Tradition has ascribed to Charles the assassination of his brother Grimwald, with whom he was to have shared his paternal inheritance; and the absence of any other known motive, the avowed hostility of his father, who imprisoned him, as well as the significant silence of the historians--evidently trembling under the stern rule of the Mayor of the Palace--give considerable probability to this hypothesis. Although disinherited, the attachment of the people was such that he was, immediately after the death of Pepin, rescued from a dungeon and raised to the dukedom. Succeeding events justified the wisdom of this measure. The address of Charles allayed the civil dissensions of the Franks; his valor and military genius awed and restrained the restless barbarians of Germany. Although unquestionably the preserver of Christianity, he is more than suspected of having been an idolater, his title, Martel, having been traced by antiquaries to the hammer of Thor, the emblem of the war-god of Scandinavia. He had no reverence for the Church, no belief in its doctrines, no consideration for its possessions, no regard for its ministers. He seized reliquaries and sacred vessels destined for communion with God, and coined them into money to pay the expenses of his campaigns. He despoiled the clergy of their lands and partitioned them among his followers. The most eminent of his captains he invested with the offices of bishops, after expelling the rightful incumbents in order to the better retain control of their confiscated estates. This sacrilegious policy, while it exasperated the priesthood, endeared him to his soldiers who were the recipients of his bounty; but the wrath of the ecclesiastical order was not appeased even by his inestimable services to its cause. Anathematized by popes and councils, legends inspired by monkish credulity and hatred have solemnly asserted that his soul had been repeatedly seen by holy men surrounded by demons in the depths of hell.