strength to conceive men. In the West things were yet worse--instead of
Rome Pagan, that had spread light and civilization--the Rome of Cicero,
of Virgil, of Lucretius--we have Rome Christian, spreader of darkness
and of degradation, the Rome of the Popes and the monks. The Latins
"were, almost without exception, sunk in the most brutish and barbarous
ignorance, so that, according to the unanimous accounts of the most
credible writers, nothing could be more melancholy and deplorable than
the darkness that reigned in the western world during this century....
In the seminaries of learning, such as they were, the seven liberal
sciences were taught in the most unskilful and miserable manner, and
that by the monks, who esteemed the arts and sciences no further than as
they were subservient to the interests of religion, or, to speak more
properly, to the views of superstition" (p. 219). But the light from
Arabia was struggling to penetrate Christendom. Gerbert, a native of
France, travelled into Spain, and studied in the Arabian schools of
Cordova and Seville, under Arabian doctors; he developed mathematical
ability, and returned into Christendom with some amount of learning:
raised to the papal throne, under the name of Sylvester II., he tried to
restore the study of science and philosophy, and found that his
geometrical figures "were regarded by the monks as magical operations,"
and he himself "as a magician and a disciple of Satan" (p. 220).

The vice of the clergy was something terrible. "These corruptions were
mounted to the most enormous height in that dismal period of the Church
which we have now before us. Both in the eastern and western provinces,
the clergy were, for the most part, composed of a most worthless set of
men, shamefully illiterate and stupid, ignorant, more especially in
religious matters, equally enslaved to sensuality and superstition, and
capable of the most abominable and flagitious deeds. This dismal
degeneracy of the sacred order was, according to the most credible