rmining it. Men were beginning to think, to inquire, and then to doubt. How could sensuality and vice at Rome be reconciled with a divin

out by the lectures of this most learned and accomplished man of his time produced an epoch. He spoke to his disciples in the open air, as no building could hold the thousands who hung upon his lips. This movement became localized; a faubourg of students was crea

by a Church council at Soissons, and he immured for life in the Monastery of Cluny, to be treasured in the h

, under the regency of his mother, "Blanche of Castile," was proclaimed king. The same family, which

the time seemed propitious for the barons to recover the power Philip ha

f arms, and by diplomacy, Blanche of Castile met this crisis with astonishing courage and address. The free cities sprang to her assistance;

owerful and disaffected state, which was making common cause with Toulouse against the king. And it is with mingled pity and rejoicing that we hear of Raymond VII. of Toulouse,

ce to the state was enduring and of the first magnitude, because it dealt with the sources of things. When he established a King's Court, which was a court of appeal from the rude justice, or injustice, of feudal counts, he undermined the foundation of feudal power. In bestowing the right of appeal, his protectin

of Normandy's conquest of England. Feudal proprietors were forbidden to hold territory under a foreign king; and henceforth no c

ute despotism which five hundred years later would require a revolution of unprecedented horror for its removal. Such was the fact. Every wise act in this reign was prompted by the spirit of fairness and

bishop, if unjust, with as much energy as one of his own barons; and, in the same spirit of fairness

al exaltation than this devout and heavenly grandson of Philip Augustus! No monk in the Dark Ages attached such sanctity to relics! When a portion of the crown of thorns was sent to him from Jerusalem, he built

. His first Crusade was disastrous, occupying years of his life; his mother, Blanche of Castile, dying during his absence. His second and last

of very different memory, was at this time, by invitation of the pope, occupying the double throne of Naples and Si

ptured in the first Crusade, was lost in the second, and never recovered. And so ineffectual had been the expenditure of

session of the Holy Land. Through the broadening of men's views, and the common heritage of a great experience,

ning infidel was not the monster he expected to find. In fact, the European discovered that in the Saracen and the Greek they met a civilization much more advanced, more learned, and more polished than their own. More civilizati

Louis demanded that the clergy should share the state's burden by contributing to its revenue. Pope Boniface VIII., imperious and strong-willed as he, immediately issued a bull, forbidding the clergy to pay, or the officers to r

arons alike, Philip took a step which profoundly affected the future of France. At a great council summoned to consider these papal claims, he commanded the presence not only of the ecclesiastic

States-General (1302); had forged the instrument which would

s attempt, the king was master of the situation. Gifts had already been distributed among corrupt cardinals in the conclave. The papacy was at his feet, and might be in his hand. The most dissolute of his own archbishops was selected as his tool, and, as Clement V., succeeded to the chair of St. P

er the cause, their extermination was decreed. Accused of impossible crimes, the whole brotherhood was arrested in one day, and, at a summary trial, condemned, Phil

od's wrath; and the death of his three sons, Louis, Philip, and Charles, who successively reigned during a perio

to the throne of France. The three sons of Philip IV. had died, leaving each a daughter, so the son of Charles of Valois, only brother of Philip