Conrad of Montferat divorced the daughter of Isaac Angelus,
Emperor of Constantinople, to marry Isabella, daughter of Amalric,
King of Jerusalem, the bride repudiating her husband Henfrid of
Thouars. Philip II. of France married the sister of the King of
Denmark one day and divorced her the next; then married a German
lady, left her, and returned to the repudiated Dane. King John in
1189 divorced Hawisia, Countess of Gloucester, and took Isabella of
Angouleme to wife, but how little he cared to be faithful to the one
or the other the chronicles disdain to ask.] It seems hardly worth
while to notice that the observance of Sunday was almost universally
neglected, or that sermons had become so rare that when Eustace,
Abbot of Flai, preached in various places in England in 1200,
miracles were said to have ensued as the ordinary effects of his
eloquence. Earnestness in such an age seemed in itself miraculous.
Here and there men and women, hungering and thirsting after
righteousness, raised their sobbing prayer to heaven that the Lord
would shortly accomplish the number of his elect and hasten his
coming, and Abbot Joachim's dreams were talked of and his vague
mutterings made the sanguine hope for better days. Among those
mutterings had there not been a speech of the two heavenly witnesses
who were to do--ah! what were they not to do? And these heavenly
witnesses, who were they? When and where would they appear?
Eight years before King Richard was in Sicily a child had been born
in the thriving town of Assisi, thirteen miles from Perugia, who was
destined to be one of the great movers of the world.
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