Large and small bells were cast; chalices, patines, incensories, images,
and even altars of gold and silver, or ornamented with them, were
fabricated. Aventin relates, that at Mauverkirchen, in Bavaria, figures
in plaster, hardened by fire, had, in 948, been made of a duke of
Bavaria and his general.
[Sidenote: 911-1024.]
The establishment of schools, and the protection given to the arts and
sciences, invited the whole body of the nation to the acquisition of
useful and ornamental knowledge; but the invitation was not even
generally accepted. There was much superstition in every order of the
laity. An opinion prevailed among them, that the world was to end, and
the day of judgment arrive, in the year 1000. An universal panic spread
itself over Europe. Strange to relate, the people sought to avoid the
catastrophe, by hiding themselves in caverns and tombs.
The existence of this ignorance cannot be denied: but, to the
ecclesiastics, who strove against it, who erected and fostered so many
schools to dispel it, and who exerted themselves in the manner we have
mentioned, to establish another and a better order of things, a great
share of praise and gratitude should never be denied.
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