ances,
fears, when every landscape of life "wore a strange hue, as if
seen through the sombre medium of a stained casement." While
congregations knelt in awe beneath the lifted Host, and the image
of the dying Savior stretched on the rood glimmered through clouds
of incense, perhaps an army of Flagellants would march by the
cathedral, shouting, "The end of the world is at hand!" filling
the streets with the echoes of their torture as they lashed their
naked backs with knotted cords wet with blood; and no soul but
must shudder with the infection of horror as the dreadful notes of
the "Dies Iioe" went sounding through the air. The narratives of
the desert Fathers, the miracles wrought in convent cells, the
visions of pillar saints, the thrilling accompaniments of the
Crusades, and other kindred influences, made the world a perpetual
mirage. The belching of a volcano was the vomit of uneasy hell.
The devil stood before every tempted man, Ghosts walked in every
nightly dell. Ghastly armies were seen contending where the aurora
borealis hung out its bloody banners. The Huns under Attila,
ravaging Southern Europe, were thought to be literal demons who
had made an irruption from the pit. The metaphysician was in peril
of the stake as a heretic, the natural philosopher as a magician.
A belief in witchcraft and a trust in ordeals were universal, even
from Pope Eugenius, who introduced the trial by cold water, and
King James, who wrote volumes on magic, to the humblest monk who
shuddered when passing the church crypt, and the simplest peasant
who quaked in his homeward path at seeing a will o' the wisp.
"Denounced by the preacher and consigned to the flames by the
judge, the wizard received secret service money from the Cabinet
to induce him to destroy the hostile armament as it sailed before
the wind." As a vivid writer has well said, "A gloomy mist of
credulity enwrapped the cathedral and the hall of justice, the
cottage and the throne. In the dank shadows of the universal
ignorance a thousand superstitions, like foul animals of night,
were propagated and nourished."

31 Hallam, Middle Ages, ch. ix.

The beliefs and excitements of the mediaval period partook of a
sort of epidemic character, diffusing and working like a
contagion.32 There were numberless throngs of pilgrims to famous
shrines, immense crowds about the localities of popular legends,
relics, or special grace. In the magnetic sphere of such a fervid
and credu