Page:Costello - A pilgrimage to Auvergne from Picardy to Velay - A 30154 1.pdf/26

12 all sent forth armies of robbers to desolate the land. Laymen and churchmen alike combined against the peace of their native country, and the whole of the north of France was a prey to war and its horrors. Here the Franks, the Normans, and Lotharingiens contended unceasingly, putting up and throwing down the kings they had chosen on either side, and slaughter and murder reigned triumphant.

According to a picture drawn at the time, things were in a condition which appeared without hope or remedy. “The towns,” says a chronicle of the period, “are depeopled, the country changed to a desert: as for the monasteries, some are ruined or burnt by the pagans; others, despoiled of their possessions and reduced to almost nothing, retain scarcely a vestige of order. Monks, canons, nuns have no longer legitimate superiors, in consequence of the abuse which has permitted strangers (laymen) to govern them. Pressed by necessity, they quit the cloister, and mingling with the people live a secular life. We behold in monasteries consecrated to God lay abbots with their wives, their children, their soldiers and their dogs. How can such abbots make those rules obeyed which they are even incapable of reading ? Each man does as he pleases, contemning both divine and human laws and the ordinances of