[6].  “Polyptique d’Irminon,” by Guérard.  In this work we see the prosperity of the domain belonging to the Abbey of St. Germain des Près at the end of the eighth century.  According to M. Guérard’s statistics, the peasantry of Paliseau were about as prosperous in the time of Charlemagne as at the present day.

[7].  Taine’s definition would also fit contemporary (1999) drugs and video entertainment which also provide mankind with both hope, pleasure and entertainment. (Sr.)

[8].  There are twenty-five thousand lives of the saints, between the sixth and the tenth centuries, collected by the Bollandists. — The last that are truly inspired are those of St. Francis of Assisi and his companions at the beginning of the fourteenth century.  The same vivid sentiment extends down to the end of the fifteenth century in the works of Fra Angelico and Hans Memling. — The Sainte Chapelle in Paris, the upper church at Assisi, Dante’s Paradise, and the Fioretti, furnish an idea of these visions.  As regards modern literature, the state of a believer’s soul in the middle ages is perfectly described in the “Pélerinage à Kevlaar,” by Henri Heine, and in “Les Reliques vivantes,” by Tourgueneff.

[9].  As, for example, Tertulle, founder of the Platagenet family, Rollo, Duke of Normandy, Hugues, Abbot of St. Martin of Tours and of St. Denis.

[10].  See the “Cantilenes” of the tenth century in which the “Chansons de Geste” are foreshadowed.

[11].  Laws governing the feudal system (1372) where the feudal lord is unable to transmit his property by testament but has to leave them to the next holder of the title.  The “mainmortables” were serfs who belonged to the property. (Sr.)

[12].  See in the “Voyages du Caillaud,” in Nubia and Abyssinia, the raids for slaves made by the Pacha’s armies; Europe presented about the same spectacle between the years 800 and 900.

[13].  See the zeal of subjects for their lords in the historians of the middle ages; Gaston Phoebus, Comte de Foix, and Guy, Comte de Flandres in Froissart; Raymond de Béziers and Raymond de Toulouse, in the chronicle of Toulouse.  This profound sentiment of small local patrimonics is apparent at each provincial assembly in Normandy, Brittany, Franche-Comté, etc.

[14].  Suger, Life of Louis VI.

[15].  “Les Grand Jours d’Auvergne,” by Fléchier, ed.  Chéruel.  The last feudal brigand, the Baron of Plumartin, in Poitou, was taken, tried, and beheaded under Louis XV in 1756.

[16].  As late as Louis XV a procès verbal is made of a number of cures of the King’s evil.

[17].  “Mémoires of Madame Campan,” I. 89; II. 215.

[18].  In 1785 an Englishman visiting France boasts of the political liberty enjoyed in his country.  As an offset to this the French reproach the English for having decapitated Charles I., and “glory in having always maintained an inviolable attachment to their own king; a fidelity, a respect which no excess or severity on his part has ever shaken.” ("A Comparative View of the French and of the English Nation,” by John Andrews, p.257.)