Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/590

 Indeed, nothing was wanting that could render a ship "magnificent," according to the prevailing tastes of the period.

Having clung to the ancient mythological taste in the decorations of the exterior of their vessels for so many ages, the ship-owners now carried their pious zeal to the extremity of saintly image-worship, which continued until the Reformation, then in its turn relapsing again into pagan heresies. But the manners and habits of the seamen continued almost unchanged. Throughout the whole of the Middle Ages they were the same superstitious mortals, and as much addicted to the marvellous as ever they had been. Prior to the Reformation, they, like the rest of Europe, were of one catholic faith. They believed in God, adored the Virgin Mary, and prayed to every saint in heaven supposed to have any connection with the sea. They had, however, a great fear of a priest, chiefly on account of his black gown; and in bad weather, if peradventure any priest were on board, he would have risked being pitched into the sea, if the master, as was often the case, happened to be as superstitious and ignorant as his crew.

Fantastic shapes and beings of another world, while they awed, pleased their imagination, for they, too, had their sirens, of which their poets sang. Nor were they without their sea-serpent. More marvellous and tantalizing than even that of modern times, which matter-of-fact men are always disputing, the sea-serpent of the dark ages was adorned with a mitre on its head and had a dalmatic robe across its shoulders. Indeed, many of the credulous world on shore believed as firmly in the bishop-fish monster as the sailors them