Editorial note — The Ignorance Of The Middle Ages.

[Footnote 236: "When, in the eleventh century, the Scandinavians landed in Greenland, the Esquimaux told them that at the south there were white men clad in long black robes, who walked chanting and carrying banners before them; they were the monks who, in the eighth century, had set sail for Iceland, and had been thrown by the wind on the American coast." (Ozanam, Le Christianisme chez les Barbares.) Dom Pitra (Histoire de St. Léger) mentions a book of the sixteenth century on the voyages of the Benedictines into America—doubtless these monks lost among the savages, who left those signs of Christianity, crosses, a kind of baptism, etc., which were afterward found, and which otherwise would be inexplicable.]