had previously held in their several domains, and their getting public and universal law administered by judges of their own appointment. Even single combat, the practice most inveterately adhered to of any among the ancient nobles, became less frequent and less honorable. The more revolting and absurd features of it were wholly abolished, though the great absurdity, and indeed the great crime itself, cannot be said to have become totally extinct, even up to our own day, when we recollect that the barbarous practice of duelling is still permitted to exist.
The effect, however, produced by the Crusades, which proved greatest in its consequences, though perhaps it was the most unlooked for at the time, was the rise of commerce. The first of these expeditions had journeyed to Constantinople by land; but the sufferings were so great, that all the rest were induced to go by sea. The Italian cities of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, furnished the vessels which conveyed them; and the sums of money obtained by the freight of so many and so great armies were immense. This, however, was but a small part of what the Italian citizens gained by the expeditions to the Holy Land. The Crusaders contracted with them for military stores and provisions; and any of the Asiatic possessions of value, which came temporarily into the hands of the Christians, became emporiums of commerce for them. The sweet reward of labor was thus first felt for ages in Europe. New arts were brought from the East, and many of those natural productions of the warmer climates were first introduced into the West, which have since afforded the materials of a lucrative and extended commerce. We will allude in a separate section to the brilliant career of several of the Italian Republics.
In these views we represent the fairest side of the picture. There were yet many obstacles in the way of a complete and harmonious evolution of the principles of civilization. But the elements all seemed now to have acquired existence, and time only was required to consolidate and strengthen them.
FROM THE CRUSADES TO THE MIDDLE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY—RISE
OF SOME NEW POWERS.
The most remarkable general feature of European society about the time of the Crusades was the papal influence. Between the pontiffs and the German emperors there was kept up a perpetual struggle for power; but for a long time the advantage was almost always with the popes. The treatment which some of the emperors received from them was extremely humiliating. Frederick Barbarossa was compelled to kiss the feet of his holiness, Alexander III, and to appease him by a large cession of territory, after having indignantly denied his supremacy, and refused the customary homage. Henry VI, while doing homage on his knees, had his imperial crown kicked off by Pope Celestinus, who, however, made some amends for this indignity by the gift of Naples and Sicily. Henry had expelled the Normans from these territories, which now became appendages of the German empire (1194). In the beginning of the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III was imagined to have permanently established the powers of the Holy See, and its right to confer the imperial crown; but this proved far from being the case. In the time of Frederick II, who succeeded Otho IV (1212), the old contentions rose to more than the usual height, and two
