Sicily of the Imperial family. [86] In these meritorious services, the volunteers might acquire at home the same spiritual indulgence, and a larger measure of temporal rewards; and even the popes, in their zeal against a domestic enemy, were sometimes tempted to forget the distress of their Syrian brethren. From the last age of the crusades they derived the occasional command of an army and revenue; and some deep reasoners have suspected that the whole enterprise, from the first synod of Placentia, was contrived and executed by the policy of Rome. The suspicion is not founded, either in nature or in fact. The successors of St. Peter appear to have followed, rather than guided, the impulse of manners and prejudice; without much foresight of the seasons, or cultivation of the soil, they gathered the ripe and spontaneous fruits of the superstition of the times. They gathered these fruits without toil or personal danger: in the council of the Lateran, Innocent the Third declared an ambiguous resolution of animating the crusaders by his example; but the pilot of the sacred vessel could not abandon the helm; nor was Palestine ever blessed with the presence of a Roman pontiff. [87] [Footnote 83: Thomassin (Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. iii. p. 311--374) has copiously treated of the origin, abuses, and restrictions of these _tenths_. A theory was started, but not pursued, that they were rightfully due to the pope, a tenth of the Levite's tenth to the high priest, (Selden on Tithes; see his Works, vol. iii. p. ii. p. 1083.)] [Footnote 84: See the Gesta Innocentii III. in Murat. Script. Rer. Ital., (tom. iii. p. 486--568.)] [Footnote 85: See the vth crusade, and the siege of Damietta, in Jacobus ‡ Vitriaco, (l. iii. p. 1125--1149, in the Gesta Dei of Bongarsius,) an eye-witness, Bernard Thesaurarius, (in Script. Muratori, tom. vii. p. 825--846, c. 190--207,) a contemporary, and Sanutus, (Secreta Fidel Crucis, l. iii. p. xi. c. 4--9,) a diligent compiler; and of the Arabians Abulpharagius, (Dynast. p. 294,) and the Extracts at the end of Joinville, (p. 533, 537, 540, 547, &c.)] [Footnote 86: To those who took the cross against Mainfroy, the pope (A.D. 1255) granted plenissimam peccatorum remissionem. Fideles mirabantur quÚd tantum eis promitteret pro sanguine Christianorum effundendo quantum pro cruore infidelium aliquando, (Matthew Paris p. 785.) A high flight for the reason of the xiiith century.] [Footnote 87: This simple idea is agreeable to the good sense of Mosheim, (Institut. Hist. EcclÈs. p. 332,) and the fine philosophy of Hume, (Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 330.)]