X. 1. Paganini's Leben und Treiben als Künstler und als 2. Paganini's Leben und Charakter. Von Lud. Vineta 478 XI. I. Histoire de Pologne, avant et sous le Roi Jean Sobieski. 2. Lettres du Roi de Pologne, Jean Sobieski, à la Reine Marie Casimire, pendant la Campagne de Vienne, traduites par M. Le Comte Plater, et publiées par N. XII. 1. La Grande Semaine des Polonais. Traduit du Polonais, XIV. 1. Henri III. et sa Cour, Drame Historique. Par Alex. 2. Jeanne la Folle, Drame Historique. Par L. M. Fontan 536 XVI. Taréas de un Solitario, o nueva Coleccion de Novelas. XVII. Histoire des Legions Polonaises en Italie. Par L. Chodzko 544 Miscellaneous Literary Notices, No. XIV., from Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Poland, Russia, and of Oriental Literature and Science List of the Principal New Works published on the Continent, from FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW. ART. I.- Histoire de Philippe-Auguste, par M. Capefigue. Ouvrage couronné par l'Institut. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1830. THE reign of Philip-Augustus belongs to two centuries, the twelfth and thirteenth-centuries of no little importance in the history of European civilization. At a period like this, when events which have their origin in the progress, decay, and reproduction of past institutions are daily being developed, the study of the different steps by which the citizen has become what he is must be an occupation of the most lively interest. It is a remark of the author of the work before us, that we are apt to consider revolutions in a far too confined point of view; we limit the epoch by its visible signs and its finished results; but these results have been in long preparation. Society does not receive a new form in a day; the ideas cast abroad in one century become the leading principles of the next; in short, in the history of mankind everything is gradual;—a revolution is but the explosion of a train that has been long and curiously laid. The period in which Philip-Augustus was a great instrument in modelling and arranging the internal forms of society, is marked as the age in which the beginnings of numerous great changes had their commencement,-in which they arose into obvious existence, without, however, then receiving their accomplishment. It was the dawn of the great intellectual reformation, which has since made such rapid progress, and is every day more and more expanding its propitious light. The two grand elements which operated on society from the establishment of the barbarous invaders in Roman Gaul, and which maintained a continual struggle for predominance over the opinions of men from the seventh to the tenth century, were the material force of the conquerors, and the moral and intelligent force of the clergy. M. Capefigue has traced the fortunes of this singular but most important strife at length; we will do so shortly, as an appropriate introduction to an article on the Spirit of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, of which the reign of VOL. VII. NO. XIII. B Philip-Augustus is the great centre, and during which the results of the events of the two or three previous centuries showed themselves in the shape of results. The annals of the Merovingians and the Carlovingians are filled with the quarrels and mutual encroachments of the warriors and the clerks; the one operated by the seizure of the lands or the treasures of cathedrals and monasteries; the others revenged themselves by interdicts and excommunications. However, at the tenth century the triumph of the Church may be considered complete. Its advantages over its rival are obvious: it was a regular institution, possessed a formal hierarchy, consecrated forms, a written code, invariable maxims: it pursued a given end with order and perseverance. The armed feudality, on the other hand, was but a confused mass of isolated forces—a government without a common object, sometimes prepared to resist, sometimes to succumb. What it gained by its violence it lost by its uncertainty. What ascendancy could the mailed baron preserve, who in the evening was seen plundering a monastery, and the next day, prostrate at the foot of the altar, demanding pardon of holy relics for his offences against God, and loading pious recluses with presents in expiation of his sins? Opposed to him and his physical force were the territorial and monachal clergy, the bishops and their suffragans, the secular priests and the different orders of monks holding their rights from the pope, whose absolute jurisdiction they maintained, all animated with a common spirit, a common object-the triumph of religious ideas and the prerogatives of the Church. Nearly half of the territory of Roman Gaul belonged to the clergy of the monasteries and the cathedrals; in addition to which they reaped the tenth of the productions of the other half, without the exception of royal domain, baronial castle, or serf's cottage. Besides the influence of riches, the clergy possessed the influence of superior instruction. The little knowledge afloat was confined to them, the scattered elements of some disfigured science, the traditions of sacred and profane literature. They alone could read or write: they were necessary in every castle of France from the suzerain to the least vassal, all had their chaplain to draw up their deeds, to recite the breviary, or enliven the long nights of winter with some tale or legend of chivalry. They were consulted on all domestic affairs, and they had contrived to connect almost every act of life with religious offices or religious ideas. The Christian faith of the middle ages was a vast polytheism, the deities of which were in continual relation with mankind. The catalogue of the church of Cluny exhibits a list of eleven thousand saints, habitually invoked by the people. The immense power of the Church was preserved in a spirit of unity by the frequent assembly of both general and provincial councils, in which the clerks deliberated upon the means of maintaining the purity of doctrine, or of consolidating the authority of the Church. From the twelfth century to the thirteenth the great collection of the Père Labbe contains four general councils, in which all the bishops of Christendom were assembled to the number of upwards of a thousand, and three hundred and seventeen particular or provincial councils, in which the necessities of the local churches were deliberated upon and provided for by the bishops and prelates of the neighbourhood. In fact, before we arrive at the end of the eleventh century, we find that the Church had become the unique source of all social existence. From it every thing flowed, the moral and intellectual order of men's ideas were founded on its doctrines, it served as an active and regular authority, the only rational forms of legal jurisdiction were established by it; in short, nothing existed out of its pale but brutal and unorganized force, which could not long oppose any effective resistance, and which was disgraced by every attempt it made against an authority sacred in the eyes of all. At this period Europe may be considered as a great religious federative republic, governed by a clerical aristocracy, consisting of the Bishop of Rome for its president, and the rest of the bishops of Christendom, their suffragans, their canons, and the monks. But the Church itself was destined to undergo its revolution : the bishops of Rome set forth their pretensions as true spiritual monarchs placed by God on earth: the famous Hildebrand (Gregory VII.) first established this maxim. The Church then lost its liberal form of government by councils, and assumed an aspect altogether monarchical: this revolution was in progress from the pontificate of Gregory VII. to that of Innocent III. The pope then became the only visible organ of the Church; and as it had previously become the unique source of power and influence, it naturally followed that the pontiff maintained a sort of universal monarchy over all the princes and people of Christendom; and during the period which forms the subject of the work before us, the proofs of this authority are displayed by the different popes in a manner not to be misunderstood. We find Gregory VII. establishing the doctrine that kings were his temporal bishops. Urban II. made Philip I. of France submit to his will in a point of private morals by relieving his subjects from their oath of allegiance. The emperor Henry IV. submitted to a similar humiliation; and in the long pontificate of Innocent III., contemporary with a great part of the reign of Philip-Augustus, we find this pope excommunicating the king, putting the kingdom under an interdict, proclaiming himself suzerain of England, and, in short, attempting, and successfully, to exercise all the acts of a universal monarch. And his influence was not only exerted over the kings, but it was felt by whole masses of the population, who moved at his beck. In the eleventh century all Europe was put in motion by the voice of Urban II. commanding the delivery of the holy sepulchre. It was he who directed the enthusiasm of the multitude, and regulated its movements. Bulls accorded privileges to the crusaders and relieved them from their debts, and pontifical regulations interfered in the settlement of disputed rights and of the public peace, without consulting any authority but its own. Sometimes it directed its force against the East, now against Spain or England, at another time against the Albigenses; in short, the feudal population of the middle ages appear to have become the devoted subjects of the despotic pontiffs of Rome. The pontificate of Innocent III. was the epoch of the greatest splendour and energy of the Church, and yet at that very moment its power carried within itself the seeds of decline. The grand principle of the Church was the argument of authority: its science began and ended in the official interpretation of the Scriptures, the regulations of councils and popes. A Christian owed his faith to his Catholic teacher, as the serf his service to his master, as the liege-man to his lord: it was no part of their duty to examine motives, or to look to consequences. But in the period from the eleventh to the twelfth century, the sphere of men's studies became enlarged, manuscripts were multiplied in the libraries of the cathedrals and monasteries; these did not all contain merely the traditions of the Church,-there were found among them the precious remains of Greek and Roman literature. In the twelfth century the classics had become familiar to the lettered clerks; all the pious books of the time display a familiarity with them, and even women had begun to devote themselves to learning the elegant tongues of Greece and Rome. Thus a source of instruction was opened which did not flow from the Church, and by this very fact, and also by the nature of the instruction, its authority received a blow from which it never fairly recovered, and of which the consequences were more strikingly exhibited every day. The philosophical character of many of the authors then beginning to be studied gave birth to heresies, the existence of which had an important influence upon the history of clerical power; and as, moreover, a branch of instruction was discovered which did not emanate from the Church and formed no part of it, it naturally produced a body of teachers devoted to its circulation. Hence arose the continental universities, the great birth-places of heresies; that is to say, of Christian notions combined with the dogmas of |