ys'
indeed, were times of rejoicing and festivity, and the Church
processions and services were pleasant events in the lives of many
who had few entertainments, and who for the most part could neither
read nor write. Printing was not yet invented, at least not in Europe,
and as every book had to be written out by hand, copies of books were
rare and only owned by the few who could read them, so that stories
were mostly handed down by word of mouth, the same being told by mother
to child for many generations.

The favourites were stories of the saints and martyrs of the Catholic
Church, for of course we are speaking now of times long before the
Reformation. The Old Testament stories and all the stories of the life
of Christ and His Apostles were well known too, and just as we never
tire of reading our favourite books over and over again, our
forefathers of 1200 wanted to see on the walls of their churches
representations of the stories which they could not read. Their daily
thoughts were more occupied with the Infant Christ, the saints, and
the angels, than ours generally are. They thought of themselves as
under the protection of some saint, who would plead with God the Father
for them if they asked him, for God Himself seemed too high or remote
to be appealed to always directly. He was approached with awe; the
saints, the Virgin, and the Infant Christ, with love.

We must realise this difference before we can well understand a picture
painted in the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries, nor can
we look at one without feeling that the artist and the people for whom
he painted, so loved the holy personages. They thought about them
always, not only at stated times and on Sundays, and never tired of
looking at pictures of them and their doings. It is sometimes said
that only Catholics can understand medieval art, because they feel
towards the saints as the old painters did. But it is possible for
any one to realize how in those far-off days the people felt, and it
is this that we must try to do. The religious fervour of the Middle
Ages was not a sign of great virtue among all the people. Some were
far more cruel, savage, and unrestrained than we are to-day. Very
wicked men even became powerful dignitaries in the Church. But it was
the Church that fostered the impulses of pity and charity in a fierce
age, and some of the saints of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
such as St. Francis of Assisi and St. Cathari