Finally, mention must be made of the extreme violence of the age. Several illustrations have been given in the course of the narrative, and it will bring many more before the reader. They were still the days of the _lex talionis_, the judicial duel, the ordeal, and the truce of God. Murder was common in town and country. We have seen the brutal murder of the Bishop of Laon in 1112; we find the Bishop of Paris threatened by the relatives of his archdeacon, and the Prior of St. Victor’s murdered by them, in 1133. But the story will contain violence enough. As for ‘the undisciplined student-hordes of the Middle Ages,’ see the appalling picture of their life in Rashdall’s _Universities of Europe_. Our period is pre-university—and worse: with the founding of the university came some degree of control. Yet even then the documentary evidence discloses a fearful condition of violence and lawlessness. In the year 1197 we find the Bishop of Paris abolishing the ‘Feast of Fools.’ On January 1st (and also on the feast of St. Stephen), it seems, a carnival was held, during which the masquers had free run of the cathedral and the churches, making them echo with ribald songs, and profaning them with bloodshed and all kinds of excess. In 1218, says Crevier, we find the ecclesiastical judges of Paris complaining that the students break into the houses of the citizens, and carry off their womenfolk. In 1200 we find a pitched battle between the students of Paris and the governor and his guards, in which several are killed; and the king condemns the unfortunate governor to be tried by ordeal; to be hanged forthwith if it proves his guilt, and to be imprisoned for life (in case Providence has made a mistake) if it absolves him. After another of these battles, when the governor has hanged several students, the king forces him and his council to go in their shirts to the scaffold and kiss the bodies. In another case, in 1228, the king sides with the governor, and the masters close the university in disgust until the students are avenged. But of story-telling there would be no end. And, indeed, there is the danger of giving a false impression of scantiness of evidence when one follows up a large assertion with a few incidents. It is, however, clear from the quoted words of accredited historians, and will be made clearer in the progress of the narrative, that simony, unchastity, violence, cruelty, and usury were real and broad features of the age of Abélard. The reader will not forget them, when he is seeking to enter into the conscience of the famous master. CHAPTER V DEAD SEA FRUIT