of Christ fell upon all; noble and lowly, old and young, and
even children of five years of age marched through the streets with no
covering but a scarf round the waist. They each carried a scourge of
leathern thongs, which they applied to their limbs, amid sighs and
tears, with such violence that the blood flowed from the wounds. Not
only during the day, but even by night and in the severest winter, they
traversed the cities with burning torches and banners, in thousands and
tens of thousands, headed by their priests, and prostrated themselves
before the altars. The melancholy chant of the penitent alone was heard;
enemies were reconciled; men and women vied with each other in splendid
works of charity, as if they dreaded that divine omnipotence would
pronounce on them the doom of annihilation."

But at length the priests resisted this dangerous fanaticism, without
being able to extirpate the illusion, which was advantageous to the
hierarchy, as long as it submitted to its sway.

The processions of the Brotherhood of the Cross undoubtedly promoted the
spreading of the plague; and it is evident that the gloomy fanaticism
which gave rise to them would infuse a new poison into the already
desponding minds of the people.

Still, however, all this was within the bounds of barbarous enthusiasm;
but horrible were the persecutions of the Jews, which were committed in
most countries with even greater exasperation than in the twelfth
century, during the first crusades. In every destructive pestilence the
common people at first attribute the mortality to poison. On whom, then,
was vengeance so likely to fall as on the Jews, the usurers and the
strangers who lived at enmity with the Christians? They were everywhere
suspected of having poisoned the wells[52] or infected the air, and were
pursued with merciless cruelty.

These bloody scenes, which disgraced Europe in the fourteenth century,
are a counterpart to a similar mania of the age which was manifested in
the persecutions of witches and sorcerers; and, like these, they prove
that enthusiasm, associated with hatred and leagued with the baser
passions, may work more powerfully upon whole nations than religion and
legal order; nay, that it even knows how to profit by the authority of
both, in order the more surely to satiate with blood the swords of
long-suppressed revenge.

The persecution of the Jews commenced in September and October, 1348, at
Chillon, on the Lake of Gene