The inconstancy of Hakim had, in a degree, mitigated the misfortunes of Jerusalem, and he had just granted liberty to the Christians to rebuild their churches, when he died by the hand of the assassin. His successor, guided by a wiser policy, tolerated both pilgrimages and the exercise of the Christian religion. The church of the Holy Sepulchre was not entirely rebuilt till thirty years after its destruction; but the spectacle of its ruins still inflamed the zeal and the devotion of the Christians. In the eleventh century the Latin Church allowed pilgrimages to suffice instead of canonical penitences; sinners were condemned to quit their country for a time, and to lead a wandering life, after the example of Cain. This mode of performing penance agreed better with the active and restless character of the people of the West. It ought to be added, that the devotion of pilgrimages, whatever may be the opinion of an enlightened philosophy, has been received, and even encouraged, in all religions. It belongs, too, to a sentiment natural to man. If the sight of a land once inhabited by heroes and sages awakens in us touching and noble remembrances; if the soul of the philosopher finds itself agitated at the sight of the ruins of Palmyra, Babylon, or Athens; what lively emotions must not the Christians have felt on beholding places which God had sanctified by his presence and his blessings? The Christians of the West, almost all unhappy in their own countries, and who often lost the sense of their evils in long voyages, appeared to be only employed in seeking upon earth the traces of a consoling and helpful divinity, or of some holy personage. There existed no province without its martyr or its apostle, whose support they went to implore; there was no city or secluded spot which did not preserve the tradition of a miracle, or had not a chapel open to pilgrims. The most guilty of sinners, or the most fervent of the faithful, exposed themselves to the greatest perils, and repaired to the most distant places. Sometimes they directed their steps to Apulia and Calabria, they visited Mount Gargan, celebrated by the apparition of St. Michael, or Mount Cassin, rendered famous by the miracles of St. Benedict; sometimes they traversed the Pyrenees, and, in a country given up to the Saracens, esteemed themselves happy in praying before the relics of St. Jago, the patron saint of Galicia. Some, like King Robert, went to Rome, and prostrated themselves on the tombs of the apostles St. Peter and St. Paul; others travelled as far as Egypt, where Christ had passed his infancy, and penetrated to the solitudes of Scete and Memphis, inhabited by the disciples of Anthony and Paul.