The amount of gold and silver and jewels used in the churches was enormous. Not only the chalices and crosses and other furnishings of the altars were of gold, but often the altars themselves. In the church built in Constantinople by Constantine in the fourth century, there were numerous lifesize figures of silver, each weighing from ninety to one hundred and ten pounds. A canopy made of polished silver is said to have weighed two thousand pounds. In making the porphyry font, three thousand pounds of silver were used, and there were also columns of gold and an image of a lamb of solid gold. Figures of the saints often had precious stones for eyes. This same beautiful work was carried into cups and spoons and salt-cellars for royal households, and into jewelry for those who could afford to possess it. Most exquisite necklaces, clasps, bracelets, and châtelaines were made and loaded with rubies and emeralds and pearls. The English were famed for their remarkable gold and enamel work. An especially well known bit of it is the "jewel" of Alfred the Great, which he lost in the ninth century and which was found again in the seventeenth. In the eighth century there was in France a famous Saint Eloy, a monk, who produced such wonderful articles in gold and silver that whole monasteries became his enthusiastic followers. To own a piece of his work was the glory of a church.

A great amount of embroidery was used in the churches for curtains, altar cloths, and vestments. The English were especially famed for this work also. They made most handsome vestments, stiff with embroidery and flashing with gold and jewels. In Lincoln Cathedral there were more than six hundred of such vestments, embroidered on silk or velvet or rare Eastern materials. In the thirteenth century, Henry III presented one of his bishops with a cope which was valued at nearly £20, a sum estimated to be worth about £300 to-day. Besides this rich embroidery, there was much tapestry. Tapestry is made in a loom, but it is not woven with a shuttle. The threads of the warp are fastened into place as in ordinary weaving; but instead of filling in the woof by throwing a shuttle across them, the tapestry maker uses a needle and works in his designs with threads of different colors. Tapestry was used for curtains, canopies, table-covers, hangings of walls, bench-covers, and often for street decorations when important processions were to pass. The most famous piece of "tapestry," the Bayeux Tapestry, is in reality not tapestry at all, but embroidery. It is worked with wool upon a strip of brown linen nineteen inches wide and nearly two hundred and twelve feet long. It tells the story of the coming of William the Conqueror to England, and has pictures of his going on board ship, of his landing, of battles, and other scenes in his conquest, all worked with the needle. The pictures are rude, but they are clear, and they tell the story. To embroider well was looked upon as a great accomplishment in the time of William, quite proper for the fingers of a queen, and it is possible that William's wife, Matilda, and the maidens of her household worked together on this strip of cloth.

In the Middle Ages, as has been said before, there were many kinds of musical instruments, flutes, harps, drums, trumpets, pipes, and many others; but the one best suited to church music was the organ. An organ was presented to Charlemagne by Constantine, emperor of the East, which was "small but mighty," for, according to the stories, it imitated the "roaring of the thunder, the accents of the lyre, and the clang of cymbals." For some time many bishops and priests objected to the thunderous rumbling; but organs made their way and became big and magnificent. Some had pipes of silver and others of gold, The organists certainly needed to be trained athletes, for the key plates were five or six inches wide, and the player had to wear gloves heavily padded and strike the keys with the full force of his fists.

From the splendor of the churches the people went out into the plain, simple life of every day. It is no that whenever there was anything of the nature of a pageant, they enjoyed it with all their might. Most of these pageants took place to celebrate some royal marriage or the coronation of a sovereign. One of the most famous occurred in France toward the end of the fourteenth century, when Isabella of Bavaria entered Paris to become the queen of the French. She left the palace of Saint Denis in the morning. She was in a richly ornamented litter and was attended by her nobles and ladies in waiting. On either side of the way stood a body of some twelve hundred citizens of Paris, all on horseback and wearing handsome uniforms of crimson and green. A company of officers did their best to clear the way for the royal party, but "it seemed as if all the world had come thither," an old chronicler says.

At the first gate of Saint Denis the pageants began. There was a representation of a starry sky, and in this sky were children dressed as angels, who sang as the queen approached. This firmament must have been a little confusing, for in one part was an image of the Virgin Mary with the Holy Child in her arms playing with a windmill made of a large walnut, and in another were the arms of France and Bavaria, somewhat entangled in the rays of an exceedingly brilliant sun.

The next sight was a fountain which ran wine instead of water. It was decorated with fine blue cloth sprinkled with fleurs-de-lys. Handsomely dressed young girls stood around the fountain, singing most melodiously and offering wine in golden cups to all who would have it. Just beyond the fountain, a high stage had been built, and on this was represented a battle with the Saracens.

Now the queen had come to the second gate, and here was another representation of the firmament; but this time two angels descended from it and, singing sweetly, they gently placed upon her head a crown of gold rich with precious stones. A second scaffold was curtained and draped with tapestry, and on it were men playing on organs. The whole street was covered with a canopy of handsome camlet and silk. At Notre Dame Bridge there was a canopy of crimson and green made bright with stars. The street leading to the church was hung with tapestry to the very door. The procession had moved so slowly that it was now late in the evening; but the show was not over, for from the highest tower of Notre Dame a rope had been let down, and by this rope a man descended, bearing two lighted torches and playing various tricks on his way.

At the church door the Bishop of Paris and his clergy met the queen and led her through the nave and the choir to the altar. There she knelt and prayed, and then she lifted the crown from her head and gave it together with four cloths of gold to the Church. Another and richer crown was at once placed upon her head; then with an escort bearing five hundred lighted tapers she was carried back to her palace.

This was on Sunday. Monday the queen was solemnly anointed with the sacred oil. The king gave a grand banquet. He had provided several interesting devices, or dumb shows, but the hall was so crowded that hardly any one could see them, or even get anything to eat, for that matter, though a great plenty had been supplied. Tuesday there was a tournament wherein thirty knights, including the king, contended from three o'clock in the afternoon until night. Then came another splendid banquet, followed by dancing which lasted till sunrise. Wednesday and Thursday there were tilting and feasting, and Friday the guests made their farewells and went to their homes.

In all such pageants the people saw nothing irreverent in mingling religion and amusement. When the little nine-year old English king, Henry VI, had been successful, by means of his generals, in his battles with Joan of Arc, his guardians decided that he should be crowned in Paris as king of the French; and at this celebration there was a hunting scene wherein a well-trained deer took refuge under the king's horse; there was a presentation of three large crimson hearts to indicate the love borne the king by his people; there was a big fountain of hippocras, a sort of spiced wine, wherein three mermaids were swimming; and there were also mystery plays acted in dumb show. At the coronation feast there were pageants of course. One was a lady with a peacock, another a lady with a swan, and a third was the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child.

When the little royal boy returned to England, he was received by gentlemen of Kent in red hoods, by mayors and corporations, by citizens in white with the insignia of their trade embroidered on their sleeves, and by aldermen in scarlet. At London Bridge a mighty giant with a drawn sword stood in the way; but he proved to be a kindly giant, and he made a speech declaring that he was ready to defy all the little king's enemies. Next followed a moral lecture in costume; for from a tower richly draped with silk there came forth three ladies dressed in white and gold and coronets. They said in rhyme that they were Nature, Grace, and Fortune, and that they had come to bestow upon him the best of gifts. Then appeared on the right seven young girls in white with blue baldrics, and on the left seven whose dresses were powdered with stars of gold. The first seven declared that they bestowed upon him sapience, intelligence, good counsel, strength, cunning, pity, and the fear of God. The others repeated the following verses:—

After this they sang a roundelay, or "an heavenly melodie and song."

The next sight was a sort of tabernacle wherein sat Dame Sapience with her pupils—the trivium and the quadrivium—Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy. The little boy must have been tired when he reached "Paradise." This was a place made beautiful with green trees bearing oranges, almonds, olives, pomegranates, dates, quinces, and peaches; and the small Henry could hardly have helped wishing that he was not a king, but just an everyday boy and could jump down and lie under the trees and pick the fruit which had been so skillfully fastened upon the branches. But there is no rest for kings, and he had to sit still and look interested while two elderly men preached a sermon to him in verse. At last the poor child reached his palace; and perhaps in his dreams he had the pleasure of forgetting that he was a sovereign.

Such were the people and the customs in the days when knights were bold. It was a time of contradictions, an extraordinary commingling of ignorance with an intense desire to learn, of courtesy and gentleness with utter recklessness of human life and suffering; of magnificence of dress and luxuriance of surroundings with revolting filth and wearisome discomfort; of keenness in argument and blindness in doing justice, of readiness to sin with equal readiness to endure extreme penance. The people of the Middle Ages studied by futile methods, their astronomy was founded upon a mistake, their chemistry upon a poetical fancy. Nevertheless, something closely akin to the change of one metal into another has already become an everyday matter in our laboratories, and the dream of the alchemists may yet prove true in essence.

The Middle Ages lay between the civilization of the ancients and that of the printing press. It was a time of rapid changes, of swift and mighty transitions. Human life was insecure, the laws and their execution were often bitterly unjust; and yet there must have been hundreds of thousands of people who lived their lives quietly and contentedly, perhaps thinking with pity of those who dwelt in the land before them and with sympathy rather than envy of the condition of those who would follow them. "When one is contented, there is no more to be desired; and when there is no more to be desired, there is an end of it," declares the wisdom of Don Quixote. Possibly the good folk of the Middle Ages have after all no special need of our compassion.