CENT. four years in Palestine, returned into France, in XIII. the year 1254, with a handful of men [r], the miserable remains of his formidable army.

PARTI.

A second crusade un

monarch.

VIII. No calamities could deject the courage dertaken nor damp the invincible spirit of Lewis; nor by the same did he look upon his vow as fulfilled by what he had already done in Palestine. He therefore resolved upon a new expedition, fitted out a formidable fleet with which he set sail for Africa, accompanied by a splendid train of princes and nobles, and proposed to begin in that part of the world his operations against the infidels, that he might either convert them to the Christian faith, or draw from their treasures the means of carrying on more effectually the war in Asia. Immediately after his arrival upon the African coast, he made himself master of the fort of Carthage; but this first success was soon followed by a fatal change in his affairs. A pestilential disease broke out in the fleet, in the harbour of Tunis, carried off the greatest part of the army, and seized, at length, the monarch himself, who fell a victim to its rage, on the 25th of August, in the year 1270 [x]. LEWIS was the last of the European princes that embarked in the holy war; the dangers and difficulties, the calamities and disorders,

[r] Of 2800 illustrious knights, who set out with LEWIS from France, there remained about an hundred when he sailed from Palestine. See JOINVILLE'S Hist. de S. Louis IX. 81.

P.

[] Among the various histories that deserve to be consulted for an ampler account of this last crusade, the principal place is due to the Histoire de S. Louis IX.du nom, Roy de France, écrite par Jean Sr. de Joinville, enrichie de nouvelles Dissertations et Observations Historiques, par Charles du Fresne, Paris 1688, Fol. See also FILLEAU DE LA CHAIZE, Histoire de S. Louis, Paris 1688, 2 vol. in 8vo.-MENCONIS Chronicon, in ANT. MATTHAI Analectis veteris ævi, tom. iii. p. 172. 179.—Luc. WADDINGI Annales Minorum, tom. iv. p. 294. 307, passim. -BOULAY, Hist. Acad. Paris, tom. iii. p. 212. 392, &c.--PIERRE CLAUDE FONTENAY, Histoire de l'Eglise Gallicane, tom. xi. p. 337. 405. 575.

XIII.

orders, and the enormous expences that accom-C E N T. panied each crusade, disgusted the most zealous, PARTL and discouraged the most intrepid promoters of these fanatical expeditions. In consequence of this, the Latin empire in the east declined apace notwithstanding the efforts of the Roman pontifs to maintain and support it; and in the year 1291, 2 2271 after the taking of Ptolomais, or Acra, by the Mahometans, it was entirely overthrown [t]. It is natural to inquire into the true causes that contributed to this unhappy revolution in Palestine z and these causes are evident. We must not seek for them either in the councils or in the valour of the infidels, but in the dissensions that reigned in the Christian armies, in the profligate lives of those, who called themselves the champions of the cross, and in the ignorance and obstinacy, the avarice and insolence of the pope's legates.

sians.

IX. Christianity as yet had not tamed the fe- Conversion rocity, nor conquered the Pagan superstitions and of the Prusprejudices, that still prevailed in some of the western provinces. Among others, the Prussians, a fierce and savage nation, retained still the idolatrous worship of their ancestors with the most obstinate perseverance; nor did the arguments and exhortations employed by the missionaries that were sent among them, from time to time, produce the least effect upon their stubborn and intractable spirits. The brutish firmness of these Pagans induced CONRAD, duke of Massovia, to have recourse to more forcible methods than reason and argument, in order to bring about their conversion. For this purpose, he addressed himself, in the year 1230, to the knights of the Teutonic order of St MARY, who, after their expulsion

[] ANT. MATTHÆI Analecta veturis ævi, tom. v. p. 748. -JAC. ECHARDI Scriptores Dominicani, tom. i. p. 422.--IMOLA in Dantem, in MURATORII Antiq. Italice medii ævi, tom. i. p. 1111, 1112.

PART I.

CENT expulsion from Palestine, had settled at Venice, XIII and engaged them, by pompous promises, to undertake the conquest and conversion of the Prussians. The knights accordingly arrived in Prussia, under the command of HERMAN DE SALTZA, and after a most cruel and obstinate war, of fifty years standing, with that resolute people, obliged them, with difficulty, to acknowledge the Teutonic order for their sovereigns, and to embrace the Christian faith [u]. After having established Christianity, and fixed their own dominion in Prussia, these booted apostles made several excursions into the neighbouring countries, and particularly into Lithuania, where they pillaged, burned, massacred, and ruined all before them, until they forced the inhabitants of that miserable province to profess a feigned submission to the gospel, or rather to the furious and unrelenting missionaries, by whom it was propagated in a manner so contrary to is divine maxims, and to the benevolent spirit of its celestial author [w].

Of the A

Spain.

X. In Spain the cause of the gospel gained rebians in ground from day to day. The kings of Castile, Leon, Navarre, and Arragon, waged perpetual war with the Saracen princes, who held still under their dominion the kingdoms of Valentia Granada and Murcia, together with the province of Andalusia; and this war was carried on with such success, that the Saracen dominion declined

apace,

[u] See MATTHÆI Analecta vet. ævi, tom. iii. p. 18. tom. v p. 684-689.-PETRI DE DUISBURGH, Chronicon. Prussia, published by HARTKNOCHIUS at Jena, in the year 1679.CHRISTOPH. HARTKNOCHIUS, his History of the Prussian Church, written in the German language, book I. ch. i. p. 33and Antiquitates Prussia, Diss. xiv. p. 201.-BALUSII Miscel lanea, tom. vii. p. 427. 478.-WADDINGI Annales Minor. tom. iv. p. 40. 63.-SOLIGNAC, Histoire de Pologne, tom. ii. P. 238.

[w] Besides the authors mentioned in the preceding note, see LUDWEGII Reliquæ Manuscriptorum omnis ævi, tom. i. p. 336.

XIII. PART I.

apace, and was daily reduced within narrower c E N T. bounds, while the limits of the church were extended on every side. The princes that contributed principally to this happy revolution were FERDINAND, king of Leon and Castile, who, after his death, obtained a place in the Kalendar, his father ALPHONSUS IX. king of Leon, and JAMES I. king of Arragon [x]. The latter, more especially, distinguished himself eminently by his fervent zeal for the advancement of Christianity; for no sooner had he made himself master of Valentia in the year 1236, than he employed, with the greatest pains and assiduity, every possible method of converting to the faith his Arabian subjects, whose expulsion would have been an irreparable loss to his kingdom. For this purpose he ordered the Dominicans, whose ministry he made use of principally in this salutary work, to learn the Arabic tongue; and he founded public schools at Majorca and Barcelona, in which a considerable number of youths were educated in a manner that might enable them to preach the gospel in that language. When these pious efforts were found to be ineffectual, the Roman pontif CLEMENT IV. exhorted the king to drive the Mahometans out of Spain. The obsequious prince followed the counsel of the inconsiderate pontif; in the execution of which, however, he met with much difficulty, both from the opposition which the Spanish nobles made to it on the one hand, and from the obstinacy of the Moors on the other [y].

[x] See JOH. FERRERAS, History of Spain, vol. iv.

[y] See GEDDES, his History of the Expulsion of the Moriscoes, in his Miscellaneous Tracts, vol. i. P. 26.

CHAP.

XIII.

PARTI.

The unhap

of the Chri

stians in the cast.

CHA P. II.

Concerning the calamitous events that happened to the church during this century.

The

CENT.I. HE accounts we have already given of the conquests of the Tartars, and of the unhappy issue of the crusades, will be sufficient py state of to give us a lively idea of the melancholy condithe affairs tion to which the Christians were reduced in Asia; and had the Saracens been infected with the same odious spirit of persecution that possessed the crusaders, there would not perhaps have remained a single Christian in that part of the world. But though these infidels were chargeable with various crimes, and had frequently treated the Christians in a rigorous and injurious manner, yet they looked with horror upon those scenes of persecution, which the Latins exhibited as the exploits of heroic piety, and considered it as the highest and most atrocious mark of cruelty and injustice to force unhappy men, by fire and sword, to abandon their religious principles, or to put them to death merely because they refused to change their opinions. After the destruction of the kingdom of Jerusalem, many of the Latins remained still in Syria, and retiring into the dark and solitary recesses of mount Liban, lived there in a savage manner, and lost, by degrees, all sense both of religion and humanity, as appears in the conduct and characters of their descendants, who still inhabit the same uncultivated wilds, and who seem almost entirely destitute of all knowledge of God and religion [z].

II.

[x] A certain tribe called DERUSI, or DRUSI, who inhabit the recesses of the mounts Liban and Antiliban, pretend to descend from the ancient Franks, who were once masters of Palestine. This derivation is, indeed, doubtful. It is however

certain,