s which the Latin language affords. The
vulgate Latin of the Bible was still more venerable. It was like a copy
of a lost original; and a copy attested by one of the most eminent
fathers, and by the general consent of the church. These are certainly
no adequate excuses for keeping the people in ignorance; and the gross
corruption of the middle ages is in a great degree assignable to this
policy. But learning, and consequently religion, have eventually derived
from it the utmost advantage.

[Sidenote: Superstitions.]

In the shadows of this universal ignorance a thousand superstitions,
like foul animals of night, were propagated and nourished. It would be
very unsatisfactory to exhibit a few specimens of this odious brood,
when the real character of those times is only to be judged by their
accumulated multitude. In every age it would be easy to select proofs of
irrational superstition, which, separately considered, seem to degrade
mankind from its level in the creation; and perhaps the contemporaries
of Swedenborg and Southcote have no right to look very contemptuously
upon the fanaticism of their ancestors. There are many books from which
a sufficient number of instances may be collected to show the absurdity
and ignorance of the middle ages in this respect. I shall only mention
two, as affording more general evidence than any local or obscure
superstition. In the tenth century an opinion prevailed everywhere that
the end of the world was approaching. Many charters begin with these
words, "As the world is now drawing to its close." An army marching
under the emperor Otho I. was so terrified by an eclipse of the sun,
which it conceived to announce this consummation, as to disperse
hastily on all sides. As this notion seems to have been founded on some
confused theory of the millennium, it naturally died away when the
seasons proceeded in the eleventh century with their usual
regularity.[518] A far more remarkable and permanent superstition was
the appeal to Heaven in judicial controversies, whether through the
means of combat or of ordeal. The principle of these was the same; but
in the former it was mingled with feelings independent of religion--the
natural dictates of resentment in a brave man unjustly accused, and the
sympathy of a warlike people with the display of skill and intrepidity.
These, in course of time, almost obliterated the primary character of
judicial combat, and ultimately changed it into the modern