the poetic spirit, which all great movements develop, songs without end raised him to the pinnacle of popular fame, they were collected and rewritten after his death by a subject, Albert of Aix, and Europe still believes that the feeble duke, who did nothing during the fray, and was only elected after it because the great leaders were absent or declined so empty an honor, was the soul of the first Crusade. well defended, the weather was inclement, | Europe fixed its eyes on the Christian King and the mob which called itself a Christian of the Sepulchre. He became the object of army perished, as such mobs under such circumstances always do. The Crusade might have ended here, but Bohemond desired Antioch as his capital, and to the calm Norman intellect many expedients were possible, foreign to his superstitious comrades. He promised to conquer Antioch if it were delivered to him in sovereignty. Count Raymond of course resisted, and the Norman suffered the Emir of Mosul to bring up his horsemen within sight of the camp rather As for Peter the Hermit, he was simply than forego his purpose. At last Count and literally chaplain to the camp-followers, Raymond gave way, and in twelve hours who, calling themselves from a Turkish word Bohemond had fulfilled his promise. With Tafurs, lived outside the camp, elected a sixty Normans he scaled the walls at a point king and priest of their own, pillaged friend held by a Seljuk whom he had bribed; the and foe, and were subsequently, there seems gate was thrown open and the garrison put no room to doubt, guilty of establishing a to the sword. The Christians, however, by practice, when provisions fell short, of eatthis victory only became the besieged, for ing the roasted bodies of the slain. the Emir of Mosul brought his horsemen The first Crusade, then, left Syria in this up to the city, and established a strict block-condition; Bohemond retained Antioch, and ade. The army began to perish of hunger, transmitted it as an independent feudal state dogs and rats were consumed, and at last to his son. Baldwin held Edessa, and on the Crusaders lost even the spirit for a sortie. They shut themselves up in thousands and preferred to die. The leaders, as usual, driven out of their prejudices by despair, turned to Bohemond, and invested him with unlimited power. The astute chief saved them in an hour, by an act which must be held in no slight degree to redeem him from the charge of self-seeking, with which envious rivals avenged themselves on his wisdom. He fired his own city, and the armed mob, driven from shelter, charged upon the enemy, who scattered in all directions. Of course, with the danger the appearance of amidst oriental harems. The successor of unanimity vanished. Raymond of Toulouse Baldwin the second was an imbecile, and his broke his oath, and at last the army, weary leading followers were intriguing for his wife with quarrels, rushed forward, dragging and his throne, when suddenly another blast their leaders, Bohemond excepted, to Jeru- of anti-Mahomedan feeling passed through salem. The town was taken by storm on Europe. King Louis of France had de15th July, 1099, Godfrey was elected king stroyed some churches in Champagne, and after Raymond of Toulouse and Robert of in the fervor of his repentance determined Normandy had refused, and the Crusaders to visit the Holy Sepulchre. Roger of Sicily disappeared. The army vanished in a week. joined, in the hope of seizing ConstantinoThe pilgrims had earned heaven, and re- ple, and the Abbot of Clairvaux induced the turned to their homes on earth, and the "King" of Germany to offer his aid. The king of Jerusalem was left in Palestine with combined armies crossed Europe, descended two thousand effective men-at-arms, most of the valley of the Danube, reached Jerusalem, them, fortunately for Christendom, Nor- and besieged Damascus. The Christian mans, and a magnificent renown. The real barons, however, did not want a powerful hero of the expedition was Bohemond, but | potentate among them; their intrigues com the death of Godfrey after a weak reign of one year, during which he announced himself as vassal of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Baldwin appointed a younger brother count of his province, and himself mounted the throne of Jerusalem. He reigned for eighteen years, conquered all the coast of Palestine, and fortified his frontier towards Egypt. His brother, who in 1118 succeeded him, desired to pursue the same policy, but his followers refused their support. They expected miracles, and while waiting for them, scattered themselves through the castles of Syria pelled him to raise the siege, and he re- tion of the Mussulman world. Four times turned, leaving the Christians to encounter had the chivalry of Europe, led by their Noureddin, the new ruler of Asia Minor, mightiest princes, blessed by the Church, and his successor, Saladin. No external and followed by the heartiest applause of menace could teach the Christians the first the population, precipitated itself upon Asia. principles of political strength. In the pres- Every year some chief, followed by a long ence of Saladin's armies the barons in- train of knights, had landed in Syria to seek trigued, and caballed, and separated, until, adventure and the remission of his sins. united for a day by an overwhelming dan- All that a warlike race could feel of devoger, they fought on July 5, 1187, the battle tion, or enthusiasm, or ambition, had been of Tiberias, and expiated their follies in one lavished in the cause. A million of brave common fate. Jerusalem held out till Octo-men had spent their lives, and the fee-simber, and then passed finally into Mussulman ple of half the lands in Europe had been lavhands. Gleams of hope now and again ished, and all without effect. The motive lighted up the gloom which, for a century, cause of the movement was also its ruin: the loss of the Holy Places spread through "We see in the first Crusade the strength, the Christian world, but Jerusalem was in the second the weakness, of medieval renever recovered. Frederic Barbarossa, in- ligious feeling. It was only fitted for rapid, deed, collected a splendid army in March, violent, and instant action; lasting combi1188, and commenced the third Crusade on nation, fruitful action, or enduring results, it a reasonable plan. He utterly prohibited was unable to produce. It evaporated in followers and encumbrances of all sorts, and heated enthusiasm and narrow contempt of he reached Cilicia with an army of seventy the world: it rushed madly on, with eyes thousand fighting men splendidly equipped, turned to heaven, in expectation of some and really disciplined. Opposition disap- wondrous miracle, and fell crashing to the peared, Saladin announced his intention of ground, its feet entangled in some miseraflying, and the eastern shore of the Mediter-ble creeping weed." ranean might to this day have been Christian, The Crusades had failed, but Europe had when Frederic was accidentally drowned. won the game. For a space of a hundred The army melted away, its sole relic being years the Continent had placed before it an the order of Teutonic Knights, which was object higher than personal advantage, and founded out of the remnants, by the emper- the hearts and brains of men responded or's son Frederic of Suabia, and which was eagerly to the great demand. Heroism bedestined to a grand but European career. came a habit. Poetry awoke from its long The failure, however, stirred Europe once trance. Commerce obtained an impetus more; the extraordinary bravo, whom we never afterwards lost, and learning arose call Richard the First, took up the cross, once more. The Greeks poured their gloand after a journey on which he wasted two rious literature over the world, and the first years, in January, 1192, he stood in sight of Crusaders brought with them back to Italy Jerusalem. Saladin, this time, ceded the a treasure worth more than all they seemed city, which, however, Richard never entered, to have spent in vain. The Code of Jusbut the new king, Conrad of Montferrat, tinian, that universal political solvent, which was murdered within three days of his elec- eats away feudalism as acids eat iron, was tion, and again Richard advanced upon the brought to Bologna, and the minds of men, Sepulchre. It was all in vain. The Chris- jarred out of their narrow grooves, began tians dared not conquer the city, lest their to expand under the influence of broader armies should disappear, and at last, on 30th and loftier thoughts than the conquerors of August, 1192, a treaty was signed which left Rome had imported. With the Crusades Jerusalem to the Mussulmans, and an- the age of pure force passed away; and if nounced the final failure of the Crusades. Europe has now advanced till she looks down They had lasted for an entire century. on the East in pitying and somewhat indisFrom 1095 to 1192, the cardinal object of criminate contempt, she owes her progress Europe had been the permanent recovery of to that great contest in which for a hundred the Holy Sepulchre, and the final subjuga- years, the East was so steadily victorious. From The Saturday Review. THE RECOVERY OF A LOST WORK OF EUSEBIUS.* in 1842 with a large collection of most valuable manuscripts, more or less imperfect. His bargain with the monks had been that "BRITISH MUSEUM, Add, MS. No. 12,- he should purchase the whole collection ; 150." Under these symbols scholars recog- but it was afterwards ascertained that they nize a manuscript which Dr. Cureton is quite had concealed and withheld a large part of justified in calling "that wonderful volume of their library. This fact was brought to light the Nitrian Collection." It is wonderful by Mr. Pacho, a native of Alexandria, who not only for its contents, and its singular had been authorized to make a further history and recovery, but for its immense search for similar literary treasures in other antiquity. It is believed by all competent Egyptian convents. It was in 1847 that this judges to have been transcribed fourteen gentleman discovered and procured nearly hundred and fifty years ago, in the year of two hundred volumes from the same house our Lord 411. Of the four treatises in the of S. Maria Deipara, whence the first instalSyriac language which this precious manu- ment had been obtained. It seems that the script contains, the first three have already monks of this convent, who had contrived been printed. The late Dr. Lee, He- to deceive and defraud Dr. Tattam, required brew Professor at Cambridge, edited and very delicate handling before Mr. Pacho translated the long-lost book of Eusebius on could be sure that he had received all the the Theophania, or Divine Manifestation of remaining Syriac manuscripts in their posour Lord; and Dr. P. A. de Lagarde pub- session. However, he was as astute as they lished, at Leipsic and Berlin respectively, were, and the second moiety of the collecSyriac versions of the Recognitiones of tion was added, after some interval of doubt Clement of Rome, and also of the contro- whether the French Government would not versial work of Titus, Bishop of Bostra in make a larger bid for it, to the first moiety Arabia, against the Manichæans. At last, in the British Museum. The literary value in the volume before us, Dr. Cureton lays of the whole collection is incalculable, and before the world an edition and a translation the National Library in which it is deposited of another lost work by Eusebius, the Bishop has become the richest in the world in Syrof Cæsarea-his contemporary History of iac manuscripts. certain Martyrs in Palestine. Before we proceed to notice this treatise more particu- present treatise of Eusebius is taken is perlarly, it may be allowed us to recall some haps the most curious of the whole number. particulars as to the remarkable Nitrian Dr. Lee, when editing from it the Theophamanuscript containing it, which we find, not nia of Eusebius, expressed an opinion that in the volume now under review, but in a the manuscript must be at least a thousand former work by Dr. Cureton-his edition of years old. Afterwards he discovered on the the Festal Letters of Athanasius, which was margin of one of the leaves in the body of printed thirteen years ago by the Society the volume a transcript of a note of the date for the Publication of Oriental Texts. A of the writing, which added nearly five cenmore curious history is not to be found in turies to the age of the manuscript. He was any of the annals of literature. naturally reluctant to accept so almost fabuIt is now nearly twenty years ago that lous an antiquity, but after weighing the Dr. Tattam, who has since been made Arch- whole question deliberately, he decided that deacon of Bedford, was commissioned by the date was genuine. Dr. Cureton, who, Government to purchase in Egypt certain from the peculiar duty which devolved upon Syriac manuscripts which were known to him as an assistant keeper of the manuexist in the monastery of S. Maria Deipara, in the valley of Nitria, or of the Natron Lakes. This scholar returned to England * History of the Martyrs in Palestine. By Eusebius, Bishop of Cæsarea. Discovered in a very ancient Syriac Manuscript. Edited and translated into English by William Cureton, D.D., Member of the Imperial Institute of France. London: Williams and Norgate. Paris: Borrani. 1861. The particular volume from which the scripts, of examining and arranging the whole collection, had acquired more practical experience than any other scholar as to the quality and condition of the vellum, the color of the ink, and the style of hand-writing, as indications of age, immediately concluded, when he saw this volume, that it was the most ancient one that had ever come into his hands. Judging from no less than sixty dated manuscripts, which ranged from A.D. 1292 up to A.D. 464, he attributed to this particular volume an antiquity of fifty or sixty years above the earliest of the collection. This would give A.D. 414 or 404 as the date of the manuscript-a most close approximation to the truth, for the actual date noted in the margin is, when reduced to modern chronology, A.D. 411. This marginal note is in itself so curious that our readers may thank us for quoting it, as translated by Dr. Cureton : "Behold, my brethren, if it should happen that the end of this ancient book should be torn off and lost, together with the writer's subscription and termination, it was written at the end of it thus: viz., that this book was written at Orrhoa, a city of Mesopotamia, by the hands of a man by the name of Jacob, in the year of seven hundred and twenty-three, in the month Tishrin the Latter, it was completed. And agreeably to what was written there, I have written also here, without addition. And what is here I wrote in the year one thousand and three hundred and ninety-eight of the era of the Greeks." These dates answer to A.D. 411, and A.D. 1086, of our era; so that before the close of the eleventh century this manuscript was already regarded as an ancient volume, and the library of this Egyptian monastery was even then we may suppose, falling into a state of neglect. That which the arnotator feared actually came to pass. The end of the volume was torn off, and the book was brought to England by Dr. Tattam, and used by Professor Lee, in this imperfect state, with its dated subscription lost. When Mr. Pacho, several years later, brought the remaining Nitrian manuscripts to the British Museum, the missing fragment was found among them; and on the last page Dr. Cureton had the delight of reading the autographic and dated colophon of the original scribe. The history of the book is summed up by Dr. Cureton as follows, not without a certain clumsiness of expression in one or two places: "Among all the curiosities of literature, I know of none more remarkable than the fate of this matchless volume. Written in the country which was the birthplace of Abraham, the Father of the Faithful, and the city [Edessa or Orfa] whose king was the first Sovereign that embraced Christianity, in the year of our Lord 411, it was at a subsequent period transported to the valley of the Ascetics in Egypt, probably in A.D. 931, when ibis during a visit to Bagdad, and presented 250 volumes were collected by Moses of Nisby him upon his return to the monastery of St. Mary Deipara, over which he presided. In A.D. 1086, some person, with careful foresight, fearing lest the memorial of the transcription of so valuable, beautiful, and even at that remote period so ancient a book,' should be lost, in order to secure its preserthe body of the volume. At how much earvation, took the precaution to copy it into lier a period the fears which he had anticipated became realized, I have no means of ascertaining; but, in A.D. 1837, the end of the volume had been torn off,' and in that state, in A.D. 1839, it was transferred from the solitude of the African desert to the most frequented city in the world. Three years later two of its fragments followed the volume to England; and, in 1847, I had the gratification of recovering almost all that had been lost, and of restoring to its place in this ancient book the transcriber's own record of the termination of his labors, which, after various fortunes in Asia, Africa, and Europe, has already survived a period of 1436 years." It is from this manuscript that Dr. Cureton now prints for the first time a Syriac version of the History of the Martyrs in Palestine, by the famous Eusebius of Cæsarea. That writer, in the eighth book of his Ecclesiastical History, states his intention of compiling a separate narrative of the martyrdoms which he had himself witnessed; and a brief notice, answering to this description, but considered by most critics to be only an abridgment of a lost treatise, is found contained in many manuscript copies of the Ecclesiastical History. We need not discuss here the arguments which led to this conclu sion. Suffice it to say that this inference is now become a certainty, since we have here before us, the original treatise, translated into the vernacular language of Palestine, transcribed within seventy years of the death of the author. Dr. Cureton tells us that Stephen Assemani was of opinion that this lost treatise of Eusebius was not improbably written in Syriac, rather than in Greek. But he gives sound arguments against this supposition. It is disappointing that Dr. Cureton declines the task of discussing thoroughly the question of the exact date of the present treatise in relation to other works of Euse- ments of the Christian martyrs and confesbius. He contents himself with throwing sors who suffered (as Eusebius words it) out suggestions which he hopes that other"in such a year of the persecution in our scholars may take up and fully investigate. days," the persecution, that is, of DiocleHowever, besides the Syriac text (which tian, beginning in A.D. 303. is printed in a not very attractive type), In illustration of the details of the martyrand a full English translation, we have a doms here described, Dr. Cureton refers very interesting body of notes, in which the continually to the work of Gallonius, De present text is compared not only with Sanctorum Martyrum Cruciatibus. This Assemani's fragments, but with the abridged book is by no means common; and some Greek of the Ecclesiastical History, and extracts from it would have been acceptable. with other notices preserved by ancient Another curious treatise, that of Hieronywriters. In particular, a long passage re-mus Magius de Equuleo, covers the same counting the Confession of Pamphilus and ground, and is enriched with copious appenhis companions has been preserved in the dices from Gallonius himself and other original Greek by Simeon Metaphrastes, in writers. In reading the Confession of Pamthe tenth century, and has been translated into Latin, which version is here reprinted for the sake of comparison. Still it is to be regretted that the present editor has not exhausted his subject. In all other respects we owe him thanks for his labor, which we should call scholarly, were it not that he prints all his Greek without accents, and that several Latin words appear without their full number of letters. Perhaps, also, we ought to complain that Dr. Cureton, who lives in London, within reach of so many value. We have no wish to distress our libraries, should apologize for not referring to a not very rare book, by saying, "I have not the Acta Martyrum at hand." We observe, also, an inaccurate reference, which we cannot verify, to the Bibliotheca Orientalis of Joseph Assemani. philus we are struck with one passage in which Firmilianus, President of Palestine, questions the victim under "the combs and cauteries of fire" as to "what city and in what country was that Jerusalem which was said to belong to the Christians only." It will be remembered that at the time when these martyrdoms took place Jerusalem was known to the Romans by no other name than Elia Capitolina. Here we have an undesigned historical coincidence of great readers with extracts describing the horrid tortures to which these Palestinian martyrs, both men and women, were exposed. We will only notice one fact which we do not remember to have seen noticed before. It appears that the victims who were doomed The interest attaching to the treatise of to the Ludus-that is, the gladiatorial exhiEusebius which is now given to the world is bitions were not immediately taken to the chiefly a moral one. It does not contribute amphitheatre, but were handed over to the many, if any, new facts to our knowledge of Procuratores in order to undergo a long the history or the theology of the Church of course of preparatory training. The Christhe fourth century. But it is impressive to tians, of course, refused to submit to this read here the record of actual martyrdoms discipline, and were treated with untold for the faith of Christ which the author severities for their non-compliance with the witnessed with his own eyes. His narrative, rules. It is impossible to close this volin its simplicity and the general absence of ume without hoping that the monasteries of exaggeration, bears upon it the stamp of the East may afford us yet more of the veracity; and many to whom this volume lost works of antiquity. A distinguished would be without interest in its critical English scholar is understood to have emaspect may find pleasure and profit in the ployed the late autumn in a fresh search for English translation, considered merely as a such treasures among the convents of Mount piece of devotional reading. It is affecting Athos. to read the details of the cruel deaths and tor |