itself with the white robes of Christ." Christian art, in its
earliest form of the Gothic style, dates from this epoch; the power and
riches of the Christian Church, in its different institutions, received,
at this crisis of the human imagination, a fresh impulse.

Other facts, some lamentable and some salutary, began, about this epoch,
to assume in French history a place which was destined before long to
become an important one. Piles of fagots were set up, first at Orleans
and then at Toulouse, for the punishment of heretics. The heretics of
the day were Manicheans. King Robert and Queen Constance sanctioned by
their presence this return to human sacrifices offered to God as a
penalty inflicted on mental offenders against His word. At the same time
a double portion of ire blazed forth against the Jews. "What have we to
do," it was said, "with going abroad to make war on Mussulmans? Have we
not in the very midst of us the greatest enemies of Jesus Christ?"
Amongst Christians acts of oppression and violence on the part of the
great against the small became so excessive and so frequent that they
excited in country parts, particularly in Normandy, insurrections which
the insurgents tried to organize into permanent resistance. "In several
counties of Normandy," says William of Jumieges, "all the peasants,
meeting in conventicles, resolved to live according to their own wills
and their own laws, not only in the heart of the forests, but also on the
borders of the rivers, and without care for any established rights. To
accomplish this design, these mobs of madmen elected each two deputies,
who were to form, at the central point, an assembly charged with the
execution of their decrees. So soon as the duke (Richard II.) was
informed thereof, he sent a large body of armed men to suppress this
audacity in the country parts, and to disperse this rustic assembly.
In execution of his orders, the deputies of the peasantry and many other
rebels were forthwith arrested; their feet and hands were cut off, and
they were sent home thus mutilated to deter their fellows from such
enterprises, and to render them more prudent, for fear of worse. After
this experience, the peasants gave up their meetings and returned to
their ploughs."

[Illustration: Knights returning from Foray----311]

This is a literal translation of the monkish chronicler, who was far from
favorable to the insurgent peasants, and was more for applauding the