530 CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS ORATORY. 



often gave rise to eloquent debates. Unfortunately nothing is extant of these 

 discussions except the text of the decrees which they had prepared. It seems 

 that spoken utterances were less easily preserved in these periods of social 

 renovation, for we possess but few records of religious oratory dating from 

 Charlemagne's reign, though we know that such celebrated preachers as 

 Alcuin, St. Anscaire, St. Agobard, lladbert, Hincmar, llaban Maurus, &c., 

 must have delivered many sermons worth recording. But scholasticism was 

 already in course of formation, and the spontaneous outbursts of the heart 

 were kept under by the subtleties of the mind. The priest was lost in the 

 rhetorician, and it needed the imperious force of circumstances to revive 

 the ardour and enthusiasm of early times ; as, for instance, at the period of 

 the Norman invasions, when the bishops preached a holy war against the 

 Northern forces with a patriotic eloquence which has not been forgotten. 



This irresistible power of speech was all the more strange because, during 

 the tenth century, which was justly called the "iron age of the Church," 

 more than one clerk frankly admitted, when a holy book was shown to him, 

 that he did not know how to read (ncscio literas). The year 1000, which 

 was expected to bring with it the day of judgment, was drawing near, 

 and all public and private contracts were dated from " the time near to the 

 end of the world." The Christian preachers mourned, amidst the lamentations 

 and sobs of the people, the coming death of the human race. In all the 

 churches homilies were pronounced upon the Antichrist and the resurrection 

 of the dead. When the dreaded epoch had passed by, religious fervour was 

 again displayed, and out of gratitude to God new churches were built, in 

 which the preachers announced the holy enterprise of the Crusades. 



It may be said that the Crusades created a new kind of religious eloquence, 

 which filled the whole world during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth 

 centuries. This eloquence was represented by two different kinds of orators, 

 both working to the same end, but by different means. There were the true 

 apostles, full of faith and enthusiasm, who travelled all over Europe preaching 

 the holy war against the infidels and the oppressors of Christianity in the 

 East ; and there were the priests, and more especially the monks, who 

 proclaimed, in the churches and in the cloisters, that the time had come for 

 the clergy and the religious orders to abandon a life of contemplation, in 

 order to form the great army of Christ, and go to Palestine to deliver his 

 tomb by dispossessing the Saracens of Jerusalem. Religious eloquence never 



