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 264 THE DECLINE AND FALL laws and legal assemblieSj and whose disregard of their sovereign was revenged by the disobedience of their inferior vassals. At Clei-mont, in the territories of the count of Auvergne/^ the pope miffht 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 en- lightened by the doctors, of the age. From the adjacent king- doms a martial train of lords and knights of power and renown attended the council,^^ in high expectation of its resolves ; and such was the ardoiu* 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 censure was pronounced against the licence of private war ; the Truce of God ^" was confirmed, a suspension of hostilities during four days of the week ; women and priests were placed under the safeguard of the church ; and a protection of three years was extended to husbandmen and merchants, the defence- less victims of military rapine. But a law, however venerable be the sanction, cannot suddenly transform the temper of the times ; and the benevolent efforts of Urban deserve the less praise, since he laboured to appease some domestic quarrels that he might spread the flames of war from the Atlantic to the Euphrates. From the sjTiod of Placentia the rumour of his 1^ These counts, a jounger branch of the dukes of Aquitain, were at length de- spoiled of the greatest part of their country by Philip Augustus. The bishops of Clermont gradually became princes of the city. Melanges, tir^s d'une grande Bibliotheque, torn, xxxvi. p. 288, &c. i-i See the acts of the council of Clermont, Concil. torn. xii. p. 829, &c. [Mansi, Concilia, xx. p. 815 sqqJ 15 [Thirteen archbishops, eighty bishops, and ninety abbots, Giesebrecht. iii. p. 667, following Cencius Camerarius (Mansi, xx. 908), and the Pope himself ib., 829).] ifi Confluxerunt ad concilium e multis regionibus viri, potentes et honorati, innumeri quamvis cingulo laicalis niilitiae superbi (Baldric, an ej'e-witness, p. 86-88. Robert. Mon. p. 31, 32. Will. Tyr. i. 14, 15, p. 639-641. Guibert, p. 478-480. Fulcher. Caront. p. 382). 1" The Truce of God (Treva, or Treuga Dei) was first invented in Aquitain, .■. D. 1032 ; blamed by some bishops as an occasion of perjury, and rejected by the Normans as contrary to their privileges (Ducange, Gloss. Latin, torn. vL p. 682-685). [Kluckhohn, Geschichte des Gottesfriedens.]