order of St. Lazarus have traced its origin to a supposed association of Christians in the first century against the persecution of their Jewish and Pagan enemies. This account is fabulous. It appears certain, however, that in very early times Christian charity founded establishments for the sick. In the year 370 St. Basil built a large hospital in the suburbs of Cesarea, and lepers were the peculiar objects of its care. Those poor men were by the laws and customs of the East interdicted from intercourse with their relations and the world, and their case was so deplorable, that, according to unexceptionable testimony,* the emperor Valens, Arian as he was, enriched the hospital of Cesarea with all the lands which he possessed in that part of the world. Christian charity formed similar institutions in various places of the east. Lazarus became their tutelary saint, and the buildings were styled Lazarettos. One of these hospitals was in existence at Jerusalem at the time of the first crusade. It was a religious order, as well as a charitable institution, and followed the rule of St. Augustin. For purposes of defence against the Muselman tyrants, the members of the society became soldiers, and insensibly they formed themselves into distinct bodies *Theodoret, lib. 4. cap. 16. CHAP. CHAP. VIII. dies of those who attended the sick, and those who mingled with the world. The cure of lepers was their first object, and they not only received lepers into their order, for the benefit of charity, but their grand master was always to be a man who was afflicted with the disorder,* the removal whereof formed the purpose of their institution. The cavaliers who were not lepers, and were in a condition to bear arms, were the allies of the Christian kings of Palestine. The order was taken under royal protection, and the Jerusalem monarchs conferred upon it various privileges.‡ *This singular rule was abrogated about the year 1253, because the infidels had slain all the lepers in Jerusalem. The Pope thereupon permitted the order to elect a man for its master who was not a leper. The habit of those knights is not known: it only appears that the crosses on their breasts were always green, in opposition to those of the knights of St. John, which were white, and the red crosses of the Templars. But neither the names, nor the exploits of the knights of St. Lazarus, often appear in the history of the Crusades. CHAP. IX. THE SECOND CRUSADE. The aspect of France favourable for a new Crusade... A Crusade necessary in consequence of the loss of Edessa...... Character of St. Bernard...... Crusade embraced by Louis VII. king of France, and the emperor Conrad III. of Germany...... Their military array......March of the Germans...... Conrad passes into Asia, disregarding the Byzantine emperor................ Louis halts at Constantinople......Distresses of the Germans......Bravery of the French......and their subsequent disasters......Arrival of the French at Antioch......Eleanora......Firmness of Louis...... The Crusaders reach Jerusalem...... They depart from their original object......Siege of Damascus... Disgraceful failure......Return to Europe of Conrad and Louis. WHEN the hour of battle arrived, the few valiant CHAP. IX. knights in the holy land wished for no participators in the glory of vanquishing their numerous foes; but the timorous and prudent clergy continually solicited the co-operation of Europe: and in the consternation throughout Palestine which the fall of Edessa occasioned, all classes of people beckoned their compatriots in the west. of France for a new Crusade. CHAP. IX. west. The news of the loss of the eastern fronThe aspect tier of the Latin kingdom reached France at a favourable time peculiarly favourable for foreign war. After having reduced his vassal, the count of Champagne, to obedience, Louis VII.the French king, exceeded the usual cruelty of conquerors, and instead of sheathing his sword, when the inhabitants of Vetri submitted, he set fire to a church in which more than thirteen hundred of them had fled for refuge. His sacrilegious barbarity excited the indignation of the clergy and laity. A fit of sickness calmed his passions; his conscience accused and condemned him, and he resolved to expiate his sins by a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.* Louis VII, was the first sovereign prince who engaged himself to fight under the banner of the cross. The news of the calamities in Palestine quickened his holy resolution, and like other men he was impetuously moved by the eloquence of St. Bernard, the great oracle of the age. By the superiority of his talents, and also of his consideration in the eyes of Europe, this new apostle of a holy war was far more capable than Peter the Hermit,† Character of St. Bernard. of * Il fit vœu de faire égorger des millions d'hommes pour expier la mort de quatre ou cinq cents Champenois. Voltaire, Essai sur les Mœurs des Nations, chap. 55. † Bernard says it was entirely owing to the bad generalship of Peter, that in the first Crusade the populace were destroyed. of exciting the tumultuous emotions of enthu- CHAP. IX: siasm. From his ancestors, the counts of Chatillon and Montbart, Bernard inherited nobility; but he felt not its usual accompaniment, the love of military honour. His ardent and religious soul soon disdained the light follies of youth and, casting off the desire of celebrity as a writer of poetry and songs,* he wandered in the fanciful regions of sanctified beatitude, or the rough and craggy paths of polemical theology. At the age of twenty-three he embraced the monastic life† at Citeaux; and soon after wards destroyed. It is amusing to observe the contempt with which the saint speaks of the hermit. "Fuit in priori ex"peditione antequam Jerosolyma caperetur, vir quidam, "Petrus nomine, cujus et vos (nisi fallor) sæpe mentionem "audistis," &c. Epist. 363, p 328, vol. i. Opera, S. Bernardi, edit. Mabillon, 1690. * Imo magis mirandum esset, te eloquii urgeri siccitate, quoniam audivimus a primis fere adolescentiæ rudimentis cantiunculas mimicas et urbanos fictitasse. Neque certe in incerto loquimur opinionis, sed testis est alumna tui patria nostri sermonis. Berengarius' Letter to Bernard, in Opera Abelardi, p. 302. This passage I first met with in Mr. Turner's History of England, vol. i. p. 498, note 31. + A Hindu or Muhammedan Faquir might envy Bernard his power of abstraction. After a year's noviciate, he did not know whether the top of his cell was covered with a ceiling, nor whether the church had more than one window, though it had three. Sce Butler's Lives of the Saints, vol. viii. p. 231. edit. 1812. |