the same
narrative, seemingly without any great sense of incongruity, how he
murdered his own relations and guests, and who not?--how he massacred
9000 Bulgars to whom he had given hospitality; how he kept a harem of
three queens, and other women so numerous that Fredegarius cannot mention
them; and also how, accompanied by his harem, he chanted among the monks
of St. Denis; how he founded many rich convents; how he was the friend,
or rather pupil, of St. Arnulf of Metz, St. Omer, and above all of St.
Eloi--whose story I recommend you to read, charmingly told, in Mr.
Maitland's 'Dark Ages,' pp. 81-122. The three saints were no
hypocrites--God forbid! They were good men and true, to whom had been
entrusted the keeping of a wild beast, to be petted and praised whenever
it shewed any signs of humanity or obedience.

But woe to the prince, however useful or virtuous in other respects, who
laid sacrilegious hands on the goods of the Church. He might, like
Charles Martel, have delivered France from the Pagans on the east, and
from the Mussulmen on the south, and have saved Christendom once and for
all from the dominion of the Crescent, in that great battle on the plains
of Poitiers, where the Arab cavalry (says Isidore of Beja) broke against
the immoveable line of Franks, like 'waves against a wall of ice.'

But if, like Charles Martel, he had dared to demand of the Church taxes
and contributions toward the support of his troops, and the salvation
both of Church and commonweal, then all his prowess was in vain. Some
monk would surely see him in a vision, as St. Eucherius, Bishop of
Orleans, saw Charles Martel (according to the Council of Kiersy), 'with
Cain, Judas, and Caiaphas, thrust into the Stygian whirlpools and
Acherontic combustion of the sempiternal Tartarus.'

Those words, which, with slight variations, are a common formula of
cursing appended to monastic charters against all who should infringe
them, remind us rather of the sixth book of Virgil's AEneid than of the
Holy Scriptures; and explain why Dante naturally chooses that poet as a
guide through his Inferno.

The cosmogony from which such an idea was derived was simple enough. I
give, of course, no theological opinion on its correctness: but as
professor of Modern History, I am bound to set before you opinions which
had the most enormous influence on the history of early Europe. Unless
you keep them in mind, as the fixed and absolute background of all h