promote public morality and the welfare of society, and
unscrupulous in the arts by which their power was gained.

That which filled the soul of Hildebrand with especial grief was
the alienation of the clergy from their highest duties, their
worldly lives, and their frail support in his efforts to elevate
the spiritual power. Therefore he determined to make a reform of
the clergy themselves, having in view all the time their assistance
in establishing the papal supremacy. He attacked the clergy where
they were weakest. They--the secular ones, the parish priests--
were getting married, especially in Germany and France. They were
setting at defiance the laws of celibacy; they not only sought
wives, but they lived in concubinage.

Now celibacy had been regarded as the supernal virtue from the time
of Saint Jerome. It was supposed to be a state most favorable to
Christian perfection; it animated the existence of the most noted
saints. Says Jerome, "Take axe in hand and hew down the sterile
tree of marriage." This notion of the superior virtue of virginity
was one of the fruits of those Eastern theogonies which were
engrafted on the early Church, growing out of the Oriental idea of
the inalienable evil of matter. It was one of the fundamental
principles of monasticism; and monasticism, wherever born--whether
in India or the Syrian deserts--was one of the established
institutions of the Church. It was indorsed by Benedict as well as
by Basil; it had taken possession of the minds of the Gothic
nations more firmly even than of the Eastern. The East never saw
such monasteries as those which covered Italy, France, Germany, and
England; they were more needed among the feudal robbers of Europe
than in the effeminate monarchies of Asia. Moreover it was in