The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends, their practice by new superstitions; and the establishment of the inquisition, the mendicant orders of monks and friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and the final progress of idolatry, flowed from the baleful fountain of the holy war.

The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion; and if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times of darkness, the thirteenth and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and fable.
[Footnote 65: Windmills, first invented in the dry country of Asia Minor, were used in Normandy as early as the year 1105, (Vie privee des Francois, tom.i.p.42, 43.

Ducange, Gloss.Latin.tom.iv.p.

474.)] [Footnote 66: See the complaints of Roger Bacon, (Biographia Britannica, vol.i.p.

418, Kippis's edition.) If Bacon himself, or Gerbert, understood _some_Greek, they were prodigies, and owed nothing to the commerce of the East.] [Footnote 67: Such was the opinion of the great Leibnitz, (uvres de Fontenelle, tom.v.p.