centuries, and in that great invasion of 1592-1597, which has left a
scar even to this day on the Korean mind. At home, Buddhist priests only
too gladly accompanied the imperial armies of conquest and occupation.
During centuries of activity in the southwest and in the far east and
extreme north, the military brought the outlying portions of the empire,
throughout the whole archipelago, under the sway of the Yamato tribe and
the Mikado's dominion. The shorn clerks not only lived in camp,
ministered to the sick and shrived the dying soldier, but wrote texts
for the banners, furnished the amulets and war cries, and were ever
assistant and valuable in keeping up the temper and morals of the
armies.[38] No sooner was the campaign over and peace had become the
order of the day, than the enthusiastic missionaries began to preach and
to teach in the pacified region. They set up the shrines, anon started
the school and built the temple; usually, indeed, with the aid of the
law and the government, acting as agents of a politico-ecclesiastical
establishment, yet with energy and consecration.

In later feudal days, when the soldier classes obtained the upper hand,
overawed the court and Mikado and gradually supplanted the civil
authority, introducing feudalism and martial law, the bonzes often
represented the popular and democratic side. Protesting against
arbitrary government, they came into collision with the warrior rulers,
so as to be exposed to imprisonment and the sword. Yet even as refugees
and as men to whom the old seats of activity no longer offered success
or comfort, they went off into the distant and outlying provinces,
preaching the old tenets and the new fashions in theology. Thus again
they won hosts of converts, built monasteries, opened fresh paths and
were purveyors of civilization.

The feudal ages in Japan bred the same type of militant priest known in