Nobody could be persuaded now that a dead head could speak, or a wolf change his nature to protect it; but thousands will credit a fortune-teller, or believe that a mesmerized patient can have a mental perception of scenes and occurrences a thousand miles away.
There was a great deal of superstition in the days when Alfred was called to the throne, and there was also, with it, a great deal of genuine honest piety.

The piety and the superstition, too, were inextricably intermingled and combined together.

They were all Catholics then, yielding an implicit obedience to the Church of Rome, making regular contributions in money to sustain the papal authority, and looking to Rome as the great and central point of Christian influence and power, and the object of supreme veneration.

We have already seen that the Saxons had established a seminary at Rome, which King Ethelwolf, Alfred's father, rebuilt and re-endowed.

One of the former Anglo-Saxon kings, too, had given a grant of one penny from every house in the kingdom to the successors of St.Peter at Rome, which tax, though nominally small, produced a very considerable sum in the aggregate, exceeding for many years the royal revenues of the kings of England.