“one of the boldest “combatants for the Roman See, who forgot nothing, “whether of arms, of the pen, or by censures, of what “he conceived to tend to the advantage of the Papacy “or disadvantage of Sovereigns.” The audacious Gregory VII. had a timid successor in Victor III. It is from him we have borrowed the words at the commencement of this chapter, to depict some of the preceding popes. Victor III. filled scarcely for a year the pontifical chair. He confirmed, however, in a council at Beneventum, the decrees passed against investitures. ¹⁶⁷ Researches on France, 1. 3. c. 7. Urban II. who succeeded him, was during ten years a more worthy successor of Hildebrand: he instigated against Henry, Conrade, the eldest son of this emperor, encouraged this ungrateful son to calumniate his father, and recompensed him by crowning him king of Italy. Christendom was then divided between Urban II. and Guibert, who had taken the name of Clement III. and whom Henry IV. re-established in Rome in 1091. Urban till 1096 travelled in France and Northern Italy. Philip, king of France, repudiating his Queen Bertha, had married Bertrade: Philip was excommunicated in his own States by Urban, his born subject, to whom he had given an asylum¹⁶⁸ But these journies of the pontiff are especially celebrated by the preaching up of the first crusade. Hildebrand had conceived¹⁶⁹ the earliest idea of these distant expeditions, which were, in aggrandizing the church, to diminish the power of the Greek emperors, or compel them to return under the domination of the Holy See. He beheld in them an opportunity of regulating at once all the movements of the Christian princes, of establishing himself judge of all the quarrels which might arise among them, to divert them from the Government of their States, and to augment by their absence the habitual influence of the clergy over all kinds of affairs. The pilgrimages to the Holy Land became under Gregory VII. more frequent than they had previously been: the recitals of the pilgrims were one day to provoke a general movement. This day did not arrive till Urban’s time: a man named Cucupietre, called Peter the Hermit, made to the pope a lamentable recital of the vexations which the Christians experienced in Palestine; he implored on their behalf powerful succours against the Musselmans. Urban dispatched Peter to all the princes and churches of Italy, France, and Germany; and after leaving the preacher time sufficient to spread his enthusiasm among the people of these countries, the crusade was finally proposed in a council or assembly at which the pope presided, in an open plain not far from Placentia. There were collected upwards of thirty thousand laics alone, independent of prelates and priests: the expedition projected was universally applauded, but it was applauded alone; no one as yet assumed the cross. Urban had better success in France; the crusade was resolved on at