ning from her body, and
no one dared to harm her. At length one bold ruffian came near her, but
was struck dead at her feet by a thunderbolt.

The emperor Diocletian renewed these terrible persecutions. The church's
only retaliation was the rescue of depraved women. Mary, an Egyptian,
was a conspicuous penitent, who sailed for Jerusalem and spent her
remaining years virtuously in the Holy Land.

The Christian emperor Theodosius II., who died in the year 450, laid
heavy penalties on traffickers in women. Justinian, who came to the
throne in 527, punished procurers with death. He was merciful toward
erring women, but was unsparing toward every one who exploited them for
gain.

FRANCE.

The Latin writers, conspicuously Tacitus, represent the Germans, Franks
and Gauls as very virtuous, and very severe in their punishment of
offenders. The earliest known legislation in the northern kingdoms is in
the Capitularies of Charlemagne, who was crowned emperor of the Holy
Roman Empire by the Pope in St. Peter's at Rome on Christmas day in the
year 800. Early in his reign in his northern dominions Charlemagne
enacted that all who kept houses of shame or lent their aid to vice were
to be scourged. He would spare neither bad women nor vile men.

But succeeding kings of France, very many of them, were themselves
models not of virtue and kingliness, but of dishonor and debauch. Many
of the clergy also were very immoral, and the whole nation became
corrupt.

Louis IX. made the first earnest effort to check the evil. He issued an
extreme edict, in 1254, that all immoral woman and all keepers and
procurers should be at once exiled from France. After a reaction Louis
renewed his efforts to extirpate the iniquity, and his son Philip
continued to inflict severe penalties. During the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries several notorious procurers were burned alive at
Paris. In the sixteenth century in cities of the south of France
sometimes a woman of this detestable class was thrust into an iron cage
and thrown into the river. When almost dead from drowning she was drawn
out, and after a little the punishment was repeated. Many of the women
who were burnt as witches were really condemned because they were
procuresses or otherwise odiously immoral.

The rise of Chivalry greatly increased the safety of good women and
diminished immorality among men. A higher moral tone was imparted to
society everywhere. Faithful preachers cried out a