was partitioned by the provincial governors, and gradually sank into decay.

The overthrow of the Seljúkian sultans and the Fatimite khaliphs, by Noureddin and Saladin, has been already mentioned. The dynasty of the Ayúbites was founded by Saladin's descendants in Syria and Egypt, and this, after having been divided into several states, was overthrown by the Mamelukes in the thirteenth century.

The Mamelukes were Turkish captives, whom the ferocious Mongols sold into slavery; great numbers of them were imported into Egypt in the reign of Sultan Saleh, of the Ayúbite dynasty. This prince purchased multitudes of the younger captives, whom he formed. into an army and kept in a camp on the seacoast, where they received instruction in military discipline.* From this they were removed to receive the charge of the royal person, and the superintendence of the officers of state. In a short time, these slaves became so numerous and so powerful that they were enabled to usurp the throne, having murdered Túran Shah, the son and successor of Saleh, who had vainly endeavored to break the yoke which the Mamelukes had imposed upon their sultan (A. D. 1250). This revolution took place in the presence of St. Louis, who had been taken prisoner at the battle of Mansurah, and had just concluded a truce for ten years with Túran Shah. The Mameluke insurgent, named at first regent or atta-beg, was finally proclaimed sultan of Egypt.

The dominion of the Mamelukes over Egypt lasted for more than two centuries and a half. Their body, constantly recruited by Turkish and Circassian slaves, disposed of the throne at its pleasure; the boldest of their chiefs, provided he could prove his descent from Turkestan, was chosen sultan. Notwithstanding the frequent wars and revolutions necessarily resulting from the licentiousness of military election, the Mamelukes made a successful resistance to the Mongols, and after the death of Jenghiz Khan's immediate heirs, conquered the kingdoms of Aleppo and Damascus, which the Mongolian khans had taken from the Ayúbites (A. D. 1260). The surviving princes of the Ayúbite dynasty in Syria and Arabia tendered their submission to the Mamelukes, who were thus masters of all the ancient Saracenic possessions in the Levantine countries, with the exception of the few forts and cities which were still retained by the Franks and western Christians. The Mamelukes soon resolved to seize these last memorials of the crusades. They invaded the principalities of Antioch and Tripoli, which were subdued without much difficulty. A fierce resistance was made by the garrison of Acre, but the town was taken by assault and its gallant defenders put to the sword. Tyre soon after surrendered by capitulation.(A. D. 1291), and thus the Christians were finally expelled from Syria and Palestine.

Hence they were called the Baharite or Maritime Mamelukes, to distinguish them from the Borjite or Garrison Mamelukes, another body of this militia, formed by the Baharite sultan, Kelaún, to counterbalance the authority usurped by the Turkish emirs. The Borjites derived their name from the forts which they garrisoned; they soon increased in power, and made the Baharite dynasty undergo the fate it inflicted on the Ayúbite sultans. They rose against their masters (A. D. 1382), gained possession of the supreme authority, and placed one of their chiefs on the throne of Egypt. The Borjites in their turn were overthrown by the Ottomans (A. D. 1517).

CHAPTER V.

THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE; THE PROGRESS OF CIVILIZATION AND INVENTION.

SECTION I. Decline of the Papal Power.-The Great Schism of the West.

CLEMENT V., elevated to the papacy by the influence of the French king, Philip the Fair, to gratify his patron, abstained from going to Rome, had the ceremony of his coronation performed at Lyons, and fixed his residence at Avignon (A. D. 1309).

Philip further insisted that the memory of Boniface should be stigmatized, and his bones disinterred and ignominiously burned. Clement was afraid to refuse; but, at the same time, he dreaded the scandal of such a proceeding, and the danger of such a precedent; he therefore resolved to temporize, and persuaded Philip to adjourn the matter until a general council should be assembled. But some sacrifice was necessary to appease the royal thirst for vengeance, and the illustrious order of the Templars was sacrificed by the head of that church it had been instituted to defend. On the 13th of October, 1307, all the knights of that order were simultaneously arrested; they were accused of the most horrible and improbable crimes; evidence was sought by every means that revenge and cupidity could suggest; the torture of the rack was used with unparalleled violence to extort confession; and sentence of condemnation was finally pronounced on these unfortunate men, whose only crime was the wealth of their order, and their adherence to the papal cause in the reign of Boniface.

The assassination of the emperor Albert inspired Philip with the hope of procuring the crown of Charlemagne for his brother, and he hastened to Avignon to claim the promised aid of the pope. But though Clement had abandoned Italy to tyrants and factions, he had not resigned the hope of re-establishing the papal power over the peninsula, and he shuddered at the prospect of a French emperor reconciling the Guelphs and Ghibellines, crushing opposition by the aid of his royal brother, and fixing the imperial authority on a permanent basis; he therefore secretly instigated the German princes to hasten the election, and Henry VII. of Luxemburg was chosen at his suggestion. Though Henry possessed little hereditary influence, his character and talents secured him obedience in Germany; he had thus leisure to attend to the affairs of Italy, which no emperor had visited during the preceding half century. He crossed the Alps with a band of faithful followers; the cities and their tyrants, as if impressed by magic with unusual respect for the imperial majesty, tendered him their allegiance,

and the peninsula, for a brief space, submitted to orderly government. But the rivalry of the chief cities, the ambition of powerful barons, and the intrigues of Clement, soon excited fresh commotions, which Henry had not the means of controlling.

The council of Vienne had been summoned for the posthumous trial of Boniface VIII., and an examination of the charges brought against the Templars (A. D. 1309). Twenty-three witnesses gave evidence against the deceased pontiff, and fully established the charges of profligacy and infidelity; but Clement's own immoralities were too flagrant for him to venture on establishing such a principle as the forfeiture of the papacy for criminal indulgences, and the confession that Christianity had been described by a pope as a lucrative fable, was justly regarded as dangerous, not only to the papacy, but to religion itself. Philip was persuaded to abandon the prosecution, and a bull was issued acquitting Boniface, but, at the same time, justifying the motives of his The order of the Templars was formally abolished, and their estates transferred to the Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem; but the Hospitallers were forced to pay such large sums to Philip and the princes who had usurped the Temple lands, that they were impoverished rather than enriched by the grant. The council passed several decrees against heretics, and made some feeble efforts to reform the lives of the clergy; finally, it ordained a new crusade, which had no result but the filling of the papal coffers with gifts from the devout, bribes from the politic, and the purchase-money of indulgences from the cowardly.

accusers.

When the emperor Henry VII. was crowned at Rome, he established a tribunal to support his authority over the cities and princes of Italy; sentence of forfeiture was pronounced against Robert, king of Naples, on a charge of treason, and this prince, to the great indignation of the French monarch, was placed under the ban of the empire. The pope interfered to protect the cousin of his patron, Philip; the wars between the papacy and the empire were about to be renewed, when Henry died suddenly at Bonconventio, in the state of Sienna. It was generally believed that the emperor was poisoned by his confessor, a Dominican monk, who administered the fatal dose in the eucharist. Clement fulminated two bulls against Henry's memory, accusing him of perjury and usurpation; he also annulled the sentence against Robert of Naples, and nominated that prince imperial vicar of Italy.

The death of Henry exposed Germany to the wars of a disputed succession; that of Clement, which soon followed, produced alarming dissensions in the church. Philip did not long survive the pontiff, and his successor, Louis X., was too deeply sunk in dissipation to regard the concerns of the papacy. Twenty-seven months elapsed in contests between the French and Italian cardinals, each anxious to have a pontiff of their own nation. When first they met in conclave, at Carpentras, the town was fired in a battle between their servants, and the cardinals, escaping from their burning palace through the windows, dispersed without coming to any decision. At length, Philip the Long, count of Poictiers, assembled the cardinals at Lyons, having voluntarily sworn that he would secure their perfect freedom. During their deliberations, the death of Louis X. gave Philip the regency, and soon

after the crown of France; the first use he made of his power was to shut up the cardinals in close conclave, and compel them to expedite the election. Thus coerced, they engaged to choose the pontiff who should be nominated by the Cardinal de Porto; this prelate, to the great surprise of all parties, named himself, and was soon after solemnly installed at Avignon, under the title of John XXII.

Europe was at this period in a miserable state of distraction. Italy was convulsed by the civil wars between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, whose animosities were secretly instigated by the intrigues of the king of Naples; Spain and Portugal were harassed by the struggles between the Christians and the Moors; England and France were at war with each other, while both were distracted by internal commotions; two emperors unfurled their hostile banners in Germany; and, finally, the Ottoman Turks were steadily advancing toward Constantinople. In these difficult times, John displayed great policy; he refused to recognise either of the rivals to the empire, and took advantage of their dissensions to revive the papal claims to the supremacy of Italy. But the battle of Muhldorf having established Louis of Bavaria on the imperial throne, John, who had previously been disposed to favor the duke of Austria, vainly attempted to gain over the successful sovereign. Louis sent efficient aid to the Ghibellines, and the papal party in Italy seemed on the point of being destroyed. John, forced to seek for allies, resolved to offer the imperial crown to Charles the Fair, who had just succeeded his brother Philip on the throne of France. The Germans, ever jealous of the French, were filled with indignation when they heard that the pope was endeavoring to remove their popular emperor; Louis summoned a diet, in which he publicly refuted the charges brought against him by the court of Avignon; several learned men published treatises to prove the subordination of the ecclesiastical to the imperial authority; the chapter of Freysingen expelled the bishop for his attachment to the pope; and the citizens of Strasburg threw a priest into the Rhine, for daring to affix a copy of John's condemnation of Louis to the gates of the cathedral. Even the religious orders were divided; for, while the Dominicans adhered to the pope, the Franciscans zealously supported the cause of the emperor.

Irritated rather than discouraged by anathemas, Louis led an army into Italy, traversed the Appenines, received the iron crown of Lombardy at Milan, and, advancing to Rome, found a schismatic bishop willing to perform the ceremony of his coronation. It was in vain that John declared these proceedings void, and issued new bulls of excommunication; the emperor conciliated the Guelphs by his real or pretended zeal for orthodoxy, and, confident in his strength, ventured to pronounce sentence of deposition and death against John, and to procure the election of Nicholas V. by the Roman clergy and people. The Franciscans declared in favor of the antipope, who was one of their body; and if Louis had shown prudence and forbearance equal to his vigor, the cause of Pope John would have been irretrievably ruined. But the avarice of the emperor alienated the affections, not only of the Romans, but of many Italian princes, who had hitherto been attached to the Ghibelline party; he was deserted by his chief supporters, and he embraced the pretext afforded him by the death of the duke of Aus

tria, to return to Bavaria. Nicholas, abandoned by his allies, was forced to surrender to the pope, and only obtained his life by submitting to appear before John, with a rope round his neck, and to ask pardon of the pope and the public, for the scandal he had occasioned (A. D. 1330). Though by this humiliation the antipope escaped immediate death, he was detained a close prisoner for the remainder of his days, " treated," says a contemporary, "like a friend, but watched like an enemy."

The emperor would doubtless have suffered severely for his share in the elevation of Nicholas, had not the church been disturbed by a religious controversy. In a discourse at Avignon, the pope maintained that the souls of the blessed would not enjoy the full fruition of celestial joys, or, as he termed it, "the beatific vision," until the day of judgment. The university of Paris, and several leaders of the mendicant orders, declared that such a doctrine was heretical; Philip of Valois, who had only recently obtained the crown of France, required that the pope should retract his assertions, and John was compelled to appease his adversaries by equivocal explanations. The dispute afforded the emperor a pretext for refusing obedience to the papal bulls, and appealing to a general council; new wars were about to commence, when John died at Avignon, leaving behind him the largest treasure that had ever been amassed by a pontiff.

It was not without cause that the Italians named the sojourn of the popes in Avignon, "the Babylonish captivity." The strength of the papacy was shaken to its very foundation, when its possessors appeared mere dependants on the kings of France, the instruments of war and of power, whose possession monarchs contested, while they spurned their authority. The successor of John owed his election to his promise, that he would not reside at Rome: he took the title of Benedict XII., and began his reign by an attempt to restore peace to the church and to the empire. Philip of Valois had other interests, and he compelled the pope to adopt his views. Edward III. was preparing to assert his claims to the crown of France, and Philip feared that he would be supported by his brother-in-law, the emperor; he therefore threatened Benedict with his vengeance, if he should enter into negotiations with Louis, and, as a proof of his earnestness, he seized the revenues of the cardinals. The king of England and the German emperor, aware that the pope was a mere instrument in the hands of their enemies, disregarded his remonstrances and derided his threats. Benedict had not courage or talents adequate to the crisis; his death delivered the papacy from the danger of sinking into contempt, under a feeble ruler, who sacrificed everything to his love of ease; the cardinals, in choosing a successor, sought a pontiff whose energy and ambition might again invest the church with political power.

sor.

Clement VI., unanimously chosen by the electors, commenced his reign by claiming the restoration of those rights of the holy see which had fallen into abeyance during the government of his feeble predecesThe Romans sent a deputation to request that he would return to the city, and appoint the celebration of a jubilee at the middle of the century; Clement granted the latter request, but he refused to visit Rome, through dread of the turbulent spirit of its inhabitants (A. D. 1343). But Clement did not neglect the affairs of Italy, though he