Heroes of Modern Europe

								

virtues of obedience and self-sacrifice.
{11}
Whereas pagan Greek and Rome had searched for beauty upon earth, it was
the dreary belief of the Middle Ages that the world was a place where
only misery could be the portion of mankind, who were bidden to look to
another life for happiness and pleasure.  Sinners hurried from
temptation into monasteries, which were founded for the purpose of
enabling men to prepare for eternity.  Family life was broken up and
all the pleasant intercourse of social habits.  Marriage was a snare,
and even the love of parents might prove dangerous to the devoted monk.
Strange was the isolation of the hermit who refused to cleanse himself
or change his clothes, desiring above all other things to attain to
that blessed state when his soul should be oblivious of his body.
Women also despised the claims of kindred and retired to convents where
the elect were granted visions after long prayer and fasting.  The nun
knelt on the bare stone floor of her cell, awaiting the ecstasy that
would descend on her.  When it had gone again she was nigh to death,
faint and weary, yet compelled to struggle onward till her earthly life
came to an end.
The Crusades, or Wars of the Cross, had roused Europe from a state of
most distressful bondage.  Ignorance and barbarism were shot with
gleams of spiritual light even after the vast armies were sent forth to
wrest the possession of Jerusalem from the infidels.  Shameful stories
of the treatment of pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre had moved the hearts
of kings and princes to a passionate indignation.  Valour became the
highest, and all men were eager to be ranked with Crusaders--those
soldiers of heroic courage whose cause was Christianity and its
defence.  At the close of the tenth century there were innumerable
pilgrims travelling {12} toward the Holy Land, for it had been
prophesied that in the year A.D. 1000 the end of the world would come,
when it would be well for those within Jerusalem, the City of the
Saviour.  The inhuman conduct of the Turk was resented violently,
because it would keep many a sinner from salvation; and the dangerous
journey to the East was held to atone for the gravest crimes.
After the first disasters in which so many Crusaders fell before they
reached their destination, Italy especially began to benefit by these
wars.  It was considered safer to reach Jerusalem by sea, boarding the
vessels in Italian ports, which were owned and equipped by Italian
merchants.  Venice, Pisa, and Genoa gradually assumed the trade of
ancient Constantinople, once without rival on the southern sea.
Constantinople was a city of wonder to the ignorant fighting men from
other lands, who had never dreamed of a civilization so complete as
that which she possessed.  Awed by elegance and luxury, they returned
to their homes with a sense of inferiority.  They had met and fought
side by side with warriors of such polished manners that they felt