Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/113

 Rh or the "one-handed Boughton," or even to the Keeper Herne.

Odin and the Æsir then were dispossessed and degraded by our Saviour and his Apostles, just as they had of old thrown out the Frost Giants, and the two are mingled together, in mediaeval Norse tradition, as Trolls and Giants, hostile alike to Christianity and man. Christianity had taken possession indeed, but it was beyond her power to kill. To this half-result the swift corruption of the Church of Rome lent no small aid. Her doctrines, as taught by Augustine and Boniface, by Anschar and Sigfrid, were comparatively mild and pure; but she had scarce swallowed the heathendom of the North, much in the same way as the Wolf was to swallow Odin at the "Twilight of the Gods," than she fell into a deadly lethargy of faith, which put it out of her power to digest her meal. Gregory the Seventh, elected Pope in 1073, tore the clergy from the ties of domestic life with a grasp that wounded every fibre of natural affection, and made it bleed to the very root. With the celibacy of the clergy he established the hierarchy of the Church, but her labours as a missionary church were over. Henceforth she worked not by missionaries and apostles, but by crusades and bulls. Now she raised mighty armaments to recover the barren soil of the Holy Sepulchre, or to annihilate heretic Albigenses. Now she established great orders, Templars and Hospitallers, whose pride and luxury and pomp brought swift destruction on one at least of those fraternities. Now she became feudal—she owned land instead of hearts, and forgot that the true patrimony of St. Peter was the souls of men. No wonder that, with the barbarism of the times, she soon.