First among these agencies, naturally, were evidences of
devotion, especially gifts of land, money, or privileges to
churches, monasteries, and shrines--the seats of fetiches which
it was supposed had wrought cures or might work them. The whole
evolution of modern history, not only ecclesiastical but civil,
has been largely affected by the wealth transferred to the clergy
at such periods. It was noted that in the fourteenth century,
after the great plague, the Black Death, had passed, an immensely
increased proportion of the landed and personal property of every
European country was in the hands of the Church. Well did a great
ecclesiastic remark that "pestilences are the harvests of the
ministers of God."[[71]]
Other modes of propitiating the higher powers were
penitential processions, the parading of images of the Virgin or
of saints through plague-stricken towns, and fetiches
innumerable. Very noted in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries were the processions of the flagellants, trooping
through various parts of Europe, scourging their naked bodies,
shrieking the penitential psalms, and often running from wild
excesses of devotion to the maddest orgies.
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