finally took Jerusalem, and put an end to their dominion. A pestilence destroyed a third army under Barbarossa of Germany, who was drowned in a river of Cilicia Philip Augustus, King of France, and Richard of England, headed another in the following year (1190). But the Mohammedan power, in the face of great disasters, remained established. In 1203-6 a crusade, which only terminated in a cruel oppression of the Greek Church and empire, was finally put an end to by the Greek Emperor and Patriarch expelling the Latin invaders from Constantinople, which they had taken. Six different and fruitless expeditions, from the year 1217-40, saw Jerusalem recovered and retaken, till the last remnant of the Christian power fell at the siege and capture of Acre in 1291. The crusades increased the power of Rome, by placing in the hands of the popes much arbitrative power, in consequence of temporal as well as spiritual property being intrusted to their charge. The idea of papal power securing remission of sins gained further ground from the preaching, that "holy expeditions were able to wipe off and blot out any amount of sins;" and as that remission came by way of Rome only, her power was enormous and unprecedented, above all canon law and every national and constitutional law. The various religious orders were her great supporters, because they were not subject to the proper jurisdiction of their bishops, but to the Pope only. They became audacious and luxurious-far different from what the ancient monastic vows and examples required; for the sole universal rule of the ancient ascetics was that they should "live in monastries, should work in silence, and eat their own bread !"

Yet did corruption work silently, but no less surely,

upon the vitality of this seeming greatness. Kings and pontiffs were equally unaware of the imperceptible change gradually working its way. One instance is worth relating here. A fund, purposing to be applied to the crusades, was spent in supporting the King of France in his usurpation of the kingdom of Arragon. This fund was granted to the French monarch with surpassing effrontery by the Pope, in the face of the claimants in the family of Peter of Arragon who however were, in spite of excommunication, restored in the person of the son of Peter, by a treaty with Charles the Second of Anjou. Honorius, the Pope, bitterly inveighed against Charles for refusing to support him in his iniquity. But the time had come when kings no longer resigned their thrones at the bidding of Rome, for power assumed and exerted in vain is necessarily weakened. Among other ill-timed assertions of the papal right of interference in State affairs, Pope Nicholas absolved Charles from his oath to the house of Arragon. This only served to increase hatred and silent opposition from kings and people, till Boniface VIII. (Benedict Cajetan) roused their indignation to the highest by his bull, "Unam Sanctam," which declared all temporal power to be vested in himself. His death in 1305 hastened, doubtless, the gradually decreasing prestige of the temporal power of the Roman See, which may be said to have reached its culminating point in the time of Hildebrand, in the latter part of the 11th century.

As the abuses of the Church had been more than ordinarily rife in Germany, so it was there that the people had been gradually endeavouring to obtain concordats similar to those which, in France, from the time

of Louis IX., had existed by the Pragmatic Sanction. The emperors and the popes had ever been at variance; battles and miseries throughout four centuries had prepared the people to receive with intense satisfaction, any system opposed to that which had been connected with all their troubles. (1414.) The concordats of Constance and Aschaffenburg had been almost totally ignored by the papal court. a line of conduct which nourished feelings of the bitterest animosity, which burst forth into action when the man and the hour came.

While many holy men, cardinals, popes, and others, ordered their life and conversation by the religion of Christ, yet they were but a very imperfect counterbalance to the vast mass of haughtiness, luxury, and immorality in high places. No spiritual power exercised so outrageously could long hold its own even among the superstitious and ignorant. When that depravity had descended, and the zeal and piety of the inferior clergy began to be poisoned by pernicious example, the Church of Rome reeled to its foundation; so that the saying of Pius II., in reference to the profligacy of the clergy, "that if there were good reasons for enacting the law of celibacy, there were greater for its removal altogether," became too true to be denied by the most zealous upholders of papal purity.

We now shall consider the attempts at reformation made by the Church of Rome within herself. The first attempt with any real intention was, when the Council of Pisa was convened by the cardinals to settle the schism caused by the rival popes, Gregory XII. and Benedict XIII., in March 1409.

QUESTIONS.

Did the primitive Church define the doctrine of the real presence?

Who first published erroneous doctrines of the Holy Sacrament?

Who opposed the author?

When did he flourish?

Who supported him?

Who was Photius?

Relate some of the incidents of his time?

What mark of heresy did Photius mention among others?

Who was Berenger?

In what did he fail as a reformer?

When was the elevation of the host first commenced?

What is "The Rosary?"

When was the first crusade originated?

By whom, and at whose instigation?

What were the words by which the Pope endeavoured to en

list soldiers in the cause?

When was the first public appeal made?

What first lessened the power of the ancient canons?

Why had Rome been induced to interest herself in the crusades?

Who led the first Christian army against the Turks?

What was the result with reference to the Greek Church? What did this cause? How were they expressed by a bishop of that Church?

What were the Decretals?

Give a short account of some of them?

'What were the "Clementines" and "Extravagants ?" Who proclaimed the second crusade? Who led it?

Who led another in the year 1190?

What resulted from a crusade in the year 1203-6 ?

How many crusades took place between 1217-40?

How did they affect the Roman See?

Who were the great supporters of the papal power? and why? What instance, amid the seeming greatness of Rome, was an evidence of the coming judgments?

What did the bull of Boniface VIII. assert?

When were abuses most palpable?

Why?

Why was France less exposed to them?

What rival popes ruled in the beginning of the 15th century

PART V.

THE FIRST ATTEMPT AT REFORMATION DURING THE

COUNCILS OF CONSTANCE, BASLE, AND THE FIFTH LATERAN.

Among so many of the wise and holy of the Roman Church, it would have been strange indeed if no tentative efforts at reaching forward to a purer and more perfect condition had never been entered upon. Thus, the word reformation was not necessarily connected with any taint of heresy. Synodical and other right methods of correcting abuses and imperfections had been set on foot by many bold and learned ecclesiastics (among whom, first in rank, were the fathers of the church in Council at Pisa, 1409), though not till the great schism and subsequent residence of the popes at Avignon had given to the world undoubted evidence of weakness and vice, as the following words of the Cardinal of Cambrai (1410) declared. The church, said d'Ailli, "has arrived at such a pass, that it deserves only to be governed by reprobates." Nicholas of Clemangis, who had been secretary to Benedict III., in an address to the Council of Constance, ascribed the schism to the frightful wickedness of the rulers and pastors of the Church. Among the Germans, the earliest treatise on the Reformation of the Church was written by Henry de Langenstein of Hesse; in the five last chapters of which work, he describes the universal profligacy of the clergy. The pontificate of Benedict IX., a shameful period in the annals of the Roman See, was marked by