Page:Vactican as a World Power.djvu/152

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3 8 LIBERATION

little garden. Apart from the meal taken in common the sole meal of the day there were only a few occasions on which the monks came together, and these served a spiritual purpose. Isolation, fast- ing and strict silence accompanied the noiseless daily tasks, the whole import of which was directed inward. Neither pastoral duties, nor schools, nor sermons, associated them with the outside world. If we practice what others preach, they said, it will also mean something. The difficult task they accomplished within themselves was the reason for their earthly being; and for Bruno the systole of the individual soul hearkening unto God was the necessary accompaniment of the diastolic working outward of the Church militant. Taken away from the Roman Order when the Pope fled to escape from Henry IV, Bruno founded a second Chartreuse in Calabria. There his great life was ended ten years later (i 101 ) .

It was Urban II who as a refugee in the Norman south brooded over Hildebrand's idea of a European attack on Islam. Then when the hour was ripe he proceeded to act. At the brilliant Synods of Piacenza and Clairmont, this fiery Papal orator won the clergy, the nobles and the masses for his plan. No matter what the motives of all these groups may have been, the effect of the undertaking as a whole was a triumph for the dead Pontiff of Salerno, and for the Papacy. By taking the initiative in a manner unparalleled during the Middle Ages, the Pontifex overshadowed the German Imperial power, the anti-Pope began to lose ground and Rome was compelled by the crusading armies to welcome Urban. The French King, whose sub- jects listened exultantly as the wandering Pope and after him the ecstatically enthusiastic if crippled Peter of Amiens, called everyone to the Cross, soon sensed the loss of a knighthood which had ridden off to battle and submitted to Urban's command in order to escape the ban. The French people, anxious to escape hunger, the plague, and slavery under their feudal masters, rallied in wild zeal. In Brittany, Normandy, Burgundy and Italy crowds likewise gathered to leave for the Holy Land. The action of the Pope made it seem as if Moham- med were drawing a bond of unity round the Christian peoples.

After such successes, it did not matter greatly that Urban's Ger- man policy could not entirely prevail. Disappointed in their expecta- tions of .heritage, the Guelphs separated their young scion from Ma-


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