There was not,
and to this silence of the clergy during those long ages of their power
we owe the maintenance in Europe to-day of the regime of violence. They
were so far from enjoying moral inspiration in this respect that they
were amongst the first to bless the banners and swell the coffers of an
aggressive monarch, and they gave the military system a final
consecration by employing it repeatedly in the interests of the Church.
All that one can plead in mitigation of this deep historical censure of
the medieval Church is that the frontiers of Christendom were for
centuries threatened by the Turk and the Saracen. The old need of
protecting civilisation by arms had almost disappeared. Few and feeble
peoples remained outside the range of Christian civilisation after the
tenth century. Armies were maintained only in the interest of criminal
ambition or for the settlement of disputes which ought to have been
submitted to judges. The menace of the Turk, with his hostile religion,
was, of course, a just ground for armaments, but a few nations generally
bore the whole brunt of his onset. Whatever religious feeling may make
of the great Crusades, which drew to the east armies from all parts of
Europe, secular history must dismiss them as appalling blunders.
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