[404] Sacred places and bodies of saints long since deceased, are but feeble safeguards against the outbreak or even moderate agency of human passions, which, in every country and under every form of superstition, act always in the same way.
[405] Aldhelmi Opera, page 28.
[406] The story of Silvester’s having baptized Constantine is considered as altogether unfounded. See Mosheim, vol. i.
[407] This, in Aldhelm, is the Labarum, or imperial standard.
[408] The place of his birth is contested.
[409] Geor. i. 103.
[410] “The Danube empties itself through six mouths into the Euxine. The river Lycus, formed by the conflux of two little streams, pours into the harbour of Constantinople a perpetual supply of fresh water, which serves to cleanse the bottom, and to invite the periodical shoals of fish to seek their retreat in the capacious port of Constantinople.”—Hardy.
[411] After all the researches of the last fifty years, the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” by Gibbon, will be found to contain the best history of these Byzantine emperors.
[412] His Turkish name was Killidge-Arslan: his kingdom of Roum extended from the Hellespont to the confines of Syria, and barred the pilgrimage of Jerusalem. (See De Guignes, tom. iii. p. 2, pp. 10–30.)—Hardy.
[413] When Urban II addressed the multitude from a lofty scaffold in the market-place of Clermont, inciting the people to undertake the crusade, he was frequently interrupted by the shout of thousands in their rustic idiom exclaiming “Deus lo vult!” “It is indeed the will of God!” replied the pope; “and let those words, the inspiration surely of the Holy Spirit, be for ever adopted as your war-cry.”—Hardy.