gulf which there was between the great and the lowly; and as there was
an almost total lack of any sort of education in the formal sense of the
word, it will be readily understood that all that education could mean
for anybody was that training which was incident to the daily round of
life, whatever it happened to be. So the poor and dependent learned to
fear and sometimes to hate their masters, and the proud and haughty
learned to consider themselves as superior and exceptional beings.

With society in such a state as this, the question will naturally arise:
What did the Church do under these circumstances to ameliorate the
condition of the people and to advance the cause of woman? The only
answer to this question is a sorry negative, as it soon becomes
apparent, after an investigation of the facts, that in many cases the
members of the clergy themselves were largely responsible for the wide
prevalence of vice and immorality. It must be remembered that absolution
from sin and crime in those days was but a matter of money price and
that pardons could be easily bought for any offence, as the venality of
the clergy was astounding. The corruption of the time was great, and the
priests themselves were steeped in crime and debauchery. In former
generations, the Church at Rome had many times issued strict orders
against the marriage of the clergy, and, doubtless as one of the
consequences of this regulation, it had become the custom for many of
the priests to have one or more concubines with whom they, in most
cases, lived openly and without shame. The monasteries became, under
these conditions, dens of iniquity, and the nunneries were no better.
The nunnery of Saint Fara in the eleventh century, according to a
contemporary description, was no longer the residence of holy virgins,
but a brothel of demoniac females who gave themselves up to all sorts of
shameless conduct; and there are many other accounts of the same general
tenor. Pope Gregory VII. tried again to do something for the cause of