THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. THE COMMENCEMENT OF IMPROVEMENT-GREGORY THE SEVENTH-FIRST CRUSADE. AND now came the dreaded or hoped-for year. The awful Thousand had at last commenced, and men held their breath to watch what would be the result of its arrival. "And he laid hold of the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season." (Revelation xx. 2, 3.) With this text all the pulpits in Christendom had been ringing for a whole generation. And not the pulpits only, but the refection-halls of convents, and the cottages of the starving peasantry. Into the castle also of the noble, we have seen, it had penetrated; and the most abject terror pervaded the superstitious, while despair, as in shipwrecked vessels, displayed itself amid the masses of the population in rioting and insubordination. The spirit of evil for a little season was to be let loose upon a sinful world; and when the observer looked round at the real condition of the people in all parts of Europe at the ignorance and degradation of the multitude, the cruelty of the lords, and the unchristian ambition and unrestrained passions of the clergy-it must have puzzled him how to imagine a worse state of things even when the chain was loosened from "that old serpent," and Q 21 241 the world placed unresistingly in his folds. Yet, as if men's minds had now reached their lowest point, there was a perpetual rise from the beginning of this date. When the first day of the thousand-and-first year shone upon the world, it seemed that in all nations the torpor of the past was to be thrown off. There were strivings everywhere after a new order of things. Coming events cast their shadows a long way before; for in the very beginning of this century, when it was reported that Jerusalem had been taken by the Saracens, Sylvester uttered the memorable words, "Soldiers of Christ, arise and fight for Zion." By a combination of all Christian powers for one object, he no doubt hoped to put an end to the party quarrels by which Europe was torn in pieces. And this great thought must have been germinating in the popular heart ever since the speech was spoken; for we shall see at the end of the period we are describing how instantaneously the cry for a crusade was responded to in all lands. In the mean time, the first joy of their deliverance from the expected destruction impelled all classes of society in a more honourable and useful path than they had ever hitherto trod. As if by universal consent, the first attention was paid to the maintenance of the churches, those holy buildings by whose virtues the wrath of Heaven had been turned away. In France, and Italy, and Germany, the fabrics had in many places been allowed to fall into ruin. They were now renovated and ornamented with the costliest materials, and with an architectural skill which, if it previously existed, had had no room for its display. Stately cathedrals took the place of the humble buildings in which the services had been conducted before. Every thing was projected on a gigantic scale, with the idea of permanence prominently brought forward, now that the threatened end of all things was seen to be post poned. The foundations were broad and deep, the walls of immense thickness, roofs steep and high to keep off the rain and snow, and square buttressed towers to sustain the church and furnish it at the same time with military defence. It was a holy occupation, and the clergy took a prominent part in the new movement. Bishops and monks were the principal members of a confraternity who devoted themselves to the science of architecture and founded all their works on the exact rules of symmetry and fitness. Artists from Italy, where Roman models were everywhere seen, and enthusiastic students from the south of France, where the great works of the Empire must have exercised an ennobling influence on their taste and fancy, brought their tribute of memory or invention to the design. Tall pillars supported the elevated vault, instead of the flat roof of former days; and gradually an approach was made to what, in after-periods, was recognised as the pure Gothic. Here, then, was at last a real science, the offspring of the highest aspirations of the human mind. Churches rising in rich profusion in all parts of the country were the centres of architectural taste. The castle of the noble was no longer to be a mere mass of stones huddled on each other, to protect its inmates from outward attack. The skill of the learned builder was called in, and on picturesque heights, safe from hostile assault by the difficulty of approach, rose turret and bartizan, arched gateway and square-flanked towers, to add new features to the landscape, and help the march of civilization, by showing to that allegorizing age the result, both for strength and beauty, of regularity and proportion. For at this time allegory, which gave an inner meaning to outward things, was in full force. There was no portion of the parish church which had not its mystical significance; and no doubt, at the end |