So quick-spreading and contagious is evil amongst men, and so difficult to extirpate in the name of justice and truth!

However, even in the midst of this cruel egotism and this gross unreason of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the necessity, from a moral and social point of view, of struggling against such disgusting irregularities, made itself felt, and found zealous advocates.  From this epoch are to be dated the first efforts to establish, in different parts of France, what was called God’s peace, God’s truce.  The words were well chosen for prohibiting at the same time oppression and revolt, for it needed nothing less than law and the voice of God to put some restraint upon the barbarous manners and passions of men, great or small, lord or peasant.  It is the peculiar and glorious characteristic of Christianity to have so well understood the primitive and permanent evil in human nature that it fought against all the great iniquities of mankind and exposed them in principle, even when, in point of general practice, it neither hoped nor attempted to sweep them away.  Bishops, priests, and monks were, in their personal lives and in the councils of the Church, the first propagators of God’s peace or truce, and in more than one locality they induced the laic lords to follow their lead.  In 1164, Hugh II., count of Rodez, in concert with his brother Hugh, bishop of Rodez, and the notables of the district, established the peace in the diocese of Rodez; “and this it is,” said the learned Benedictines of the eighteenth century, in the Art of Verifying Dates, “which gave rise to the toll of commune paix or pesade, which is still collected in Rouergue.”  King Robert always showed himself favorable to this pacific work; and he is the first amongst the five kings of France, in other respects very different,—­himself, St. Louis, Louis XII, Henry IV., and Louis XVI.,—­ who were particularly distinguished for sympathetic kindness and anxiety for the popular welfare.  Robert had a kindly feeling for the weak and poor; not only did he protect them, on occasion, against the powerful, but he took pains to conceal their defaults, and, in his church and at his table, he suffered himself to be robbed without complaint, that he might not have to denounce and punish the robbers.  “Wherefore at his death,” says his biographer Helgaud, “there were great mourning and intolerable grief; a countless number of widows and orphans sorrowed for the many benefits received from him; they did beat their breasts and went to and from his tomb, crying, ’Whilst Robert was king and ordered all, we lived in peace, we had nought to fear.  May the soul of that pious father, that father of the senate, that father of all good, be blest and saved!  May it mount up and dwell forever with Jesus Christ, the King of kings!”

[Illustration:  Robert had a Kindly Feeling for the Weak and Poor——­313]