Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/251

Rh the ramparts of Rouen, where Meroveus and Brunehilde took refuge to escape the wrath of Queen Fredegonda, and the remains of which were till lately extant. "It was a wooden church," says Augustin Thierry, "the slender frame of which, with its columns formed of several trunks of trees tied together, and its arcades necessarily angular (owing to the difficulty of centering with the materials at hand), that furnished, in all appearance, the type of the ogive or Gothic style which has since played so prominent a part in architecture."

According as the industrial and agricultural colonies led by St. Benedict spread, carpentry enlivened the wilderness of central and northern Europe by constructing those monasteries around which large communities grouped, thus rendering them greater commercial than religious centers. To the carpenters of St. Benedict the establishment of the first manufactories is due as well as the introduction of watermills, which, though known before, were yet so rare in the fifth century as to make one of them, erected on the river Indre, France, by Ursus, Bishop of Cahors, seem the marvel of the time, and so excite the covetousness of Alaric, King of the Visigoths.

History, always ready to register any deed of princes and courtiers, has rarely preserved any record of the martyrs of labor. In documents discovered and examined with much patience and labor by recent historians, mention is, however, made of a carpenter, by the name of Modestus, who in his time exercised great influence upon the course of events. He lived in Soissons, and, though a plain, unlearned man, he appreciated and honored virtue whenever and wherever he found it. "When Gregory, Bishop of Tours, was accused of treason to Queen Fredegonda, by Subdeacon Rikulph, her favorite, and when he was brought to Soissons for trial, Modestus indignantly appealed to the people to defend the saintly bishop, and placed himself at their head. But Rikulph, backed by the Queen's army, caused the poor carpenter to be taken, whipped, tortured, chained, and thrown into a dungeon. Modestus, however, broke his chains and escaped. His escape seemed a miracle, and, as such, it could not fail to affect and embolden the multitude. A conflict was about to ensue, but Modestus deprecated violence and checked the movement. He rushed into the court, by his eloquent pleading persuaded the judges of the bishop's innocence, and exposed Rikulph's iniquity. Gregory was acquitted, but the carpenter, later on, paid with his blood for his love of justice and his opposition to the Queen's favorite.

When cremation of corpses ceased to be a general custom, certain nations intrusted carpenters with the duty of preparing the last dwelling of man. It is not long since quite a number of tombs, perhaps eleven or twelve centuries old, were discovered on the banks of the Danube. They were hollowed out of the trunks of trees, in the form of primeval canoes, to symbolize, perhaps, the last journey of man to unknown regions. We have read somewhere that the tree selected