e: 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.

By the end of the thirteenth century, however, the clerical power was
already beginning to decline. It was not the corruption of the Church,
but its enormous wealth which engendered the hatred, with which it was by
many regarded. Temporal princes and haughty barons began to dispute the
right of ecclesiastics to enjoy vast estates, while refusing the burthen
of taxation, and unable to draw a sword for the common defence. At this
period, the Counts of Flanders, of Holland, and other Netherland