o
whether she were man or maid; and it was even feared that she might be
an illusion in woman's semblance, produced by the art of demons, which
scholars considered by no means impossible.[773] It was not long since
the death of that canon who held that now and again knights are
changed into bears and spirits travel a hundred leagues in one night,
then suddenly become sows or wisps of straw.[774] Suitable measures
had therefore been taken. But they must be carried out exactly,
wisely, and cautiously, for the matter was of great importance.

[Footnote 773: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 95; vol. iii, p. 209.]

[Footnote 774: Mary Darmesteter, _Froissart_, Paris, 1894, in 12mo, p.
96.]

CHAPTER VIII

THE MAID AT POITIERS (_continued_)

A belief, common to learned and ignorant alike, ascribed special
virtues to the state of virginity. Such ideas had been handed down
from a remote antiquity; their origin was pre-Christian; they were an
immemorial inheritance, one part of which came from the Gauls and
Germans, the other from the Romans and Greeks. In the land of Gaul
there still lingered a memory of the sacred beauty of the white
priestesses of the forest; and sometimes in the Island of Sein, along
the misty shores of the Ocean, there wandered the shades of those nine
sisters at whose bidding, in days of yore, the tempest raged and was
stilled.

According to these beliefs, which had dawned in the childhood of
races, the gift of prophecy is bestowed on virgins alone. It is the
heritage of a Cassandra or a Velleda. It was said that Sibyls had
prophesied the coming of Jesus Christ. In the Church they were
considered the first witnesses of Christ among the Gentiles, and they
were venerated as the august sisters of the prophets of Israel. The
_Dies Irae_ mentions one of them in the same breath with King David
himself. By what pious frauds their fame for prophecy was established,
we cannot tell any more than Jean Gerson or Gerard Machet. With the
doctors of the fifteenth century we must look upon these virgins as
speaking the word of truth to the nations, who venerated but did not
understand them. Such was the ancient tradition of the Christian
Church. The most ancient fathers of the Church, Justin, Origen,
Clement of Alexandria, frequently made use of the Sibylline oracles;
and the heathen were at a loss for a reply when Lactantius confronted
them with these prophetesses of the nations. Trusting in the word of
Varro, Saint J