[111] How could the clergy be said to pay for these wars? What became of the vast sums raised by the sale of indulgences of all kinds? The clergy had the collecting of the offerings of the faithful, which we have seen was sometimes profitable. Besides, the barons and knights paid for their own and their vassals’ equipments as long as they had a coin left; then the king or leader, as Louis IX. did, sometimes helped them.—Trans.
[112] This is one of innumerable instances in the course of the work, in which the reader must regret that M. Michaud was not aware he was writing for the world; his views, and, I am sorry to say, his biasses, are exclusively French.—Trans.
[113] Surely he should have added to these, the human passions and mundane interests of these ignorant, independent tyrants.—Trans.
[114] Is not there always some such dominant principle in society? Is not money now as powerful as brute force or skill in arms were in the middle ages?—Trans.
[115] Nothing has been better said upon the influence of the clergy and religion, in the middle ages, than that which we read in a work entitled Des Intérêts et des Opinions, by M. Fievée:—“At a time in which the Church imposed public penitences, whilst the tribunals only ordered judgments by arms, we cannot see how the high police could not have fallen into the hands of the ecclesiastics; and it was because they alone exercised it, that, in the civil wars, fortunate princes confided to the monks the guarding of princes, from whom the fate of battle or treachery took the rights they possessed to share the kingdom. It was necessary that the void left by the laws should be filled up, or the state would perish; and the priests alone enjoyed a moral authority sufficiently great to supply the weakness of legislation;—exalted passions, more powerful virtues, great crimes, great remorse; a proud independence, salutary fears; an excess of force, and no regulations; courage in everything and everywhere: such was, at this period, the state of society;—it is easy to perceive that religion alone contended with barbarism.” We regret not to be able to quote more than a fragment of a work filled with ingenious perceptions and profound views, upon the march of civilization in the middle ages.
[116] The author of A Memoir to serve as a New History of Louis XII. carries the first appearance of judicial reform in France to the reign of that monarch. He has prosecuted on this subject learned researches, and his work has given us much information upon the spirit and the march of our legislation in the middle ages. Although we do not always agree as to the consequences of the principles he develops, particularly as to their application to that which is passing at present, we take pleasure in rendering justice to the rare sagacity with which he has cleared up questions which have been scarcely perceived by our best historians.
[117] La Fontaine.
[118] And yet Marseilles had been a flourishing port for ages. In the early crusades it did not belong to the French monarchy.—Trans.
[119] “A skilful man, appointed to view and make a report of a thing,” in this case; but it has several other meanings; as a man of worth, probity, or even valour.—Trans.
[120] Hotspur says to his lady—