They respected the Apostles Peter and Paul, they respected My Lord the Pope, and the Bishops of France and Normandy and England who shared in their authority.

They flouted a king's edict, but none but hardened criminals among them laughed at an episcopal or a Papal excommunication.
These rude men, and it places their rude age high in the scale of civilization, respected religion.

They lowered the sword before the Cross.

The Church had for the disobedient and the refractory one terrible weapon, which she was loath to use, but which she occasionally used with swift and tragic effect, the weapon of excommunication.

Many a modern historian or philosopher has smiled good-naturedly and in mild contempt at this weapon used by the Church to frighten her children, much as children are frightened by flaunting some horrid tale of ogre or hobgoblin before them.