If then, as contemporary witnesses agree, a large proportion of the villagers lived in semi-paganism, what was responsible for this? Doubtless, in the first place, human nature; there never has been a land or an age of real faith in the Pauline sense, which implies not only acquiescence in certain formulae, but a certain effort to realize and practice that which often goes in at the ears and sometimes comes forth from the lips. It would be far less necessary to insist upon these things, if they were not daily misrepresented among us by superficial writers, and condoned by the silence of professional historians. A priori, nobody would expect the centuries of reconstruction after the break-up of ancient civilization to have been an age of noble and deep religion among the multitude, apart from a small minority of idealists; nor was it so in fact.

I have said, human nature was the first obstacle; and few men realize what a rough-hewn humanity the missionaries had to deal with at the end of the Dark Ages. Some readers will be familiar with that story in Book II of the monk of St-Gall, where he tells how noble Danes came yearly to the court of Charles the Great, seeking baptism and rebaptism for the sake of the new clothes which were distributed after the ceremony.