Volume II Part 45 (2/2)

470 See Delepierre, Wright, and Alger.

471 This appears from the vision of Thurcill. (Wright's _Purgatory of St. Patrick_, p. 42.) Brompton (_Chronicon_) tells of an English landlord who had refused to pay t.i.thes. St. Augustine, having vainly reasoned with him, at last convinced him by a miracle. Before celebrating ma.s.s he ordered all excommunicated persons to leave the church, whereupon a corpse got out of a grave and walked away. The corpse, on being questioned, said it was the body of an ancient Briton who refused to pay t.i.thes, and had in consequence been excommunicated and d.a.m.ned.

472 Greg. _Dial._ iv. 40.

473 As Sismondi says: ”Pendant quatre-vingts ans, tout au moins, il n'y eut pas un Franc qui songeat a transmettre a la posterite la memoire des evenements contemporains, et pendant le meme es.p.a.ce de temps il n'y eut pas un personnage puissant qui ne bat.i.t des temples pour la posterite la plus reculee.”-_Hist. des Francais_, tome ii. p. 46.

474 Gibbon says of the period during which the Merovingian dynasty reigned, that ”it would be difficult to find anywhere more vice or less virtue.” Hallam reproduces this observation, and adds: ”The facts of these times are of little other importance than as they impress on the mind a thorough notion of the extreme wickedness of almost every person concerned in them, and consequently of the state to which society was reduced.”-_Hist. of the Middle Ages_, ch. i.

Dean Milman is equally unfavourable and emphatic in his judgment.

”It is difficult to conceive a more dark and odious state of society than that of France under her Merovingian kings, the descendants of Clovis, as described by Gregory of Tours. In the conflict of barbarism with Roman Christianity, barbarism has introduced into Christianity all its ferocity with none of its generosity and magnanimity; its energy shows itself in atrocity of cruelty, and even of sensuality. Christianity has given to barbarism hardly more than its superst.i.tion and its hatred of heretics and unbelievers.

Throughout, a.s.sa.s.sinations, parricides, and fratricides intermingle with adulteries and rapes.”-_History of Latin Christianity_, vol. i.

p. 365.

475 Greg. Tur. iv. 12. Gregory mentions (v. 41) another bishop who used to become so intoxicated as to be unable to stand; and St. Boniface, after describing the extreme sensuality of the clergy of his time, adds that there are some bishops ”qui licet dicant se fornicarios vel adulteros non esse, sed sunt ebriosi et injuriosi,” &c.-_Ep._ xlix.

476 Greg. Tur. iv. 12.

477 Ibid. viii. 29. She gave them knives with hollow grooves, filled with poison, in the blades.

478 Ibid. vii. 20.

479 Ibid. viii. 31-41.

480 Ibid. v. 19.

481 See his very curious correspondence with her.-_Ep._ vi. 5, 50, 59; ix. 11, 117; xi. 62-63.

482 Avitus, _Ep._ v. He adds: ”Minuebat regni felicitas numerum regalium personarum.”

483 See the emphatic testimony of St. Boniface in the eighth century.

”Modo autem maxima ex parte per civitates episcopales sedes traditae sunt laicis cupidis ad possidendum, vel adulteratis clericis, scortatoribus et publicanis saeculariter ad perfruendum.”-_Epist._ xlix. ”ad Zachariam.” The whole epistle contains an appalling picture of the clerical vices of the times.

484 More than one Council made decrees about this. See the _Vie de St.

Leger_, by Dom Pitra, pp. 172-177.

485 Greg. Tur. iv. 43. St. Boniface, at a much later period (A.D. 742), talks of bishops ”Qui pugnant in exercitu armati et effundunt propria manu sanguinem hominum.”-_Ep._ xlix.

486 Greg. Tur. iv. 26.

487 Ibid. iv. 20.

488 Ibid. iii. 26.

489 Ibid. ix. 34.

490 Ibid. viii. 19. Gregory says this story should warn clergymen not to meddle with the wives of other people, but ”content themselves with those that they may possess without crime.” The abbot had previously tried to seduce the husband within the precincts of the monastery, that he might murder him.

491 Ibid. v. 3.

492 Ibid. viii. 39. She was guilty of many other crimes, which the historian says ”it is better to pa.s.s in silence.” The bishop himself had been guilty of outrageous and violent tyranny. The marriage of ecclesiastics appears at this time to have been common in Gaul, though the best men commonly deserted their wives when they were ordained. Another bishop's wife (iv. 36) was notorious for her tyranny.

<script>