CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS ORATltR}'. 



5*9 



the armies of Charlemagne, as the missionaries of the sixteenth century 

 opened America to the armies of Spain." 



Preaching was not the sole arena in which religious oratory had to do 

 battle. The Councils, which were, so to speak, the guardians of the sacred 

 deposit of orthodox faith, and to which the Middle Ages owe, even in the 



Fig. 396. Preaching of the first Missionary Apostles. After a Tapestry in Tournay Cathedral, 



made at Arras in 1402. 



civil order, the wisest of their laws these Councils, which have been so happily 

 termed the Champs de Mai of the Church, offered to ecclesiastical speakers a 

 vast field for the display of what ability they might possess. Whatever 

 subject was laid before these illustrious assemblies was carefully studied, and 



3 Y 



