35

Third was the friend and disciple of the holy Bernard. It was in the proclamation of the second crusade that he shone as the missionary and prophet of God, who called the nations to the defence of his holy sepulchre. At the parliament of Vézelay he spoke before the king; and Louis the Seventh, (A.D. 1146] with his nobles, received their crosses from his hand. The abbot of Clairvaux then marched to the less easy conquest of the emperor Conrad: a phlegmatic people, ignorant of his (at Speyer] language, was transported by the pathetic vehemence of his tone and gestures; and his progress from Constance to Cologne was the triumph of eloquence and zeal. Bernard applauds his own success in the depopulation of Europe; affirms that cities. and castles were emptied of their inhabitants; and computes that only one man was left behind for the consolation of seven widows.36 The blind fanatics were desirous of electing him for their general; but the example of the hermit Peter was before his eyes; and, while he assured the crusaders of the divine favour, he prudently declined a military command, in which failure and victory would have been almost equally disgraceful to his character.37 Yet, after the calamitous event, the abbot of Clairvaux was loudly accused as a false prophet, the author of the public and private mourning; his enemies exulted, his friends blushed, and his apology was slow and unsatisfactory. He justifies his obedience to the commands of the pope; expatiates on the mysterious ways of Providence; imputes the misfortunes of the pilgrims to their own sins; and modestly insinuates that his mission had been approved by signs and wonders.38 Had the fact been certain, the argument would be

35 Otho Frising. 1. i. c. 4. Bernard, Epist. 363, ad Francos Orientales, Opp. tom. i. p. 328. Vit. 1ma, 1. iii. c. 4, tom. vi. p. 1235.

36 Mandastis et obedivi... multiplicati sunt super numerum; vacuantur urbes et castella; et pene jam non inveniunt quem apprehendant septem mulieres unum virum; adeo ubique viduæ vivis remanent viris. Bernard. Epist. p. 247 [leg. p. 246; ep. 247; p. 447 ap. Migne]. We must be careful not to construe pene as a substantive.

37 Quis ego sum ut disponam [castrorum] acies, ut egrediar ante facies armatorum, aut quid tam remotum a professione meâ, [etiam] si vires [suppeterent etiam], si peritia [non deesset], &c. epist. 256, tom. i. p. 259 [leg. 258]. He speaks with contempt of the hermit Peter, vir quidam, epist. 363 [p. 586 ap. Migne].

38 Sic [leg. sed] dicunt forsitan iste, unde scimus quod a Domino sermo egressus sit? Quæ signa tu facis, ut credamus tibi? Non est quod ad ista ipse respondeam; parcendum verecundiæ meæ ; responde tu pro me, et pro te ipso, secundum que vidisti et audisti [leg. audisti et vidisti], et [leg. aut certe] secundum quod te [leg. tibi] inspiraverit Deus. Consolat. [De Consideratione ad Eugenium, iii. Papam] 1. ii. c. 1 [p. 744 ap. Migne]: Opp. tom. ii. p. 421-423.

Progress of the Ma

decisive; and his faithful disciples, who enumerate twenty or thirty miracles in a day, appeal to the public assemblies of France and Germany, in which they were performed. At the present hour such prodigies will not obtain credit beyond the precincts of Clairvaux; but in the preternatural cures of the blind, the lame, or the sick, who were presented to the man of God, it is impossible for us to ascertain the separate shares of accident, of fancy, of imposture, and of fiction.

Omnipotence itself cannot escape the murmurs of its discordhometans ant votaries; since the same dispensation which was applauded as a deliverance in Europe was deplored, and perhaps arraigned, as a calamity in Asia. After the loss in Jerusalem the Syrian fugitives diffused their consternation and sorrow: Bagdad mourned in the dust; the Cadhi Zeineddin of Damascus tore his beard in the caliph's presence; and the whole divan shed tears at his melancholy tale.40 But the commanders of the faithful could only weep; they were themselves captives in the hands of the Turks; some temporal power was restored to the last age of the Abbassides; but their humble ambition was confined to Bagdad and the adjacent province. Their tyrants, the Seljukian sultans, had followed the common law of the Asiatic dynasties, the unceasing round of valour, greatness, discord, degeneracy, and decay: their spirit and power were unequal to the defence of religion; and, in his distant realm of Persia, the Christians were strangers to the name and the arms of Sangiar, the last hero of his race.41 While the sultans were involved in the silken web of the harem, the pious task was undertaken by their slaves, the Atabeks, 42 a Turkish name, which, like the

The Atabeks of Syria [Guardians]

39 See the testimonies in Vita 1ma, 1. iv. c. 5, 6. Opp. tom. vi. p. 1258-1261, 1. vi. c. 1-17, p. 1287-1314.

40 Abulmahasen apud de Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. p. ii. p. 99.

41 See his article in the Bibliothèque Orientale of d'Herbelot, and de Guignes, tom. ii. p. i. p. 230-261. Such was his valour that he was styled the second Alexander; and such the extravagant love of his subjects that they prayed for the sultan a year after his decease. Yet Sangiar might have been made prisoner by the Franks, as well as by the Uzes [Ghuzz]. He reigned near fifty years (A.D. 1103-1152), and was a munificent patron of Persian poetry. [Muizz ad-din Abû1-Harith Sinjar, A.D. 1117-1157; his power was practically confined to Khurāsān.]

42 See the Chronology of the Atabeks of Irak and Syria, in de Guignes, tom. i. p. 254; and the reigns of Zenghi and Noureddin in the same writer (tom. ii. p. ii. p. 147-221), who uses the Arabic text of Benelathir, Ben Schouna, and Abulfeda; the Bibliothèque Orientale, under the articles Atabeks and Noureddin; and the Dynasties of Abulpharagius, p. 250-267, vers. Pocock. [For life of Zengi see Stanley Lane-Poole, Saladin, chaps. 3 and 4; for the genealogy of the Atabeks, the same writer's Mohammadan Dynasties.]

WEST END OF THE COURT OF THE GREAT MOSQUE AT DIARBEKR (AMIDA), RECONSTRUCTED BY THE SELJUKS IN THE 12TH CENTURY FROM

REMAINS OF AN EARLIER CHRISTIAN BUILDING

THE

43

A.D. 1127

Byzantine patricians, may be translated by Father of the Prince. Ascansar, a valiant Turk, had been the favourite of Malek Shah, [Aksunkur] from whom he received the privilege of standing on the right hand of the throne; but, in the civil wars that ensued on the monarch's death, he lost his head and the government of Aleppo. His domestic emirs persevered in their attachment to his son Zenghi, who proved his first arms against the Franks in the de- Zenghi. feat of Antioch; thirty campaigns in the service of the caliph 1145 1146] and sultan established his military fame; and he was invested with the command of Mosul, as the only champion that could avenge the cause of the prophet. The public hope was not disappointed: after a siege of twenty-five days, he stormed the city of Edessa, and recovered from the Franks their conquests beyond the Euphrates: 4 the martial tribes of Curdistan were subdued by the independent sovereign of Mosul and Aleppo : his soldiers were taught to behold the camp as their only country; they trusted to his liberality for their rewards; and their absent families were protected by the vigilance of Zenghi. At the head of these veterans, his son Noureddin gradually Noureddin. united the Mahometan powers; added the kingdom of Damascus (146)-1174 to that of Aleppo, and waged a long and successful war against the Christians of Syria: he spread his ample reign from the Tigris to the Nile, and the Abbassides rewarded their faithful servant with all the titles and prerogatives of royalty. The Latins themselves were compelled to own the wisdom and courage, and even the justice and piety, of this implacable adversary.44 In his life and government, the holy warrior revived the zeal and simplicity of the first caliphs. Gold and silk were banished from his palace; the use of wine from his dominions; the public revenue was scrupulously applied to the public service; and the frugal household of Noureddin was maintained from the legitimate share of the spoil, which he

43 William of Tyre (l. xvi. c. 4, 5, 7) describes the loss of Edessa, and the death of Zenghi. The corruption of his name into Sanguin, afforded the Latins a comfortable allusion to his sanguinary character and end, fit sanguine sanguinolentus.

44 Noradinus [Nür ad-din Mahmud ibn Zangi] (says William of Tyre, 1. xx. 33) maximus nominis et fidei Christianæ persecutor; princeps tamen justus, vafer, providus, et secundum gentis suæ traditiones religiosus. To this Catholic witness, we may add the primate of the Jacobites (Abulpharag. p. 267), quo non alter erat inter reges vitae ratione magis laudabili, aut quæ pluribus justitiæ experimentis abundaret. The true praise of kings is after their death, and from the mouth of their enemies. [He won Damascus in 1154.]

A.D. 1145