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.