In the helpless misery existing in France at this time, the Church saw
its opportunity. To that silent, humble, forgotten multitude without
life or hope in the world, she offered refuge, peace, consolation, and
thus forever bound to her the poor of Christendom; by this means
establishing in the end an ecclesiastical dominion to which kings and
peerage would be compelled to bow.

If one would know how kings submitted to the authority of the Church at
this time, let him read the story of the good King Robert, second in
the Capetian line, who for marrying the gentle Bertha, his cousin
fourth removed, suffered the punishment of excommunication; was treated
as a moral leper in his own palace; cut off from contact with human
kind and from sound of human voice; the dishes from which he ate, the
clothes he wore, destroyed, until repentant and heart-broken they
consented to part and to break the bond of their union forever.

It was the despair in the heart of the nation which gave intensity to
the religious instinct at this time. And when pestilence came, and
neither rich nor poor could escape, conscience-stricken barons also
trembled. A belief began to prevail that the end of the world was at
hand. Did not the Book of Revelation say that one thousand years from
the birth of Christ the great dragon was to be let loose and the earth
was to be destroyed?

As the hour of doom approached, labor ceased, the fields were
untouched, and when to pestilence and despair was added famine, then
men's hearts failed them even under coats of mail. The Church came to
the rescue with the "Truce of God," which, in the hope of appeasing an
avenging God, forbade private wars during certain periods in the
ecclesiastical year. Repentant barons, with a similar hope, made peace