"We possess a catalogue," says M. Ampère (quoting d'Achery's Spicilegium, ii. 310), "of the library in the abbey of St. Riquier, written in 831; it consists of 256 volumes, some containing several works. Christian writers are in great majority; but we find also the Eclogues of Virgil, the Rhetoric of Cicero, the History of Homer, that is, the works ascribed to Dictys and Dares." Ampère, iii. 236. Can anything be lower than this, if nothing is omitted more valuable than what is mentioned? The Rhetoric of Cicero was probably the spurious books Ad Herennium. But other libraries must have been somewhat better furnished than this; else the Latin authors would have been still less known in the ninth century than they actually were.
In the gradual progress of learning, a very small number of princes thought it honourable to collect books. Perhaps no earlier instance can be mentioned than that of a most respectable man, William III., duke of Guienne, in the first part of the eleventh century. Fuit dux iste, says a contemporary writer, a pueritia doctus literis, et satis notitiam Scripturarum habuit; librorum copiam in palatio suo servavit; et si forte a frequentia causarum et tumultu vacaret, lectioni per seipsum operam dabat longioribus noctibus elucubrans in libris, donec somno vinceretur. Rec. des Hist. x. 155.
[t] Robertson, Introduction to Hist. Charles V. note 13; Schmidt, Hist. des Allemands, t. ii. p. 380; Hist. Littéraire de la France, t. vi.
[] Duelling, in the modern sense of the word, exclusive of casual frays and single combat during war, was unknown before the sixteenth century. But we find one anecdote which seems to illustrate its derivation from the judicial combat. The dukes of Lancaster and Brunswick, having some differences, agreed to decide them by duel before John king of France. The lists were prepared with the solemnity of a real trial by battle; but the king interfered to prevent the engagement. Villaret, t. ix. p. 71. The barbarous practice of wearing swords as a part of domestic dress, which tended very much to the frequency of duelling, was not introduced till the latter part of the 15th century. I can only find one print in Montfaucon's Monuments of the French monarchy where a sword is worn without armour before the reign of Charles VIII.: though a few, as early as the reign of Charles VI., have short daggers in their girdles. The exception is a figure of Charles VII. t. iii. pl. 47.
[x] Baluzii Capitularia, p. 444. It was prohibited by Louis the Debonair; a man, as I have noticed in another place, not inferior, as a legislator, to his father. Ibid. p. 668. "The spirit of party," says a late writer, "has often accused the church of having devised these barbarous methods of discovering truth—the duel and the ordeal; nothing can be more unjust. Neither one nor the other is derived from Christianity; they existed long before in the Germanic usages." Ampère, Hist. Litt. de la France, iii. 180. Any one must have been very ignorant who attributed the invention of ordeals to the church. But during the dark ages they were always sanctioned. Agobard, from whom M. Ampère gives a quotation, in the reign of Louis the Debonair wrote strongly against them; but this was the remonstrance of a superior man in an age that was ill-inclined to hear him.
[y] Ordeals were not actually abolished in France, notwithstanding the law of Louis above-mentioned, so late as the eleventh century (Bouquet, t. xi. p. 430), nor in England till the reign of Henry III. Some of the stories we read, wherein accused persons have passed triumphantly through these severe proofs, are perplexing enough: and perhaps it is safer, as well as easier, to deny than to explain them. For example, a writer in the Archæologia (vol. xv. p. 172) has shown that Emma, queen of Edward the Confessor, did not perform her trial by stepping between, as Blackstone imagines, but upon nine red-hot ploughshares. But he seems not aware that the whole story is unsupported by any contemporary or even respectable testimony. A similar anecdote is related of Cunegunda, wife of the emperor Henry II., which probably gave rise to that of Emma. There are, however, medicaments, as is well known, that protect the skin to a certain degree against the effect of fire. This phenomenon would pass for miraculous, and form the basis of those exaggerated stories in monkish books.
[z] The most singular effect of this crusading spirit was witnessed in 1211, when a multitude, amounting, as some say, to 90,000, chiefly composed of children, and commanded by a child, set out for the purpose of recovering the Holy Land. They came for the most part from Germany, and reached Genoa without harm. But, finding there an obstacle which their imperfect knowledge of geography had not anticipated, they soon dispersed in various directions. Thirty thousand arrived at Marseilles, where part were murdered, part probably starved, and the rest sold to the Saracens. Annali di Muratori, A.D. 1211; Velly, Hist. de France, t. iv. p. 206.
[a] Velly, t. iii. p. 295; Du Cange, v. Capuciati.
[] Velly, Hist. de France, t. v. p. 7; Du Cange, v. Pastorelli.
[c] Velly, Hist. de France, t. viii. p. 99. The continuator of Nangis says, sicut fumus subitò evanuit tota illa commotio. Spicilegium, t. iii. p. 77.