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120 The Eulogion was a holy gift, any small object given by a holy man and kept as a sort of Sacramental. Besides the Sacrament of Penance, it was considered a pious practice to confess one's sins to any virtuous person, chiefly to a monk, who was not a priest and could therefore not give absolution. The extreme punishment that the Church could inflict on her children was excommunication. All heretics and schismatics were ipso facto excommunicate. Any ecclesiastical intercourse with them involved the same punishment; to sign their formulas, receive any sacrament from them, sing psalms in their company, even to dine with them, or to have any civil relations, beyond what was absolutely necessary, involved excommunication. One may not accept their gifts to churches, nor pray for them publicly, nor say Mass for them after their death. Even after they are converted back to orthodoxy, some of the stigma of their former heresy clings to them. Priests may not celebrate the liturgy, at any rate until they have done a long penance; if an orthodox Christian dines with a converted heretic, the convert may not say grace.

Meanwhile the great popular feasts, most of which have come down from pagan days—the Carnival, the feast of Spring in May, the Brumalia in November, &c.—are the occasion of every sort of licence; magic flourishes, and strolling magicians make fortunes by curing diseases, finding riches, and making women beautiful. The Court continually becomes a hotbed of unnameable vice. Byzantine society during all the middle ages, from Constantine (330) till the city fell (1453), was by far the richest, most splendid, and most comfortable in Europe. It was also an old society, long established, and, at any rate comparatively, secure. These circumstances generally make for luxury, and then for vice. But it was not wholly bad. The Moslems first attacked the legions in 634, two years after Mohammed's death; from that