Note 115 — BOOK XVIII. (continued 2)

Nothing has been better said upon the influence of the clergy and religion, in the middle ages, than that which we read in a work entitled Des Intérêts et des Opinions, by M. Fievée:—“At a time in which the Church imposed public penitences, whilst the tribunals only ordered judgments by arms, we cannot see how the high police could not have fallen into the hands of the ecclesiastics; and it was because they alone exercised it, that, in the civil wars, fortunate princes confided to the monks the guarding of princes, from whom the fate of battle or treachery took the rights they possessed to share the kingdom. It was necessary that the void left by the laws should be filled up, or the state would perish; and the priests alone enjoyed a moral authority sufficiently great to supply the weakness of legislation;—exalted passions, more powerful virtues, great crimes, great remorse; a proud independence, salutary fears; an excess of force, and no regulations; courage in everything and everywhere: such was, at this period, the state of society;—it is easy to perceive that religion alone contended with barbarism.” We regret not to be able to quote more than a fragment of a work filled with ingenious perceptions and profound views, upon the march of civilization in the middle ages.