successors of “Apostolical Majesty.” King Stephen’s wife was Queen Gisela, the sister of Henry II of Germany; and thus two powerful Christian nations, Hungary and Germany, were brought closely together. Bohemia, Germany, and Hungary were zealous workers for the faith. King Stephen built churches, colleges, and hospitals, in the East at Constantinople, and even at Jerusalem; in the West at Rome and Ravenna.
Otho and Stephen, with Pope Sylvester, had formed a great design of arousing all Christian Europe to rescue the Holy Land from the Mohammedans. None of them lived to see their plan carried out; and it was nearly a hundred years later, when their idea took definite shape, in the first of the famous Crusades.
It was at this time, while these rulers governed and these conditions existed, that a pilgrim came to the City of Rome. It was an autumn day in the year 1000, and during the second year of Pope Sylvester’s reign. This pilgrim was attired in the usual dress of one bound upon a journey to the Holy Land,—the sombre, brown tunic, with a monk-like hood and sandals. The palmer’s staff was in his hand and a cross was embroidered on the breast of his tunic. As the pilgrim walked through the streets of Rome, every passer-by gazed at him in wonder, although the sight of a pilgrim was a common one in the Eternal City. But this one was a man of such
