Small detachments, however, remained, scattered throughout the land, waiting only an able leader once more to re-unite them: amongst those who appeared most fitted for that destiny was Walter de Montreal, a Knight of St.John, and gentleman of Provence, whose valour and military genius had already, though yet young, raised his name into dreaded celebrity; and whose ambition, experience, and sagacity, relieved by certain chivalric and noble qualities, were suited to enterprises far greater and more important than the violent depredations of the atrocious Werner.

From these scourges, no state had suffered more grievously than Rome.

The patrimonial territories of the pope,--in part wrested from him by petty tyrants, in part laid waste by these foreign robbers,--yielded but a scanty supply to the necessities of Clement VI., the most accomplished gentleman and the most graceful voluptuary of his time; and the good father had devised a plan, whereby to enrich at once the Romans and their pontiff.
Nearly fifty years before the time we enter upon, in order both to replenish the papal coffers and pacify the starving Romans, Boniface VIII.

had instituted the Festival of the Jubilee, or Holy Year; in fact, a revival of a Pagan ceremonial.

A plenary indulgence was promised to every Catholic who, in that year, and in the first year of every succeeding century, should visit the churches of St.Peter and St.Paul.
An immense concourse of pilgrims, from every part of Christendom, had attested the wisdom of the invention; "and two priests stood night and day, with rakes in their hands, to collect without counting the heaps of gold and silver that were poured on the altar of St.Paul." (Gibbon, vol.xii.c.