rocious than the savage bigotry with which they
maintained their own system and infected the laity. In Saxony, Poland,
Lithuania, and the countries on the Baltic Sea, a sanguinary persecution
extirpated the original idolatry. The Jews were everywhere the objects
of popular insult and oppression, frequently of a general massacre,
though protected, it must be confessed, by the laws of the church, as
well as in general by temporal princes.[540] Of the crusades it is only
necessary to repeat that they began in a tremendous eruption of
fanaticism, and ceased only because that spirit could not be constantly
kept alive. A similar influence produced the devastation of Languedoc,
the stakes and scaffolds of the Inquisition, and rooted in the religious
theory of Europe those maxims of intolerance which it has so slowly, and
still perhaps so imperfectly, renounced.

From no other cause are the dictates of sound reason and the moral sense
of mankind more confused than by this narrow theological bigotry. For as
it must often happen that men to whom the arrogance of a prevailing
faction imputes religious error are exemplary for their performance of
moral duties, these virtues gradually cease to make their proper
impression, and are depreciated by the rigidly orthodox as of little
value in comparison with just opinions in speculative points. On the
other hand, vices are forgiven to those who are zealous in the faith. I
speak too gently, and with a view to later times; in treating of the
dark ages it would be more correct to say that crimes were commended.
Thus Gregory of Tours, a saint of the church, after relating a most
atrocious story of Clovis--the murder of a prince whom he had
previously instigated to parricide--continues the sentence: "For God
daily subdued his enemies to his hand, and increased his kingdom;
because he walked before him in uprightness, and did what was pleasing
in his eyes."[541]

[Sidenote: Commutation of penances.]

It is a frequent complaint of ecclesiastical writers that the rigorous
penances imposed by the primitive canons upon delinquents were commuted
in a laxer state of discipline for less severe atonements, and
ultimately indeed for money.[542] We must not, however, regret that the
clergy should have lost the power of compelling men to abstain fifteen
years from eating meat, or to stand exposed to public derision at the
gates of a church. Such implicit submissiveness could only have produced
superst