The six sisters of the valleys : an historical romance - University Library

2 THE SIX SISTEES OE THE VALLEYS.
would not unfaithfully have typified the
purity and steadfastness of the Vestal
Church, which worshipped at its base.
When the last of the ten Gothic king-
doms became subservient to the See of
Rome ; when superstition, ignorance, and
error deluged the Western Empire ; when
Germany was a black forest from Savoy
to the Baltic ; when the Moor held the
sunny vineyards of Andalusia ;
when Islam
received its check on the plain of Tours ;
when the Saxon bowed before his images,
this hidden Church of the Valleys breasted
the flood of Rome's corruptions ; for the
truths which had first echoed in Jerusalem
and. Antioch, and had there waxed faint,
rang with no uncertain sound upon the
slopes of the Alps, from generation to
generation :
—
" Extrema per illos,
Justitia excedens terris vestigia fecit."
Mother of the reformed Churches of