[16] The present writer recalls a similar glacial epoch in Paris during the early eighties, when the Seine was frozen over at Christmas time.
[17] By the law of 350 A.D. it was a capital offence to sacrifice to or honour the old gods. The persecuted had already become persecutors. Boissier, La Fin du Paganisme.
[18] "He soon hugs himself in ease at any price."
[19] To protect home producers against the competition of the Gallic wine and olive growers, Roman statesmen could conceive nothing better than the stupid expedient of prohibiting the culture of the vine and olive in Gaul.
[20] The favourite arm of the Franks, a short battle-axe, used as a missile or at close quarters.
[21] Again we quote from the Golden Legend.
[22] Her figure was a favourite subject for the sculptors of Christian churches. She usually bears a taper in her hand and a devil is seen peering over her shoulder. This symbolises the miraculous relighting of the taper after the devil had extinguished it. The taper was long preserved at Notre Dame.
[23] If we may believe Gregory of Tours, her arguments were vituperative rather than convincing. "Your Jupiter," said she, "is omnium stuprorum spurcissimus perpetrator."
[24] Merovée, second of the kings of the Salic Franks, was fabled to be the issue of Clodio's wife and a sea monster.
[25] Among the wives of Clothaire was the gentle Radegonde, who turned with horror from the bloody scenes of the palace to live in works of charity with the poor and suffering, and in holy communion with priests and bishops. She was at length consecrated a deaconess by St. Médard, donned the habit of a nun, and founded a convent at Poitiers, where the poet Fortunatus had himself ordained a priest that he might be near her. Radegonde's memory is dear to us in England, for it was a small company of her nuns who settled on the Green Croft by the river bank below Cambridge, and founded a priory whose noble church and monastic buildings were subsequently incorporated in Jesus College when the nunnery was suppressed by Bishop Alcock in 1496.