So little was this matter doubted, that one day the bishop
had enough to do to save three men and a woman from being stoned to
death, the people insisting they had just fallen overboard from one of
these aerial ships.
We do not here examine whether, in those days, the people literally were
more superstitious and credulous than in the days of paganism. It is
enough to say, that they were of very easy belief; and hence men began
to write their histories in the style of romance, mixing up a thousand
fables with the deeds of great men, such as Roland, nephew to
Charlemagne; which so suited the taste of the age, that no book would
afterwards go down in any other style--witness, for instance, the Manual
of Devotions by James de Voragine, archbishop of Genoa, composed towards
the latter end of the thirteenth century; and in which Melchior Canus, a
learned Spanish bishop, is so scandalized in his eleventh book of Common
Places. Another doctor of divinity,[129] speaking of the depraved state of
the times, says, "It was the error, or rather folly, of some of the
ancients, to think, that in writing the actions of illustrious men, the
style must sink, unless they mixed up with it the ornaments, for so they
called them, of poetical fiction, or something of this sort; and,
consequently, thus blended truth with fable.
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