J. Fr. Michaud

“ In this parallel, the imagination would be dazzled when such an empire should be presented to it as has never been seen upon earth, and which would lead to the belief that the popes did not belong to this fragile and transitory world,—a power which hell cannot pull down,—which the world cannot corrupt,—which, without the help of any army, and by the simple ascendancy of a few words, subdues things sooner, and proves itself more formidable, than ancient Rome, with all her victories. What more magnificent spectacle can the history of empires present to us? ”

“ Let him cease to boast of being brave, the knight who does not arm to succour both the cross and the sacred tomb! Yes, with rich equipments, with valour, with courtesy, and with all that is fair and irreproachable, we cannot obtain glory and happiness in paradise. What more could counts and kings require, if, by honourable deeds, they could redeem themselves from hell and from fire eternal, in which so many wretches would live tormented for ever? ”

“ Religion, which mingled itself with all the institutions and all the passions of the middle ages, purified the sentiments of the knights, and elevated them to the enthusiasm of virtue. Christianity lent chivalry its ceremonies and its emblems, and tempered, by the mildness of its maxims, the asperities of warlike manners.
Piety, bravery, and modesty were the distinctive qualities of chivalry: “Serve God, and he will help you; be mild and courteous to every gentleman, by divesting yourself of all pride; be neither a flatterer nor a slanderer, for such people seldom come to great excellence. ”

“ What Christian will refuse to follow the vicar of God, going with his holy senate, and all the revered train of the Church, to the defence of religion and humanity?
“What war was ever more just or more necessary? The Turks attack all that we hold most dear, all that Christian society considers most holy. If you are men, can you be wanting in compassion for your fellow-men? If you are Christians, religion commands you to carry succour to your brethren. If the misfortunes of others touch you not, think of your own safety—have pity on yourselves. ”

“ If at the moment in which I write this history all Europe is moved by the rumour of a general rising against the Mussulmans, now masters of Byzantium;—if the most ardent disciples of the modern school of philosophy are putting up vows for the triumph of the Gospel over the Koran, for the deliverance of the Greeks, and the resurrection of Athens and Lacedæmon, how can we believe that in the middle ages princes and Christian nations would not be affected by the horrible state of slavery of Jerusalem, and all those holy regions from which the light first broke upon Christendom? ”

“ Whilst glancing thus at the principal states of Europe, we are particularly struck with the great diversity that exists in the manners, the institutions, and the destinies of nations. How is it possible to follow the march of civilization amidst so many republics and monarchies, some bursting with splendour from the bosom of barbarism, others sinking into ruins? And how is it possible to point out the influence of the crusades through so many revolutions, which have often the same causes, but whose effects are so different, and sometimes so opposite? ”

“ There is no doubt the cross will again arise in the East, and the fate of Christians residing there will receive some amelioration; but are we arrived at the moment which is to render Europe entirely Christian? Will the Ottoman empire, whose weakness now appears so great, yield to the power of its enemies, or will it hasten its own ruin? Will Greece, so long enslaved, resume that rank among nations from which she formerly descended so ingloriously, or will she fall into the hands of her liberators? ”

“ Shame followed every offence towards the weak, and every aggression towards an unarmed man.
The spirit of chivalry kept up and strengthened among warriors the generous sentiments which the military spirit of feudalism had given birth to: devotion to his sovereign was the first virtue, or rather the first duty, of a knight. Thus in every state of Europe grew up a young military power, always ready for fight, and always ready to sacrifice itself for prince or for country, as for the cause of justice and innocence. ”

“ The time was not ripe, and when the laboriously gathered lines of power fell from the strong hand, there was no successor to grasp them. Anarchy became well-nigh universal. The royal authority was everywhere, with here and there a passing exception, a vague and indefinite thing, hemmed in and jealously watched by barons, more powerful than the king in everything but name. Society was broken up into small communities, with apparently no common direction of movement or impulse of progress. Every castle was a centre of power, which might be hostile to every other authority about it. ”

“ The Turks could not endure either a pacific prince, or a prince unfortunate in war; so thoroughly were they persuaded that they ought to be always fighting, and that they ought always to conquer. The Ottoman people, to whom nothing was good or right but conquest, would obey none but a conqueror; and if they consented to be slaves, and tremble beneath the frown of a master, it was upon the sole condition that this all-powerful master should carry abroad the terror of his arms, and should give chains to other nations. ”

“ When we see—so near to a power almost supernatural—weakness, uncertainty, the fragility common to things below, and humanity with all its miseries, why may we not be permitted to compare the double power of the popes to Jesus Christ himself, of whom they were the vicars and images upon earth,—to Jesus Christ, whose double nature presents us, on one side, a God beaming with splendour, and on the other a simple mortal, loaded with the cross, and crowned with thorns? ”

“ The violent measures which it took to preserve itself, showed plainly that it itself felt a consciousness of its own fragility. When we see it immolate all the laws of nature to its own laws, hold the sword constantly suspended over all that approach it, and itself experience more fear than it inspires, we are tempted to believe that it has no veritable support. Whilst reading the oriental history of the middle ages, we are astonished to see all those empires which the genius of despotism raised in Asia, fall almost without resistance, and disappear from the scene of the world. ”

“ The holy war! the holy war! that is the best of your worships, the most noble of your customs; help God, and he will help you; hold to God, and he will hold to you; remember him, and he will remember you; do good towards him, and he will do good towards you; endeavour to cut off every diseased member, to destroy even to the last enemy; purify the rest of the earth of those nations with whom God and his messenger are angry. ”

“ Under the empire of Islamism, there is nothing strong but despotism; but the strength of despotism is, almost always, nothing but the weakness of the nation it rules over. The Christian religion has another aim, when it says to its disciples, Love one another as brothers. One of its most admirable characteristics is the spirit of sociability with which it inspires men. By all its maxims, it orders them to unite, to help one another, to enlighten one another. It thus doubles their strength, by placing them constantly in community of labours and dangers, fears and hopes, opinions and feelings. ”

“ Then the monk resumed: “If thy intention is to perform that which thou hast promised, I implore Jesus Christ to direct thy steps, and grant thee the victory; but if the enterprise thou hast commenced is only to turn to the shame and misfortunes of Christians, if thou art not, with the help of God, determined to finish it, if thou hast deceived the holy Catholic Church, divine justice will fall heavily on thy family and on thy kingdom, and the blood which the news of thy expedition has caused to flow will rise up against thee.” ”

“ So many sources of prosperity, all that could cause peace to nourish or serve for defence in war, all perished under the flame, the axe, and the hammer! The principal aim of the Mussulman policy in this war, was to destroy all that the Christians had done; to leave no traces of their power upon the coasts of Syria; nothing which could afterwards attract thither the princes and warriors of the West, nothing that could yield them the means of maintaining themselves there if ever they should be tempted again to unfurl their standards in the East. ”

“ Praise to God, who has raised Islamism into glory by his aid; who has abased polytheism by his power; who rules worldly things by his will; who prolongs his blessings according to the measure of our gratitude; who defeats infidels by his stratagems; who gives power to dynasties, according to his justice; who has reserved future life for those who fear him, by an effort of his goodness; who extends his shadow over his servants; who has caused his religion to triumph over all others; who gains the victory over his servants without any one being able to oppose him ”

“ It was possible now to call not only separate feudatories but all Europe to arms. Feudalism would keep men divided into fixed classes, and society broken up into permanent groups; the Church, on the other hand, would prevent the oppression of one class by another by binding all in a universal allegiance to herself, and would impress upon society the unity of a common service and a common faith.
The crusades sprang out of a feeling which was as strong in the heart of the peasant as in that of the noble. A great cause and a universal sentiment gave the Church the opportunity for which it sought. ”

“ What shame! how wrong it is of the kings and the emperor that they do not deign to conclude treaties and truces with one another, in order to be able to succour the kingdom of the law, the holy light, and the tomb and the cross which the Turks have so long retained. The repetition alone of this disaster overwhelms us with profound sadness— (Aimerie de Peguilhan: Evas pana.)
It will soon be known what gallant men entertain the noble ambition of meriting the glory of this world and the glory of God. ”

“ My dear son, above all things I recommend thee to avoid war with every Christian nation; if thou art reduced by necessity to make it, at least take care that the poor people, who are not in the wrong, be kept safe from all harm. Give all thy efforts to appease the divisions that may arise in thy kingdom, for nothing is so pleasing to God as the spectacle of concord and peace. Neglect nothing to provide good lieutenants (baillis) and provosts in thy provinces. Give power freely to men who know how to use it, and punish all who abuse it ”

“ When we study the whimsicalities of the human mind, that which most affects the enlightened observer is, to see there are men whose passion is words, whom self-love attaches to vain subtleties, and for whom the ruin of the world would be a less painful spectacle than the triumph of an opinion they have opposed. On the eve of the greatest perils, Constantinople was filled with people whom hatred for the Latins made forgetful of even the approach and menaces of the Turks. ”

“ Society, always ready to split to pieces, appeared to have no other motive but the fury of parties, no other principle of life but discord and civil war; there was no other guarantee against license but tyranny; or against tyranny, but the despair of factions, and the poniard of conspirators. As the strength of most of the little states which covered Italy was seldom equal to their ambition; and as princes and citizens, by the same reason that they were weak, wanted both moderation and courage ”

“ The crusades found Europe stationary and without the power of progress. Society had crystallized into forms so rigid and fixed that strong pressure from without was essential to any movement toward liberation. Not only were communities circumscribed and reduced in numbers, and individuals held in their places by a power against which it was hopeless to strive; but the whole population was bound to the soil by a system of servitude the most exacting and the most pervasive known in history. ”

“ What shall I say to the sovereign pontiff who has sent me to you, not to treat with Mussulmans, but to drive them beyond the seas? What shall I say to all the pastors of the Christian Churches, and to all the faithful of the West, who are now offering up prayers to Heaven for the success of your arms?
“There is no doubt that the barbarians, whom we have twice conquered, would never have consented to a peace, if they had had the means of carrying on the war. Do you believe they will observe the truce, when fortune shall become more favourable to them? ”

“ When we reflect upon the rapidity with which generations pass away, and how difficult it is, even in civilized times, for most families to make out their own history during a single [279] century, can we be astonished that, in times of ignorance and barbarism, there have been so few means of preserving the memory of the most illustrious families? In addition to the almost entire absence of written documents, the idea of true grandeur, the idea of that which constitutes heroic illustration, did not yet strike men’s minds sufficiently forcibly to make them preserve a long remembrance of it. ”

“ May the wicked and the impious, who shall trouble the public peace, be accursed of God! May Heaven pour upon them the scourges of its wrath! Let them live in unceasing fear, and may their life be as if suspended by a thread! ”

“ The Turks expected that the Christians would give way at the first charge; that they would disperse over the plain; that their ranks would be broken; and that they would allow themselves to be cut to pieces almost without resistance. But the Christian battalion remained firm and motionless, without yielding a foot to either the terror or the violence of the assault. The Turks wondered at this unheard of audacity in so small a number, and reining up their horses, retired backwards some distance, yet not so far but that they might touch each other with their lances on both sides. ”