Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/393

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 371 The aversion of the Greeks and Latins ^^ was nourished and Enmity of the manifested in the three first expeditions to the Holy Land. Latins, a.d. Alexius Comnenus contrived the absence at least of the formid- able pilgrims ; his successors, Manuel and Isaac Angelus, con- spired with the Moslems for the ruin of the greatest princes of the Franks ; and their crooked and malignant policy was seconded by the active and voluntary obedience of every order of their subjects. Of this hostile temper a large portion may doubtless be ascribed to the difference of language, dress, and manners, which severs and alienates the nations of the globe. The pride, as well as the prudence, of the sovereign was deeply wounded by the intrusion of foreign armies, that claimed a right of traversing his dominions and passing under the walls of his capital ; his subjects were insulted and plundered by the rude strangers of the West ; and the hatred of the pusillanimous Greeks was sharpened by secret envy of the bold and pious enterprises of the Franks. But these profane causes of national enmity were fortified and inflamed by the venom of religious zeal. Instead of a kind embrace, an hospitable reception from their Christian brethren of the East, every tongue was taught to repeat the names of schismatic and heretic, more odious to an orthodox ear than those of pagan and infidel ; instead of being loved for the general conformity of faith and worship, they were abhorred for some rules of discipline, some questions of theology, in which themselves or their teachers might differ from the Oriental church. In the crusade of Louis the Seventh, the Greek clergy washed and purified the altars which had been defiled by the sacrifice of a French priest. The companions of Frederic Barbarossa deplore the injuries which they endured, both in word and deed, from the peculiar rancour of the bishops and monks. Their prayers and sermons excited the people against the impious barbarians ; and the patriarch is accused of declaring that the faithful might obtain the redemption of all their sins by the extirpation of the schismatics. ^^ An enthusiast, ^'^ [The disputes over trivial points of theology and ceremony were the expression of the national enmity of the Greeks and Latins ; and this aversion was the true cause of the schism ; the questions of controversy were a pretext.] 15 His anonymous historian (de Expedit. Asiat. Fred. I. in Canisii Lection. An- tiq. torn. iii. pars ii. p. 511, edit. Basnage) mentions the sermons of the Greek patriarch, quomodo Grrecis injunxerat in remissionem peccatorum peregrinos oc- cidere ct delere de terra. Tagino observes (in Scriptores Freher. torn. i. p. 409, edit. Struv. ), Graeci hsereticos nos appellant ; clerici et monachi dictis et factisper- sequuntur. We may add the declaration of the emperor Baldwin fifteen years afterwards : Haec est (gens) qute Latinos omnes non hominum nomine, sed canum