t, to heal the effects of the long troubles of
Germany, the popes encouraged his son Conrad, and after Conrad's death,
his younger son Henry, to rebel against him. The younger Henry behaved
very treacherously to his father, whom he forced to give up his crown;
and, at last, Henry IV. died broken-hearted in 1106. When Henry was thus
out of the way, his son, Henry V., who, until then, had seemed to be a
tool of the pope and the clergy, showed what sort of man he really was
by imprisoning Pope Paschal II. and his cardinals for nine weeks, until
he made the pope grant all that he wanted. But at length this emperor
was able to settle for a time the great quarrel of investitures, by an
agreement made at the city of Worms, on the Rhine, in 1123.

But before this time, and while Henry IV. was still emperor, the popes
had got a great addition to their power and importance by the
_Crusades_,--a word which means wars undertaken for the sake of the
Cross. I have told you already, how, from the fourth century, it became
the fashion for Christians to flock from all countries into the Holy
Land, that they might warm their faith (as they thought) by the sight of
the places where our Blessed Lord had been born, and lived, and died,
and where most of the other things written in the Scripture history had
taken place.[71] Very often, indeed, this pilgrimage was found to do
more harm than good to those who went on it; for many of them had their
minds taken up with anything rather than the pious thoughts which they
professed: but the fashion of pilgrimage grew more and more, whether the
pilgrims were the better or the worse for it.

[71] Part I., p. 91.

When the Holy Land had fallen into the hands of the Mahometans, as I
have mentioned,[72] these often treated the Christian pilgrims very
badly, behaving cruelly to them, insulting them, and making them pay
enormously for leave to visit the holy places. And when Palestine was
conquered by the Turks, who had taken up the Mahometan religion lately,
and were full of their new zeal for it (A.D. 1076), the condition of the
Christians there became worse than ever. There had often been thoughts
among the Christians of the West as to making an attempt to get back the
Holy Land from the unbelievers; but now the matter was to be taken up
with a zeal which had never before been felt.

[72] Page 169.

A pilgrim from the north of France, called Peter the Hermit, on
returning from Jerusalem, carried t