. x. p. 378, 402, &c. Grotius, Prolegomen. ad Hist.
Goth. p. 99.)]
54 (return) [ Constantine only reckons seven cataracts, of which
he gives the Russian and Sclavonic names; but thirteen are
enumerated by the Sieur de Beauplan, a French engineer, who had
surveyed the course and navigation of the Dnieper, or
Borysthenes, (Description de l’Ukraine, Rouen, 1660, a thin
quarto;) but the map is unluckily wanting in my copy.]
55 (return) [ Nestor, apud Leveque, Hist. de Russie, tom. i. p.
78-80. From the Dnieper, or Borysthenes, the Russians went to
Black Bulgaria, Chazaria, and Syria. To Syria, how? where? when?
The alteration is slight; the position of Suania, between
Chazaria and Lazica, is perfectly suitable; and the name was
still used in the xith century, (Cedren. tom. ii. p. 770.)]
Chapter LV: The Bulgarians, The Hungarians And The Russians.—Part
III.
But the same communication which had been opened for the benefit,
was soon abused for the injury, of mankind. In a period of one
hundred and ninety years, the Russians made four attempts to
plunder the treasures of Constantinople: the event was various,
but the motive, the means, and the object, were the same in these
naval expeditions. 56 The Russian traders had seen the
magnificence, and tasted the luxury of the city of the Caesars. A
marvellous tale, and a scanty supply, excited the desires of
their savage countrymen: they envied the gifts of nature which
their climate denied; they coveted the works of art, which they
were too lazy to imitate and too indigent to purchase; the
Varangian princes unfurled the banners of piratical adventure,
and their bravest soldiers were drawn from the nations that dwelt
in the northern isles of the ocean. 57 The image of their naval
armaments was revived in the last century, in the fleets of the
Cossacks, which issued from the Borysthenes, to navigate the same
seas for a similar purpose. 58 The Greek appellation of monoxyla,
or single canoes, might justly be applied to the bottom of their
vessels. It was scooped out of the long stem of a beech or
willow, but the slight and narrow foundation was raised and
continued on either side with planks, till it attained the length
of sixty, and the height of about twelve, feet. These boats were
built without a deck, but with two rudders and a mast; to move
with sails and oars; and to contain from forty to seventy men,
with their arms, and provisions of fresh water and salt fish. The
first trial of the Russians was made with two hundred boats; but
when the national force was exerted, they might arm against
Constantinople a thousand or twelve hundred vessels. Their fleet
was not much inferior to the royal navy of Agamemnon, but it was
magnified in the eyes of fear to ten or fifteen times the real
proportion of its strength and numbers. Had the Greek emperors
been endowed with foresight to discern, and vigor to prevent,
perhaps they might have sealed with a maritime force the mouth of
the Borysthenes. Their indolence abandoned the coast of Anatolia
to the calamities of a piratical war, which, after an interval of
six hundred years, again infested the Euxine; but as long as the
capital was respected, the sufferings of a distant province
escaped the notice both of the prince and the historian. The
storm which had swept along from the Phasis and Trebizond, at
length burst on the Bosphorus of Thrace; a strait of fifteen
miles, in which the rude vessels of the Russians might have been
stopped and destroyed by a more skilful adversary. In their first
enterprise 59 under the princes of Kiow, they passed without
opposition, and occupied the port of Constantinople in the
absence of the emperor Michael, the son of Theophilus. Through a
crowd of perils, he landed at the palace-stairs, and immediately
repaired to a church of the Virgin Mary. 60 By the advice of the
patriarch, her garment, a precious relic, was drawn from the
sanctuary and dipped in the sea; and a seasonable tempest, which
determined the retreat of the Russians, was devoutly ascribed to
the mother of God. 61 The silence of the Greeks may inspire some
doubt of the truth, or at least of the importance, of the second
attempt by Oleg, the guardian of the sons of Ruric. 62 A strong
barrier of arms and fortifications defended the Bosphorus: they
were eluded by the usual expedient of drawing the boats over the
isthmus; and this simple operation is described in the national
chronicles, as if the Russian fleet had sailed over dry land with
a brisk and favorable gale. The leader of the third armament,
Igor, the son of Ruric, had chosen a moment of weakness and
decay, when the naval powers of the empire were employed against
the Saracens. But if courage be not wanting, the instruments of
defence are seldom deficient. Fifteen broken and decayed galleys
were boldly launched against the enemy; but instead of the single
tube of Greek fire usually planted on the prow, the sides and
stern of each vessel were abundantly supplied with that liquid
combustible. The engineers were dexterous; the weather was
propitious; many thousand Russians, who chose rather to be
drowned than burnt, leaped into the sea; and those who escaped to
the Thracian shore were inhumanly slaughtered by the peasants and
soldiers. Yet one third of the canoes escaped into shallow water;
and the next spring Igor was again prepared to retrieve his
disgrace and claim his revenge. 63 After a long peace, Jaroslaus,
the great grandson of Igor, resumed the same project of a naval
invasion. A fleet, under the command of his son, was repulsed at
the entrance of the Bosphorus by the same artificial flames. But
in the rashness of pursuit, the vanguard of the Greeks was
encompassed by an irresistible multitude of boats and men; their
provision of fire was probably exhausted; and twenty-four galleys
were either taken, sunk, or destroyed. 64
56 (return) [ The wars of the Russians and Greeks in the ixth,
xth, and xith centuries, are related in the Byzantine annals,
especially those of Zonaras and Cedrenus; and all their
testimonies are collected in the Russica of Stritter, tom. ii.
pars ii. p. 939-1044.]
57 (return) [ Cedrenus in Compend. p. 758]
58 (return) [ See Beauplan, (Description de l’Ukraine, p. 54-61:
) his descriptions are lively, his plans accurate, and except the
circumstances of fire-arms, we may read old Russians for modern
Cosacks.]
59 (return) [ It is to be lamented, that Bayer has only given a
Dissertation de Russorum prima Expeditione Constantinopolitana,
(Comment. Academ. Petropol. tom. vi. p. 265-391.) After
disentangling some chronological intricacies, he fixes it in the
years 864 or 865, a date which might have smoothed some doubts
and difficulties in the beginning of M. Leveque’s history.]
60 (return) [ When Photius wrote his encyclic epistle on the
conversion of the Russians, the miracle was not yet sufficiently
ripe.]
61 (return) [ Leo Grammaticus, p. 463, 464. Constantini
Continuator in Script. post Theophanem, p. 121, 122. Symeon
Logothet. p. 445, 446. Georg. Monach. p. 535, 536. Cedrenus, tom.
ii. p. 551. Zonaras, tom. ii. p. 162.]
62 (return) [ See Nestor and Nicon, in Leveque’s Hist. de Russie,
tom. i. p. 74-80. Katona (Hist. Ducum, p. 75-79) uses his
advantage to disprove this Russian victory, which would cloud the
siege of Kiow by the Hungarians.]
63 (return) [ Leo Grammaticus, p. 506, 507. Incert. Contin. p.
263, 264 Symeon Logothet. p. 490, 491. Georg. Monach. p. 588,
589. Cedren tom. ii. p. 629. Zonaras, tom. ii. p. 190, 191, and
Liutprand, l. v. c. 6, who writes from the narratives of his
father-in-law, then ambassador at Constantinople, and corrects
the vain exaggeration of the Greeks.]
64 (return) [ I can only appeal to Cedrenus (tom. ii. p. 758,
759) and Zonaras, (tom. ii. p. 253, 254;) but they grow more
weighty and credible as they draw near to their own times.]
Yet the threats or calamities of a Russian war were more
frequently diverted by treaty than by arms. In these naval
hostilities, every disadvantage was on the side of the Greeks;
their savage enemy afforded no mercy: his poverty promised no
spoil; his impenetrable retreat deprived the conqueror of the
hopes of revenge; and the pride or weakness of empire indulged an
opinion, that no honor could be gained or lost in the intercourse
with Barbarians. At first their demands were high and
inadmissible, three pounds of gold for each soldier or mariner of
the fleet: the Russian youth adhered to the design of conquest
and glory; but the counsels of moderation were recommended by the
hoary sages. “Be content,” they said, “with the liberal offers of
Caesar; is it not far better to obtain without a combat the
possession of gold, silver, silks, and all the objects of our
desires? Are we sure of victory? Can we conclude a treaty with
the sea? We do not tread on the land; we float on the abyss of
water, and a common death hangs over our heads.” 65 The memory of
these Arctic fleets that seemed to descend from the polar circle
left deep impression of terror on the Imperial city. By the
vulgar of every rank, it was asserted and believed, that an
equestrian statue in the square of Taurus was secretly inscribed
with a prophecy, how the Russians, in the last days, should
become masters of Constantinople. 66 In our own time, a Russian
armament, instead of sailing from the Borysthenes, has
circumnavigated the continent of Europe; and the Turkish capital
has been threatened by a squadron of strong and lofty ships of
war, each of which, with its naval science and thundering
artillery, could have sunk or scattered a hundred canoes, such as
those of their ancestors. Perhaps the present generation may yet
behold the accomplishment of the prediction, of a rare
prediction, of which the style is unambiguous and the date
unquestionable.
65 (return) [ Nestor, apud Leveque, Hist. de Russie, tom. i. p.
87.]
66 (return) [ This brazen statue, which had been brought from
Antioch, and was melted down by the Latins, was supposed to
represent either Joshua or Bellerophon, an odd dilemma. See
Nicetas Choniates, (p. 413, 414,) Codinus, (de Originibus C. P.
p. 24,) and the anonymous writer de Antiquitat. C. P. (Banduri,
Imp. Orient. tom. i. p. 17, 18,) who lived about the year 1100.
They witness the belief of the prophecy the rest is immaterial.]
By land the Russians were less formidable than by sea; and as
they fought for the most part on foot, their irregular legions
must often have been broken and overthrown by the cavalry of the
Scythian hordes. Yet their growing towns, however slight and
imperfect, presented a shelter to the subject, and a barrier to
the enemy: the monarchy of Kiow, till a fatal partition, assumed
the dominion of the North; and the nations from the Volga to the
Danube were subdued or repelled by the arms of Swatoslaus, 67 the
son of Igor, the son of Oleg, the son of Ruric. The vigor of his
mind and body was fortified by the hardships of a military and
savage life. Wrapped in a bear-skin, Swatoslaus usually slept on
the ground, his head reclining on a saddle; his diet was coarse
and frugal, and, like the heroes of Homer, 68 his meat (it was
often horse-flesh) was broiled or roasted on the coals. The
exercise of war gave stability and discipline to his army; and it
may be presumed, that no soldier was permitted to transcend the
luxury of his chief. By an embassy from Nicephorus, the Greek
emperor, he was moved to undertake the conquest of Bulgaria; and
a gift of fifteen hundred pounds of gold was laid at his feet to
defray the expense, or reward the toils, of the expedition. An
army of sixty thousand men was assembled and embarked; they
sailed from the Borysthenes to the Danube; their landing was
effected on the Maesian shore; and, after a sharp encounter, the
swords of the Russians prevailed against the arrows of the
Bulgarian horse. The vanquished king sunk into the grave; his
children were made captive; and his dominions, as far as Mount
Haemus, were subdued or ravaged by the northern invaders. But
instead of relinquishing his prey, and performing his
engagements, the Varangian prince was more disposed to advance
than to retire; and, had his ambition been crowned with success,
the seat of empire in that early period might have been
transferred to a more temperate and fruitful climate. Swatoslaus
enjoyed and acknowledged the advantages of his new position, in
which he could unite, by exchange or rapine, the various
productions of the earth. By an easy navigation he might draw
from Russia the native commodities of furs, wax, and hydromed:
Hungary supplied him with a breed of horses and the spoils of the
West; and Greece abounded with gold, silver, and the foreign
luxuries, which his poverty had affected to disdain. The bands of
Patzinacites, Chozars, and Turks, repaired to the standard of
victory; and the ambassador of Nicephorus betrayed his trust,
assumed the purple, and promised to share with his new allies the
treasures of the Eastern world. From the banks of the Danube the
Russian prince pursued his march as far as Adrianople; a formal
summons to evacuate the Roman province was dismissed with
contempt; and Swatoslaus fiercely replied, that Constantinople
might soon expect the presence of an enemy and a master.
67 (return) [ The life of Swatoslaus, or Sviatoslaf, or
Sphendosthlabus, is extracted from the Russian Chronicles by M.
Levesque, (Hist. de Russie, tom. i. p. 94-107.)]
68 (return) [ This resemblance may be clearly seen in the ninth
book of the Iliad, (205-221,) in the minute detail of the cookery
of Achilles. By such a picture, a modern epic poet would disgrace
his work, and disgust his reader; but the Greek verses are
harmonious—a dead language can seldom appear low or familiar; and
at the distance of two thousand seven hundred years, we are
amused with the primitive manners of antiquity.]
Nicephorus could no longer expel the mischief which he had
introduced; but his throne and wife were inherited by John
Zimisces, 69 who, in a diminutive body, possessed the spirit and
abilities of a hero. The first victory of his lieutenants
deprived the Russians of their foreign allies, twenty thousand of
whom were either destroyed by the sword, or provoked to revolt,
or tempted to desert. Thrace was delivered, but seventy thousand
Barbarians were still in arms; and the legions that had been
recalled from the new conquests of Syria, prepared, with the
return of the spring, to march under the banners of a warlike
prince, who declared himself the friend and avenger of the
injured Bulgaria. The passes of Mount Haemus had been left
unguarded; they were instantly occupied; the Roman vanguard was
formed of the immortals, (a proud imitation of the Persian
style;) the emperor led the main body of ten thousand five
hundred foot; and the rest of his forces followed in slow and
cautious array, with the baggage and military engines. The first
exploit of Zimisces was the reduction of Marcianopolis, or
Peristhlaba, 70 in two days; the trumpets sounded; the walls were
scaled; eight thousand five hundred Russians were put to the
sword; and the sons of the Bulgarian king were rescued from an
ignominious prison, and invested with a nominal diadem. After
these repeated losses, Swatoslaus retired to the strong post of
Drista, on the banks of the Danube, and was pursued by an enemy
who alternately employed the arms of celerity and delay. The
Byzantine galleys ascended the river, the legions completed a
line of circumvallation; and the Russian prince was encompassed,
assaulted, and famished, in the fortifications of the camp and
city. Many deeds of valor were performed; several desperate
sallies were attempted; nor was it till after a siege of
sixty-five days that Swatoslaus yielded to his adverse fortune.
The liberal terms which he obtained announce the prudence of the
victor, who respected the valor, and apprehended the despair, of
an unconquered mind. The great duke of Russia bound himself, by
solemn imprecations, to relinquish all hostile designs; a safe
passage was opened for his return; the liberty of trade and
navigation was restored; a measure of corn was distributed to
each of his soldiers; and the allowance of twenty-two thousand
measures attests the loss and the remnant of the Barbarians.
After a painful voyage, they again reached the mouth of the
Borysthenes; but their provisions were exhausted; the season was
unfavorable; they passed the winter on the ice; and, before they
could prosecute their march, Swatoslaus was surprised and
oppressed by the neighboring tribes with whom the Greeks
entertained a perpetual and useful correspondence. 71 Far
different was the return of Zimisces, who was received in his
capital like Camillus or Marius, the saviors of ancient Rome. But
the merit of the victory was attributed by the pious emperor to
the mother of God; and the image of the Virgin Mary, with the
divine infant in her arms, was placed on a triumphal car, adorned
with the spoils of war, and the ensigns of Bulgarian royalty.
Zimisces made his public entry on horseback; the diadem on his
head, a crown of laurel in his hand; and Constantinople was
astonished to applaud the martial virtues of her sovereign. 72
69 (return) [ This singular epithet is derived from the Armenian
language. As I profess myself equally ignorant of these words, I
may be indulged in the question in the play, “Pray, which of you
is the interpreter?” From the context, they seem to signify
Adolescentulus, (Leo Diacon l. iv. Ms. apud Ducange, Glossar.
Graec. p. 1570.) * Note: Cerbied. the learned Armenian, gives
another derivation. There is a city called Tschemisch-gaizag,
which means a bright or purple sandal, such as women wear in the
East. He was called Tschemisch-ghigh, (for so his name is written
in Armenian, from this city, his native place.) Hase. Note to Leo
Diac. p. 454, in Niebuhr’s Byzant. Hist.—M.]
70 (return) [ In the Sclavonic tongue, the name of Peristhlaba
implied the great or illustrious city, says Anna Comnena,
(Alexiad, l. vii. p. 194.) From its position between Mount Haemus
and the Lower Danube, it appears to fill the ground, or at least
the station, of Marcianopolis. The situation of Durostolus, or
Dristra, is well known and conspicuous, (Comment. Academ.
Petropol. tom. ix. p. 415, 416. D’Anville, Geographie Ancienne,
tom. i. p. 307, 311.)]
71 (return) [ The political management of the Greeks, more
especially with the Patzinacites, is explained in the seven first
chapters, de Administratione Imperii.]
72 (return) [ In the narrative of this war, Leo the Deacon (apud
Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. A.D. 968-973) is more authentic and
circumstantial than Cedrenus (tom. ii. p. 660-683) and Zonaras,
(tom. ii. p. 205-214.) These declaimers have multiplied to
308,000 and 330,000 men, those Russian forces, of which the
contemporary had given a moderate and consistent account.]
Photius of Constantinople, a patriarch, whose ambition was equal
to his curiosity, congratulates himself and the Greek church on
the conversion of the Russians. 73 Those fierce and bloody
Barbarians had been persuaded, by the voice of reason and
religion, to acknowledge Jesus for their God, the Christian
missionaries for their teachers, and the Romans for their friends
and brethren. His triumph was transient and premature. In the
various fortune of their piratical adventures, some Russian
chiefs might allow themselves to be sprinkled with the waters of
baptism; and a Greek bishop, with the name of metropolitan, might
administer the sacraments in the church of Kiow, to a
congregation of slaves and natives. But the seed of the gospel
was sown on a barren soil: many were the apostates, the converts
were few; and the baptism of Olga may be fixed as the aera of
Russian Christianity. 74 A female, perhaps of the basest origin,
who could revenge the death, and assume the sceptre, of her
husband Igor, must have been endowed with those active virtues
which command the fear and obedience of Barbarians. In a moment
of foreign and domestic peace, she sailed from Kiow to
Constantinople; and the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus has
described, with minute diligence, the ceremonial of her reception
in his capital and palace. The steps, the titles, the
salutations, the banquet, the presents, were exquisitely adjusted
to gratify the vanity of the stranger, with due reverence to the
superior majesty of the purple. 75 In the sacrament of baptism,
she received the venerable name of the empress Helena; and her
conversion might be preceded or followed by her uncle, two
interpreters, sixteen damsels of a higher, and eighteen of a
lower rank, twenty-two domestics or ministers, and forty-four
Russian merchants, who composed the retinue of the great princess
Olga. After her return to Kiow and Novogorod, she firmly
persisted in her new religion; but her labors in the propagation
of the gospel were not crowned with success; and both her family
and nation adhered with obstinacy or indifference to the gods of
their fathers. Her son Swatoslaus was apprehensive of the scorn
and ridicule of his companions; and her grandson Wolodomir
devoted his youthful zeal to multiply and decorate the monuments
of ancient worship. The savage deities of the North were still
propitiated with human sacrifices: in the choice of the victim, a
citizen was preferred to a stranger, a Christian to an idolater;
and the father, who defended his son from the sacerdotal knife,
was involved in the same doom by the rage of a fanatic tumult.
Yet the lessons and example of the pious Olga had made a deep,
though secret, impression in the minds of the prince and people:
the Greek missionaries continued to preach, to dispute, and to
baptize: and the ambassadors or merchants of Russia compared the
idolatry of the woods with the elegant superstition of
Constantinople. They had gazed with admiration on the dome of St.
Sophia: the lively pictures of saints and martyrs, the riches of
the altar, the number and vestments of the priests, the pomp and
order of the ceremonies; they were edified by the alternate
succession of devout silence and harmonious song; nor was it
difficult to persuade them, that a choir of angels descended each
day from heaven to join in the devotion of the Christians. 76 But
the conversion of Wolodomir was determined, or hastened, by his
desire of a Roman bride. At the same time, and in the city of
Cherson, the rites of baptism and marriage were celebrated by the
Christian pontiff: the city he restored to the emperor Basil, the
brother of his spouse; but the brazen gates were transported, as
it is said, to Novogorod, and erected before the first church as
a trophy of his victory and faith. 77 At his despotic command,
Peround, the god of thunder, whom he had so long adored, was
dragged through the streets of Kiow; and twelve sturdy Barbarians
battered with clubs the misshapen image, which was indignantly
cast into the waters of the Borysthenes. The edict of Wolodomir
had proclaimed, that all who should refuse the rites of baptism
would be treated as the enemies of God and their prince; and the
rivers were instantly filled with many thousands of obedient
Russians, who acquiesced in the truth and excellence of a
doctrine which had been embraced by the great duke and his
boyars. In the next generation, the relics of Paganism were
finally extirpated; but as the two brothers of Wolodomir had died
without baptism, their bones were taken from the grave, and
sanctified by an irregular and posthumous sacrament.
73 (return) [ Phot. Epistol. ii. No. 35, p. 58, edit. Montacut.
It was unworthy of the learning of the editor to mistake the
Russian nation, for a war-cry of the Bulgarians, nor did it
become the enlightened patriarch to accuse the Sclavonian
idolaters. They were neither Greeks nor Atheists.]
74 (return) [ M. Levesque has extracted, from old chronicles and
modern researches, the most satisfactory account of the religion
of the Slavi, and the conversion of Russia, (Hist. de Russie,
tom. i. p. 35-54, 59, 92, 92, 113-121, 124-129, 148, 149, &c.)]
75 (return) [ See the Ceremoniale Aulae Byzant. tom. ii. c. 15,
p. 343-345: the style of Olga, or Elga. For the chief of
Barbarians the Greeks whimsically borrowed the title of an
Athenian magistrate, with a female termination, which would have
astonished the ear of Demosthenes.]
76 (return) [ See an anonymous fragment published by Banduri,
(Imperium Orientale, tom. ii. p. 112, 113, de Conversione
Russorum.)]
77 (return) [ Cherson, or Corsun, is mentioned by Herberstein
(apud Pagi tom. iv. p. 56) as the place of Wolodomir’s baptism
and marriage; and both the tradition and the gates are still
preserved at Novogorod. Yet an observing traveller transports the
brazen gates from Magdeburgh in Germany, (Coxe’s Travels into
Russia, &c., vol. i. p. 452;) and quotes an inscription, which
seems to justify his opinion. The modern reader must not confound
this old Cherson of the Tauric or Crimaean peninsula, with a new
city of the same name, which has arisen near the mouth of the
Borysthenes, and was lately honored by the memorable interview of
the empress of Russia with the emperor of the West.]
In the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries of the Christian
aera, the reign of the gospel and of the church was extended over
Bulgaria, Hungary, Bohemia, Saxony, Denmark, Norway, Sweden,
Poland, and Russia. 78 The triumphs of apostolic zeal were
repeated in the iron age of Christianity; and the northern and
eastern regions of Europe submitted to a religion, more different
in theory than in practice, from the worship of their native
idols. A laudable ambition excited the monks both of Germany and
Greece, to visit the tents and huts of the Barbarians: poverty,
hardships, and dangers, were the lot of the first missionaries;
their courage was active and patient; their motive pure and
meritorious; their present reward consisted in the testimony of
their conscience and the respect of a grateful people; but the
fruitful harvest of their toils was inherited and enjoyed by the
proud and wealthy prelates of succeeding times. The first
conversions were free and spontaneous: a holy life and an
eloquent tongue were the only arms of the missionaries; but the
domestic fables of the Pagans were silenced by the miracles and
visions of the strangers; and the favorable temper of the chiefs
was accelerated by the dictates of vanity and interest. The
leaders of nations, who were saluted with the titles of kings and
saints, 79 held it lawful and pious to impose the Catholic faith
on their subjects and neighbors; the coast of the Baltic, from
Holstein to the Gulf of Finland, was invaded under the standard
of the cross; and the reign of idolatry was closed by the
conversion of Lithuania in the fourteenth century. Yet truth and
candor must acknowledge, that the conversion of the North
imparted many temporal benefits both to the old and the new
Christians. The rage of war, inherent to the human species, could
not be healed by the evangelic precepts of charity and peace; and
the ambition of Catholic princes has renewed in every age the
calamities of hostile contention. But the admission of the
Barbarians into the pale of civil and ecclesiastical society
delivered Europe from the depredations, by sea and land, of the
Normans, the Hungarians, and the Russians, who learned to spare
their brethren and cultivate their possessions. 80 The
establishment of law and order was promoted by the influence of
the clergy; and the rudiments of art and science were introduced
into the savage countries of the globe. The liberal piety of the
Russian princes engaged in their service the most skilful of the
Greeks, to decorate the cities and instruct the inhabitants: the
dome and the paintings of St. Sophia were rudely copied in the
churches of Kiow and Novogorod: the writings of the fathers were
translated into the Sclavonic idiom; and three hundred noble
youths were invited or compelled to attend the lessons of the
college of Jaroslaus. It should appear that Russia might have
derived an early and rapid improvement from her peculiar
connection with the church and state of Constantinople, which at
that age so justly despised the ignorance of the Latins. But the
Byzantine nation was servile, solitary, and verging to a hasty
decline: after the fall of Kiow, the navigation of the
Borysthenes was forgotten; the great princes of Wolodomir and
Moscow were separated from the sea and Christendom; and the
divided monarchy was oppressed by the ignominy and blindness of
Tartar servitude. 81 The Sclavonic and Scandinavian kingdoms,
which had been converted by the Latin missionaries, were exposed,
it is true, to the spiritual jurisdiction and temporal claims of
the popes; 82 but they were united in language and religious
worship, with each other, and with Rome; they imbibed the free
and generous spirit of the European republic, and gradually
shared the light of knowledge which arose on the western world.
78 (return) [ Consult the Latin text, or English version, of
Mosheim’s excellent History of the Church, under the first head
or section of each of these centuries.]
79 (return) [ In the year 1000, the ambassadors of St. Stephen
received from Pope Silvester the title of King of Hungary, with a
diadem of Greek workmanship. It had been designed for the duke of
Poland: but the Poles, by their own confession, were yet too
barbarous to deserve an angelical and apostolical crown. (Katona,
Hist. Critic Regum Stirpis Arpadianae, tom. i. p. 1-20.)]
80 (return) [ Listen to the exultations of Adam of Bremen, (A.D.
1080,) of which the substance is agreeable to truth: Ecce illa
ferocissima Danorum, &c., natio..... jamdudum novit in Dei
laudibus Alleluia resonare..... Ecce populus ille piraticus .....
suis nunc finibus contentus est. Ecce patria horribilis semper
inaccessa propter cultum idolorum... praedicatores veritatis
ubique certatim admittit, &c., &c., (de Situ Daniae, &c., p. 40,
41, edit. Elzevir; a curious and original prospect of the north
of Europe, and the introduction of Christianity.)]
81 (return) [ The great princes removed in 1156 from Kiow, which
was ruined by the Tartars in 1240. Moscow became the seat of
empire in the xivth century. See the 1st and 2d volumes of
Levesque’s History, and Mr. Coxe’s Travels into the North, tom.
i. p. 241, &c.]
82 (return) [ The ambassadors of St. Stephen had used the
reverential expressions of regnum oblatum, debitam obedientiam,
&c., which were most rigorously interpreted by Gregory VII.; and
the Hungarian Catholics are distressed between the sanctity of
the pope and the independence of the crown, (Katona, Hist.
Critica, tom. i. p. 20-25, tom. ii. p. 304, 346, 360, &c.)]
Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.—Part I.
The Saracens, Franks, And Greeks, In Italy.—First Adventures And
Settlement Of The Normans.—Character And Conquest Of Robert
Guiscard, Duke Of Apulia—Deliverance Of Sicily By His Brother
Roger.—Victories Of Robert Over The Emperors Of The East And
West.—Roger, King Of Sicily, Invades Africa And Greece.—The
Emperor Manuel Comnenus.— Wars Of The Greeks And
Normans.—Extinction Of The Normans.
The three great nations of the world, the Greeks, the Saracens,
and the Franks, encountered each other on the theatre of Italy. 1
The southern provinces, which now compose the kingdom of Naples,
were subject, for the most part, to the Lombard dukes and princes
of Beneventum; 2 so powerful in war, that they checked for a
moment the genius of Charlemagne; so liberal in peace, that they
maintained in their capital an academy of thirty-two philosophers
and grammarians. The division of this flourishing state produced
the rival principalities of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua; and
the thoughtless ambition or revenge of the competitors invited
the Saracens to the ruin of their common inheritance. During a
calamitous period of two hundred years, Italy was exposed to a
repetition of wounds, which the invaders were not capable of
healing by the union and tranquility of a perfect conquest. Their
frequent and almost annual squadrons issued from the port of
Palermo, and were entertained with too much indulgence by the
Christians of Naples: the more formidable fleets were prepared on
the African coast; and even the Arabs of Andalusia were sometimes
tempted to assist or oppose the Moslems of an adverse sect. In
the revolution of human events, a new ambuscade was concealed in
the Caudine Forks, the fields of Cannae were bedewed a second
time with the blood of the Africans, and the sovereign of Rome
again attacked or defended the walls of Capua and Tarentum. A
colony of Saracens had been planted at Bari, which commands the
entrance of the Adriatic Gulf; and their impartial depredations
provoked the resentment, and conciliated the union of the two
emperors. An offensive alliance was concluded between Basil the
Macedonian, the first of his race, and Lewis the great-grandson
of Charlemagne; 3 and each party supplied the deficiencies of his
associate. It would have been imprudent in the Byzantine monarch
to transport his stationary troops of Asia to an Italian
campaign; and the Latin arms would have been insufficient if his
superior navy had not occupied the mouth of the Gulf. The
fortress of Bari was invested by the infantry of the Franks, and
by the cavalry and galleys of the Greeks; and, after a defence of
four years, the Arabian emir submitted to the clemency of Lewis,
who commanded in person the operations of the siege. This
important conquest had been achieved by the concord of the East
and West; but their recent amity was soon imbittered by the
mutual complaints of jealousy and pride. The Greeks assumed as
their own the merit of the conquest and the pomp of the triumph;
extolled the greatness of their powers, and affected to deride
the intemperance and sloth of the handful of Barbarians who
appeared under the banners of the Carlovingian prince. His reply
is expressed with the eloquence of indignation and truth: “We
confess the magnitude of your preparation,” says the
great-grandson of Charlemagne. “Your armies were indeed as
numerous as a cloud of summer locusts, who darken the day, flap
their wings, and, after a short flight, tumble weary and
breathless to the ground. Like them, ye sunk after a feeble
effort; ye were vanquished by your own cowardice; and withdrew
from the scene of action to injure and despoil our Christian
subjects of the Sclavonian coast. We were few in number, and why
were we few? Because, after a tedious expectation of your
arrival, I had dismissed my host, and retained only a chosen band
of warriors to continue the blockade of the city. If they
indulged their hospitable feasts in the face of danger and death,
did these feasts abate the vigor of their enterprise? Is it by
your fasting that the walls of Bari have been overturned? Did not
these valiant Franks, diminished as they were by languor and
fatigue, intercept and vanish the three most powerful emirs of
the Saracens? and did not their defeat precipitate the fall of
the city? Bari is now fallen; Tarentum trembles; Calabria will be
delivered; and, if we command the sea, the Island of Sicily may
be rescued from the hands of the infidels. My brother,”
accelerate (a name most offensive to the vanity of the Greek,)
“accelerate your naval succors, respect your allies, and distrust
your flatterers.” 4
1 (return) [ For the general history of Italy in the ixth and xth
centuries, I may properly refer to the vth, vith, and viith books
of Sigonius de Regno Italiae, (in the second volume of his works,
Milan, 1732;) the Annals of Baronius, with the criticism of Pagi;
the viith and viiith books of the Istoria Civile del Regno di
Napoli of Giannone; the viith and viiith volumes (the octavo
edition) of the Annali d’ Italia of Muratori, and the 2d volume
of the Abrege Chronologique of M. de St. Marc, a work which,
under a superficial title, contains much genuine learning and
industry. But my long-accustomed reader will give me credit for
saying, that I myself have ascended to the fountain head, as
often as such ascent could be either profitable or possible; and
that I have diligently turned over the originals in the first
volumes of Muratori’s great collection of the Scriptores Rerum
Italicarum.]
2 (return) [ Camillo Pellegrino, a learned Capuan of the last
century, has illustrated the history of the duchy of Beneventum,
in his two books Historia Principum Longobardorum, in the
Scriptores of Muratori tom. ii. pars i. p. 221-345, and tom. v. p
159-245.]
3 (return) [ See Constantin. Porphyrogen. de Thematibus, l. ii. c
xi. in Vit Basil. c. 55, p. 181.]
4 (return) [ The oriental epistle of the emperor Lewis II. to the
emperor Basil, a curious record of the age, was first published
by Baronius, (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 871, No. 51-71,) from the
Vatican Ms. of Erchempert, or rather of the anonymous historian
of Salerno.] These lofty hopes were soon extinguished by the
death of Lewis, and the decay of the Carlovingian house; and
whoever might deserve the honor, the Greek emperors, Basil, and
his son Leo, secured the advantage, of the reduction of Bari. The
Italians of Apulia and Calabria were persuaded or compelled to
acknowledge their supremacy, and an ideal line from Mount
Garganus to the Bay of Salerno, leaves the far greater part of
the kingdom of Naples under the dominion of the Eastern empire.
Beyond that line, the dukes or republics of Amalfi 5 and Naples,
who had never forfeited their voluntary allegiance, rejoiced in
the neighborhood of their lawful sovereign; and Amalfi was
enriched by supplying Europe with the produce and manufactures of
Asia. But the Lombard princes of Benevento, Salerno, and Capua, 6
were reluctantly torn from the communion of the Latin world, and
too often violated their oaths of servitude and tribute. The city
of Bari rose to dignity and wealth, as the metropolis of the new
theme or province of Lombardy: the title of patrician, and
afterwards the singular name of Catapan, 7 was assigned to the
supreme governor; and the policy both of the church and state was
modelled in exact subordination to the throne of Constantinople.
As long as the sceptre was disputed by the princes of Italy,
their efforts were feeble and adverse; and the Greeks resisted or
eluded the forces of Germany, which descended from the Alps under
the Imperial standard of the Othos. The first and greatest of
those Saxon princes was compelled to relinquish the siege of
Bari: the second, after the loss of his stoutest bishops and
barons, escaped with honor from the bloody field of Crotona. On
that day the scale of war was turned against the Franks by the
valor of the Saracens. 8 These corsairs had indeed been driven by
the Byzantine fleets from the fortresses and coasts of Italy; but
a sense of interest was more prevalent than superstition or
resentment, and the caliph of Egypt had transported forty
thousand Moslems to the aid of his Christian ally. The successors
of Basil amused themselves with the belief, that the conquest of
Lombardy had been achieved, and was still preserved by the
justice of their laws, the virtues of their ministers, and the
gratitude of a people whom they had rescued from anarchy and
oppression. A series of rebellions might dart a ray of truth into
the palace of Constantinople; and the illusions of flattery were
dispelled by the easy and rapid success of the Norman
adventurers.
5 (return) [ See an excellent Dissertation de Republica
Amalphitana, in the Appendix (p. 1-42) of Henry Brencman’s
Historia Pandectarum, (Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1722, in 4to.)]
6 (return) [ Your master, says Nicephorus, has given aid and
protection prinminibus Capuano et Beneventano, servis meis, quos
oppugnare dispono.... Nova (potius nota) res est quod eorum
patres et avi nostro Imperio tributa dederunt, (Liutprand, in
Legat. p. 484.) Salerno is not mentioned, yet the prince changed
his party about the same time, and Camillo Pellegrino (Script.
Rer. Ital. tom. ii. pars i. p. 285) has nicely discerned this
change in the style of the anonymous Chronicle. On the rational
ground of history and language, Liutprand (p. 480) had asserted
the Latin claim to Apulia and Calabria.]
7 (return) [ See the Greek and Latin Glossaries of Ducange
(catapanus,) and his notes on the Alexias, (p. 275.) Against the
contemporary notion, which derives it from juxta omne, he treats
it as a corruption of the Latin capitaneus. Yet M. de St. Marc
has accurately observed (Abrege Chronologique, tom. ii. p. 924)
that in this age the capitanei were not captains, but only nobles
of the first rank, the great valvassors of Italy.]
8 (return) [ (the Lombards), (Leon. Tactic. c. xv. p. 741.) The
little Chronicle of Beneventum (tom. ii. pars i. p. 280) gives a
far different character of the Greeks during the five years (A.D.
891-896) that Leo was master of the city.]
The revolution of human affairs had produced in Apulia and
Calabria a melancholy contrast between the age of Pythagoras and
the tenth century of the Christian aera. At the former period,
the coast of Great Greece (as it was then styled) was planted
with free and opulent cities: these cities were peopled with
soldiers, artists, and philosophers; and the military strength of
Tarentum; Sybaris, or Crotona, was not inferior to that of a
powerful kingdom. At the second aera, these once flourishing
provinces were clouded with ignorance impoverished by tyranny,
and depopulated by Barbarian war; nor can we severely accuse the
exaggeration of a contemporary, that a fair and ample district
was reduced to the same desolation which had covered the earth
after the general deluge. 9 Among the hostilities of the Arabs,
the Franks, and the Greeks, in the southern Italy, I shall select
two or three anecdotes expressive of their national manners. 1.
It was the amusement of the Saracens to profane, as well as to
pillage, the monasteries and churches. At the siege of Salerno, a
Mussulman chief spread his couch on the communion-table, and on
that altar sacrificed each night the virginity of a Christian
nun. As he wrestled with a reluctant maid, a beam in the roof was
accidentally or dexterously thrown down on his head; and the
death of the lustful emir was imputed to the wrath of Christ,
which was at length awakened to the defence of his faithful
spouse. 10 2. The Saracens besieged the cities of Beneventum and
Capua: after a vain appeal to the successors of Charlemagne, the
Lombards implored the clemency and aid of the Greek emperor. 11 A
fearless citizen dropped from the walls, passed the
intrenchments, accomplished his commission, and fell into the
hands of the Barbarians as he was returning with the welcome
news. They commanded him to assist their enterprise, and deceive
his countrymen, with the assurance that wealth and honors should
be the reward of his falsehood, and that his sincerity would be
punished with immediate death. He affected to yield, but as soon
as he was conducted within hearing of the Christians on the
rampart, “Friends and brethren,” he cried with a loud voice, “be
bold and patient, maintain the city; your sovereign is informed
of your distress, and your deliverers are at hand. I know my
doom, and commit my wife and children to your gratitude.” The
rage of the Arabs confirmed his evidence; and the self-devoted
patriot was transpierced with a hundred spears. He deserves to
live in the memory of the virtuous, but the repetition of the
same story in ancient and modern times, may sprinkle some doubts
on the reality of this generous deed. 12 3. The recital of a
third incident may provoke a smile amidst the horrors of war.
Theobald, marquis of Camerino and Spoleto, 13 supported the
rebels of Beneventum; and his wanton cruelty was not incompatible
in that age with the character of a hero. His captives of the
Greek nation or party were castrated without mercy, and the
outrage was aggravated by a cruel jest, that he wished to present
the emperor with a supply of eunuchs, the most precious ornaments
of the Byzantine court. The garrison of a castle had been
defeated in a sally, and the prisoners were sentenced to the
customary operation. But the sacrifice was disturbed by the
intrusion of a frantic female, who, with bleeding cheeks
dishevelled hair, and importunate clamors, compelled the marquis
to listen to her complaint. “Is it thus,” she cried, “ye
magnanimous heroes, that ye wage war against women, against women
who have never injured ye, and whose only arms are the distaff
and the loom?” Theobald denied the charge, and protested that,
since the Amazons, he had never heard of a female war. “And how,”
she furiously exclaimed, “can you attack us more directly, how
can you wound us in a more vital part, than by robbing our
husbands of what we most dearly cherish, the source of our joys,
and the hope of our posterity? The plunder of our flocks and
herds I have endured without a murmur, but this fatal injury,
this irreparable loss, subdues my patience, and calls aloud on
the justice of heaven and earth.” A general laugh applauded her
eloquence; the savage Franks, inaccessible to pity, were moved by
her ridiculous, yet rational despair; and with the deliverance of
the captives, she obtained the restitution of her effects. As she
returned in triumph to the castle, she was overtaken by a
messenger, to inquire, in the name of Theobald, what punishment
should be inflicted on her husband, were he again taken in arms.
“Should such,” she answered without hesitation, “be his guilt and
misfortune, he has eyes, and a nose, and hands, and feet. These
are his own, and these he may deserve to forfeit by his personal
offences. But let my lord be pleased to spare what his little
handmaid presumes to claim as her peculiar and lawful property.”
14
9 (return) [ Calabriam adeunt, eamque inter se divisam
reperientes funditus depopulati sunt, (or depopularunt,) ita ut
deserta sit velut in diluvio. Such is the text of Herempert, or
Erchempert, according to the two editions of Carraccioli (Rer.
Italic. Script. tom. v. p. 23) and of Camillo Pellegrino, (tom.
ii. pars i. p. 246.) Both were extremely scarce, when they were
reprinted by Muratori.]
10 (return) [ Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 874, No. 2) has drawn
this story from a Ms. of Erchempert, who died at Capua only
fifteen years after the event. But the cardinal was deceived by a
false title, and we can only quote the anonymous Chronicle of
Salerno, (Paralipomena, c. 110,) composed towards the end of the
xth century, and published in the second volume of Muratori’s
Collection. See the Dissertations of Camillo Pellegrino, tom. ii.
pars i. p. 231-281, &c.]
11 (return) [ Constantine Porphyrogenitus (in Vit. Basil. c. 58,
p. 183) is the original author of this story. He places it under
the reigns of Basil and Lewis II.; yet the reduction of
Beneventum by the Greeks is dated A.D. 891, after the decease of
both of those princes.]
12 (return) [ In the year 663, the same tragedy is described by
Paul the Deacon, (de Gestis Langobard. l. v. c. 7, 8, p. 870,
871, edit. Grot.,) under the walls of the same city of
Beneventum. But the actors are different, and the guilt is
imputed to the Greeks themselves, which in the Byzantine edition
is applied to the Saracens. In the late war in Germany, M.
D’Assas, a French officer of the regiment of Auvergne, is said to
have devoted himself in a similar manner. His behavior is the
more heroic, as mere silence was required by the enemy who had
made him prisoner, (Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XV. c. 33, tom. ix.
p. 172.)]
13 (return) [ Theobald, who is styled Heros by Liutprand, was
properly duke of Spoleto and marquis of Camerino, from the year
926 to 935. The title and office of marquis (commander of the
march or frontier) was introduced into Italy by the French
emperors, (Abrege Chronologique, tom. ii. p. 545-732 &c.)]
14 (return) [ Liutprand, Hist. l. iv. c. iv. in the Rerum Italic.
Script. tom. i. pars i. p. 453, 454. Should the licentiousness of
the tale be questioned, I may exclaim, with poor Sterne, that it
is hard if I may not transcribe with caution what a bishop could
write without scruple What if I had translated, ut viris certetis
testiculos amputare, in quibus nostri corporis refocillatio,
&c.?]
The establishment of the Normans in the kingdoms of Naples and
Sicily 15 is an event most romantic in its origin, and in its
consequences most important both to Italy and the Eastern empire.
The broken provinces of the Greeks, Lombards, and Saracens, were
exposed to every invader, and every sea and land were invaded by
the adventurous spirit of the Scandinavian pirates. After a long
indulgence of rapine and slaughter, a fair and ample territory
was accepted, occupied, and named, by the Normans of France: they
renounced their gods for the God of the Christians; 16 and the
dukes of Normandy acknowledged themselves the vassals of the
successors of Charlemagne and Capet. The savage fierceness which
they had brought from the snowy mountains of Norway was refined,
without being corrupted, in a warmer climate; the companions of
Rollo insensibly mingled with the natives; they imbibed the
manners, language, 17 and gallantry, of the French nation; and in
a martial age, the Normans might claim the palm of valor and
glorious achievements. Of the fashionable superstitions, they
embraced with ardor the pilgrimages of Rome, Italy, and the Holy
Land. 171 In this active devotion, the minds and bodies were
invigorated by exercise: danger was the incentive, novelty the
recompense; and the prospect of the world was decorated by
wonder, credulity, and ambitious hope. They confederated for
their mutual defence; and the robbers of the Alps, who had been
allured by the garb of a pilgrim, were often chastised by the arm
of a warrior. In one of these pious visits to the cavern of Mount
Garganus in Apulia, which had been sanctified by the apparition
of the archangel Michael, 18 they were accosted by a stranger in
the Greek habit, but who soon revealed himself as a rebel, a
fugitive, and a mortal foe of the Greek empire. His name was
Melo; a noble citizen of Bari, who, after an unsuccessful revolt,
was compelled to seek new allies and avengers of his country. The
bold appearance of the Normans revived his hopes and solicited
his confidence: they listened to the complaints, and still more
to the promises, of the patriot. The assurance of wealth
demonstrated the justice of his cause; and they viewed, as the
inheritance of the brave, the fruitful land which was oppressed
by effeminate tyrants. On their return to Normandy, they kindled
a spark of enterprise, and a small but intrepid band was freely
associated for the deliverance of Apulia. They passed the Alps by
separate roads, and in the disguise of pilgrims; but in the
neighborhood of Rome they were saluted by the chief of Bari, who
supplied the more indigent with arms and horses, and instantly
led them to the field of action. In the first conflict, their
valor prevailed; but in the second engagement they were
overwhelmed by the numbers and military engines of the Greeks,
and indignantly retreated with their faces to the enemy. 1811 The
unfortunate Melo ended his life a suppliant at the court of
Germany: his Norman followers, excluded from their native and
their promised land, wandered among the hills and valleys of
Italy, and earned their daily subsistence by the sword. To that
formidable sword the princes of Capua, Beneventum, Salerno, and
Naples, alternately appealed in their domestic quarrels; the
superior spirit and discipline of the Normans gave victory to the
side which they espoused; and their cautious policy observed the
balance of power, lest the preponderance of any rival state
should render their aid less important, and their service less
profitable. Their first asylum was a strong camp in the depth of
the marshes of Campania: but they were soon endowed by the
liberality of the duke of Naples with a more plentiful and
permanent seat. Eight miles from his residence, as a bulwark
against Capua, the town of Aversa was built and fortified for
their use; and they enjoyed as their own the corn and fruits, the
meadows and groves, of that fertile district. The report of their
success attracted every year new swarms of pilgrims and soldiers:
the poor were urged by necessity; the rich were excited by hope;
and the brave and active spirits of Normandy were impatient of
ease and ambitious of renown. The independent standard of Aversa
afforded shelter and encouragement to the outlaws of the
province, to every fugitive who had escaped from the injustice or
justice of his superiors; and these foreign associates were
quickly assimilated in manners and language to the Gallic colony.
The first leader of the Normans was Count Rainulf; and, in the
origin of society, preeminence of rank is the reward and the
proof of superior merit. 19 1911
15 (return) [ The original monuments of the Normans in Italy are
collected in the vth volume of Muratori; and among these we may
distinguish the poems of William Appulus (p. 245-278) and the
history of Galfridus (Jeffrey) Malaterra, (p. 537-607.) Both were
natives of France, but they wrote on the spot, in the age of the
first conquerors (before A.D. 1100,) and with the spirit of
freemen. It is needless to recapitulate the compilers and critics
of Italian history, Sigonius, Baronius, Pagi, Giannone, Muratori,
St. Marc, &c., whom I have always consulted, and never copied. *
Note: M. Goutier d’Arc has discovered a translation of the
Chronicle of Aime, monk of Mont Cassino, a contemporary of the
first Norman invaders of Italy. He has made use of it in his
Histoire des Conquetes des Normands, and added a summary of its
contents. This work was quoted by later writers, but was supposed
to have been entirely lost.—M.]
16 (return) [ Some of the first converts were baptized ten or
twelve times, for the sake of the white garment usually given at
this ceremony. At the funeral of Rollo, the gifts to monasteries
for the repose of his soul were accompanied by a sacrifice of one
hundred captives. But in a generation or two, the national change
was pure and general.]
17 (return) [ The Danish language was still spoken by the Normans
of Bayeux on the sea-coast, at a time (A.D. 940) when it was
already forgotten at Rouen, in the court and capital. Quem
(Richard I.) confestim pater Baiocas mittens Botoni militiae suae
principi nutriendum tradidit, ut, ibi lingua eruditus Danica,
suis exterisque hominibus sciret aperte dare responsa, (Wilhelm.
Gemeticensis de Ducibus Normannis, l. iii. c. 8, p. 623, edit.
Camden.) Of the vernacular and favorite idiom of William the
Conqueror, (A.D. 1035,) Selden (Opera, tom. ii. p. 1640-1656) has
given a specimen, obsolete and obscure even to antiquarians and
lawyers.]
171 (return) [ A band of Normans returning from the Holy Land had
rescued the city of Salerno from the attack of a numerous fleet
of Saracens. Gainar, the Lombard prince of Salerno wished to
retain them in his service and take them into his pay. They
answered, “We fight for our religion, and not for money.” Gaimar
entreated them to send some Norman knights to his court. This
seems to have been the origin of the connection of the Normans
with Italy. See Histoire des Conquetes des Normands par Goutier
d’Arc, l. i. c. i., Paris, 1830.—M.]
18 (return) [ See Leandro Alberti (Descrizione d’Italia, p. 250)
and Baronius, (A.D. 493, No. 43.) If the archangel inherited the
temple and oracle, perhaps the cavern, of old Calchas the
soothsayer, (Strab. Geograph l. vi. p. 435, 436,) the Catholics
(on this occasion) have surpassed the Greeks in the elegance of
their superstition.]
1811 (return) [ Nine out of ten perished in the field. Chronique
d’Aime, tom. i. p. 21 quoted by M Goutier d’Arc, p. 42.—M.]
19 (return) [ See the first book of William Appulus. His words
are applicable to every swarm of Barbarians and freebooters:—
Si vicinorum quis pernitiosus ad illos
Confugiebat eum gratanter suscipiebant:
Moribus et lingua quoscumque venire videbant
Informant propria; gens efficiatur ut una.
And elsewhere, of the native adventurers of Normandy:—
Pars parat, exiguae vel opes aderant quia nullae:
Pars, quia de magnis majora subire volebant.]
1911 (return) [ This account is not accurate. After the retreat
of the emperor Henry II. the Normans, united under the command of
Rainulf, had taken possession of Aversa, then a small castle in
the duchy of Naples. They had been masters of it a few years when
Pandulf IV., prince of Capua, found means to take Naples by
surprise. Sergius, master of the soldiers, and head of the
republic, with the principal citizens, abandoned a city in which
he could not behold, without horror, the establishment of a
foreign dominion he retired to Aversa; and when, with the
assistance of the Greeks and that of the citizens faithful to
their country, he had collected money enough to satisfy the
rapacity of the Norman adventurers, he advanced at their head to
attack the garrison of the prince of Capua, defeated it, and
reentered Naples. It was then that he confirmed the Normans in
the possession of Aversa and its territory, which he raised into
a count’s fief, and granted the investiture to Rainulf. Hist. des
Rep. Ital. tom. i. p. 267]
Since the conquest of Sicily by the Arabs, the Grecian emperors
had been anxious to regain that valuable possession; but their
efforts, however strenuous, had been opposed by the distance and
the sea. Their costly armaments, after a gleam of success, added
new pages of calamity and disgrace to the Byzantine annals:
twenty thousand of their best troops were lost in a single
expedition; and the victorious Moslems derided the policy of a
nation which intrusted eunuchs not only with the custody of their
women, but with the command of their men 20 After a reign of two
hundred years, the Saracens were ruined by their divisions. 21
The emir disclaimed the authority of the king of Tunis; the
people rose against the emir; the cities were usurped by the
chiefs; each meaner rebel was independent in his village or
castle; and the weaker of two rival brothers implored the
friendship of the Christians. In every service of danger the
Normans were prompt and useful; and five hundred knights, or
warriors on horseback, were enrolled by Arduin, the agent and
interpreter of the Greeks, under the standard of Maniaces,
governor of Lombardy. Before their landing, the brothers were
reconciled; the union of Sicily and Africa was restored; and the
island was guarded to the water’s edge. The Normans led the van
and the Arabs of Messina felt the valor of an untried foe. In a
second action the emir of Syracuse was unhorsed and transpierced
by the iron arm of William of Hauteville. In a third engagement,
his intrepid companions discomfited the host of sixty thousand
Saracens, and left the Greeks no more than the labor of the
pursuit: a splendid victory; but of which the pen of the
historian may divide the merit with the lance of the Normans. It
is, however, true, that they essentially promoted the success of
Maniaces, who reduced thirteen cities, and the greater part of
Sicily, under the obedience of the emperor. But his military fame
was sullied by ingratitude and tyranny. In the division of the
spoils, the deserts of his brave auxiliaries were forgotten; and
neither their avarice nor their pride could brook this injurious
treatment. They complained by the mouth of their interpreter:
their complaint was disregarded; their interpreter was scourged;
the sufferings were his; the insult and resentment belonged to
those whose sentiments he had delivered. Yet they dissembled till
they had obtained, or stolen, a safe passage to the Italian
continent: their brethren of Aversa sympathized in their
indignation, and the province of Apulia was invaded as the
forfeit of the debt. 22 Above twenty years after the first
emigration, the Normans took the field with no more than seven
hundred horse and five hundred foot; and after the recall of the
Byzantine legions 23 from the Sicilian war, their numbers are
magnified to the amount of threescore thousand men. Their herald
proposed the option of battle or retreat; “of battle,” was the
unanimous cry of the Normans; and one of their stoutest warriors,
with a stroke of his fist, felled to the ground the horse of the
Greek messenger. He was dismissed with a fresh horse; the insult
was concealed from the Imperial troops; but in two successive
battles they were more fatally instructed of the prowess of their
adversaries. In the plains of Cannae, the Asiatics fled before
the adventurers of France; the duke of Lombardy was made
prisoner; the Apulians acquiesced in a new dominion; and the four
places of Bari, Otranto, Brundusium, and Tarentum, were alone
saved in the shipwreck of the Grecian fortunes. From this aera we
may date the establishment of the Norman power, which soon
eclipsed the infant colony of Aversa. Twelve counts 24 were
chosen by the popular suffrage; and age, birth, and merit, were
the motives of their choice. The tributes of their peculiar
districts were appropriated to their use; and each count erected
a fortress in the midst of his lands, and at the head of his
vassals. In the centre of the province, the common habitation of
Melphi was reserved as the metropolis and citadel of the
republic; a house and separate quarter was allotted to each of
the twelve counts: and the national concerns were regulated by
this military senate. The first of his peers, their president and
general, was entitled count of Apulia; and this dignity was
conferred on William of the iron arm, who, in the language of the
age, is styled a lion in battle, a lamb in society, and an angel
in council. 25 The manners of his countrymen are fairly
delineated by a contemporary and national historian. 26 “The
Normans,” says Malaterra, “are a cunning and revengeful people;
eloquence and dissimulation appear to be their hereditary
qualities: they can stoop to flatter; but unless they are curbed
by the restraint of law, they indulge the licentiousness of
nature and passion. Their princes affect the praises of popular
munificence; the people observe the medium, or rather blond the
extremes, of avarice and prodigality; and in their eager thirst
of wealth and dominion, they despise whatever they possess, and
hope whatever they desire. Arms and horses, the luxury of dress,
the exercises of hunting and hawking 27 are the delight of the
Normans; but, on pressing occasions, they can endure with
incredible patience the inclemency of every climate, and the toil
and absence of a military life.” 28
20 (return) [ Liutprand, in Legatione, p. 485. Pagi has
illustrated this event from the Ms. history of the deacon Leo,
(tom. iv. A.D. 965, No. 17-19.)]
21 (return) [ See the Arabian Chronicle of Sicily, apud Muratori,
Script. Rerum Ital. tom. i. p. 253.]
22 (return) [ Jeffrey Malaterra, who relates the Sicilian war,
and the conquest of Apulia, (l. i. c. 7, 8, 9, 19.) The same
events are described by Cedrenus (tom. ii. p. 741-743, 755, 756)
and Zonaras, (tom. ii. p. 237, 238;) and the Greeks are so
hardened to disgrace, that their narratives are impartial
enough.]
23 (return) [ Lydia: consult Constantine de Thematibus, i. 3, 4,
with Delisle’s map.]
24 (return) [ Omnes conveniunt; et bis sex nobiliores,
Quos genus et gravitas morum decorabat et aetas,
Elegere duces. Provectis ad comitatum
His alii parent. Comitatus nomen honoris
Quo donantur erat. Hi totas undique terras
Divisere sibi, ni sors inimica repugnet;
Singula proponunt loca quae contingere sorte
Cuique duci debent, et quaeque tributa locorum.
And after speaking of Melphi, William Appulus adds,
Pro numero comitum bis sex statuere plateas,
Atque domus comitum totidem fabricantur in urbe.
Leo Ostiensis (l. ii. c. 67) enumerates the divisions of the
Apulian cities, which it is needless to repeat.]
25 (return) [ Gulielm. Appulus, l. ii. c 12, according to the
reference of Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii. p.
31,) which I cannot verify in the original. The Apulian praises
indeed his validas vires, probitas animi, and vivida virtus; and
declares that, had he lived, no poet could have equalled his
merits, (l. i. p. 258, l. ii. p. 259.) He was bewailed by the
Normans, quippe qui tanti consilii virum, (says Malaterra, l. i.
c. 12, p. 552,) tam armis strenuum, tam sibi munificum,
affabilem, morigeratum, ulterius se habere diffidebant.]
26 (return) [ The gens astutissima, injuriarum ultrix.... adulari
sciens.... eloquentiis inserviens, of Malaterra, (l. i. c. 3, p.
550,) are expressive of the popular and proverbial character of
the Normans.]
27 (return) [ The hunting and hawking more properly belong to the
descendants of the Norwegian sailors; though they might import
from Norway and Iceland the finest casts of falcons.]
28 (return) [ We may compare this portrait with that of William
of Malmsbury, (de Gestis Anglorum, l. iii. p. 101, 102,) who
appreciates, like a philosophic historian, the vices and virtues
of the Saxons and Normans. England was assuredly a gainer by the
conquest.]
Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.—Part II.
The Normans of Apulia were seated on the verge of the two
empires; and, according to the policy of the hour, they accepted
the investiture of their lands, from the sovereigns of Germany or
Constantinople. But the firmest title of these adventurers was
the right of conquest: they neither loved nor trusted; they were
neither trusted nor beloved: the contempt of the princes was
mixed with fear, and the fear of the natives was mingled with
hatred and resentment. Every object of desire, a horse, a woman,
a garden, tempted and gratified the rapaciousness of the
strangers; 29 and the avarice of their chiefs was only colored by
the more specious names of ambition and glory. The twelve counts
were sometimes joined in the league of injustice: in their
domestic quarrels they disputed the spoils of the people: the
virtues of William were buried in his grave; and Drogo, his
brother and successor, was better qualified to lead the valor,
than to restrain the violence, of his peers. Under the reign of
Constantine Monomachus, the policy, rather than benevolence, of
the Byzantine court, attempted to relieve Italy from this
adherent mischief, more grievous than a flight of Barbarians; 30
and Argyrus, the son of Melo, was invested for this purpose with
the most lofty titles 31 and the most ample commission. The
memory of his father might recommend him to the Normans; and he
had already engaged their voluntary service to quell the revolt
of Maniaces, and to avenge their own and the public injury. It
was the design of Constantine to transplant the warlike colony
from the Italian provinces to the Persian war; and the son of
Melo distributed among the chiefs the gold and manufactures of
Greece, as the first-fruits of the Imperial bounty. But his arts
were baffled by the sense and spirit of the conquerors of Apulia:
his gifts, or at least his proposals, were rejected; and they
unanimously refused to relinquish their possessions and their
hopes for the distant prospect of Asiatic fortune. After the
means of persuasion had failed, Argyrus resolved to compel or to
destroy: the Latin powers were solicited against the common
enemy; and an offensive alliance was formed of the pope and the
two emperors of the East and West. The throne of St. Peter was
occupied by Leo the Ninth, a simple saint, 32 of a temper most
apt to deceive himself and the world, and whose venerable
character would consecrate with the name of piety the measures
least compatible with the practice of religion. His humanity was
affected by the complaints, perhaps the calumnies, of an injured
people: the impious Normans had interrupted the payment of
tithes; and the temporal sword might be lawfully unsheathed
against the sacrilegious robbers, who were deaf to the censures
of the church. As a German of noble birth and royal kindred, Leo
had free access to the court and confidence of the emperor Henry
the Third; and in search of arms and allies, his ardent zeal
transported him from Apulia to Saxony, from the Elbe to the
Tyber. During these hostile preparations, Argyrus indulged
himself in the use of secret and guilty weapons: a crowd of
Normans became the victims of public or private revenge; and the
valiant Drogo was murdered in a church. But his spirit survived
in his brother Humphrey, the third count of Apulia. The assassins
were chastised; and the son of Melo, overthrown and wounded, was
driven from the field, to hide his shame behind the walls of
Bari, and to await the tardy succor of his allies.
29 (return) [ The biographer of St. Leo IX. pours his holy venom
on the Normans. Videns indisciplinatam et alienam gentem
Normannorum, crudeli et inaudita rabie, et plusquam Pagana
impietate, adversus ecclesias Dei insurgere, passim Christianos
trucidare, &c., (Wibert, c. 6.) The honest Apulian (l. ii. p.
259) says calmly of their accuser, Veris commiscens fallacia.]
30 (return) [ The policy of the Greeks, revolt of Maniaces, &c.,
must be collected from Cedrenus, (tom. ii. p. 757, 758,) William
Appulus, (l. i. p 257, 258, l. ii. p. 259,) and the two
Chronicles of Bari, by Lupus Protospata, (Muratori, Script. Ital.
tom. v. p. 42, 43, 44,) and an anonymous writer, (Antiquitat,
Italiae Medii Aevi, tom. i. p 31-35.) This last is a fragment of
some value.]
31 (return) [ Argyrus received, says the anonymous Chronicle of
Bari, Imperial letters, Foederatus et Patriciatus, et Catapani et
Vestatus. In his Annals, Muratori (tom. viii. p. 426) very
properly reads, or interprets, Sevestatus, the title of Sebastos
or Augustus. But in his Antiquities, he was taught by Ducange to
make it a palatine office, master of the wardrobe.]
32 (return) [ A Life of St. Leo IX., deeply tinged with the
passions and prejudices of the age, has been composed by Wibert,
printed at Paris, 1615, in octavo, and since inserted in the
Collections of the Bollandists, of Mabillon, and of Muratori. The
public and private history of that pope is diligently treated by
M. de St. Marc. (Abrege, tom. ii. p. 140-210, and p. 25-95,
second column.)]
But the power of Constantine was distracted by a Turkish war; the
mind of Henry was feeble and irresolute; and the pope, instead of
repassing the Alps with a German army, was accompanied only by a
guard of seven hundred Swabians and some volunteers of Lorraine.
In his long progress from Mantua to Beneventum, a vile and
promiscuous multitude of Italians was enlisted under the holy
standard: 33 the priest and the robber slept in the same tent;
the pikes and crosses were intermingled in the front; and the
martial saint repeated the lessons of his youth in the order of
march, of encampment, and of combat. The Normans of Apulia could
muster in the field no more than three thousand horse, with a
handful of infantry: the defection of the natives intercepted
their provisions and retreat; and their spirit, incapable of
fear, was chilled for a moment by superstitious awe. On the
hostile approach of Leo, they knelt without disgrace or
reluctance before their spiritual father. But the pope was
inexorable; his lofty Germans affected to deride the diminutive
stature of their adversaries; and the Normans were informed that
death or exile was their only alternative. Flight they disdained,
and, as many of them had been three days without tasting food,
they embraced the assurance of a more easy and honorable death.
They climbed the hill of Civitella, descended into the plain, and
charged in three divisions the army of the pope. On the left, and
in the centre, Richard count of Aversa, and Robert the famous
Guiscard, attacked, broke, routed, and pursued the Italian
multitudes, who fought without discipline, and fled without
shame. A harder trial was reserved for the valor of Count
Humphrey, who led the cavalry of the right wing. The Germans 34
have been described as unskillful in the management of the horse
and the lance, but on foot they formed a strong and impenetrable
phalanx; and neither man, nor steed, nor armor, could resist the
weight of their long and two-handed swords. After a severe
conflict, they were encompassed by the squadrons returning from
the pursuit; and died in the ranks with the esteem of their foes,
and the satisfaction of revenge. The gates of Civitella were shut
against the flying pope, and he was overtaken by the pious
conquerors, who kissed his feet, to implore his blessing and the
absolution of their sinful victory. The soldiers beheld in their
enemy and captive the vicar of Christ; and, though we may suppose
the policy of the chiefs, it is probable that they were infected
by the popular superstition. In the calm of retirement, the
well-meaning pope deplored the effusion of Christian blood, which
must be imputed to his account: he felt, that he had been the
author of sin and scandal; and as his undertaking had failed, the
indecency of his military character was universally condemned. 35
With these dispositions, he listened to the offers of a
beneficial treaty; deserted an alliance which he had preached as
the cause of God; and ratified the past and future conquests of
the Normans. By whatever hands they had been usurped, the
provinces of Apulia and Calabria were a part of the donation of
Constantine and the patrimony of St. Peter: the grant and the
acceptance confirmed the mutual claims of the pontiff and the
adventurers. They promised to support each other with spiritual
and temporal arms; a tribute or quitrent of twelve pence was
afterwards stipulated for every ploughland; and since this
memorable transaction, the kingdom of Naples has remained above
seven hundred years a fief of the Holy See. 36
33 (return) [ See the expedition of Leo XI. against the Normans.
See William Appulus (l. ii. p. 259-261) and Jeffrey Malaterra (l.
i. c. 13, 14, 15, p. 253.) They are impartial, as the national is
counterbalanced by the clerical prejudice]
34 (return) [ Teutonici, quia caesaries et forma decoros
Fecerat egregie proceri corporis illos
Corpora derident Normannica quae breviora
Esse videbantur.
The verses of the Apulian are commonly in this strain, though he
heats himself a little in the battle. Two of his similes from
hawking and sorcery are descriptive of manners.]
35 (return) [ Several respectable censures or complaints are
produced by M. de St. Marc, (tom. ii. p. 200-204.) As Peter
Damianus, the oracle of the times, has denied the popes the right
of making war, the hermit (lugens eremi incola) is arraigned by
the cardinal, and Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 1053, No. 10-17)
most strenuously asserts the two swords of St. Peter.]
36 (return) [ The origin and nature of the papal investitures are
ably discussed by Giannone, (Istoria Civile di Napoli, tom. ii.
p. 37-49, 57-66,) as a lawyer and antiquarian. Yet he vainly
strives to reconcile the duties of patriot and Catholic, adopts
an empty distinction of “Ecclesia Romana non dedit, sed accepit,”
and shrinks from an honest but dangerous confession of the
truth.]
The pedigree of Robert of Guiscard 37 is variously deduced from
the peasants and the dukes of Normandy: from the peasants, by the
pride and ignorance of a Grecian princess; 38 from the dukes, by
the ignorance and flattery of the Italian subjects. 39 His
genuine descent may be ascribed to the second or middle order of
private nobility. 40 He sprang from a race of valvassors or
bannerets, of the diocese of Coutances, in the Lower Normandy:
the castle of Hauteville was their honorable seat: his father
Tancred was conspicuous in the court and army of the duke; and
his military service was furnished by ten soldiers or knights.
Two marriages, of a rank not unworthy of his own, made him the
father of twelve sons, who were educated at home by the impartial
tenderness of his second wife. But a narrow patrimony was
insufficient for this numerous and daring progeny; they saw
around the neighborhood the mischiefs of poverty and discord, and
resolved to seek in foreign wars a more glorious inheritance. Two
only remained to perpetuate the race, and cherish their father’s
age: their ten brothers, as they successfully attained the vigor
of manhood, departed from the castle, passed the Alps, and joined
the Apulian camp of the Normans. The elder were prompted by
native spirit; their success encouraged their younger brethren,
and the three first in seniority, William, Drogo, and Humphrey,
deserved to be the chiefs of their nation and the founders of the
new republic. Robert was the eldest of the seven sons of the
second marriage; and even the reluctant praise of his foes has
endowed him with the heroic qualities of a soldier and a
statesman. His lofty stature surpassed the tallest of his army:
his limbs were cast in the true proportion of strength and
gracefulness; and to the decline of life, he maintained the
patient vigor of health and the commanding dignity of his form.
His complexion was ruddy, his shoulders were broad, his hair and
beard were long and of a flaxen color, his eyes sparkled with
fire, and his voice, like that of Achilles, could impress
obedience and terror amidst the tumult of battle. In the ruder
ages of chivalry, such qualifications are not below the notice of
the poet or historians: they may observe that Robert, at once,
and with equal dexterity, could wield in the right hand his
sword, his lance in the left; that in the battle of Civitella he
was thrice unhorsed; and that in the close of that memorable day
he was adjudged to have borne away the prize of valor from the
warriors of the two armies. 41 His boundless ambition was founded
on the consciousness of superior worth: in the pursuit of
greatness, he was never arrested by the scruples of justice, and
seldom moved by the feelings of humanity: though not insensible
of fame, the choice of open or clandestine means was determined
only by his present advantage. The surname of Guiscard 42 was
applied to this master of political wisdom, which is too often
confounded with the practice of dissimulation and deceit; and
Robert is praised by the Apulian poet for excelling the cunning
of Ulysses and the eloquence of Cicero. Yet these arts were
disguised by an appearance of military frankness: in his highest
fortune, he was accessible and courteous to his fellow-soldiers;
and while he indulged the prejudices of his new subjects, he
affected in his dress and manners to maintain the ancient fashion
of his country. He grasped with a rapacious, that he might
distribute with a liberal, hand: his primitive indigence had
taught the habits of frugality; the gain of a merchant was not
below his attention; and his prisoners were tortured with slow
and unfeeling cruelty, to force a discovery of their secret
treasure. According to the Greeks, he departed from Normandy with
only five followers on horseback and thirty on foot; yet even
this allowance appears too bountiful: the sixth son of Tancred of
Hauteville passed the Alps as a pilgrim; and his first military
band was levied among the adventurers of Italy. His brothers and
countrymen had divided the fertile lands of Apulia; but they
guarded their shares with the jealousy of avarice; the aspiring
youth was driven forwards to the mountains of Calabria, and in
his first exploits against the Greeks and the natives, it is not
easy to discriminate the hero from the robber. To surprise a
castle or a convent, to ensnare a wealthy citizen, to plunder the
adjacent villages for necessary food, were the obscure labors
which formed and exercised the powers of his mind and body. The
volunteers of Normandy adhered to his standard; and, under his
command, the peasants of Calabria assumed the name and character
of Normans.
37 (return) [ The birth, character, and first actions of Robert
Guiscard, may be found in Jeffrey Malaterra, (l. i. c. 3, 4, 11,
16, 17, 18, 38, 39, 40,) William Appulus, (l. ii. p. 260-262,)
William Gemeticensis, or of Jumieges, (l. xi. c. 30, p. 663, 664,
edit. Camden,) and Anna Comnena, (Alexiad, l. i. p. 23-27, l. vi.
p. 165, 166,) with the annotations of Ducange, (Not. in Alexiad,
p. 230-232, 320,) who has swept all the French and Latin
Chronicles for supplemental intelligence.]
38 (return) [ (a Greek corruption), and elsewhere, (l. iv. p.
84,). Anna Comnena was born in the purple; yet her father was no
more than a private though illustrious subject, who raised
himself to the empire.]
39 (return) [ Giannone, (tom. ii. p. 2) forgets all his original
authors, and rests this princely descent on the credit of
Inveges, an Augustine monk of Palermo in the last century. They
continue the succession of dukes from Rollo to William II. the
Bastard or Conqueror, whom they hold (communemente si tiene) to
be the father of Tancred of Hauteville; a most strange and
stupendous blunder! The sons of Tancred fought in Apulia, before
William II. was three years old, (A.D. 1037.)]
40 (return) [ The judgment of Ducange is just and moderate: Certe
humilis fuit ac tenuis Roberti familia, si ducalem et regium
spectemus apicem, ad quem postea pervenit; quae honesta tamen et
praeter nobilium vulgarium statum et conditionem illustris habita
est, “quae nec humi reperet nec altum quid tumeret.” (Wilhem.
Malmsbur. de Gestis Anglorum, l. iii. p. 107. Not. ad Alexiad. p.
230.)]
41 (return) [ I shall quote with pleasure some of the best lines
of the Apulian, (l. ii. p. 270.)
Pugnat utraque manu, nec lancea cassa, nec ensis
Cassus erat, quocunque manu deducere vellet.
Ter dejectus equo, ter viribus ipse resumptis
Major in arma redit: stimulos furor ipse ministrat.
Ut Leo cum frendens, &c.
- — — — — — -
Nullus in hoc bello sicuti post bella probatum est
Victor vel victus, tam magnos edidit ictus.]
42 (return) [ The Norman writers and editors most conversant with
their own idiom interpret Guiscard or Wiscard, by Callidus, a
cunning man. The root (wise) is familiar to our ear; and in the
old word Wiseacre, I can discern something of a similar sense and
termination. It is no bad translation of the surname and
character of Robert.]
As the genius of Robert expanded with his fortune, he awakened
the jealousy of his elder brother, by whom, in a transient
quarrel, his life was threatened and his liberty restrained.
After the death of Humphrey, the tender age of his sons excluded
them from the command; they were reduced to a private estate, by
the ambition of their guardian and uncle; and Guiscard was
exalted on a buckler, and saluted count of Apulia and general of
the republic. With an increase of authority and of force, he
resumed the conquest of Calabria, and soon aspired to a rank that
should raise him forever above the heads of his equals.
By some acts of rapine or sacrilege, he had incurred a papal
excommunication; but Nicholas the Second was easily persuaded
that the divisions of friends could terminate only in their
mutual prejudice; that the Normans were the faithful champions of
the Holy See; and it was safer to trust the alliance of a prince
than the caprice of an aristocracy. A synod of one hundred
bishops was convened at Melphi; and the count interrupted an
important enterprise to guard the person and execute the decrees
of the Roman pontiff. His gratitude and policy conferred on
Robert and his posterity the ducal title, 43 with the investiture
of Apulia, Calabria, and all the lands, both in Italy and Sicily,
which his sword could rescue from the schismatic Greeks and the
unbelieving Saracens. 44 This apostolic sanction might justify
his arms; but the obedience of a free and victorious people could
not be transferred without their consent; and Guiscard dissembled
his elevation till the ensuing campaign had been illustrated by
the conquest of Consenza and Reggio. In the hour of triumph, he
assembled his troops, and solicited the Normans to confirm by
their suffrage the judgment of the vicar of Christ: the soldiers
hailed with joyful acclamations their valiant duke; and the
counts, his former equals, pronounced the oath of fidelity with
hollow smiles and secret indignation. After this inauguration,
Robert styled himself, “By the grace of God and St. Peter, duke
of Apulia, Calabria, and hereafter of Sicily;” and it was the
labor of twenty years to deserve and realize these lofty
appellations. Such sardy progress, in a narrow space, may seem
unworthy of the abilities of the chief and the spirit of the
nation; but the Normans were few in number; their resources were
scanty; their service was voluntary and precarious. The bravest
designs of the duke were sometimes opposed by the free voice of
his parliament of barons: the twelve counts of popular election
conspired against his authority; and against their perfidious
uncle, the sons of Humphrey demanded justice and revenge. By his
policy and vigor, Guiscard discovered their plots, suppressed
their rebellions, and punished the guilty with death or exile:
but in these domestic feuds, his years, and the national
strength, were unprofitably consumed. After the defeat of his
foreign enemies, the Greeks, Lombards, and Saracens, their broken
forces retreated to the strong and populous cities of the
sea-coast. They excelled in the arts of fortification and
defence; the Normans were accustomed to serve on horseback in the
field, and their rude attempts could only succeed by the efforts
of persevering courage. The resistance of Salerno was maintained
above eight months; the siege or blockade of Bari lasted near
four years. In these actions the Norman duke was the foremost in
every danger; in every fatigue the last and most patient. As he
pressed the citadel of Salerno, a huge stone from the rampart
shattered one of his military engines; and by a splinter he was
wounded in the breast. Before the gates of Bari, he lodged in a
miserable hut or barrack, composed of dry branches, and thatched
with straw; a perilous station, on all sides open to the
inclemency of the winter and the spears of the enemy. 45
43 (return) [ The acquisition of the ducal title by Robert
Guiscard is a nice and obscure business. With the good advice of
Giannone, Muratori, and St. Marc, I have endeavored to form a
consistent and probable narrative.]
44 (return) [ Baronius (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 1059, No. 69) has
published the original act. He professes to have copied it from
the Liber Censuum, a Vatican Ms. Yet a Liber Censuum of the xiith
century has been printed by Muratori, (Antiquit. Medii Aevi, tom.
v. p. 851-908;) and the names of Vatican and Cardinal awaken the
suspicions of a Protestant, and even of a philosopher.]
45 (return) [ Read the life of Guiscard in the second and third
books of the Apulian, the first and second books of Malaterra.]
The Italian conquests of Robert correspond with the limits of the
present kingdom of Naples; and the countries united by his arms
have not been dissevered by the revolutions of seven hundred
years. 46 The monarchy has been composed of the Greek provinces
of Calabria and Apulia, of the Lombard principality of Salerno,
the republic of Amalphi, and the inland dependencies of the large
and ancient duchy of Beneventum. Three districts only were
exempted from the common law of subjection; the first forever,
the two last till the middle of the succeeding century. The city
and immediate territory of Benevento had been transferred, by
gift or exchange, from the German emperor to the Roman pontiff;
and although this holy land was sometimes invaded, the name of
St. Peter was finally more potent than the sword of the Normans.
Their first colony of Aversa subdued and held the state of Capua;
and her princes were reduced to beg their bread before the palace
of their fathers. The dukes of Naples, the present metropolis,
maintained the popular freedom, under the shadow of the Byzantine
empire. Among the new acquisitions of Guiscard, the science of
Salerno, 47 and the trade of Amalphi, 48 may detain for a moment
the curiosity of the reader. I. Of the learned faculties,
jurisprudence implies the previous establishment of laws and
property; and theology may perhaps be superseded by the full
light of religion and reason. But the savage and the sage must
alike implore the assistance of physic; and, if our diseases are
inflamed by luxury, the mischiefs of blows and wounds would be
more frequent in the ruder ages of society. The treasures of
Grecian medicine had been communicated to the Arabian colonies of
Africa, Spain, and Sicily; and in the intercourse of peace and
war, a spark of knowledge had been kindled and cherished at
Salerno, an illustrious city, in which the men were honest and
the women beautiful. 49 A school, the first that arose in the
darkness of Europe, was consecrated to the healing art: the
conscience of monks and bishops was reconciled to that salutary
and lucrative profession; and a crowd of patients, of the most
eminent rank, and most distant climates, invited or visited the
physicians of Salerno. They were protected by the Norman
conquerors; and Guiscard, though bred in arms, could discern the
merit and value of a philosopher. After a pilgrimage of
thirty-nine years, Constantine, an African Christian, returned
from Bagdad, a master of the language and learning of the
Arabians; and Salerno was enriched by the practice, the lessons,
and the writings of the pupil of Avicenna. The school of medicine
has long slept in the name of a university; but her precepts are
abridged in a string of aphorisms, bound together in the Leonine
verses, or Latin rhymes, of the twelfth century. 50 II. Seven
miles to the west of Salerno, and thirty to the south of Naples,
the obscure town of Amalphi displayed the power and rewards of
industry. The land, however fertile, was of narrow extent; but
the sea was accessible and open: the inhabitants first assumed
the office of supplying the western world with the manufactures
and productions of the East; and this useful traffic was the
source of their opulence and freedom. The government was popular,
under the administration of a duke and the supremacy of the Greek
emperor. Fifty thousand citizens were numbered in the walls of
Amalphi; nor was any city more abundantly provided with gold,
silver, and the objects of precious luxury. The mariners who
swarmed in her port, excelled in the theory and practice of
navigation and astronomy: and the discovery of the compass, which
has opened the globe, is owing to their ingenuity or good
fortune. Their trade was extended to the coasts, or at least to
the commodities, of Africa, Arabia, and India: and their
settlements in Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and
Alexandria, acquired the privileges of independent colonies. 51
After three hundred years of prosperity, Amalphi was oppressed by
the arms of the Normans, and sacked by the jealousy of Pisa; but
the poverty of one thousand 5111 fisherman is yet dignified by
the remains of an arsenal, a cathedral, and the palaces of royal
merchants.
46 (return) [ The conquests of Robert Guiscard and Roger I., the
exemption of Benevento and the xii provinces of the kingdom, are
fairly exposed by Giannone in the second volume of his Istoria
Civile, l. ix. x. xi and l. xvii. p. 460-470. This modern
division was not established before the time of Frederic II.]
47 (return) [ Giannone, (tom. ii. p. 119-127,) Muratori,
(Antiquitat. Medii Aevi, tom. iii. dissert. xliv. p. 935, 936,)
and Tiraboschi, (Istoria della Letteratura Italiana,) have given
an historical account of these physicians; their medical
knowledge and practice must be left to our physicians.]
48 (return) [ At the end of the Historia Pandectarum of Henry
Brenckmann, (Trajecti ad Rhenum, 1722, in 4to.,) the
indefatigable author has inserted two dissertations, de Republica
Amalphitana, and de Amalphi a Pisanis direpta, which are built on
the testimonies of one hundred and forty writers. Yet he has
forgotten two most important passages of the embassy of
Liutprand, (A.D. 939,) which compare the trade and navigation of
Amalphi with that of Venice.]
49 (return) [ Urbs Latii non est hac delitiosior urbe,
Frugibus, arboribus, vinoque redundat; et unde
Non tibi poma, nuces, non pulchra palatia desunt,
Non species muliebris abest probitasque virorum.
—Gulielmus Appulus, l. iii. p. 367]
50 (return) [ Muratori carries their antiquity above the year
(1066) of the death of Edward the Confessor, the rex Anglorum to
whom they are addressed. Nor is this date affected by the
opinion, or rather mistake, of Pasquier (Recherches de la France,
l. vii. c. 2) and Ducange, (Glossar. Latin.) The practice of
rhyming, as early as the viith century, was borrowed from the
languages of the North and East, (Muratori, Antiquitat. tom. iii.
dissert. xl. p. 686-708.)]
51 (return) [ The description of Amalphi, by William the Apulian,
(l. iii. p. 267,) contains much truth and some poetry, and the
third line may be applied to the sailor’s compass:—
Nulla magis locuples argento, vestibus, auro
Partibus innumeris: hac plurimus urbe moratur
Nauta maris Caelique vias aperire peritus.
Huc et Alexandri diversa feruntur ab urbe
Regis, et Antiochi. Gens haec freta plurima transit.
His Arabes, Indi, Siculi nascuntur et Afri.
Haec gens est totum proore nobilitata per orbem,
Et mercando forens, et amans mercata referre.]
5111 (return) [ Amalfi had only one thousand inhabitants at the
commencement of the 18th century, when it was visited by
Brenckmann, (Brenckmann de Rep. Amalph. Diss. i. c. 23.) At
present it has six or eight thousand Hist. des Rep. tom. i. p.
304.—G.]
Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.—Part III.
Roger, the twelfth and last of the sons of Tancred, had been long
detained in Normandy by his own and his father’s age. He accepted
the welcome summons; hastened to the Apulian camp; and deserved
at first the esteem, and afterwards the envy, of his elder
brother. Their valor and ambition were equal; but the youth, the
beauty, the elegant manners, of Roger engaged the disinterested
love of the soldiers and people. So scanty was his allowance for
himself and forty followers, that he descended from conquest to
robbery, and from robbery to domestic theft; and so loose were
the notions of property, that, by his own historian, at his
special command, he is accused of stealing horses from a stable
at Melphi. 52 His spirit emerged from poverty and disgrace: from
these base practices he rose to the merit and glory of a holy
war; and the invasion of Sicily was seconded by the zeal and
policy of his brother Guiscard. After the retreat of the Greeks,
the idolaters, a most audacious reproach of the Catholics, had
retrieved their losses and possessions; but the deliverance of
the island, so vainly undertaken by the forces of the Eastern
empire, was achieved by a small and private band of adventurers.
53 In the first attempt, Roger braved, in an open boat, the real
and fabulous dangers of Scylla and Charybdis; landed with only
sixty soldiers on a hostile shore; drove the Saracens to the
gates of Messina and safely returned with the spoils of the
adjacent country. In the fortress of Trani, his active and
patient courage were equally conspicuous. In his old age he
related with pleasure, that, by the distress of the siege,
himself, and the countess his wife, had been reduced to a single
cloak or mantle, which they wore alternately; that in a sally his
horse had been slain, and he was dragged away by the Saracens;
but that he owed his rescue to his good sword, and had retreated
with his saddle on his back, lest the meanest trophy might be
left in the hands of the miscreants. In the siege of Trani, three
hundred Normans withstood and repulsed the forces of the island.
In the field of Ceramio, fifty thousand horse and foot were
overthrown by one hundred and thirty-six Christian soldiers,
without reckoning St. George, who fought on horseback in the
foremost ranks. The captive banners, with four camels, were
reserved for the successor of St. Peter; and had these barbaric
spoils been exposed, not in the Vatican, but in the Capitol, they
might have revived the memory of the Punic triumphs. These
insufficient numbers of the Normans most probably denote their
knights, the soldiers of honorable and equestrian rank, each of
whom was attended by five or six followers in the field; 54 yet,
with the aid of this interpretation, and after every fair
allowance on the side of valor, arms, and reputation, the
discomfiture of so many myriads will reduce the prudent reader to
the alternative of a miracle or a fable. The Arabs of Sicily
derived a frequent and powerful succor from their countrymen of
Africa: in the siege of Palermo, the Norman cavalry was assisted
by the galleys of Pisa; and, in the hour of action, the envy of
the two brothers was sublimed to a generous and invincible
emulation. After a war of thirty years, 55 Roger, with the title
of great count, obtained the sovereignty of the largest and most
fruitful island of the Mediterranean; and his administration
displays a liberal and enlightened mind, above the limits of his
age and education. The Moslems were maintained in the free
enjoyment of their religion and property: 56 a philosopher and
physician of Mazara, of the race of Mahomet, harangued the
conqueror, and was invited to court; his geography of the seven
climates was translated into Latin; and Roger, after a diligent
perusal, preferred the work of the Arabian to the writings of the
Grecian Ptolemy. 57 A remnant of Christian natives had promoted
the success of the Normans: they were rewarded by the triumph of
the cross. The island was restored to the jurisdiction of the
Roman pontiff; new bishops were planted in the principal cities;
and the clergy was satisfied by a liberal endowment of churches
and monasteries. Yet the Catholic hero asserted the rights of the
civil magistrate. Instead of resigning the investiture of
benefices, he dexterously applied to his own profit the papal
claims: the supremacy of the crown was secured and enlarged, by
the singular bull, which declares the princes of Sicily
hereditary and perpetual legates of the Holy See. 58
52 (return) [ Latrocinio armigerorum suorum in multis
sustentabatur, quod quidem ad ejus ignominiam non dicimus; sed
ipso ita praecipiente adhuc viliora et reprehensibiliora dicturi
sumus ut pluribus patescat, quam laboriose et cum quanta angustia
a profunda paupertate ad summum culmen divitiarum vel honoris
attigerit. Such is the preface of Malaterra (l. i. c. 25) to the
horse-stealing. From the moment (l. i. c. 19) that he has
mentioned his patron Roger, the elder brother sinks into the
second character. Something similar in Velleius Paterculus may be
observed of Augustus and Tiberius.]
53 (return) [ Duo sibi proficua deputans animae scilicet et
corporis si terran: Idolis deditam ad cultum divinum revocaret,
(Galfrid Malaterra, l. ii. c. 1.) The conquest of Sicily is
related in the three last books, and he himself has given an
accurate summary of the chapters, (p. 544-546.)]
54 (return) [ See the word Milites in the Latin Glossary of
Ducange.]
55 (return) [ Of odd particulars, I learn from Malaterra, that
the Arabs had introduced into Sicily the use of camels (l. i. c.
33) and of carrier-pigeons, (c. 42;) and that the bite of the
tarantula provokes a windy disposition, quae per anum inhoneste
crepitando emergit; a symptom most ridiculously felt by the whole
Norman army in their camp near Palermo, (c. 36.) I shall add an
etymology not unworthy of the xith century: Messana is divided
from Messis, the place from whence the harvests of the isle were
sent in tribute to Rome, (l. ii. c. 1.)]
56 (return) [ See the capitulation of Palermo in Malaterra, l.
ii. c. 45, and Giannone, who remarks the general toleration of
the Saracens, (tom ii. p. 72.)]
57 (return) [ John Leo Afer, de Medicis et Philosophus Arabibus,
c. 14, apud Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. tom. xiii. p. 278, 279. This
philosopher is named Esseriph Essachalli, and he died in Africa,
A. H. 516, A.D. 1122. Yet this story bears a strange resemblance
to the Sherif al Edrissi, who presented his book (Geographia
Nubiensis, see preface p. 88, 90, 170) to Roger, king of Sicily,
A. H. 541, A.D. 1153, (D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p.
786. Prideaux’s Life of Mahomet, p. 188. Petit de la Croix, Hist.
de Gengiscan, p. 535, 536. Casiri, Bibliot. Arab. Hispan. tom.
ii. p. 9-13;) and I am afraid of some mistake.]
58 (return) [ Malaterra remarks the foundation of the bishoprics,
(l. iv. c. 7,) and produces the original of the bull, (l. iv. c.
29.) Giannone gives a rational idea of this privilege, and the
tribunal of the monarchy of Sicily, (tom. ii. p. 95-102;) and St.
Marc (Abrege, tom. iii. p. 217-301, 1st column) labors the case
with the diligence of a Sicilian lawyer.]
To Robert Guiscard, the conquest of Sicily was more glorious than
beneficial: the possession of Apulia and Calabria was inadequate
to his ambition; and he resolved to embrace or create the first
occasion of invading, perhaps of subduing, the Roman empire of
the East. 59 From his first wife, the partner of his humble
fortune, he had been divorced under the pretence of
consanguinity; and her son Bohemond was destined to imitate,
rather than to succeed, his illustrious father. The second wife
of Guiscard was the daughter of the princes of Salerno; the
Lombards acquiesced in the lineal succession of their son Roger;
their five daughters were given in honorable nuptials, 60 and one
of them was betrothed, in a tender age, to Constantine, a
beautiful youth, the son and heir of the emperor Michael. 61 But
the throne of Constantinople was shaken by a revolution: the
Imperial family of Ducas was confined to the palace or the
cloister; and Robert deplored, and resented, the disgrace of his
daughter and the expulsion of his ally. A Greek, who styled
himself the father of Constantine, soon appeared at Salerno, and
related the adventures of his fall and flight. That unfortunate
friend was acknowledged by the duke, and adorned with the pomp
and titles of Imperial dignity: in his triumphal progress through
Apulia and Calabria, Michael 62 was saluted with the tears and
acclamations of the people; and Pope Gregory the Seventh exhorted
the bishops to preach, and the Catholics to fight, in the pious
work of his restoration. His conversations with Robert were
frequent and familiar; and their mutual promises were justified
by the valor of the Normans and the treasures of the East. Yet
this Michael, by the confession of the Greeks and Latins, was a
pageant and an impostor; a monk who had fled from his convent, or
a domestic who had served in the palace. The fraud had been
contrived by the subtle Guiscard; and he trusted, that after this
pretender had given a decent color to his arms, he would sink, at
the nod of the conqueror, into his primitive obscurity. But
victory was the only argument that could determine the belief of
the Greeks; and the ardor of the Latins was much inferior to
their credulity: the Norman veterans wished to enjoy the harvest
of their toils, and the unwarlike Italians trembled at the known
and unknown dangers of a transmarine expedition. In his new
levies, Robert exerted the influence of gifts and promises, the
terrors of civil and ecclesiastical authority; and some acts of
violence might justify the reproach, that age and infancy were
pressed without distinction into the service of their unrelenting
prince. After two years’ incessant preparations the land and
naval forces were assembled at Otranto, at the heel, or extreme
promontory, of Italy; and Robert was accompanied by his wife, who
fought by his side, his son Bohemond, and the representative of
the emperor Michael. Thirteen hundred knights 63 of Norman race
or discipline, formed the sinews of the army, which might be
swelled to thirty thousand 64 followers of every denomination.
The men, the horses, the arms, the engines, the wooden towers,
covered with raw hides, were embarked on board one hundred and
fifty vessels: the transports had been built in the ports of
Italy, and the galleys were supplied by the alliance of the
republic of Ragusa.
59 (return) [ In the first expedition of Robert against the
Greeks, I follow Anna Comnena, (the ist, iiid, ivth, and vth
books of the Alexiad,) William Appulus, (l. ivth and vth, p.
270-275,) and Jeffrey Malaterra, (l. iii. c. 13, 14, 24-29, 39.)
Their information is contemporary and authentic, but none of them
were eye-witnesses of the war.]
60 (return) [ One of them was married to Hugh, the son of Azzo,
or Axo, a marquis of Lombardy, rich, powerful, and noble,
(Gulielm. Appul. l. iii. p. 267,) in the xith century, and whose
ancestors in the xth and ixth are explored by the critical
industry of Leibnitz and Muratori. From the two elder sons of the
marquis Azzo are derived the illustrious lines of Brunswick and
Este. See Muratori, Antichita Estense.]
61 (return) [ Anna Comnena, somewhat too wantonly, praises and
bewails that handsome boy, who, after the rupture of his barbaric
nuptials, (l. i. p. 23,) was betrothed as her husband. (p. 27.)
Elsewhere she describes the red and white of his skin, his hawk’s
eyes, &c., l. iii. p. 71.]
62 (return) [ Anna Comnena, l. i. p. 28, 29. Gulielm. Appul. l.
iv p. 271. Galfrid Malaterra, l. iii. c. 13, p. 579, 580.
Malaterra is more cautious in his style; but the Apulian is bold
and positive.—Mentitus se Michaelem Venerata Danais quidam
seductor ad illum. As Gregory VII had believed, Baronius almost
alone, recognizes the emperor Michael. (A.D. No. 44.)]
63 (return) [ Ipse armatae militiae non plusquam MCCC milites
secum habuisse, ab eis qui eidem negotio interfuerunt attestatur,
(Malaterra, l. iii. c. 24, p. 583.) These are the same whom the
Apulian (l. iv. p. 273) styles the equestris gens ducis, equites
de gente ducis.]
64 (return) [ Anna Comnena (Alexias, l. i. p. 37;) and her
account tallies with the number and lading of the ships. Ivit in
Dyrrachium cum xv. millibus hominum, says the Chronicon Breve
Normannicum, (Muratori, Scriptores, tom. v. p. 278.) I have
endeavored to reconcile these reckonings.]
At the mouth of the Adriatic Gulf, the shores of Italy and Epirus
incline towards each other. The space between Brundusium and
Durazzo, the Roman passage, is no more than one hundred miles; 65
at the last station of Otranto, it is contracted to fifty; 66 and
this narrow distance had suggested to Pyrrhus and Pompey the
sublime or extravagant idea of a bridge. Before the general
embarkation, the Norman duke despatched Bohemond with fifteen
galleys to seize or threaten the Isle of Corfu, to survey the
opposite coast, and to secure a harbor in the neighborhood of
Vallona for the landing of the troops. They passed and landed
without perceiving an enemy; and this successful experiment
displayed the neglect and decay of the naval power of the Greeks.
The islands of Epirus and the maritime towns were subdued by the
arms or the name of Robert, who led his fleet and army from Corfu
(I use the modern appellation) to the siege of Durazzo. That
city, the western key of the empire, was guarded by ancient
renown, and recent fortifications, by George Palaeologus, a
patrician, victorious in the Oriental wars, and a numerous
garrison of Albanians and Macedonians, who, in every age, have
maintained the character of soldiers. In the prosecution of his
enterprise, the courage of Guiscard was assailed by every form of
danger and mischance. In the most propitious season of the year,
as his fleet passed along the coast, a storm of wind and snow
unexpectedly arose: the Adriatic was swelled by the raging blast
of the south, and a new shipwreck confirmed the old infamy of the
Acroceraunian rocks. 67 The sails, the masts, and the oars, were
shattered or torn away; the sea and shore were covered with the
fragments of vessels, with arms and dead bodies; and the greatest
part of the provisions were either drowned or damaged. The ducal
galley was laboriously rescued from the waves, and Robert halted
seven days on the adjacent cape, to collect the relics of his
loss, and revive the drooping spirits of his soldiers. The
Normans were no longer the bold and experienced mariners who had
explored the ocean from Greenland to Mount Atlas, and who smiled
at the petty dangers of the Mediterranean. They had wept during
the tempest; they were alarmed by the hostile approach of the
Venetians, who had been solicited by the prayers and promises of
the Byzantine court. The first day’s action was not
disadvantageous to Bohemond, a beardless youth, 68 who led the
naval powers of his father. All night the galleys of the republic
lay on their anchors in the form of a crescent; and the victory
of the second day was decided by the dexterity of their
evolutions, the station of their archers, the weight of their
javelins, and the borrowed aid of the Greek fire. The Apulian and
Ragusian vessels fled to the shore, several were cut from their
cables, and dragged away by the conqueror; and a sally from the
town carried slaughter and dismay to the tents of the Norman
duke. A seasonable relief was poured into Durazzo, and as soon as
the besiegers had lost the command of the sea, the islands and
maritime towns withdrew from the camp the supply of tribute and
provision. That camp was soon afflicted with a pestilential
disease; five hundred knights perished by an inglorious death;
and the list of burials (if all could obtain a decent burial)
amounted to ten thousand persons. Under these calamities, the
mind of Guiscard alone was firm and invincible; and while he
collected new forces from Apulia and Sicily, he battered, or
scaled, or sapped, the walls of Durazzo. But his industry and
valor were encountered by equal valor and more perfect industry.
A movable turret, of a size and capacity to contain five hundred
soldiers, had been rolled forwards to the foot of the rampart:
but the descent of the door or drawbridge was checked by an
enormous beam, and the wooden structure was constantly consumed
by artificial flames.
65 (return) [ The Itinerary of Jerusalem (p. 609, edit.
Wesseling) gives a true and reasonable space of a thousand stadia
or one hundred miles which is strangely doubled by Strabo (l. vi.
p. 433) and Pliny, (Hist. Natur. iii. 16.)]
66 (return) [ Pliny (Hist. Nat. iii. 6, 16) allows quinquaginta
millia for this brevissimus cursus, and agrees with the real
distance from Otranto to La Vallona, or Aulon, (D’Anville,
Analyse de sa Carte des Cotes de la Grece, &c., p. 3-6.)
Hermolaus Barbarus, who substitutes centum. (Harduin, Not. lxvi.
in Plin. l. iii.,) might have been corrected by every Venetian
pilot who had sailed out of the gulf.]
67 (return) [ Infames scopulos Acroceraunia, Horat. carm. i. 3.
The praecipitem Africum decertantem Aquilonibus, et rabiem Noti
and the monstra natantia of the Adriatic, are somewhat enlarged;
but Horace trembling for the life of Virgil, is an interesting
moment in the history of poetry and friendship.]
68 (return) [ (Alexias, l. iv. p. 106.) Yet the Normans shaved,
and the Venetians wore, their beards: they must have derided the
no beard of Bohemond; a harsh interpretation. (Duncanga ad
Alexiad. p. 283.)]
While the Roman empire was attacked by the Turks in the East,
east, and the Normans in the West, the aged successor of Michael
surrendered the sceptre to the hands of Alexius, an illustrious
captain, and the founder of the Comnenian dynasty. The princess
Anne, his daughter and historian, observes, in her affected
style, that even Hercules was unequal to a double combat; and, on
this principle, she approves a hasty peace with the Turks, which
allowed her father to undertake in person the relief of Durazzo.
On his accession, Alexius found the camp without soldiers, and
the treasury without money; yet such were the vigor and activity
of his measures, that in six months he assembled an army of
seventy thousand men, 69 and performed a march of five hundred
miles. His troops were levied in Europe and Asia, from
Peloponnesus to the Black Sea; his majesty was displayed in the
silver arms and rich trappings of the companies of Horse-guards;
and the emperor was attended by a train of nobles and princes,
some of whom, in rapid succession, had been clothed with the
purple, and were indulged by the lenity of the times in a life of
affluence and dignity. Their youthful ardor might animate the
multitude; but their love of pleasure and contempt of
subordination were pregnant with disorder and mischief; and their
importunate clamors for speedy and decisive action disconcerted
the prudence of Alexius, who might have surrounded and starved
the besieging army. The enumeration of provinces recalls a sad
comparison of the past and present limits of the Roman world: the
raw levies were drawn together in haste and terror; and the
garrisons of Anatolia, or Asia Minor, had been purchased by the
evacuation of the cities which were immediately occupied by the
Turks. The strength of the Greek army consisted in the
Varangians, the Scandinavian guards, whose numbers were recently
augmented by a colony of exiles and volunteers from the British
Island of Thule. Under the yoke of the Norman conqueror, the
Danes and English were oppressed and united; a band of
adventurous youths resolved to desert a land of slavery; the sea
was open to their escape; and, in their long pilgrimage, they
visited every coast that afforded any hope of liberty and
revenge. They were entertained in the service of the Greek
emperor; and their first station was in a new city on the Asiatic
shore: but Alexius soon recalled them to the defence of his
person and palace; and bequeathed to his successors the
inheritance of their faith and valor. 70 The name of a Norman
invader revived the memory of their wrongs: they marched with
alacrity against the national foe, and panted to regain in Epirus
the glory which they had lost in the battle of Hastings. The
Varangians were supported by some companies of Franks or Latins;
and the rebels, who had fled to Constantinople from the tyranny
of Guiscard, were eager to signalize their zeal and gratify their
revenge. In this emergency, the emperor had not disdained the
impure aid of the Paulicians or Manichaeans of Thrace and
Bulgaria; and these heretics united with the patience of
martyrdom the spirit and discipline of active valor. 71 The
treaty with the sultan had procured a supply of some thousand
Turks; and the arrows of the Scythian horse were opposed to the
lances of the Norman cavalry. On the report and distant prospect
of these formidable numbers, Robert assembled a council of his
principal officers. “You behold,” said he, “your danger: it is
urgent and inevitable. The hills are covered with arms and
standards; and the emperor of the Greeks is accustomed to wars
and triumphs. Obedience and union are our only safety; and I am
ready to yield the command to a more worthy leader.” The vote and
acclamation even of his secret enemies, assured him, in that
perilous moment, of their esteem and confidence; and the duke
thus continued: “Let us trust in the rewards of victory, and
deprive cowardice of the means of escape. Let us burn our vessels
and our baggage, and give battle on this spot, as if it were the
place of our nativity and our burial.” The resolution was
unanimously approved; and, without confining himself to his
lines, Guiscard awaited in battle-array the nearer approach of
the enemy. His rear was covered by a small river; his right wing
extended to the sea; his left to the hills: nor was he conscious,
perhaps, that on the same ground Caesar and Pompey had formerly
disputed the empire of the world. 72
69 (return) [ Muratori (Annali d’ Italia, tom. ix. p. 136, 137)
observes, that some authors (Petrus Diacon. Chron. Casinen. l.
iii. c. 49) compose the Greek army of 170,000 men, but that the
hundred may be struck off, and that Malaterra reckons only
70,000; a slight inattention. The passage to which he alludes is
in the Chronicle of Lupus Protospata, (Script. Ital. tom. v. p.
45.) Malaterra (l. iv. c. 27) speaks in high, but indefinite
terms of the emperor, cum copiisinnumerabilbus: like the Apulian
poet, (l. iv. p. 272:) —More locustarum montes et pianna
teguntur.]
70 (return) [ See William of Malmsbury, de Gestis Anglorum, l.
ii. p. 92. Alexius fidem Anglorum suspiciens praecipuis
familiaritatibus suis eos applicabat, amorem eorum filio
transcribens. Odericus Vitalis (Hist. Eccles. l. iv. p. 508, l.
vii. p. 641) relates their emigration from England, and their
service in Greece.]
71 (return) [ See the Apulian, (l. i. p. 256.) The character and
the story of these Manichaeans has been the subject of the livth
chapter.]
72 (return) [ See the simple and masterly narrative of Caesar
himself, (Comment. de Bell. Civil. iii. 41-75.) It is a pity that
Quintus Icilius (M. Guichard) did not live to analyze these
operations, as he has done the campaigns of Africa and Spain.]
Against the advice of his wisest captains, Alexius resolved to
risk the event of a general action, and exhorted the garrison of
Durazzo to assist their own deliverance by a well-timed sally
from the town. He marched in two columns to surprise the Normans
before daybreak on two different sides: his light cavalry was
scattered over the plain; the archers formed the second line; and
the Varangians claimed the honors of the vanguard. In the first
onset, the battle-axes of the strangers made a deep and bloody
impression on the army of Guiscard, which was now reduced to
fifteen thousand men. The Lombards and Calabrians ignominiously
turned their backs; they fled towards the river and the sea; but
the bridge had been broken down to check the sally of the
garrison, and the coast was lined with the Venetian galleys, who
played their engines among the disorderly throng. On the verge of
ruin, they were saved by the spirit and conduct of their chiefs.
Gaita, the wife of Robert, is painted by the Greeks as a warlike
Amazon, a second Pallas; less skilful in arts, but not less
terrible in arms, than the Athenian goddess: 73 though wounded by
an arrow, she stood her ground, and strove, by her exhortation
and example, to rally the flying troops. 74 Her female voice was
seconded by the more powerful voice and arm of the Norman duke,
as calm in action as he was magnanimous in council: “Whither,” he
cried aloud, “whither do ye fly? Your enemy is implacable; and
death is less grievous than servitude.” The moment was decisive:
as the Varangians advanced before the line, they discovered the
nakedness of their flanks: the main battle of the duke, of eight
hundred knights, stood firm and entire; they couched their
lances, and the Greeks bore the furious and irresistible shock of
the French cavalry. 75 Alexius was not deficient in the duties of
a soldier or a general; but he no sooner beheld the slaughter of
the Varangians, and the flight of the Turks, than he despised his
subjects, and despaired of his fortune. The princess Anne, who
drops a tear on this melancholy event, is reduced to praise the
strength and swiftness of her father’s horse, and his vigorous
struggle when he was almost overthrown by the stroke of a lance,
which had shivered the Imperial helmet. His desperate valor broke
through a squadron of Franks who opposed his flight; and after
wandering two days and as many nights in the mountains, he found
some repose, of body, though not of mind, in the walls of
Lychnidus. The victorious Robert reproached the tardy and feeble
pursuit which had suffered the escape of so illustrious a prize:
but he consoled his disappointment by the trophies and standards
of the field, the wealth and luxury of the Byzantine camp, and
the glory of defeating an army five times more numerous than his
own. A multitude of Italians had been the victims of their own
fears; but only thirty of his knights were slain in this
memorable day. In the Roman host, the loss of Greeks, Turks, and
English, amounted to five or six thousand: 76 the plain of
Durazzo was stained with noble and royal blood; and the end of
the impostor Michael was more honorable than his life.
73 (return) [ It is very properly translated by the President
Cousin, (Hist. de Constantinople, tom. iv. p. 131, in 12mo.,) qui
combattoit comme une Pallas, quoiqu’elle ne fut pas aussi savante
que celle d’Athenes. The Grecian goddess was composed of two
discordant characters, of Neith, the workwoman of Sais in Egypt,
and of a virgin Amazon of the Tritonian lake in Libya, (Banier,
Mythologie, tom. iv. p. 1-31, in 12mo.)]
74 (return) [ Anna Comnena (l. iv. p. 116) admires, with some
degree of terror, her masculine virtues. They were more familiar
to the Latins and though the Apulian (l. iv. p. 273) mentions her
presence and her wound, he represents her as far less intrepid.
Uxor in hoc bello Roberti forte sagitta
Quadam laesa fuit: quo vulnere territa nullam.
Dum sperabat opem, se poene subegerat hosti.
The last is an unlucky word for a female prisoner.]
75 (return) [ (Anna, l. v. p. 133;) and elsewhere, (p. 140.) The
pedantry of the princess in the choice of classic appellations
encouraged Ducange to apply to his countrymen the characters of
the ancient Gauls.]
76 (return) [ Lupus Protospata (tom. iii. p. 45) says 6000:
William the Apulian more than 5000, (l. iv. p. 273.) Their
modesty is singular and laudable: they might with so little
trouble have slain two or three myriads of schismatics and
infidels!]
It is more than probable that Guiscard was not afflicted by the
loss of a costly pageant, which had merited only the contempt and
derision of the Greeks. After their defeat, they still persevered
in the defence of Durazzo; and a Venetian commander supplied the
place of George Palaeologus, who had been imprudently called away
from his station. The tents of the besiegers were converted into
barracks, to sustain the inclemency of the winter; and in answer
to the defiance of the garrison, Robert insinuated, that his
patience was at least equal to their obstinacy. 77 Perhaps he
already trusted to his secret correspondence with a Venetian
noble, who sold the city for a rich and honorable marriage. At
the dead of night, several rope-ladders were dropped from the
walls; the light Calabrians ascended in silence; and the Greeks
were awakened by the name and trumpets of the conqueror. Yet they
defended the streets three days against an enemy already master
of the rampart; and near seven months elapsed between the first
investment and the final surrender of the place. From Durazzo,
the Norman duke advanced into the heart of Epirus or Albania;
traversed the first mountains of Thessaly; surprised three
hundred English in the city of Castoria; approached Thessalonica;
and made Constantinople tremble. A more pressing duty suspended
the prosecution of his ambitious designs. By shipwreck,
pestilence, and the sword, his army was reduced to a third of the
original numbers; and instead of being recruited from Italy, he
was informed, by plaintive epistles, of the mischiefs and dangers
which had been produced by his absence: the revolt of the cities
and barons of Apulia; the distress of the pope; and the approach
or invasion of Henry king of Germany. Highly presuming that his
person was sufficient for the public safety, he repassed the sea
in a single brigantine, and left the remains of the army under
the command of his son and the Norman counts, exhorting Bohemond
to respect the freedom of his peers, and the counts to obey the
authority of their leader. The son of Guiscard trod in the
footsteps of his father; and the two destroyers are compared, by
the Greeks, to the caterpillar and the locust, the last of whom
devours whatever has escaped the teeth of the former. 78 After
winning two battles against the emperor, he descended into the
plain of Thessaly, and besieged Larissa, the fabulous realm of
Achilles, 79 which contained the treasure and magazines of the
Byzantine camp. Yet a just praise must not be refused to the
fortitude and prudence of Alexius, who bravely struggled with the
calamities of the times. In the poverty of the state, he presumed
to borrow the superfluous ornaments of the churches: the
desertion of the Manichaeans was supplied by some tribes of
Moldavia: a reenforcement of seven thousand Turks replaced and
revenged the loss of their brethren; and the Greek soldiers were
exercised to ride, to draw the bow, and to the daily practice of
ambuscades and evolutions. Alexius had been taught by experience,
that the formidable cavalry of the Franks on foot was unfit for
action, and almost incapable of motion; 80 his archers were
directed to aim their arrows at the horse rather than the man;
and a variety of spikes and snares were scattered over the ground
on which he might expect an attack. In the neighborhood of
Larissa the events of war were protracted and balanced. The
courage of Bohemond was always conspicuous, and often successful;
but his camp was pillaged by a stratagem of the Greeks; the city
was impregnable; and the venal or discontented counts deserted
his standard, betrayed their trusts, and enlisted in the service
of the emperor. Alexius returned to Constantinople with the
advantage, rather than the honor, of victory. After evacuating
the conquests which he could no longer defend, the son of
Guiscard embarked for Italy, and was embraced by a father who
esteemed his merit, and sympathized in his misfortune.
77 (return) [ The Romans had changed the inauspicious name of
Epidamnus to Dyrrachium, (Plin. iii. 26;) and the vulgar
corruption of Duracium (see Malaterra) bore some affinity to
hardness. One of Robert’s names was Durand, a durando: poor wit!
(Alberic. Monach. in Chron. apud Muratori, Annali d’Italia, tom.
ix. p. 137.)]
78 (return) [ (Anna, l. i. p. 35.) By these similes, so different
from those of Homer she wishes to inspire contempt as well as
horror for the little noxious animal, a conqueror. Most
unfortunately, the common sense, or common nonsense, of mankind,
resists her laudable design.]
79 (return) [ Prodiit hac auctor Trojanae cladis Achilles. The
supposition of the Apulian (l. v. p. 275) may be excused by the
more classic poetry of Virgil, (Aeneid. ii. 197,) Larissaeus
Achilles, but it is not justified by the geography of Homer.]
80 (return) [ The items which encumbered the knights on foot,
have been ignorantly translated spurs, (Anna Comnena, Alexias, l.
v. p. 140.) Ducange has explained the true sense by a ridiculous
and inconvenient fashion, which lasted from the xith to the xvth
century. These peaks, in the form of a scorpion, were sometimes
two feet and fastened to the knee with a silver chain.]
Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.—Part IV.
Of the Latin princes, the allies of Alexius and enemies of
Robert, the most prompt and powerful was Henry the Third or
Fourth, king of Germany and Italy, and future emperor of the
West. The epistle of the Greek monarch 81 to his brother is
filled with the warmest professions of friendship, and the most
lively desire of strengthening their alliance by every public and
private tie. He congratulates Henry on his success in a just and
pious war; and complains that the prosperity of his own empire is
disturbed by the audacious enterprises of the Norman Robert. The
lists of his presents expresses the manners of the age—a radiated
crown of gold, a cross set with pearls to hang on the breast, a
case of relics, with the names and titles of the saints, a vase
of crystal, a vase of sardonyx, some balm, most probably of
Mecca, and one hundred pieces of purple. To these he added a more
solid present, of one hundred and forty-four thousand Byzantines
of gold, with a further assurance of two hundred and sixteen
thousand, so soon as Henry should have entered in arms the
Apulian territories, and confirmed by an oath the league against
the common enemy. The German, 82 who was already in Lombardy at
the head of an army and a faction, accepted these liberal offers,
and marched towards the south: his speed was checked by the sound
of the battle of Durazzo; but the influence of his arms, or name,
in the hasty return of Robert, was a full equivalent for the
Grecian bribe. Henry was the severe adversary of the Normans, the
allies and vassals of Gregory the Seventh, his implacable foe.
The long quarrel of the throne and mitre had been recently
kindled by the zeal and ambition of that haughty priest: 83 the
king and the pope had degraded each other; and each had seated a
rival on the temporal or spiritual throne of his antagonist.
After the defeat and death of his Swabian rebel, Henry descended
into Italy, to assume the Imperial crown, and to drive from the
Vatican the tyrant of the church. 84 But the Roman people adhered
to the cause of Gregory: their resolution was fortified by
supplies of men and money from Apulia; and the city was thrice
ineffectually besieged by the king of Germany. In the fourth year
he corrupted, as it is said, with Byzantine gold, the nobles of
Rome, whose estates and castles had been ruined by the war. The
gates, the bridges, and fifty hostages, were delivered into his
hands: the anti-pope, Clement the Third, was consecrated in the
Lateran: the grateful pontiff crowned his protector in the
Vatican; and the emperor Henry fixed his residence in the
Capitol, as the lawful successor of Augustus and Charlemagne. The
ruins of the Septizonium were still defended by the nephew of
Gregory: the pope himself was invested in the castle of St.
Angelo; and his last hope was in the courage and fidelity of his
Norman vassal. Their friendship had been interrupted by some
reciprocal injuries and complaints; but, on this pressing
occasion, Guiscard was urged by the obligation of his oath, by
his interest, more potent than oaths, by the love of fame, and
his enmity to the two emperors. Unfurling the holy banner, he
resolved to fly to the relief of the prince of the apostles: the
most numerous of his armies, six thousand horse, and thirty
thousand foot, was instantly assembled; and his march from
Salerno to Rome was animated by the public applause and the
promise of the divine favor. Henry, invincible in sixty-six
battles, trembled at his approach; recollected some indispensable
affairs that required his presence in Lombardy; exhorted the
Romans to persevere in their allegiance; and hastily retreated
three days before the entrance of the Normans. In less than three
years, the son of Tancred of Hauteville enjoyed the glory of
delivering the pope, and of compelling the two emperors, of the
East and West, to fly before his victorious arms. 85 But the
triumph of Robert was clouded by the calamities of Rome. By the
aid of the friends of Gregory, the walls had been perforated or
scaled; but the Imperial faction was still powerful and active;
on the third day, the people rose in a furious tumult; and a
hasty word of the conqueror, in his defence or revenge, was the
signal of fire and pillage. 86 The Saracens of Sicily, the
subjects of Roger, and auxiliaries of his brother, embraced this
fair occasion of rifling and profaning the holy city of the
Christians: many thousands of the citizens, in the sight, and by
the allies, of their spiritual father were exposed to violation,
captivity, or death; and a spacious quarter of the city, from the
Lateran to the Coliseum, was consumed by the flames, and devoted
to perpetual solitude. 87 From a city, where he was now hated,
and might be no longer feared, Gregory retired to end his days in
the palace of Salerno. The artful pontiff might flatter the
vanity of Guiscard with the hope of a Roman or Imperial crown;
but this dangerous measure, which would have inflamed the
ambition of the Norman, must forever have alienated the most
faithful princes of Germany.
81 (return) [ The epistle itself (Alexias, l. iii. p. 93, 94, 95)
well deserves to be read. There is one expression which Ducange
does not understand. I have endeavored to grope out a tolerable
meaning: The first word is a golden crown; the second is
explained by Simon Portius, (in Lexico Graeco-Barbar.,) by a
flash of lightning.]
82 (return) [ For these general events I must refer to the
general historians Sigonius, Baronius, Muratori, Mosheim, St.
Marc, &c.]
83 (return) [ The lives of Gregory VII. are either legends or
invectives, (St. Marc, Abrege, tom. iii. p. 235, &c.;) and his
miraculous or magical performances are alike incredible to a
modern reader. He will, as usual, find some instruction in Le
Clerc, (Vie de Hildebrand, Bibliot, ancienne et moderne, tom.
viii.,) and much amusement in Bayle, (Dictionnaire Critique,
Gregoire VII.) That pope was undoubtedly a great man, a second
Athanasius, in a more fortunate age of the church. May I presume
to add, that the portrait of Athanasius is one of the passages of
my history (vol. ii. p. 332, &c.) with which I am the least
dissatisfied? * Note: There is a fair life of Gregory VII. by
Voigt, (Weimar. 1815,) which has been translated into French. M.
Villemain, it is understood, has devoted much time to the study
of this remarkable character, to whom his eloquence may do
justice. There is much valuable information on the subject in the
accurate work of Stenzel, Geschichte Deutschlands unter den
Frankischen Kaisern—the History of Germany under the Emperors of
the Franconian Race.—M.]
84 (return) [ Anna, with the rancor of a Greek schismatic, calls
him (l. i. p. 32,) a pope, or priest, worthy to be spit upon and
accuses him of scourging, shaving, and perhaps of castrating the
ambassadors of Henry, (p. 31, 33.) But this outrage is improbable
and doubtful, (see the sensible preface of Cousin.)]
85 (return) [
Sic uno tempore victi
Sunt terrae Domini duo: rex Alemannicus iste,
Imperii rector Romani maximus ille.
Alter ad arma ruens armis superatur; et alter
Nominis auditi sola formidine cessit.
It is singular enough, that the Apulian, a Latin, should
distinguish the Greek as the ruler of the Roman empire, (l. iv.
p. 274.)]
86 (return) [ The narrative of Malaterra (l. iii. c. 37, p. 587,
588) is authentic, circumstantial, and fair. Dux ignem exclamans
urbe incensa, &c. The Apulian softens the mischief, (inde
quibusdam aedibus exustis,) which is again exaggerated in some
partial chronicles, (Muratori, Annali, tom. ix. p. 147.)]
87 (return) [ After mentioning this devastation, the Jesuit
Donatus (de Roma veteri et nova, l. iv. c. 8, p. 489) prettily
adds, Duraret hodieque in Coelio monte, interque ipsum et
capitolium, miserabilis facies prostrates urbis, nisi in hortorum
vinetorumque amoenitatem Roma resurrexisset, ut perpetua
viriditate contegeret vulnera et ruinas suas.]
The deliverer and scourge of Rome might have indulged himself in
a season of repose; but in the same year of the flight of the
German emperor, the indefatigable Robert resumed the design of
his eastern conquests. The zeal or gratitude of Gregory had
promised to his valor the kingdoms of Greece and Asia; 88 his
troops were assembled in arms, flushed with success, and eager
for action. Their numbers, in the language of Homer, are compared
by Anna to a swarm of bees; 89 yet the utmost and moderate limits
of the powers of Guiscard have been already defined; they were
contained on this second occasion in one hundred and twenty
vessels; and as the season was far advanced, the harbor of
Brundusium 90 was preferred to the open road of Otranto. Alexius,
apprehensive of a second attack, had assiduously labored to
restore the naval forces of the empire; and obtained from the
republic of Venice an important succor of thirty-six transports,
fourteen galleys, and nine galiots or ships of extra-ordinary
strength and magnitude. Their services were liberally paid by the
license or monopoly of trade, a profitable gift of many shops and
houses in the port of Constantinople, and a tribute to St. Mark,
the more acceptable, as it was the produce of a tax on their
rivals at Amalphi. By the union of the Greeks and Venetians, the
Adriatic was covered with a hostile fleet; but their own neglect,
or the vigilance of Robert, the change of a wind, or the shelter
of a mist, opened a free passage; and the Norman troops were
safely disembarked on the coast of Epirus. With twenty strong and
well-appointed galleys, their intrepid duke immediately sought
the enemy, and though more accustomed to fight on horseback, he
trusted his own life, and the lives of his brother and two sons,
to the event of a naval combat. The dominion of the sea was
disputed in three engagements, in sight of the Isle of Corfu: in
the two former, the skill and numbers of the allies were
superior; but in the third, the Normans obtained a final and
complete victory. 91 The light brigantines of the Greeks were
scattered in ignominious flight: the nine castles of the
Venetians maintained a more obstinate conflict; seven were sunk,
two were taken; two thousand five hundred captives implored in
vain the mercy of the victor; and the daughter of Alexius
deplores the loss of thirteen thousand of his subjects or allies.
The want of experience had been supplied by the genius of
Guiscard; and each evening, when he had sounded a retreat, he
calmly explored the causes of his repulse, and invented new
methods how to remedy his own defects, and to baffle the
advantages of the enemy. The winter season suspended his
progress: with the return of spring he again aspired to the
conquest of Constantinople; but, instead of traversing the hills
of Epirus, he turned his arms against Greece and the islands,
where the spoils would repay the labor, and where the land and
sea forces might pursue their joint operations with vigor and
effect. But, in the Isle of Cephalonia, his projects were fatally
blasted by an epidemical disease: Robert himself, in the
seventieth year of his age, expired in his tent; and a suspicion
of poison was imputed, by public rumor, to his wife, or to the
Greek emperor. 92 This premature death might allow a boundless
scope for the imagination of his future exploits; and the event
sufficiently declares, that the Norman greatness was founded on
his life. 93 Without the appearance of an enemy, a victorious
army dispersed or retreated in disorder and consternation; and
Alexius, who had trembled for his empire, rejoiced in his
deliverance. The galley which transported the remains of Guiscard
was ship-wrecked on the Italian shore; but the duke’s body was
recovered from the sea, and deposited in the sepulchre of
Venusia, 94 a place more illustrious for the birth of Horace 95
than for the burial of the Norman heroes. Roger, his second son
and successor, immediately sunk to the humble station of a duke
of Apulia: the esteem or partiality of his father left the
valiant Bohemond to the inheritance of his sword.
The national tranquillity was disturbed by his claims, till the
first crusade against the infidels of the East opened a more
splendid field of glory and conquest. 96
88 (return) [ The royalty of Robert, either promised or bestowed
by the pope, (Anna, l. i. p. 32,) is sufficiently confirmed by
the Apulian, (l. iv. p. 270.) —Romani regni sibi promisisse
coronam Papa ferebatur. Nor can I understand why Gretser, and the
other papal advocates, should be displeased with this new
instance of apostolic jurisdiction.]
89 (return) [ See Homer, Iliad, B. (I hate this pedantic mode of
quotation by letters of the Greek alphabet) 87, &c. His bees are
the image of a disorderly crowd: their discipline and public
works seem to be the ideas of a later age, (Virgil. Aeneid. l.
i.)]
90 (return) [ Gulielm. Appulus, l. v. p. 276.) The admirable port
of Brundusium was double; the outward harbor was a gulf covered
by an island, and narrowing by degrees, till it communicated by a
small gullet with the inner harbor, which embraced the city on
both sides. Caesar and nature have labored for its ruin; and
against such agents what are the feeble efforts of the Neapolitan
government? (Swinburne’s Travels in the Two Sicilies, vol. i. p.
384-390.]
91 (return) [ William of Apulia (l. v. p. 276) describes the
victory of the Normans, and forgets the two previous defeats,
which are diligently recorded by Anna Comnena, (l. vi. p. 159,
160, 161.) In her turn, she invents or magnifies a fourth action,
to give the Venetians revenge and rewards. Their own feelings
were far different, since they deposed their doge, propter
excidium stoli, (Dandulus in Chron in Muratori, Script. Rerum
Italicarum, tom. xii. p. 249.)]
92 (return) [ The most authentic writers, William of Apulia. (l.
v. 277,) Jeffrey Malaterra, (l. iii. c. 41, p. 589,) and Romuald
of Salerno, (Chron. in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. vii.,)
are ignorant of this crime, so apparent to our countrymen William
of Malmsbury (l. iii. p. 107) and Roger de Hoveden, (p. 710, in
Script. post Bedam) and the latter can tell, how the just Alexius
married, crowned, and burnt alive, his female accomplice. The
English historian is indeed so blind, that he ranks Robert
Guiscard, or Wiscard, among the knights of Henry I, who ascended
the throne fifteen years after the duke of Apulia’s death.]
93 (return) [ The joyful Anna Comnena scatters some flowers over
the grave of an enemy, (Alexiad, l. v. p. 162-166;) and his best
praise is the esteem and envy of William the Conqueror, the
sovereign of his family Graecia (says Malaterra) hostibus
recedentibus libera laeta quievit: Apulia tota sive Calabria
turbatur.]
94 (return) [ Urbs Venusina nitet tantis decorata sepulchris, is
one of the last lines of the Apulian’s poems, (l. v. p. 278.)
William of Malmsbury (l. iii. p. 107) inserts an epitaph on
Guiscard, which is not worth transcribing.]
95 (return) [ Yet Horace had few obligations to Venusia; he was
carried to Rome in his childhood, (Serm. i. 6;) and his repeated
allusions to the doubtful limit of Apulia and Lucania (Carm. iii.
4, Serm. ii. I) are unworthy of his age and genius.]
96 (return) [ See Giannone (tom. ii. p. 88-93) and the historians
of the fire crusade.]
Of human life, the most glorious or humble prospects are alike
and soon bounded by the sepulchre. The male line of Robert
Guiscard was extinguished, both in Apulia and at Antioch, in the
second generation; but his younger brother became the father of a
line of kings; and the son of the great count was endowed with
the name, the conquests, and the spirit, of the first Roger. 97
The heir of that Norman adventurer was born in Sicily; and, at
the age of only four years, he succeeded to the sovereignty of
the island, a lot which reason might envy, could she indulge for
a moment the visionary, though virtuous wish of dominion. Had
Roger been content with his fruitful patrimony, a happy and
grateful people might have blessed their benefactor; and if a
wise administration could have restored the prosperous times of
the Greek colonies, 98 the opulence and power of Sicily alone
might have equalled the widest scope that could be acquired and
desolated by the sword of war. But the ambition of the great
count was ignorant of these noble pursuits; it was gratified by
the vulgar means of violence and artifice. He sought to obtain
the undivided possession of Palermo, of which one moiety had been
ceded to the elder branch; struggled to enlarge his Calabrian
limits beyond the measure of former treaties; and impatiently
watched the declining health of his cousin William of Apulia, the
grandson of Robert. On the first intelligence of his premature
death, Roger sailed from Palermo with seven galleys, cast anchor
in the Bay of Salerno, received, after ten days’ negotiation, an
oath of fidelity from the Norman capital, commanded the
submission of the barons, and extorted a legal investiture from
the reluctant popes, who could not long endure either the
friendship or enmity of a powerful vassal. The sacred spot of
Benevento was respectfully spared, as the patrimony of St. Peter;
but the reduction of Capua and Naples completed the design of his
uncle Guiscard; and the sole inheritance of the Norman conquests
was possessed by the victorious Roger. A conscious superiority of
power and merit prompted him to disdain the titles of duke and of
count; and the Isle of Sicily, with a third perhaps of the
continent of Italy, might form the basis of a kingdom 99 which
would only yield to the monarchies of France and England. The
chiefs of the nation who attended his coronation at Palermo might
doubtless pronounce under what name he should reign over them;
but the example of a Greek tyrant or a Saracen emir was
insufficient to justify his regal character; and the nine kings
of the Latin world 100 might disclaim their new associate, unless
he were consecrated by the authority of the supreme pontiff. The
pride of Anacletus was pleased to confer a title, which the pride
of the Norman had stooped to solicit; 101 but his own legitimacy
was attacked by the adverse election of Innocent the Second; and
while Anacletus sat in the Vatican, the successful fugitive was
acknowledged by the nations of Europe. The infant monarchy of
Roger was shaken, and almost overthrown, by the unlucky choice of
an ecclesiastical patron; and the sword of Lothaire the Second of
Germany, the excommunications of Innocent, the fleets of Pisa,
and the zeal of St. Bernard, were united for the ruin of the
Sicilian robber. After a gallant resistance, the Norman prince
was driven from the continent of Italy: a new duke of Apulia was
invested by the pope and the emperor, each of whom held one end
of the gonfanon, or flagstaff, as a token that they asserted
their right, and suspended their quarrel. But such jealous
friendship was of short and precarious duration: the German
armies soon vanished in disease and desertion: 102 the Apulian
duke, with all his adherents, was exterminated by a conqueror who
seldom forgave either the dead or the living; like his
predecessor Leo the Ninth, the feeble though haughty pontiff
became the captive and friend of the Normans; and their
reconciliation was celebrated by the eloquence of Bernard, who
now revered the title and virtues of the king of Sicily.
97 (return) [ The reign of Roger, and the Norman kings of Sicily,
fills books of the Istoria Civile of Giannone, (tom. ii. l.
xi.-xiv. p. 136-340,) and is spread over the ixth and xth volumes
of the Italian Annals of Muratori. In the Bibliotheque Italique
(tom. i. p. 175-122,) I find a useful abstract of Capacelatro, a
modern Neapolitan, who has composed, in two volumes, the history
of his country from Roger Frederic II. inclusive.]
98 (return) [ According to the testimony of Philistus and
Diodorus, the tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse could maintain a
standing force of 10,000 horse, 100,000 foot, and 400 galleys.
Compare Hume, (Essays, vol. i. p. 268, 435,) and his adversary
Wallace, (Numbers of Mankind, p. 306, 307.) The ruins of
Agrigentum are the theme of every traveller, D’Orville, Reidesel,
Swinburne, &c.]
99 (return) [ A contemporary historian of the acts of Roger from
the year 1127 to 1135, founds his title on merit and power, the
consent of the barons, and the ancient royalty of Sicily and
Palermo, without introducing Pope Anacletus, (Alexand. Coenobii
Telesini Abbatis de Rebus gestis Regis Rogerii, lib. iv. in
Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital. tom. v. p. 607-645)]
100 (return) [ The kings of France, England, Scotland, Castille,
Arragon, Navarre, Sweden, Denmark, and Hungary. The three first
were more ancient than Charlemagne; the three next were created
by their sword; the three last by their baptism; and of these the
king of Hungary alone was honored or debased by a papal crown.]
101 (return) [ Fazellus, and a crowd of Sicilians, had imagined a
more early and independent coronation, (A.D. 1130, May 1,) which
Giannone unwillingly rejects, (tom. ii. p. 137-144.) This fiction
is disproved by the silence of contemporaries; nor can it be
restored by a spurious character of Messina, (Muratori, Annali d’
Italia, tom. ix. p. 340. Pagi, Critica, tom. iv. p. 467, 468.)]
102 (return) [ Roger corrupted the second person of Lothaire’s
army, who sounded, or rather cried, a retreat; for the Germans
(says Cinnamus, l. iii. c. i. p. 51) are ignorant of the use of
trumpets. Most ignorant himself! * Note: Cinnamus says nothing of
their ignorance.—M]
As a penance for his impious war against the successor of St.
Peter, that monarch might have promised to display the banner of
the cross, and he accomplished with ardor a vow so propitious to
his interest and revenge. The recent injuries of Sicily might
provoke a just retaliation on the heads of the Saracens: the
Normans, whose blood had been mingled with so many subject
streams, were encouraged to remember and emulate the naval
trophies of their fathers, and in the maturity of their strength
they contended with the decline of an African power. When the
Fatimite caliph departed for the conquest of Egypt, he rewarded
the real merit and apparent fidelity of his servant Joseph with a
gift of his royal mantle, and forty Arabian horses, his palace
with its sumptuous furniture, and the government of the kingdoms
of Tunis and Algiers. The Zeirides, 103 the descendants of
Joseph, forgot their allegiance and gratitude to a distant
benefactor, grasped and abused the fruits of prosperity; and
after running the little course of an Oriental dynasty, were now
fainting in their own weakness. On the side of the land, they
were pressed by the Almohades, the fanatic princes of Morocco,
while the sea-coast was open to the enterprises of the Greeks and
Franks, who, before the close of the eleventh century, had
extorted a ransom of two hundred thousand pieces of gold. By the
first arms of Roger, the island or rock of Malta, which has been
since ennobled by a military and religious colony, was
inseparably annexed to the crown of Sicily. Tripoli, 104 a strong
and maritime city, was the next object of his attack; and the
slaughter of the males, the captivity of the females, might be
justified by the frequent practice of the Moslems themselves. The
capital of the Zeirides was named Africa from the country, and
Mahadia 105 from the Arabian founder: it is strongly built on a
neck of land, but the imperfection of the harbor is not
compensated by the fertility of the adjacent plain. Mahadia was
besieged by George the Sicilian admiral, with a fleet of one
hundred and fifty galleys, amply provided with men and the
instruments of mischief: the sovereign had fled, the Moorish
governor refused to capitulate, declined the last and
irresistible assault, and secretly escaping with the Moslem
inhabitants abandoned the place and its treasures to the
rapacious Franks. In successive expeditions, the king of Sicily
or his lieutenants reduced the cities of Tunis, Safax, Capsia,
Bona, and a long tract of the sea-coast; 106 the fortresses were
garrisoned, the country was tributary, and a boast that it held
Africa in subjection might be inscribed with some flattery on the
sword of Roger. 107 After his death, that sword was broken; and
these transmarine possessions were neglected, evacuated, or lost,
under the troubled reign of his successor. 108 The triumphs of
Scipio and Belisarius have proved, that the African continent is
neither inaccessible nor invincible; yet the great princes and
powers of Christendom have repeatedly failed in their armaments
against the Moors, who may still glory in the easy conquest and
long servitude of Spain.
103 (return) [ See De Guignes, Hist. Generate des Huns, tom. i.
p. 369-373 and Cardonne, Hist. de l’Afrique, &c., sous la
Domination des Arabes tom. ii. p. 70-144. Their common original
appears to be Novairi.]
104 (return) [ Tripoli (says the Nubian geographer, or more
properly the Sherif al Edrisi) urbs fortis, saxeo muro vallata,
sita prope littus maris Hanc expugnavit Rogerius, qui mulieribus
captivis ductis, viros pere mit.]
105 (return) [ See the geography of Leo Africanus, (in Ramusio
tom. i. fol. 74 verso. fol. 75, recto,) and Shaw’s Travels, (p.
110,) the viith book of Thuanus, and the xith of the Abbe de
Vertot. The possession and defence of the place was offered by
Charles V. and wisely declined by the knights of Malta.]
106 (return) [ Pagi has accurately marked the African conquests
of Roger and his criticism was supplied by his friend the Abbe de
Longuerue with some Arabic memorials, (A.D. 1147, No. 26, 27,
A.D. 1148, No. 16, A.D. 1153, No. 16.)]
107 (return) [ Appulus et Calaber, Siculus mihi servit et Afer. A
proud inscription, which denotes, that the Norman conquerors were
still discriminated from their Christian and Moslem subjects.]
108 (return) [ Hugo Falcandus (Hist. Sicula, in Muratori, Script.
tom. vii. p. 270, 271) ascribes these losses to the neglect or
treachery of the admiral Majo.]
Since the decease of Robert Guiscard, the Normans had
relinquished, above sixty years, their hostile designs against
the empire of the East. The policy of Roger solicited a public
and private union with the Greek princes, whose alliance would
dignify his regal character: he demanded in marriage a daughter
of the Comnenian family, and the first steps of the treaty seemed
to promise a favorable event. But the contemptuous treatment of
his ambassadors exasperated the vanity of the new monarch; and
the insolence of the Byzantine court was expiated, according to
the laws of nations, by the sufferings of a guiltless people. 109
With the fleet of seventy galleys, George, the admiral of Sicily,
appeared before Corfu; and both the island and city were
delivered into his hands by the disaffected inhabitants, who had
yet to learn that a siege is still more calamitous than a
tribute. In this invasion, of some moment in the annals of
commerce, the Normans spread themselves by sea, and over the
provinces of Greece; and the venerable age of Athens, Thebes, and
Corinth, was violated by rapine and cruelty. Of the wrongs of
Athens, no memorial remains. The ancient walls, which
encompassed, without guarding, the opulence of Thebes, were
scaled by the Latin Christians; but their sole use of the gospel
was to sanctify an oath, that the lawful owners had not secreted
any relic of their inheritance or industry. On the approach of
the Normans, the lower town of Corinth was evacuated; the Greeks
retired to the citadel, which was seated on a lofty eminence,
abundantly watered by the classic fountain of Pirene; an
impregnable fortress, if the want of courage could be balanced by
any advantages of art or nature. As soon as the besiegers had
surmounted the labor (their sole labor) of climbing the hill,
their general, from the commanding eminence, admired his own
victory, and testified his gratitude to Heaven, by tearing from
the altar the precious image of Theodore, the tutelary saint. The
silk weavers of both sexes, whom George transported to Sicily,
composed the most valuable part of the spoil; and in comparing
the skilful industry of the mechanic with the sloth and cowardice
of the soldier, he was heard to exclaim that the distaff and loom
were the only weapons which the Greeks were capable of using. The
progress of this naval armament was marked by two conspicuous
events, the rescue of the king of France, and the insult of the
Byzantine capital. In his return by sea from an unfortunate
crusade, Louis the Seventh was intercepted by the Greeks, who
basely violated the laws of honor and religion. The fortunate
encounter of the Norman fleet delivered the royal captive; and
after a free and honorable entertainment in the court of Sicily,
Louis continued his journey to Rome and Paris. 110 In the absence
of the emperor, Constantinople and the Hellespont were left
without defence and without the suspicion of danger. The clergy
and people (for the soldiers had followed the standard of Manuel)
were astonished and dismayed at the hostile appearance of a line
of galleys, which boldly cast anchor in the front of the Imperial
city. The forces of the Sicilian admiral were inadequate to the
siege or assault of an immense and populous metropolis; but
George enjoyed the glory of humbling the Greek arrogance, and of
marking the path of conquest to the navies of the West. He landed
some soldiers to rifle the fruits of the royal gardens, and
pointed with silver, or most probably with fire, the arrows which
he discharged against the palace of the Caesars. 111 This playful
outrage of the pirates of Sicily, who had surprised an unguarded
moment, Manuel affected to despise, while his martial spirit, and
the forces of the empire, were awakened to revenge. The
Archipelago and Ionian Sea were covered with his squadrons and
those of Venice; but I know not by what favorable allowance of
transports, victuallers, and pinnaces, our reason, or even our
fancy, can be reconciled to the stupendous account of fifteen
hundred vessels, which is proposed by a Byzantine historian.
These operations were directed with prudence and energy: in his
homeward voyage George lost nineteen of his galleys, which were
separated and taken: after an obstinate defence, Corfu implored
the clemency of her lawful sovereign; nor could a ship, a
soldier, of the Norman prince, be found, unless as a captive,
within the limits of the Eastern empire. The prosperity and the
health of Roger were already in a declining state: while he
listened in his palace of Palermo to the messengers of victory or
defeat, the invincible Manuel, the foremost in every assault, was
celebrated by the Greeks and Latins as the Alexander or the
Hercules of the age.
109 (return) [ The silence of the Sicilian historians, who end
too soon, or begin too late, must be supplied by Otho of
Frisingen, a German, (de Gestis Frederici I. l. i. c. 33, in
Muratori, Script. tom. vi. p. 668,) the Venetian Andrew Dandulus,
(Id. tom. xii. p. 282, 283) and the Greek writers Cinnamus (l.
iii. c. 2-5) and Nicetas, (in Manuel. l. iii. c. 1-6.)]
110 (return) [ To this imperfect capture and speedy rescue I
apply Cinnamus, l. ii. c. 19, p. 49. Muratori, on tolerable
evidence, (Annali d’Italia, tom. ix. p. 420, 421,) laughs at the
delicacy of the French, who maintain, marisque nullo impediente
periculo ad regnum proprium reversum esse; yet I observe that
their advocate, Ducange, is less positive as the commentator on
Cinnamus, than as the editor of Joinville.]
111 (return) [ In palatium regium sagittas igneas injecit, says
Dandulus; but Nicetas (l. ii. c. 8, p. 66) transforms them, and
adds, that Manuel styled this insult. These arrows, by the
compiler, Vincent de Beauvais, are again transmuted into gold.]
Chapter LVI: The Saracens, The Franks And The Normans.—Part V.
A prince of such a temper could not be satisfied with having
repelled the insolence of a Barbarian. It was the right and duty,
it might be the interest and glory, of Manuel to restore the
ancient majesty of the empire, to recover the provinces of Italy
and Sicily, and to chastise this pretended king, the grandson of
a Norman vassal. 112 The natives of Calabria were still attached
to the Greek language and worship, which had been inexorably
proscribed by the Latin clergy: after the loss of her dukes,
Apulia was chained as a servile appendage to the crown of Sicily;
the founder of the monarchy had ruled by the sword; and his death
had abated the fear, without healing the discontent, of his
subjects: the feudal government was always pregnant with the
seeds of rebellion; and a nephew of Roger himself invited the
enemies of his family and nation. The majesty of the purple, and
a series of Hungarian and Turkish wars, prevented Manuel from
embarking his person in the Italian expedition. To the brave and
noble Palaeologus, his lieutenant, the Greek monarch intrusted a
fleet and army: the siege of Bari was his first exploit; and, in
every operation, gold as well as steel was the instrument of
victory. Salerno, and some places along the western coast,
maintained their fidelity to the Norman king; but he lost in two
campaigns the greater part of his continental possessions; and
the modest emperor, disdaining all flattery and falsehood, was
content with the reduction of three hundred cities or villages of
Apulia and Calabria, whose names and titles were inscribed on all
the walls of the palace. The prejudices of the Latins were
gratified by a genuine or fictitious donation under the seal of
the German Caesars; 113 but the successor of Constantine soon
renounced this ignominious pretence, claimed the indefeasible
dominion of Italy, and professed his design of chasing the
Barbarians beyond the Alps. By the artful speeches, liberal
gifts, and unbounded promises, of their Eastern ally, the free
cities were encouraged to persevere in their generous struggle
against the despotism of Frederic Barbarossa: the walls of Milan
were rebuilt by the contributions of Manuel; and he poured, says
the historian, a river of gold into the bosom of Ancona, whose
attachment to the Greeks was fortified by the jealous enmity of
the Venetians. 114 The situation and trade of Ancona rendered it
an important garrison in the heart of Italy: it was twice
besieged by the arms of Frederic; the imperial forces were twice
repulsed by the spirit of freedom; that spirit was animated by
the ambassador of Constantinople; and the most intrepid patriots,
the most faithful servants, were rewarded by the wealth and
honors of the Byzantine court. 115 The pride of Manuel disdained
and rejected a Barbarian colleague; his ambition was excited by
the hope of stripping the purple from the German usurpers, and of
establishing, in the West, as in the East, his lawful title of
sole emperor of the Romans. With this view, he solicited the
alliance of the people and the bishop of Rome. Several of the
nobles embraced the cause of the Greek monarch; the splendid
nuptials of his niece with Odo Frangipani secured the support of
that powerful family, 116 and his royal standard or image was
entertained with due reverence in the ancient metropolis. 117
During the quarrel between Frederic and Alexander the Third, the
pope twice received in the Vatican the ambassadors of
Constantinople. They flattered his piety by the long-promised
union of the two churches, tempted the avarice of his venal
court, and exhorted the Roman pontiff to seize the just
provocation, the favorable moment, to humble the savage insolence
of the Alemanni and to acknowledge the true representative of
Constantine and Augustus. 118
112 (return) [ For the invasion of Italy, which is almost
overlooked by Nicetas see the more polite history of Cinnamus,
(l. iv. c. 1-15, p. 78-101,) who introduces a diffuse narrative
by a lofty profession, iii. 5.]
113 (return) [ The Latin, Otho, (de Gestis Frederici I. l. ii. c.
30, p. 734,) attests the forgery; the Greek, Cinnamus, (l. iv. c.
1, p. 78,) claims a promise of restitution from Conrad and
Frederic. An act of fraud is always credible when it is told of
the Greeks.]
114 (return) [ Quod Ancontiani Graecum imperium nimis diligerent
... Veneti speciali odio Anconam oderunt. The cause of love,
perhaps of envy, were the beneficia, flumen aureum of the
emperor; and the Latin narrative is confirmed by Cinnamus, (l.
iv. c. 14, p. 98.)]
115 (return) [ Muratori mentions the two sieges of Ancona; the
first, in 1167, against Frederic I. in person (Annali, tom. x. p.
39, &c.;) the second, in 1173, against his lieutenant Christian,
archbishop of Mentz, a man unworthy of his name and office, (p.
76, &c.) It is of the second siege that we possess an original
narrative, which he has published in his great collection, (tom.
vi. p. 921-946.)]
116 (return) [ We derive this anecdote from an anonymous
chronicle of Fossa Nova, published by Muratori, (Script. Ital.
tom. vii. p. 874.)]
117 (return) [ Cinnamus (l. iv. c. 14, p. 99) is susceptible of
this double sense. A standard is more Latin, an image more
Greek.]
118 (return) [ Nihilominus quoque petebat, ut quia occasio justa
et tempos opportunum et acceptabile se obtulerant, Romani corona
imperii a sancto apostolo sibi redderetur; quoniam non ad
Frederici Alemanni, sed ad suum jus asseruit pertinere, (Vit.
Alexandri III. a Cardinal. Arragoniae, in Script. Rerum Ital.
tom. iii. par. i. p. 458.) His second embassy was accompanied cum
immensa multitudine pecuniarum.]
But these Italian conquests, this universal reign, soon escaped
from the hand of the Greek emperor. His first demands were eluded
by the prudence of Alexander the Third, who paused on this deep
and momentous revolution; 119 nor could the pope be seduced by a
personal dispute to renounce the perpetual inheritance of the
Latin name. After the reunion with Frederic, he spoke a more
peremptory language, confirmed the acts of his predecessors,
excommunicated the adherents of Manuel, and pronounced the final
separation of the churches, or at least the empires, of
Constantinople and Rome. 120 The free cities of Lombardy no
longer remembered their foreign benefactor, and without
preserving the friendship of Ancona, he soon incurred the enmity
of Venice. 121 By his own avarice, or the complaints of his
subjects, the Greek emperor was provoked to arrest the persons,
and confiscate the effects, of the Venetian merchants. This
violation of the public faith exasperated a free and commercial
people: one hundred galleys were launched and armed in as many
days; they swept the coasts of Dalmatia and Greece: but after
some mutual wounds, the war was terminated by an agreement,
inglorious to the empire, insufficient for the republic; and a
complete vengeance of these and of fresh injuries was reserved
for the succeeding generation. The lieutenant of Manuel had
informed his sovereign that he was strong enough to quell any
domestic revolt of Apulia and Calabria; but that his forces were
inadequate to resist the impending attack of the king of Sicily.
His prophecy was soon verified: the death of Palaeologus devolved
the command on several chiefs, alike eminent in rank, alike
defective in military talents; the Greeks were oppressed by land
and sea; and a captive remnant that escaped the swords of the
Normans and Saracens, abjured all future hostility against the
person or dominions of their conqueror. 122 Yet the king of
Sicily esteemed the courage and constancy of Manuel, who had
landed a second army on the Italian shore; he respectfully
addressed the new Justinian; solicited a peace or truce of thirty
years, accepted as a gift the regal title; and acknowledged
himself the military vassal of the Roman empire. 123 The
Byzantine Caesars acquiesced in this shadow of dominion, without
expecting, perhaps without desiring, the service of a Norman
army; and the truce of thirty years was not disturbed by any
hostilities between Sicily and Constantinople. About the end of
that period, the throne of Manuel was usurped by an inhuman
tyrant, who had deserved the abhorrence of his country and
mankind: the sword of William the Second, the grandson of Roger,
was drawn by a fugitive of the Comnenian race; and the subjects
of Andronicus might salute the strangers as friends, since they
detested their sovereign as the worst of enemies. The Latin
historians 124 expatiate on the rapid progress of the four counts
who invaded Romania with a fleet and army, and reduced many
castles and cities to the obedience of the king of Sicily. The
Greeks 125 accuse and magnify the wanton and sacrilegious
cruelties that were perpetrated in the sack of Thessalonica, the
second city of the empire. The former deplore the fate of those
invincible but unsuspecting warriors who were destroyed by the
arts of a vanquished foe. The latter applaud, in songs of
triumph, the repeated victories of their countrymen on the Sea of
Marmora or Propontis, on the banks of the Strymon, and under the
walls of Durazzo. A revolution which punished the crimes of
Andronicus, had united against the Franks the zeal and courage of
the successful insurgents: ten thousand were slain in battle, and
Isaac Angelus, the new emperor, might indulge his vanity or
vengeance in the treatment of four thousand captives. Such was
the event of the last contest between the Greeks and Normans:
before the expiration of twenty years, the rival nations were
lost or degraded in foreign servitude; and the successors of
Constantine did not long survive to insult the fall of the
Sicilian monarchy.
119 (return) [ Nimis alta et perplexa sunt, (Vit. Alexandri III.
p. 460, 461,) says the cautious pope.]
120 (return) [ (Cinnamus, l. iv. c. 14, p. 99.)]
121 (return) [ In his vith book, Cinnamus describes the Venetian
war, which Nicetas has not thought worthy of his attention. The
Italian accounts, which do not satisfy our curiosity, are
reported by the annalist Muratori, under the years 1171, &c.]
122 (return) [ This victory is mentioned by Romuald of Salerno,
(in Muratori, Script. Ital. tom. vii. p. 198.) It is whimsical
enough, that in the praise of the king of Sicily, Cinnamus (l.
iv. c. 13, p. 97, 98) is much warmer and copious than Falcandus,
(p. 268, 270.) But the Greek is fond of description, and the
Latin historian is not fond of William the Bad.]
123 (return) [ For the epistle of William I. see Cinnamus (l. iv.
c. 15, p. 101, 102) and Nicetas, (l. ii. c. 8.) It is difficult
to affirm, whether these Greeks deceived themselves, or the
public, in these flattering portraits of the grandeur of the
empire.]
124 (return) [ I can only quote, of original evidence, the poor
chronicles of Sicard of Cremona, (p. 603,) and of Fossa Nova, (p.
875,) as they are published in the viith tome of Muratori’s
historians. The king of Sicily sent his troops contra nequitiam
Andronici.... ad acquirendum imperium C. P. They were.... decepti
captique, by Isaac.]
125 (return) [ By the failure of Cinnamus to Nicetas (in
Andronico, l.. c. 7, 8, 9, l. ii. c. 1, in Isaac Angelo, l. i. c.
1-4,) who now becomes a respectable contemporary. As he survived
the emperor and the empire, he is above flattery; but the fall of
Constantinople exasperated his prejudices against the Latins. For
the honor of learning I shall observe that Homer’s great
commentator, Eustathias archbishop of Thessalonica, refused to
desert his flock.]
The sceptre of Roger successively devolved to his son and
grandson: they might be confounded under the name of William:
they are strongly discriminated by the epithets of the bad and
the good; but these epithets, which appear to describe the
perfection of vice and virtue, cannot strictly be applied to
either of the Norman princes. When he was roused to arms by
danger and shame, the first William did not degenerate from the
valor of his race; but his temper was slothful; his manners were
dissolute; his passions headstrong and mischievous; and the
monarch is responsible, not only for his personal vices, but for
those of Majo, the great admiral, who abused the confidence, and
conspired against the life, of his benefactor. From the Arabian
conquest, Sicily had imbibed a deep tincture of Oriental manners;
the despotism, the pomp, and even the harem, of a sultan; and a
Christian people was oppressed and insulted by the ascendant of
the eunuchs, who openly professed, or secretly cherished, the
religion of Mahomet. An eloquent historian of the times 126 has
delineated the misfortunes of his country: 127 the ambition and
fall of the ungrateful Majo; the revolt and punishment of his
assassins; the imprisonment and deliverance of the king himself;
the private feuds that arose from the public confusion; and the
various forms of calamity and discord which afflicted Palermo,
the island, and the continent, during the reign of William the
First, and the minority of his son. The youth, innocence, and
beauty of William the Second, 128 endeared him to the nation: the
factions were reconciled; the laws were revived; and from the
manhood to the premature death of that amiable prince, Sicily
enjoyed a short season of peace, justice, and happiness, whose
value was enhanced by the remembrance of the past and the dread
of futurity. The legitimate male posterity of Tancred of
Hauteville was extinct in the person of the second William; but
his aunt, the daughter of Roger, had married the most powerful
prince of the age; and Henry the Sixth, the son of Frederic
Barbarossa, descended from the Alps to claim the Imperial crown
and the inheritance of his wife. Against the unanimous wish of a
free people, this inheritance could only be acquired by arms; and
I am pleased to transcribe the style and sense of the historian
Falcandus, who writes at the moment, and on the spot, with the
feelings of a patriot, and the prophetic eye of a statesman.
“Constantia, the daughter of Sicily, nursed from her cradle in
the pleasures and plenty, and educated in the arts and manners,
of this fortunate isle, departed long since to enrich the
Barbarians with our treasures, and now returns, with her savage
allies, to contaminate the beauties of her venerable parent.
Already I behold the swarms of angry Barbarians: our opulent
cities, the places flourishing in a long peace, are shaken with
fear, desolated by slaughter, consumed by rapine, and polluted by
intemperance and lust. I see the massacre or captivity of our
citizens, the rapes of our virgins and matrons. 129 In this
extremity (he interrogates a friend) how must the Sicilians act?
By the unanimous election of a king of valor and experience,
Sicily and Calabria might yet be preserved; 130 for in the levity
of the Apulians, ever eager for new revolutions, I can repose
neither confidence nor hope. 131 Should Calabria be lost, the
lofty towers, the numerous youth, and the naval strength, of
Messina, 132 might guard the passage against a foreign invader.
If the savage Germans coalesce with the pirates of Messina; if
they destroy with fire the fruitful region, so often wasted by
the fires of Mount Aetna, 133 what resource will be left for the
interior parts of the island, these noble cities which should
never be violated by the hostile footsteps of a Barbarian? 134
Catana has again been overwhelmed by an earthquake: the ancient
virtue of Syracuse expires in poverty and solitude; 135 but
Palermo is still crowned with a diadem, and her triple walls
enclose the active multitudes of Christians and Saracens. If the
two nations, under one king, can unite for their common safety,
they may rush on the Barbarians with invincible arms. But if the
Saracens, fatigued by a repetition of injuries, should now retire
and rebel; if they should occupy the castles of the mountains and
sea-coast, the unfortunate Christians, exposed to a double
attack, and placed as it were between the hammer and the anvil,
must resign themselves to hopeless and inevitable servitude.” 136
We must not forget, that a priest here prefers his country to his
religion; and that the Moslems, whose alliance he seeks, were
still numerous and powerful in the state of Sicily.
126 (return) [ The Historia Sicula of Hugo Falcandus, which
properly extends from 1154 to 1169, is inserted in the viiith
volume of Muratori’s Collection, (tom. vii. p. 259-344,) and
preceded by a eloquent preface or epistle, (p. 251-258, de
Calamitatibus Siciliae.) Falcandus has been styled the Tacitus of
Sicily; and, after a just, but immense, abatement, from the ist
to the xiith century, from a senator to a monk, I would not strip
him of his title: his narrative is rapid and perspicuous, his
style bold and elegant, his observation keen; he had studied
mankind, and feels like a man. I can only regret the narrow and
barren field on which his labors have been cast.]
127 (return) [ The laborious Benedictines (l’Art de verifier les
Dates, p. 896) are of opinion, that the true name of Falcandus is
Fulcandus, or Foucault. According to them, Hugues Foucalt, a
Frenchman by birth, and at length abbot of St. Denys, had
followed into Sicily his patron Stephen de la Perche, uncle to
the mother of William II., archbishop of Palermo, and great
chancellor of the kingdom. Yet Falcandus has all the feelings of
a Sicilian; and the title of Alumnus (which he bestows on
himself) appears to indicate that he was born, or at least
educated, in the island.]
128 (return) [ Falcand. p. 303. Richard de St. Germano begins his
history from the death and praises of William II. After some
unmeaning epithets, he thus continues: Legis et justitiae cultus
tempore suo vigebat in regno; sua erat quilibet sorte contentus;
(were they mortals?) abique pax, ubique securitas, nec latronum
metuebat viator insidias, nec maris nauta offendicula piratarum,
(Script. Rerum Ital. tom. vii p 939.)]
129 (return) [ Constantia, primis a cunabulis in deliciarun
tuarum affluentia diutius educata, tuisque institutis, doctrinus
et moribus informata, tandem opibus tuis Barbaros delatura
discessit: et nunc cum imgentibus copiis revertitur, ut
pulcherrima nutricis ornamenta barbarica foeditate contaminet
.... Intuari mihi jam videor turbulentas bar barorum acies....
civitates opulentas et loca diuturna pace florentia, metu
concutere, caede vastare, rapinis atterere, et foedare luxuria
hinc cives aut gladiis intercepti, aut servitute depressi,
virgines constupratae, matronae, &c.]
130 (return) [ Certe si regem non dubiae virtutis elegerint, nec
a Saracenis Christiani dissentiant, poterit rex creatus rebus
licet quasi desperatis et perditis subvenire, et incursus
hostium, si prudenter egerit, propulsare.]
131 (return) [ In Apulis, qui, semper novitate gaudentes, novarum
rerum studiis aguntur, nihil arbitror spei aut fiduciae
reponendum.]
132 (return) [ Si civium tuorum virtutem et audaciam attendas,
.... muriorum etiam ambitum densis turribus circumseptum.]
133 (return) [ Cum erudelitate piratica Theutonum confligat
atrocitas, et inter aucbustos lapides, et Aethnae flagrant’s
incendia, &c.]
134 (return) [ Eam partem, quam nobilissimarum civitatum fulgor
illustrat, quae et toti regno singulari meruit privilegio
praeminere, nefarium esset.... vel barbarorum ingressu pollui. I
wish to transcribe his florid, but curious, description, of the
palace, city, and luxuriant plain of Palermo.]
135 (return) [ Vires non suppetunt, et conatus tuos tam inopia
civium, quam paucitas bellatorum elidunt.]
136 (return) [ The Normans and Sicilians appear to be
confounded.]
The hopes, or at least the wishes, of Falcandus were at first
gratified by the free and unanimous election of Tancred, the
grandson of the first king, whose birth was illegitimate, but
whose civil and military virtues shone without a blemish. During
four years, the term of his life and reign, he stood in arms on
the farthest verge of the Apulian frontier, against the powers of
Germany; and the restitution of a royal captive, of Constantia
herself, without injury or ransom, may appear to surpass the most
liberal measure of policy or reason. After his decease, the
kingdom of his widow and infant son fell without a struggle; and
Henry pursued his victorious march from Capua to Palermo. The
political balance of Italy was destroyed by his success; and if
the pope and the free cities had consulted their obvious and real
interest, they would have combined the powers of earth and heaven
to prevent the dangerous union of the German empire with the
kingdom of Sicily. But the subtle policy, for which the Vatican
has so often been praised or arraigned, was on this occasion
blind and inactive; and if it were true that Celestine the Third
had kicked away the Imperial crown from the head of the prostrate
Henry, 137 such an act of impotent pride could serve only to
cancel an obligation and provoke an enemy. The Genoese, who
enjoyed a beneficial trade and establishment in Sicily, listened
to the promise of his boundless gratitude and speedy departure:
138 their fleet commanded the straits of Messina, and opened the
harbor of Palermo; and the first act of his government was to
abolish the privileges, and to seize the property, of these
imprudent allies. The last hope of Falcandus was defeated by the
discord of the Christians and Mahometans: they fought in the
capital; several thousands of the latter were slain; but their
surviving brethren fortified the mountains, and disturbed above
thirty years the peace of the island. By the policy of Frederic
the Second, sixty thousand Saracens were transplanted to Nocera
in Apulia. In their wars against the Roman church, the emperor
and his son Mainfroy were strengthened and disgraced by the
service of the enemies of Christ; and this national colony
maintained their religion and manners in the heart of Italy, till
they were extirpated, at the end of the thirteenth century, by
the zeal and revenge of the house of Anjou. 139 All the
calamities which the prophetic orator had deplored were surpassed
by the cruelty and avarice of the German conqueror. He violated
the royal sepulchres, 1391 and explored the secret treasures of
the palace, Palermo, and the whole kingdom: the pearls and
jewels, however precious, might be easily removed; but one
hundred and sixty horses were laden with the gold and silver of
Sicily. 140 The young king, his mother and sisters, and the
nobles of both sexes, were separately confined in the fortresses
of the Alps; and, on the slightest rumor of rebellion, the
captives were deprived of life, of their eyes, or of the hope of
posterity. Constantia herself was touched with sympathy for the
miseries of her country; and the heiress of the Norman line might
struggle to check her despotic husband, and to save the patrimony
of her new-born son, of an emperor so famous in the next age
under the name of Frederic the Second. Ten years after this
revolution, the French monarchs annexed to their crown the duchy
of Normandy: the sceptre of her ancient dukes had been
transmitted, by a granddaughter of William the Conqueror, to the
house of Plantagenet; and the adventurous Normans, who had raised
so many trophies in France, England, and Ireland, in Apulia,
Sicily, and the East, were lost, either in victory or servitude,
among the vanquished nations.
137 (return) [ The testimony of an Englishman, of Roger de
Hoveden, (p. 689,) will lightly weigh against the silence of
German and Italian history, (Muratori, Annali d’ Italia, tom. x.
p. 156.) The priests and pilgrims, who returned from Rome,
exalted, by every tale, the omnipotence of the holy father.]
138 (return) [ Ego enim in eo cum Teutonicis manere non debeo,
(Caffari, Annal. Genuenses, in Muratori, Script. Rerum
Italicarum, tom vi. p. 367, 368.)]
139 (return) [ For the Saracens of Sicily and Nocera, see the
Annals of Muratori, (tom. x. p. 149, and A.D. 1223, 1247,)
Giannone, (tom ii. p. 385,) and of the originals, in Muratori’s
Collection, Richard de St. Germano, (tom. vii. p. 996,) Matteo
Spinelli de Giovenazzo, (tom. vii. p. 1064,) Nicholas de
Jamsilla, (tom. x. p. 494,) and Matreo Villani, (tom. xiv l. vii.
p. 103.) The last of these insinuates that, in reducing the
Saracens of Nocera, Charles II. of Anjou employed rather artifice
than violence.]
1391 (return) [ It is remarkable that at the same time the tombs
of the Roman emperors, even of Constantine himself, were violated
and ransacked by their degenerate successor Alexius Comnenus, in
order to enable him to pay the “German” tribute exacted by the
menaces of the emperor Henry. See the end of the first book of
the Life of Alexius, in Nicetas, p. 632, edit.—M.]
140 (return) [ Muratori quotes a passage from Arnold of Lubec,
(l. iv. c. 20:) Reperit thesauros absconditos, et omnem lapidum
pretiosorum et gemmarum gloriam, ita ut oneratis 160 somariis,
gloriose ad terram suam redierit. Roger de Hoveden, who mentions
the violation of the royal tombs and corpses, computes the spoil
of Salerno at 200,000 ounces of gold, (p. 746.) On these
occasions, I am almost tempted to exclaim with the listening maid
in La Fontaine, “Je voudrois bien avoir ce qui manque.”]
Chapter LVII: The Turks.—Part I.
The Turks Of The House Of Seljuk.—Their Revolt Against Mahmud
Conqueror Of Hindostan.—Togrul Subdues Persia, And Protects The
Caliphs.—Defeat And Captivity Of The Emperor Romanus Diogenes By
Alp Arslan.—Power And Magnificence Of Malek Shah.—Conquest Of Asia
Minor And Syria.—State And Oppression Of Jerusalem.—Pilgrimages To
The Holy Sepulchre.
From the Isle of Sicily, the reader must transport himself beyond
the Caspian Sea, to the original seat of the Turks or Turkmans,
against whom the first crusade was principally directed. Their
Scythian empire of the sixth century was long since dissolved;
but the name was still famous among the Greeks and Orientals; and
the fragments of the nation, each a powerful and independent
people, were scattered over the desert from China to the Oxus and
the Danube: the colony of Hungarians was admitted into the
republic of Europe, and the thrones of Asia were occupied by
slaves and soldiers of Turkish extraction. While Apulia and
Sicily were subdued by the Norman lance, a swarm of these
northern shepherds overspread the kingdoms of Persia; their
princes of the race of Seljuk erected a splendid and solid empire
from Samarcand to the confines of Greece and Egypt; and the Turks
have maintained their dominion in Asia Minor, till the victorious
crescent has been planted on the dome of St. Sophia.
One of the greatest of the Turkish princes was Mahmood or Mahmud,
1 the Gaznevide, who reigned in the eastern provinces of Persia,
one thousand years after the birth of Christ. His father
Sebectagi was the slave of the slave of the slave of the
commander of the faithful. But in this descent of servitude, the
first degree was merely titular, since it was filled by the
sovereign of Transoxiana and Chorasan, who still paid a nominal
allegiance to the caliph of Bagdad. The second rank was that of a
minister of state, a lieutenant of the Samanides, 2 who broke, by
his revolt, the bonds of political slavery. But the third step
was a state of real and domestic servitude in the family of that
rebel; from which Sebectagi, by his courage and dexterity,
ascended to the supreme command of the city and provinces of
Gazna, 3 as the son-in-law and successor of his grateful master.
The falling dynasty of the Samanides was at first protected, and
at last overthrown, by their servants; and, in the public
disorders, the fortune of Mahmud continually increased. From him
the title of Sultan 4 was first invented; and his kingdom was
enlarged from Transoxiana to the neighborhood of Ispahan, from
the shores of the Caspian to the mouth of the Indus. But the
principal source of his fame and riches was the holy war which he
waged against the Gentoos of Hindostan. In this foreign narrative
I may not consume a page; and a volume would scarcely suffice to
recapitulate the battles and sieges of his twelve expeditions.
Never was the Mussulman hero dismayed by the inclemency of the
seasons, the height of the mountains, the breadth of the rivers,
the barrenness of the desert, the multitudes of the enemy, or the
formidable array of their elephants of war. 5 The sultan of Gazna
surpassed the limits of the conquests of Alexander: after a march
of three months, over the hills of Cashmir and Thibet, he reached
the famous city of Kinnoge, 6 on the Upper Ganges; and, in a
naval combat on one of the branches of the Indus, he fought and
vanquished four thousand boats of the natives. Delhi, Lahor, and
Multan, were compelled to open their gates: the fertile kingdom
of Guzarat attracted his ambition and tempted his stay; and his
avarice indulged the fruitless project of discovering the golden
and aromatic isles of the Southern Ocean. On the payment of a
tribute, the rajahs preserved their dominions; the people, their
lives and fortunes; but to the religion of Hindostan the zealous
Mussulman was cruel and inexorable: many hundred temples, or
pagodas, were levelled with the ground; many thousand idols were
demolished; and the servants of the prophet were stimulated and
rewarded by the precious materials of which they were composed.
The pagoda of Sumnat was situate on the promontory of Guzarat, in
the neighborhood of Diu, one of the last remaining possessions of
the Portuguese. 7 It was endowed with the revenue of two thousand
villages; two thousand Brahmins were consecrated to the service
of the Deity, whom they washed each morning and evening in water
from the distant Ganges: the subordinate ministers consisted of
three hundred musicians, three hundred barbers, and five hundred
dancing girls, conspicuous for their birth or beauty. Three sides
of the temple were protected by the ocean, the narrow isthmus was
fortified by a natural or artificial precipice; and the city and
adjacent country were peopled by a nation of fanatics. They
confessed the sins and the punishment of Kinnoge and Delhi; but
if the impious stranger should presume to approach their holy
precincts, he would surely be overwhelmed by a blast of the
divine vengeance. By this challenge, the faith of Mahmud was
animated to a personal trial of the strength of this Indian
deity. Fifty thousand of his worshippers were pierced by the
spear of the Moslems; the walls were scaled; the sanctuary was
profaned; and the conqueror aimed a blow of his iron mace at the
head of the idol. The trembling Brahmins are said to have offered
ten millions 711 sterling for his ransom; and it was urged by the
wisest counsellors, that the destruction of a stone image would
not change the hearts of the Gentoos; and that such a sum might
be dedicated to the relief of the true believers. “Your reasons,”
replied the sultan, “are specious and strong; but never in the
eyes of posterity shall Mahmud appear as a merchant of idols.”
712 He repeated his blows, and a treasure of pearls and rubies,
concealed in the belly of the statue, explained in some degree
the devout prodigality of the Brahmins. The fragments of the idol
were distributed to Gazna, Mecca, and Medina. Bagdad listened to
the edifying tale; and Mahmud was saluted by the caliph with the
title of guardian of the fortune and faith of Mahomet.
1 (return) [ I am indebted for his character and history to
D’Herbelot, (Bibliotheque Orientale, Mahmud, p. 533-537,) M. De
Guignes, (Histoire des Huns, tom. iii. p. 155-173,) and our
countryman Colonel Alexander Dow, (vol. i. p. 23-83.) In the two
first volumes of his History of Hindostan, he styles himself the
translator of the Persian Ferishta; but in his florid text, it is
not easy to distinguish the version and the original. * Note: The
European reader now possesses a more accurate version of
Ferishta, that of Col. Briggs. Of Col. Dow’s work, Col. Briggs
observes, “that the author’s name will be handed down to
posterity as one of the earliest and most indefatigable of our
Oriental scholars. Instead of confining himself, however, to mere
translation, he has filled his work with his own observations,
which have been so embodied in the text that Gibbon declares it
impossible to distinguish the translator from the original
author.” Preface p. vii.—M.]
2 (return) [ The dynasty of the Samanides continued 125 years,
A.D. 847-999, under ten princes. See their succession and ruin,
in the Tables of M. De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p.
404-406.) They were followed by the Gaznevides, A.D. 999-1183,
(see tom. i. p. 239, 240.) His divisions of nations often
disturbs the series of time and place.]
3 (return) [ Gaznah hortos non habet: est emporium et domicilium
mercaturae Indicae. Abulfedae Geograph. Reiske, tab. xxiii. p.
349. D’Herbelot, p. 364. It has not been visited by any modern
traveller.]
4 (return) [ By the ambassador of the caliph of Bagdad, who
employed an Arabian or Chaldaic word that signifies lord and
master, (D’Herbelot, p. 825.) It is interpreted by the Byzantine
writers of the eleventh century; and the name (Soldanus) is
familiarly employed in the Greek and Latin languages, after it
had passed from the Gaznevides to the Seljukides, and other emirs
of Asia and Egypt. Ducange (Dissertation xvi. sur Joinville, p.
238-240. Gloss. Graec. et Latin.) labors to find the title of
Sultan in the ancient kingdom of Persia: but his proofs are mere
shadows; a proper name in the Themes of Constantine, (ii. 11,) an
anticipation of Zonaras, &c., and a medal of Kai Khosrou, not (as
he believes) the Sassanide of the vith, but the Seljukide of
Iconium of the xiiith century, (De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom.
i. p. 246.)]
5 (return) [ Ferishta (apud Dow, Hist. of Hindostan, vol. i. p.
49) mentions the report of a gun in the Indian army. But as I am
slow in believing this premature (A.D. 1008) use of artillery, I
must desire to scrutinize first the text, and then the authority
of Ferishta, who lived in the Mogul court in the last century. *
Note: This passage is differently written in the various
manuscripts I have seen; and in some the word tope (gun) has been
written for nupth, (naphtha, and toofung) (musket) for khudung,
(arrow.) But no Persian or Arabic history speaks of gunpowder
before the time usually assigned for its invention, (A.D. 1317;)
long after which, it was first applied to the purposes of war.
Briggs’s Ferishta, vol. i. p. 47, note.—M.]
6 (return) [ Kinnouge, or Canouge, (the old Palimbothra) is
marked in latitude 27 Degrees 3 Minutes, longitude 80 Degrees 13
Minutes. See D’Anville, (Antiquite de l’Inde, p. 60-62,)
corrected by the local knowledge of Major Rennel (in his
excellent Memoir on his Map of Hindostan, p. 37-43: ) 300]
jewellers, 30,000 shops for the arreca nut, 60,000 bands of
musicians, &c. (Abulfed. Geograph. tab. xv. p. 274. Dow, vol. i.
p. 16,) will allow an ample deduction. * Note: Mr. Wilson (Hindu
Drama, vol. iii. p. 12) and Schlegel (Indische Bibliothek, vol.
ii. p. 394) concur in identifying Palimbothra with the Patalipara
of the Indians; the Patna of the moderns.—M.]
7 (return) [ The idolaters of Europe, says Ferishta, (Dow, vol.
i. p. 66.) Consult Abulfeda, (p. 272,) and Rennel’s Map of
Hindostan.]
711 (return) [ Ferishta says, some “crores of gold.” Dow says, in
a note at the bottom of the page, “ten millions,” which is the
explanation of the word “crore.” Mr. Gibbon says rashly that the
sum offered by the Brahmins was ten millions sterling. Note to
Mill’s India, vol. ii. p. 222. Col. Briggs’s translation is “a
quantity of gold.” The treasure found in the temple, “perhaps in
the image,” according to Major Price’s authorities, was twenty
millions of dinars of gold, above nine millions sterling; but
this was a hundred-fold the ransom offered by the Brahmins.
Price, vol. ii. p. 290.—M.]
712 (return) [ Rather than the idol broker, he chose to be called
Mahmud the idol breaker. Price, vol. ii. p. 289—M]
From the paths of blood (and such is the history of nations) I
cannot refuse to turn aside to gather some flowers of science or
virtue. The name of Mahmud the Gaznevide is still venerable in
the East: his subjects enjoyed the blessings of prosperity and
peace; his vices were concealed by the veil of religion; and two
familiar examples will testify his justice and magnanimity.
I. As he sat in the Divan, an unhappy subject bowed before the
throne to accuse the insolence of a Turkish soldier who had
driven him from his house and bed. “Suspend your clamors,” said
Mahmud; “inform me of his next visit, and ourself in person will
judge and punish the offender.” The sultan followed his guide,
invested the house with his guards, and extinguishing the
torches, pronounced the death of the criminal, who had been
seized in the act of rapine and adultery. After the execution of
his sentence, the lights were rekindled, Mahmud fell prostrate in
prayer, and rising from the ground, demanded some homely fare,
which he devoured with the voraciousness of hunger. The poor man,
whose injury he had avenged, was unable to suppress his
astonishment and curiosity; and the courteous monarch
condescended to explain the motives of this singular behavior. “I
had reason to suspect that none, except one of my sons, could
dare to perpetrate such an outrage; and I extinguished the
lights, that my justice might be blind and inexorable. My prayer
was a thanksgiving on the discovery of the offender; and so
painful was my anxiety, that I had passed three days without food
since the first moment of your complaint.”
II. The sultan of Gazna had declared war against the dynasty of
the Bowides, the sovereigns of the western Persia: he was
disarmed by an epistle of the sultana mother, and delayed his
invasion till the manhood of her son. 8 “During the life of my
husband,” said the artful regent, “I was ever apprehensive of
your ambition: he was a prince and a soldier worthy of your arms.
He is now no more; his sceptre has passed to a woman and a child,
and you dare not attack their infancy and weakness. How
inglorious would be your conquest, how shameful your defeat! and
yet the event of war is in the hand of the Almighty.” Avarice was
the only defect that tarnished the illustrious character of
Mahmud; and never has that passion been more richly satiated. 811
The Orientals exceed the measure of credibility in the account of
millions of gold and silver, such as the avidity of man has never
accumulated; in the magnitude of pearls, diamonds, and rubies,
such as have never been produced by the workmanship of nature. 9
Yet the soil of Hindostan is impregnated with precious minerals:
her trade, in every age, has attracted the gold and silver of the
world; and her virgin spoils were rifled by the first of the
Mahometan conquerors. His behavior, in the last days of his life,
evinces the vanity of these possessions, so laboriously won, so
dangerously held, and so inevitably lost. He surveyed the vast
and various chambers of the treasury of Gazna, burst into tears,
and again closed the doors, without bestowing any portion of the
wealth which he could no longer hope to preserve. The following
day he reviewed the state of his military force; one hundred
thousand foot, fifty-five thousand horse, and thirteen hundred
elephants of battle. 10 He again wept the instability of human
greatness; and his grief was imbittered by the hostile progress
of the Turkmans, whom he had introduced into the heart of his
Persian kingdom.
8 (return) [ D’Herbelot, Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 527. Yet
these letters apothegms, &c., are rarely the language of the
heart, or the motives of public action.]
811 (return) [ Compare Price, vol. ii. p. 295.—M]
9 (return) [ For instance, a ruby of four hundred and fifty
miskals, (Dow, vol. i. p. 53,) or six pounds three ounces: the
largest in the treasury of Delhi weighed seventeen miskals,
(Voyages de Tavernier, partie ii. p. 280.) It is true, that in
the East all colored stones are calied rubies, (p. 355,) and that
Tavernier saw three larger and more precious among the jewels de
notre grand roi, le plus puissant et plus magnifique de tous les
rois de la terre, (p. 376.)]
10 (return) [ Dow, vol. i. p. 65. The sovereign of Kinoge is said
to have possessed 2500 elephants, (Abulfed. Geograph. tab. xv. p.
274.) From these Indian stories, the reader may correct a note in
my first volume, (p. 245;) or from that note he may correct these
stories.]
In the modern depopulation of Asia, the regular operation of
government and agriculture is confined to the neighborhood of
cities; and the distant country is abandoned to the pastoral
tribes of Arabs, Curds, and Turkmans. 11 Of the last-mentioned
people, two considerable branches extend on either side of the
Caspian Sea: the western colony can muster forty thousand
soldiers; the eastern, less obvious to the traveller, but more
strong and populous, has increased to the number of one hundred
thousand families. In the midst of civilized nations, they
preserve the manners of the Scythian desert, remove their
encampments with a change of seasons, and feed their cattle among
the ruins of palaces and temples. Their flocks and herds are
their only riches; their tents, either black or white, according
to the color of the banner, are covered with felt, and of a
circular form; their winter apparel is a sheep-skin; a robe of
cloth or cotton their summer garment: the features of the men are
harsh and ferocious; the countenance of their women is soft and
pleasing. Their wandering life maintains the spirit and exercise
of arms; they fight on horseback; and their courage is displayed
in frequent contests with each other and with their neighbors.
For the license of pasture they pay a slight tribute to the
sovereign of the land; but the domestic jurisdiction is in the
hands of the chiefs and elders. The first emigration of the
Eastern Turkmans, the most ancient of the race, may be ascribed
to the tenth century of the Christian aera. 12 In the decline of
the caliphs, and the weakness of their lieutenants, the barrier
of the Jaxartes was often violated; in each invasion, after the
victory or retreat of their countrymen, some wandering tribe,
embracing the Mahometan faith, obtained a free encampment in the
spacious plains and pleasant climate of Transoxiana and Carizme.
The Turkish slaves who aspired to the throne encouraged these
emigrations which recruited their armies, awed their subjects and
rivals, and protected the frontier against the wilder natives of
Turkestan; and this policy was abused by Mahmud the Gaznevide
beyond the example of former times. He was admonished of his
error by the chief of the race of Seljuk, who dwelt in the
territory of Bochara. The sultan had inquired what supply of men
he could furnish for military service. “If you send,” replied
Ismael, “one of these arrows into our camp, fifty thousand of
your servants will mount on horseback.”—“And if that number,”
continued Mahmud, “should not be sufficient?”—“Send this second
arrow to the horde of Balik, and you will find fifty thousand
more.”—“But,” said the Gaznevide, dissembling his anxiety, “if I
should stand in need of the whole force of your kindred
tribes?”—“Despatch my bow,” was the last reply of Ismael, “and as
it is circulated around, the summons will be obeyed by two
hundred thousand horse.” The apprehension of such formidable
friendship induced Mahmud to transport the most obnoxious tribes
into the heart of Chorasan, where they would be separated from
their brethren of the River Oxus, and enclosed on all sides by
the walls of obedient cities. But the face of the country was an
object of temptation rather than terror; and the vigor of
government was relaxed by the absence and death of the sultan of
Gazna. The shepherds were converted into robbers; the bands of
robbers were collected into an army of conquerors: as far as
Ispahan and the Tigris, Persia was afflicted by their predatory
inroads; and the Turkmans were not ashamed or afraid to measure
their courage and numbers with the proudest sovereigns of Asia.
Massoud, the son and successor of Mahmud, had too long neglected
the advice of his wisest Omrahs. “Your enemies,” they repeatedly
urged, “were in their origin a swarm of ants; they are now little
snakes; and, unless they be instantly crushed, they will acquire
the venom and magnitude of serpents.” After some alternatives of
truce and hostility, after the repulse or partial success of his
lieutenants, the sultan marched in person against the Turkmans,
who attacked him on all sides with barbarous shouts and irregular
onset. “Massoud,” says the Persian historian, 13 “plunged singly
to oppose the torrent of gleaming arms, exhibiting such acts of
gigantic force and valor as never king had before displayed. A
few of his friends, roused by his words and actions, and that
innate honor which inspires the brave, seconded their lord so
well, that wheresoever he turned his fatal sword, the enemies
were mowed down, or retreated before him. But now, when victory
seemed to blow on his standard, misfortune was active behind it;
for when he looked round, be beheld almost his whole army,
excepting that body he commanded in person, devouring the paths
of flight.” The Gaznevide was abandoned by the cowardice or
treachery of some generals of Turkish race; and this memorable
day of Zendecan 14 founded in Persia the dynasty of the shepherd
kings. 15
11 (return) [ See a just and natural picture of these pastoral
manners, in the history of William archbishop of Tyre, (l. i. c.
vii. in the Gesta Dei per Francos, p. 633, 634,) and a valuable
note by the editor of the Histoire Genealogique des Tatars, p.
535-538.]
12 (return) [ The first emigration of the Turkmans, and doubtful
origin of the Seljukians, may be traced in the laborious History
of the Huns, by M. De Guignes, (tom. i. Tables Chronologiques, l.
v. tom. iii. l. vii. ix. x.) and the Bibliotheque Orientale, of
D’Herbelot, (p. 799-802, 897-901,) Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p.
321-333,) and Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 221, 222.)]
13 (return) [ Dow, Hist. of Hindostan, vol. i. p. 89, 95-98. I
have copied this passage as a specimen of the Persian manner; but
I suspect that, by some odd fatality, the style of Ferishta has
been improved by that of Ossian. * Note: Gibbon’s conjecture was
well founded. Compare the more sober and genuine version of Col.
Briggs, vol. i. p. 110.-M.]
14 (return) [ The Zendekan of D’Herbelot, (p. 1028,) the Dindaka
of Dow (vol. i. p. 97,) is probably the Dandanekan of Abulfeda,
(Geograph. p. 345, Reiske,) a small town of Chorasan, two days’
journey from Maru, and renowned through the East for the
production and manufacture of cotton.]
15 (return) [ The Byzantine historians (Cedrenus, tom. ii. p.
766, 766, Zonaras tom. ii. p. 255, Nicephorus Bryennius, p. 21)
have confounded, in this revolution, the truth of time and place,
of names and persons, of causes and events. The ignorance and
errors of these Greeks (which I shall not stop to unravel) may
inspire some distrust of the story of Cyaxares and Cyrus, as it
is told by their most eloquent predecessor.]
The victorious Turkmans immediately proceeded to the election of
a king; and, if the probable tale of a Latin historian 16
deserves any credit, they determined by lot the choice of their
new master. A number of arrows were successively inscribed with
the name of a tribe, a family, and a candidate; they were drawn
from the bundle by the hand of a child; and the important prize
was obtained by Togrul Beg, the son of Michael the son of Seljuk,
whose surname was immortalized in the greatness of his posterity.
The sultan Mahmud, who valued himself on his skill in national
genealogy, professed his ignorance of the family of Seljuk; yet
the father of that race appears to have been a chief of power and
renown. 17 For a daring intrusion into the harem of his prince,
Seljuk was banished from Turkestan: with a numerous tribe of his
friends and vassals, he passed the Jaxartes, encamped in the
neighborhood of Samarcand, embraced the religion of Mahomet, and
acquired the crown of martyrdom in a war against the infidels.
His age, of a hundred and seven years, surpassed the life of his
son, and Seljuk adopted the care of his two grandsons, Togrul and
Jaafar; the eldest of whom, at the age of forty-five, was
invested with the title of Sultan, in the royal city of Nishabur.
The blind determination of chance was justified by the virtues of
the successful candidate. It would be superfluous to praise the
valor of a Turk; and the ambition of Togrul 18 was equal to his
valor. By his arms, the Gasnevides were expelled from the eastern
kingdoms of Persia, and gradually driven to the banks of the
Indus, in search of a softer and more wealthy conquest. In the
West he annihilated the dynasty of the Bowides; and the sceptre
of Irak passed from the Persian to the Turkish nation. The
princes who had felt, or who feared, the Seljukian arrows, bowed
their heads in the dust; by the conquest of Aderbijan, or Media,
he approached the Roman confines; and the shepherd presumed to
despatch an ambassador, or herald, to demand the tribute and
obedience of the emperor of Constantinople. 19 In his own
dominions, Togrul was the father of his soldiers and people; by a
firm and equal administration, Persia was relieved from the evils
of anarchy; and the same hands which had been imbrued in blood
became the guardians of justice and the public peace. The more
rustic, perhaps the wisest, portion of the Turkmans 20 continued
to dwell in the tents of their ancestors; and, from the Oxus to
the Euphrates, these military colonies were protected and
propagated by their native princes. But the Turks of the court
and city were refined by business and softened by pleasure: they
imitated the dress, language, and manners of Persia; and the
royal palaces of Nishabur and Rei displayed the order and
magnificence of a great monarchy. The most deserving of the
Arabians and Persians were promoted to the honors of the state;
and the whole body of the Turkish nation embraced, with fervor
and sincerity, the religion of Mahomet. The northern swarms of
Barbarians, who overspread both Europe and Asia, have been
irreconcilably separated by the consequences of a similar
conduct. Among the Moslems, as among the Christians, their vague
and local traditions have yielded to the reason and authority of
the prevailing system, to the fame of antiquity, and the consent
of nations. But the triumph of the Koran is more pure and
meritorious, as it was not assisted by any visible splendor of
worship which might allure the Pagans by some resemblance of
idolatry. The first of the Seljukian sultans was conspicuous by
his zeal and faith: each day he repeated the five prayers which
are enjoined to the true believers; of each week, the two first
days were consecrated by an extraordinary fast; and in every city
a mosch was completed, before Togrul presumed to lay the
foundations of a palace. 21
16 (return) [ Willerm. Tyr. l. i. c. 7, p. 633. The divination by
arrows is ancient and famous in the East.]
17 (return) [ D’Herbelot, p. 801. Yet after the fortune of his
posterity, Seljuk became the thirty-fourth in lineal descent from
the great Afrasiab, emperor of Touran, (p. 800.) The Tartar
pedigree of the house of Zingis gave a different cast to flattery
and fable; and the historian Mirkhond derives the Seljukides from
Alankavah, the virgin mother, (p. 801, col. 2.) If they be the
same as the Zalzuts of Abulghazi Bahadur Kahn, (Hist.
Genealogique, p. 148,) we quote in their favor the most weighty
evidence of a Tartar prince himself, the descendant of Zingis,
Alankavah, or Alancu, and Oguz Khan.]
18 (return) [ By a slight corruption, Togrul Beg is the
Tangroli-pix of the Greeks. His reign and character are
faithfully exhibited by D’Herbelot (Bibliotheque Orientale, p.
1027, 1028) and De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. iii. p.
189-201.)]
19 (return) [ Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 774, 775. Zonaras, tom. ii.
p. 257. With their usual knowledge of Oriental affairs, they
describe the ambassador as a sherif, who, like the syncellus of
the patriarch, was the vicar and successor of the caliph.]
20 (return) [ From William of Tyre I have borrowed this
distinction of Turks and Turkmans, which at least is popular and
convenient. The names are the same, and the addition of man is of
the same import in the Persic and Teutonic idioms. Few critics
will adopt the etymology of James de Vitry, (Hist. Hierosol. l.
i. c. 11 p. 1061,) of Turcomani, quesi Turci et Comani, a mixed
people.]
21 (return) [ Hist. Generale des Huns, tom. iii. p. 165, 166,
167. M. DeGognes Abulmahasen, an historian of Egypt.]
With the belief of the Koran, the son of Seljuk imbibed a lively
reverence for the successor of the prophet. But that sublime
character was still disputed by the caliphs of Bagdad and Egypt,
and each of the rivals was solicitous to prove his title in the
judgment of the strong, though illiterate Barbarians. Mahmud the
Gaznevide had declared himself in favor of the line of Abbas; and
had treated with indignity the robe of honor which was presented
by the Fatimite ambassador. Yet the ungrateful Hashemite had
changed with the change of fortune; he applauded the victory of
Zendecan, and named the Seljukian sultan his temporal vicegerent
over the Moslem world. As Togrul executed and enlarged this
important trust, he was called to the deliverance of the caliph
Cayem, and obeyed the holy summons, which gave a new kingdom to
his arms. 22 In the palace of Bagdad, the commander of the
faithful still slumbered, a venerable phantom. His servant or
master, the prince of the Bowides, could no longer protect him
from the insolence of meaner tyrants; and the Euphrates and
Tigris were oppressed by the revolt of the Turkish and Arabian
emirs. The presence of a conqueror was implored as a blessing;
and the transient mischiefs of fire and sword were excused as the
sharp but salutary remedies which alone could restore the health
of the republic. At the head of an irresistible force, the sultan
of Persia marched from Hamadan: the proud were crushed, the
prostrate were spared; the prince of the Bowides disappeared; the
heads of the most obstinate rebels were laid at the feet of
Togrul; and he inflicted a lesson of obedience on the people of
Mosul and Bagdad. After the chastisement of the guilty, and the
restoration of peace, the royal shepherd accepted the reward of
his labors; and a solemn comedy represented the triumph of
religious prejudice over Barbarian power. 23 The Turkish sultan
embarked on the Tigris, landed at the gate of Racca, and made his
public entry on horseback. At the palace-gate he respectfully
dismounted, and walked on foot, preceded by his emirs without
arms. The caliph was seated behind his black veil: the black
garment of the Abbassides was cast over his shoulders, and he
held in his hand the staff of the apostle of God. The conqueror
of the East kissed the ground, stood some time in a modest
posture, and was led towards the throne by the vizier and
interpreter. After Togrul had seated himself on another throne,
his commission was publicly read, which declared him the temporal
lieutenant of the vicar of the prophet. He was successively
invested with seven robes of honor, and presented with seven
slaves, the natives of the seven climates of the Arabian empire.
His mystic veil was perfumed with musk; two crowns 231 were
placed on his head; two cimeters were girded to his side, as the
symbols of a double reign over the East and West. After this
inauguration, the sultan was prevented from prostrating himself a
second time; but he twice kissed the hand of the commander of the
faithful, and his titles were proclaimed by the voice of heralds
and the applause of the Moslems. In a second visit to Bagdad, the
Seljukian prince again rescued the caliph from his enemies and
devoutly, on foot, led the bridle of his mule from the prison to
the palace. Their alliance was cemented by the marriage of
Togrul’s sister with the successor of the prophet. Without
reluctance he had introduced a Turkish virgin into his harem; but
Cayem proudly refused his daughter to the sultan, disdained to
mingle the blood of the Hashemites with the blood of a Scythian
shepherd; and protracted the negotiation many months, till the
gradual diminution of his revenue admonished him that he was
still in the hands of a master. The royal nuptials were followed
by the death of Togrul himself; 24 as he left no children, his
nephew Alp Arslan succeeded to the title and prerogatives of
sultan; and his name, after that of the caliph, was pronounced in
the public prayers of the Moslems. Yet in this revolution, the
Abbassides acquired a larger measure of liberty and power. On the
throne of Asia, the Turkish monarchs were less jealous of the
domestic administration of Bagdad; and the commanders of the
faithful were relieved from the ignominious vexations to which
they had been exposed by the presence and poverty of the Persian
dynasty.
22 (return) [ Consult the Bibliotheque Orientale, in the articles
of the Abbassides, Caher, and Caiem, and the Annals of Elmacin
and Abulpharagius.]
23 (return) [ For this curious ceremony, I am indebted to M. De
Guignes (tom. iii. p. 197, 198,) and that learned author is
obliged to Bondari, who composed in Arabic the history of the
Seljukides, tom. v. p. 365) I am ignorant of his age, country,
and character.]
231 (return) [ According to Von Hammer, “crowns” are incorrect.
They are unknown as a symbol of royalty in the East. V. Hammer,
Osmanische Geschischte, vol. i. p. 567.—M.]
24 (return) [ Eodem anno (A. H. 455) obiit princeps Togrulbecus
.... rex fuit clemens, prudens, et peritus regnandi, cujus terror
corda mortalium invaserat, ita ut obedirent ei reges atque ad
ipsum scriberent. Elma cin, Hist. Saracen. p. 342, vers. Erpenii.
* Note: He died, being 75 years old. V. Hammer.—M.]
Chapter LVII: The Turks.—Part II.
Since the fall of the caliphs, the discord and degeneracy of the
Saracens respected the Asiatic provinces of Rome; which, by the
victories of Nicephorus, Zimisces, and Basil, had been extended
as far as Antioch and the eastern boundaries of Armenia.
Twenty-five years after the death of Basil, his successors were
suddenly assaulted by an unknown race of Barbarians, who united
the Scythian valor with the fanaticism of new proselytes, and the
art and riches of a powerful monarchy. 25 The myriads of Turkish
horse overspread a frontier of six hundred miles from Tauris to
Arzeroum, and the blood of one hundred and thirty thousand
Christians was a grateful sacrifice to the Arabian prophet. Yet
the arms of Togrul did not make any deep or lasting impression on
the Greek empire. The torrent rolled away from the open country;
the sultan retired without glory or success from the siege of an
Armenian city; the obscure hostilities were continued or
suspended with a vicissitude of events; and the bravery of the
Macedonian legions renewed the fame of the conqueror of Asia. 26
The name of Alp Arslan, the valiant lion, is expressive of the
popular idea of the perfection of man; and the successor of
Togrul displayed the fierceness and generosity of the royal
animal. He passed the Euphrates at the head of the Turkish
cavalry, and entered Caesarea, the metropolis of Cappadocia, to
which he had been attracted by the fame and wealth of the temple
of St. Basil. The solid structure resisted the destroyer: but he
carried away the doors of the shrine incrusted with gold and
pearls, and profaned the relics of the tutelar saint, whose
mortal frailties were now covered by the venerable rust of
antiquity. The final conquest of Armenia and Georgia was achieved
by Alp Arslan. In Armenia, the title of a kingdom, and the spirit
of a nation, were annihilated: the artificial fortifications were
yielded by the mercenaries of Constantinople; by strangers
without faith, veterans without pay or arms, and recruits without
experience or discipline. The loss of this important frontier was
the news of a day; and the Catholics were neither surprised nor
displeased, that a people so deeply infected with the Nestorian
and Eutychian errors had been delivered by Christ and his mother
into the hands of the infidels. 27 The woods and valleys of Mount
Caucasus were more strenuously defended by the native Georgians
28 or Iberians; but the Turkish sultan and his son Malek were
indefatigable in this holy war: their captives were compelled to
promise a spiritual, as well as temporal, obedience; and, instead
of their collars and bracelets, an iron horseshoe, a badge of
ignominy, was imposed on the infidels who still adhered to the
worship of their fathers. The change, however, was not sincere or
universal; and, through ages of servitude, the Georgians have
maintained the succession of their princes and bishops. But a
race of men, whom nature has cast in her most perfect mould, is
degraded by poverty, ignorance, and vice; their profession, and
still more their practice, of Christianity is an empty name; and
if they have emerged from heresy, it is only because they are too
illiterate to remember a metaphysical creed. 29
25 (return) [ For these wars of the Turks and Romans, see in
general the Byzantine histories of Zonaras and Cedrenus,
Scylitzes the continuator of Cedrenus, and Nicephorus Bryennius
Caesar. The two first of these were monks, the two latter
statesmen; yet such were the Greeks, that the difference of style
and character is scarcely discernible. For the Orientals, I draw
as usuul on the wealth of D’Herbelot (see titles of the first
Seljukides) and the accuracy of De Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom.
iii. l. x.)]
26 (return) [ Cedrenus, tom. ii. p. 791. The credulity of the
vulgar is always probable; and the Turks had learned from the
Arabs the history or legend of Escander Dulcarnein, (D’Herbelot,
p. 213 &c.)]
27 (return) [ (Scylitzes, ad calcem Cedreni, tom. ii. p. 834,
whose ambiguous construction shall not tempt me to suspect that
he confounded the Nestorian and Monophysite heresies,) He
familiarly talks of the qualities, as I should apprehend, very
foreign to the perfect Being; but his bigotry is forced to
confess that they were soon afterwards discharged on the orthodox
Romans.]
28 (return) [ Had the name of Georgians been known to the Greeks,
(Stritter, Memoriae Byzant. tom. iv. Iberica,) I should derive it
from their agriculture, (l. iv. c. 18, p. 289, edit. Wesseling.)
But it appears only since the crusades, among the Latins (Jac. a
Vitriaco, Hist. Hierosol. c. 79, p. 1095) and Orientals,
(D’Herbelot, p. 407,) and was devoutly borrowed from St. George
of Cappadocia.]
29 (return) [ Mosheim, Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 632. See, in
Chardin’s Travels, (tom. i. p. 171-174,) the manners and religion
of this handsome but worthless nation. See the pedigree of their
princes from Adam to the present century, in the tables of M. De
Guignes, (tom. i. p. 433-438.)]
The false or genuine magnanimity of Mahmud the Gaznevide was not
imitated by Alp Arslan; and he attacked without scruple the Greek
empress Eudocia and her children. His alarming progress compelled
her to give herself and her sceptre to the hand of a soldier; and
Romanus Diogenes was invested with the Imperial purple. His
patriotism, and perhaps his pride, urged him from Constantinople
within two months after his accession; and the next campaign he
most scandalously took the field during the holy festival of
Easter. In the palace, Diogenes was no more than the husband of
Eudocia: in the camp, he was the emperor of the Romans, and he
sustained that character with feeble resources and invincible
courage. By his spirit and success the soldiers were taught to
act, the subjects to hope, and the enemies to fear. The Turks had
penetrated into the heart of Phrygia; but the sultan himself had
resigned to his emirs the prosecution of the war; and their
numerous detachments were scattered over Asia in the security of
conquest. Laden with spoil, and careless of discipline, they were
separately surprised and defeated by the Greeks: the activity of
the emperor seemed to multiply his presence: and while they heard
of his expedition to Antioch, the enemy felt his sword on the
hills of Trebizond. In three laborious campaigns, the Turks were
driven beyond the Euphrates; in the fourth and last, Romanus
undertook the deliverance of Armenia. The desolation of the land
obliged him to transport a supply of two months’ provisions; and
he marched forwards to the siege of Malazkerd, 30 an important
fortress in the midway between the modern cities of Arzeroum and
Van. His army amounted, at the least, to one hundred thousand
men. The troops of Constantinople were reenforced by the
disorderly multitudes of Phrygia and Cappadocia; but the real
strength was composed of the subjects and allies of Europe, the
legions of Macedonia, and the squadrons of Bulgaria; the Uzi, a
Moldavian horde, who were themselves of the Turkish race; 31 and,
above all, the mercenary and adventurous bands of French and
Normans. Their lances were commanded by the valiant Ursel of
Baliol, the kinsman or father of the Scottish kings, 32 and were
allowed to excel in the exercise of arms, or, according to the
Greek style, in the practice of the Pyrrhic dance.
30 (return) [ This city is mentioned by Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, (de Administrat. Imperii, l. ii. c. 44, p. 119,)
and the Byzantines of the xith century, under the name of
Mantzikierte, and by some is confounded with Theodosiopolis; but
Delisle, in his notes and maps, has very properly fixed the
situation. Abulfeda (Geograph. tab. xviii. p. 310) describes
Malasgerd as a small town, built with black stone, supplied with
water, without trees, &c.]
31 (return) [ The Uzi of the Greeks (Stritter, Memor. Byzant.
tom. iii. p. 923-948) are the Gozz of the Orientals, (Hist. des
Huns, tom. ii. p. 522, tom. iii. p. 133, &c.) They appear on the
Danube and the Volga, and Armenia, Syria, and Chorasan, and the
name seems to have been extended to the whole Turkman race.]
32 (return) [ Urselius (the Russelius of Zonaras) is
distinguished by Jeffrey Malaterra (l. i. c. 33) among the Norman
conquerors of Sicily, and with the surname of Baliol: and our own
historians will tell how the Baliols came from Normandy to
Durham, built Bernard’s castle on the Tees, married an heiress of
Scotland, &c. Ducange (Not. ad Nicephor. Bryennium, l. ii. No. 4)
has labored the subject in honor of the president de Bailleul,
whose father had exchanged the sword for the gown.]
On the report of this bold invasion, which threatened his
hereditary dominions, Alp Arslan flew to the scene of action at
the head of forty thousand horse. 33 His rapid and skilful
evolutions distressed and dismayed the superior numbers of the
Greeks; and in the defeat of Basilacius, one of their principal
generals, he displayed the first example of his valor and
clemency. The imprudence of the emperor had separated his forces
after the reduction of Malazkerd. It was in vain that he
attempted to recall the mercenary Franks: they refused to obey
his summons; he disdained to await their return: the desertion of
the Uzi filled his mind with anxiety and suspicion; and against
the most salutary advice he rushed forwards to speedy and
decisive action. Had he listened to the fair proposals of the
sultan, Romanus might have secured a retreat, perhaps a peace;
but in these overtures he supposed the fear or weakness of the
enemy, and his answer was conceived in the tone of insult and
defiance. “If the Barbarian wishes for peace, let him evacuate
the ground which he occupies for the encampment of the Romans,
and surrender his city and palace of Rei as a pledge of his
sincerity.” Alp Arslan smiled at the vanity of the demand, but he
wept the death of so many faithful Moslems; and, after a devout
prayer, proclaimed a free permission to all who were desirous of
retiring from the field. With his own hands he tied up his
horse’s tail, exchanged his bow and arrows for a mace and
cimeter, clothed himself in a white garment, perfumed his body
with musk, and declared that if he were vanquished, that spot
should be the place of his burial. 34 The sultan himself had
affected to cast away his missile weapons: but his hopes of
victory were placed in the arrows of the Turkish cavalry, whose
squadrons were loosely distributed in the form of a crescent.
Instead of the successive lines and reserves of the Grecian
tactics, Romulus led his army in a single and solid phalanx, and
pressed with vigor and impatience the artful and yielding
resistance of the Barbarians. In this desultory and fruitless
combat he spent the greater part of a summer’s day, till prudence
and fatigue compelled him to return to his camp. But a retreat is
always perilous in the face of an active foe; and no sooner had
the standard been turned to the rear than the phalanx was broken
by the base cowardice, or the baser jealousy, of Andronicus, a
rival prince, who disgraced his birth and the purple of the
Caesars. 35 The Turkish squadrons poured a cloud of arrows on
this moment of confusion and lassitude; and the horns of their
formidable crescent were closed in the rear of the Greeks. In the
destruction of the army and pillage of the camp, it would be
needless to mention the number of the slain or captives. The
Byzantine writers deplore the loss of an inestimable pearl: they
forgot to mention, that in this fatal day the Asiatic provinces
of Rome were irretrievably sacrificed.
33 (return) [ Elmacin (p. 343, 344) assigns this probable number,
which is reduced by Abulpharagius to 15,000, (p. 227,) and by
D’Herbelot (p. 102) to 12,000 horse. But the same Elmacin gives
300,000 met to the emperor, of whom Abulpharagius says, Cum
centum hominum millibus, multisque equis et magna pompa
instructus. The Greeks abstain from any definition of numbers.]
34 (return) [ The Byzantine writers do not speak so distinctly of
the presence of the sultan: he committed his forces to a eunuch,
had retired to a distance, &c. Is it ignorance, or jealousy, or
truth?]
35 (return) [ He was the son of Caesar John Ducas, brother of the
emperor Constantine, (Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 165.) Nicephorus
Bryennius applauds his virtues and extenuates his faults, (l. i.
p. 30, 38. l. ii. p. 53.) Yet he owns his enmity to Romanus.
Scylitzes speaks more explicitly of his treason.]
As long as a hope survived, Romanus attempted to rally and save
the relics of his army. When the centre, the Imperial station,
was left naked on all sides, and encompassed by the victorious
Turks, he still, with desperate courage, maintained the fight
till the close of day, at the head of the brave and faithful
subjects who adhered to his standard. They fell around him; his
horse was slain; the emperor was wounded; yet he stood alone and
intrepid, till he was oppressed and bound by the strength of
multitudes. The glory of this illustrious prize was disputed by a
slave and a soldier; a slave who had seen him on the throne of
Constantinople, and a soldier whose extreme deformity had been
excused on the promise of some signal service.
Despoiled of his arms, his jewels, and his purple, Romanus spent
a dreary and perilous night on the field of battle, amidst a
disorderly crowd of the meaner Barbarians. In the morning the
royal captive was presented to Alp Arslan, who doubted of his
fortune, till the identity of the person was ascertained by the
report of his ambassadors, and by the more pathetic evidence of
Basilacius, who embraced with tears the feet of his unhappy
sovereign. The successor of Constantine, in a plebeian habit, was
led into the Turkish divan, and commanded to kiss the ground
before the lord of Asia. He reluctantly obeyed; and Alp Arslan,
starting from his throne, is said to have planted his foot on the
neck of the Roman emperor. 36 But the fact is doubtful; and if,
in this moment of insolence, the sultan complied with the
national custom, the rest of his conduct has extorted the praise
of his bigoted foes, and may afford a lesson to the most
civilized ages. He instantly raised the royal captive from the
ground; and thrice clasping his hand with tender sympathy,
assured him, that his life and dignity should be inviolate in the
hands of a prince who had learned to respect the majesty of his
equals and the vicissitudes of fortune. From the divan, Romanus
was conducted to an adjacent tent, where he was served with pomp
and reverence by the officers of the sultan, who, twice each day,
seated him in the place of honor at his own table. In a free and
familiar conversation of eight days, not a word, not a look, of
insult escaped from the conqueror; but he severely censured the
unworthy subjects who had deserted their valiant prince in the
hour of danger, and gently admonished his antagonist of some
errors which he had committed in the management of the war. In
the preliminaries of negotiation, Alp Arslan asked him what
treatment he expected to receive, and the calm indifference of
the emperor displays the freedom of his mind. “If you are cruel,”
said he, “you will take my life; if you listen to pride, you will
drag me at your chariot-wheels; if you consult your interest, you
will accept a ransom, and restore me to my country.” “And what,”
continued the sultan, “would have been your own behavior, had
fortune smiled on your arms?” The reply of the Greek betrays a
sentiment, which prudence, and even gratitude, should have taught
him to suppress. “Had I vanquished,” he fiercely said, “I would
have inflicted on thy body many a stripe.” The Turkish conqueror
smiled at the insolence of his captive; observed that the
Christian law inculcated the love of enemies and forgiveness of
injuries; and nobly declared, that he would not imitate an
example which he condemned. After mature deliberation, Alp Arslan
dictated the terms of liberty and peace, a ransom of a million,
361 an annual tribute of three hundred and sixty thousand pieces
of gold, 37 the marriage of the royal children, and the
deliverance of all the Moslems, who were in the power of the
Greeks. Romanus, with a sigh, subscribed this treaty, so
disgraceful to the majesty of the empire; he was immediately
invested with a Turkish robe of honor; his nobles and patricians
were restored to their sovereign; and the sultan, after a
courteous embrace, dismissed him with rich presents and a
military guard. No sooner did he reach the confines of the
empire, than he was informed that the palace and provinces had
disclaimed their allegiance to a captive: a sum of two hundred
thousand pieces was painfully collected; and the fallen monarch
transmitted this part of his ransom, with a sad confession of his
impotence and disgrace. The generosity, or perhaps the ambition,
of the sultan, prepared to espouse the cause of his ally; but his
designs were prevented by the defeat, imprisonment, and death, of
Romanus Diogenes. 38
36 (return) [ This circumstance, which we read and doubt in
Scylitzes and Constantine Manasses, is more prudently omitted by
Nicephorus and Zonaras.]
361 (return) [ Elmacin gives 1,500,000. Wilken, Geschichte der
Kreuz-zuge, vol. l. p. 10.—M.]
37 (return) [ The ransom and tribute are attested by reason and
the Orientals. The other Greeks are modestly silent; but
Nicephorus Bryennius dares to affirm, that the terms were bad and
that the emperor would have preferred death to a shameful
treaty.]
38 (return) [ The defeat and captivity of Romanus Diogenes may be
found in John Scylitzes ad calcem Cedreni, tom. ii. p. 835-843.
Zonaras, tom. ii. p. 281-284. Nicephorus Bryennius, l. i. p.
25-32. Glycas, p. 325-327. Constantine Manasses, p. 134. Elmacin,
Hist. Saracen. p. 343 344. Abulpharag. Dynast. p. 227.
D’Herbelot, p. 102, 103. D Guignes, tom. iii. p. 207-211. Besides
my old acquaintance Elmacin and Abulpharagius, the historian of
the Huns has consulted Abulfeda, and his epitomizer Benschounah,
a Chronicle of the Caliphs, by Abulmahasen of Egypt, and Novairi
of Africa.]
In the treaty of peace, it does not appear that Alp Arslan
extorted any province or city from the captive emperor; and his
revenge was satisfied with the trophies of his victory, and the
spoils of Anatolia, from Antioch to the Black Sea. The fairest
part of Asia was subject to his laws: twelve hundred princes, or
the sons of princes, stood before his throne; and two hundred
thousand soldiers marched under his banners. The sultan disdained
to pursue the fugitive Greeks; but he meditated the more glorious
conquest of Turkestan, the original seat of the house of Seljuk.
He moved from Bagdad to the banks of the Oxus; a bridge was
thrown over the river; and twenty days were consumed in the
passage of his troops. But the progress of the great king was
retarded by the governor of Berzem; and Joseph the Carizmian
presumed to defend his fortress against the powers of the East.
When he was produced a captive in the royal tent, the sultan,
instead of praising his valor, severely reproached his obstinate
folly: and the insolent replies of the rebel provoked a sentence,
that he should be fastened to four stakes, and left to expire in
that painful situation. At this command, the desperate Carizmian,
drawing a dagger, rushed headlong towards the throne: the guards
raised their battle-axes; their zeal was checked by Alp Arslan,
the most skilful archer of the age: he drew his bow, but his foot
slipped, the arrow glanced aside, and he received in his breast
the dagger of Joseph, who was instantly cut in pieces.
The wound was mortal; and the Turkish prince bequeathed a dying
admonition to the pride of kings. “In my youth,” said Alp Arslan,
“I was advised by a sage to humble myself before God; to distrust
my own strength; and never to despise the most contemptible foe.
I have neglected these lessons; and my neglect has been
deservedly punished. Yesterday, as from an eminence I beheld the
numbers, the discipline, and the spirit, of my armies, the earth
seemed to tremble under my feet; and I said in my heart, Surely
thou art the king of the world, the greatest and most invincible
of warriors. These armies are no longer mine; and, in the
confidence of my personal strength, I now fall by the hand of an
assassin.” 39 Alp Arslan possessed the virtues of a Turk and a
Mussulman; his voice and stature commanded the reverence of
mankind; his face was shaded with long whiskers; and his ample
turban was fashioned in the shape of a crown. The remains of the
sultan were deposited in the tomb of the Seljukian dynasty; and
the passenger might read and meditate this useful inscription: 40
“O ye who have seen the glory of Alp Arslan exalted to the
heavens, repair to Maru, and you will behold it buried in the
dust.” The annihilation of the inscription, and the tomb itself,
more forcibly proclaims the instability of human greatness.
39 (return) [ This interesting death is told by D’Herbelot, (p.
103, 104,) and M. De Guignes, (tom. iii. p. 212, 213.) from their
Oriental writers; but neither of them have transfused the spirit
of Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen p. 344, 345.)]
40 (return) [ A critic of high renown, (the late Dr. Johnson,)
who has severely scrutinized the epitaphs of Pope, might cavil in
this sublime inscription at the words “repair to Maru,” since the
reader must already be at Maru before he could peruse the
inscription.]
During the life of Alp Arslan, his eldest son had been
acknowledged as the future sultan of the Turks. On his father’s
death the inheritance was disputed by an uncle, a cousin, and a
brother: they drew their cimeters, and assembled their followers;
and the triple victory of Malek Shah 41 established his own
reputation and the right of primogeniture. In every age, and more
especially in Asia, the thirst of power has inspired the same
passions, and occasioned the same disorders; but, from the long
series of civil war, it would not be easy to extract a sentiment
more pure and magnanimous than is contained in the saying of the
Turkish prince. On the eve of the battle, he performed his
devotions at Thous, before the tomb of the Imam Riza. As the
sultan rose from the ground, he asked his vizier Nizam, who had
knelt beside him, what had been the object of his secret
petition: “That your arms may be crowned with victory,” was the
prudent, and most probably the sincere, answer of the minister.
“For my part,” replied the generous Malek, “I implored the Lord
of Hosts that he would take from me my life and crown, if my
brother be more worthy than myself to reign over the Moslems.”
The favorable judgment of heaven was ratified by the caliph; and
for the first time, the sacred title of Commander of the Faithful
was communicated to a Barbarian. But this Barbarian, by his
personal merit, and the extent of his empire, was the greatest
prince of his age. After the settlement of Persia and Syria, he
marched at the head of innumerable armies to achieve the conquest
of Turkestan, which had been undertaken by his father. In his
passage of the Oxus, the boatmen, who had been employed in
transporting some troops, complained, that their payment was
assigned on the revenues of Antioch. The sultan frowned at this
preposterous choice; but he miled at the artful flattery of his
vizier. “It was not to postpone their reward, that I selected
those remote places, but to leave a memorial to posterity, that,
under your reign, Antioch and the Oxus were subject to the same
sovereign.” But this description of his limits was unjust and
parsimonious: beyond the Oxus, he reduced to his obedience the
cities of Bochara, Carizme, and Samarcand, and crushed each
rebellious slave, or independent savage, who dared to resist.
Malek passed the Sihon or Jaxartes, the last boundary of Persian
civilization: the hordes of Turkestan yielded to his supremacy:
his name was inserted on the coins, and in the prayers of
Cashgar, a Tartar kingdom on the extreme borders of China. From
the Chinese frontier, he stretched his immediate jurisdiction or
feudatory sway to the west and south, as far as the mountains of
Georgia, the neighborhood of Constantinople, the holy city of
Jerusalem, and the spicy groves of Arabia Felix. Instead of
resigning himself to the luxury of his harem, the shepherd king,
both in peace and war, was in action and in the field. By the
perpetual motion of the royal camp, each province was
successively blessed with his presence; and he is said to have
perambulated twelve times the wide extent of his dominions, which
surpassed the Asiatic reign of Cyrus and the caliphs. Of these
expeditions, the most pious and splendid was the pilgrimage of
Mecca: the freedom and safety of the caravans were protected by
his arms; the citizens and pilgrims were enriched by the
profusion of his alms; and the desert was cheered by the places
of relief and refreshment, which he instituted for the use of his
brethren. Hunting was the pleasure, and even the passion, of the
sultan, and his train consisted of forty-seven thousand horses;
but after the massacre of a Turkish chase, for each piece of
game, he bestowed a piece of gold on the poor, a slight
atonement, at the expense of the people, for the cost and
mischief of the amusement of kings. In the peaceful prosperity of
his reign, the cities of Asia were adorned with palaces and
hospitals with moschs and colleges; few departed from his Divan
without reward, and none without justice. The language and
literature of Persia revived under the house of Seljuk; 42 and if
Malek emulated the liberality of a Turk less potent than himself,
43 his palace might resound with the songs of a hundred poets.
The sultan bestowed a more serious and learned care on the
reformation of the calendar, which was effected by a general
assembly of the astronomers of the East. By a law of the prophet,
the Moslems are confined to the irregular course of the lunar
months; in Persia, since the age of Zoroaster, the revolution of
the sun has been known and celebrated as an annual festival; 44
but after the fall of the Magian empire, the intercalation had
been neglected; the fractions of minutes and hours were
multiplied into days; and the date of the springs was removed
from the sign of Aries to that of Pisces. The reign of Malek was
illustrated by the Gelalaean aera; and all errors, either past or
future, were corrected by a computation of time, which surpasses
the Julian, and approaches the accuracy of the Gregorian, style.
45
41 (return) [ The Bibliotheque Orientale has given the text of
the reign of Malek, (p. 542, 543, 544, 654, 655;) and the
Histoire Generale des Huns (tom. iii. p. 214-224) has added the
usual measure of repetition emendation, and supplement. Without
those two learned Frenchmen I should be blind indeed in the
Eastern world.]
42 (return) [ See an excellent discourse at the end of Sir
William Jones’s History of Nadir Shah, and the articles of the
poets, Amak, Anvari, Raschidi, &c., in the Bibliotheque
Orientale. ]
43 (return) [ His name was Kheder Khan. Four bags were placed
round his sopha, and as he listened to the song, he cast handfuls
of gold and silver to the poets, (D’Herbelot, p. 107.) All this
may be true; but I do not understand how he could reign in
Transoxiana in the time of Malek Shah, and much less how Kheder
could surpass him in power and pomp. I suspect that the
beginning, not the end, of the xith century is the true aera of
his reign.]
44 (return) [ See Chardin, Voyages en Perse, tom. ii. p. 235.]
45 (return) [ The Gelalaean aera (Gelaleddin, Glory of the Faith,
was one of the names or titles of Malek Shah) is fixed to the
xvth of March, A. H. 471, A.D. 1079. Dr. Hyde has produced the
original testimonies of the Persians and Arabians, (de Religione
veterum Persarum, c. 16 p. 200-211.)]
In a period when Europe was plunged in the deepest barbarism, the
light and splendor of Asia may be ascribed to the docility rather
than the knowledge of the Turkish conquerors. An ample share of
their wisdom and virtue is due to a Persian vizier, who ruled the
empire under the reigns of Alp Arslan and his son. Nizam, one of
the most illustrious ministers of the East, was honored by the
caliph as an oracle of religion and science; he was trusted by
the sultan as the faithful vicegerent of his power and justice.
After an administration of thirty years, the fame of the vizier,
his wealth, and even his services, were transformed into crimes.
He was overthrown by the insidious arts of a woman and a rival;
and his fall was hastened by a rash declaration, that his cap and
ink-horn, the badges of his office, were connected by the divine
decree with the throne and diadem of the sultan. At the age of
ninety-three years, the venerable statesman was dismissed by his
master, accused by his enemies, and murdered by a fanatic: 451
the last words of Nizam attested his innocence, and the remainder
of Malek’s life was short and inglorious. From Ispahan, the scene
of this disgraceful transaction, the sultan moved to Bagdad, with
the design of transplanting the caliph, and of fixing his own
residence in the capital of the Moslem world. The feeble
successor of Mahomet obtained a respite of ten days; and before
the expiration of the term, the Barbarian was summoned by the
angel of death. His ambassadors at Constantinople had asked in
marriage a Roman princess; but the proposal was decently eluded;
and the daughter of Alexius, who might herself have been the
victim, expresses her abhorrence of his unnatural conjunction. 46
The daughter of the sultan was bestowed on the caliph Moctadi,
with the imperious condition, that, renouncing the society of his
wives and concubines, he should forever confine himself to this
honorable alliance.
451 (return) [ He was the first great victim of his enemy, Hassan
Sabek, founder of the Assassins. Von Hammer, Geschichte der
Assassinen, p. 95.—M.]
46 (return) [ She speaks of this Persian royalty. Anna Comnena
was only nine years old at the end of the reign of Malek Shah,
(A.D. 1092,) and when she speaks of his assassination, she
confounds the sultan with the vizier, (Alexias, l. vi. p. 177,
178.)]
Chapter LVII: The Turks.—Part III.
The greatness and unity of the Turkish empire expired in the
person of Malek Shah. His vacant throne was disputed by his
brother and his four sons; 461 and, after a series of civil wars,
the treaty which reconciled the surviving candidates confirmed a
lasting separation in the Persian dynasty, the eldest and
principal branch of the house of Seljuk. The three younger
dynasties were those of Kerman, of Syria, and of Roum: the first
of these commanded an extensive, though obscure, 47 dominion on
the shores of the Indian Ocean: 48 the second expelled the
Arabian princes of Aleppo and Damascus; and the third, our
peculiar care, invaded the Roman provinces of Asia Minor. The
generous policy of Malek contributed to their elevation: he
allowed the princes of his blood, even those whom he had
vanquished in the field, to seek new kingdoms worthy of their
ambition; nor was he displeased that they should draw away the
more ardent spirits, who might have disturbed the tranquillity of
his reign. As the supreme head of his family and nation, the
great sultan of Persia commanded the obedience and tribute of his
royal brethren: the thrones of Kerman and Nice, of Aleppo and
Damascus; the Atabeks, and emirs of Syria and Mesopotamia,
erected their standards under the shadow of his sceptre: 49 and
the hordes of Turkmans overspread the plains of the Western Asia.
After the death of Malek, the bands of union and subordination
were relaxed and finally dissolved: the indulgence of the house
of Seljuk invested their slaves with the inheritance of kingdoms;
and, in the Oriental style, a crowd of princes arose from the
dust of their feet. 50
461 (return) [ See Von Hammer, Osmanische Geschichte, vol. i. p.
16. The Seljukian dominions were for a time reunited in the
person of Sandjar, one of the sons of Malek Shah, who ruled “from
Kashgar to Antioch, from the Caspian to the Straits of
Babelmandel.”—M.]
47 (return) [ So obscure, that the industry of M. De Guignes
could only copy (tom. i. p. 244, tom. iii. part i. p. 269, &c.)
the history, or rather list, of the Seljukides of Kerman, in
Bibliotheque Orientale. They were extinguished before the end of
the xiith century.]
48 (return) [ Tavernier, perhaps the only traveller who has
visited Kerman, describes the capital as a great ruinous village,
twenty-five days’ journey from Ispahan, and twenty-seven from
Ormus, in the midst of a fertile country, (Voyages en Turquie et
en Perse, p. 107, 110.)]
49 (return) [ It appears from Anna Comnena, that the Turks of
Asia Minor obeyed the signet and chiauss of the great sultan,
(Alexias, l. vi. p. 170;) and that the two sons of Soliman were
detained in his court, (p. 180.)]
50 (return) [ This expression is quoted by Petit de la Croix (Vie
de Gestis p. 160) from some poet, most probably a Persian.]
A prince of the royal line, Cutulmish, 501 the son of Izrail, the
son of Seljuk, had fallen in a battle against Alp Arslan and the
humane victor had dropped a tear over his grave. His five sons,
strong in arms, ambitious of power, and eager for revenge,
unsheathed their cimeters against the son of Alp Arslan. The two
armies expected the signal when the caliph, forgetful of the
majesty which secluded him from vulgar eyes, interposed his
venerable mediation. “Instead of shedding the blood of your
brethren, your brethren both in descent and faith, unite your
forces in a holy war against the Greeks, the enemies of God and
his apostle.” They listened to his voice; the sultan embraced his
rebellious kinsmen; and the eldest, the valiant Soliman, accepted
the royal standard, which gave him the free conquest and
hereditary command of the provinces of the Roman empire, from
Arzeroum to Constantinople, and the unknown regions of the West.
51 Accompanied by his four brothers, he passed the Euphrates; the
Turkish camp was soon seated in the neighborhood of Kutaieh in
Phrygia; and his flying cavalry laid waste the country as far as
the Hellespont and the Black Sea. Since the decline of the
empire, the peninsula of Asia Minor had been exposed to the
transient, though destructive, inroads of the Persians and
Saracens; but the fruits of a lasting conquest were reserved for
the Turkish sultan; and his arms were introduced by the Greeks,
who aspired to reign on the ruins of their country. Since the
captivity of Romanus, six years the feeble son of Eudocia had
trembled under the weight of the Imperial crown, till the
provinces of the East and West were lost in the same month by a
double rebellion: of either chief Nicephorus was the common name;
but the surnames of Bryennius and Botoniates distinguish the
European and Asiatic candidates. Their reasons, or rather their
promises, were weighed in the Divan; and, after some hesitation,
Soliman declared himself in favor of Botoniates, opened a free
passage to his troops in their march from Antioch to Nice, and
joined the banner of the Crescent to that of the Cross. After his
ally had ascended the throne of Constantinople, the sultan was
hospitably entertained in the suburb of Chrysopolis or Scutari;
and a body of two thousand Turks was transported into Europe, to
whose dexterity and courage the new emperor was indebted for the
defeat and captivity of his rival, Bryennius. But the conquest of
Europe was dearly purchased by the sacrifice of Asia:
Constantinople was deprived of the obedience and revenue of the
provinces beyond the Bosphorus and Hellespont; and the regular
progress of the Turks, who fortified the passes of the rivers and
mountains, left not a hope of their retreat or expulsion. Another
candidate implored the aid of the sultan: Melissenus, in his
purple robes and red buskins, attended the motions of the Turkish
camp; and the desponding cities were tempted by the summons of a
Roman prince, who immediately surrendered them into the hands of
the Barbarians. These acquisitions were confirmed by a treaty of
peace with the emperor Alexius: his fear of Robert compelled him
to seek the friendship of Soliman; and it was not till after the
sultan’s death that he extended as far as Nicomedia, about sixty
miles from Constantinople, the eastern boundary of the Roman
world. Trebizond alone, defended on either side by the sea and
mountains, preserved at the extremity of the Euxine the ancient
character of a Greek colony, and the future destiny of a
Christian empire.
501 (return) [ Wilken considers Cutulmish not a Turkish name.
Geschicht Kreuz-zuge, vol. i. p. 9.—M.]
51 (return) [ On the conquest of Asia Minor, M. De Guignes has
derived no assistance from the Turkish or Arabian writers, who
produce a naked list of the Seljukides of Roum. The Greeks are
unwilling to expose their shame, and we must extort some hints
from Scylitzes, (p. 860, 863,) Nicephorus Bryennius, (p. 88, 91,
92, &c., 103, 104,) and Anna Comnena (Alexias, p. 91, 92, &c.,
163, &c.)]
Since the first conquests of the caliphs, the establishment of
the Turks in Anatolia or Asia Minor was the most deplorable loss
which the church and empire had sustained. By the propagation of
the Moslem faith, Soliman deserved the name of Gazi, a holy
champion; and his new kingdoms, of the Romans, or of Roum, was
added to the tables of Oriental geography. It is described as
extending from the Euphrates to Constantinople, from the Black
Sea to the confines of Syria; pregnant with mines of silver and
iron, of alum and copper, fruitful in corn and wine, and
productive of cattle and excellent horses. 52 The wealth of
Lydia, the arts of the Greeks, the splendor of the Augustan age,
existed only in books and ruins, which were equally obscure in
the eyes of the Scythian conquerors. Yet, in the present decay,
Anatolia still contains some wealthy and populous cities; and,
under the Byzantine empire, they were far more flourishing in
numbers, size, and opulence. By the choice of the sultan, Nice,
the metropolis of Bithynia, was preferred for his palace and
fortress: the seat of the Seljukian dynasty of Roum was planted
one hundred miles from Constantinople; and the divinity of Christ
was denied and derided in the same temple in which it had been
pronounced by the first general synod of the Catholics. The unity
of God, and the mission of Mahomet, were preached in the moschs;
the Arabian learning was taught in the schools; the Cadhis judged
according to the law of the Koran; the Turkish manners and
language prevailed in the cities; and Turkman camps were
scattered over the plains and mountains of Anatolia. On the hard
conditions of tribute and servitude, the Greek Christians might
enjoy the exercise of their religion; but their most holy
churches were profaned; their priests and bishops were insulted;
53 they were compelled to suffer the triumph of the Pagans, and
the apostasy of their brethren; many thousand children were
marked by the knife of circumcision; and many thousand captives
were devoted to the service or the pleasures of their masters. 54
After the loss of Asia, Antioch still maintained her primitive
allegiance to Christ and Caesar; but the solitary province was
separated from all Roman aid, and surrounded on all sides by the
Mahometan powers. The despair of Philaretus the governor prepared
the sacrifice of his religion and loyalty, had not his guilt been
prevented by his son, who hastened to the Nicene palace, and
offered to deliver this valuable prize into the hands of Soliman.
The ambitious sultan mounted on horseback, and in twelve nights
(for he reposed in the day) performed a march of six hundred
miles. Antioch was oppressed by the speed and secrecy of his
enterprise; and the dependent cities, as far as Laodicea and the
confines of Aleppo, 55 obeyed the example of the metropolis. From
Laodicea to the Thracian Bosphorus, or arm of St. George, the
conquests and reign of Soliman extended thirty days’ journey in
length, and in breadth about ten or fifteen, between the rocks of
Lycia and the Black Sea. 56 The Turkish ignorance of navigation
protected, for a while, the inglorious safety of the emperor; but
no sooner had a fleet of two hundred ships been constructed by
the hands of the captive Greeks, than Alexius trembled behind the
walls of his capital. His plaintive epistles were dispersed over
Europe, to excite the compassion of the Latins, and to paint the
danger, the weakness, and the riches of the city of Constantine.
57
52 (return) [ Such is the description of Roum by Haiton the
Armenian, whose Tartar history may be found in the collections of
Ramusio and Bergeron, (see Abulfeda, Geograph. climat. xvii. p.
301-305.)]
53 (return) [ Dicit eos quendam abusione Sodomitica intervertisse
episcopum, (Guibert. Abbat. Hist. Hierosol. l. i. p. 468.) It is
odd enough, that we should find a parallel passage of the same
people in the present age. “Il n’est point d’horreur que ces
Turcs n’ayent commis, et semblables aux soldats effrenes, qui
dans le sac d’une ville, non contens de disposer de tout a leur
gre pretendent encore aux succes les moins desirables. Quelque
Sipahis ont porte leurs attentats sur la personne du vieux rabbi
de la synagogue, et celle de l’Archeveque Grec.” (Memoires du
Baron de Tott, tom. ii. p. 193.)]
54 (return) [ The emperor, or abbot describe the scenes of a
Turkish camp as if they had been present. Matres correptae in
conspectu filiarum multipliciter repetitis diversorum coitibus
vexabantur; (is that the true reading?) cum filiae assistentes
carmina praecinere saltando cogerentur. Mox eadem passio ad
filias, &c.]
55 (return) [ See Antioch, and the death of Soliman, in Anna
Comnena, (Alexius, l. vi. p. 168, 169,) with the notes of
Ducange.]
56 (return) [ William of Tyre (l. i. c. 9, 10, p. 635) gives the
most authentic and deplorable account of these Turkish
conquests.]
57 (return) [ In his epistle to the count of Flanders, Alexius
seems to fall too low beneath his character and dignity; yet it
is approved by Ducange, (Not. ad Alexiad. p. 335, &c.,) and
paraphrased by the Abbot Guibert, a contemporary historian. The
Greek text no longer exists; and each translator and scribe might
say with Guibert, (p. 475,) verbis vestita meis, a privilege of
most indefinite latitude.]
But the most interesting conquest of the Seljukian Turks was that
of Jerusalem, 58 which soon became the theatre of nations. In
their capitulation with Omar, the inhabitants had stipulated the
assurance of their religion and property; but the articles were
interpreted by a master against whom it was dangerous to dispute;
and in the four hundred years of the reign of the caliphs, the
political climate of Jerusalem was exposed to the vicissitudes of
storm and sunshine. 59 By the increase of proselytes and
population, the Mahometans might excuse the usurpation of three
fourths of the city: but a peculiar quarter was resolved for the
patriarch with his clergy and people; a tribute of two pieces of
gold was the price of protection; and the sepulchre of Christ,
with the church of the Resurrection, was still left in the hands
of his votaries. Of these votaries, the most numerous and
respectable portion were strangers to Jerusalem: the pilgrimages
to the Holy Land had been stimulated, rather than suppressed, by
the conquest of the Arabs; and the enthusiasm which had always
prompted these perilous journeys, was nourished by the congenial
passions of grief and indignation. A crowd of pilgrims from the
East and West continued to visit the holy sepulchre, and the
adjacent sanctuaries, more especially at the festival of Easter;
and the Greeks and Latins, the Nestorians and Jacobites, the
Copts and Abyssinians, the Armenians and Georgians, maintained
the chapels, the clergy, and the poor of their respective
communions. The harmony of prayer in so many various tongues, the
worship of so many nations in the common temple of their
religion, might have afforded a spectacle of edification and
peace; but the zeal of the Christian sects was imbittered by
hatred and revenge; and in the kingdom of a suffering Messiah,
who had pardoned his enemies, they aspired to command and
persecute their spiritual brethren. The preeminence was asserted
by the spirit and numbers of the Franks; and the greatness of
Charlemagne 60 protected both the Latin pilgrims and the
Catholics of the East. The poverty of Carthage, Alexandria, and
Jerusalem, was relieved by the alms of that pious emperor; and
many monasteries of Palestine were founded or restored by his
liberal devotion. Harun Alrashid, the greatest of the Abbassides,
esteemed in his Christian brother a similar supremacy of genius
and power: their friendship was cemented by a frequent
intercourse of gifts and embassies; and the caliph, without
resigning the substantial dominion, presented the emperor with
the keys of the holy sepulchre, and perhaps of the city of
Jerusalem. In the decline of the Carlovingian monarchy, the
republic of Amalphi promoted the interest of trade and religion
in the East. Her vessels transported the Latin pilgrims to the
coasts of Egypt and Palestine, and deserved, by their useful
imports, the favor and alliance of the Fatimite caliphs: 61 an
annual fair was instituted on Mount Calvary: and the Italian
merchants founded the convent and hospital of St. John of
Jerusalem, the cradle of the monastic and military order, which
has since reigned in the isles of Rhodes and of Malta. Had the
Christian pilgrims been content to revere the tomb of a prophet,
the disciples of Mahomet, instead of blaming, would have
imitated, their piety: but these rigid Unitarians were
scandalized by a worship which represents the birth, death, and
resurrection, of a God; the Catholic images were branded with the
name of idols; and the Moslems smiled with indignation 62 at the
miraculous flame which was kindled on the eve of Easter in the
holy sepulchre. 63 This pious fraud, first devised in the ninth
century, 64 was devoutly cherished by the Latin crusaders, and is
annually repeated by the clergy of the Greek, Armenian, and
Coptic sects, 65 who impose on the credulous spectators 66 for
their own benefit, and that of their tyrants. In every age, a
principle of toleration has been fortified by a sense of
interest: and the revenue of the prince and his emir was
increased each year, by the expense and tribute of so many
thousand strangers.
58 (return) [ Our best fund for the history of Jerusalem from
Heraclius to the crusades is contained in two large and original
passages of William archbishop of Tyre, (l. i. c. 1-10, l. xviii.
c. 5, 6,) the principal author of the Gesta Dei per Francos. M.
De Guignes has composed a very learned Memoire sur le Commerce
des Francois dans le de Levant avant les Croisades, &c. (Mem. de
l’Academie des Inscriptions, tom. xxxvii. p. 467-500.)]
59 (return) [ Secundum Dominorum dispositionem plerumque lucida
plerum que nubila recepit intervalla, et aegrotantium more
temporum praesentium gravabatur aut respirabat qualitate, (l. i.
c. 3, p. 630.) The latinity of William of Tyre is by no means
contemptible: but in his account of 490 years, from the loss to
the recovery of Jerusalem, precedes the true account by 30
years.]
60 (return) [ For the transactions of Charlemagne with the Holy
Land, see Eginhard, (de Vita Caroli Magni, c. 16, p. 79-82,)
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, (de Administratione Imperii, l. ii.
c. 26, p. 80,) and Pagi, (Critica, tom. iii. A.D. 800, No. 13,
14, 15.)]
61 (return) [ The caliph granted his privileges, Amalphitanis
viris amicis et utilium introductoribus, (Gesta Dei, p. 934.) The
trade of Venice to Egypt and Palestine cannot produce so old a
title, unless we adopt the laughable translation of a Frenchman,
who mistook the two factions of the circus (Veneti et Prasini)
for the Venetians and Parisians.]
62 (return) [ An Arabic chronicle of Jerusalem (apud Asseman.
Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 268, tom. iv. p. 368) attests the
unbelief of the caliph and the historian; yet Cantacuzene
presumes to appeal to the Mahometans themselves for the truth of
this perpetual miracle.]
63 (return) [ In his Dissertations on Ecclesiastical History, the
learned Mosheim has separately discussed this pretended miracle,
(tom. ii. p. 214-306,) de lumine sancti sepulchri.]
64 (return) [ William of Malmsbury (l. iv. c. 2, p. 209) quotes
the Itinerary of the monk Bernard, an eye-witness, who visited
Jerusalem A.D. 870. The miracle is confirmed by another pilgrim
some years older; and Mosheim ascribes the invention to the
Franks, soon after the decease of Charlemagne.]
65 (return) [ Our travellers, Sandys, (p. 134,) Thevenot, (p.
621-627,) Maundrell, (p. 94, 95,) &c., describes this extravagant
farce. The Catholics are puzzled to decide when the miracle ended
and the trick began.]
66 (return) [ The Orientals themselves confess the fraud, and
plead necessity and edification, (Memoires du Chevalier
D’Arvieux, tom. ii. p. 140. Joseph Abudacni, Hist. Copt. c. 20;)
but I will not attempt, with Mosheim, to explain the mode. Our
travellers have failed with the blood of St. Januarius at
Naples.]
The revolution which transferred the sceptre from the Abbassides
to the Fatimites was a benefit, rather than an injury, to the
Holy Land. A sovereign resident in Egypt was more sensible of the
importance of Christian trade; and the emirs of Palestine were
less remote from the justice and power of the throne. But the
third of these Fatimite caliphs was the famous Hakem, 67 a
frantic youth, who was delivered by his impiety and despotism
from the fear either of God or man; and whose reign was a wild
mixture of vice and folly. Regardless of the most ancient customs
of Egypt, he imposed on the women an absolute confinement; the
restraint excited the clamors of both sexes; their clamors
provoked his fury; a part of Old Cairo was delivered to the
flames and the guards and citizens were engaged many days in a
bloody conflict. At first the caliph declared himself a zealous
Mussulman, the founder or benefactor of moschs and colleges:
twelve hundred and ninety copies of the Koran were transcribed at
his expense in letters of gold; and his edict extirpated the
vineyards of the Upper Egypt. But his vanity was soon flattered
by the hope of introducing a new religion; he aspired above the
fame of a prophet, and styled himself the visible image of the
Most High God, who, after nine apparitions on earth, was at
length manifest in his royal person. At the name of Hakem, the
lord of the living and the dead, every knee was bent in religious
adoration: his mysteries were performed on a mountain near Cairo:
sixteen thousand converts had signed his profession of faith; and
at the present hour, a free and warlike people, the Druses of
Mount Libanus, are persuaded of the life and divinity of a madman
and tyrant. 68 In his divine character, Hakem hated the Jews and
Christians, as the servants of his rivals; while some remains of
prejudice or prudence still pleaded in favor of the law of
Mahomet. Both in Egypt and Palestine, his cruel and wanton
persecution made some martyrs and many apostles: the common
rights and special privileges of the sectaries were equally
disregarded; and a general interdict was laid on the devotion of
strangers and natives. The temple of the Christian world, the
church of the Resurrection, was demolished to its foundations;
the luminous prodigy of Easter was interrupted, and much profane
labor was exhausted to destroy the cave in the rock which
properly constitutes the holy sepulchre. At the report of this
sacrilege, the nations of Europe were astonished and afflicted:
but instead of arming in the defence of the Holy Land, they
contented themselves with burning, or banishing, the Jews, as the
secret advisers of the impious Barbarian. 69 Yet the calamities
of Jerusalem were in some measure alleviated by the inconstancy
or repentance of Hakem himself; and the royal mandate was sealed
for the restitution of the churches, when the tyrant was
assassinated by the emissaries of his sister. The succeeding
caliphs resumed the maxims of religion and policy: a free
toleration was again granted; with the pious aid of the emperor
of Constantinople, the holy sepulchre arose from its ruins; and,
after a short abstinence, the pilgrims returned with an increase
of appetite to the spiritual feast. 70 In the sea-voyage of
Palestine, the dangers were frequent, and the opportunities rare:
but the conversion of Hungary opened a safe communication between
Germany and Greece. The charity of St. Stephen, the apostle of
his kingdom, relieved and conducted his itinerant brethren; 71
and from Belgrade to Antioch, they traversed fifteen hundred
miles of a Christian empire. Among the Franks, the zeal of
pilgrimage prevailed beyond the example of former times: and the
roads were covered with multitudes of either sex, and of every
rank, who professed their contempt of life, so soon as they
should have kissed the tomb of their Redeemer. Princes and
prelates abandoned the care of their dominions; and the numbers
of these pious caravans were a prelude to the armies which
marched in the ensuing age under the banner of the cross. About
thirty years before the first crusade, the arch bishop of Mentz,
with the bishops of Utrecht, Bamberg, and Ratisbon, undertook
this laborious journey from the Rhine to the Jordan; and the
multitude of their followers amounted to seven thousand persons.
At Constantinople, they were hospitably entertained by the
emperor; but the ostentation of their wealth provoked the assault
of the wild Arabs: they drew their swords with scrupulous
reluctance, and sustained siege in the village of Capernaum, till
they were rescued by the venal protection of the Fatimite emir.
After visiting the holy places, they embarked for Italy, but only
a remnant of two thousand arrived in safety in their native land.
Ingulphus, a secretary of William the Conqueror, was a companion
of this pilgrimage: he observes that they sailed from Normandy,
thirty stout and well-appointed horsemen; but that they repassed
the Alps, twenty miserable palmers, with the staff in their hand,
and the wallet at their back. 72
67 (return) [ See D’Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orientale, p. 411,)
Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 390, 397, 400, 401,)
Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 321-323,) and Marei, (p. 384-386,) an
historian of Egypt, translated by Reiske from Arabic into German,
and verbally interpreted to me by a friend.]
68 (return) [ The religion of the Druses is concealed by their
ignorance and hypocrisy. Their secret doctrines are confined to
the elect who profess a contemplative life; and the vulgar
Druses, the most indifferent of men, occasionally conform to the
worship of the Mahometans and Christians of their neighborhood.
The little that is, or deserves to be, known, may be seen in the
industrious Niebuhr, (Voyages, tom. ii. p. 354-357,) and the
second volume of the recent and instructive Travels of M. de
Volney. * Note: The religion of the Druses has, within the
present year, been fully developed from their own writings, which
have long lain neglected in the libraries of Paris and Oxford, in
the “Expose de la Religion des Druses, by M. Silvestre de Sacy.”
Deux tomes, Paris, 1838. The learned author has prefixed a life
of Hakem Biamr-Allah, which enables us to correct several errors
in the account of Gibbon. These errors chiefly arose from his
want of knowledge or of attention to the chronology of Hakem’s
life. Hakem succeeded to the throne of Egypt in the year of the
Hegira 386. He did not assume his divinity till 408. His life was
indeed “a wild mixture of vice and folly,” to which may be added,
of the most sanguinary cruelty. During his reign, 18,000 persons
were victims of his ferocity. Yet such is the god, observes M. de
Sacy, whom the Druses have worshipped for 800 years! (See p.
ccccxxix.) All his wildest and most extravagant actions were
interpreted by his followers as having a mystic and allegoric
meaning, alluding to the destruction of other religions and the
propagation of his own. It does not seem to have been the
“vanity” of Hakem which induced him to introduce a new religion.
The curious point in the new faith is that Hamza, the son of Ali,
the real founder of the Unitarian religion, (such is its boastful
title,) was content to take a secondary part. While Hakem was
God, the one Supreme, the Imam Hamza was his Intelligence. It was
not in his “divine character” that Hakem “hated the Jews and
Christians,” but in that of a Mahometan bigot, which he displayed
in the earlier years of his reign. His barbarous persecution, and
the burning of the church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem,
belong entirely to that period; and his assumption of divinity
was followed by an edict of toleration to Jews and Christians.
The Mahometans, whose religion he then treated with hostility and
contempt, being far the most numerous, were his most dangerous
enemies, and therefore the objects of his most inveterate hatred.
It is another singular fact, that the religion of Hakem was by no
means confined to Egypt and Syria. M. de Sacy quotes a letter
addressed to the chief of the sect in India; and there is
likewise a letter to the Byzantine emperor Constantine, son of
Armanous, (Romanus,) and the clergy of the empire. (Constantine
VIII., M. de Sacy supposes, but this is irreconcilable with
chronology; it must mean Constantine XI., Monomachus.) The
assassination of Hakem is, of course, disbelieved by his
sectaries. M. de Sacy seems to consider the fact obscure and
doubtful. According to his followers he disappeared, but is
hereafter to return. At his return the resurrection is to take
place; the triumph of Unitarianism, and the final discomfiture of
all other religions. The temple of Mecca is especially devoted to
destruction. It is remarkable that one of the signs of this final
consummation, and of the reappearance of Hakem, is that
Christianity shall be gaining a manifest predominance over
Mahometanism. As for the religion of the Druses, I cannot agree
with Gibbon that it does not “deserve” to be better known; and am
grateful to M. de Sacy, notwithstanding the prolixity and
occasional repetition in his two large volumes, for the full
examination of the most extraordinary religious aberration which
ever extensively affected the mind of man. The worship of a mad
tyrant is the basis of a subtle metaphysical creed, and of a
severe, and even ascetic, morality.—M.]
69 (return) [ See Glaber, l. iii. c. 7, and the Annals of
Baronius and Pagi, A.D. 1009.]
70 (return) [ Per idem tempus ex universo orbe tam innumerabilis
multitudo coepit confluere ad sepulchrum Salvatoris Hierosolymis,
quantum nullus hominum prius sperare poterat. Ordo inferioris
plebis.... mediocres.... reges et comites..... praesules .....
mulieres multae nobilis cum pauperioribus.... Pluribus enim erat
mentis desiderium mori priusquam ad propria reverterentur,
(Glaber, l. iv. c. 6, Bouquet. Historians of France, tom. x. p.
50.) * Note: Compare the first chap. of Wilken, Geschichte der
Kreuz-zuge.—M.]
71 (return) [ Glaber, l. iii. c. 1. Katona (Hist. Critic. Regum
Hungariae, tom. i. p. 304-311) examines whether St. Stephen
founded a monastery at Jerusalem.]
72 (return) [ Baronius (A.D. 1064, No. 43-56) has transcribed the
greater part of the original narratives of Ingulphus, Marianus,
and Lambertus.]
After the defeat of the Romans, the tranquillity of the Fatimite
caliphs was invaded by the Turks. 73 One of the lieutenants of
Malek Shah, Atsiz the Carizmian, marched into Syria at the head
of a powerful army, and reduced Damascus by famine and the sword.
Hems, and the other cities of the province, acknowledged the
caliph of Bagdad and the sultan of Persia; and the victorious
emir advanced without resistance to the banks of the Nile: the
Fatimite was preparing to fly into the heart of Africa; but the
negroes of his guard and the inhabitants of Cairo made a
desperate sally, and repulsed the Turk from the confines of
Egypt. In his retreat he indulged the license of slaughter and
rapine: the judge and notaries of Jerusalem were invited to his
camp; and their execution was followed by the massacre of three
thousand citizens. The cruelty or the defeat of Atsiz was soon
punished by the sultan Toucush, the brother of Malek Shah, who,
with a higher title and more formidable powers, asserted the
dominion of Syria and Palestine. The house of Seljuk reigned
about twenty years in Jerusalem; 74 but the hereditary command of
the holy city and territory was intrusted or abandoned to the
emir Ortok, the chief of a tribe of Turkmans, whose children,
after their expulsion from Palestine, formed two dynasties on the
borders of Armenia and Assyria. 75 The Oriental Christians and
the Latin pilgrims deplored a revolution, which, instead of the
regular government and old alliance of the caliphs, imposed on
their necks the iron yoke of the strangers of the North. 76 In
his court and camp the great sultan had adopted in some degree
the arts and manners of Persia; but the body of the Turkish
nation, and more especially the pastoral tribes, still breathed
the fierceness of the desert. From Nice to Jerusalem, the western
countries of Asia were a scene of foreign and domestic hostility;
and the shepherds of Palestine, who held a precarious sway on a
doubtful frontier, had neither leisure nor capacity to await the
slow profits of commercial and religious freedom. The pilgrims,
who, through innumerable perils, had reached the gates of
Jerusalem, were the victims of private rapine or public
oppression, and often sunk under the pressure of famine and
disease, before they were permitted to salute the holy sepulchre.
A spirit of native barbarism, or recent zeal, prompted the
Turkmans to insult the clergy of every sect: the patriarch was
dragged by the hair along the pavement, and cast into a dungeon,
to extort a ransom from the sympathy of his flock; and the divine
worship in the church of the Resurrection was often disturbed by
the savage rudeness of its masters. The pathetic tale excited the
millions of the West to march under the standard of the cross to
the relief of the Holy Land; and yet how trifling is the sum of
these accumulated evils, if compared with the single act of the
sacrilege of Hakem, which had been so patiently endured by the
Latin Christians! A slighter provocation inflamed the more
irascible temper of their descendants: a new spirit had arisen of
religious chivalry and papal dominion; a nerve was touched of
exquisite feeling; and the sensation vibrated to the heart of
Europe.
73 (return) [ See Elmacin (Hist. Saracen. p. 349, 350) and
Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 237, vers. Pocock.) M. De Guignes
(Hist. des Huns, tom iii. part i. p. 215, 216) adds the
testimonies, or rather the names, of Abulfeda and Novairi.]
74 (return) [ From the expedition of Isar Atsiz, (A. H. 469, A.D.
1076,) to the expulsion of the Ortokides, (A.D. 1096.) Yet
William of Tyre (l. i. c. 6, p. 633) asserts, that Jerusalem was
thirty-eight years in the hands of the Turks; and an Arabic
chronicle, quoted by Pagi, (tom. iv. p. 202) supposes that the
city was reduced by a Carizmian general to the obedience of the
caliph of Bagdad, A. H. 463, A.D. 1070. These early dates are not
very compatible with the general history of Asia; and I am sure,
that as late as A.D. 1064, the regnum Babylonicum (of Cairo)
still prevailed in Palestine, (Baronius, A.D. 1064, No. 56.)]
75 (return) [ De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 249-252. ]
76 (return) [ Willierm. Tyr. l. i. c. 8, p. 634, who strives hard
to magnify the Christian grievances. The Turks exacted an aureus
from each pilgrim! The caphar of the Franks now is fourteen
dollars: and Europe does not complain of this voluntary tax.]
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.—Part I.
Origin And Numbers Of The First Crusade.—Characters Of The Latin
Princes.—Their March To Constantinople.—Policy Of The Greek
Emperor Alexius.—Conquest Of Nice, Antioch, And Jerusalem, By The
Franks.—Deliverance Of The Holy Sepulchre.— Godfrey Of Bouillon,
First King Of Jerusalem.—Institutions Of The French Or Latin
Kingdom.
About twenty years after the conquest of Jerusalem by the Turks,
the holy sepulchre was visited by a hermit of the name of Peter,
a native of Amiens, in the province of Picardy 1 in France. His
resentment and sympathy were excited by his own injuries and the
oppression of the Christian name; he mingled his tears with those
of the patriarch, and earnestly inquired, if no hopes of relief
could be entertained from the Greek emperors of the East. The
patriarch exposed the vices and weakness of the successors of
Constantine. “I will rouse,” exclaimed the hermit, “the martial
nations of Europe in your cause;” and Europe was obedient to the
call of the hermit. The astonished patriarch dismissed him with
epistles of credit and complaint; and no sooner did he land at
Bari, than Peter hastened to kiss the feet of the Roman pontiff.
His stature was small, his appearance contemptible; but his eye
was keen and lively; and he possessed that vehemence of speech,
which seldom fails to impart the persuasion of the soul. 2 He was
born of a gentleman’s family, (for we must now adopt a modern
idiom,) and his military service was under the neighboring counts
of Boulogne, the heroes of the first crusade. But he soon
relinquished the sword and the world; and if it be true, that his
wife, however noble, was aged and ugly, he might withdraw, with
the less reluctance, from her bed to a convent, and at length to
a hermitage. 211 In this austere solitude, his body was
emaciated, his fancy was inflamed; whatever he wished, he
believed; whatever he believed, he saw in dreams and revelations.
From Jerusalem the pilgrim returned an accomplished fanatic; but
as he excelled in the popular madness of the times, Pope Urban
the Second received him as a prophet, applauded his glorious
design, promised to support it in a general council, and
encouraged him to proclaim the deliverance of the Holy Land.
Invigorated by the approbation of the pontiff, his zealous
missionary traversed. with speed and success, the provinces of
Italy and France. His diet was abstemious, his prayers long and
fervent, and the alms which he received with one hand, he
distributed with the other: his head was bare, his feet naked,
his meagre body was wrapped in a coarse garment; he bore and
displayed a weighty crucifix; and the ass on which he rode was
sanctified, in the public eye, by the service of the man of God.
He preached to innumerable crowds in the churches, the streets,
and the highways: the hermit entered with equal confidence the
palace and the cottage; and the people (for all was people) was
impetuously moved by his call to repentance and arms. When he
painted the sufferings of the natives and pilgrims of Palestine,
every heart was melted to compassion; every breast glowed with
indignation, when he challenged the warriors of the age to defend
their brethren, and rescue their Savior: his ignorance of art and
language was compensated by sighs, and tears, and ejaculations;
and Peter supplied the deficiency of reason by loud and frequent
appeals to Christ and his mother, to the saints and angels of
paradise, with whom he had personally conversed. 212 The most
perfect orator of Athens might have envied the success of his
eloquence; the rustic enthusiast inspired the passions which he
felt, and Christendom expected with impatience the counsels and
decrees of the supreme pontiff.
1 (return) [ Whimsical enough is the origin of the name of
Picards, and from thence of Picardie, which does not date later
than A.D. 1200. It was an academical joke, an epithet first
applied to the quarrelsome humor of those students, in the
University of Paris, who came from the frontier of France and
Flanders, (Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 447, Longuerue.
Description de la France, p. 54.)]
2 (return) [ William of Tyre (l. i. c. 11, p. 637, 638) thus
describes the hermit: Pusillus, persona contemptibilis, vivacis
ingenii, et oculum habeas perspicacem gratumque, et sponte fluens
ei non deerat eloquium. See Albert Aquensis, p. 185. Guibert, p.
482. Anna Comnena in Alex isd, l. x. p. 284, &c., with Ducarge’s
Notes, p. 349.]
211 (return) [ Wilken considers this as doubtful, (vol. i. p.
47.)—M.]
212 (return) [ He had seen the Savior in a vision: a letter had
fallen from heaven Wilken, (vol. i. p. 49.)—M.]
The magnanimous spirit of Gregory the Seventh had already
embraced the design of arming Europe against Asia; the ardor of
his zeal and ambition still breathes in his epistles: from either
side of the Alps, fifty thousand Catholics had enlisted under the
banner of St. Peter; 3 and his successor reveals his intention of
marching at their head against the impious sectaries of Mahomet.
But the glory or reproach of executing, though not in person,
this holy enterprise, was reserved for Urban the Second, 4 the
most faithful of his disciples. He undertook the conquest of the
East, whilst the larger portion of Rome was possessed and
fortified by his rival Guibert of Ravenna, who contended with
Urban for the name and honors of the pontificate. He attempted to
unite the powers of the West, at a time when the princes were
separated from the church, and the people from their princes, by
the excommunication which himself and his predecessors had
thundered against the emperor and the king of France. Philip the
First, of France, supported with patience the censures which he
had provoked by his scandalous life and adulterous marriage.
Henry the Fourth, of Germany, asserted the right of investitures,
the prerogative of confirming his bishops by the delivery of the
ring and crosier. But the emperor’s party was crushed in Italy by
the arms of the Normans and the Countess Mathilda; and the long
quarrel had been recently envenomed by the revolt of his son
Conrad and the shame of his wife, 5 who, in the synods of
Constance and Placentia, confessed the manifold prostitutions to
which she had been exposed by a husband regardless of her honor
and his own. 6 So popular was the cause of Urban, so weighty was
his influence, that the council which he summoned at Placentia 7
was composed of two hundred bishops of Italy, France, Burgandy,
Swabia, and Bavaria. Four thousand of the clergy, and thirty
thousand of the laity, attended this important meeting; and, as
the most spacious cathedral would have been inadequate to the
multitude, the session of seven days was held in a plain adjacent
to the city. The ambassadors of the Greek emperor, Alexius
Comnenus, were introduced to plead the distress of their
sovereign, and the danger of Constantinople, which was divided
only by a narrow sea from the victorious Turks, the common
enemies of the Christian name. In their suppliant address they
flattered the pride of the Latin princes; and, appealing at once
to their policy and religion, exhorted them to repel the
Barbarians on the confines of Asia, rather than to expect them in
the heart of Europe. At the sad tale of the misery and perils of
their Eastern brethren, the assembly burst into tears; the most
eager champions declared their readiness to march; and the Greek
ambassadors were dismissed with the assurance of a speedy and
powerful succor. The relief of Constantinople was included in the
larger and most distant project of the deliverance of Jerusalem;
but the prudent Urban adjourned the final decision to a second
synod, which he proposed to celebrate in some city of France in
the autumn of the same year. The short delay would propagate the
flame of enthusiasm; and his firmest hope was in a nation of
soldiers 8 still proud of the preeminence of their name, and
ambitious to emulate their hero Charlemagne, 9 who, in the
popular romance of Turpin, 10 had achieved the conquest of the
Holy Land. A latent motive of affection or vanity might influence
the choice of Urban: he was himself a native of France, a monk of
Clugny, and the first of his countrymen who ascended the throne
of St. Peter. The pope had illustrated his family and province;
nor is there perhaps a more exquisite gratification than to
revisit, in a conspicuous dignity, the humble and laborious
scenes of our youth.
3 (return) [ Ultra quinquaginta millia, si me possunt in
expeditione pro duce et pontifice habere, armata manu volunt in
inimicos Dei insurgere et ad sepulchrum Domini ipso ducente
pervenire, (Gregor. vii. epist. ii. 31, in tom. xii. 322,
concil.)]
4 (return) [ See the original lives of Urban II. by Pandulphus
Pisanus and Bernardus Guido, in Muratori, Rer. Ital. Script. tom.
iii. pars i. p. 352, 353.]
5 (return) [ She is known by the different names of Praxes,
Eupraecia, Eufrasia, and Adelais; and was the daughter of a
Russian prince, and the widow of a margrave of Brandenburgh.
(Struv. Corpus Hist. Germanicae, p. 340.)]
6 (return) [ Henricus odio eam coepit habere: ideo incarceravit
eam, et concessit ut plerique vim ei inferrent; immo filium
hortans ut eam subagitaret, (Dodechin, Continuat. Marian. Scot.
apud Baron. A.D. 1093, No. 4.) In the synod of Constance, she is
described by Bertholdus, rerum inspector: quae se tantas et tam
inauditas fornicationum spur citias, et a tantis passam fuisse
conquesta est, &c.; and again at Placentia: satis misericorditer
suscepit, eo quod ipsam tantas spurcitias pertulisse pro certo
cognoverit papa cum sancta synodo. Apud Baron. A.D. 1093, No. 4,
1094, No. 3. A rare subject for the infallible decision of a pope
and council. These abominations are repugnant to every principle
of human nature, which is not altered by a dispute about rings
and crosiers. Yet it should seem, that the wretched woman was
tempted by the priests to relate or subscribe some infamous
stories of herself and her husband.]
7 (return) [ See the narrative and acts of the synod of
Placentia, Concil. tom. xii. p. 821, &c.]
8 (return) [ Guibert, himself a Frenchman, praises the piety and
valor of the French nation, the author and example of the
crusades: Gens nobilis, prudens, bellicosa, dapsilis et nitida
.... Quos enim Britones, Anglos, Ligures, si bonis eos moribus
videamus, non illico Francos homines appellemus? (p. 478.) He
owns, however, that the vivacity of the French degenerates into
petulance among foreigners, (p. 488.) and vain loquaciousness,
(p. 502.)]
9 (return) [ Per viam quam jamdudum Carolus Magnus mirificus rex
Francorum aptari fecit usque C. P., (Gesta Francorum, p. 1.
Robert. Monach. Hist. Hieros. l. i. p. 33, &c.)]
10 (return) [ John Tilpinus, or Turpinus, was archbishop of
Rheims, A.D. 773. After the year 1000, this romance was composed
in his name, by a monk of the borders of France and Spain; and
such was the idea of ecclesiastical merit, that he describes
himself as a fighting and drinking priest! Yet the book of lies
was pronounced authentic by Pope Calixtus II., (A.D. 1122,) and
is respectfully quoted by the abbot Suger, in the great
Chronicles of St. Denys, (Fabric Bibliot. Latin Medii Aevi, edit.
Mansi, tom. iv. p. 161.)]
It may occasion some surprise that the Roman pontiff should
erect, in the heart of France, the tribunal from whence he hurled
his anathemas against the king; but our surprise will vanish so
soon as we form a just estimate of a king of France of the
eleventh century. 11 Philip the First was the great-grandson of
Hugh Capet, the founder of the present race, who, in the decline
of Charlemagne’s posterity, added the regal title to his
patrimonial estates of Paris and Orleans. In this narrow compass,
he was possessed of wealth and jurisdiction; but in the rest of
France, Hugh and his first descendants were no more than the
feudal lords of about sixty dukes and counts, of independent and
hereditary power, 12 who disdained the control of laws and legal
assemblies, and whose disregard of their sovereign was revenged
by the disobedience of their inferior vassals. At Clermont, in
the territories of the count of Auvergne, 13 the pope might brave
with impunity the resentment of Philip; and the council which he
convened in that city was not less numerous or respectable than
the synod of Placentia. 14 Besides his court and council of Roman
cardinals, he was supported by thirteen archbishops and two
hundred and twenty-five bishops: the number of mitred prelates
was computed at four hundred; and the fathers of the church were
blessed by the saints and enlightened by the doctors of the age.
From the adjacent kingdoms, a martial train of lords and knights
of power and renown attended the council, 15 in high expectation
of its resolves; and such was the ardor of zeal and curiosity,
that the city was filled, and many thousands, in the month of
November, erected their tents or huts in the open field. A
session of eight days produced some useful or edifying canons for
the reformation of manners; a severe censure was pronounced
against the license of private war; the Truce of God 16 was
confirmed, a suspension of hostilities during four days of the
week; women and priests were placed under the safeguard of the
church; and a protection of three years was extended to
husbandmen and merchants, the defenceless victims of military
rapine. But a law, however venerable be the sanction, cannot
suddenly transform the temper of the times; and the benevolent
efforts of Urban deserve the less praise, since he labored to
appease some domestic quarrels that he might spread the flames of
war from the Atlantic to the Euphrates. From the synod of
Placentia, the rumor of his great design had gone forth among the
nations: the clergy on their return had preached in every diocese
the merit and glory of the deliverance of the Holy Land; and when
the pope ascended a lofty scaffold in the market-place of
Clermont, his eloquence was addressed to a well-prepared and
impatient audience. His topics were obvious, his exhortation was
vehement, his success inevitable. The orator was interrupted by
the shout of thousands, who with one voice, and in their rustic
idiom, exclaimed aloud, “God wills it, God wills it.” 17 “It is
indeed the will of God,” replied the pope; “and let this
memorable word, the inspiration surely of the Holy Spirit, be
forever adopted as your cry of battle, to animate the devotion
and courage of the champions of Christ. His cross is the symbol
of your salvation; wear it, a red, a bloody cross, as an external
mark, on your breasts or shoulders, as a pledge of your sacred
and irrevocable engagement.” The proposal was joyfully accepted;
great numbers, both of the clergy and laity, impressed on their
garments the sign of the cross, 18 and solicited the pope to
march at their head. This dangerous honor was declined by the
more prudent successor of Gregory, who alleged the schism of the
church, and the duties of his pastoral office, recommending to
the faithful, who were disqualified by sex or profession, by age
or infirmity, to aid, with their prayers and alms, the personal
service of their robust brethren. The name and powers of his
legate he devolved on Adhemar bishop of Puy, the first who had
received the cross at his hands. The foremost of the temporal
chiefs was Raymond count of Thoulouse, whose ambassadors in the
council excused the absence, and pledged the honor, of their
master. After the confession and absolution of their sins, the
champions of the cross were dismissed with a superfluous
admonition to invite their countrymen and friends; and their
departure for the Holy Land was fixed to the festival of the
Assumption, the fifteenth of August, of the ensuing year. 19
11 (return) [ See Etat de la France, by the Count de
Boulainvilliers, tom. i. p. 180-182, and the second volume of the
Observations sur l’Histoire de France, by the Abbe de Mably.]
12 (return) [ In the provinces to the south of the Loire, the
first Capetians were scarcely allowed a feudal supremacy. On all
sides, Normandy, Bretagne, Aquitain, Burgundy, Lorraine, and
Flanders, contracted the same and limits of the proper France.
See Hadrian Vales. Notitia Galliarum]
13 (return) [ These counts, a younger branch of the dukes of
Aquitain, were at length despoiled of the greatest part of their
country by Philip Augustus. The bishops of Clermont gradually
became princes of the city. Melanges, tires d’une grand
Bibliotheque, tom. xxxvi. p. 288, &c.]
14 (return) [ See the Acts of the council of Clermont, Concil.
tom. xii. p. 829, &c.]
15 (return) [ Confluxerunt ad concilium e multis regionibus, viri
potentes et honorati, innumeri quamvis cingulo laicalis militiae
superbi, (Baldric, an eye-witness, p. 86-88. Robert. Monach. p.
31, 32. Will. Tyr. i. 14, 15, p. 639-641. Guibert, p. 478-480.
Fulcher. Carnot. p. 382.)]
16 (return) [ The Truce of God (Treva, or Treuga Dei) was first
invented in Aquitain, A.D. 1032; blamed by some bishops as an
occasion of perjury, and rejected by the Normans as contrary to
their privileges (Ducange, Gloss Latin. tom. vi. p. 682-685.)]
17 (return) [ Deus vult, Deus vult! was the pure acclamation of
the clergy who understood Latin, (Robert. Mon. l. i. p. 32.) By
the illiterate laity, who spoke the Provincial or Limousin idiom,
it was corrupted to Deus lo volt, or Diex el volt. See Chron.
Casinense, l. iv. c. 11, p. 497, in Muratori, Script. Rerum Ital.
tom. iv., and Ducange, (Dissertat xi. p. 207, sur Joinville, and
Gloss. Latin. tom. ii. p. 690,) who, in his preface, produces a
very difficult specimen of the dialect of Rovergue, A.D. 1100,
very near, both in time and place, to the council of Clermont,
(p. 15, 16.)]
18 (return) [ Most commonly on their shoulders, in gold, or silk,
or cloth sewed on their garments. In the first crusade, all were
red, in the third, the French alone preserved that color, while
green crosses were adopted by the Flemings, and white by the
English, (Ducange, tom. ii. p. 651.) Yet in England, the red ever
appears the favorite, and as if were, the national, color of our
military ensigns and uniforms.]
19 (return) [ Bongarsius, who has published the original writers
of the crusades, adopts, with much complacency, the fanatic title
of Guibertus, Gesta Dei per Francos; though some critics propose
to read Gesta Diaboli per Francos, (Hanoviae, 1611, two vols. in
folio.) I shall briefly enumerate, as they stand in this
collection, the authors whom I have used for the first crusade.
I. Gesta Francorum.
II. Robertus Monachus.
III. Baldricus.
IV. Raimundus de Agiles.
V. Albertus Aquensis VI. Fulcherius Carnotensis.
VII. Guibertus.
VIII. Willielmus Tyriensis. Muratori has given us,
IX. Radulphus Cadomensis de Gestis Tancredi,
(Script. Rer. Ital. tom. v. p. 285-333,)
X. Bernardus Thesaurarius de Acquisitione Terrae Sanctae,
(tom. vii. p. 664-848.)
The last of these was unknown to a late French historian, who has
given a large and critical list of the writers of the crusades,
(Esprit des Croisades, tom. i. p. 13-141,) and most of whose
judgments my own experience will allow me to ratify. It was late
before I could obtain a sight of the French historians collected
by Duchesne. I. Petri Tudebodi Sacerdotis Sivracensis Historia de
Hierosolymitano Itinere, (tom. iv. p. 773-815,) has been
transfused into the first anonymous writer of Bongarsius. II. The
Metrical History of the first Crusade, in vii. books, (p.
890-912,) is of small value or account. * Note: Several new
documents, particularly from the East, have been collected by the
industry of the modern historians of the crusades, M. Michaud and
Wilken.—M.]
So familiar, and as it were so natural to man, is the practice of
violence, that our indulgence allows the slightest provocation,
the most disputable right, as a sufficient ground of national
hostility. But the name and nature of a holy war demands a more
rigorous scrutiny; nor can we hastily believe, that the servants
of the Prince of Peace would unsheathe the sword of destruction,
unless the motive were pure, the quarrel legitimate, and the
necessity inevitable. The policy of an action may be determined
from the tardy lessons of experience; but, before we act, our
conscience should be satisfied of the justice and propriety of
our enterprise. In the age of the crusades, the Christians, both
of the East and West, were persuaded of their lawfulness and
merit; their arguments are clouded by the perpetual abuse of
Scripture and rhetoric; but they seem to insist on the right of
natural and religious defence, their peculiar title to the Holy
Land, and the impiety of their Pagan and Mahometan foes. 20
I. The right of a just defence may fairly include our civil and
spiritual allies: it depends on the existence of danger; and that
danger must be estimated by the twofold consideration of the
malice, and the power, of our enemies. A pernicious tenet has
been imputed to the Mahometans, the duty of extirpating all other
religions by the sword. This charge of ignorance and bigotry is
refuted by the Koran, by the history of the Mussulman conquerors,
and by their public and legal toleration of the Christian
worship. But it cannot be denied, that the Oriental churches are
depressed under their iron yoke; that, in peace and war, they
assert a divine and indefeasible claim of universal empire; and
that, in their orthodox creed, the unbelieving nations are
continually threatened with the loss of religion or liberty. In
the eleventh century, the victorious arms of the Turks presented
a real and urgent apprehension of these losses. They had subdued,
in less than thirty years, the kingdoms of Asia, as far as
Jerusalem and the Hellespont; and the Greek empire tottered on
the verge of destruction. Besides an honest sympathy for their
brethren, the Latins had a right and interest in the support of
Constantinople, the most important barrier of the West; and the
privilege of defence must reach to prevent, as well as to repel,
an impending assault. But this salutary purpose might have been
accomplished by a moderate succor; and our calmer reason must
disclaim the innumerable hosts, and remote operations, which
overwhelmed Asia and depopulated Europe. 2011
20 (return) [ If the reader will turn to the first scene of the
First Part of Henry the Fourth, he will see in the text of
Shakespeare the natural feelings of enthusiasm; and in the notes
of Dr. Johnson the workings of a bigoted, though vigorous mind,
greedy of every pretence to hate and persecute those who dissent
from his creed.]
2011 (return) [ The manner in which the war was conducted surely
has little relation to the abstract question of the justice or
injustice of the war. The most just and necessary war may be
conducted with the most prodigal waste of human life, and the
wildest fanaticism; the most unjust with the coolest moderation
and consummate generalship. The question is, whether the
liberties and religion of Europe were in danger from the
aggressions of Mahometanism? If so, it is difficult to limit the
right, though it may be proper to question the wisdom, of
overwhelming the enemy with the armed population of a whole
continent, and repelling, if possible, the invading conqueror
into his native deserts. The crusades are monuments of human
folly! but to which of the more regular wars civilized. Europe,
waged for personal ambition or national jealousy, will our calmer
reason appeal as monuments either of human justice or human
wisdom?—M.]
II. Palestine could add nothing to the strength or safety of the
Latins; and fanaticism alone could pretend to justify the
conquest of that distant and narrow province. The Christians
affirmed that their inalienable title to the promised land had
been sealed by the blood of their divine Savior; it was their
right and duty to rescue their inheritance from the unjust
possessors, who profaned his sepulchre, and oppressed the
pilgrimage of his disciples. Vainly would it be alleged that the
preeminence of Jerusalem, and the sanctity of Palestine, have
been abolished with the Mosaic law; that the God of the
Christians is not a local deity, and that the recovery of Bethlem
or Calvary, his cradle or his tomb, will not atone for the
violation of the moral precepts of the gospel. Such arguments
glance aside from the leaden shield of superstition; and the
religious mind will not easily relinquish its hold on the sacred
ground of mystery and miracle.
III. But the holy wars which have been waged in every climate of
the globe, from Egypt to Livonia, and from Peru to Hindostan,
require the support of some more general and flexible tenet. It
has been often supposed, and sometimes affirmed, that a
difference of religion is a worthy cause of hostility; that
obstinate unbelievers may be slain or subdued by the champions of
the cross; and that grace is the sole fountain of dominion as
well as of mercy. 2012 Above four hundred years before the first
crusade, the eastern and western provinces of the Roman empire
had been acquired about the same time, and in the same manner, by
the Barbarians of Germany and Arabia. Time and treaties had
legitimated the conquest of the Christian Franks; but in the eyes
of their subjects and neighbors, the Mahometan princes were still
tyrants and usurpers, who, by the arms of war or rebellion, might
be lawfully driven from their unlawful possession. 21
2012 (return) [ “God,” says the abbot Guibert, “invented the
crusades as a new way for the laity to atone for their sins and
to merit salvation.” This extraordinary and characteristic
passage must be given entire. “Deus nostro tempore praelia sancta
instituit, ut ordo equestris et vulgus oberrans qui vetustae
Paganitatis exemplo in mutuas versabatur caedes, novum reperirent
salutis promerendae genus, ut nec funditus electa, ut fieri
assolet, monastica conversatione, seu religiosa qualibet
professione saeculum relinquere congerentur; sed sub consueta
licentia et habitu ex suo ipsorum officio Dei aliquantenus
gratiam consequerentur.” Guib. Abbas, p. 371. See Wilken, vol. i.
p. 63.—M.]
21 (return) [ The vith Discourse of Fleury on Ecclesiastical
History (p. 223-261) contains an accurate and rational view of
the causes and effects of the crusades.]
As the manners of the Christians were relaxed, their discipline
of penance 22 was enforced; and with the multiplication of sins,
the remedies were multiplied. In the primitive church, a
voluntary and open confession prepared the work of atonement. In
the middle ages, the bishops and priests interrogated the
criminal; compelled him to account for his thoughts, words, and
actions; and prescribed the terms of his reconciliation with God.
But as this discretionary power might alternately be abused by
indulgence and tyranny, a rule of discipline was framed, to
inform and regulate the spiritual judges. This mode of
legislation was invented by the Greeks; their penitentials 23
were translated, or imitated, in the Latin church; and, in the
time of Charlemagne, the clergy of every diocese were provided
with a code, which they prudently concealed from the knowledge of
the vulgar. In this dangerous estimate of crimes and punishments,
each case was supposed, each difference was remarked, by the
experience or penetration of the monks; some sins are enumerated
which innocence could not have suspected, and others which reason
cannot believe; and the more ordinary offences of fornication and
adultery, of perjury and sacrilege, of rapine and murder, were
expiated by a penance, which, according to the various
circumstances, was prolonged from forty days to seven years.
During this term of mortification, the patient was healed, the
criminal was absolved, by a salutary regimen of fasts and
prayers: the disorder of his dress was expressive of grief and
remorse; and he humbly abstained from all the business and
pleasure of social life. But the rigid execution of these laws
would have depopulated the palace, the camp, and the city; the
Barbarians of the West believed and trembled; but nature often
rebelled against principle; and the magistrate labored without
effect to enforce the jurisdiction of the priest. A literal
accomplishment of penance was indeed impracticable: the guilt of
adultery was multiplied by daily repetition; that of homicide
might involve the massacre of a whole people; each act was
separately numbered; and, in those times of anarchy and vice, a
modest sinner might easily incur a debt of three hundred years.
His insolvency was relieved by a commutation, or indulgence: a
year of penance was appreciated at twenty-six solidi 24 of
silver, about four pounds sterling, for the rich; at three
solidi, or nine shillings, for the indigent: and these alms were
soon appropriated to the use of the church, which derived, from
the redemption of sins, an inexhaustible source of opulence and
dominion. A debt of three hundred years, or twelve hundred
pounds, was enough to impoverish a plentiful fortune; the
scarcity of gold and silver was supplied by the alienation of
land; and the princely donations of Pepin and Charlemagne are
expressly given for the remedy of their soul. It is a maxim of
the civil law, that whosoever cannot pay with his purse, must pay
with his body; and the practice of flagellation was adopted by
the monks, a cheap, though painful equivalent. By a fantastic
arithmetic, a year of penance was taxed at three thousand lashes;
25 and such was the skill and patience of a famous hermit, St.
Dominic of the iron Cuirass, 26 that in six days he could
discharge an entire century, by a whipping of three hundred
thousand stripes. His example was followed by many penitents of
both sexes; and, as a vicarious sacrifice was accepted, a sturdy
disciplinarian might expiate on his own back the sins of his
benefactors. 27 These compensations of the purse and the person
introduced, in the eleventh century, a more honorable mode of
satisfaction. The merit of military service against the Saracens
of Africa and Spain had been allowed by the predecessors of Urban
the Second. In the council of Clermont, that pope proclaimed a
plenary indulgence to those who should enlist under the banner of
the cross; the absolution of all their sins, and a full receipt
for all that might be due of canonical penance. 28 The cold
philosophy of modern times is incapable of feeling the impression
that was made on a sinful and fanatic world. At the voice of
their pastor, the robber, the incendiary, the homicide, arose by
thousands to redeem their souls, by repeating on the infidels the
same deeds which they had exercised against their Christian
brethren; and the terms of atonement were eagerly embraced by
offenders of every rank and denomination. None were pure; none
were exempt from the guilt and penalty of sin; and those who were
the least amenable to the justice of God and the church were the
best entitled to the temporal and eternal recompense of their
pious courage. If they fell, the spirit of the Latin clergy did
not hesitate to adorn their tomb with the crown of martyrdom; 29
and should they survive, they could expect without impatience the
delay and increase of their heavenly reward. They offered their
blood to the Son of God, who had laid down his life for their
salvation: they took up the cross, and entered with confidence
into the way of the Lord. His providence would watch over their
safety; perhaps his visible and miraculous power would smooth the
difficulties of their holy enterprise. The cloud and pillar of
Jehovah had marched before the Israelites into the promised land.
Might not the Christians more reasonably hope that the rivers
would open for their passage; that the walls of their strongest
cities would fall at the sound of their trumpets; and that the
sun would be arrested in his mid career, to allow them time for
the destruction of the infidels?
22 (return) [ The penance, indulgences, &c., of the middle ages
are amply discussed by Muratori, (Antiquitat. Italiae Medii Aevi,
tom. v. dissert. lxviii. p. 709-768,) and by M. Chais, (Lettres
sur les Jubiles et les Indulgences, tom. ii. lettres 21 & 22, p.
478-556,) with this difference, that the abuses of superstition
are mildly, perhaps faintly, exposed by the learned Italian, and
peevishly magnified by the Dutch minister.]
23 (return) [ Schmidt (Histoire des Allemands, tom. ii. p.
211-220, 452-462) gives an abstract of the Penitential of Rhegino
in the ninth, and of Burchard in the tenth, century. In one year,
five-and-thirty murders were perpetrated at Worms.]
24 (return) [ Till the xiith century, we may support the clear
account of xii. denarii, or pence, to the solidus, or shilling;
and xx. solidi to the pound weight of silver, about the pound
sterling. Our money is diminished to a third, and the French to a
fiftieth, of this primitive standard.]
25 (return) [ Each century of lashes was sanctified with a
recital of a psalm, and the whole Psalter, with the accompaniment
of 15,000 stripes, was equivalent to five years.]
26 (return) [ The Life and Achievements of St. Dominic Loricatus
was composed by his friend and admirer, Peter Damianus. See
Fleury, Hist. Eccles. tom. xiii. p. 96-104. Baronius, A.D. 1056,
No. 7, who observes, from Damianus, how fashionable, even among
ladies of quality, (sublimis generis,) this expiation (purgatorii
genus) was grown.]
27 (return) [ At a quarter, or even half a rial a lash, Sancho
Panza was a cheaper, and possibly not a more dishonest, workman.
I remember in Pere Labat (Voyages en Italie, tom. vii. p. 16-29)
a very lively picture of the dexterity of one of these artists.]
28 (return) [ Quicunque pro sola devotione, non pro honoris vel
pecuniae adoptione, ad liberandam ecclesiam Dei Jerusalem
profectus fuerit, iter illud pro omni poenitentia reputetur.
Canon. Concil. Claromont. ii. p. 829. Guibert styles it novum
salutis genus, (p. 471,) and is almost philosophical on the
subject. * Note: See note, page 546.—M.]
29 (return) [ Such at least was the belief of the crusaders, and
such is the uniform style of the historians, (Esprit des
Croisades, tom. iii. p. 477;) but the prayer for the repose of
their souls is inconsistent in orthodox theology with the merits
of martyrdom.]
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.—Part II.
Of the chiefs and soldiers who marched to the holy sepulchre, I
will dare to affirm, that all were prompted by the spirit of
enthusiasm; the belief of merit, the hope of reward, and the
assurance of divine aid. But I am equally persuaded, that in many
it was not the sole, that in some it was not the leading,
principle of action. The use and abuse of religion are feeble to
stem, they are strong and irresistible to impel, the stream of
national manners. Against the private wars of the Barbarians,
their bloody tournaments, licentious love, and judicial duels,
the popes and synods might ineffectually thunder. It is a more
easy task to provoke the metaphysical disputes of the Greeks, to
drive into the cloister the victims of anarchy or despotism, to
sanctify the patience of slaves and cowards, or to assume the
merit of the humanity and benevolence of modern Christians. War
and exercise were the reigning passions of the Franks or Latins;
they were enjoined, as a penance, to gratify those passions, to
visit distant lands, and to draw their swords against the nation
of the East. Their victory, or even their attempt, would
immortalize the names of the intrepid heroes of the cross; and
the purest piety could not be insensible to the most splendid
prospect of military glory. In the petty quarrels of Europe, they
shed the blood of their friends and countrymen, for the
acquisition perhaps of a castle or a village. They could march
with alacrity against the distant and hostile nations who were
devoted to their arms; their fancy already grasped the golden
sceptres of Asia; and the conquest of Apulia and Sicily by the
Normans might exalt to royalty the hopes of the most private
adventurer. Christendom, in her rudest state, must have yielded
to the climate and cultivation of the Mahometan countries; and
their natural and artificial wealth had been magnified by the
tales of pilgrims, and the gifts of an imperfect commerce. The
vulgar, both the great and small, were taught to believe every
wonder, of lands flowing with milk and honey, of mines and
treasures, of gold and diamonds, of palaces of marble and jasper,
and of odoriferous groves of cinnamon and frankincense. In this
earthly paradise, each warrior depended on his sword to carve a
plenteous and honorable establishment, which he measured only by
the extent of his wishes. 30 Their vassals and soldiers trusted
their fortunes to God and their master: the spoils of a Turkish
emir might enrich the meanest follower of the camp; and the
flavor of the wines, the beauty of the Grecian women, 31 were
temptations more adapted to the nature, than to the profession,
of the champions of the cross. The love of freedom was a powerful
incitement to the multitudes who were oppressed by feudal or
ecclesiastical tyranny. Under this holy sign, the peasants and
burghers, who were attached to the servitude of the glebe, might
escape from a haughty lord, and transplant themselves and their
families to a land of liberty. The monk might release himself
from the discipline of his convent: the debtor might suspend the
accumulation of usury, and the pursuit of his creditors; and
outlaws and malefactors of every cast might continue to brave the
laws and elude the punishment of their crimes. 32
30 (return) [ The same hopes were displayed in the letters of the
adventurers ad animandos qui in Francia residerant. Hugh de
Reiteste could boast, that his share amounted to one abbey and
ten castles, of the yearly value of 1500 marks, and that he
should acquire a hundred castles by the conquest of Aleppo,
(Guibert, p. 554, 555.)]
31 (return) [ In his genuine or fictitious letter to the count of
Flanders, Alexius mingles with the danger of the church, and the
relics of saints, the auri et argenti amor, and pulcherrimarum
foeminarum voluptas, (p. 476;) as if, says the indignant Guibert,
the Greek women were handsomer than those of France.]
32 (return) [ See the privileges of the Crucesignati, freedom
from debt, usury injury, secular justice, &c. The pope was their
perpetual guardian (Ducange, tom. ii. p. 651, 652.)]
These motives were potent and numerous: when we have singly
computed their weight on the mind of each individual, we must add
the infinite series, the multiplying powers, of example and
fashion. The first proselytes became the warmest and most
effectual missionaries of the cross: among their friends and
countrymen they preached the duty, the merit, and the recompense,
of their holy vow; and the most reluctant hearers were insensibly
drawn within the whirlpool of persuasion and authority. The
martial youths were fired by the reproach or suspicion of
cowardice; the opportunity of visiting with an army the sepulchre
of Christ was embraced by the old and infirm, by women and
children, who consulted rather their zeal than their strength;
and those who in the evening had derided the folly of their
companions, were the most eager, the ensuing day, to tread in
their footsteps. The ignorance, which magnified the hopes,
diminished the perils, of the enterprise. Since the Turkish
conquest, the paths of pilgrimage were obliterated; the chiefs
themselves had an imperfect notion of the length of the way and
the state of their enemies; and such was the stupidity of the
people, that, at the sight of the first city or castle beyond the
limits of their knowledge, they were ready to ask whether that
was not the Jerusalem, the term and object of their labors. Yet
the more prudent of the crusaders, who were not sure that they
should be fed from heaven with a shower of quails or manna,
provided themselves with those precious metals, which, in every
country, are the representatives of every commodity. To defray,
according to their rank, the expenses of the road, princes
alienated their provinces, nobles their lands and castles,
peasants their cattle and the instruments of husbandry. The value
of property was depreciated by the eager competition of
multitudes; while the price of arms and horses was raised to an
exorbitant height by the wants and impatience of the buyers. 33
Those who remained at home, with sense and money, were enriched
by the epidemical disease: the sovereigns acquired at a cheap
rate the domains of their vassals; and the ecclesiastical
purchasers completed the payment by the assurance of their
prayers. The cross, which was commonly sewed on the garment, in
cloth or silk, was inscribed by some zealots on their skin: a hot
iron, or indelible liquor, was applied to perpetuate the mark;
and a crafty monk, who showed the miraculous impression on his
breast was repaid with the popular veneration and the richest
benefices of Palestine. 34
33 (return) [ Guibert (p. 481) paints in lively colors this
general emotion. He was one of the few contemporaries who had
genius enough to feel the astonishing scenes that were passing
before their eyes. Erat itaque videre miraculum, caro omnes
emere, atque vili vendere, &c.]
34 (return) [ Some instances of these stigmata are given in the
Esprit des Croisades, (tom. iii. p. 169 &c.,) from authors whom I
have not seen]
The fifteenth of August had been fixed in the council of Clermont
for the departure of the pilgrims; but the day was anticipated by
the thoughtless and needy crowd of plebeians, and I shall briefly
despatch the calamities which they inflicted and suffered, before
I enter on the more serious and successful enterprise of the
chiefs. Early in the spring, from the confines of France and
Lorraine, above sixty thousand of the populace of both sexes
flocked round the first missionary of the crusade, and pressed
him with clamorous importunity to lead them to the holy
sepulchre. The hermit, assuming the character, without the
talents or authority, of a general, impelled or obeyed the
forward impulse of his votaries along the banks of the Rhine and
Danube. Their wants and numbers soon compelled them to separate,
and his lieutenant, Walter the Penniless, a valiant though needy
soldier, conducted a van guard of pilgrims, whose condition may
be determined from the proportion of eight horsemen to fifteen
thousand foot. The example and footsteps of Peter were closely
pursued by another fanatic, the monk Godescal, whose sermons had
swept away fifteen or twenty thousand peasants from the villages
of Germany. Their rear was again pressed by a herd of two hundred
thousand, the most stupid and savage refuse of the people, who
mingled with their devotion a brutal license of rapine,
prostitution, and drunkenness. Some counts and gentlemen, at the
head of three thousand horse, attended the motions of the
multitude to partake in the spoil; but their genuine leaders (may
we credit such folly?) were a goose and a goat, who were carried
in the front, and to whom these worthy Christians ascribed an
infusion of the divine spirit. 35 Of these, and of other bands of
enthusiasts, the first and most easy warfare was against the
Jews, the murderers of the Son of God. In the trading cities of
the Moselle and the Rhine, their colonies were numerous and rich;
and they enjoyed, under the protection of the emperor and the
bishops, the free exercise of their religion. 36 At Verdun,
Treves, Mentz, Spires, Worms, many thousands of that unhappy
people were pillaged and massacred: 37 nor had they felt a more
bloody stroke since the persecution of Hadrian. A remnant was
saved by the firmness of their bishops, who accepted a feigned
and transient conversion; but the more obstinate Jews opposed
their fanaticism to the fanaticism of the Christians, barricadoed
their houses, and precipitating themselves, their families, and
their wealth, into the rivers or the flames, disappointed the
malice, or at least the avarice, of their implacable foes.
35 (return) [ Fuit et aliud scelus detestabile in hac
congregatione pedestris populi stulti et vesanae levitatis,
anserem quendam divino spiritu asserebant afflatum, et capellam
non minus eodem repletam, et has sibi duces secundae viae
fecerant, &c., (Albert. Aquensis, l. i. c. 31, p. 196.) Had these
peasants founded an empire, they might have introduced, as in
Egypt, the worship of animals, which their philosophic descend
ants would have glossed over with some specious and subtile
allegory. * Note: A singular “allegoric” explanation of this
strange fact has recently been broached: it is connected with the
charge of idolatry and Eastern heretical opinions subsequently
made against the Templars. “We have no doubt that they were
Manichee or Gnostic standards.” (The author says the animals
themselves were carried before the army.—M.) “The goose, in
Egyptian symbols, as every Egyptian scholar knows, meant ‘divine
Son,’ or ‘Son of God.’ The goat meant Typhon, or Devil. Thus we
have the Manichee opposing principles of good and evil, as
standards, at the head of the ignorant mob of crusading invaders.
Can any one doubt that a large portion of this host must have
been infected with the Manichee or Gnostic idolatry?” Account of
the Temple Church by R. W. Billings, p. 5 London. 1838. This is,
at all events, a curious coincidence, especially considered in
connection with the extensive dissemination of the Paulician
opinions among the common people of Europe. At any rate, in so
inexplicable a matter, we are inclined to catch at any
explanation, however wild or subtile.—M.]
36 (return) [ Benjamin of Tudela describes the state of his
Jewish brethren from Cologne along the Rhine: they were rich,
generous, learned, hospitable, and lived in the eager hope of the
Messiah, (Voyage, tom. i. p. 243-245, par Baratier.) In seventy
years (he wrote about A.D. 1170) they had recovered from these
massacres.]
37 (return) [ These massacres and depredations on the Jews, which
were renewed at each crusade, are coolly related. It is true,
that St. Bernard (epist. 363, tom. i. p. 329) admonishes the
Oriental Franks, non sunt persequendi Judaei, non sunt
trucidandi. The contrary doctrine had been preached by a rival
monk. * Note: This is an unjust sarcasm against St. Bernard. He
stood above all rivalry of this kind See note 31, c. l x.—M]
Between the frontiers of Austria and the seat of the Byzantine
monarchy, the crusaders were compelled to traverse as interval of
six hundred miles; the wild and desolate countries of Hungary 38
and Bulgaria. The soil is fruitful, and intersected with rivers;
but it was then covered with morasses and forests, which spread
to a boundless extent, whenever man has ceased to exercise his
dominion over the earth. Both nations had imbibed the rudiments
of Christianity; the Hungarians were ruled by their native
princes; the Bulgarians by a lieutenant of the Greek emperor;
but, on the slightest provocation, their ferocious nature was
rekindled, and ample provocation was afforded by the disorders of
the first pilgrims Agriculture must have been unskilful and
languid among a people, whose cities were built of reeds and
timber, which were deserted in the summer season for the tents of
hunters and shepherds. A scanty supply of provisions was rudely
demanded, forcibly seized, and greedily consumed; and on the
first quarrel, the crusaders gave a loose to indignation and
revenge. But their ignorance of the country, of war, and of
discipline, exposed them to every snare. The Greek praefect of
Bulgaria commanded a regular force; 381 at the trumpet of the
Hungarian king, the eighth or the tenth of his martial subjects
bent their bows and mounted on horseback; their policy was
insidious, and their retaliation on these pious robbers was
unrelenting and bloody. 39 About a third of the naked fugitives
(and the hermit Peter was of the number) escaped to the Thracian
mountains; and the emperor, who respected the pilgrimage and
succor of the Latins, conducted them by secure and easy journeys
to Constantinople, and advised them to await the arrival of their
brethren. For a while they remembered their faults and losses;
but no sooner were they revived by the hospitable entertainment,
than their venom was again inflamed; they stung their benefactor,
and neither gardens, nor palaces, nor churches, were safe from
their depredations. For his own safety, Alexius allured them to
pass over to the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus; but their blind
impetuosity soon urged them to desert the station which he had
assigned, and to rush headlong against the Turks, who occupied
the road to Jerusalem. The hermit, conscious of his shame, had
withdrawn from the camp to Constantinople; and his lieutenant,
Walter the Penniless, who was worthy of a better command,
attempted without success to introduce some order and prudence
among the herd of savages. They separated in quest of prey, and
themselves fell an easy prey to the arts of the sultan. By a
rumor that their foremost companions were rioting in the spoils
of his capital, Soliman 391 tempted the main body to descend into
the plain of Nice: they were overwhelmed by the Turkish arrows;
and a pyramid of bones 40 informed their companions of the place
of their defeat. Of the first crusaders, three hundred thousand
had already perished, before a single city was rescued from the
infidels, before their graver and more noble brethren had
completed the preparations of their enterprise. 41
38 (return) [ See the contemporary description of Hungary in Otho
of Frisin gen, l. ii. c. 31, in Muratori, Script. Rerum
Italicarum, tom. vi. p. 665 666.]
381 (return) [ The narrative of the first march is very
incorrect. The first party moved under Walter de Pexego and
Walter the Penniless: they passed safe through Hungary, the
kingdom of Kalmeny, and were attacked in Bulgaria. Peter followed
with 40,000 men; passed through Hungary; but seeing the clothes
of sixteen crusaders, who had been empaled on the walls of
Semlin. he attacked and stormed the city. He then marched to
Nissa, where, at first, he was hospitably received: but an
accidental quar rel taking place, he suffered a great defeat.
Wilken, vol. i. p. 84-86—M.]
39 (return) [ The old Hungarians, without excepting Turotzius,
are ill informed of the first crusade, which they involve in a
single passage. Katona, like ourselves, can only quote the
writers of France; but he compares with local science the ancient
and modern geography. Ante portam Cyperon, is Sopron or Poson;
Mallevilla, Zemlin; Fluvius Maroe, Savus; Lintax, Leith;
Mesebroch, or Merseburg, Ouar, or Moson; Tollenburg, Pragg, (de
Regibus Hungariae, tom. iii. p. 19-53.)]
391 (return) [ Soliman had been killed in 1085, in a battle
against Toutoneh, brother of Malek Schah, between Appelo and
Antioch. It was not Soliman, therefore, but his son David,
surnamed Kilidje Arslan, the “Sword of the Lion,” who reigned in
Nice. Almost all the occidental authors have fallen into this
mistake, which was detected by M. Michaud, Hist. des Crois. 4th
edit. and Extraits des Aut. Arab. rel. aux Croisades, par M.
Reinaud Paris, 1829, p. 3. His kingdom extended from the Orontes
to the Euphra tes, and as far as the Bosphorus. Kilidje Arslan
must uniformly be substituted for Soliman. Brosset note on Le
Beau, tom. xv. p. 311.—M.]
40 (return) [ Anna Comnena (Alexias, l. x. p. 287) describes this
as a mountain. In the siege of Nice, such were used by the Franks
themselves as the materials of a wall.]
41 (return) [ See table on following page.]
“To save time and space, I shall represent, in a short table, the
particular references to the great events of the first crusade.”
[See Table 1.: Events Of The First Crusade]
None of the great sovereigns of Europe embarked their persons in
the first crusade. The emperor Henry the Fourth was not disposed
to obey the summons of the pope: Philip the First of France was
occupied by his pleasures; William Rufus of England by a recent
conquest; the kin`gs of Spain were engaged in a domestic war
against the Moors; and the northern monarchs of Scotland,
Denmark, 42 Sweden, and Poland, were yet strangers to the
passions and interests of the South. The religious ardor was more
strongly felt by the princes of the second order, who held an
important place in the feudal system. Their situation will
naturally cast under four distinct heads the review of their
names and characters; but I may escape some needless repetition,
by observing at once, that courage and the exercise of arms are
the common attribute of these Christian adventurers. I. The first
rank both in war and council is justly due to Godfrey of
Bouillon; and happy would it have been for the crusaders, if they
had trusted themselves to the sole conduct of that accomplished
hero, a worthy representative of Charlemagne, from whom he was
descended in the female line. His father was of the noble race of
the counts of Boulogne: Brabant, the lower province of Lorraine,
43 was the inheritance of his mother; and by the emperor’s bounty
he was himself invested with that ducal title, which has been
improperly transferred to his lordship of Bouillon in the
Ardennes. 44 In the service of Henry the Fourth, he bore the
great standard of the empire, and pierced with his lance the
breast of Rodolph, the rebel king: Godfrey was the first who
ascended the walls of Rome; and his sickness, his vow, perhaps
his remorse for bearing arms against the pope, confirmed an early
resolution of visiting the holy sepulchre, not as a pilgrim, but
a deliverer. His valor was matured by prudence and moderation;
his piety, though blind, was sincere; and, in the tumult of a
camp, he practised the real and fictitious virtues of a convent.
Superior to the private factions of the chiefs, he reserved his
enmity for the enemies of Christ; and though he gained a kingdom
by the attempt, his pure and disinterested zeal was acknowledged
by his rivals. Godfrey of Bouillon 45 was accompanied by his two
brothers, by Eustace the elder, who had succeeded to the county
of Boulogne, and by the younger, Baldwin, a character of more
ambiguous virtue. The duke of Lorraine, was alike celebrated on
either side of the Rhine: from his birth and education, he was
equally conversant with the French and Teutonic languages: the
barons of France, Germany, and Lorraine, assembled their vassals;
and the confederate force that marched under his banner was
composed of fourscore thousand foot and about ten thousand horse.
II. In the parliament that was held at Paris, in the king’s
presence, about two months after the council of Clermont, Hugh,
count of Vermandois, was the most conspicuous of the princes who
assumed the cross. But the appellation of the Great was applied,
not so much to his merit or possessions, (though neither were
contemptible,) as to the royal birth of the brother of the king
of France. 46 Robert, duke of Normandy, was the eldest son of
William the Conqueror; but on his father’s death he was deprived
of the kingdom of England, by his own indolence and the activity
of his brother Rufus. The worth of Robert was degraded by an
excessive levity and easiness of temper: his cheerfulness seduced
him to the indulgence of pleasure; his profuse liberality
impoverished the prince and people; his indiscriminate clemency
multiplied the number of offenders; and the amiable qualities of
a private man became the essential defects of a sovereign. For
the trifling sum of ten thousand marks, he mortgaged Normandy
during his absence to the English usurper; 47 but his engagement
and behavior in the holy war announced in Robert a reformation of
manners, and restored him in some degree to the public esteem.
Another Robert was count of Flanders, a royal province, which, in
this century, gave three queens to the thrones of France,
England, and Denmark: he was surnamed the Sword and Lance of the
Christians; but in the exploits of a soldier he sometimes forgot
the duties of a general. Stephen, count of Chartres, of Blois,
and of Troyes, was one of the richest princes of the age; and the
number of his castles has been compared to the three hundred and
sixty-five days of the year. His mind was improved by literature;
and, in the council of the chiefs, the eloquent Stephen 48 was
chosen to discharge the office of their president. These four
were the principal leaders of the French, the Normans, and the
pilgrims of the British isles: but the list of the barons who
were possessed of three or four towns would exceed, says a
contemporary, the catalogue of the Trojan war. 49 III. In the
south of France, the command was assumed by Adhemar bishop of
Puy, the pope egate, and by Raymond count of St. Giles and
Thoulouse who added the prouder titles of duke of Narbonne and
marquis of Provence. The former was a respectable prelate, alike
qualified for this world and the next. The latter was a veteran
warrior, who had fought against the Saracens of Spain, and who
consecrated his declining age, not only to the deliverance, but
to the perpetual service, of the holy sepulchre. His experience
and riches gave him a strong ascendant in the Christian camp,
whose distress he was often able, and sometimes willing, to
relieve. But it was easier for him to extort the praise of the
Infidels, than to preserve the love of his subjects and
associates. His eminent qualities were clouded by a temper
haughty, envious, and obstinate; and, though he resigned an ample
patrimony for the cause of God, his piety, in the public opinion,
was not exempt from avarice and ambition. 50 A mercantile, rather
than a martial, spirit prevailed among his provincials, 51 a
common name, which included the natives of Auvergne and
Languedoc, 52 the vassals of the kingdom of Burgundy or Arles.
From the adjacent frontier of Spain he drew a band of hardy
adventurers; as he marched through Lombardy, a crowd of Italians
flocked to his standard, and his united force consisted of one
hundred thousand horse and foot. If Raymond was the first to
enlist and the last to depart, the delay may be excused by the
greatness of his preparation and the promise of an everlasting
farewell. IV. The name of Bohemond, the son of Robert Guiscard,
was already famous by his double victory over the Greek emperor;
but his father’s will had reduced him to the principality of
Tarentum, and the remembrance of his Eastern trophies, till he
was awakened by the rumor and passage of the French pilgrims. It
is in the person of this Norman chief that we may seek for the
coolest policy and ambition, with a small allay of religious
fanaticism. His conduct may justify a belief that he had secretly
directed the design of the pope, which he affected to second with
astonishment and zeal: at the siege of Amalphi, his example and
discourse inflamed the passions of a confederate army; he
instantly tore his garment to supply crosses for the numerous
candidates, and prepared to visit Constantinople and Asia at the
head of ten thousand horse and twenty thousand foot. Several
princes of the Norman race accompanied this veteran general; and
his cousin Tancred 53 was the partner, rather than the servant,
of the war.
In the accomplished character of Tancred we discover all the
virtues of a perfect knight, 54 the true spirit of chivalry,
which inspired the generous sentiments and social offices of man
far better than the base philosophy, or the baser religion, of
the times.
42 (return) [ The author of the Esprit des Croisades has doubted,
and might have disbelieved, the crusade and tragic death of
Prince Sueno, with 1500 or 15,000 Danes, who was cut off by
Sultan Soliman in Cappadocia, but who still lives in the poem of
Tasso, (tom. iv. p. 111-115.)]
43 (return) [ The fragments of the kingdoms of Lotharingia, or
Lorraine, were broken into the two duchies of the Moselle and of
the Meuse: the first has preserved its name, which in the latter
has been changed into that of Brabant, (Vales. Notit. Gall. p.
283-288.)]
44 (return) [ See, in the Description of France, by the Abbe de
Longuerue, the articles of Boulogne, part i. p. 54; Brabant, part
ii. p. 47, 48; Bouillon, p. 134. On his departure, Godfrey sold
or pawned Bouillon to the church for 1300 marks.]
45 (return) [ See the family character of Godfrey, in William of
Tyre, l. ix. c. 5-8; his previous design in Guibert, (p. 485;)
his sickness and vow in Bernard. Thesaur., (c 78.)]
46 (return) [ Anna Comnena supposes, that Hugh was proud of his
nobility riches, and power, (l. x. p. 288: ) the two last
articles appear more equivocal; but an item, which seven hundred
years ago was famous in the palace of Constantinople, attests the
ancient dignity of the Capetian family of France.]
47 (return) [ Will. Gemeticensis, l. vii. c. 7, p. 672, 673, in
Camden. Normani cis. He pawned the duchy for one hundredth part
of the present yearly revenue. Ten thousand marks may be equal to
five hundred thousand livres, and Normandy annually yields
fifty-seven millions to the king, (Necker, Administration des
Finances, tom. i. p. 287.)]
48 (return) [ His original letter to his wife is inserted in the
Spicilegium of Dom. Luc. d’Acheri, tom. iv. and quoted in the
Esprit des Croisades tom. i. p. 63.]
49 (return) [ Unius enim duum, trium seu quatuor oppidorum
dominos quis numeret? quorum tanta fuit copia, ut non vix totidem
Trojana obsidio coegisse putetur. (Ever the lively and
interesting Guibert, p. 486.)]
50 (return) [ It is singular enough, that Raymond of St. Giles, a
second character in the genuine history of the crusades, should
shine as the first of heroes in the writings of the Greeks (Anna
Comnen. Alexiad, l. x xi.) and the Arabians, (Longueruana, p.
129.)]
51 (return) [ Omnes de Burgundia, et Alvernia, et Vasconia, et
Gothi, (of Languedoc,) provinciales appellabantur, caeteri vero
Francigenae et hoc in exercitu; inter hostes autem Franci
dicebantur. Raymond des Agiles, p. 144.]
52 (return) [ The town of his birth, or first appanage, was
consecrated to St Aegidius, whose name, as early as the first
crusade, was corrupted by the French into St. Gilles, or St.
Giles. It is situate in the Iowen Languedoc, between Nismes and
the Rhone, and still boasts a collegiate church of the foundation
of Raymond, (Melanges tires d’une Grande Bibliotheque, tom.
xxxvii. p 51.)]
53 (return) [ The mother of Tancred was Emma, sister of the great
Robert Guiscard; his father, the Marquis Odo the Good. It is
singular enough, that the family and country of so illustrious a
person should be unknown; but Muratori reasonably conjectures
that he was an Italian, and perhaps of the race of the marquises
of Montferrat in Piedmont, (Script. tom. v. p. 281, 282.)]
54 (return) [ To gratify the childish vanity of the house of
Este. Tasso has inserted in his poem, and in the first crusade, a
fabulous hero, the brave and amorous Rinaldo, (x. 75, xvii.
66-94.) He might borrow his name from a Rinaldo, with the Aquila
bianca Estense, who vanquished, as the standard-bearer of the
Roman church, the emperor Frederic I., (Storia Imperiale di
Ricobaldo, in Muratori Script. Ital. tom. ix. p. 360. Ariosto,
Orlando Furioso, iii. 30.) But, 1. The distance of sixty years
between the youth of the two Rinaldos destroys their identity. 2.
The Storia Imperiale is a forgery of the Conte Boyardo, at the
end of the xvth century, (Muratori, p. 281-289.) 3. This Rinaldo,
and his exploits, are not less chimerical than the hero of Tasso,
(Muratori, Antichita Estense, tom. i. p. 350.)]
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.—Part III.
Between the age of Charlemagne and that of the crusades, a
revolution had taken place among the Spaniards, the Normans, and
the French, which was gradually extended to the rest of Europe.
The service of the infantry was degraded to the plebeians; the
cavalry formed the strength of the armies, and the honorable name
of miles, or soldier, was confined to the gentlemen 55 who served
on horseback, and were invested with the character of knighthood.
The dukes and counts, who had usurped the rights of sovereignty,
divided the provinces among their faithful barons: the barons
distributed among their vassals the fiefs or benefices of their
jurisdiction; and these military tenants, the peers of each other
and of their lord, composed the noble or equestrian order, which
disdained to conceive the peasant or burgher as of the same
species with themselves. The dignity of their birth was preserved
by pure and equal alliances; their sons alone, who could produce
four quarters or lines of ancestry without spot or reproach,
might legally pretend to the honor of knighthood; but a valiant
plebeian was sometimes enriched and ennobled by the sword, and
became the father of a new race. A single knight could impart,
according to his judgment, the character which he received; and
the warlike sovereigns of Europe derived more glory from this
personal distinction than from the lustre of their diadem. This
ceremony, of which some traces may be found in Tacitus and the
woods of Germany, 56 was in its origin simple and profane; the
candidate, after some previous trial, was invested with the sword
and spurs; and his cheek or shoulder was touched with a slight
blow, as an emblem of the last affront which it was lawful for
him to endure. But superstition mingled in every public and
private action of life: in the holy wars, it sanctified the
profession of arms; and the order of chivalry was assimilated in
its rights and privileges to the sacred orders of priesthood. The
bath and white garment of the novice were an indecent copy of the
regeneration of baptism: his sword, which he offered on the
altar, was blessed by the ministers of religion: his solemn
reception was preceded by fasts and vigils; and he was created a
knight in the name of God, of St. George, and of St. Michael the
archangel. He swore to accomplish the duties of his profession;
and education, example, and the public opinion, were the
inviolable guardians of his oath. As the champion of God and the
ladies, (I blush to unite such discordant names,) he devoted
himself to speak the truth; to maintain the right; to protect the
distressed; to practise courtesy, a virtue less familiar to the
ancients; to pursue the infidels; to despise the allurements of
ease and safety; and to vindicate in every perilous adventure the
honor of his character. The abuse of the same spirit provoked the
illiterate knight to disdain the arts of industry and peace; to
esteem himself the sole judge and avenger of his own injuries;
and proudly to neglect the laws of civil society and military
discipline. Yet the benefits of this institution, to refine the
temper of Barbarians, and to infuse some principles of faith,
justice, and humanity, were strongly felt, and have been often
observed. The asperity of national prejudice was softened; and
the community of religion and arms spread a similar color and
generous emulation over the face of Christendom. Abroad in
enterprise and pilgrimage, at home in martial exercise, the
warriors of every country were perpetually associated; and
impartial taste must prefer a Gothic tournament to the Olympic
games of classic antiquity. 57 Instead of the naked spectacles
which corrupted the manners of the Greeks, and banished from the
stadium the virgins and matrons, the pompous decoration of the
lists was crowned with the presence of chaste and high-born
beauty, from whose hands the conqueror received the prize of his
dexterity and courage. The skill and strength that were exerted
in wrestling and boxing bear a distant and doubtful relation to
the merit of a soldier; but the tournaments, as they were
invented in France, and eagerly adopted both in the East and
West, presented a lively image of the business of the field. The
single combats, the general skirmish, the defence of a pass, or
castle, were rehearsed as in actual service; and the contest,
both in real and mimic war, was decided by the superior
management of the horse and lance. The lance was the proper and
peculiar weapon of the knight: his horse was of a large and heavy
breed; but this charger, till he was roused by the approaching
danger, was usually led by an attendant, and he quietly rode a
pad or palfrey of a more easy pace. His helmet and sword, his
greaves and buckler, it would be superfluous to describe; but I
may remark, that, at the period of the crusades, the armor was
less ponderous than in later times; and that, instead of a massy
cuirass, his breast was defended by a hauberk or coat of mail.
When their long lances were fixed in the rest, the warriors
furiously spurred their horses against the foe; and the light
cavalry of the Turks and Arabs could seldom stand against the
direct and impetuous weight of their charge. Each knight was
attended to the field by his faithful squire, a youth of equal
birth and similar hopes; he was followed by his archers and men
at arms, and four, or five, or six soldiers were computed as the
furniture of a complete lance. In the expeditions to the
neighboring kingdoms or the Holy Land, the duties of the feudal
tenure no longer subsisted; the voluntary service of the knights
and their followers were either prompted by zeal or attachment,
or purchased with rewards and promises; and the numbers of each
squadron were measured by the power, the wealth, and the fame, of
each independent chieftain. They were distinguished by his
banner, his armorial coat, and his cry of war; and the most
ancient families of Europe must seek in these achievements the
origin and proof of their nobility. In this rapid portrait of
chivalry I have been urged to anticipate on the story of the
crusades, at once an effect and a cause, of this memorable
institution. 58
55 (return) [ Of the words gentilis, gentilhomme, gentleman, two
etymologies are produced: 1. From the Barbarians of the fifth
century, the soldiers, and at length the conquerors of the Roman
empire, who were vain of their foreign nobility; and 2. From the
sense of the civilians, who consider gentilis as synonymous with
ingenuus. Selden inclines to the first but the latter is more
pure, as well as probable.]
56 (return) [ Framea scutoque juvenem ornant. Tacitus, Germania.
c. 13.]
57 (return) [ The athletic exercises, particularly the caestus
and pancratium, were condemned by Lycurgus, Philopoemen, and
Galen, a lawgiver, a general, and a physician. Against their
authority and reasons, the reader may weigh the apology of
Lucian, in the character of Solon. See West on the Olympic Games,
in his Pindar, vol. ii. p. 86-96 243-248]
58 (return) [ On the curious subjects of knighthood,
knights-service, nobility, arms, cry of war, banners, and
tournaments, an ample fund of information may be sought in
Selden, (Opera, tom. iii. part i. Titles of Honor, part ii. c. 1,
3, 5, 8,) Ducange, (Gloss. Latin. tom. iv. p. 398-412, &c.,)
Dissertations sur Joinville, (i. vi.—xii. p. 127-142, p.
161-222,) and M. de St. Palaye, (Memoires sur la Chevalerie.)]
Such were the troops, and such the leaders, who assumed the cross
for the deliverance of the holy sepulchre. As soon as they were
relieved by the absence of the plebeian multitude, they
encouraged each other, by interviews and messages, to accomplish
their vow, and hasten their departure. Their wives and sisters
were desirous of partaking the danger and merit of the
pilgrimage: their portable treasures were conveyed in bars of
silver and gold; and the princes and barons were attended by
their equipage of hounds and hawks to amuse their leisure and to
supply their table. The difficulty of procuring subsistence for
so many myriads of men and horses engaged them to separate their
forces: their choice or situation determined the road; and it was
agreed to meet in the neighborhood of Constantinople, and from
thence to begin their operations against the Turks. From the
banks of the Meuse and the Moselle, Godfrey of Bouillon followed
the direct way of Germany, Hungary, and Bulgaria; and, as long as
he exercised the sole command every step afforded some proof of
his prudence and virtue. On the confines of Hungary he was
stopped three weeks by a Christian people, to whom the name, or
at least the abuse, of the cross was justly odious. The
Hungarians still smarted with the wounds which they had received
from the first pilgrims: in their turn they had abused the right
of defence and retaliation; and they had reason to apprehend a
severe revenge from a hero of the same nation, and who was
engaged in the same cause. But, after weighing the motives and
the events, the virtuous duke was content to pity the crimes and
misfortunes of his worthless brethren; and his twelve deputies,
the messengers of peace, requested in his name a free passage and
an equal market. To remove their suspicions, Godfrey trusted
himself, and afterwards his brother, to the faith of Carloman,
581 king of Hungary, who treated them with a simple but
hospitable entertainment: the treaty was sanctified by their
common gospel; and a proclamation, under pain of death,
restrained the animosity and license of the Latin soldiers. From
Austria to Belgrade, they traversed the plains of Hungary,
without enduring or offering an injury; and the proximity of
Carloman, who hovered on their flanks with his numerous cavalry,
was a precaution not less useful for their safety than for his
own. They reached the banks of the Save; and no sooner had they
passed the river, than the king of Hungary restored the hostages,
and saluted their departure with the fairest wishes for the
success of their enterprise. With the same conduct and
discipline, Godfrey pervaded the woods of Bulgaria and the
frontiers of Thrace; and might congratulate himself that he had
almost reached the first term of his pilgrimage, without drawing
his sword against a Christian adversary. After an easy and
pleasant journey through Lombardy, from Turin to Aquileia,
Raymond and his provincials marched forty days through the savage
country of Dalmatia 59 and Sclavonia. The weather was a perpetual
fog; the land was mountainous and desolate; the natives were
either fugitive or hostile: loose in their religion and
government, they refused to furnish provisions or guides;
murdered the stragglers; and exercised by night and day the
vigilance of the count, who derived more security from the
punishment of some captive robbers than from his interview and
treaty with the prince of Scodra. 60 His march between Durazzo
and Constantinople was harassed, without being stopped, by the
peasants and soldiers of the Greek emperor; and the same faint
and ambiguous hostility was prepared for the remaining chiefs,
who passed the Adriatic from the coast of Italy. Bohemond had
arms and vessels, and foresight and discipline; and his name was
not forgotten in the provinces of Epirus and Thessaly. Whatever
obstacles he encountered were surmounted by his military conduct
and the valor of Tancred; and if the Norman prince affected to
spare the Greeks, he gorged his soldiers with the full plunder of
an heretical castle. 61 The nobles of France pressed forwards
with the vain and thoughtless ardor of which their nation has
been sometimes accused. From the Alps to Apulia the march of Hugh
the Great, of the two Roberts, and of Stephen of Chartres,
through a wealthy country, and amidst the applauding Catholics,
was a devout or triumphant progress: they kissed the feet of the
Roman pontiff; and the golden standard of St. Peter was delivered
to the brother of the French monarch. 62 But in this visit of
piety and pleasure, they neglected to secure the season, and the
means of their embarkation: the winter was insensibly lost: their
troops were scattered and corrupted in the towns of Italy. They
separately accomplished their passage, regardless of safety or
dignity; and within nine months from the feast of the Assumption,
the day appointed by Urban, all the Latin princes had reached
Constantinople. But the count of Vermandois was produced as a
captive; his foremost vessels were scattered by a tempest; and
his person, against the law of nations, was detained by the
lieutenants of Alexius. Yet the arrival of Hugh had been
announced by four-and-twenty knights in golden armor, who
commanded the emperor to revere the general of the Latin
Christians, the brother of the king of kings. 63 631
581 (return) [ Carloman (or Calmany) demanded the brother of
Godfrey as hostage but Count Baldwin refused the humiliating
submission. Godfrey shamed him into this sacrifice for the common
good by offering to surrender himself Wilken, vol. i. p. 104.—M.]
59 (return) [ The Familiae Dalmaticae of Ducange are meagre and
imperfect; the national historians are recent and fabulous, the
Greeks remote and careless. In the year 1104 Coloman reduced the
maritine country as far as Trau and Saloma, (Katona, Hist. Crit.
tom. iii. p. 195-207.)]
60 (return) [ Scodras appears in Livy as the capital and fortress
of Gentius, king of the Illyrians, arx munitissima, afterwards a
Roman colony, (Cellarius, tom. i. p. 393, 394.) It is now called
Iscodar, or Scutari, (D’Anville, Geographie Ancienne, tom. i. p.
164.) The sanjiak (now a pacha) of Scutari, or Schendeire, was
the viiith under the Beglerbeg of Romania, and furnished 600
soldiers on a revenue of 78,787 rix dollars, (Marsigli, Stato
Militare del Imperio Ottomano, p. 128.)]
61 (return) [ In Pelagonia castrum haereticum..... spoliatum cum
suis habi tatoribus igne combussere. Nec id eis injuria contigit:
quia illorum detestabilis sermo et cancer serpebat, jamque
circumjacentes regiones suo pravo dogmate foedaverat, (Robert.
Mon. p. 36, 37.) After cooly relating the fact, the Archbishop
Baldric adds, as a praise, Omnes siquidem illi viatores, Judeos,
haereticos, Saracenos aequaliter habent exosos; quos omnes
appellant inimicos Dei, (p. 92.)]
62 (return) [ (Alexiad. l. x. p. 288.)]
63 (return) [ This Oriental pomp is extravagant in a count of
Vermandois; but the patriot Ducange repeats with much complacency
(Not. ad Alexiad. p. 352, 353. Dissert. xxvii. sur Joinville, p.
315) the passages of Matthew Paris (A.D. 1254) and Froissard,
(vol. iv. p. 201,) which style the king of France rex regum, and
chef de tous les rois Chretiens.]
631 (return) [ Hugh was taken at Durazzo, and sent by land to
Constantinople Wilken—M.]
In some oriental tale I have read the fable of a shepherd, who
was ruined by the accomplishment of his own wishes: he had prayed
for water; the Ganges was turned into his grounds, and his flock
and cottage were swept away by the inundation. Such was the
fortune, or at least the apprehension of the Greek emperor
Alexius Comnenus, whose name has already appeared in this
history, and whose conduct is so differently represented by his
daughter Anne, 64 and by the Latin writers. 65 In the council of
Placentia, his ambassadors had solicited a moderate succor,
perhaps of ten thousand soldiers, but he was astonished by the
approach of so many potent chiefs and fanatic nations. The
emperor fluctuated between hope and fear, between timidity and
courage; but in the crooked policy which he mistook for wisdom, I
cannot believe, I cannot discern, that he maliciously conspired
against the life or honor of the French heroes. The promiscuous
multitudes of Peter the Hermit were savage beasts, alike
destitute of humanity and reason: nor was it possible for Alexius
to prevent or deplore their destruction. The troops of Godfrey
and his peers were less contemptible, but not less suspicious, to
the Greek emperor. Their motives might be pure and pious: but he
was equally alarmed by his knowledge of the ambitious Bohemond,
651 and his ignorance of the Transalpine chiefs: the courage of
the French was blind and headstrong; they might be tempted by the
luxury and wealth of Greece, and elated by the view and opinion
of their invincible strength: and Jerusalem might be forgotten in
the prospect of Constantinople. After a long march and painful
abstinence, the troops of Godfrey encamped in the plains of
Thrace; they heard with indignation, that their brother, the
count of Vermandois, was imprisoned by the Greeks; and their
reluctant duke was compelled to indulge them in some freedom of
retaliation and rapine. They were appeased by the submission of
Alexius: he promised to supply their camp; and as they refused,
in the midst of winter, to pass the Bosphorus, their quarters
were assigned among the gardens and palaces on the shores of that
narrow sea. But an incurable jealousy still rankled in the minds
of the two nations, who despised each other as slaves and
Barbarians. Ignorance is the ground of suspicion, and suspicion
was inflamed into daily provocations: prejudice is blind, hunger
is deaf; and Alexius is accused of a design to starve or assault
the Latins in a dangerous post, on all sides encompassed with the
waters. 66 Godfrey sounded his trumpets, burst the net,
overspread the plain, and insulted the suburbs; but the gates of
Constantinople were strongly fortified; the ramparts were lined
with archers; and, after a doubtful conflict, both parties
listened to the voice of peace and religion. The gifts and
promises of the emperor insensibly soothed the fierce spirit of
the western strangers; as a Christian warrior, he rekindled their
zeal for the prosecution of their holy enterprise, which he
engaged to second with his troops and treasures. On the return of
spring, Godfrey was persuaded to occupy a pleasant and plentiful
camp in Asia; and no sooner had he passed the Bosphorus, than the
Greek vessels were suddenly recalled to the opposite shore. The
same policy was repeated with the succeeding chiefs, who were
swayed by the example, and weakened by the departure, of their
foremost companions. By his skill and diligence, Alexius
prevented the union of any two of the confederate armies at the
same moment under the walls of Constantinople; and before the
feast of the Pentecost not a Latin pilgrim was left on the coast
of Europe.
64 (return) [ Anna Comnena was born the 1st of December, A.D.
1083, indiction vii., (Alexiad. l. vi. p. 166, 167.) At thirteen,
the time of the first crusade, she was nubile, and perhaps
married to the younger Nicephorus Bryennius, whom she fondly
styles, (l. x. p. 295, 296.) Some moderns have imagined, that her
enmity to Bohemond was the fruit of disappointed love. In the
transactions of Constantinople and Nice, her partial accounts
(Alex. l. x. xi. p. 283-317) may be opposed to the partiality of
the Latins, but in their subsequent exploits she is brief and
ignorant.]
65 (return) [ In their views of the character and conduct of
Alexius, Maimbourg has favored the Catholic Franks, and Voltaire
has been partial to the schismatic Greeks. The prejudice of a
philosopher is less excusable than that of a Jesuit.]
651 (return) [ Wilken quotes a remarkable passage of William of
Malmsbury as to the secret motives of Urban and of Bohemond in
urging the crusade. Illud repositius propositum non ita
vulgabatur, quod Boemundi consilio, pene totam Europam in
Asiaticam expeditionem moveret, ut in tanto tumultu omnium
provinciarum facile obaeratis auxiliaribus, et Urbanus Romam et
Boemundus Illyricum et Macedoniam pervaderent. Nam eas terras et
quidquid praeterea a Dyrrachio usque ad Thessalonicam
protenditur, Guiscardus pater, super Alexium acquisierat; ideirco
illas Boemundus suo juri competere clamitabat: inops haereditatis
Apuliae, quam genitor Rogerio, minori filio delegaverat. Wilken,
vol. ii. p. 313.—M]
66 (return) [ Between the Black Sea, the Bosphorus, and the River
Barbyses, which is deep in summer, and runs fifteen miles through
a flat meadow. Its communication with Europe and Constantinople
is by the stone bridge of the Blachernoe, which in successive
ages was restored by Justinian and Basil, (Gyllius de Bosphoro
Thracio, l. ii. c. 3. Ducange O. P. Christiana, l. v. c. 2, p,
179.)]
The same arms which threatened Europe might deliver Asia, and
repel the Turks from the neighboring shores of the Bosphorus and
Hellespont. The fair provinces from Nice to Antioch were the
recent patrimony of the Roman emperor; and his ancient and
perpetual claim still embraced the kingdoms of Syria and Egypt.
In his enthusiasm, Alexius indulged, or affected, the ambitious
hope of leading his new allies to subvert the thrones of the
East; but the calmer dictates of reason and temper dissuaded him
from exposing his royal person to the faith of unknown and
lawless Barbarians. His prudence, or his pride, was content with
extorting from the French princes an oath of homage and fidelity,
and a solemn promise, that they
would either restore, or hold, their Asiatic conquests as the
humble and loyal vassals of the Roman empire. Their independent
spirit was fired at the mention of this foreign and voluntary
servitude: they successively yielded to the dexterous application
of gifts and flattery; and the first proselytes became the most
eloquent and effectual missionaries to multiply the companions of
their shame. The pride of Hugh of Vermandois was soothed by the
honors of his captivity; and in the brother of the French king,
the example of submission was prevalent and weighty. In the mind
of Godfrey of Bouillon every human consideration was subordinate
to the glory of God and the success of the crusade. He had firmly
resisted the temptations of Bohemond and Raymond, who urged the
attack and conquest of Constantinople. Alexius esteemed his
virtues, deservedly named him the champion of the empire, and
dignified his homage with the filial name and the rights of
adoption. 67 The hateful Bohemond was received as a true and
ancient ally; and if the emperor reminded him of former
hostilities, it was only to praise the valor that he had
displayed, and the glory that he had acquired, in the fields of
Durazzo and Larissa. The son of Guiscard was lodged and
entertained, and served with Imperial pomp: one day, as he passed
through the gallery of the palace, a door was carelessly left
open to expose a pile of gold and silver, of silk and gems, of
curious and costly furniture, that was heaped, in seeming
disorder, from the floor to the roof of the chamber. “What
conquests,” exclaimed the ambitious miser, “might not be achieved
by the possession of such a treasure!”—“It is your own,” replied
a Greek attendant, who watched the motions of his soul; and
Bohemond, after some hesitation, condescended to accept this
magnificent present. The Norman was flattered by the assurance of
an independent principality; and Alexius eluded, rather than
denied, his daring demand of the office of great domestic, or
general of the East. The two Roberts, the son of the conqueror of
England, and the kinsmen of three queens, 68 bowed in their turn
before the Byzantine throne. A private letter of Stephen of
Chartres attests his admiration of the emperor, the most
excellent and liberal of men, who taught him to believe that he
was a favorite, and promised to educate and establish his
youngest son. In his southern province, the count of St. Giles
and Thoulouse faintly recognized the supremacy of the king of
France, a prince of a foreign nation and language. At the head of
a hundred thousand men, he declared that he was the soldier and
servant of Christ alone, and that the Greek might be satisfied
with an equal treaty of alliance and friendship. His obstinate
resistance enhanced the value and the price of his submission;
and he shone, says the princess Anne, among the Barbarians, as
the sun amidst the stars of heaven. His disgust of the noise and
insolence of the French, his suspicions of the designs of
Bohemond, the emperor imparted to his faithful Raymond; and that
aged statesman might clearly discern, that however false in
friendship, he was sincere in his enmity. 69 The spirit of
chivalry was last subdued in the person of Tancred; and none
could deem themselves dishonored by the imitation of that gallant
knight. He disdained the gold and flattery of the Greek monarch;
assaulted in his presence an insolent patrician; escaped to Asia
in the habit of a private soldier; and yielded with a sigh to the
authority of Bohemond, and the interest of the Christian cause.
The best and most ostensible reason was the impossibility of
passing the sea and accomplishing their vow, without the license
and the vessels of Alexius; but they cherished a secret hope,
that as soon as they trod the continent of Asia, their swords
would obliterate their shame, and dissolve the engagement, which
on his side might not be very faithfully performed. The ceremony
of their homage was grateful to a people who had long since
considered pride as the substitute of power. High on his throne,
the emperor sat mute and immovable: his majesty was adored by the
Latin princes; and they submitted to kiss either his feet or his
knees, an indignity which their own writers are ashamed to
confess and unable to deny. 70
67 (return) [ There are two sorts of adoption, the one by arms,
the other by introducing the son between the shirt and skin of
his father. Ducange isur Joinville, (Diss. xxii. p. 270) supposes
Godfrey’s adoption to have been of the latter sort.]
68 (return) [ After his return, Robert of Flanders became the man
of the king of England, for a pension of four hundred marks. See
the first act in Rymer’s Foedera.]
69 (return) [ Sensit vetus regnandi, falsos in amore, odia non
fingere. Tacit. vi. 44.]
70 (return) [ The proud historians of the crusades slide and
stumble over this humiliating step. Yet, since the heroes knelt
to salute the emperor, as he sat motionless on his throne, it is
clear that they must have kissed either his feet or knees. It is
only singular, that Anna should not have amply supplied the
silence or ambiguity of the Latins. The abasement of their
princes would have added a fine chapter to the Ceremoniale Aulae
Byzantinae.]
Private or public interest suppressed the murmurs of the dukes
and counts; but a French baron (he is supposed to be Robert of
Paris 71 presumed to ascend the throne, and to place himself by
the side of Alexius. The sage reproof of Baldwin provoked him to
exclaim, in his barbarous idiom, “Who is this rustic, that keeps
his seat, while so many valiant captains are standing round him?”
The emperor maintained his silence, dissembled his indignation,
and questioned his interpreter concerning the meaning of the
words, which he partly suspected from the universal language of
gesture and countenance. Before the departure of the pilgrims, he
endeavored to learn the name and condition of the audacious
baron. “I am a Frenchman,” replied Robert, “of the purest and
most ancient nobility of my country. All that I know is, that
there is a church in my neighborhood, 72 the resort of those who
are desirous of approving their valor in single combat. Till an
enemy appears, they address their prayers to God and his saints.
That church I have frequently visited. But never have I found an
antagonist who dared to accept my defiance.” Alexius dismissed
the challenger with some prudent advice for his conduct in the
Turkish warfare; and history repeats with pleasure this lively
example of the manners of his age and country.
71 (return) [ He called himself (see Alexias, l. x. p. 301.) What
a title of noblesse of the eleventh century, if any one could now
prove his inheritance! Anna relates, with visible pleasure, that
the swelling Barbarian, was killed, or wounded, after fighting in
the front in the battle of Dorylaeum, (l. xi. p. 317.) This
circumstance may justify the suspicion of Ducange, (Not. p. 362,)
that he was no other than Robert of Paris, of the district most
peculiarly styled the Duchy or Island of France, (L’Isle de
France.)]
72 (return) [ With the same penetration, Ducange discovers his
church to be that of St. Drausus, or Drosin, of Soissons, quem
duello dimicaturi solent invocare: pugiles qui ad memoriam ejus
(his tomb) pernoctant invictos reddit, ut et de Burgundia et
Italia tali necessitate confugiatur ad eum. Joan. Sariberiensis,
epist. 139.]
The conquest of Asia was undertaken and achieved by Alexander,
with thirty-five thousand Macedonians and Greeks; 73 and his best
hope was in the strength and discipline of his phalanx of
infantry. The principal force of the crusaders consisted in their
cavalry; and when that force was mustered in the plains of
Bithynia, the knights and their martial attendants on horseback
amounted to one hundred thousand fighting men, completely armed
with the helmet and coat of mail. The value of these soldiers
deserved a strict and authentic account; and the flower of
European chivalry might furnish, in a first effort, this
formidable body of heavy horse. A part of the infantry might be
enrolled for the service of scouts, pioneers, and archers; but
the promiscuous crowd were lost in their own disorder; and we
depend not on the eyes and knowledge, but on the belief and
fancy, of a chaplain of Count Baldwin, 74 in the estimate of six
hundred thousand pilgrims able to bear arms, besides the priests
and monks, the women and children of the Latin camp. The reader
starts; and before he is recovered from his surprise, I shall
add, on the same testimony, that if all who took the cross had
accomplished their vow, above six millions would have migrated
from Europe to Asia. Under this oppression of faith, I derive
some relief from a more sagacious and thinking writer, 75 who,
after the same review of the cavalry, accuses the credulity of
the priest of Chartres, and even doubts whether the Cisalpine
regions (in the geography of a Frenchman) were sufficient to
produce and pour forth such incredible multitudes. The coolest
scepticism will remember, that of these religious volunteers
great numbers never beheld Constantinople and Nice. Of enthusiasm
the influence is irregular and transient: many were detained at
home by reason or cowardice, by poverty or weakness; and many
were repulsed by the obstacles of the way, the more insuperable
as they were unforeseen, to these ignorant fanatics. The savage
countries of Hungary and Bulgaria were whitened with their bones:
their vanguard was cut in pieces by the Turkish sultan; and the
loss of the first adventure, by the sword, or climate, or
fatigue, has already been stated at three hundred thousand men.
Yet the myriads that survived, that marched, that pressed
forwards on the holy pilgrimage, were a subject of astonishment
to themselves and to the Greeks. The copious energy of her
language sinks under the efforts of the princess Anne: 76 the
images of locusts, of leaves and flowers, of the sands of the
sea, or the stars of heaven, imperfectly represent what she had
seen and heard; and the daughter of Alexius exclaims, that Europe
was loosened from its foundations, and hurled against Asia. The
ancient hosts of Darius and Xerxes labor under the same doubt of
a vague and indefinite magnitude; but I am inclined to believe,
that a larger number has never been contained within the lines of
a single camp, than at the siege of Nice, the first operation of
the Latin princes. Their motives, their characters, and their
arms, have been already displayed. Of their troops the most
numerous portion were natives of France: the Low Countries, the
banks of the Rhine, and Apulia, sent a powerful reenforcement:
some bands of adventurers were drawn from Spain, Lombardy, and
England; 77 and from the distant bogs and mountains of Ireland or
Scotland 78 issued some naked and savage fanatics, ferocious at
home but unwarlike abroad. Had not superstition condemned the
sacrilegious prudence of depriving the poorest or weakest
Christian of the merit of the pilgrimage, the useless crowd, with
mouths but without hands, might have been stationed in the Greek
empire, till their companions had opened and secured the way of
the Lord. A small remnant of the pilgrims, who passed the
Bosphorus, was permitted to visit the holy sepulchre. Their
northern constitution was scorched by the rays, and infected by
the vapors, of a Syrian sun. They consumed, with heedless
prodigality, their stores of water and provision: their numbers
exhausted the inland country: the sea was remote, the Greeks were
unfriendly, and the Christians of every sect fled before the
voracious and cruel rapine of their brethren. In the dire
necessity of famine, they sometimes roasted and devoured the
flesh of their infant or adult captives. Among the Turks and
Saracens, the idolaters of Europe were rendered more odious by
the name and reputation of Cannibals; the spies, who introduced
themselves into the kitchen of Bohemond, were shown several human
bodies turning on the spit: and the artful Norman encouraged a
report, which increased at the same time the abhorrence and the
terror of the infidels. 79
73 (return) [ There is some diversity on the numbers of his army;
but no authority can be compared with that of Ptolemy, who states
it at five thousand horse and thirty thousand foot, (see Usher’s
Annales, p 152.)]
74 (return) [ Fulcher. Carnotensis, p. 387. He enumerates
nineteen nations of different names and languages, (p. 389;) but
I do not clearly apprehend his difference between the Franci and
Galli, Itali and Apuli. Elsewhere (p. 385) he contemptuously
brands the deserters.]
75 (return) [ Guibert, p. 556. Yet even his gentle opposition
implies an immense multitude. By Urban II., in the fervor of his
zeal, it is only rated at 300,000 pilgrims, (epist. xvi. Concil.
tom. xii. p. 731.)]
76 (return) [ Alexias, l. x. p. 283, 305. Her fastidious delicacy
complains of their strange and inarticulate names; and indeed
there is scarcely one that she has not contrived to disfigure
with the proud ignorance so dear and familiar to a polished
people. I shall select only one example, Sangeles, for the count
of St. Giles.]
77 (return) [ William of Malmsbury (who wrote about the year
1130) has inserted in his history (l. iv. p. 130-154) a narrative
of the first crusade: but I wish that, instead of listening to
the tenue murmur which had passed the British ocean, (p. 143,) he
had confined himself to the numbers, families, and adventures of
his countrymen. I find in Dugdale, that an English Norman,
Stephen earl of Albemarle and Holdernesse, led the rear-guard
with Duke Robert, at the battle of Antioch, (Baronage, part i. p.
61.)]
78 (return) [ Videres Scotorum apud se ferocium alias imbellium
cuneos, (Guibert, p. 471;) the crus intectum and hispida chlamys,
may suit the Highlanders; but the finibus uliginosis may rather
apply to the Irish bogs. William of Malmsbury expressly mentions
the Welsh and Scots, &c., (l. iv. p. 133,) who quitted, the
former venatiorem, the latter familiaritatem pulicum.]
79 (return) [ This cannibal hunger, sometimes real, more
frequently an artifice or a lie, may be found in Anna Comnena,
(Alexias, l. x. p. 288,) Guibert, (p. 546,) Radulph. Cadom., (c.
97.) The stratagem is related by the author of the Gesta
Francorum, the monk Robert Baldric, and Raymond des Agiles, in
the siege and famine of Antioch.]
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.—Part IV.
I have expiated with pleasure on the first steps of the
crusaders, as they paint the manners and character of Europe: but
I shall abridge the tedious and uniform narrative of their blind
achievements, which were performed by strength and are described
by ignorance. From their first station in the neighborhood of
Nicomedia, they advanced in successive divisions; passed the
contracted limit of the Greek empire; opened a road through the
hills, and commenced, by the siege of his capital, their pious
warfare against the Turkish sultan. His kingdom of Roum extended
from the Hellespont to the confines of Syria, and barred the
pilgrimage of Jerusalem, his name was Kilidge-Arslan, or Soliman,
80 of the race of Seljuk, and son of the first conqueror; and in
the defence of a land which the Turks considered as their own, he
deserved the praise of his enemies, by whom alone he is known to
posterity. Yielding to the first impulse of the torrent, he
deposited his family and treasure in Nice; retired to the
mountains with fifty thousand horse; and twice descended to
assault the camps or quarters of the Christian besiegers, which
formed an imperfect circle of above six miles. The lofty and
solid walls of Nice were covered by a deep ditch, and flanked by
three hundred and seventy towers; and on the verge of
Christendom, the Moslems were trained in arms, and inflamed by
religion. Before this city, the French princes occupied their
stations, and prosecuted their attacks without correspondence or
subordination: emulation prompted their valor; but their valor
was sullied by cruelty, and their emulation degenerated into envy
and civil discord. In the siege of Nice, the arts and engines of
antiquity were employed by the Latins; the mine and the
battering-ram, the tortoise, and the belfrey or movable turret,
artificial fire, and the catapult and balist, the sling, and the
crossbow for the casting of stones and darts. 81 In the space of
seven weeks much labor and blood were expended, and some
progress, especially by Count Raymond, was made on the side of
the besiegers. But the Turks could protract their resistance and
secure their escape, as long as they were masters of the Lake 82
Ascanius, which stretches several miles to the westward of the
city. The means of conquest were supplied by the prudence and
industry of Alexius; a great number of boats was transported on
sledges from the sea to the lake; they were filled with the most
dexterous of his archers; the flight of the sultana was
intercepted; Nice was invested by land and water; and a Greek
emissary persuaded the inhabitants to accept his master’s
protection, and to save themselves, by a timely surrender, from
the rage of the savages of Europe. In the moment of victory, or
at least of hope, the crusaders, thirsting for blood and plunder,
were awed by the Imperial banner that streamed from the citadel;
821 and Alexius guarded with jealous vigilance this important
conquest. The murmurs of the chiefs were stifled by honor or
interest; and after a halt of nine days, they directed their
march towards Phrygia under the guidance of a Greek general, whom
they suspected of a secret connivance with the sultan. The
consort and the principal servants of Soliman had been honorably
restored without ransom; and the emperor’s generosity to the
miscreants 83 was interpreted as treason to the Christian cause.
80 (return) [ His Mussulman appellation of Soliman is used by the
Latins, and his character is highly embellished by Tasso. His
Turkish name of Kilidge-Arslan (A. H. 485-500, A.D. 1192-1206.
See De Guignes’s Tables, tom. i. p. 245) is employed by the
Orientals, and with some corruption by the Greeks; but little
more than his name can be found in the Mahometan writers, who are
dry and sulky on the subject of the first crusade, (De Guignes,
tom. iii. p. ii. p. 10-30.) * Note: See note, page 556. Soliman
and Kilidge-Arslan were father and son—M.]
81 (return) [ On the fortifications, engines, and sieges of the
middle ages, see Muratori, (Antiquitat. Italiae, tom. ii.
dissert. xxvi. p. 452-524.) The belfredus, from whence our
belfrey, was the movable tower of the ancients, (Ducange, tom. i.
p. 608.)]
82 (return) [ I cannot forbear remarking the resemblance between
the siege and lake of Nice, with the operations of Hernan Cortez
before Mexico. See Dr. Robertson, History of America, l. v.]
821 (return) [ See Anna Comnena.—M.]
83 (return) [ Mecreant, a word invented by the French crusaders,
and confined in that language to its primitive sense. It should
seem, that the zeal of our ancestors boiled higher, and that they
branded every unbeliever as a rascal. A similar prejudice still
lurks in the minds of many who think themselves Christians.]
Soliman was rather provoked than dismayed by the loss of his
capital: he admonished his subjects and allies of this strange
invasion of the Western Barbarians; the Turkish emirs obeyed the
call of loyalty or religion; the Turkman hordes encamped round
his standard; and his whole force is loosely stated by the
Christians at two hundred, or even three hundred and sixty
thousand horse. Yet he patiently waited till they had left behind
them the sea and the Greek frontier; and hovering on the flanks,
observed their careless and confident progress in two columns
beyond the view of each other. Some miles before they could reach
Dorylaeum in Phrygia, the left, and least numerous, division was
surprised, and attacked, and almost oppressed, by the Turkish
cavalry. 84 The heat of the weather, the clouds of arrows, and
the barbarous onset, overwhelmed the crusaders; they lost their
order and confidence, and the fainting fight was sustained by the
personal valor, rather than by the military conduct, of Bohemond,
Tancred, and Robert of Normandy. They were revived by the welcome
banners of Duke Godfrey, who flew to their succor, with the count
of Vermandois, and sixty thousand horse; and was followed by
Raymond of Tholouse, the bishop of Puy, and the remainder of the
sacred army. Without a moment’s pause, they formed in new order,
and advanced to a second battle. They were received with equal
resolution; and, in their common disdain for the unwarlike people
of Greece and Asia, it was confessed on both sides, that the
Turks and the Franks were the only nations entitled to the
appellation of soldiers. 85 Their encounter was varied, and
balanced by the contrast of arms and discipline; of the direct
charge, and wheeling evolutions; of the couched lance, and the
brandished javelin; of a weighty broadsword, and a crooked sabre;
of cumbrous armor, and thin flowing robes; and of the long Tartar
bow, and the arbalist or crossbow, a deadly weapon, yet unknown
to the Orientals. 86 As long as the horses were fresh, and the
quivers full, Soliman maintained the advantage of the day; and
four thousand Christians were pierced by the Turkish arrows. In
the evening, swiftness yielded to strength: on either side, the
numbers were equal or at least as great as any ground could hold,
or any generals could manage; but in turning the hills, the last
division of Raymond and his provincials was led, perhaps without
design on the rear of an exhausted enemy; and the long contest
was determined. Besides a nameless and unaccounted multitude,
three thousand Pagan knights were slain in the battle and
pursuit; the camp of Soliman was pillaged; and in the variety of
precious spoil, the curiosity of the Latins was amused with
foreign arms and apparel, and the new aspect of dromedaries and
camels. The importance of the victory was proved by the hasty
retreat of the sultan: reserving ten thousand guards of the
relics of his army, Soliman evacuated the kingdom of Roum, and
hastened to implore the aid, and kindle the resentment, of his
Eastern brethren. In a march of five hundred miles, the crusaders
traversed the Lesser Asia, through a wasted land and deserted
towns, without finding either a friend or an enemy. The
geographer 87 may trace the position of Dorylaeum, Antioch of
Pisidia, Iconium, Archelais, and Germanicia, and may compare
those classic appellations with the modern names of Eskishehr the
old city, Akshehr the white city, Cogni, Erekli, and Marash. As
the pilgrims passed over a desert, where a draught of water is
exchanged for silver, they were tormented by intolerable thirst;
and on the banks of the first rivulet, their haste and
intemperance were still more pernicious to the disorderly throng.
They climbed with toil and danger the steep and slippery sides of
Mount Taurus; many of the soldiers cast away their arms to secure
their footsteps; and had not terror preceded their van, the long
and trembling file might have been driven down the precipice by a
handful of resolute enemies. Two of their most respectable
chiefs, the duke of Lorraine and the count of Tholouse, were
carried in litters: Raymond was raised, as it is said by miracle,
from a hopeless malady; and Godfrey had been torn by a bear, as
he pursued that rough and perilous chase in the mountains of
Pisidia.
84 (return) [ Baronius has produced a very doubtful letter to his
brother Roger, (A.D. 1098, No. 15.) The enemies consisted of
Medes, Persians, Chaldeans: be it so. The first attack was cum
nostro incommodo; true and tender. But why Godfrey of Bouillon
and Hugh brothers! Tancred is styled filius; of whom? Certainly
not of Roger, nor of Bohemond.]
85 (return) [ Verumtamen dicunt se esse de Francorum generatione;
et quia nullus homo naturaliter debet esse miles nisi Franci et
Turci, (Gesta Francorum, p. 7.) The same community of blood and
valor is attested by Archbishop Baldric, (p. 99.)]
86 (return) [ Balista, Balestra, Arbalestre. See Muratori, Antiq.
tom. ii. p. 517-524. Ducange, Gloss. Latin. tom. i. p. 531, 532.
In the time of Anna Comnena, this weapon, which she describes
under the name of izangra, was unknown in the East, (l. x. p.
291.) By a humane inconsistency, the pope strove to prohibit it
in Christian wars.]
87 (return) [ The curious reader may compare the classic learning
of Cellarius and the geographical science of D’Anville. William
of Tyre is the only historian of the crusades who has any
knowledge of antiquity; and M. Otter trod almost in the footsteps
of the Franks from Constantinople to Antioch, (Voyage en Turquie
et en Perse, tom. i. p. 35-88.) * Note: The journey of Col.
Macdonald Kinneir in Asia Minor throws considerable light on the
geography of this march of the crusaders.—M.]
To improve the general consternation, the cousin of Bohemond and
the brother of Godfrey were detached from the main army with
their respective squadrons of five, and of seven, hundred
knights. They overran in a rapid career the hills and sea-coast
of Cilicia, from Cogni to the Syrian gates: the Norman standard
was first planted on the walls of Tarsus and Malmistra; but the
proud injustice of Baldwin at length provoked the patient and
generous Italian; and they turned their consecrated swords
against each other in a private and profane quarrel. Honor was
the motive, and fame the reward, of Tancred; but fortune smiled
on the more selfish enterprise of his rival. 88 He was called to
the assistance of a Greek or Armenian tyrant, who had been
suffered under the Turkish yoke to reign over the Christians of
Edessa. Baldwin accepted the character of his son and champion:
but no sooner was he introduced into the city, than he inflamed
the people to the massacre of his father, occupied the throne and
treasure, extended his conquests over the hills of Armenia and
the plain of Mesopotamia, and founded the first principality of
the Franks or Latins, which subsisted fifty-four years beyond the
Euphrates. 89
88 (return) [ This detached conquest of Edessa is best
represented by Fulcherius Carnotensis, or of Chartres, (in the
collections of Bongarsius Duchesne, and Martenne,) the valiant
chaplain of Count Baldwin (Esprit des Croisades, tom. i. p. 13,
14.) In the disputes of that prince with Tancred, his partiality
is encountered by the partiality of Radulphus Cadomensis, the
soldier and historian of the gallant marquis.]
89 (return) [ See de Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. i. p. 456.]
Before the Franks could enter Syria, the summer, and even the
autumn, were completely wasted: the siege of Antioch, or the
separation and repose of the army during the winter season, was
strongly debated in their council: the love of arms and the holy
sepulchre urged them to advance; and reason perhaps was on the
side of resolution, since every hour of delay abates the fame and
force of the invader, and multiplies the resources of defensive
war. The capital of Syria was protected by the River Orontes; and
the iron bridge, 891 of nine arches, derives its name from the
massy gates of the two towers which are constructed at either
end. They were opened by the sword of the duke of Normandy: his
victory gave entrance to three hundred thousand crusaders, an
account which may allow some scope for losses and desertion, but
which clearly detects much exaggeration in the review of Nice. In
the description of Antioch, 90 it is not easy to define a middle
term between her ancient magnificence, under the successors of
Alexander and Augustus, and the modern aspect of Turkish
desolation. The Tetrapolis, or four cities, if they retained
their name and position, must have left a large vacuity in a
circumference of twelve miles; and that measure, as well as the
number of four hundred towers, are not perfectly consistent with
the five gates, so often mentioned in the history of the siege.
Yet Antioch must have still flourished as a great and populous
capital. At the head of the Turkish emirs, Baghisian, a veteran
chief, commanded in the place: his garrison was composed of six
or seven thousand horse, and fifteen or twenty thousand foot: one
hundred thousand Moslems are said to have fallen by the sword;
and their numbers were probably inferior to the Greeks,
Armenians, and Syrians, who had been no more than fourteen years
the slaves of the house of Seljuk. From the remains of a solid
and stately wall, it appears to have arisen to the height of
threescore feet in the valleys; and wherever less art and labor
had been applied, the ground was supposed to be defended by the
river, the morass, and the mountains. Notwithstanding these
fortifications, the city had been repeatedly taken by the
Persians, the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Turks; so large a
circuit must have yielded many pervious points of attack; and in
a siege that was formed about the middle of October, the vigor of
the execution could alone justify the boldness of the attempt.
Whatever strength and valor could perform in the field was
abundantly discharged by the champions of the cross: in the
frequent occasions of sallies, of forage, of the attack and
defence of convoys, they were often victorious; and we can only
complain, that their exploits are sometimes enlarged beyond the
scale of probability and truth. The sword of Godfrey 91 divided a
Turk from the shoulder to the haunch; and one half of the infidel
fell to the ground, while the other was transported by his horse
to the city gate. As Robert of Normandy rode against his
antagonist, “I devote thy head,” he piously exclaimed, “to the
daemons of hell;” and that head was instantly cloven to the
breast by the resistless stroke of his descending falchion. But
the reality or the report of such gigantic prowess 92 must have
taught the Moslems to keep within their walls: and against those
walls of earth or stone, the sword and the lance were unavailing
weapons. In the slow and successive labors of a siege, the
crusaders were supine and ignorant, without skill to contrive, or
money to purchase, or industry to use, the artificial engines and
implements of assault. In the conquest of Nice, they had been
powerfully assisted by the wealth and knowledge of the Greek
emperor: his absence was poorly supplied by some Genoese and
Pisan vessels, that were attracted by religion or trade to the
coast of Syria: the stores were scanty, the return precarious,
and the communication difficult and dangerous. Indolence or
weakness had prevented the Franks from investing the entire
circuit; and the perpetual freedom of two gates relieved the
wants and recruited the garrison of the city. At the end of seven
months, after the ruin of their cavalry, and an enormous loss by
famine, desertion and fatigue, the progress of the crusaders was
imperceptible, and their success remote, if the Latin Ulysses,
the artful and ambitious Bohemond, had not employed the arms of
cunning and deceit. The Christians of Antioch were numerous and
discontented: Phirouz, a Syrian renegado, had acquired the favor
of the emir and the command of three towers; and the merit of his
repentance disguised to the Latins, and perhaps to himself, the
foul design of perfidy and treason. A secret correspondence, for
their mutual interest, was soon established between Phirouz and
the prince of Tarento; and Bohemond declared in the council of
the chiefs, that he could deliver the city into their hands. 921
But he claimed the sovereignty of Antioch as the reward of his
service; and the proposal which had been rejected by the envy,
was at length extorted from the distress, of his equals. The
nocturnal surprise was executed by the French and Norman princes,
who ascended in person the scaling-ladders that were thrown from
the walls: their new proselyte, after the murder of his too
scrupulous brother, embraced and introduced the servants of
Christ; the army rushed through the gates; and the Moslems soon
found, that although mercy was hopeless, resistance was impotent.
But the citadel still refused to surrender; and the victims
themselves were speedily encompassed and besieged by the
innumerable forces of Kerboga, prince of Mosul, who, with
twenty-eight Turkish emirs, advanced to the deliverance of
Antioch. Five-and-twenty days the Christians spent on the verge
of destruction; and the proud lieutenant of the caliph and the
sultan left them only the choice of servitude or death. 93 In
this extremity they collected the relics of their strength,
sallied from the town, and in a single memorable day, annihilated
or dispersed the host of Turks and Arabians, which they might
safely report to have consisted of six hundred thousand men. 94
Their supernatural allies I shall proceed to consider: the human
causes of the victory of Antioch were the fearless despair of the
Franks; and the surprise, the discord, perhaps the errors, of
their unskilful and presumptuous adversaries. The battle is
described with as much disorder as it was fought; but we may
observe the tent of Kerboga, a movable and spacious palace,
enriched with the luxury of Asia, and capable of holding above
two thousand persons; we may distinguish his three thousand
guards, who were cased, the horse as well as the men, in complete
steel.
891 (return) [ This bridge was over the Ifrin, not the Orontes,
at a distance of three leagues from Antioch. See Wilken, vol. i.
p. 172.—M.]
90 (return) [ For Antioch, see Pocock, (Description of the East,
vol. ii. p. i. p. 188-193,) Otter, (Voyage en Turquie, &c., tom.
i. p. 81, &c.,) the Turkish geographer, (in Otter’s notes,) the
Index Geographicus of Schultens, (ad calcem Bohadin. Vit.
Saladin.,) and Abulfeda, (Tabula Syriae, p. 115, 116, vers.
Reiske.)]
91 (return) [ Ensem elevat, eumque a sinistra parte scapularum,
tanta virtute intorsit, ut quod pectus medium disjunxit spinam et
vitalia interrupit; et sic lubricus ensis super crus dextrum
integer exivit: sicque caput integrum cum dextra parte corporis
immersit gurgite, partemque quae equo praesidebat remisit
civitati, (Robert. Mon. p. 50.) Cujus ense trajectus, Turcus duo
factus est Turci: ut inferior alter in urbem equitaret, alter
arcitenens in flumine nataret, (Radulph. Cadom. c. 53, p. 304.)
Yet he justifies the deed by the stupendis viribus of Godfrey;
and William of Tyre covers it by obstupuit populus facti novitate
.... mirabilis, (l. v. c. 6, p. 701.) Yet it must not have
appeared incredible to the knights of that age.]
92 (return) [ See the exploits of Robert, Raymond, and the modest
Tancred who imposed silence on his squire, (Randulph. Cadom. c.
53.)]
921 (return) [ See the interesting extract from Kemaleddin’s
History of Aleppo in Wilken, preface to vol. ii. p. 36. Phirouz,
or Azzerrad, the breastplate maker, had been pillaged and put to
the torture by Bagi Sejan, the prince of Antioch.—M.]
93 (return) [ After mentioning the distress and humble petition
of the Franks, Abulpharagius adds the haughty reply of Codbuka,
or Kerboga, “Non evasuri estis nisi per gladium,” (Dynast. p.
242.)]
94 (return) [ In describing the host of Kerboga, most of the
Latin historians, the author of the Gesta, (p. 17,) Robert
Monachus, (p. 56,) Baldric, (p. 111,) Fulcherius Carnotensis, (p.
392,) Guibert, (p. 512,) William of Tyre, (l. vi. c. 3, p. 714,)
Bernard Thesaurarius, (c. 39, p. 695,) are content with the vague
expressions of infinita multitudo, immensum agmen, innumerae
copiae or gentes, which correspond with Anna Comnena, (Alexias,
l. xi. p. 318-320.) The numbers of the Turks are fixed by Albert
Aquensis at 200,000, (l. iv. c. 10, p. 242,) and by Radulphus
Cadomensis at 400,000 horse, (c. 72, p. 309.)]
In the eventful period of the siege and defence of Antioch, the
crusaders were alternately exalted by victory or sunk in despair;
either swelled with plenty or emaciated with hunger. A
speculative reasoner might suppose, that their faith had a strong
and serious influence on their practice; and that the soldiers of
the cross, the deliverers of the holy sepulchre, prepared
themselves by a sober and virtuous life for the daily
contemplation of martyrdom. Experience blows away this charitable
illusion; and seldom does the history of profane war display such
scenes of intemperance and prostitution as were exhibited under
the walls of Antioch. The grove of Daphne no longer flourished;
but the Syrian air was still impregnated with the same vices; the
Christians were seduced by every temptation 95 that nature either
prompts or reprobates; the authority of the chiefs was despised;
and sermons and edicts were alike fruitless against those
scandalous disorders, not less pernicious to military discipline,
than repugnant to evangelic purity. In the first days of the
siege and the possession of Antioch, the Franks consumed with
wanton and thoughtless prodigality the frugal subsistence of
weeks and months: the desolate country no longer yielded a
supply; and from that country they were at length excluded by the
arms of the besieging Turks. Disease, the faithful companion of
want, was envenomed by the rains of the winter, the summer heats,
unwholesome food, and the close imprisonment of multitudes. The
pictures of famine and pestilence are always the same, and always
disgustful; and our imagination may suggest the nature of their
sufferings and their resources. The remains of treasure or spoil
were eagerly lavished in the purchase of the vilest nourishment;
and dreadful must have been the calamities of the poor, since,
after paying three marks of silver for a goat and fifteen for a
lean camel, 96 the count of Flanders was reduced to beg a dinner,
and Duke Godfrey to borrow a horse. Sixty thousand horse had been
reviewed in the camp: before the end of the siege they were
diminished to two thousand, and scarcely two hundred fit for
service could be mustered on the day of battle. Weakness of body
and terror of mind extinguished the ardent enthusiasm of the
pilgrims; and every motive of honor and religion was subdued by
the desire of life. 97 Among the chiefs, three heroes may be
found without fear or reproach: Godfrey of Bouillon was supported
by his magnanimous piety; Bohemond by ambition and interest; and
Tancred declared, in the true spirit of chivalry, that as long as
he was at the head of forty knights, he would never relinquish
the enterprise of Palestine. But the count of Tholouse and
Provence was suspected of a voluntary indisposition; the duke of
Normandy was recalled from the sea-shore by the censures of the
church: Hugh the Great, though he led the vanguard of the battle,
embraced an ambiguous opportunity of returning to France and
Stephen, count of Chartres, basely deserted the standard which he
bore, and the council in which he presided. The soldiers were
discouraged by the flight of William, viscount of Melun, surnamed
the Carpenter, from the weighty strokes of his axe; and the
saints were scandalized by the fall 971 of Peter the Hermit, who,
after arming Europe against Asia, attempted to escape from the
penance of a necessary fast. Of the multitude of recreant
warriors, the names (says an historian) are blotted from the book
of life; and the opprobrious epithet of the rope-dancers was
applied to the deserters who dropped in the night from the walls
of Antioch. The emperor Alexius, 98 who seemed to advance to the
succor of the Latins, was dismayed by the assurance of their
hopeless condition. They expected their fate in silent despair;
oaths and punishments were tried without effect; and to rouse the
soldiers to the defence of the walls, it was found necessary to
set fire to their quarters.
95 (return) [ See the tragic and scandalous fate of an archdeacon
of royal birth, who was slain by the Turks as he reposed in an
orchard, playing at dice with a Syrian concubine.]
96 (return) [ The value of an ox rose from five solidi, (fifteen
shillings,) at Christmas to two marks, (four pounds,) and
afterwards much higher; a kid or lamb, from one shilling to
eighteen of our present money: in the second famine, a loaf of
bread, or the head of an animal, sold for a piece of gold. More
examples might be produced; but it is the ordinary, not the
extraordinary, prices, that deserve the notice of the
philosopher.]
97 (return) [ Alli multi, quorum nomina non tenemus; quia, deleta
de libro vitae, praesenti operi non sunt inserenda, (Will. Tyr.
l. vi. c. 5, p. 715.) Guibert (p. 518, 523) attempts to excuse
Hugh the Great, and even Stephen of Chartres.]
971 (return) [ Peter fell during the siege: he went afterwards on
an embassy to Kerboga Wilken. vol. i. p. 217.—M.]
98 (return) [ See the progress of the crusade, the retreat of
Alexius, the victory of Antioch, and the conquest of Jerusalem,
in the Alexiad, l. xi. p. 317-327. Anna was so prone to
exaggeration, that she magnifies the exploits of the Latins.]
For their salvation and victory, they were indebted to the same
fanaticism which had led them to the brink of ruin. In such a
cause, and in such an army, visions, prophecies, and miracles,
were frequent and familiar. In the distress of Antioch, they were
repeated with unusual energy and success: St. Ambrose had assured
a pious ecclesiastic, that two years of trial must precede the
season of deliverance and grace; the deserters were stopped by
the presence and reproaches of Christ himself; the dead had
promised to arise and combat with their brethren; the Virgin had
obtained the pardon of their sins; and their confidence was
revived by a visible sign, the seasonable and splendid discovery
of the Holy Lance. The policy of their chiefs has on this
occasion been admired, and might surely be excused; but a pious
fraud is seldom produced by the cool conspiracy of many persons;
and a voluntary impostor might depend on the support of the wise
and the credulity of the people. Of the diocese of Marseilles,
there was a priest of low cunning and loose manners, and his name
was Peter Bartholemy. He presented himself at the door of the
council-chamber, to disclose an apparition of St. Andrew, which
had been thrice reiterated in his sleep with a dreadful menace,
if he presumed to suppress the commands of Heaven. “At Antioch,”
said the apostle, “in the church of my brother St. Peter, near
the high altar, is concealed the steel head of the lance that
pierced the side of our Redeemer. In three days that instrument
of eternal, and now of temporal, salvation, will be manifested to
his disciples. Search, and ye shall find: bear it aloft in
battle; and that mystic weapon shall penetrate the souls of the
miscreants.” The pope’s legate, the bishop of Puy, affected to
listen with coldness and distrust; but the revelation was eagerly
accepted by Count Raymond, whom his faithful subject, in the name
of the apostle, had chosen for the guardian of the holy lance.
The experiment was resolved; and on the third day after a due
preparation of prayer and fasting, the priest of Marseilles
introduced twelve trusty spectators, among whom were the count
and his chaplain; and the church doors were barred against the
impetuous multitude. The ground was opened in the appointed
place; but the workmen, who relieved each other, dug to the depth
of twelve feet without discovering the object of their search. In
the evening, when Count Raymond had withdrawn to his post, and
the weary assistants began to murmur, Bartholemy, in his shirt,
and without his shoes, boldly descended into the pit; the
darkness of the hour and of the place enabled him to secrete and
deposit the head of a Saracen lance; and the first sound, the
first gleam, of the steel was saluted with a devout rapture. The
holy lance was drawn from its recess, wrapped in a veil of silk
and gold, and exposed to the veneration of the crusaders; their
anxious suspense burst forth in a general shout of joy and hope,
and the desponding troops were again inflamed with the enthusiasm
of valor. Whatever had been the arts, and whatever might be the
sentiments of the chiefs, they skilfully improved this fortunate
revolution by every aid that discipline and devotion could
afford. The soldiers were dismissed to their quarters with an
injunction to fortify their minds and bodies for the approaching
conflict, freely to bestow their last pittance on themselves and
their horses, and to expect with the dawn of day the signal of
victory. On the festival of St. Peter and St. Paul, the gates of
Antioch were thrown open: a martial psalm, “Let the Lord arise,
and let his enemies be scattered!” was chanted by a procession of
priests and monks; the battle array was marshalled in twelve
divisions, in honor of the twelve apostles; and the holy lance,
in the absence of Raymond, was intrusted to the hands of his
chaplain. The influence of his relic or trophy, was felt by the
servants, and perhaps by the enemies, of Christ; 99 and its
potent energy was heightened by an accident, a stratagem, or a
rumor, of a miraculous complexion. Three knights, in white
garments and resplendent arms, either issued, or seemed to issue,
from the hills: the voice of Adhemar, the pope’s legate,
proclaimed them as the martyrs St. George, St. Theodore, and St.
Maurice: the tumult of battle allowed no time for doubt or
scrutiny; and the welcome apparition dazzled the eyes or the
imagination of a fanatic army. 991 In the season of danger and
triumph, the revelation of Bartholemy of Marseilles was
unanimously asserted; but as soon as the temporary service was
accomplished, the personal dignity and liberal arms which the
count of Tholouse derived from the custody of the holy lance,
provoked the envy, and awakened the reason, of his rivals. A
Norman clerk presumed to sift, with a philosophic spirit, the
truth of the legend, the circumstances of the discovery, and the
character of the prophet; and the pious Bohemond ascribed their
deliverance to the merits and intercession of Christ alone. For a
while, the Provincials defended their national palladium with
clamors and arms and new visions condemned to death and hell the
profane sceptics who presumed to scrutinize the truth and merit
of the discovery. The prevalence of incredulity compelled the
author to submit his life and veracity to the judgment of God. A
pile of dry fagots, four feet high and fourteen long, was erected
in the midst of the camp; the flames burnt fiercely to the
elevation of thirty cubits; and a narrow path of twelve inches
was left for the perilous trial. The unfortunate priest of
Marseilles traversed the fire with dexterity and speed; but the
thighs and belly were scorched by the intense heat; he expired
the next day; 992 and the logic of believing minds will pay some
regard to his dying protestations of innocence and truth. Some
efforts were made by the Provincials to substitute a cross, a
ring, or a tabernacle, in the place of the holy lance, which soon
vanished in contempt and oblivion. 100 Yet the revelation of
Antioch is gravely asserted by succeeding historians: and such is
the progress of credulity, that miracles most doubtful on the
spot, and at the moment, will be received with implicit faith at
a convenient distance of time and space.
99 (return) [ The Mahometan Aboulmahasen (apud De Guignes, tom.
ii. p. ii. p. 95) is more correct in his account of the holy
lance than the Christians, Anna Comnena and Abulpharagius: the
Greek princess confounds it with the nail of the cross, (l. xi.
p. 326;) the Jacobite primate, with St. Peter’s staff, (p. 242.)]
991 (return) [ The real cause of this victory appears to have
been the feud in Kerboga’s army Wilken, vol. ii. p. 40.—M.]
992 (return) [ The twelfth day after. He was much injured, and
his flesh torn off, from the ardor of pious congratulation with
which he was assailed by those who witnessed his escape, unhurt,
as it was first supposed. Wilken vol. i p. 263—M.]
100 (return) [ The two antagonists who express the most intimate
knowledge and the strongest conviction of the miracle, and of the
fraud, are Raymond des Agiles, and Radulphus Cadomensis, the one
attached to the count of Tholouse, the other to the Norman
prince. Fulcherius Carnotensis presumes to say, Audite fraudem et
non fraudem! and afterwards, Invenit lanceam, fallaciter
occultatam forsitan. The rest of the herd are loud and
strenuous.]
The prudence or fortune of the Franks had delayed their invasion
till the decline of the Turkish empire. 101 Under the manly
government of the three first sultans, the kingdoms of Asia were
united in peace and justice; and the innumerable armies which
they led in person were equal in courage, and superior in
discipline, to the Barbarians of the West. But at the time of the
crusade, the inheritance of Malek Shaw was disputed by his four
sons; their private ambition was insensible of the public danger;
and, in the vicissitudes of their fortune, the royal vassals were
ignorant, or regardless, of the true object of their allegiance.
The twenty-eight emirs who marched with the standard or Kerboga
were his rivals or enemies: their hasty levies were drawn from
the towns and tents of Mesopotamia and Syria; and the Turkish
veterans were employed or consumed in the civil wars beyond the
Tigris. The caliph of Egypt embraced this opportunity of weakness
and discord to recover his ancient possessions; and his sultan
Aphdal besieged Jerusalem and Tyre, expelled the children of
Ortok, and restored in Palestine the civil and ecclesiastical
authority of the Fatimites. 102 They heard with astonishment of
the vast armies of Christians that had passed from Europe to
Asia, and rejoiced in the sieges and battles which broke the
power of the Turks, the adversaries of their sect and monarchy.
But the same Christians were the enemies of the prophet; and from
the overthrow of Nice and Antioch, the motive of their
enterprise, which was gradually understood, would urge them
forwards to the banks of the Jordan, or perhaps of the Nile.
An intercourse of epistles and embassies, which rose and fell
with the events of war, was maintained between the throne of
Cairo and the camp of the Latins; and their adverse pride was the
result of ignorance and enthusiasm. The ministers of Egypt
declared in a haughty, or insinuated in a milder, tone, that
their sovereign, the true and lawful commander of the faithful,
had rescued Jerusalem from the Turkish yoke; and that the
pilgrims, if they would divide their numbers, and lay aside their
arms, should find a safe and hospitable reception at the
sepulchre of Jesus. In the belief of their lost condition, the
caliph Mostali despised their arms and imprisoned their deputies:
the conquest and victory of Antioch prompted him to solicit those
formidable champions with gifts of horses and silk robes, of
vases, and purses of gold and silver; and in his estimate of
their merit or power, the first place was assigned to Bohemond,
and the second to Godfrey. In either fortune, the answer of the
crusaders was firm and uniform: they disdained to inquire into
the private claims or possessions of the followers of Mahomet;
whatsoever was his name or nation, the usurper of Jerusalem was
their enemy; and instead of prescribing the mode and terms of
their pilgrimage, it was only by a timely surrender of the city
and province, their sacred right, that he could deserve their
alliance, or deprecate their impending and irresistible attack.
103
101 (return) [ See M. De Guignes, tom. ii. p. ii. p. 223, &c.;
and the articles of Barkidrok, Mohammed, Sangiar, in D’Herbelot.]
102 (return) [ The emir, or sultan, Aphdal, recovered Jerusalem
and Tyre, A. H. 489, (Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexandrin. p.
478. De Guignes, tom. i. p. 249, from Abulfeda and Ben Schounah.)
Jerusalem ante adventum vestrum recuperavimus, Turcos ejecimus,
say the Fatimite ambassadors]
103 (return) [ See the transactions between the caliph of Egypt
and the crusaders in William of Tyre (l. iv. c. 24, l. vi. c. 19)
and Albert Aquensis, (l. iii. c. 59,) who are more sensible of
their importance than the contemporary writers.]
Yet this attack, when they were within the view and reach of
their glorious prize, was suspended above ten months after the
defeat of Kerboga. The zeal and courage of the crusaders were
chilled in the moment of victory; and instead of marching to
improve the consternation, they hastily dispersed to enjoy the
luxury, of Syria. The causes of this strange delay may be found
in the want of strength and subordination. In the painful and
various service of Antioch, the cavalry was annihilated; many
thousands of every rank had been lost by famine, sickness, and
desertion: the same abuse of plenty had been productive of a
third famine; and the alternative of intemperance and distress
had generated a pestilence, which swept away above fifty thousand
of the pilgrims. Few were able to command, and none were willing
to obey; the domestic feuds, which had been stifled by common
fear, were again renewed in acts, or at least in sentiments, of
hostility; the fortune of Baldwin and Bohemond excited the envy
of their companions; the bravest knights were enlisted for the
defence of their new principalities; and Count Raymond exhausted
his troops and treasures in an idle expedition into the heart of
Syria. 1031 The winter was consumed in discord and disorder; a
sense of honor and religion was rekindled in the spring; and the
private soldiers, less susceptible of ambition and jealousy,
awakened with angry clamors the indolence of their chiefs. In the
month of May, the relics of this mighty host proceeded from
Antioch to Laodicea: about forty thousand Latins, of whom no more
than fifteen hundred horse, and twenty thousand foot, were
capable of immediate service. Their easy march was continued
between Mount Libanus and the sea-shore: their wants were
liberally supplied by the coasting traders of Genoa and Pisa; and
they drew large contributions from the emirs of Tripoli, Tyre,
Sidon, Acre, and Caesarea, who granted a free passage, and
promised to follow the example of Jerusalem. From Caesarea they
advanced into the midland country; their clerks recognized the
sacred geography of Lydda, Ramla, Emmaus, and Bethlem, 1032 and
as soon as they descried the holy city, the crusaders forgot
their toils and claimed their reward. 104
1031 (return) [ This is not quite correct: he took Marra on his
road. His excursions were partly to obtain provisions for the
army and fodder for the horses Wilken, vol. i. p. 226.—M.]
1032 (return) [ Scarcely of Bethlehem, to the south of
Jerusalem.— M.]
104 (return) [ The greatest part of the march of the Franks is
traced, and most accurately traced, in Maundrell’s Journey from
Aleppo to Jerusalem, (p. 11-67;) un des meilleurs morceaux, sans
contredit qu’on ait dans ce genre, (D’Anville, Memoire sur
Jerusalem, p. 27.)]
Chapter LVIII: The First Crusade.—Part V.
Jerusalem has derived some reputation from the number and
importance of her memorable sieges. It was not till after a long
and obstinate contest that Babylon and Rome could prevail against
the obstinacy of the people, the craggy ground that might
supersede the necessity of fortifications, and the walls and
towers that would have fortified the most accessible plain. 105
These obstacles were diminished in the age of the crusades. The
bulwarks had been completely destroyed and imperfectly restored:
the Jews, their nation, and worship, were forever banished; but
nature is less changeable than man, and the site of Jerusalem,
though somewhat softened and somewhat removed, was still strong
against the assaults of an enemy. By the experience of a recent
siege, and a three years’ possession, the Saracens of Egypt had
been taught to discern, and in some degree to remedy, the defects
of a place, which religion as well as honor forbade them to
resign. Aladin, or Iftikhar, the caliph’s lieutenant, was
intrusted with the defence: his policy strove to restrain the
native Christians by the dread of their own ruin and that of the
holy sepulchre; to animate the Moslems by the assurance of
temporal and eternal rewards. His garrison is said to have
consisted of forty thousand Turks and Arabians; and if he could
muster twenty thousand of the inhabitants, it must be confessed
that the besieged were more numerous than the besieging army. 106
Had the diminished strength and numbers of the Latins allowed
them to grasp the whole circumference of four thousand yards,
(about two English miles and a half, 107 to what useful purpose
should they have descended into the valley of Ben Hinnom and
torrent of Cedron, 108 or approach the precipices of the south
and east, from whence they had nothing either to hope or fear?
Their siege was more reasonably directed against the northern and
western sides of the city. Godfrey of Bouillon erected his
standard on the first swell of Mount Calvary: to the left, as far
as St. Stephen’s gate, the line of attack was continued by
Tancred and the two Roberts; and Count Raymond established his
quarters from the citadel to the foot of Mount Sion, which was no
longer included within the precincts of the city. On the fifth
day, the crusaders made a general assault, in the fanatic hope of
battering down the walls without engines, and of scaling them
without ladders. By the dint of brutal force, they burst the
first barrier; but they were driven back with shame and slaughter
to the camp: the influence of vision and prophecy was deadened by
the too frequent abuse of those pious stratagems; and time and
labor were found to be the only means of victory. The time of the
siege was indeed fulfilled in forty days, but they were forty
days of calamity and anguish. A repetition of the old complaint
of famine may be imputed in some degree to the voracious or
disorderly appetite of the Franks; but the stony soil of
Jerusalem is almost destitute of water; the scanty springs and
hasty torrents were dry in the summer season; nor was the thirst
of the besiegers relieved, as in the city, by the artificial
supply of cisterns and aqueducts. The circumjacent country is
equally destitute of trees for the uses of shade or building, but
some large beams were discovered in a cave by the crusaders: a
wood near Sichem, the enchanted grove of Tasso, 109 was cut down:
the necessary timber was transported to the camp by the vigor and
dexterity of Tancred; and the engines were framed by some Genoese
artists, who had fortunately landed in the harbor of Jaffa. Two
movable turrets were constructed at the expense, and in the
stations, of the duke of Lorraine and the count of Tholouse, and
rolled forwards with devout labor, not to the most accessible,
but to the most neglected, parts of the fortification. Raymond’s
Tower was reduced to ashes by the fire of the besieged, but his
colleague was more vigilant and successful; 1091 the enemies were
driven by his archers from the rampart; the draw-bridge was let
down; and on a Friday, at three in the afternoon, the day and
hour of the passion, Godfrey of Bouillon stood victorious on the
walls of Jerusalem. His example was followed on every side by the
emulation of valor; and about four hundred and sixty years after
the conquest of Omar, the holy city was rescued from the
Mahometan yoke. In the pillage of public and private wealth, the
adventurers had agreed to respect the exclusive property of the
first occupant; and the spoils of the great mosque, seventy lamps
and massy vases of gold and silver, rewarded the diligence, and
displayed the generosity, of Tancred. A bloody sacrifice was
offered by his mistaken votaries to the God of the Christians:
resistance might provoke but neither age nor sex could mollify,
their implacable rage: they indulged themselves three days in a
promiscuous massacre; 110 and the infection of the dead bodies
produced an epidemical disease. After seventy thousand Moslems
had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burnt
in their synagogue, they could still reserve a multitude of
captives, whom interest or lassitude persuaded them to spare. Of
these savage heroes of the cross, Tancred alone betrayed some
sentiments of compassion; yet we may praise the more selfish
lenity of Raymond, who granted a capitulation and safe-conduct to
the garrison of the citadel. 111 The holy sepulchre was now free;
and the bloody victors prepared to accomplish their vow.
Bareheaded and barefoot, with contrite hearts, and in an humble
posture, they ascended the hill of Calvary, amidst the loud
anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered the
Savior of the world; and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence
the monument of their redemption. This union of the fiercest and
most tender passions has been variously considered by two
philosophers; by the one, 112 as easy and natural; by the other,
113 as absurd and incredible. Perhaps it is too rigorously
applied to the same persons and the same hour; the example of the
virtuous Godfrey awakened the piety of his companions; while they
cleansed their bodies, they purified their minds; nor shall I
believe that the most ardent in slaughter and rapine were the
foremost in the procession to the holy sepulchre.
105 (return) [ See the masterly description of Tacitus, (Hist. v.
11, 12, 13,) who supposes that the Jewish lawgivers had provided
for a perpetual state of hostility against the rest of mankind. *
Note: This is an exaggerated inference from the words of Tacitus,
who speaks of the founders of the city, not the lawgivers.
Praeviderant conditores, ex diversitate morum, crebra bella; inde
cuncta quamvis adversus loagum obsidium.—M.]
106 (return) [ The lively scepticism of Voltaire is balanced with
sense and erudition by the French author of the Esprit des
Croisades, (tom. iv. p. 386-388,) who observes, that, according
to the Arabians, the inhabitants of Jerusalem must have exceeded
200,000; that in the siege of Titus, Josephus collects 1,300,000
Jews; that they are stated by Tacitus himself at 600,000; and
that the largest defalcation, that his accepimus can justify,
will still leave them more numerous than the Roman army.]
107 (return) [ Maundrell, who diligently perambulated the walls,
found a circuit of 4630 paces, or 4167 English yards, (p. 109,
110: ) from an authentic plan, D’Anville concludes a measure
nearly similar, of 1960 French toises, (p. 23-29,) in his scarce
and valuable tract. For the topography of Jerusalem, see Reland,
(Palestina, tom. ii. p. 832-860.)]
108 (return) [ Jerusalem was possessed only of the torrent of
Kedron, dry in summer, and of the little spring or brook of
Siloe, (Reland, tom. i. p. 294, 300.) Both strangers and natives
complain of the want of water, which, in time of war, was
studiously aggravated. Within the city, Tacitus mentions a
perennial fountain, an aqueduct and cisterns for rain water. The
aqueduct was conveyed from the rivulet Tekos or Etham, which is
likewise mentioned by Bohadin, (in Vit. Saludio p. 238.)]
109 (return) [ Gierusalomme Liberata, canto xiii. It is pleasant
enough to observe how Tasso has copied and embellished the
minutest details of the siege.]
1091 (return) [ This does not appear by Wilken’s account, (p.
294.) They fought in vair the whole of the Thursday.—M.]
110 (return) [ Besides the Latins, who are not ashamed of the
massacre, see Elmacin, (Hist. Saracen. p. 363,) Abulpharagius,
(Dynast. p. 243,) and M. De Guignes, tom. ii. p. ii. p. 99, from
Aboulmahasen.]
111 (return) [ The old tower Psephina, in the middle ages
Neblosa, was named Castellum Pisanum, from the patriarch
Daimbert. It is still the citadel, the residence of the Turkish
aga, and commands a prospect of the Dead Sea, Judea, and Arabia,
(D’Anville, p. 19-23.) It was likewise called the Tower of
David.]
112 (return) [ Hume, in his History of England, vol. i. p. 311,
312, octavo edition.]
113 (return) [ Voltaire, in his Essai sur l’Histoire Generale,
tom ii. c. 54, p 345, 346]
Eight days after this memorable event, which Pope Urban did not
live to hear, the Latin chiefs proceeded to the election of a
king, to guard and govern their conquests in Palestine. Hugh the
Great, and Stephen of Chartres, had retired with some loss of
reputation, which they strove to regain by a second crusade and
an honorable death. Baldwin was established at Edessa, and
Bohemond at Antioch; and two Roberts, the duke of Normandy 114
and the count of Flanders, preferred their fair inheritance in
the West to a doubtful competition or a barren sceptre. The
jealousy and ambition of Raymond were condemned by his own
followers, and the free, the just, the unanimous voice of the
army proclaimed Godfrey of Bouillon the first and most worthy of
the champions of Christendom. His magnanimity accepted a trust as
full of danger as of glory; but in a city where his Savior had
been crowned with thorns, the devout pilgrim rejected the name
and ensigns of royalty; and the founder of the kingdom of
Jerusalem contented himself with the modest title of Defender and
Baron of the Holy Sepulchre. His government of a single year, 115
too short for the public happiness, was interrupted in the first
fortnight by a summons to the field, by the approach of the
vizier or sultan of Egypt, who had been too slow to prevent, but
who was impatient to avenge, the loss of Jerusalem. His total
overthrow in the battle of Ascalon sealed the establishment of
the Latins in Syria, and signalized the valor of the French
princes who in this action bade a long farewell to the holy wars.
Some glory might be derived from the prodigious inequality of
numbers, though I shall not count the myriads of horse and foot
1151 on the side of the Fatimites; but, except three thousand
Ethiopians or Blacks, who were armed with flails or scourges of
iron, the Barbarians of the South fled on the first onset, and
afforded a pleasing comparison between the active valor of the
Turks and the sloth and effeminacy of the natives of Egypt. After
suspending before the holy sepulchre the sword and standard of
the sultan, the new king (he deserves the title) embraced his
departing companions, and could retain only with the gallant
Tancred three hundred knights, and two thousand foot-soldiers for
the defence of Palestine. His sovereignty was soon attacked by a
new enemy, the only one against whom Godfrey was a coward.
Adhemar, bishop of Puy, who excelled both in council and action,
had been swept away in the last plague at Antioch: the remaining
ecclesiastics preserved only the pride and avarice of their
character; and their seditious clamors had required that the
choice of a bishop should precede that of a king. The revenue and
jurisdiction of the lawful patriarch were usurped by the Latin
clergy: the exclusion of the Greeks and Syrians was justified by
the reproach of heresy or schism; 116 and, under the iron yoke of
their deliverers, the Oriental Christians regretted the
tolerating government of the Arabian caliphs. Daimbert,
archbishop of Pisa, had long been trained in the secret policy of
Rome: he brought a fleet at his countrymen to the succor of the
Holy Land, and was installed, without a competitor, the spiritual
and temporal head of the church. 1161 The new patriarch 117
immediately grasped the sceptre which had been acquired by the
toil and blood of the victorious pilgrims; and both Godfrey and
Bohemond submitted to receive at his hands the investiture of
their feudal possessions. Nor was this sufficient; Daimbert
claimed the immediate property of Jerusalem and Jaffa; instead of
a firm and generous refusal, the hero negotiated with the priest;
a quarter of either city was ceded to the church; and the modest
bishop was satisfied with an eventual reversion of the rest, on
the death of Godfrey without children, or on the future
acquisition of a new seat at Cairo or Damascus.
114 (return) [ The English ascribe to Robert of Normandy, and the
Provincials to Raymond of Tholouse, the glory of refusing the
crown; but the honest voice of tradition has preserved the memory
of the ambition and revenge (Villehardouin, No. 136) of the count
of St. Giles. He died at the siege of Tripoli, which was
possessed by his descendants.]
115 (return) [ See the election, the battle of Ascalon, &c., in
William of Tyre l. ix. c. 1-12, and in the conclusion of the
Latin historians of the first crusade.]
1151 (return) [ 20,000 Franks, 300,000 Mussulmen, according to
Wilken, (vol. ii. p. 9)—M.]
116 (return) [ Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 479.]
1161 (return) [ Arnulf was first chosen, but illegitimately, and
degraded. He was ever after the secret enemy of Daimbert or
Dagobert. Wilken, vol. i. p. 306, vol. ii. p. 52.—M]
117 (return) [ See the claims of the patriarch Daimbert, in
William of Tyre (l. ix. c. 15-18, x. 4, 7, 9,) who asserts with
marvellous candor the independence of the conquerors and kings of
Jerusalem.]
Without this indulgence, the conqueror would have almost been
stripped of his infant kingdom, which consisted only of Jerusalem
and Jaffa, with about twenty villages and towns of the adjacent
country. 118 Within this narrow verge, the Mahometans were still
lodged in some impregnable castles: and the husbandman, the
trader, and the pilgrim, were exposed to daily and domestic
hostility. By the arms of Godfrey himself, and of the two
Baldwins, his brother and cousin, who succeeded to the throne,
the Latins breathed with more ease and safety; and at length they
equalled, in the extent of their dominions, though not in the
millions of their subjects, the ancient princes of Judah and
Israel. 119 After the reduction of the maritime cities of
Laodicea, Tripoli, Tyre, and Ascalon, 120 which were powerfully
assisted by the fleets of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, and even of
Flanders and Norway, 121 the range of sea-coast from Scanderoon
to the borders of Egypt was possessed by the Christian pilgrims.
If the prince of Antioch disclaimed his supremacy, the counts of
Edessa and Tripoli owned themselves the vassals of the king of
Jerusalem: the Latins reigned beyond the Euphrates; and the four
cities of Hems, Hamah, Damascus, and Aleppo, were the only relics
of the Mahometan conquests in Syria. 122 The laws and language,
the manners and titles, of the French nation and Latin church,
were introduced into these transmarine colonies. According to the
feudal jurisprudence, the principal states and subordinate
baronies descended in the line of male and female succession: 123
but the children of the first conquerors, 124 a motley and
degenerate race, were dissolved by the luxury of the climate; the
arrival of new crusaders from Europe was a doubtful hope and a
casual event. The service of the feudal tenures 125 was performed
by six hundred and sixty-six knights, who might expect the aid of
two hundred more under the banner of the count of Tripoli; and
each knight was attended to the field by four squires or archers
on horseback. 126 Five thousand and seventy sergeants, most
probably foot-soldiers, were supplied by the churches and cities;
and the whole legal militia of the kingdom could not exceed
eleven thousand men, a slender defence against the surrounding
myriads of Saracens and Turks. 127 But the firmest bulwark of
Jerusalem was founded on the knights of the Hospital of St. John,
128 and of the temple of Solomon; 129 on the strange association
of a monastic and military life, which fanaticism might suggest,
but which policy must approve. The flower of the nobility of
Europe aspired to wear the cross, and to profess the vows, of
these respectable orders; their spirit and discipline were
immortal; and the speedy donation of twenty-eight thousand farms,
or manors, 130 enabled them to support a regular force of cavalry
and infantry for the defence of Palestine. The austerity of the
convent soon evaporated in the exercise of arms; the world was
scandalized by the pride, avarice, and corruption of these
Christian soldiers; their claims of immunity and jurisdiction
disturbed the harmony of the church and state; and the public
peace was endangered by their jealous emulation. But in their
most dissolute period, the knights of their hospital and temple
maintained their fearless and fanatic character: they neglected
to live, but they were prepared to die, in the service of Christ;
and the spirit of chivalry, the parent and offspring of the
crusades, has been transplanted by this institution from the holy
sepulchre to the Isle of Malta. 131
118 (return) [ Willerm. Tyr. l. x. 19. The Historia
Hierosolimitana of Jacobus a Vitriaco (l. i. c. 21-50) and the
Secreta Fidelium Crucis of Marinus Sanutus (l. iii. p. 1)
describe the state and conquests of the Latin kingdom of
Jerusalem.]
119 (return) [ An actual muster, not including the tribes of Levi
and Benjamin, gave David an army of 1,300,000 or 1,574,000
fighting men; which, with the addition of women, children, and
slaves, may imply a population of thirteen millions, in a country
sixty leagues in length, and thirty broad. The honest and
rational Le Clerc (Comment on 2d Samuel xxiv. and 1st Chronicles,
xxi.) aestuat angusto in limite, and mutters his suspicion of a
false transcript; a dangerous suspicion! * Note: David determined
to take a census of his vast dominions, which extended from
Lebanon to the frontiers of Egypt, from the Euphrates to the
Mediterranean. The numbers (in 2 Sam. xxiv. 9, and 1 Chron. xxi.
5) differ; but the lowest gives 800,000 men fit to bear arms in
Israel, 500,000 in Judah. Hist. of Jews, vol. i. p. 248. Gibbon
has taken the highest census in his estimate of the population,
and confined the dominions of David to Jordandic Palestine.—M.]
120 (return) [ These sieges are related, each in its proper
place, in the great history of William of Tyre, from the ixth to
the xviiith book, and more briefly told by Bernardus
Thesaurarius, (de Acquisitione Terrae Sanctae, c. 89-98, p.
732-740.) Some domestic facts are celebrated in the Chronicles of
Pisa, Genoa, and Venice, in the vith, ixth, and xiith tomes of
Muratori.]
121 (return) [ Quidam populus de insulis occidentis egressus, et
maxime de ea parte quae Norvegia dicitur. William of Tyre (l. xi.
c. 14, p. 804) marks their course per Britannicum Mare et Calpen
to the siege of Sidon.]
122 (return) [ Benelathir, apud De Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom.
ii. part ii. p. 150, 151, A.D. 1127. He must speak of the inland
country.]
123 (return) [ Sanut very sensibly descants on the mischiefs of
female succession, in a land hostibus circumdata, ubi cuncta
virilia et virtuosa esse deberent. Yet, at the summons, and with
the approbation, of her feudal lord, a noble damsel was obliged
to choose a husband and champion, (Assises de Jerusalem, c. 242,
&c.) See in M. De Guignes (tom. i. p. 441-471) the accurate and
useful tables of these dynasties, which are chiefly drawn from
the Lignages d’Outremer.]
124 (return) [ They were called by derision Poullains, Pallani,
and their name is never pronounced without contempt, (Ducange,
Gloss. Latin. tom. v. p. 535; and Observations sur Joinville, p.
84, 85; Jacob. a Vitriaco Hist. Hierosol. i. c. 67, 72; and
Sanut, l. iii. p. viii. c. 2, p. 182.) Illustrium virorum, qui ad
Terrae Sanctae.... liberationem in ipsa manserunt, degeneres
filii.... in deliciis enutriti, molles et effoe minati, &c.]
125 (return) [ This authentic detail is extracted from the
Assises de Jerusalem (c. 324, 326-331.) Sanut (l. iii. p. viii.
c. 1, p. 174) reckons only 518 knights, and 5775 followers.]
126 (return) [ The sum total, and the division, ascertain the
service of the three great baronies at 100 knights each; and the
text of the Assises, which extends the number to 500, can only be
justified by this supposition.]
127 (return) [ Yet on great emergencies (says Sanut) the barons
brought a voluntary aid; decentem comitivam militum juxta statum
suum.]
128 (return) [ William of Tyre (l. xviii. c. 3, 4, 5) relates the
ignoble origin and early insolence of the Hospitallers, who soon
deserted their humble patron, St. John the Eleemosynary, for the
more august character of St. John the Baptist, (see the
ineffectual struggles of Pagi, Critica, A. D 1099, No. 14-18.)
They assumed the profession of arms about the year 1120; the
Hospital was mater; the Temple filia; the Teutonic order was
founded A.D. 1190, at the siege of Acre, (Mosheim Institut p.
389, 390.)]
129 (return) [ See St. Bernard de Laude Novae Militiae Templi,
composed A.D. 1132-1136, in Opp. tom. i. p. ii. p. 547-563, edit.
Mabillon, Venet. 1750. Such an encomium, which is thrown away on
the dead Templars, would be highly valued by the historians of
Malta.]
130 (return) [ Matthew Paris, Hist. Major, p. 544. He assigns to
the Hospitallers 19,000, to the Templars 9,000 maneria, word of
much higher import (as Ducange has rightly observed) in the
English than in the French idiom. Manor is a lordship, manoir a
dwelling.]
131 (return) [ In the three first books of the Histoire de
Chevaliers de Malthe par l’Abbe de Vertot, the reader may amuse
himself with a fair, and sometimes flattering, picture of the
order, while it was employed for the defence of Palestine. The
subsequent books pursue their emigration to Rhodes and Malta.]
The spirit of freedom, which pervades the feudal institutions,
was felt in its strongest energy by the volunteers of the cross,
who elected for their chief the most deserving of his peers.
Amidst the slaves of Asia, unconscious of the lesson or example,
a model of political liberty was introduced; and the laws of the
French kingdom are derived from the purest source of equality and
justice. Of such laws, the first and indispensable condition is
the assent of those whose obedience they require, and for whose
benefit they are designed. No sooner had Godfrey of Bouillon
accepted the office of supreme magistrate, than he solicited the
public and private advice of the Latin pilgrims, who were the
best skilled in the statutes and customs of Europe. From these
materials, with the counsel and approbation of the patriarch and
barons, of the clergy and laity, Godfrey composed the Assise of
Jerusalem, 132 a precious monument of feudal jurisprudence. The
new code, attested by the seals of the king, the patriarch, and
the viscount of Jerusalem, was deposited in the holy sepulchre,
enriched with the improvements of succeeding times, and
respectfully consulted as often as any doubtful question arose in
the tribunals of Palestine. With the kingdom and city all was
lost: 133 the fragments of the written law were preserved by
jealous tradition 134 and variable practice till the middle of
the thirteenth century: the code was restored by the pen of John
d’Ibelin, count of Jaffa, one of the principal feudatories; 135
and the final revision was accomplished in the year thirteen
hundred and sixty-nine, for the use of the Latin kingdom of
Cyprus. 136
132 (return) [ The Assises de Jerusalem, in old law French, were
printed with Beaumanoir’s Coutumes de Beauvoisis, (Bourges and
Paris, 1690, in folio,) and illustrated by Gaspard Thaumas de la
Thaumassiere, with a comment and glossary. An Italian version had
been published in 1534, at Venice, for the use of the kingdom of
Cyprus. * Note: See Wilken, vol. i. p. 17, &c.,—M.]
133 (return) [ A la terre perdue, tout fut perdu, is the vigorous
expression of the Assise, (c. 281.) Yet Jerusalem capitulated
with Saladin; the queen and the principal Christians departed in
peace; and a code so precious and so portable could not provoke
the avarice of the conquerors. I have sometimes suspected the
existence of this original copy of the Holy Sepulchre, which
might be invented to sanctify and authenticate the traditionary
customs of the French in Palestine.]
134 (return) [ A noble lawyer, Raoul de Tabarie, denied the
prayer of King Amauri, (A.D. 1195-1205,) that he would commit his
knowledged to writing, and frankly declared, que de ce qu’il
savoit ne feroit-il ja nul borjois son pareill, ne null sage
homme lettre, (c. 281.)]
135 (return) [ The compiler of this work, Jean d’Ibelin, was
count of Jaffa and Ascalon, lord of Baruth (Berytus) and Rames,
and died A.D. 1266, (Sanut, l. iii. p. ii. c. 5, 8.) The family
of Ibelin, which descended from a younger brother of a count of
Chartres in France, long flourished in Palestine and Cyprus, (see
the Lignages de deca Mer, or d’Outremer, c. 6, at the end of the
Assises de Jerusalem, an original book, which records the
pedigrees of the French adventurers.)]
136 (return) [ By sixteen commissioners chosen in the states of
the island: the work was finished the 3d of November, 1369,
sealed with four seals and deposited in the cathedral of Nicosia,
(see the preface to the Assises.)]
The justice and freedom of the constitution were maintained by
two tribunals of unequal dignity, which were instituted by
Godfrey of Bouillon after the conquest of Jerusalem. The king, in
person, presided in the upper court, the court of the barons. Of
these the four most conspicuous were the prince of Galilee, the
lord of Sidon and Caesarea, and the counts of Jaffa and Tripoli,
who, perhaps with the constable and marshal, 137 were in a
special manner the compeers and judges of each other. But all the
nobles, who held their lands immediately of the crown, were
entitled and bound to attend the king’s court; and each baron
exercised a similar jurisdiction on the subordinate assemblies of
his own feudatories. The connection of lord and vassal was
honorable and voluntary: reverence was due to the benefactor,
protection to the dependant; but they mutually pledged their
faith to each other; and the obligation on either side might be
suspended by neglect or dissolved by injury. The cognizance of
marriages and testaments was blended with religion, and usurped
by the clergy: but the civil and criminal causes of the nobles,
the inheritance and tenure of their fiefs, formed the proper
occupation of the supreme court. Each member was the judge and
guardian both of public and private rights. It was his duty to
assert with his tongue and sword the lawful claims of the lord;
but if an unjust superior presumed to violate the freedom or
property of a vassal, the confederate peers stood forth to
maintain his quarrel by word and deed. They boldly affirmed his
innocence and his wrongs; demanded the restitution of his liberty
or his lands; suspended, after a fruitless demand, their own
service; rescued their brother from prison; and employed every
weapon in his defence, without offering direct violence to the
person of their lord, which was ever sacred in their eyes. 138 In
their pleadings, replies, and rejoinders, the advocates of the
court were subtle and copious; but the use of argument and
evidence was often superseded by judicial combat; and the Assise
of Jerusalem admits in many cases this barbarous institution,
which has been slowly abolished by the laws and manners of
Europe.
137 (return) [ The cautious John D’Ibelin argues, rather than
affirms, that Tripoli is the fourth barony, and expresses some
doubt concerning the right or pretension of the constable and
marshal, (c. 323.)]
138 (return) [ Entre seignor et homme ne n’a que la foi;.... mais
tant que l’homme doit a son seignor reverence en toutes choses,
(c. 206.) Tous les hommes dudit royaume sont par ladite Assise
tenus les uns as autres.... et en celle maniere que le seignor
mette main ou face mettre au cors ou au fie d’aucun d’yaus sans
esgard et sans connoissans de court, que tous les autres doivent
venir devant le seignor, &c., (212.) The form of their
remonstrances is conceived with the noble simplicity of freedom.]
The trial by battle was established in all criminal cases which
affected the life, or limb, or honor, of any person; and in all
civil transactions, of or above the value of one mark of silver.
It appears that in criminal cases the combat was the privilege of
the accuser, who, except in a charge of treason, avenged his
personal injury, or the death of those persons whom he had a
right to represent; but wherever, from the nature of the charge,
testimony could be obtained, it was necessary for him to produce
witnesses of the fact. In civil cases, the combat was not allowed
as the means of establishing the claim of the demandant; but he
was obliged to produce witnesses who had, or assumed to have,
knowledge of the fact. The combat was then the privilege of the
defendant; because he charged the witness with an attempt by
perjury to take away his right. He came therefore to be in the
same situation as the appellant in criminal cases. It was not
then as a mode of proof that the combat was received, nor as
making negative evidence, (according to the supposition of
Montesquieu; 139 but in every case the right to offer battle was
founded on the right to pursue by arms the redress of an injury;
and the judicial combat was fought on the same principle, and
with the same spirit, as a private duel. Champions were only
allowed to women, and to men maimed or past the age of sixty. The
consequence of a defeat was death to the person accused, or to
the champion or witness, as well as to the accuser himself: but
in civil cases, the demandant was punished with infamy and the
loss of his suit, while his witness and champion suffered
ignominious death. In many cases it was in the option of the
judge to award or to refuse the combat: but two are specified, in
which it was the inevitable result of the challenge; if a
faithful vassal gave the lie to his compeer, who unjustly claimed
any portion of their lord’s demesnes; or if an unsuccessful
suitor presumed to impeach the judgment and veracity of the
court. He might impeach them, but the terms were severe and
perilous: in the same day he successively fought all the members
of the tribunal, even those who had been absent; a single defeat
was followed by death and infamy; and where none could hope for
victory, it is highly probable that none would adventure the
trial. In the Assise of Jerusalem, the legal subtlety of the
count of Jaffa is more laudably employed to elude, than to
facilitate, the judicial combat, which he derives from a
principle of honor rather than of superstition. 140
139 (return) [ See l’Esprit des Loix, l. xxviii. In the forty
years since its publication, no work has been more read and
criticized; and the spirit of inquiry which it has excited is not
the least of our obligations to the author.]
140 (return) [ For the intelligence of this obscure and obsolete
jurisprudence (c. 80-111) I am deeply indebted to the friendship
of a learned lord, who, with an accurate and discerning eye, has
surveyed the philosophic history of law. By his studies,
posterity might be enriched: the merit of the orator and the
judge can be felt only by his contemporaries.]
Among the causes which enfranchised the plebeians from the yoke
of feudal tyranny, the institution of cities and corporations is
one of the most powerful; and if those of Palestine are coeval
with the first crusade, they may be ranked with the most ancient
of the Latin world. Many of the pilgrims had escaped from their
lords under the banner of the cross; and it was the policy of the
French princes to tempt their stay by the assurance of the rights
and privileges of freemen. It is expressly declared in the Assise
of Jerusalem, that after instituting, for his knights and barons,
the court of peers, in which he presided himself, Godfrey of
Bouillon established a second tribunal, in which his person was
represented by his viscount. The jurisdiction of this inferior
court extended over the burgesses of the kingdom; and it was
composed of a select number of the most discreet and worthy
citizens, who were sworn to judge, according to the laws of the
actions and fortunes of their equals. 141 In the conquest and
settlement of new cities, the example of Jerusalem was imitated
by the kings and their great vassals; and above thirty similar
corporations were founded before the loss of the Holy Land.
Another class of subjects, the Syrians, 142 or Oriental
Christians, were oppressed by the zeal of the clergy, and
protected by the toleration of the state. Godfrey listened to
their reasonable prayer, that they might be judged by their own
national laws. A third court was instituted for their use, of
limited and domestic jurisdiction: the sworn members were
Syrians, in blood, language, and religion; but the office of the
president (in Arabic, of the rais) was sometimes exercised by the
viscount of the city. At an immeasurable distance below the
nobles, the burgesses, and the strangers, the Assise of Jerusalem
condescends to mention the villains and slaves, the peasants of
the land and the captives of war, who were almost equally
considered as the objects of property. The relief or protection
of these unhappy men was not esteemed worthy of the care of the
legislator; but he diligently provides for the recovery, though
not indeed for the punishment, of the fugitives. Like hounds, or
hawks, who had strayed from the lawful owner, they might be lost
and claimed: the slave and falcon were of the same value; but
three slaves, or twelve oxen, were accumulated to equal the price
of the war-horse; and a sum of three hundred pieces of gold was
fixed, in the age of chivalry, as the equivalent of the more
noble animal. 143
141 (return) [ Louis le Gros, who is considered as the father of
this institution in France, did not begin his reign till nine
years (A.D. 1108) after Godfrey of Bouillon, (Assises, c. 2,
324.) For its origin and effects, see the judicious remarks of
Dr. Robertson, (History of Charles V. vol. i. p. 30-36, 251-265,
quarto edition.)]
142 (return) [ Every reader conversant with the historians of the
crusades will understand by the peuple des Suriens, the Oriental
Christians, Melchites, Jacobites, or Nestorians, who had all
adopted the use of the Arabic language, (vol. iv. p. 593.)]
143 (return) [ See the Assises de Jerusalem, (310, 311, 312.)
These laws were enacted as late as the year 1350, in the kingdom
of Cyprus. In the same century, in the reign of Edward I., I
understand, from a late publication, (of his Book of Account,)
that the price of a war-horse was not less exorbitant in
England.]
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