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At a time when honest writers on current politics were punished with fine and imprisonment, the pillory and the whip, statesmen and ecclesiastics were not ashamed to keep such libellers as Mrs. Manley in their pay.
And when we remember that it was carried from town to town by order of Napoleon I., and also exhibited on the stage on certain occasions; that it has survived the Revolution, and that the cathedral, which it was originally intended to adorn, has long been levelled with the ground, we cannot help approaching it with more than ordinary interest; an interest in which the inhabitants, and even the ecclesiastics of Bayeux, scarcely seem to share.
Twenty-four persons, mostly ecclesiastics, were chosen for this purpose: a bell-ringer, a psalmist, a cook, a brewer, a chamberlain, three smiths, three artificers, and three embroiderers are reckoned of the number. These last must be considered as employed in furnishing the interior of the new churches.
The gentleman gentile-man who respected his own gens, or family and pedigree, was bound to be gentle. The courtier, who had picked up at court some touch of Roman civilisation from Roman ecclesiastics, was bound to be courteous. He who held an "honour" or "edel" of land was bound to be honourable; and he who held a "weorthig," or worthy, thereof, was bound himself to be worthy.
Why should we be stricter than He? As long as we live in the flesh, we must think according to the flesh, but that does not prevent the spirit obtaining its due rights. Did not Paul himself say, "So then we hold that man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law"? Yes, but were these drunken and licentious ecclesiastics really believers?
At first some of the clergy were refractory. The head of the whole church establishment of Venice, the Patriarch himself, gave signs of resistance; but the Senate at once silenced him. Sundry other bishops and high ecclesiastics made a show of opposition; and they were placed in confinement.
Thus in 1103 the magnates of the kingdom were required to swear that for the next four years they would not molest ecclesiastics, merchants, women, or Jews; that during the same period they would neither burn nor break into private houses; that they would not kill or wound or hold to ransom any man.
This brought the fresh amazement of wide lamplit streets, clean and bright as a ball-room, lined with palaces and filled with well-dressed loungers: officers in the brilliant Sardinian uniforms, fine gentlemen in French tie-wigs and narrow-sleeved coats, merchants hurrying home from business, ecclesiastics in high-swung carriages, and young bloods dashing by in their curricles.
The sun sometimes shone brightly upon the little round panes of the ancient building, the Golden Cross, on the northern side of the square, which the people of Ratisbon call "on the moor"; sometimes it was veiled by gray clouds. A party of nobles, ecclesiastics, and knights belonging to the Emperor's train were just coming out.
"If he is not sent to jail, there will be one more priest for Paris," said Des Hermies. "How's that?" "Why, all the ecclesiastics who get in bad in the provinces, or who have a serious falling out with the bishop, are sent here where they will be less in view, lost in the crowd, as it were. They form a part of that corporation known as 'scratch priests." "What are they?"
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