Books were very scarce, and from about the close of the seventh century, after the conquest of Alexandria, when the importation of the Egyptian papyrus into Europe almost ceased, to the close of the eleventh century, when the art of making paper out of cotton rags seems to have been introduced, there was a very great scarcity of writing material. Parchment was very scarce and expensive, and a habit prevailed of erasing a manuscript in order to write again on the same skin, which greatly retarded any literary efforts on any extended scale. The preservation of the Latin tongue by the priesthood was all that saved any of the relics of the Roman literature in Europe.1 Bad as were the monasteries in their immediate influence upon the people, they were nevertheless the repositories of all that was preserved of the wonderful art, science and literature of the noble Greeks and Romans that remained in Europe. An isolated instance of depravity can in any age hardly be considered as a type of the race, yet in any period of ignorance and superstition the leaders. are a fit type of the state of the followers, as culture and morality work down from the leaders among the people. While in an age of reason they work up from the people, emanating largely from them, and influence and control their nominal leaders, and the era we now consider is not an exception to the rule.

In A. D. 757, after the death of Pope Paul I., the Duke of Nepi compelled some bishops to consecrate Constantine, one of his brothers, as Pope. But the electors subsequently chose (A. D. 768) Stephen IV., and the usurper and his adherents were severely punished. The eyes of Constantine were put out, the tongue of Bishop Theodore was amputated and he left to die in a miserable dungeon. The relatives of Pope Adrian seized his successor, took him into a church near at hand and attempted to put out his eyes and cut off his tongue. Boniface VI. (A. D. 896) was deposed from the deaconate, and again from the priesthood for his immoral and lewd life. After cutting off the hand of one of his antagonists, the nose, fingers and tongue of others, he was killed by the man whose wife he had seduced.

John the XIII. was strangled in prison, Benedict the VIII. was starved to death in a jail, John the XIV. was secretly put

1 Hallam's Middle Ages, p. 575,

to death in the dungeons of the Castle of St. Angelo. At this time the historian tells us that the sentiment of respect in Rome for the Pontiff had become extinct. In A. D. 1033 Benedict the IX., a mere boy of less than twelve years of age, was raised to the apostolic throne. Of this Pontiff one of his successors, Victor III., declared that his life was so foul, so shameful, so execrable, that he shuddered to describe it.

The people at last, unable to bear longer his adulteries and homicides, rose against him, and despairing of maintaining himself he put up the papacy to auction, and it was actually purchased by a presbyter named John, who became Gregory VI. (A. D. 1045.) But the depths were not yet reached.

In A. D. 1171 the Abbott elect of St. Augustine was found on examination to have seventeen illegitimate children in one village. The Abbott of St. Pelays in Spain in A. D. 1130 was proved to have kept no less than seventy concubines. Henry III., Bishop of Liege, was deposed in 1724 for having sixty-five illegitimate children. During this period the nunneries were like brothels, and vast multitudes of infanticides were so prevalent that strict enactments were made that they should not be permitted to live with their mothers and sisters, and the confessional was constantly in use for the purposes of debauchery.

3

An Italian bishop of the tenth century declared that if he should enforce the canons against unchaste persons administering the ecclesiastical rites of the church, no one would be left except the boys, and if he were to enforce the canons against bastards, even these must be excluded.. A tax on the clergy for keeping concubines was systematically levied for several centuries by the ruling princes, and the atrocious immoralities of the monasteries were known to all the people. But enough has been said to show to what extreme depths the teachers and the people had sunk in civil, social and moral life. It is not strange that in the tenth century there was a general expectation that the world was coming to an end, or at least ought to; and that the doctrine of total depravity of the race found many firm believers and ardent supporters.

1Draper's Intellectual Development of Europe, pp. 282-283. 2 History of European Morals, Leckey, Vol. 2, p. 350. sHistory of European Morals, Leckey, Vol. 2, p. 351. 4History of European Morals, Leckey, Vol. 2, p. 249,

But another cause of the dark ages, and more final in its nature, but somewhat secondary in its development, as when connected with the doctrine of the infallibility it found its greatest results, was the condition of woman in the theologies of the day, and as a moral element among the people and the view taken of marriage by the priesthood. They were the moral exemplars of that era. As vice-gerents of God, the clergy strive to imitate the life of Christ while upon earth. This originally gave a prominence to the doctrine of celibacy among them, which was afterward greatly enhanced by the considerations of missionary work. The old Jewish theory was incorporated into their dogmas of faith and action, and woman was considered the original cause of sin. As early as the fourth century it was recognized as criminal for the clergy to marry. This theory and the teaching of the early fathers of the church was most fatal to all that we call moral and holy in the family and married relation. They represent woman "as the door of hell," as "the mother of all human ills." Asserting that "she should be ashamed at the very thought that she is a woman." That she should live in continual penance on account of the crimes she has brought upon the world. She should be ashamed of her dress since it is the memorial of her fall, and she should be especially ashamed of her beauty, for it is the most potent instrument of her Deamon.1

Women were forbidden by a provincial council in the sixth century on account of their impurity to receive the eucharist into their naked hands, and hence the practice of receiving the wafer upon the tongue to the present day. This monstrous theory of the inherent sinfulness of women, and the criminality of marriage in the clergy, had a most disastrous effect upon the people. The better classes of women under the baneful influences of these teachings, which claimed to be infallible, sought the nunneries and retirement from the more active duties of life. And the clergy, in whom lay the culture and education of the age, being forbidden to marry, only the lower classes, the vicious and the uneducated, were left to inter-marry and perpetuate the race. Only one result could be expected-the rapid and constant decline and decay of all the nobler powers of the race. When we remem

1 History of European Morals, Leckey, Vol. 2, p. 358.

ber that this continued for some eight to ten centuries, the Dark Ages are no mystery, but the legitimate result of natural laws. The mystery being that there should have been recuperative power enough left to rise again from such depths of depraved thought and action.

As women, in the popular theology of the Jews, and largely among the Greeks and Romans, and the consequent degraded estimate in which she was held, contributed greatly to the decline of the race in the Dark Ages, so a change of sentiment of the people in reference to her is the first indication of the recuperative power of the people in Europe. This is first manifested in a movement of considerable power in the order of knighthood, a branch of the chivalrous power of that age, and in fact all the organized civil power there was for some 500 years. The origin of this sentiment, of a more favorable view of women, was among the Pagans and barbarians of that age, and more particularly among the Germans. They, with better reason and truer instinct, attributed sin in the race to other causes than to women alone. They were inclined to treat her as a rather essential part of the race, and to place her, as far as the depraved sentiments of that age would admit, on something of an equality with man. While they believed with all modern philosophers that she has contributed her part to the general sufferings and misery of the race, yet they were too manly and honorable to attribute to her the origin and all the results of sin in the world. The light-haired races, of which the Germans have always been conspicuous, are controlled more by reason, while the dark-haired races are more influenced by sentiment, impulse and emotion. One of the oaths taken when they received the honor of knighthood is sufficient to indicate this changing sentiment, and that it had become a part of the very spirit and character of the ruling military power of the age. This honor was conferred by the petty princes and barons, in whose service the knight was for the time being employed. "Sir, you that desire to receive the honor of knighthood swear before God and this Holy Book that you will not fight against his majesty that now bestoweth the order of knighthood upon you. You do also swear to maintain and defend all ladies, gentlemen, widows and orphans. And you shall shun no adventure of your person in any war wherein you shall happen to be.”

This organization was the first, at least for a thousand years, and perhaps in history, of any ruling importance that placed the ladies on an equality with the men. And it is significant as indicating the spirit of this noble organization, whose very name has stood in all subsequent history, and stands to-day as the synonym of gallantry, honor and purity.

St. Bernard says of them in the eleventh century: "They were full of self-denial, frugality, modesty, purity and bravery. Their arms their only finery, they used with courage, not dreading either the numbers or the strength of their enemies." An uncourteous knight was an anomaly and an anachronism. Courtesy was always the proper attribute of a knight and protection of the weak his particular duty. But when a woman became the object of their efforts, they were heightened to a wonderful pitch of enthusiasm. In France, the fountain of chivalry, and whose people are still marked the world over, as the best exemplars of its spirit, there appears to have been little of jealousy shown in their treatment of women. The Romance of Perceforest tells of a feast of eight hundred knights, each of whom had his lady eating off his plate. To eat off of the same plate was then a usual mark of gallantry.or friendship. All comparison between the two was obviated, and "the love of God and the Ladies," was enjoined as a single duty. He who was true and faithful to his mistress was held sure of salvation in the theologies of the castle, though not of the cloister. This change is the more significant, "as in a rude state of manners, and amid ignorant and superstitious people in all ages, woman has not full scope to display those fascinating powers with which nature has so bountifully endowed her. But where a taste for the more elegant enjoyments of wealth and culture characterize a people, she appears to best advantage, and her policy and delight are ever to encourage them, until she obtains the ascendency, at first in the lighter hours and then in the more serious occupations of life."

This change rapidly and surely prepared the way for the purity and stability of the family relation, which is the bulwark and foundation of the civil, intellectual and moral development of the race.

The crusades commenced by Peter the Hermit in A. D. 1Hallam's Middle Ages, p. 638.