CHAP.

V.

to treat King John as a peer, to condemn him for the
murder of Arthur, and to confiscate his possessions.
The Duke of Burgundy was the only lay peer who was
present at a judgment of 1216, relative to the succession
of Champagne. It was the bishops who judged. In
1224, the fiction of a Court of Peers, consisting chiefly
of the absent, was considered too absurd; and the
officers of the court, such as constables, chamberlains
and chancellors, were empowered to take part in the
trial and judgment. The decrees of such a tribunal
could only be made valid or respected by the armies
which supported them. But Philip Augustus made it
the interest of his nobles to enforce them, and that with
all their power.
So that the Court of Peers, or the
Parliament, as it came to be called, flourished and grew
in spirit to differ widely from its feudal origin. At
first, under the colour of being a council of noblesse,
it was made a tribunal of ecclesiastics. Afterwards the
power of the Crown to compose or complete such a
council by its officers and courtiers, enabled it to intro-
duce legists, men of a new class, which had risen up
with the revival of study of the Roman law. And
these rendered the Crown far other services than courtier
nobles or ecclesiastics.

One of the great strides of the Parliament and, in association with it, of the Crown to power, was made by its being considered a court of appeal from the sentences of seignorial jurisdiction. In addition to the prevots or magistrates, which the Crown appointed to govern towns, it also named baillis or royal governors of districts, who superseded in a great measure feudal administration. These were extended by degrees and under different titles to the conquered provinces. They referred all doubtful or important questions to the Court of Paris, and commenced that system of administrative and judicial centralisation, which combated and neutralised feudalism, without destroying it, and

laid the foundation of a monarchy as despotic as any of CHAP. even Oriental origin.

To this consummation Philip largely contributed. The supremacy of his crown, which up to his time was but a feudal name, he rendered a reality, sanctioned by forms, and supported by institutions, which flattered the aristocracy with an apparent share of power, conciliated the citizens by a semblance of freedom, and kindled generally a spirit of patriotism and pride in the new country of France, which few other monarchs could incite or instil. In a word, it was only in France that the great experiment of Monarchy fully succeeded. In Germany it failed altogether for a time. The English began to found a system peculiar to themselves, monarchy controlled by the other classes of society, and more or less responsible to them. Centuries were required to develope, to fashion, to regulate such a principle, and to arrive at representative government. The consultative monarchy of France, on the contrary, started from the first very much what it continued to be to the last. It was a deification of the sovereign, an assumption of prerogative and supremacy, resembling those which the Pope claimed in spiritual matters, and in fact rivalling them. Whilst the Pope summoned monarchs before his consistory, deposed them, and granted their kingdoms to others by virtue of his spiritual authority, the kings of France affected to do the same by right of their feudal supremacy. The language of the early French jurisprudents and chroniclers was, in fact, modelled upon that of the churchmen. So pretentious a power could not long remain in amity with that of the Roman pontiffs. The antagonism betweem them was, however, for some time adjourned. They were nigh quarrelling later, as to which of them should dispose of the crown of England, which had in a manner fallen from John's head. But previous to John's prostration, the French King and the Roman Pope had a

V.

СНАР.

V.

common object, which was to recover the entire south of France from sentiments and from jurisdictions inimical to both.

The inhabitants of this region were in advance of surrounding countries, in respect to mental cultivation. This was owing, in a great measure, to the blending of the feudal and the civic elements, each retaining and contributing its peculiar character. The nobles preserved the chivalrous spirit, their devotion to the weaker sex, the love of luxury, the cultivation of minstrelsy and song; whilst the civic class, whether patrician or plebeian, far more numerous and prevalent than in the north, received a far better education in youth, and improved the knowledge so acquired by social habits and intermixture.* In Italy, from some cause, the civic and feudal population quarrelled and rushed into internecine wars, which, fostered and fanned by the feuds between Pope and Emperor, distracted the Italians for a time from intellectual occupation or enjoyment. Languedoc and Provence were comparatively exempt from this strife. The townspeople lived contented under the sovereignty of their counts, who respected their privileges, and shared their opinions and their pleasures. In this phase of society had sprung up, in Languedoc, the language and literature of the Troubadours.

Such light literature, however, took its birth from graver studies. There were schools at Toulouse, and a Spanish monarch, the King of Arragon, being suzerain of the country, the learning of the Arabs crossed the Alps, and was cultivated in the south before it was known in the north. As to the Church of Rome, it taught nothing. Its doctrine was for the most part a negation of all that free and rational minds imagined or

* One of the conditions which Rome afterwards sought to impose was, that the nobles should abandon

residing in towns, and should live with and clothe themselves like peasants.

V.

asserted. The sole guide in its decisions was what CHAP. would enhance the grandeur of the Church, not what was consonant to either truth, to human or divine nature. Audacious to invent, and tyrannical to impose a dogma, it disdained to support it by philosophy or learning, although the use of logical and scholastic quibble was had recourse to by a few sanguinary pedants. The doctors of the Church soon flung away even these for the only arguments congenial to them, those of the torch and the sword. Amidst this reign of spiritual ignorance and tyranny, wherever there was a school, there was of course a heresy. Wherever men set themselves to think and to teach, they did so in a spirit different from the monks. Every man who cultivated his mind became necessarily a heretic, and any one who uttered a rational opinion, committed treason against the reigning absurdity. In fact, it was the position of the nineteenth century that was presented by the thirteenth, except that bigotry was far more preponderant, and the protest of intellect infinitely more weak. The Provençals did all that was possible. They anticipated Voltaire, overwhelmed the clergy with satire, and neutralised the religion, at least, of Rome in the south.

Unfortunately, perhaps, the schism took a more formal and philosophic mode of dissent. The doctrines of the Paulicians, popular in Bulgaria and in many countries of the East, had penetrated, with the return of the crusaders, into their homes. The Paulicians agreed with the Provençals in their contempt of the wealth, tyranny, and ignorance of the clergy. They rejected those doctrines respecting the Eucharist and Absolution, which seemed invented rather to give authority to a priesthood than truth and strength to a religion. To this they joined a horror of the Old Testament, a belief in the principle of evil as more permanent and more ancient than the biblical Satan, and an exaggeration of the Christian doctrine of flesh warring against spirit,

CHAP.

V.

which made them repudiate marriage and eschew animal food. Of this heterogeneous creed, the clergy fastened upon the doctrine of the permanent principle of evil as unscriptural and heretical. It was too abstruse to be entertained or, indeed, understood, save by a few dreamers. But the monks represented the whole religion as Manichean, and the certainly blameless habits of abstinence and continence as proceeding from a doctrine of old condemned by the Church. On the other hand, the reformers of the south, like all their successors, when they found their tenets proscribed and their lives sacrificed by Rome, denounced it "as that Babylon which John mentioned in the Apocalypse as the mother of fornication, drunk with the blood of the saints."*

Whatever semblance or leaning to the Manichean doctrine might have been taught or professed at Albi or Toulouse, certain it is that there was nothing of the kind in the tenets of that sect, which was confounded with the Albigenses in papal maledictions. In the mountains of Piedmont and Dauphiné, and in the valleys running up towards Monte Viso, the king of these mountains, there existed from the earliest times, and still exist, congregations of Christians who had never acknowledged the supremacy of Rome, or accepted its peculiar dogmas and teachings. These mountain Christians, called Vaudois, wherever they came in contact with Roman doctrines or pretensions, always repudiated them, and rejected in the same manner as the Albigenses all the tenets and usages adopted for the sake of the sanctity and power which they communicated to the priesthood. The Vaudois knew nothing of the two principles and were untainted, with any of the peculiarities, of the Paulicians. They had a Bible in their own language, as well as certain ancient books and poems inspired from Holy Writ, and in close accord

* Chronique de G. de Puy Laurens.