[656] Une malvese coustume souloit courre anciemment, si comme nos avons entendu des seigneurs de lois.—Cout. du Beauvoisis, cap. xxxviii. § 15.
[657] Hist. des Français, XVe Siècle, Hist. xiii.—The tariff of rewards paid to Blondel, and Beaumanoir’s argument in favor of mutilating a defeated champion, offer a strong practical commentary on the fundamental principles upon which the whole system of appeals to the judgment of God was based—that success was an evidence of right.
[658] Bysshe’s notes to Upton’s De Studio Militari, p. 36.
[659] Neilson’s Trial by Combat, p. 150.
[660] Hist. Monast. Figeacens. (Baluz. et Mansi IV. p. 1).
[661] Abbonis Floriac. Collect. Canon. can. ii.—Histor. Trevirens. (D’Achery Spicileg. II. 223).—Gerohi Reichersperg. de Ædificio Dei cap. VI.
[662] Schlegel Comment. ad Grágás, p. xxii.—Dasent, in his Icelandic Chronology (Burnt Njal, I. cciii.), places this in 1006, and Keyser (Religion of the Northmen, Pennock’s Trans. p. 258) in 1000.
[663] The kind of Christianity introduced may be estimated by the character of the Apostle of Iceland. Deacon Thangbrand was the son of Willibald Count of Saxony, and even after he had taken orders continued to ply his old vocation of viking or sea robbing. To get rid of him and to punish him, King Olaf Tryggvesson of Norway imposed upon him the task of converting Iceland, which he accomplished with the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other.—See Dasent, Burnt Njal, II. 361.—Olaf Tryggvesson’s Saga c. lxxx. (Laing’s Heimskringla, I. 441).
[664] Keyser, op. cit. p. 258.
[665] Saxon. Grammat. Hist. Dan. Lib. x.