terbo not coming
to an agreement in the choice of a pope, till, by common consent, they
referred his election to six among them, who, on the 1st of September,
in 1271, nominated Theobald, the archdeacon of Liege. Upon the news of
his election, he prepared himself to return to Italy. Nothing could be
more tender and moving than his last farewell to the disconsolate
Christians of Palestine, whom he promised, in a most solemn manner,
never to forget. He arrived at Rome in March, and was first ordained
priest, then consecrated bishop, and crowned on the 27th of the same
month, in 1272. He took the name of Gregory X., and, to procure the most
effectual succor to the Holy Land, called a general council to meet at
Lyons, where pope Innocent IV. had held the last in 1245, partly for the
same purpose of the holy war, and partly to endeavor to reclaim the
emperor Frederick II. The city of Lyons was most convenient for the
meeting of those princes whose succors were principally expected for the
holy war; and was most unexceptionable, because at that time it
acknowledged no other sovereign than its archbishop. Henry III., king of
England, died on the 16th of November, 1272, and Edward I., who had
concluded a peace of ten years with the Saracens, in the name of the
Christians in Syria and Palestine, returned for England, and on the road
at Trapani, in Sicily, met the news of his father's death. In the same
place he received most obliging letters from pope Gregory X. The
fourteenth general council, the second of Lyons, was opened in that city
in May, 1274, in which were assembled five hundred bishops and seventy
abbots. In the fourth session, the Greek ambassadors (who were,
Germanus, formerly patriarch of Constantinople, Theophanes, archbishop
of Nice, and the senator, George Acropolita, great logothete, or
chancellor) were admitted. The logothete abjured the schism in the name
of the emperor Michael Palaeologus; and the pope, while Te Deum was sung,
stood with his cheeks all the time bathed in tears. St. Thomas Aquinas
died on the 7th of March, before the opening of the council, and St.
Bonaventure at Lyons, on the 15th of July. The council was closed by the
fifth and last session, on the 17th of July. The more our holy pope was
overwhelmed with public affairs, the more watchful he was over his own
soul, and the more earnest in the interior duties of self-examination,
contemplation, and prayer. He spoke little, conversing assiduously