system had become established, and had introduced some rule into social
relations, when the fate of mankind appeared no longer entirely left to
the risks of force, intellect once more found some sort of employment,
and once more assumed some sort of sway. Active and educated minds once
more began to watch with some sort of independence the social facts
before their eyes, to stigmatize vices and to seek for remedies. The
spectacle afforded by their age could not fail to strike them. Society,
after having made some few strides away from physical chaos, seemed in
danger of falling into moral chaos; morals had sunk far below the laws,
and religion was in deplorable contrast to morals. It was not laymen
only who abandoned themselves with impunity to every excess of violence
and licentiousness; scandals were frequent amongst the clergy themselves;
bishoprics and other ecclesiastical benefices, publicly sold or left by
will, passed down through families from father to son, and from husband
to wife, and the possessions of the Church served for dowry to the
daughters of bishops. Absolution was at a low quotation in the market,
and redemption for sins of the greatest enormity cost scarcely the price
of founding a church or a monastery. Horror-stricken at the sight of
such corruption in the only things they at that time recognized as holy,
men no longer knew where to find the rule of life or the safeguard of
conscience. But it is the peculiar and glorious characteristic of
Christianity that it is unable to bear for long, without making an effort
to check them, the vices it has been unable to prevent, and that it
always carries in its womb the vigorous germ of human regeneration. In
the midst of their irregularities, the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw
the outbreak of a grand religious, moral, and intellectual fermentation,
and it was the Church herself that had the honor and the power of taking
the initiative in the reformation. Under the influence of Gregory VII.
the rigor of the popes began to declare itself against the scandals of
the episcopate, the traffic in ecclesiastical benefices, and the bad