[11] See the Capitularies, passim.
[12] An illustrious Breton, the last man of the Middle Ages, who had gone on a bootless errand to convert Rome, received there some brilliant offers. “What do you want?” said the Pope.—“Only one thing: to have done with the Breviary.”
[13] The famous avowal made by Hincmar.
[14] Charles the Bald.—Trans.
[15] A difference too little felt by those who have spoken of the personal recommendation, &c.
[16] Grimm, Rechts Alterthümer, and my Origines du Droit.
[17] This befell the Count of Avesnes when his freehold was declared a mere fief, himself a mere vassal, a serf of the Earl of Hainault. Read, too, the dreadful story of the Great Chancellor of Flanders, the first magistrate of Bruges, who also was claimed as a serf.—Gualterius, Scriptores Rerum Francicarum, viii. 334.
CHAPTER III.
THE LITTLE DEVIL OF THE FIRESIDE.
There is an air of dreaming about those earlier centuries of the Middle Ages, in which the legends were self-conceived. Among countryfolk so gently submissive, as these legends show them, to the Church, you would readily suppose that very great innocence might be found. This is surely the temple of God the Father. And yet the penitentiaries, wherein reference is made to ordinary sins, speak of strange defilements, of things afterwards rare enough under the rule of Satan.