recite the Psalter twice a day, while he flogged himself with both hands at the rate of a thousand lashes to ten psalms. These self-flagellations were said to serve as a satisfaction for the sins of other men. This system of Dominic was extolled by Damiani as something divine. Damiani was also a determined enemy to the marriage of the clergy, which he denounced as a very Gomorrah. By Hildebrand's influence he was made a cardinal, and died in 1072. THE TRUCE OF GOD. At the end of the tenth century Guido, Bishop of Puy, in Velai, was said to be the first to establish the _Treuga Dei_, which was the origin of the great expedient for securing peace, emanating a century later from the monks of Cluny. The Council of Clermont (1095) decreed that the Truce of God should be observed during the leading Church festivals, and every week from sunset on Wednesday till sunrise on Monday. At the Council of Soissons in 1155 King Louis VII. and many princes assembled, and swore to observe the Truce of God inviolably. And in 1209 the Pope's legate prescribed its observance to the barons of France. Others say that the Truce of God was brought into prominence by Rudolph the Bald in 1033, as in that year there had been, after three years' famine, a most abundant harvest, and the clergy suggested that men's minds would then be well disposed to any sacrifice, more especially as the recent events connected with the expected millennium in 1000 were still in vivid remembrance. The Council of Limoges resolved that those who refused to adopt a similar practice, called the Peace of God, should be excommunicated, and their country laid under an interdict. Yet there was a vigorous opponent, named Gerard of Cambray, who protested that war was an affair of state in which the clergy had no business to interfere; moreover, that the exercise of arms was sanctioned by Scripture. But the vast majority of the people welcomed the new practice, and the time chosen, between the evening of Wednesday and the dawn of Monday, was noted to include the interval between the Saviour's betrayal and the Resurrection. The time was soon, however, abridged. Odilo of Cluny had been a prominent advocate of this restriction on the military barbarism of his time; and William the Conqueror, before the Conquest, had also joined in its observance. THE NUMBER SEVEN IN SCRIPTURE.