ABOUT CARPENTERS. 239 



the ramparts of Rouen, where Meroveus and Brunehilde took refuge 

 to escape the wrath of Queen Fredegonda, and the remains of which 

 were till lately extant. "It was a wooden church," says Augustin 

 Thierry, " the slender frame of which, with its columns formed of sev- 

 eral trunks of trees tied together, and its arcades necessarily angular 

 (owing to the difficulty of centering with the materials at hand), that 

 furnished, in all appearance, the type of the ogive or Gothic style 

 which has since played so prominent a part in architecture." 



According as the industrial and agricultural colonies led hy St. 

 Benedict spread, carpentry enlivened the wilderness of central and 

 northern Europe by constructing those monasteries around which large 

 communities grouped, thus rendering them greater commercial than 

 religious centers. To the carpenters of St. Benedict the establishment 

 of the first manufactories is due as well as the introduction of water- 

 mills, which, though known before, were yet so rare in the fifth cen- 

 tury as to make one of them, erected on the river Indre, France, by 

 Ursus, Bishop of Cahors, seem the marvel of the time, and so excite 

 the covetousness of Alaric, King of the Visigoths. 



History, always ready to register any deed of princes and courtiers, 

 has rarely preserved any record of the martyrs of labor. In documents 

 discovered and examined with much patience and labor by recent his- 

 torians, mention is, however, made of a carpenter, by the name of Mo- 

 destus, who in his time exercised great influence upon the course of 

 events. He lived in Soissons, and, though a plain, unlearned man, he 

 appreciated and honored virtue whenever and wherever he found it. 

 "When Gregory, Bishop of Tours, was accused of treason to Queen 

 Fredegonda, by Subdeacon Rikulph, her favorite, and when he was 

 brought to Soissons for trial, Modestus indignantly appealed to the 

 people to defend the saintly bishop, and placed himself at their head. 

 But Rikulph, backed by the Queen's army, caused the poor carpenter 

 to be taken, whipped, tortured, chained, and thrown into a dungeon. 

 Modestus, however, broke his chains and escaped. His escape seemed 

 a miracle, and, as such, it could not fail to affect and embolden the 

 multitude. A conflict was about to ensue, but Modestus deprecated 

 violence and checked the movement. He rushed into the court, by 

 his eloquent pleading persuaded the judges of the bishop's innocence, 

 and exposed Rikulph's iniquity. Gregory was acquitted, but the car- 

 penter, later on, paid with his blood for his love of justice and his 

 opposition to the Queen's favorite. 



When cremation of corpses ceased to be a general custom, certain 

 nations intrusted carpenters with the duty of preparing the last dwell- 

 ing of man. It is not long since quite a number of tombs, perhaps 

 eleven or twelve centuries old, were discovered on the banks of the 

 Danube. They were hollowed out of the trunks of trees, in the form 

 of primeval canoes, to symbolize, perhaps, the last journey of man to 

 unknown regions. We have read somewhere that the tree selected 



