To which class Tanchelm belonged who shall say? The only contemporary account of him which has come down to us was not written by his friends. Fool or knave, in this man we have a picturesque personality, and an interesting one, too, in several respects. He lived in those days of stress and whirl when the atoms which were presently to form the great communes of Brabant were striving to come together: we first hear of him at Antwerp somewhere about the year 1113. Who he was, whence he came, what his calling, no man could tell, but the women whispered it about that the mysterious stranger was a prophet, and at last Tanchelm broke silence and publicly proclaimed in the market-place that he was indeed a prophet, and more than a prophet--the incarnation of the Paraclete. Half the population believed him. Churches were consecrated in his honour. He lived in royal state, and when he came forth he was attended by a bodyguard of armed men. Riot and bloodshed were the outcome, and in the midst of it he fled, disguised as a monk, to Rome, where, strangely enough, he was not molested. When the storm had had time to lull he set out on the homeward journey, but at Cologne he was arrested by the Archbishop, who, less complaisant than the Pope, or perhaps better informed, set him in gaol. Somehow or other he contrived to escape to Antwerp, where he did as he had done before, like results followed; Duke Godfrey meditating his arrest, the fanatic got wind of it, and again determined on flight; but as he was on his way to the wharf, whence he would have taken shipping for England, he was stabbed by a man 'full of zeal,' as an ancient writer has it. Thus did Tanchelm end his chequered career. His fate was not unmerited, for he himself had slain Alaric, Burgrave of Antwerp, but in the eyes of his disciples he was a martyr, and the sect which he had founded did not die with him. It was not till the close of the eleven hundreds that religious peace was at last established throughout the length and breadth of the land, for the movement at Antwerp was not an isolated one. Heresy was everywhere in the air. The infection was carried from place to place by merchant and artisan, and fierce outbreaks were continually occurring, sometimes in one place and sometimes in another, all through the century. 'The social and moral disturbance provoked by the communal movement,' notes M. Pirenne, sufficiently explains this state of things,'[29] and doubtless he is right; but the fewness and the incapacity of the parochial clergy must also be taken into account. [29] See _Histoire de Belgique_, vol. i. p. 337.