From the eighth to the twelfth century Constantinople was, in all

probability, the most opulent and populous city in the world. It had

inherited the traditions of the ancient Roman capital, while it had in

a great measure discarded the policy which had made those traditions

famous. The most exquisite of the works of art that had escaped the

fury of the barbarous hordes of Scythia and Gaul had been conveyed

within its walls. Its streets were lined with magnificent mansions,

colonnades, temples. Everywhere rose suggestive mementos of that great

power whose name had been renowned and feared from the Highlands

of Scotland to the banks of the Oxus. In forum and garden the mean

and stolid visages of sainted monk and anchorite stood side by side

with the noble busts and statues of the most illustrious heroes and

citizens of classic Rome. The royal palaces were modelled, some after

the beautiful villas which had once adorned the Campagna, others after

plans suggested by the Saracen architects of Bagdad. The churches

also bore evidence of the imitative character of Byzantine art, which

borrowed its inspiration from Greece and the Orient. It is said that in

1403 there were three thousand of them in the city. Monolithic columns

of different colored marble supported their domes,--sometimes as many

as five in number,--roofed with tiles of gilded bronze. Their walls

were incrusted with lapis-lazuli and jasper. The sculpture in relief

was covered with gold. Elaborate patterns of arabesques in mosaics

embellished the walls and formed the pavements. The fountains were of

silver and their basins were filled with wine instead of water, for

the benefit of the Byzantine mob, whose struggles often diverted the

indolent leisure of the monarch and his luxurious court. A separate

dwelling was used by the Emperor during each season of the year, and

the appointments and furniture of each of them were adapted to the

atmospheric vicissitudes of the climate of Constantinople. In all

the decorations of these sumptuous edifices jewels were lavished in

ostentatious and semi-barbaric profusion. The perverted ingenuity of

the Byzantine inventor was expended in the construction of curious

toys that might delight the simplicity of childhood, but which could

hardly be expected to engage the attention of royalty, even in a

degenerate age. One of the masterpieces of these skilful artisans was

a tree of the precious metals with foliage occupied by golden birds,

whose shrill notes filled the halls of the palace. Notwithstanding

its vast expenditure of treasure, such were the resources of the

Byzantine monarchy that even after its territory was contracted

almost to the walls of the capital, it still embraced the wealthiest

community in Christendom. The unrivalled commercial facilities

enjoyed by Constantinople more than counterbalanced for centuries the

disadvantages of political incapacity, national idleness, and official

corruption. The losses resulting from ecclesiastical quarrels, the

sanguinary revolutions of political factions, the ravages of Crusaders

and the pestilence were speedily supplied from the cities of Greece

and the colonies of Asia Minor. The heterogeneous elements of its

population, thus recruited from so many sources, early caused it to

assume the appearance and the character of the most cosmopolitan of

cities; and as the capital was the type of the entire region subject

to the sovereign, it has been remarked, not incorrectly, that the

Byzantine Empire was a government without a nation.

So marked, however, was the religious and intellectual debasement

of contemporaneous Europe that the weakness and crimes of the Greek

emperors passed unnoticed amidst the recognized superiority of the

civilization which their wanton extravagance polluted. The extent

and magnitude of their commerce, the splendor of their embassies,

the munificence with which they rewarded their allies, afforded the

most exaggerated ideas of their importance and power. The pomp which

invested their presence concealed the deplorable conditions under whose

restraints they were compelled to direct the affairs of their empire.

The political imbecility of the Greeks was, therefore, not visible to

their neighbors. These observed only the gorgeous theatrical effects

which sustained the prestige of a decaying monarchy, and the alliance

of the princes of Constantinople was solicited alike by the khalifs

of Bagdad, Cairo, and Cordova, by the emperors of the West, and by

the kings of England. In the social polity of the Greeks the court

was everything and the people nothing. The natural law of progress,

by which man is encouraged to accumulate wealth by the knowledge that

he can enjoy it unmolested, and is impelled to intellectual pursuits

through the hope of political advancement,--a law practically annulled

by the Cæsars of Rome,--was entirely abolished under the emperors of

Byzantium. Little security could be expected from a government which

attempted to extort from the wretched peasant, whose harvests had been

swept away by the barbarian, the same tax demanded from the prosperous

merchant, and made no allowance for the destitution for which its own

incapacity and corruption were responsible.

The most pernicious ideas relative to the duties and privileges of

citizenship had been imported from Italy. The people were divided

into castes. The aristocracy considered all occupations carried on

for profit as disgraceful to a patrician. It was a maxim with the

populace, and one which it would have been dangerous to controvert,

that the state owed it sustenance and amusement. In maintaining

such a principle, the lower classes could have no motive for labor,

and the rabble of Constantinople had not forgotten that the Roman

citizen who so far disregarded his dignity as to become an artisan

was ignominiously driven from his tribe. The only career open to

the aspiring plebeian was through the Church. To obtain a commanding

position in the hierarchy, the favor and assistance of a eunuch or

of a princess of the royal family was indispensable. The duties of

the priesthood required the possession of little intelligence and

less education. The affairs of palace and cathedral were usually

administered by emasculated monks, indebted for their places to

the ostentatious devotion or convenient servility by which they

demonstrated their usefulness in furthering the designs of ambitious

patrons. While the general licentiousness which scandalized the

papal court did not prevail to an equal extent among the clergy of

Constantinople, the lives of many of the patriarchs were stained

with vices equal in baseness and impiety to any that defiled the

character of the worst of the pontiffs. Soldiers, eunuchs, parasites,

and tools of intriguing statesmen were elevated in turn to the most

eminent dignity of the Eastern Church. Some carried with them into

the episcopal palace the manners and the license of the camp. Others,

by enlisting the services of the monks and the populace, fomented

sanguinary and disastrous revolutions. Others again, by the monstrous

extravagance of their behavior and the irreverence which they displayed

in the discharge of their sacred functions, aroused the indignation

and incurred the censure of the devout. Of the latter, Theophylactus

offers a conspicuous example. The sale of ecclesiastical preferments

furnished him regularly with means for the gratification of his unholy

passions. He was raised to the patriarchal throne of Constantinople at

the age of twelve years. He introduced into the Greek ritual absurd

ceremonies and licentious hymns which, strange to relate, survived him

for almost two centuries. To this practice are traceable the riotous

and obscene festivals of the Middle Ages, when religion was travestied

and the rites of the Church profaned by license as gross as that

which characterized the excesses of the decadent empire of the Cæsars.

He deprecated the wrath of the Devil with heathen sacrifices. In his

stable were two thousand horses, which were fed on almonds and figs

steeped in wine, regaled with costly liquors, and sprinkled with the

most exquisite perfumes. Not infrequently in the midst of the mass he

left his congregation to visit the stall of some favorite charger.

Could piety or virtue be expected from a people whose spiritual

necessities were ministered to by such a prelate?

With moral degeneracy came also intellectual decrepitude. A scanty but

inestimable remnant of the vast stores of learning which had instructed

and delighted the Pagan world had been rescued from the hands of the

ruthless barbarian and preserved on the shores of the Bosphorus. But

the scarcity of writing materials and the ignorance and prejudice of

the unlettered ecclesiastics into whose hands many of these treasures

fell insured their destruction. Great numbers of the productions of

classic authors were erased from the precious parchment to make room

for the legendary miracles of fictitious saints. Others perished by

mould and mildew in the dripping vaults of monasteries and churches.

Near the Cathedral of St. Sophia there stood in the eighth century a

great basilica of unique and elegant design called the Octagon. It

was approached by eight magnificent porticos supported by pillars of

white marble. The edifice itself displayed the taste and skill of

the Grecian architect, whose type, while suggestive of the decline

of an art once carried to a perfection without parallel, was, even

in its decadence, superior to the masterpieces of all other nations.

Erected by Constantine the Great for purposes of religious worship,

Julian had consecrated it to literature, had deposited within its

halls his extensive library, and had established there an academy in

imitation of the famous Museum founded by the Ptolemies at Alexandria.

Here a corps of teachers, maintained at the expense of the state,

imparted instruction gratuitously on all branches of theology and

the arts. The library was open to every student of whatever creed

or nationality. A number of expert calligraphists and scholars were

constantly employed in adding to the collection, or in reproducing

manuscripts that had been damaged by abuse or neglect. The professors

of this university--the only institution worthy of the name in the

entire realm of the empire--were held in the highest reverence.

Sometimes their opinions were taken on important questions of law

and diplomacy. Often their mediation was solicited by the heads of

contending factions. By the pre-eminence of their acquirements and

the weight attaching to their decisions, they averted many a national

catastrophe. The incumbents of the most exalted places in the Church

were frequently taken from their ranks. During the season of its

prosperity no institution of learning outside of the dominions of

the khalifs wielded such a salutary influence or was regarded with

such respect and homage by all classes of mankind as the Octagon of

Constantinople. In the reign of Zeno, when it was consumed by fire,

this famous edifice contained a library of a hundred and twenty

thousand volumes. Among the treasures lost in the conflagration was a

wonderful manuscript of the works of Homer, more than one hundred feet

long, composed of serpent skins inscribed with characters of gold.

Restored by the emperors to some degree of its former splendor, Leo

the Isaurian, who, after repeated interviews, had failed to convert to

his iconoclastic views the teachers of the University, determined to

effectually silence those who had so signally refuted his arguments.

Secretly, and during the night, an immense quantity of combustibles

was distributed about the building, the torch was applied, detachments

of troops prevented all attempts at rescue, and the assembled wisdom

and learning of the Byzantine Empire perished in one indiscriminate

ruin. From this inexcusable act of vandalism dates the disappearance of

many of the greatest works of the poets, philosophers, and historians

of antiquity. What the iconoclast had begun the crusader completed. The

storming of the capital by the Latins dealt another destructive blow to

literature. The martial fanaticism of the West saw nothing to admire

and much to execrate in the immortal productions of Pagan genius. The

ignorant monks who followed in the train of the Count of Flanders and

the Marquis of Montferrat showed scant consideration to such of the

classics as fell into their hands. The precious remains that survived

this age of violence, superstition, and intellectual apathy rested

uncared for and forgotten in the seclusion of private libraries and

the sacred recesses of the cloister until they were resurrected by

the insatiable demand for knowledge which distinguished the people of

Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

In every phase of social as well as of intellectual life, the national

inferiority of the Byzantine was manifest. He could copy with a fair

degree of skill, but he could not originate. He absorbed little and

created almost nothing. The works of art in which he took most pride

were rather indebted for their value to the nature of their materials

than to the labor and ingenuity that had produced them. In the style of

ornamentation,--especially as regards the pattern of textile fabrics

and the settings of jewels,--the Syrian taste, which delighted in

floral designs and the forms of grotesque animals, predominated. There

was little in the work of the Byzantine sculptor to call to mind the

simplicity and delicacy that pre-eminently distinguished the exquisite

products of the Attic chisel. Yet its imitative tendency induced the

genius of the Eastern Empire to borrow from all its neighbors, and

especially from Greece, whose art had greatly retrograded even before

the accession of Constantine. The adoption of Christianity as the

religion of the state was most unfavorable to sculpture, which was

associated by the ignorant with the representation and worship of the

gods of antiquity. The term “Byzantine,” as applied to decoration,

is most comprehensive, and, employed by writers at will, has become

indefinite. When examples of this style possess marked characteristics,

however, and can readily be identified, they show clearly the impress

of foreign influence, resulting commercial activity, and intimate

diplomatic relations of the Greek Empire with nations of the most

discordant customs and religious traditions. The mural designs in

mosaic peculiar to Constantinople were reproduced in temples dedicated

to the ceremonial of widely different creeds, as the Mosque of Cordova,

the Church of St. Mark at Venice, and the Cathedral of St. Isaac at St.

Petersburg.

The division of society into castes was the most serious and

insurmountable impediment to progress encountered by the people of

the Greek Empire. Public opinion was voiced by the court at the

instigation of the clergy. There was one law for the members of

the imperial household and another for all who did not enjoy that

adventitious privilege. What was a crime in the citizen was scarcely

considered an error in the patrician. The tradesmen, who to some extent

constituted a middle class, were not wealthy or influential enough

to own slaves,--a criterion of social importance,--and in nine cases

out of ten sympathized with, if they did not actually support, the

claims of the rabble. The cultivator of the soil, uncertain whether

he would be permitted to enjoy the fruit of his labors, through

the rapacity of the imperial officials or the relentless fury of

the barbarians, pursued his useful vocation to little purpose. In a

region proverbial for fertility, under a sky unusually favorable to

the husbandman, there was no uniformity in the amount of the yield,

no certainty of even a moderate harvest. Under the same atmospheric

conditions a year of famine often succeeded a year of the greatest

abundance. The most lucrative branch of commerce was the slave-trade.

The Saracen pirates, who swarmed in the Mediterranean, exchanged

their captives in the markets of Byzantium for Baltic amber, Chinese

silks, Arabian spices, and Indian jewels. These slaves, both male and

female, were sold to Jews, who disposed of them to the Moslems of

Persia, Egypt, Mauritania, and Spain. The manufacture of eunuchs was

not only a profitable industry, but was often resorted to with a view

to the future political or ecclesiastical promotion of the unfortunate

subject. Parents mutilated their children in the hope that they might

rise to the administration of important dignities in the palace or the

Church. Unsuccessful aspirants to the throne were compelled to undergo

this painful and dangerous operation, and were then confined for life

in some secluded monastery. The abject degeneracy of the nation further

revealed itself by the infliction of even more inhuman and revolting

punishments. Political conspirators were flayed alive. Vivisection was

practised upon criminals not sufficiently adroit or wealthy to escape

the vigilance of the magistrate. Offenders guilty of public sacrilege

were scourged, crucified, or burnt. With the intellectual debasement

indicated by the enjoyment of human suffering were mingled the most

puerile superstitions. Every class of society, from the emperor to the

peasant, was a firm believer in visions, omens, auguries. The flight

of birds was observed, the entrails of a slaughtered animal examined

with an eagerness never surpassed by that of the votaries of Paganism.

The occurrence of an inauspicious event, an unusual dream, an apparent

prodigy, overwhelmed the unhappy Byzantine with dismay. Still tinctured

with the idolatrous superstition of his fathers, he secretly placed

gifts upon the defaced altars of ruined temples, consulted the silent

oracles, endeavored to propitiate the neglected gods by nocturnal

sacrifices. Belief in the evil-eye was universal, a delusion not

extinct even in our day among the more ignorant peasantry of Italy, who

think that the possession and exercise of this mysterious power is one

of the prerogatives of the Pope. In such a community the charlatans who

thrive by the weakness of mankind were not wanting. Astrologers were

considered necessary appendages to the grandeur of the imperial court.

They abounded in every quarter of the city, and were regarded by the

populace with feelings of mingled fear and veneration. Even members of

the priesthood, terrified by some unfamiliar natural phenomenon, which

their ignorance suggested might portend an imminent calamity, did not

hesitate to openly visit these impostors.

To the hands of these two great powers, the Papacy of Rome and

the Empire of the Greeks, were virtually intrusted the destinies

of the vast and constantly increasing population of Europe. Their

evil influence over the minds of men was incalculable. What the

unprincipled methods and insolent pretensions of the former failed

to effect was supplied by the political duplicity of the latter.

While often apparently at variance, they were in reality, though

unconsciously, seeking to compass a common end,--the moral, social,

and intellectual degradation of humanity. No conceptions of honor,

consistency, generosity, or patriotism affected the policy of either.

Is it surprising that under such circumstances and with such masters

the society of the Christian world should have remained for many

centuries absolutely stagnant, without advancement in the arts, without

incentives to literary effort, without exertion in the fascinating

domain of science, almost without the consolation of hope beyond the

grave? When we consider the boundless opportunities for good in the

grasp of these two great enemies of human progress, and the energy and

ability employed by one of them especially to stifle all inquiry and

every aspiration for mental improvement, we may realize the extent

of the darkness which enveloped the society of Europe for nearly a

thousand years, and appreciate the efforts of the Mohammedan nations,

whose self-instructed genius illumined with such a brilliant light the

path of civilization and knowledge.

The most pernicious and debasing conditions of Byzantine society

prevailed to even a greater degree in the brutalized communities of

Central and Western Europe. In no country of that continent did there

exist a firmly established or legally constituted government. The

authority of the sovereign was nominal and complimentary,--obeyed when

it was more convenient to do so than to dispute it, and practically

recognized under protest. The order of succession was perpetually

violated. Ambitious vassals overturned thrones won by the valor of

great chieftains, or ruled with despotic power in the names of their

feeble progeny. Anarchy prevailed throughout those provinces whose

population was not intimidated by the immediate presence of the

court. Property and life were at the mercy of banditti in the pay and

under the protection of powerful nobles, who complacently shared the

spoils and the infamy of these highway plunderers. The savage and

absurd customs imported by barbarians from the forests of Germany

and Britain usurped the office of laws approved by the wisdom and

practice of Roman jurisprudence. The decay of that science under

the later emperors, and especially under the system established

by Constantine, must be attributed to the increasing interest in

religious doctrines and theological controversy, which ignored the

talents and ambition once exercised in the profession of the civil

law. The priest had become the successful rival of the advocate, and

ecclesiastical preferment was prized more highly by the educated than

the triumphs of judicial learning and forensic eloquence. The arm of

the strongest determined the justice of a cause without the formalities

of evidence and argument. A graduated tariff of compensation for bodily

injury existed, and any offence could be expiated by the payment of

a stipulated sum. The imposition and collection of taxes were not

regulated by any established principles, and the obvious rules of

political economy were violated in the application and enforcement

of the fiscal regulations. Amidst the universal disorder, the Church

lost no opportunity to increase her acquisitions and consolidate her

power. She encouraged the continuance of the incredible ignorance

and inhumanity of the age. She resolutely set her face against every

attempt of the laity to shake off the fetters imposed upon it by

violence and superstition. She punished with atrocious severity the

slightest manifestation to question the genuineness of her pretensions

or the validity of her canons.

The warlike and pugnacious spirit of an age governed by force affected

even a profession generally associated with the offices of mercy and

peace. For centuries among the Saxons it was the bishop and not the

king who conferred the distinction of knighthood. In martial assemblies

no difference existed in the appearance of the prelate and the warrior.

The panoply and weapons of the field were often also a feature of

ecclesiastical convocations. Godfrey, Archbishop of Narbonne, presided

in complete armor over councils called to determine points of religious

doctrine. The Bishop of Cahors, in Provence, refused to say mass unless

his sword and gauntlets had been previously deposited on the altar. The

Treasurer of the Cathedral of Nevers appeared in the choir armed to

the teeth and with his hawk upon his wrist. In Languedoc, during the

thirteenth century, it was the practice of priests to settle questions

in dispute by fisticuffs.

After the destruction of the Roman Empire, the first attempt to

reorganize society was made by the institution of the Feudal System.

It was an instance of the selection of the lesser of two evils. In

consideration of protection, the vassal paid homage to his lord and

promised him military and other services under certain ill-defined

conditions. Defective and susceptible of enormous abuses as this

arrangement was, it alleviated to some degree the misery of the lower

orders. Its jurisdiction was coextensive with the dominions formerly

embraced by the empire of Charlemagne. The temptation it held out

to oppression more than neutralized the benefits it occasionally

conferred. It organized and perpetuated the most vexatious of

thraldoms, the tyranny of caste. It appropriated all property in the

soil, and a person not of noble birth or ecclesiastical distinction

was doomed to the humiliating dependence of vassalage or serfdom. The

nominal liberty originally enjoyed by the descendants of the ancient

Roman colonists was easily forfeited by the non-payment of taxes, whose

amount was regulated by the caprice of the lord; the failure to perform

military service or even the neglect to observe obligations of trifling

importance of themselves was sufficient to reduce the offender to a

condition of servitude.

The serfs were divided into two principal classes, known to the

technical jargon of the law as villains in gross and villains

regardant. The authority of the lord over both of these was absolute

and irresponsible; the former were attached to his person and, like

other chattels, could be sold or otherwise disposed of; the latter

belonged to the soil and could under no circumstances be alienated. In

every case villains were inventoried and valued as beasts of burden.

They experienced all the hardships that greed and malice could invent

or cruelty inflict. Not only were they exposed to the violence and

rapacity of their superiors, but they were subject to the exaction

of certain privileges which could only have been tolerated in an age

wholly devoid of the principles of honor, justice, and decency. A

conveyance for the transfer of a fief scarcely deigned to mention the

wretched creatures who in the eye of the law formed a part of the

glebe, and one from which the latter derived its principal value. The

avarice of unfeeling lords compelled the peasant to labor throughout

the night and to share the lodgings of the cattle. Around his neck was

soldered a metal collar, sometimes of brass, often of silver, on which

were engraved his name and that of his master. His manhood was entirely

destroyed; he possessed no rights, enjoyed no liberties, participated

in no diversions. His identity was lost, his very being was merged into

the soil on whose surface he toiled from early childhood until released

by death. No more pathetic and forlorn example of the deplorable

effects of human tyranny and human suffering exists than that presented

by the life of the villain regardant of the Middle Ages.

The code of seignioral rights which governed the lord in the

relations he maintained with his vassals is one of the most curious

and remarkable collections in the entire system of jurisprudence.

Voluminous treatises have been written upon it. Dictionaries have been

compiled in explanation of the obscure and technical terms by which

its customs are designated. The abuse of its prerogatives has led to

more than one event whose effects have been experienced in the fall

of empires, the institution of anarchy, the weakening of religious

sentiment, the destruction of social order.

By the provisions of this code, whose authority was usually presumed

to be based upon charters or capitularies conferred by reigning

monarchs, the suzerain, always an individual of noble lineage or

clerical importance, was invested with all the powers of despotism, so

far as the jurisdiction of his estates was concerned. The infliction

of the death penalty was within his discretion. He could impose

taxes at will, and there was no check upon his rapacity except that

suggested by considerations of private interest. The rights of

legalized plunder were multiplied to an astonishing degree--for every

important action of life, for the performance of every labor, for every

change of condition, for birth, death, marriage, for the gathering

of harvests, for the construction of buildings, for the keeping of

animals, permission was required and a contribution demanded. The

virtue of the female serf was absolutely at the mercy of her lord.

She was the subject of the most flagitious and degrading section in

this code of infamy. The charters or the prescriptive regulations

of many fiefs conceded to the lord the exercise of certain prior

rights over the bride of a vassal. Where such a privilege existed,

none of any rank who owed homage to prince or noble were exempt from

its enforcement. Known in different countries by various names,--in

France, as _Cuissage_; in Italy, as _Cazzagio_; in Flanders,

as _Bednood_; in Germany, as _Reit-Schot_; in England, as

Maidenrent,--it was one of the most widely diffused of all feudal

exactions. The gentlemen of the clergy practised it most assiduously;

they were among the first to adopt and the last to relinquish it. This

odious privilege attached to the estates of most of the great abbeys

and sees of Catholic Europe. Its exertion might be commuted for a sum

of money, but this was a matter entirely dependent on the caprice of

him who enjoyed it. In different localities the interpretation of the

general law which sanctioned its use was, by common consent, enlarged,

and its indiscriminate infliction was not infrequently imposed upon the

serfs of a neighbor as a penalty for trespass and other misdemeanors.

Modern propriety will not tolerate the enumeration of the curious and

revolting details concerning the “Droit de prélibation,” with which the

ancient charters of mediæval times are filled. The evils resulting from

this custom frequently aroused the indignation of even the meek and

plodding villain, and incited him to assassination and rebellion. It

is an extraordinary circumstance, however, that the victim most nearly

affected by the operation of this iniquitous law, which had a direct

tendency permanently to impair domestic happiness and cast a stigma

upon the offspring of every family, never complained of its hardships.

Among all the remonstrances and memorials presented during the Middle

Ages to monarchs and legislative bodies which have been preserved,

and many of which are signed by women, not a single instance can be

found where a female vassal requested the abolition of a custom whose

continuance was a constant menace to her modesty and virtue.

The essential principles of feudalism were territorial and martial.

The right to receive homage implied the possession of real property

and the privilege of private warfare. The soldier was the controlling

power in the state. Questions affecting the integrity or loyalty

of an individual, the liability for civil forfeiture or criminal

punishment, the settlement of a boundary, the vindication of personal

honor, were referred, not to a judicial tribunal to be determined

by the application of well-established rules and precedents, but to

the wager of battle. In cases where heresy was suspected, other and

even more absurd tests, such as the ordeals by fire and water, were

adopted. No rational ideas existed for the ascertainment of truth or

the dispensation of justice. Every nation was subject to a haughty and

cruel aristocracy, whose tyranny was sometimes tempered and sometimes

aggravated by the influence of the clerical order, as its interests or

its passions at the time might dictate. Whenever a rebellious spirit

was evinced by the peasantry, and the authority of the barons was not

strong enough to suppress it, bands of foreign mercenaries and outlaws

were enlisted, who were paid with the effects of the serfs which had

escaped the rapacity of the suzerain. The maintenance of a system which

countenanced the settlement of private feuds by the sword and admitted

the virtual independence of the nobles was, of course, inimical to the

dignity and power of the sovereign. In France the seignioral fiefs

bestowed by charters numbered five thousand, and their lords exercised

jurisdiction over thirty thousand villages. There were abbeys whose

domains were tilled by as many as twenty thousand serfs attached to

the glebe. This enumeration did not include the villains in gross, who

sometimes exceeded in number all the other retainers and dependents of

the lords. The greater portion of the vast territory administered by

the hierarchy under the customs of feudalism was obtained from wealthy

pilgrims and crusaders, who sacrificed their earthly possessions

to the thrifty priesthood for a trifle in the vain expectation of

securing a celestial inheritance. By means of this folly, as well as

through the effects of ecclesiastical oppression and torture, France

lost thirty-three per cent. of its population during the thirteenth

century. In Saxon England the peasants had absolutely no guaranty

of protection. Their property was appropriated and their persons

enslaved by the petty kings and piratical chieftains who contended in

incessant warfare for control of the affairs of Britain. The conquest

by the Normans was productive of little improvement. A tyranny of

race and caste arose, aggravated by the worst features of the Feudal

System, and the despised and humiliated Saxon was degraded almost to

the level of a brute. During this unhappy epoch the law of force was

paramount throughout Europe. The moral influence exerted by the clergy

through the medium of superstitious fear afforded the only instance

where obedience was not dependent upon the sword. Where the privileges

of feudalism were combined with the exactions of sacerdotal avarice

and intolerance, the lot of the serf was indeed grievous. But in

cases that did not compromise the prestige or affect the revenues of

the hierarchy, the Church not infrequently interposed to protect the

victim of aristocratic persecution and injustice. The savage baron, all

but omnipotent elsewhere, dared not invade the hallowed precincts of

her sanctuary. Under the beneficent shadow of her altar the fugitive

peasant was safe from the vengeance of his oppressor. By the tender

of her mediation in the quarrels of powerful chieftains, peace was

re-established over extensive provinces where anarchy and implacable

hatred had long held sway. And it was by her aid, combined with the

efforts of the outraged Third Estate, and encouraged by monarchs whose

prerogatives had been usurped, that the offensive and cruel rights of

feudalism were finally abolished. The Crusades struck a fatal blow at

the system by impoverishing the lords through the alienation of their

estates and the consequent overthrow of their power. For this service,

if for no other, posterity owes to the priesthood an incalculable debt

of gratitude. So firmly rooted were many of the practices of the

Feudal System that to this day they have not been entirely eradicated.

Ceremonies unquestionably derived from seignioral privileges are still

observed in remote districts of France and Italy. The statutes of

England and her colonies have not yet been purged of provisions and

terms which suggest to the legal antiquary the mutual obligations of

vassal and suzerain.

The relative position of nations in the scale of barbarism or

civilization is largely determined by the nature of their tastes and

favorite occupations, by their pastimes, by the means which they

invent or adopt to add to the comforts and conveniences of daily life.

During the greater portion of the period under consideration in this

chapter, the existence of the people of Europe, without distinction

of rank or resources, was a purely animal one. The necessities of the

fortress, the camp, and the hovel were easily supplied. Articles of

the simplest construction and most inexpensive materials, whose uses

must have occurred spontaneously to the most unimaginative mind, and

are now considered indispensable in every household, were unknown. The

castle of the noble partook of all the forbidding characteristics of a

prison. Its frowning donjon, its impassable moat, its embattled walls,

its jealously guarded portals, were suggestive of tyranny and disorder.

The interior was not more inviting. The halls were cold and cheerless;

the gloomy chambers, into whose damp recesses the rays of the sun

struggled with difficulty through narrow, unglazed windows, the stone

seats, the massive furniture and mildewed tapestry were typical of the

coarse simplicity and unsettled condition of society in that age. The

banqueting hall, where hospitality was dispensed on state occasions

with rude magnificence, was at almost every meal the scene of gluttony

and uncontrolled inebriety.

The decorations and their surroundings exhibited the greatest possible

incongruity. Hangings of silk and velvet embroidered with gold were

suspended against whitewashed walls. Plate of the precious metals was

served upon tables of rough and uneven boards. The mailed foot of the

knight and the dainty slipper of the chatelaine reposed upon undressed

flags, whose coldness was somewhat counteracted by a covering of straw

or fragrant herbs. In the viands abundance was considered rather than

excellence of flavor, which, however, on extraordinary occasions was

supposed to be supplied by the use of rose-water profusely sprinkled

over every dish. The repast, where incredible quantities of food were

consumed, was characterized by coarse jests and barbaric revelry. The

favorite beverage was beer, often brewed in the castle and indulged in

to disgusting excess; for through its potency the festivities became

the fatal cause of indescribable libertinism and sanguinary encounters.

The guests were served by squires and pages, youths of rank, who,

inmates of the castle, acquired there a knowledge of arms as well as

an acquaintance with the more doubtful accomplishments of gaming and

amorous intrigue. The intimate associations and domestic character

of mediæval society arising from a sparse population removed all

suspicion of menial service from this duty, which was considered highly

honorable, and was gladly performed by the proudest noble at the board

of his royal suzerain.

The amusements of the feudal lord were confined to war or its

substitute, the chase. In the intervals of peace the tournament

supplied the necessary practice in arms as well as the military pomp

and excitement of the field. One of the favorite diversions of both

the nobility and the wealthier clergy was flying the falcon. An

extraordinary importance attached to the possession and use of these

birds of prey. Property in them was inviolate. They were inseparably

connected with the aristocratical or personal privileges of the owner,

and could not be alienated, even with his consent, for the ransom

of their master. Persons of plebeian station were not permitted to

purchase or keep them. They were universally recognized symbols of

suzerainty. Kings, bishops, abbots, ladies never went abroad without

these birds upon their fists. Warriors carried them in battle. Prelates

deposited them in the chancel while they recited the service of the

altar. The regulations of falconry constituted a science only to be

mastered after months of assiduous study. The education of these birds

required the exertion of great skill and boundless patience. Each

falcon was carried upon a glove which could not be used for any other.

It bore the arms of the master, and was often embroidered with gold and

ornamented with jewels. In many kingdoms the office of Grand Falconer

was one of the greatest distinction and importance. In France the

emoluments of this dignitary were eighty thousand francs a year, and

gentlemen of rank eagerly competed for the subordinate employments at

his disposal.

The supreme ambition of baronial life was the fame that attached to

martial deeds and romantic adventure. The first care of the noble was

to secure himself against the treachery and violence of his neighbors.

His castle, perched upon a lofty eminence, was furnished with every

device to render it impregnable. The most incessant vigilance was

adopted to provide against surprise. In front of the gateway, or

projected from the summit of the keep and overhanging the moat, was a

gibbet, a significant reminder to malefactors of the consequences of

violated law or resisted oppression. By the over-scrupulous, immunity

was purchased from the Church with the proceeds of the spoliation of

the helpless. On all sides--in the bloody traditions of the moated

stronghold, with its subterranean dungeons and its instruments of

torture; in the license of the armored troop that rode down the

ripening harvest and levied blackmail on the trader and the pilgrim; in

the perpetual labors of the uncomplaining serf; in the outraged modesty

of weeping womanhood; in the summary execution of suspected offenders

against feudal privilege,--everywhere were visible the brutalizing

effects of unrestrained cruelty and irresponsible power.

But with all their defects, the baronial institutions of mediæval times

bestowed upon society advantages that in some measure compensated

for the evil which they too often occasioned. The military tastes

of the age gave rise to the laws of chivalry and the institution of

knighthood, whence in turn were derived graces and amenities of social

intercourse hitherto unpractised by the savage warriors of Gallic and

Saxon Europe.

The tournament was, as might be imagined, the most popular of the

diversions of the Middle Ages. From far and near multitudes flocked

to the scene of martial skill and splendor. The town where it was

held presented the aspect of an immense fair. For leagues around

the country was dotted with tents, and with pavilions surmounted by

the pennons of the chivalry of many lands. The retinues of prince

and noble not infrequently assumed the dimensions of an army. The

followers of Gottfried, Duke von Löwen, at Trazignies in 1169 numbered

three thousand. At a tournament near Soissons in 1175, Count Baldwin

von Hennegau appeared with an escort of a hundred knights and twelve

hundred esquires. The blazons of the most ancient and celebrated houses

of Europe were conspicuous in the vast encampment. Kings frequently

held their courts within its precincts. All classes were in holiday

garb. The magnificence of the spectacle was enhanced by gorgeously

caparisoned horses, damascened harnesses, waving plumes, many

colored silks, sparkling jewels, the parade of men-at-arms, the pomp

of marching squadrons, the resplendent charms of female beauty. The

contest, repeatedly, but without effect, prohibited by the edicts of

Pope and Council, was conducted with all the ferocity of battle. The

thirst of blood predominated over every other sentiment. It was not an

unusual occurrences for scores of knights to be carried lifeless from

the lists after one of these fierce encounters.

The point of honor which inspired the conduct of the mediæval

champion of distressed innocence and avenger of privileged oppression

had no existence among the most civilized races of antiquity. The

individuality implied by its exercise could not be comprehended by

communities whose members, while capable of renouncing every tie of

kindred in behalf of the interests of the state and of undergoing

the most severe privations to sustain the national supremacy, were

prevented by the peculiar circumstances of their surroundings from

appreciating the qualities which ennobled even the vices of the knight

of the Middle Ages. Without this prominent and compensating feature the

condition of society during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries

would have been one of unredeemed and unequivocal barbarism.

The coarse though abundant fare of the castle board, the more delicate

but still far from dainty viands of the monastic refectory, the

boisterous amusements which occupied the leisure and menaced the safety

of the participants, the drunken revels of gluttonous banquets, the

incessant perils of domestic warfare, to which baron and monk were

alike exposed, were suggestive of absolute happiness and luxury when

contrasted with the conditions under which was sustained the miserable

existence of the serf. His habitation was shared by beasts of burden,

the companions of his daily and nightly toil. Composed of unhewn logs

or of sticks wattled with rushes, thatched with straw and plastered

with mud, its primitive and defective construction afforded little

security against the vicissitudes of the climate or the inclemency

of the seasons. Through a hole in the centre of the roof the smoke

emerged and the storm descended; the walls were blackened with soot;

the earthen floor was covered with a trampled litter of hay, mingled

with bones and the decaying fragments of many a repast which the

occupants had never taken the trouble to remove. Of furniture there

was almost none; a bench, perhaps, and a table of unsmoothed planks

answered the simple requirements of the hapless villain. He reposed

upon a heap of straw with a block of wood for a pillow; the few

culinary utensils he possessed were of the rudest description, and

had been fashioned by the hand of the owner. No provision was made

for the decencies of life or the safeguards of virtue, which were

indeed unknown; the family occupied a common apartment, and often a

single bed, while the grunting of swine and the lowing of oxen, which

animals ranged at will through the dwelling, were sounds too familiar

to disturb the slumbers of the drowsy household. The accumulated filth

of years, combined with indescribable personal neglect and revolting

customs, attracted and multiplied swarming multitudes of every species

of vermin. The garments of the peasant, usually of skins, descended

uncleansed and unchanged from father to son through many generations,

bearing in their contaminated folds the germs of pestilence and death.

Where the circumstances of the serf were not sufficiently prosperous

to afford even this protection against the weather, his shivering

limbs were wrapped with ropes of straw. His head was uncovered, often

even in the depth of winter. The most obvious precautions of hygiene

were neglected; the simplest precepts of medical science had not

yet penetrated to the isolated communities of Western Europe or were

sedulously discountenanced by the interests of superstition; and the

plague, assisted by favorable climatic conditions, as well as by the

physical debasement and the fears of the people, at each visitation

numbered its victims by myriads. With game in every grove and fish

in every stream, the famishing peasant was often reduced to appease

his hunger with unwholesome roots and bark when the meal of chestnuts

and acorns, his most luxurious fare, was wanting. The severity of

the forest laws visited upon the poacher, even when impelled by the

pangs of starvation to trespass on the seignioral demesnes, the most

barbarous of punishments. Around the monastery and the castle were

visible the signs of unskilled and reluctant cultivation; but not

far away was a wilderness diversified with vast forests, majestic

rivers, and pestilential marshes. Intercommunication was irregular

and limited to populous districts; many villages of no inconsiderable

dimensions were as completely separated from the outside world as if

they stood on islands in the midst of the ocean. Barter of commodities

necessarily prevailed in the almost entire absence of money; there

was no opportunity for the establishment of trade; no incitement to

agricultural industry; no work for the artisan. The accumulation of

property was effectually discouraged through the incapacity of the

laborer to retain or enjoy it when his hopes were constantly frustrated

by the insinuating artifices of the priest or the significant threats

of the noble. The extortions of the inexorable tax-receiver, the

inhumanity of licensed hirelings, the enormities countenanced by

baronial tyranny, carried dismay into every hamlet. Epidemics appeared

without warning, and spread with mysterious and appalling rapidity;

the death-rate was frightful; fatal symptoms developed almost with

the first attack, while in the ignorance of rational treatment the

application of relics and the mummeries of the clergy proved signally

ineffectual to avert what was considered the vengeance of Heaven.

Confined in the lazar-house with hundreds of his fellow-sufferers or

banished to a lonely hut, far from the haunts of men, the hapless

leper dragged out his melancholy existence in pain, in disgrace, in

penury. The law declared him civilly dead. With a ceremony not less

solemn than that performed over the remains of a Christian actually

deceased, the priest announced his final separation from the society

of mankind. His body was enveloped in a shroud. He was laid upon a

bier. With the repetition of the legal formula which consigned him

to a life of odium and sorrow, a few garments and necessary utensils

were placed in his hands. He was forbidden to eat with any person but

a leper; to wash his hands in running water; to give away any object

he had touched; to frequent places of public resort; even to enter the

house of a relative or a friend. With his shoulders covered with a

tattered scarlet mantle,--a danger-signal, visible from afar,--hideous

to the sight, emaciated to a skeleton, and horribly scarred with

disease, he crouched by the wayside, sounding his rattle to arouse

the compassion and solicit the charity of the passer-by. Deprived of

civil rights and debarred from invoking the protection of the law, he

was, however, not wholly an outcast, for with the exclusion from these

privileges he became the ward and vassal of the Church. So loathed and

dreaded was his malady--often considered a divine penalty for crime

or sacrilege--that no physician could be induced to employ the scanty

medical science of the day for the alleviation of his sufferings; and,

even if wealthy, he was abandoned to the suspicious ministrations of

wizards, barbers, and charlatans. Shunned as accursed and repulsive

during his lifetime, when dead he was unceremoniously buried under the

floor of his hovel.

The segregation of lepers in the Middle Ages, as a measure of public

safety, was productive of singular results in subsequent times. The

disease, which at different periods seems to have been both infectious

and contagious, gradually disappeared. But the prejudice attaching to

the posterity of the unfortunate outcasts, formerly cut off from all

intercourse with their fellow-men, and who formed isolated communities,

still remained. The origin of that prejudice was completely forgotten.

The people in their ignorance attributed the cause of their enmity

to religious differences. It was believed that the objects of their

unreasoning aversion were variously sprung from the Goths, the Jews,

the Saracens, the Albigenses. Modern research, however, has definitely

established the fact that the former pariahs of Southwestern Europe,

known in Languedoc and Gascony as Capots and Gahets, in Brittany

as Cacous, in the Pyrenees as Cagots, in Spain as Agotes, were the

descendants of mediæval lepers. A century has hardly elapsed since

these victims of popular antipathy have been divested of that suspicion

of uncleanness which was their ancient and unhappy heritage.

In the disorganized state of society which everywhere prevailed,

facilities for the profitable and friendly intercourse which promote

the intelligence and contribute to the temporal welfare of nations

could not exist. Even in provinces of the same country the professional

robber and the bandit noble united to imperil the life and seize the

merchandise of the trader. The courses of the old Roman highways,

unused for centuries, concealed by rubbish and sometimes overgrown

with forests, had been utterly lost. There was no provision made by

the state for the protection of commerce, and the universal insecurity

discouraged the schemes of private enterprise. The mortality resulting

from habitual violation of the most obvious sanitary laws, from the use

of insufficient and innutritious food, from the hardships of incessant

toil, and from daily exposure to the elements, effectually retarded the

increase of population. That district was fortunate indeed where even

a uniform standard was preserved. In many localities in kingdoms where

modern civilization has achieved her most signal triumphs, a solitary

shepherd pasturing his flock, or a tottering hovel standing in the

centre of a dismal waste, alone proclaimed the presence of man.

The condition of the towns, where an improvement in the manner of

living might reasonably have been expected, was in but few respects

superior to that of the scattered villages and isolated settlements of

the country. Even the main thoroughfares were narrow, tortuous, and

dirty. Without drainage or adequate municipal supervision, they were

receptacles for the refuse of the household and the offensive carcasses

of dead and decaying animals. Even as late as the reign of Francis

I., the hogs belonging to the monks of St. Anthony, who asserted and

exercised special privileges for the animals sacred to their patron,

wandered at will through the fashionable quarters of the metropolitan

city of Paris. From the overhanging balconies filthy slops were dashed,

without warning, upon the head of the unwary passer-by. By night,

daring criminals, secure from the risk of punishment, plied their

lawless calling in these dismal and unlighted lanes. He who ventured,

unattended, to thread the maze of alleys that wound through even the

most frequented quarters of great cities did so at peril of his life.

Each corner formed a convenient lair for the lurking assassin. The

projecting gables of the houses aided in obscuring the gloomy footways.

As the citizen stood in constant fear of robbers, his dwelling was

always barred and silent. No light was visible anywhere save the

flickering gleam in the lantern carried by the trembling pedestrian,

always on his guard against some prowling assailant. Sometimes the mud

was so deep that locomotion was impossible for the bearers of sedans,

and women were carried from place to place upon the backs of porters,

as the narrow and crooked streets precluded the use of vehicles drawn

by horses. In the habitations of even those considered wealthy, a

general air of discomfort was prevalent. The apartments were dark,

ill-ventilated, and unclean. In the windows plates of horn and sheets

of oiled paper supplied the place of glass, which was practically

unknown. No carpet covered the floors, which were strewn with rushes.

The foul surroundings assisted materially in the propagation of fevers

and the spread of contagion. Provision for frequent ablution, so

conducive to personal comfort as well as to immunity from disease,

was unheard of. In many of the most populous capitals of Europe not

a single public bath could be found. The attire of the prosperous

burgher and merchant was prescribed by sumptuary laws dictated by the

jealous spirit of the aristocracy, who could not tolerate a display of

plebeian splendor to which their own resources were unable to attain.

Their garments were limited to coarse woollen stuffs, whose cut and

fashion were regulated according to the capricious decisions of the

court. The use of golden ornaments and jewels, so indispensable to

the gratification of female vanity, was prohibited to the wives and

daughters of their households, who were also restricted to a sombre

and unattractive garb. In some instances this contemptible exercise of

authority went still further. It dictated the quantity and quality of

the food and the beverages to be consumed at the table of the citizen,

the description and the price of the light which illumined his home

and of the fuel that warmed him. If he had anything to sell, he was

paid by his superiors in the product of a debased coinage or with

counterfeit money, whose manufacture was everywhere prosecuted with

comparative impunity.

Drunkenness was so prevalent in England during the reign of Edgar

that restrictions were placed upon the quantity of liquor to be

consumed,--the amount allowed each guest being indicated by a mark

on the side of the cup or the drinking-horn. The observance of these

tyrannical and senseless ordinances was secured by a harassing system

of espionage and informers, and their violation was punished by

ruinous fines and by condemnation to the stocks or the pillory. The

publication and enforcement of sumptuary laws necessarily prevented

the development of commerce, already greatly retarded by the prevalent

barbarism and poverty of the age. Countries enjoying unlimited natural

resources of soil, minerals, timber, and water-power, and whose noble

streams only required a portion of the energy and enterprise of man

to bring the fertile regions they traversed into intimate contact

with the humanizing influences and exquisite products of the highest

civilization, were as backward as the savage kingdoms of central Africa

are to-day.

A good index of the force of the bigoted prejudice and public

intolerance of the time is discernible in the treatment universally

received by the Jew. He was the financier, the physician, the merchant,

the broker, the scholar of the Middle Ages. He managed with eminent

success the fiscal departments of vast empires and kingdoms. In the

great catastrophes which overwhelmed entire nations,--amidst the want

and despair occasioned by earthquakes, wars, famine, pestilence,--his

shrewdness and his resources always afforded relief to the suffering

induced by the prevalent evils, although it must be confessed rarely

without exorbitant compensation. His medical talents and surgical

skill brought him under the ban of the clergy as a dealer in magic; but

neither the statutes of Parliament nor the anathemas of priests could

deprive him of the protection and friendship of orthodox monarchs, or

of even the Sovereign Pontiff himself. True to the adventurous and

acquisitive character of his race, he introduced the knowledge and

use of foreign commodities in lands rarely trodden by the foot of

the stranger, defying the storms of sea and ocean, braving alike the

unprincipled rapacity of the noble, the violence of the highwayman,

the perils of remote and unexplored solitudes. In maritime cities

he established depôts for the importation and exchange of every

description of merchandise. His credit and his tact enabled him to

negotiate loans for improvident princes, which, more than once, saved

distressed nations from bankruptcy. Amidst the multifarious variety

of his occupations, he found time for the recreation derived from the

pursuits of literature. In this sphere, as in all others to which

he devoted his talents, he attained to the highest distinction. In

philosophy, in astronomy, in chemistry, in mathematics, his opinions

were regarded by his contemporaries with the reverence attaching to

oracles. His poetry and his eloquence delighted such courts as those of

Cordova and Bagdad; his erudition instructed and his genius illumined

schools like those of Salerno, Montpellier, and Narbonne.

How then did society reward such inestimable benefits? Alas! for

the credit of humanity, it must be confessed that the intolerance

fostered by centuries of hatred obliterated every generous impulse,

every sentiment of gratitude. The remembrance of the decision of

the Sanhedrim, the story of the sacrifice on Calvary, extinguished

in the minds of the fanatical populace the sense of any subsequent

obligation. The anniversary of that tremendous event was the signal

for insult and outrage. The most heinous accusations, many of them

extravagant and improbable in their very nature, were brought by

popular clamor, instigated by ecclesiastical malice, against the

defenceless Hebrew. His commercial relations with the East had

introduced the leprosy. The plague was caused by poison which he had

thrown into the wells. The meat he sold was sometimes whispered to

be human flesh; and the milk he dealt in not yielded by the cow, but

drawn from the breasts of the females of his household. He kidnapped

children, whose blood he made use of in the concoction of magical

potions. On Good Friday, aided by his kinsmen, he re-enacted the

tragedy of Golgotha, the victim being a Christian youth who played,

perforce, the _rôle_ of the Saviour, and who, with unavailing

struggles and lamentations, endured the humiliation and agony of the

Crucifixion. Kings, merely by proclamation, appropriated the Jews of

their realms as the absolute property of the crown. Then, by virtue

of this arbitrary proceeding, they confiscated the possessions of

these victims of royal avarice, under pretence of fines or ransom.

Under these significant circumstances it requires no extraordinary

degree of discernment to perceive that the wealth of the Jews was the

principal cause of their persecution. By their talents and industry

they had reached the highest posts in the learned professions; had

monopolized the trade; had controlled, to a greater or less extent,

the policy of every government in Christendom. Under Charlemagne and

Louis le Debonnair their condition was more prosperous than under

succeeding monarchs for eight hundred years. In every walk of life

they received the consideration merited by their commanding abilities.

Their influence was unrivalled. They maintained royal state. Great

concessions were made to their convenience and religious prejudices.

Their prosperity excited the envy of the rabble. Their influence with

the monarch enraged the courtiers. The clergy, whose profits were

reduced by their enterprise and whose monopolies they antagonized by

their insinuating arts, regarded them with the double hatred engendered

by imperilled temporal interests and ferocious bigotry. Among every

class and rank their superior intelligence was believed to be due

to sacrilegious bargains with the powers of darkness. The prejudice

attaching to their name and religion always afforded a specious pretext

for persecution. In every Christian kingdom they were the objects of

popular execration. They were unceremoniously robbed by the government.

They were banished without notice. Their debtors were encouraged to

repudiate contracts made with them. The officials of the Inquisition

took exquisite pleasure in burning Hebrews, always selecting the

most wealthy for its victims. Of the one hundred and sixty thousand

persons burnt or disciplined during the twenty-eight years comprising

the administrations of Torquemada and Ximenes as Inquisitors-General,

the majority were of that unfortunate race. The cause of a Jew was

prejudged before every tribunal, and it was often difficult for him

to obtain a hearing, and still more to secure the protection to which

he was legally entitled. Under such intolerable oppression it is not

strange that he should, by the adoption of unprincipled methods and by

the exaction of enormous usury, have endeavored to compensate himself,

in some degree, for the degradation and hardships he was compelled to

undergo. This course, however, only intensified the popular hatred

until the term Jew was considered the epitome of all dishonor, deceit,

and unprincipled villany. These discreditable prejudices, dictated by

general ignorance and by the sacerdotal malice of the Middle Ages,

are still, it is well known, far from being eradicated even by the

superior understanding and liberal opinions of the twentieth century.

The universal distress which afflicted the peasantry, as well as the

poorer classes of the cities, is revealed by the inhumanity with which

they were accustomed to treat their offspring. Robbed and oppressed by

both priest and baron, and barely able to eke out a miserable existence

by themselves, they regarded the birth of an infant as a domestic

calamity. Parents deliberately abandoned their children in unfrequented

places to perish by starvation or to be torn to pieces by birds of

prey. Many were drowned like puppies. Some were buried alive. Others

were deposited at the doors of churches and convents, where they were

often killed by dogs. The extent of the evil, as well as the prevalent

immorality existing in a single country, may be inferred from the fact

that the Hospital of Santa Cruz, founded by Cardinal Mendoza of Spain

in the sixteenth century, received and sheltered during twenty years

more than thirteen thousand foundlings.

The great epidemics that from time to time raged throughout Europe

afford glimpses of the life and character of the people not readily

obtained from other sources. Medical science recognizes to-day that the

principal causes of such visitations are private uncleanness and the

accumulation of filth in public places. During the Middle Ages, the

regulations of sanitary police were wholly unknown. On every side heaps

of garbage and putrefying offal met the eye and offended the nostrils.

The necessity for the thorough ventilation and drainage of dwellings

was unsuspected. The prejudice against bathing, which universally

existed, was partly due to the example of the clergy, who were not

supposed to have time to spare from their sacred duties to care for

their persons, and partly due to contempt for the Mohammedans, whose

lustrations were a peremptory religious duty. As Christianity spread,

the practice of ablution gradually declined. The Roman thermæ, one of

the wonders of the capital, were at first abandoned and afterwards

utilized as quarries for the palace and the cathedral. A general idea

prevailed that the ceremony of baptism removed all necessity for the

subsequent application of water to the body. Filth became a test of

devotion, and, following the example of their spiritual guides, the

multitude came finally, by the natural law of association, to regard

the unsavory manifestations of personal neglect as _prima-facie_

evidence of Christian orthodoxy. Thus, sanctioned by public opinion

and confirmed by ecclesiastical authority, a stigma was placed upon

cleanliness, and a premium offered for corporeal foulness and offensive

surroundings. Those who violated the established custom were in

danger of being denounced as heretics. It was one of the most serious

accusations against the Emperor Frederick II. that he was addicted to

the frequent use of the bath. Among the upper classes of society, the

unpleasant consequences of untidy habits were in a measure neutralized

by the excessive use of strong perfumes, such as musk, civet, and

ambergris. Among the lower orders many of the physical conditions

of life were indescribable. In the vicinity of towns, as well as of

isolated habitations, equal negligence of the laws of health prevailed.

From the moat, with its stagnant waters reeking with the refuse of

the castle, to the vast marshes, with their exhalations poisoning

the air around the hut of the shepherd, the atmosphere was charged

with the miasma of death. When to the effects of such surroundings

were added the depressing influences of contagion and terror, the

results were appalling. The plague of the sixth century, whose course

raged unchecked from the Bosphorus to the Atlantic, desolated entire

countries; the Black Death of the fourteenth carried off seventy-five

million persons, one-half the inhabitants of Christendom. So favorable

to the spread of the pestilence were the climatic conditions of the

country and the personal habits of the people of England that the

majority of them perished in a few months by a single visitation

of this dreadful epidemic. It so diminished the population that

the pursuits of mechanical industry were seriously and permanently

affected. Wages became higher than ever before, and legislation

concerning the vexed question of the mutual rights of employer and

employed was inaugurated, a question which has not been settled to the

present day. The vicinity of the dying and the dead carried with it

almost certain infection. Even the extraordinary brilliancy of the eyes

of patients suffering from delirium was supposed, in conformity with

the prevailing superstition, to convey a malignant and fatal influence

upon all within the range of their glances. The air was so tainted

that domestic animals, cattle, horses, sheep, even the birds, died by

hundreds of strange and fatal distempers. The mortality was so great in

some districts that the helpless convalescents were unable to perform

the burial rites for their friends and neighbors. Ships encumbered with

the corpses of their crews drifted about in the ocean without sailor

or helmsman. Men became insane through fright, and thousands committed

suicide. The wealthy flocked to the churches and poured their gold

upon the altars; but for once ecclesiastical avarice was forgotten,

and the timid priests, through dread of the scourge, often refused

the proffered treasure. As a result of the universal consternation

inspired by the calamity, negligent and hasty interment was, in many

instances, responsible for the rapid propagation of the pestilence.

Multitudes of corpses, covered only with a thin layer of earth, were

placed in shallow trenches. Others were cast into the rivers, to be in

time lodged against their banks, fresh sources of contagion and death.

Through all these scenes of physical and mental agony no scientific

medical aid was available. The few skilled Jewish practitioners, who,

graduates of the schools of the Moslem, had ventured into the dangerous

precincts of Christian courts, were looked upon with suspicion as

professors of sorcery and members of a proscribed and accursed race.

In the South of France it was unlawful to consult them or to receive

their prescriptions. No correct theories were entertained concerning

the cause and prevention of disease, even by the intelligent and

educated. The malady was attributed to the active intervention of the

devil or his agents, and the sick were bound and brought, dozens at a

time, to the Church as the most suitable place for exorcism, where,

in general, their sufferings were speedily terminated by agony and

neglect. There was no comfort for the terrified but the whispers of

the confessional; no resource for the pest-stricken sufferer but the

Host and the reliquary. Indeed, it was but natural that these should

be appealed to for succor, for it had long been assiduously taught

that Divine wrath was the immediate cause of all physical misfortune.

The pestilence was now considered a tremendous judgment for the

derelictions of mankind. The ravings of insanity and delirium were

declared to be due to possession by demons, only to be relieved by

bell, book, and candle, and all the manifold impostures of sacerdotal

mummery. During the continuance of the plague the Church prospered

amazingly, as she always does prosper by the woes and the misery of

mankind. Her gains were far greater than during the Crusades. The zeal

of the devout, the superstitious fear and remorse of the wicked, alike

paid enormous tribute to her rapacity. Valuable estates were devised by

dying penitents to her ministers. Sumptuous cathedrals were raised and

endowed by the grateful piety of those who attributed their recovery to

the intercession of her saints. Monasteries and chapels were founded

by those whom her prayers were supposed to have rescued from the very

jaws of death. The portable wealth of empires poured daily into her

treasury. But all these sacrifices, all this generosity, all this

religious display, afforded no perceptible relief. If they proved

anything, they demonstrated effectually the worthlessness of cure by

the resorting to shrines and the application of relics. The pestilence

ceased its ravages on account of the want of material, not because its

progress was stayed by priestly intercession. But while its violence

abated and its characteristic symptoms disappeared, its effects

remained, and it bequeathed a frightful legacy to posterity. Although

respectable medical authority has contended for a different origin of

the disease, there can be little doubt in the minds of those who have

thoroughly familiarized themselves with the subject that syphilis is

either the result of a recrudescent form of leprosy or of a modified

morbid condition developed from the plague. Such is a portion of the

foul inheritance for which the twentieth century is indebted to the

ignorance, the filth, and the superstition of the Middle Ages.

Wretched as was the physical condition of the people of Europe, their

moral state was even more deplorable. The revolting characteristics

and manners of the clergy have already been considered in these

pages. Under such instructors, whose admonitions were so palpably at

variance with their unholy lives, it cannot be wondered at that society

was permeated with treachery and hypocrisy. It is one of the most

remarkable of mental phenomena that man should earnestly solicit the

intercession of the members of a sacred profession with Heaven, while

at the same time he demonstrates unequivocally by his actions that

he has no respect for their calling and no faith in their prayers.

Such was largely the case of the Roman Catholics of the Dark Ages.

They lavished their wealth with unstinted profusion upon the Church.

They greeted her ministers with servile tokens of respect and homage.

They sought her advice in worldly affairs; they obeyed her oppressive

edicts; they voluntarily relinquished their natural rights at her

despotic bidding. But when opportunity offered, the insincerity of

these professions became unmistakably evident. In the midst of the

apparent blind and devoted subserviency to the principles of a debased

religion, ancient Pagan ideas were constantly manifesting themselves.

The worship of fairies, often scarcely concealed, was widespread

throughout the Christian world. The knight placed far more confidence

in his armor, consecrated by heathen ceremonies, than in the reliquary

that was attached to his saddle-bow or the Agnus Dei suspended about

his neck. The anxious housewife on the eve of a feast preferred to

address her petitions to some popular and beneficent Pagan spirit,

accustomed to good living and luxury, than to a female saint with

whom abstinence was a duty, and whose life had been passed amidst the

privations of the convent or the hermitage.

The death of a pope was hailed with indecorous joy in every quarter

of Rome. The election of a new pontiff was the signal for disorder,

riot, massacre. Yelling mobs filled the streets, singing impious and

obscene songs. The most indecent actions were perpetrated in the face

of open day. The papal palace was repeatedly sacked and its precious

contents destroyed. The mansions of the cardinals and the nobility

were plundered. It was not safe for these dignitaries to appear in

public until the popular excitement had subsided, and the death of

the spiritual sovereign of the Christian world was often concealed

until his successor had been chosen, in order to prevent the scenes

of anarchy certain to result if this precaution was not taken. So

far from conceding divine attributes to the pontifical character,

the Roman populace habitually and openly derided its pretensions to

infallibility. It not infrequently interfered with the freedom of the

conclave and, intimidating the cardinals, dictated the selection of a

pope. If such was the disrespect manifested by the inhabitants of the

papal capital towards the head of the Church, little courtesy could be

expected by his ecclesiastical subordinates anywhere. The veneration

they claimed by reason of their calling was offered only by the more

ignorant of the masculine sex and by women. The latter, more weak and

credulous in their nature, were the bulwark of superstition, as indeed

they have always been in every age. But with the educated the case

was far different. As has been already remarked, the ecclesiastic was

represented in the most popular writings of the time as a foolish,

licentious, and degraded hypocrite. Public opinion would not have

tolerated this holding up the sacerdotal profession to derision had

there not been ample provocation for such a course. There are good

reasons for believing that the awkward and disgraceful predicaments

of profligate clerks described in the entertaining pages of the Cent

Nouvelles Nouvelles, Boccaccio, Poggio, the Queen of Navarre, and

similar collections were actual occurrences. It is indisputable that

many of these tales were obtained from the archives of religious

houses and the humorous traditions of monastic life. The existence

of universal corruption among the regular clergy indicated by these

satirical authors receives a significant illustration from the fact

that they invariably include the nunnery and the brothel in the

same category, and indiscriminately designate the heads of these

establishments by the title of “abbess.”

In the religious festivals and dramatic representations there also

appeared conspicuous indications of the prevalent irreverence and

mockery of the age. The most solemn and awful events of sacred history

were absurdly burlesqued amidst the jeers of a scoffing and delighted

mob. The grotesque features of these ceremonies were a survival of

the Roman Saturnalia not yet extinct among the less enlightened

peasantry of Europe. The most holy mysteries of the Church were

parodied in obscene and sacrilegious scenic exhibitions. The actors

in these profane representations were selected from the lower orders

of the priesthood. They assumed the characters of popes, cardinals,

bishops. Sometimes they were dressed in the vestments and equipped

with the insignia of their rank,--the tiara, the mitre, the crosier,

the crucifix; but often they donned the parti-colored attire of the

professional fool and jester and carried his truncheon. The mass was

celebrated in due form, but accompanied with a thousand extravagant

and often indecent gestures by these privileged buffoons. Men entirely

nude were conducted into the churches and deluged with pailfuls of

holy water. Old shoes burned in the censers filled the atmosphere with

a sickening stench. A repast was spread upon the altar, and all who

desired regaled themselves while the representative of the celebrant

recited the impressive service of the Church. In the mean time, the

aisles were swarming with maskers, whose coarse jests and lascivious

contortions evoked the applause and laughter of the audience. Men

gambled within the rail of the chancel. Every excess was indulged

in without check or remonstrance during the continuance of these

festivals. Debauchery ran riot even in the most holy places. Priests,

stripped of their clerical vestments, danced half-naked in the streets.

The bells were removed from the church-towers and concealed. During

the Feast of Asses, a donkey with his rider was conducted into the

choir, and the responses of the congregation were made in imitation of

the unmelodious voice of that useful but proverbially stupid animal.

In this instance, sausages seasoned with garlic supplied the place of

frankincense. In the celebration of another festival, a fox, dressed

in the habiliments of the Papacy, was carried in state by an escort of

mock cardinals. A quantity of poultry was distributed at intervals in

the streets through which this singular procession was to pass, and

when the fox, dropping his tiara and trailing his purple robes in the

dust, occasionally attempted to seize a hen, the delighted multitude

fairly rent the air with acclamations.

The dramas, known under the name of miracle and moral plays, were

often fully as depraved in tone and as demoralizing in effect as the

festivals. They owed their origin to the lively imagination and love

of spectacular display characteristic of the Greeks of Constantinople.

In some instances, the actors represented Scriptural personages, in

others the virtues and vices of an allegory. The greatest incongruities

of locality, time, and character were introduced without question

or criticism. With the absurdities of the plot were mingled impious

sentiments and vulgar witticisms. Notwithstanding the coarseness and

profanity of these dramas, their value in controlling the minds of

the impressionable populace was fully recognized by the hierarchy.

Generally enacted by members of the priesthood, funds were appropriated

from the treasury of the Church for their celebration, and indulgences

granted to induce pilgrims to attend them.

The dramatic spectacles of the Middle Ages were, however, not confined

to representations of a nominally religious character. As early as

the tenth century, the plays of the nun Hrotswitha were enacted in

monasteries and convents for the amusement of their inmates. These

productions, imitations of the comedies of Terrence, far surpassed the

latter in freedom of language and action. Their coarseness is such that

they will not bear translation. The poems of the same author, whose

life was ostensibly devoted to pious thoughts and communion with the

saints, are even more extraordinary. The sentiments they express and

the scenes they depict are the last which the reader would ordinarily

expect to find in compositions proceeding from such a source, and must

have been suggested by an extensive and varied experience.

These things, necessarily transitory in their character, have vanished

with the gross ignorance and credulity of mediæval life. But more

permanent memorials, carved upon the corbels, capitals, and architraves

of edifices dedicated to divine worship, disclose more forcibly, if

possible, the want of reverence for the rites of the Church, and the

callous indifference of the priesthood to what cannot be construed

otherwise than as a deliberate insult to religion. Monks, priests,

and bishops in full canonicals are depicted with the attributes of

cunning and filthy animals, such as foxes, wolves, asses, and baboons.

The hog is a favorite subject, and seems to have been considered by

the medieval sculptor as possessing traits peculiarly applicable

to delineations of monastic life and character. These grotesque

caricatures are frequently interspersed with indescribable obscenities.

A partial explanation of their occurrence may be found in the fact that

they were sculptured by the monks themselves. The latter were the only

class of their age skilled in the practice of the mechanical arts.

In their order was centred the architectural as well as the literary

knowledge of the time. They built and decorated their own churches and

abbeys. It is difficult to reconcile the spirit which could conceive

and execute such representations with that which could endure their

publicity, especially in the temples of God. For the fact is only too

well established that mediæval churchmen were far from being noted for

toleration. Still, the ruling sentiments of society in those days were

far different from those which obtain in ours. Its standard of morality

was lower, but, at the same time, it was evidently not disposed to

conceal its favorite vices. One thing, however, is certain, the

failings of the clergy were so open and notorious as to have become a

common jest, in whose merriment even the subjects themselves were not

ashamed to participate. It is not a pleasing reflection upon the state

of public morals that its teachers had not only become insensible to

contempt for their violation of human and divine laws, but encouraged

and even rewarded the preservation of their monstrous vices in

imperishable materials for the amazement and disgust of posterity.

With the fall of the Roman Empire the knowledge of letters, in

common with every other accomplishment, had departed. From the time

of Charlemagne, no instruction was accessible save that transmitted

through the doubtful medium of ecclesiastical institutions. That

monarch had imparted a great impulse to learning by the foundation

of academies; by attracting to his court the wisdom of other lands;

by the appointment of monastic chroniclers; and by the encouragement

of the Jews. As it was the policy of the Church to keep the masses

in ignorance, the scanty and general information to be derived from

that source was restricted to members of the privileged classes. The

general and incredible abasement of the people in those times may be

inferred from the fact that so late as 1590, when a mouse had devoured

the sacramental wafer in one of the churches of Italy, it was gravely

discussed by an ecclesiastical council convoked for that purpose, in

the presence of a pious and wondering audience, whether the Holy Ghost

had entered the animal or not, and if the demands of religion required

that it should be killed or be made an object of worship!

Many of the priesthood could neither read nor write, and, having

memorized the service by rote, celebrated mass like so many parrots,

as ignorant of what they were saying as their stolid congregations.

Bishops made their marks upon important documents with their fingers

dipped in sacramental wine. The books used in the service were more

esteemed for their pecuniary value than on account of the precepts

they contained. Their golden, jewel-studded covers often attracted the

cupidity of the brethren, who defaced, pawned, or bodily abstracted the

volumes as opportunity offered or their carnal necessities required.

Almost incredible difficulties attended the dissemination of learning.

In addition to the hostility, negligence, and incapacity of the clergy,

who were its privileged custodians, great expense was involved in the

manufacture of books. Parchment was generally of wretched quality and

commanded extravagant prices. The supply to be obtained by the erasure

of ancient manuscripts was limited, and, in the universal decline of

the arts, the knowledge of its preparation had been lost. The skins

which were brought to the monasteries were required to be cleaned

and smoothed by the writers themselves before they could be rendered

available. The time required for the completion of a book was a serious

impediment to the scholar. The transcription and illumination of a

manuscript often consumed years of arduous labor. With the Hebrews,

the copying of the Scriptures was a proceeding not less solemn than

the invocation of the sacred name of Jehovah. The materials were

prepared, with every precaution, by the orthodox of the Jewish faith.

The most dextrous and pious calligraphists were employed. Every other

occupation was abandoned until this holy task--whose performance was

considered as not less important than the celebration of the rites of

the synagogue--had been completed.

As a rule, the productions of the scribe and the illuminator were

considered too valuable to be used for any other than religious

purposes. The donation was accompanied with the ceremony of music and

prayer as the missal, often enclosed in an exquisite golden casket, was

deposited upon the altar.

It was only through political or pecuniary necessity, or to obtain

the favor of royalty, that these specimens of art were allowed, even

temporarily, to leave the hands of their owners. In 1190 the Bishop

of Ely pawned with the Jews of Cambridge thirteen volumes, to aid in

obtaining the ransom of Richard Cœur de Lion. To secure the loan of

a single missal, a king of France was compelled to give a bond, with

his nobles as sureties, and to deposit with the cathedral chapter a

quantity of plate of enormous value. One of the kings of Northumberland

gave a productive estate for a copy of the Gospels. The Elector of

Bavaria offered a city in exchange for a manuscript, and was refused.

The illuminated romance of chivalry, worth more than its weight in

gold, was the most highly prized possession of the opulent baron.

So valuable, in fact, were these treasures that those destined for

public inspection were fastened to the walls with massive chains, and

guardians were appointed to turn over the leaves. Peter de Nemours,

Bishop of Paris, on his departure for the Crusade, presented to

the Abbey of St. Victor “his great library, consisting of eighteen

volumes;” a gift at that time worth a prince’s ransom. It will be

seen from these examples that during the Middle Ages books were not

always at the command of the greatest princes, and a collection of a

few hundred volumes was a marvel; that of Queen Isabella contained two

hundred and one, of which sixty-seven were treatises on theology.

Other circumstances contributed to their scarcity. Written usually in a

learned language, it required a special education to read them, to say

nothing of their composition. The expensiveness of writing materials

prevented many from acquiring familiarity with the use of the pen. The

dimensions of leaves designed for various purposes were established

by law, but the original sizes into which a sheepskin could be folded

have been preserved in the quartos, octavos, and duodecimos of the

modern bookseller. As a menace to the irreverent and the dishonest,

the author frequently appended to his manuscript a malediction on

whomsoever should steal or mutilate the product of his industry.

The donor also added his imprecations upon the head of the borrower

when the book was presented to a church or monastery. As the modern

languages of Europe were not formed, communication by other than oral

means was not possible among the uneducated; and the art of writing was

in some localities entirely lost. With the great mass of the people the

word “library” was understood to mean the Holy Scriptures; they were

ignorant of the existence of any other books. The immense advantages

accruing to the clergy from the habitual use of an idiom unfamiliar to

the vulgar, as well as from the monopoly of the simplest rudiments of

knowledge, were not lost upon these shrewd observers of human nature.

The church became the point whence royal edicts were promulgated and

where commercial bargains were concluded. Proclamations were issued

at its doors. Contracts were entered into before its altar. Oaths

were taken upon the Scriptures and the crucifix. The Host was used in

the detection of criminals and in the solemnization of treaties. Land

was conveyed by the mere transfer of a twig or a clod of earth in the

presence of clerical witnesses. The cross still traced upon legal

documents by the hands of the illiterate, in lieu of a signature, is a

suggestive reminiscence of an age when the potency of ecclesiastical

influence was recognized in every important transaction of life.

The persecution of learning was systematized and maintained, first, by

the creation of theological odium, and subsequently by the institution

of such tribunals as the Holy Office; not through a desire to preserve

a becoming reverence for religious worship, but from a consciousness of

the inability of the existing system to withstand the examination of

reason. Heresy was a convenient and ever available pretext for crushing

that independence of thought which threatened the integrity of doctrine

or the permanence of sacerdotal supremacy. The Inquisition was, when

its real object is considered, as has already been stated, a temporal

rather than an ecclesiastical device. Its unspeakable atrocities and

their effects are too well known to require description. In refutation

of its claim as a means of moral purification may be introduced the

indisputable fact that during the period of its greatest power the

worst atheists, blasphemers, and criminals in Europe were to be found

masquerading in the cowl and the surplice. The outrages it committed

on humanity must be regarded as the legitimate results of the papal

system, which, inheriting to a great extent the organization, the

prestige, and the traditions of imperial authority, encouraged, by

immunity purchased with corruption and by the profligate example of the

Holy See, the neglect of every duty and the commission of every crime.

The exercise of the faculties of the human mind in the Dark Ages, when

they were permitted to develop and be employed for the benefit of

the Church,--their only profitable patron,--are eminently suggestive

of the capacity which it possessed when afforded encouragement. The

cathedrals, the carvings, and the missals, which, in their respective

departments of art, far surpass the efforts of modern times, are

appropriate examples of the scope and fertility of mediæval genius.

I have now endeavored to depict the general and more striking features

which distinguished society during the Middle Ages coincident with

the period of the Hispano-Arab domination. The description, from the

limited space allotted to the subject, is necessarily imperfect.

Volumes might still be composed on the events and customs of that

dismal period whose most prominent characteristic is the intellectual

degradation of mankind. The reader cannot have failed to remark, in

every instance--whether merely the trifling incidents of private life

were affected or whether the interests of extensive kingdoms were

involved--the incessant interference as well as the unquestioned

predominance of the ecclesiastical power. He cannot but respect, if

he is unable to admire, the commanding genius of an organization

which could appropriate and utilize with success the profound policy,

the consummate skill, the incomparable talents for administration,

the heartless selfishness, of its political exemplar and religious

prototype, the Roman Empire. He may turn with disgust from its crimes

and its horrors; from papal grandeur built upon forgery and maintained

by fraud and torture; from the shamelessness of monastic life; from

the duplicity of a system which could avail itself of the uncertain

caprices and hideous brutality of barbarian kings; from the repulsive

chronicles of famous churchmen, with their long catalogue of appalling

cruelties, their obscene and portentous legends. But while disapproving

of its methods, he must admit its eminent adaptability to secure the

end at which it aimed, and acknowledge that since the institution of

society no government has ever exercised such a powerful influence

over the bodies and minds of men as the Papacy. From that influence no

potentate, however great, was free. The reputation of many a mediæval

monarch and statesman with posterity is based, in reality, not upon

talents and merit, but upon the standing and relations he maintained

during his lifetime with the sacerdotal order.

In the universal ignorance of mankind, the familiar phenomena of nature

contributed to the ascendency of unprincipled charlatans, who based

their hopes of success and its necessary incidents, wealth, power, and

glory, on the invention and sedulous propagation of falsehood. The

personification of everything material and immaterial, the globe of

the earth, the sparkling orbs of the visible heavens, the sudden and

often unexpected effects of the action of the imponderable agents, the

most ordinary operation of nature’s laws, were classed as supernatural

manifestations, were engrafted upon religion and received the

obsequious homage of fear and superstition. The wily ecclesiastic never

forgot that

“Das Wunder ist des Glaubens liebstes Kind.”

Gnomes, witches, goblins, those imaginary denizens of the spiritual

world whose weird and mischievous antics were so well authenticated as

to strike the simple masses with terror and to cause even the learned

to shudder when their sins had not been removed by the godly solace of

confession and absolution, were enlisted as the allies of the politic

Church. By the aid of such auxiliaries and the ability to profit by

every phase of human weakness and every incitement to human ambition,

she has maintained her authority even under the most discouraging

circumstances until her achievements in defiance of law and progress,

arduous as they seem, are even less remarkable than the apparently

eternal duration of her empire.