cliv.] In return the townsmen hated him
cordially, as a supercilious aristocrat and Pharisee, with the guile
and greed of the Scribe and lawyer superadded.
Upon the townsmen--whatever it may have been among the countrymen--
the ministers of religion exercised the smallest possible
_restraint._ Nay! it was only too evident that the bonds of
ecclesiastical discipline which had so often exercised a salutary
check upon the unruly had become seriously relaxed of late, both in
town and country; they had been put to too great a strain and had
snapped. By the suicidal methods of Excommunication and Interdict all
ranks were schooled into doing without the rites of religion, the
baptism of their children, or the blessing upon the marriage union.
In the meantime it was notorious that even in high places there were
instances not a few of Christians who had denied the faith and had
given themselves up to strange beliefs, of which the creed of the
Moslem was not the worst. Men must have received with a smile the
doctrine that Marriage was a Sacrament when everybody knew that,
among the upper classes at least, the bonds of matrimony were soluble
almost at pleasure. [Footnote: Eleanor of Aquitaine, consort of Henry
II., had been divorced by Louis VII. of France. Constance of
Brittany, mother of Arthur--Shakespeare's idealized Constance--left
her husband, Ranulph, Earl of Chester, to unite herself with Guy of
Flanders.
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