elay would propagate the flame
of enthusiasm; and his firmest hope was in a nation of soldiers still
proud of the preeminence of their name, and ambitious to emulate their
hero Charlemagne, who, in the popular romance of Turpin, had achieved
the conquest of the Holy Land. A latent motive of affection or vanity
might influence the choice of Urban: he was himself a native of France,
a monk of Clugny, and the first of his countrymen who ascended the
throne of St. Peter. The pope had illustrated his family and province;
nor is there perhaps a more exquisite gratification than to revisit, in
a conspicuous dignity, the humble and laborious scenes of our youth.

It may occasion some surprise that the Roman pontiff should erect, in
the heart of France, the tribunal from whence he hurled his anathemas
against the king; but our surprise will vanish so soon as we form a just
estimate of a king of France of the eleventh century. Philip the First
was the great-grandson of Hugh Capet, the founder of the present race,
who, in the decline of Charlemagne's posterity, added the regal title to
his patrimonial estates of Paris and Orleans. In this narrow compass,
he was possessed of wealth and jurisdiction; but in the rest of France,
Hugh and his first descendants were no more than the feudal lords of
about sixty dukes and counts, of independent and hereditary power, who
disdained the control of laws and legal assemblies, and whose disregard
of their sovereign was revenged by the disobedience of their inferior
vassals. At Clermont, in the territories of the count of Auvergne, the
pope might brave with impunity the resentment of Philip; and the council
which he convened in that city was not less numerous or respectable
than the synod of Placentia. Besides his court and council of Roman
cardinals, he was supported by thirteen archbishops and two hundred and
twenty-five bishops: the number of mitred prelates was computed at four
hundred; and the fathers of the church were blessed by the saints and
enlightened by the doctors of the age. From the adjacent kingdoms, a
martial train of lords and knights of power and renown attended the
council, in high expectation of its resolves; and such was the ardor of
zeal and curiosity, that the city was filled, and many thousands, in
the month of November, erected their tents or huts in the open field.
A session of eight days produced some useful or edifying canons for
the reformation of manners; a severe c