that of the prince) "I invest you with sovereign au"thority; but remember, that it is nothing but a public employment, to which you are called by Heaven, and "for the exercise of which you must render an account "in the world to come"

A. D. 1137.

The king unexpectedly recovered; but he would never afterwards use any of the ensigns of royalty. An accident contributed to the revival of his strength. William, duke of Guienne, and earl of Poitou, resolved to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. James of Compostella, bequeathed his extensive territories to his daughter Eleanor, on condition that she married young Lewis, already crowned king of France, at the desire of his father; and the duke dying in that pilgrimage, the marriage was celebrated with great pomp at Bourdeaux, where Lewis VII. was solemnly inaugurated as lord of Guienne and Poitou17.

In the mean time Lewis VI. unable to support the heat of the dog-days, died at Paris on the first of August, in the sixtieth year of his age, and the thirtieth of his reign. A better man, historians agree, never graced the throne of France; but with the addition of certain qualities, his countrymen say he might have made a better king. Posterity, however, may not perhaps be inclined to think worse of his character, when they are told that the qualities he wanted were hypocrisy and dissimulation, and that his vices were honesty and sincerity: which led him to despise flattery, and indulge himself in a manly freedom of speech.

We should now, my dear Philip, return to the history of England; but the second crusade, which was conducted by the sovereigns of France and Germany, makes it necessary to carry farther the affairs of the continent.

16. Sug. Vit. Lud. Grosse. Henault, Hist. tom. i. 17. Id. ibid.

LETTER

LETTER XXV.

THE GERMAN EMPIRE AND ITS DEPENDENCIES, ROME AND THE ITALIAN STATES, FROM THE DEATH OF HENRY V. TO THE ELECTION OF FREDERICK I. SURNAMED BARBAROSSA,

As Henry V. left no issue, it was universally believed that the states would confer the empire on one of his nephews, Conrad, duke of Franconia, or Frederic, duke of Suabia, who were princes of great merit; but Albert, archbishop of Mentz, found means to influence the German chiefs to give their suffrages in A. D. 1125. favour of Lothario, duke of Saxe-Supplembourg, who had supported him in all his contests with the late emperor. Lothario was accordingly crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, in presence of the pope's nuncio. Meanwhile his two competitors neglected nothing in their power to obtain the throne. But after a short opposition, which was, however, obstinate and bloody, they dropped their pretensions, and were reconciled to Lothario, who afterwards honoured them with his friendship.

The first expedition of the new emperor was against the Bohemians, whom he obliged to sue for peace, and do homage to the empire. He next marched into Italy, where the ecclesiastical affairs, as usual, were A. D. 1130, in much disorder. Innocent II. had succeeded Honorius II. by virtue of a canonical election; notwithstanding which cardinal Leoni, the grandson of a wealthy Jew, was also proclaimed pope by the name of Anacletus, and kept possession of Rome by means of his money, whilst his rival was obliged to retire into France, the common asylum of distressed popes. Lothario espoused the cause of Innocent, with

VOL. I.

A. D. 1132.

whom he had an interview at Liege; accompanied him to Rome at the head of an army, and re-established him in the papal chair, in spite of all the efforts and opposition of Anacletus'.

After being solemnly crowned at Rome, the emperor returned to Germany; where, by the advice of Ernerius, a learned professor of the Roman law, he ordered that justice should be administered in the empire according to the Digesta, or Code of Justinian, a copy of which was, about this time, found in Italy3. In the mean time, Roger, duke of Apulia, who had lately conquered the island of Sicily, raised an army in favour of Anacletus, and made himself master of almost all the places belonging to the holy see. Pope Innocent retired to Pisa, which was then one of the most considerable trading cities in Europe, and again implored the assistance of Lothario. The emperor did not desert him in his adversity: he immediately put himself at the head of a powerful army; and, by the help of the Pisans, the imperial forces soon recovered all the patrimony of St. Peter. Pope InnoA. D. 1137. cent was re-conducted in triumph to Rome: a circumstance which so much affected Anacletus, that he fell a martyr to the success of his competitor, literally ying of grief.

The emperor afterwards drove Roger, duke of Apulia, from city to city; and, at length, obliged him to take refuge in Sicily, his new kingdom. He then subdued the provinces of Apulia and Calabria, and all Roger's Italian dominions, which he formed into a principality, and bestowed it, with the title of duke, upon Renaud, a German prince, and one of his own relations.

A. D. 1139.

2. Jean de Launes, Hist. du Pontificat. du Pope Innocent II.

3. On this subject, which is involved in controversy, see Hen. Brenchmann, Hist. Pandect. Murat. Antiq. Ital. tom. ii.

On

On his way to Germany, Lothario was seized with à dangerous distemper, which carried him off, near Trent, in the twelfth year of his reign. He was distinguished by a passionate love of peace, and an exact attention to the administration of public justice.

Conrad, duke of Franconia, nephew to Henry V. was unanimously elected emperor, on the death of Lothario. But the imperial throne was disputed by Henry the Haughty, duke of Bavaria, the name of whose family was Guelph; hence those who espoused his party were called Guelphs, an appellation afterwards usually bestowed on the enemies of the emperors.

A. D. 1140.

Henry the Haughty died during this contest, after being divested of his dominions by the princes of the empire; but the war was still carried on against the emperor by Guelph, the duke's brother, and Roger, king of Sicily. The imperial army was commanded by Frederic, duke of Suabia, the emperor's brother, who being born at the village of Hieghibelin, gave to his soldiers the name of Ghibelins; an epithet by which the imperial party was distinguished in Italy, while the pope's adherents grew famous under that of Guelphs.

Guelph, and his principal followers, were besieged in the castle of Weinsberg; and having sustained great loss in a sally, they were obliged to surrender at discretion. The emperor, however, instead of using his good fortune with rigour, granted the duke, and his chief officers, permission to retire unmolested. But the duchess, suspecting the generosity of Conrad, with whose enmity against her husband she was well acquainted, begged that she, and the other women in the castle, might be allowed to come out with as much as each of them could carry, and be conducted to a place of safety. Her request was granted, and the evacuation was imme

4. Annal. de l'Emp. tom. i. 5. Mura Dissertat. de Guelph. et Guibel, Sigon. lib. xi. Krant. Sax. lib. vii.

diately

diately performed; when the emperor and his army, who expected to see every lady loaded with jewels, gold, and silver, beheld, to their astonishment, the duchess and her fair companions, staggering beneath the A. D. 1141. weight of their husbands. The tears ran down Conrad's cheeks: he applauded their conjugal tenderness, and an accommodation with Guelph and his adherents, was the consequence of this act of female heroism".

While these things were transacting in Germany, new disorders broke out in Italy. The people of Rome formed a design of re-establishing the commonwealth ; of retrieving the sovereignty of their city, and abolishing the temporal dominion of the popes. Lucius II. marched against the rebels, and was killed at the foot of the capitol; but Eugenius III. his successor, found means to reduce them to reason, and preserve the authority of the apostolic see".

A. D. 1145.

A. D. 1147.

This pope afterwards countenanced the second crusade against the Saracens, preached by St. Bernard, in which the emperor and the king of France, engaged, as I shall soon have occasion to relate. Another crusade was preached against the Moors in Spain, in which a great number of Germans, from the neighbourhood of the Rhine and Weser, engaged; and the Saxons, about the same time, undertook a crusade against the pagans of the north, whom they cut off in thousands, without making one convert.

Nothing remarkable happened in the empire, after the return of Conrad III. from the east, except the death of prince Henry, his eldest son, who had been elected king of the Romans. This event greatly affected the emperor, who died soon after; and his nephew Frederic, surnamed Barbarossa, duke of

A. D. 1152.

6. Heis. lib. ii. cap. xii. 7. Fleury, Hist. Eccles. vol. xiv. Mosheim, Hist. Eccles. vol. iii. 8. Id. ibid.

Suabia,