we enjoin, that every priest zealously promote Christianity, and totally extinguish every heathenism; and fordid necromancies and divinations and enchantments, and the practices which are carried on with various spells, and with frith-splots and with elders, and also with various other trees, and with stones, and with many various delusions, with which men do much of what they should not.’ I have done.”[219] For a while there was silence, the monks sitting and gazing at each other in astonishment and horror. At length, seeing that the abbat was almost choked, and could not speak at all, Girolamo said, “my lord, may I begin?” Thurstan nodded a yea. Hereupon the Salernitan went over the whole history of his past life, with all its sorrows, studies, and wanderings; and bade the monks reflect whether such a life was not fitted to make a man moody and sad and unlike other men. He acknowledged that, as compared with Saxons, and more especially with the Saxon monks of Ely, he ate and drank very little; but this was because his appetite was not good, and his habit of life very different from theirs. He allowed that he was fond of wandering about in lonely places, more especially by moonlight, but this was because eating little he required the less sleep, and because the sadness of his heart was soothed by solitude and the quiet aspect of the moon and stars. All this, and a great deal more, the Salernitan said in a passably composed and quiet voice; but when he came to deny and refute the charges which the prior had made, his voice pealed through that hall like thunder, and his eyes flashed like lightning. In concluding he said—“I was ever a faithful son of Mother Church. The blessed Pope at Rome—Pope Alexander it was—hath put his hand upon this unworthy head and given me his benediction. The pious abbat of the ancient Benedictine house of La Cava that stands in the chasm of the mountain between Salerno and the city of Neapolis held me at the baptismal font; cloister-monks were my early instructors, and learned doctors of the church were my teachers in youth and manhood. I have been a witch-seeker and a witch-finder in mine own country. Ye have known me, here, burn, or help to burn, a witch almost under your own eyes. Jews have I ever abhorred,[220] even as much as witches, necromancers, and devils! Saracens and Moors, and all that follow Mahound, have I ever hated as Jews, and as much as good Christians ought to hate them! Oh prior, that makest thyself my accuser, thou hast been a home-staying man, and hast not been called upon to testify to thy faith in the lands where heathens rule and reign, and Mahound is held to be the prophet of God, and superior to God’s own Son. But I tell thee, prior, that I have testified to my faith in such places, and openly on the threshold of Mahound’s temples, braving death and seeking a happy martyrdom which, alas! I could not find. Saxons! in a town in