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THE

CHRISTIAN LADY'S MAGAZINE.

JUNE, 1845.

WAR WITH THE SAINTS.

CHAPTER VIII,

IF, among those who followed the profession of a purer faith, were any who had forgotten the exhortation to 66 cease from man," and had made flesh their arm, by trusting in the favourable disposition of the Count of Toulouse to uphold their cause, they were convinced of their sin, and made to realize the fulness of their peril, on the 18th of June, 1209. On that morning a pageant wound its way through the public streets towards the church of St. Gilles', comprising an extraordinary number of ecclesiastics of every order and degree, habited in their goodliest raiment, and exhibiting in ostentatious display the pomp and the pride of that renovated power to which all else was rapidly succumbing. There were the Bernadines, the boasted directors of the terrible movement that was to annihilate all opposition JUNE, 1845.

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to the papal see; there were the few first followers of Dominic, fearful in the infamy of their sanguinary brotherhood; and their dark leader silently pondering as he strode along, the mechanism of his project for a permanent tribunal of irresponsible, irresistible powers of destruction. There were the lazy monks, the denizens of many a fat abbacy, and mendicant friars, and parish priests, from the humble curate to the pompous prelate, each in his due place, distinguished by the habit of his order. One character pervaded the whole mass it was that of an ovation. Their step was a march of triumph; and every eye was lighted up with an exultation that no one strove to repress. Conspicuous above all rode the legate, Milon, the confidential secretary of Innocent III, who had nominated him to the temporary dignity in a shew of compliance with Count Raymond's remonstrances against being placed in the hands of Arnold, whom he regarded as his personal enemy. Milon was instructed to deal subtilly with this miserable dupe, allowing the Abbot of Citeaux to direct and to devise every thing, while he wore only the semblance of authority to deceive the Count. Gorgeously apparelled, and tended with the reverence due to the Pope's representative, the nominal legate presided over the cavalcade; his stately mule led by knights of noble birth, while his own hands were uplifted to dispense among the kneeling crowd such blessings as Rome's delegate can bestow.

So far the triumphant ecclesiastics; and next after them came the conquered captive. Bare-headed, and bare-footed, his shoulders also exposed, in readiness for the coming infliction, while a cord was knotted round his neck, in token of such criminality as would have incurred a public execution but for the merciful dispo

sition of his judges, walked the mighty and warlike prince, Count Raymond of Toulouse, who had submitted to this disgraceful humiliation as part price of the papal absolution. Half a dozen tonsured officials of the church came close behind him, bearing the instruments of flagellation; while the penitent, with arms devoutly crossed, and eyes cast down to the ground, where his ignominous halter trailed, wore the aspect of profound submission, and self-upbraiding sorrow for his past contumacious resistance of the holy church. It was a spectacle on which few could look unmoved, though for the greater part the emotions excited were such as men felt it needful to confine within their own bosoms. Of avowed and consistent believers none were present; but there were many hundreds who had virtually shaken off the fetters of the papacy, and who, looking on the power of the ecclesiastical order as a bygone thing, had accustomed themselves to treat with undisguised scorn and derision the very men who were now setting their foot on the neck of their chief. With bitter indignation, and stern disdain, and struggling impatience of the yoke which yet they knew not how to avert from their unwilling shoulders, they beheld their fallen prince; and secretly wished that his fall had rather been into an honourable grave, than such an act of voluntary prostration under the heel of an usurpation that he had long seemed to set at nought. But spies were on every side; accusers, who would make a man an offender not only for a word but for a look; and heads depressed, and brows bent, it might appear in submission or in devotion, were all that met the scrutinizing gaze of the monks and their emissaries.

The church, of course, was filled with as many of

Raymond's knightly followers as could be summoned to witness his shameful degradation. This would answer the double purpose of alienating them from a despicable chief, and of impressing them with awful convictions of the church's power. Slowly, and amid the chaunt of penitential psalms, the culprit took his way, ́in a long circuit through the aisles of the church, offering homage at every shrine, and exhibiting himself to each scattered portion of the breathless congregation. The legate was duly enthroned: his sacerdotal brethren took their stations, so as best to display their numbers, and the gaudiness of their changeable attire: and some preliminary mummeries having been performed, Raymond, Count of Toulouse, the lordly prince, the veteran commander, the man who had been set for the defence of a persecuted flock now cruelly abandoned, was led as near as possible to the altar, and scourged by the willing hands of the monks till the vaulted roof reechoed their strokes, and the blood that he dared not to shed in a lawful resistance against sin, flowed to appease the roused vengeance of Satan's vicegerent.

This being done, and a violent harangue from the pulpit having set forth in glowing colours the enormity of his crimes, and the marvellous tenderness of Rome in sparing his forfeit life; with a full enumeration of the concessions that he had made, including the surrender of his seven principal castles to the Pope, and his unreserved submission to whatsoever sentence might be pronounced upon him; an absolution, not less degrading than the flagellation, was declared by the legate; and in final token of his perfect reconciliation to the papal see, Count Raymond was invested with the white cross, and commanded to unite his forces with those then about to attack his nephew ; he also, as best

acquainted with the territories and the resources of the assailed noble, becoming their principal guide.

Disgusting and disgraceful as was the conduct of Count Raymond, there is not at this hour a prince or a warrior in Europe who would not act the same part, at the beck of Rome, if but the Lord permitted her to wield again the like authority, and removed the restraining grace that alone keeps them as yet from giving their power unto the Beast. Already, in England, we have our political Count Raymond, pursuing the same career of degrading concession to the demands of an alien usurpation, as rapidly as the awakened Protestantism of the nation will permit him to go on and to "be beaten with many stripes" will assuredly, sooner or later, be his well-earned meed. Stripes that will but seal his ultimate condemnation with the brand of unrepentant treachery.

The host whom the wretched Count was dispatched to join, consisted of three principal divisions, of which the first had been chiefly collected at Lyons, by Arnold the legate, and were subjects of the Emperor Otho IV. The second division, subjects of England, had been assembled by the archbishop of Bourdeaux; and the third, who owed allegiance to France, had the bishop of Puy for their leader. Strange indeed does it sound, that men asserting themselves to be ministers and preachers of the everlasting gospel, pastors of the Church of God, should be named as generals leading an army to battle: but so it was afore declared in the prophetic word: "The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit," the vivid type of the Roman papal power, was to "make war with the saints, and to overcome them."

The amount of the combined forces is very variously

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