Now you ask: "What were his reforms, and what were his schemes of
aggrandizement, for which we honor him while we denounce him?" We cannot
see the reforms he attempted without glancing at the enormous evils
which stared him in the face.

Society in Europe, in the eleventh century, was nearly as dark and
degraded as it was on the fall of the Merovingian dynasty. In some
respects it had reached the lowest depth of wretchedness which the
Middle Ages ever saw. Never had the clergy been more ignorant, more
sensual, and more worldly. They had not the piety of the fourth century,
nor the intelligence of the sixteenth century; they were powerful and
wealthy, but exceedingly corrupt. Monastic institutions covered the face
of Europe, but the monks had sadly departed from the virtues which
partially redeemed the miseries that succeeded the fall of the Roman
Empire. The lives of the clergy, regular and secular, still compared
favorably with the lives of the feudal nobility, who had, in addition to
priestly vices, the vices of robbers and bandits. But still the clergy
were notoriously ignorant, superstitious, and sensual. Monasteries
sought to be independent of all foreign control and of episcopal
jurisdiction. They had been enormously enriched by princes and barons,
and they owned, with the other clergy, half the lands of Europe, and
more than half its silver and gold. The monks fattened on all the
luxuries which then were known; they neglected the rules of their order
and lived in idleness,--spending their time in the chase, or in taverns
and brothels. Hardly a great scholar or theologian had arisen among them
since the Patristic age, with the exception of a few schoolmen like
Anselm and Peter Lombard. Saint Bernard had not yet appeared to reform
the Benedictines, nor Dominic and Saint Francis to found new orders.
Gluttony and idleness were perhaps the characteristic vices of the great