Netherlands.  The clerical order became the most privileged of all.  The accused priest refused to acknowledge the temporal tribunals.  The protection of ecclesiastical edifices was extended over all criminals and fugitives from justice—­a beneficent result in those sanguinary ages, even if its roots were sacerdotal pride.  To establish an accusation against a bishop, seventy-two witnesses were necessary; against a deacon, twenty-seven; against an inferior dignitary, seven; while two were sufficient to convict a layman.  The power to read and write helped the clergy to much wealth.  Privileges and charters from petty princes, gifts and devises from private persons, were documents which few, save ecclesiastics, could draw or dispute.  Not content, moreover, with their territories and their tithings, the churchmen perpetually devised new burthens upon the peasantry.  Ploughs, sickles, horses, oxen, all implements of husbandry, were taxed for the benefit of those who toiled not, but who gathered into barns.  In the course of the twelfth century, many religious houses, richly endowed with lands and other property, were founded in the Netherlands.  Was hand or voice raised against clerical encroachment—­the priests held ever in readiness a deadly weapon of defence:  a blasting anathema was thundered against their antagonist, and smote him into submission.  The disciples of Him who ordered his followers to bless their persecutors, and to love their enemies, invented such Christian formulas as these:—­“In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, the blessed Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, Peter and Paul, and all other Saints in Heaven, do we curse and cut off from our Communion him who has thus rebelled against us.  May the curse strike him in his house, barn, bed, field, path, city, castle.  May he be cursed in battle, accursed in praying, in speaking, in silence, in eating, in drinking, in sleeping.  May he be accursed in his taste, hearing, smell, and all his senses.  May the curse blast his eyes, head, and his body, from his crown to the soles of his feet.  I conjure you, Devil, and all your imps, that you take no rest till you have brought him to eternal shame; till he is destroyed by drowning or hanging, till he is torn to pieces by wild beasts, or consumed by fire.  Let his children become orphans, his wife a widow.  I command you, Devil, and all your imps, that even as I now blow out these torches, you do immediately extinguish the light from his eyes.  So be it—­so be it.  Amen.  Amen.”  So speaking, the curser was wont to blow out two waxen torches which he held in his hands, and, with this practical illustration, the anathema was complete.

Such insane ravings, even in the mouth of some impotent beldame, were enough to excite a shudder, but in that dreary epoch, these curses from the lips of clergymen were deemed sufficient to draw down celestial lightning upon the head, not of the blasphemer, but of his victim.  Men, who trembled neither at sword nor fire, cowered like slaves before such horrid imprecations, uttered by tongues gifted, as it seemed, with superhuman power.  Their fellow-men shrank from the wretches thus blasted, and refused communication with them as unclean and abhorred.