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 262 THE DECLINE AND FALL own.^ So popular Avas the cause of Urban, so weighty was his influence, that the council which he summoned at Placentia" was composed of two hundred bishops of Italy, France, Bur- gundy, Swabia, and Bavaria. Four thousand of the clergy, and thirty thousand of the laity, attended this important meeting ; and, as the most spacious cathedral would have been inadequate to the multitude, the session of seven days was held in a plain adjacent to the city. The ambassadors of the Greek emperor, Alexius Comnenus, were introduced to plead the distress of their sovereign, and the danger of Constantinople, which was divided only by a narrow sea from the victorious Turks, the common enemy of the Christian name. In their suppliant address, they flattered the pride of the Latin princes ; and, appealing at once to their policy and religion, exhorted them to repel the bar- barians on the confines of Asia rather than to expect them in the heart of Europe. At the sad tale of the misery and perils of their Eastern brethren, the assembly burst into tears ; the most eager champions declared their readiness to march ; and the Greek ambassadors were dismissed with the assurance of a speedy and powerful succour. The relief of Constantinople was included in the larger and most distant project of the deliver- ance of Jerusalem ; but the prudent Urban adjourned the final decision to a second synod, which he proposed to celebrate in some city of France in the autumn of the same year. The short delay would propagate the flame of enthusiasm ; and his firmest hope was in a nation of soldiers,^ still proud of the pre-eminence ^ Henricus odio earn coepit habere: ideo incarceravit earn, et concessit ut plerique vim ei inferrent ; imo filium hortans ut earn subagitaret (Dodechin, Continuat. Marian. Scot. [i.e. the Annales S. Disibodi falsely ascribed to a certain Abbot Dodechin and erroneously supposed to be a continuation of the Chronicle of Marianus Scotus] apud Baron, a.d. 1093, No. 4). In the synpd of Constance, she is described by Bertholdus, rerum inspector : quae se tantas et tarn inauditas fornicationum spurcitias, et a tantis passam fuisse conquesta est, &c. And again at Placentia : satis misericorditer suscepit, eo quod ipsam tantas spurcitias non tarn commississe quam invitam pertulisse pro certo cognoverit Papa cum sancta synodo. Apud Baron, a.d. 1093, ^o- 4i io94' No. 3. A rare subject for the in- falhble decision of a Pope and council ! These abominations are repugnant to every principle of human nature, which is not altered by a dispute about rings and crosiers. Yet it should seem that the wretched woman was tempted by the priests to relate or subscribe some infamous stories of herself and her husband. ''See the narrative and acts of the synod of Placentia, Concil. torn. xii. p. 821, &c. [Mansi, Concil. .xx. p. 804, and cp. Pertz, Mon. 8, p. 474, for a notice appended to the Acts.] ^Guibert himself, a Frenchman, praises the piety and valour of the French nation, the author and example of the cnisades : Gens nobilis, prudens, bellicosa, dapsilis, et nitida. Quos enim Britones, Anglos, Ligures, si bonis eos moribus