tate, the reorganisation of the Church under
a general discipline such as could be exercised only by the pope. He,
in their ideal, was to stand towards the whole world as the Cluniac
abbat stood towards each Cluniac priory, the one ultimate source of
jurisdiction, the Universal Bishop, appointing and degrading the
diocesan bishops as the abbat made and unmade the priors.

How much of all this did the great Odo plan? Not very much. But it
was his work to revive the discipline, the holiness, the
self-sacrifice, which, through the reformed monasteries, should touch
the whole Church.

And thus monasticism at the beginning of the eleventh century was a
wholly new force in the life of Christendom. It was destined to reform
the papacy itself.

[1] Bp. Stubbs in _Dict. of Christian Biography_, vol. i. p. 74.

{176}

CHAPTER XVI

SACRAMENTS AND LITURGIES

[Sidenote: Baptism.]

In the centuries with which we deal the importance of Baptism cannot be
overrated. It was everywhere, in all the missions of the Church,
regarded as the critical point of the individual life and the
indispensable means of entrance to the Christian Church. When the
children of Sebert the king of the East Saxons wished to have all the
privileges of Christians, which their father had had, and "a share in
the white bread" though they were still heathen, Mellitus the bishop
answered, "If you will be washed in that font of salvation in which
your father was washed, then you may also partake of the holy bread of
which he used to partake: but if you despise the laver of life you
cannot possibly receive the bread of life"; and he was driven from the
kingdom because he would not yield an inch. The tale however shows
also that there were still on the fringe of Christianity persons who
were not baptized, not catechumens, yet still interested in the
religion and to some extent anxious to be sharers in its life.
Throughout the early history of Gaulish Christianity the same is to be
observed, and it is doubtless the reason why a number of semi-pagan
customs still survived among those who were nominally Christians, {177}
as well as those who still stood outside the Church. Baptism in the
case of many was a critical point in the history of a tribe or nation.
The baptism of Chlodowech was the greatest historical event in the
history of the Franks: it was of critical importance that the Franks,
with him, accepted orthodox Christianity, that he, r