. The Church had been struggling for centuries, and was to
struggle some time longer, to make effective its opposition to marriage
among the clergy. Among the secular priests, those not connected with a
monastic order, marriage or concubinage had not by any means ceased, and
we find even bishops leading scandalous lives. But the Church continued
to fulminate its decrees, and the evil grew slowly less and less, till
it existed only among the lower orders of the clergy and in
out-of-the-way places. Monks and nuns alike took the three vows of
poverty, of chastity, and of obedience. We are not concerned with the
general question of whether or not priests should be married, or whether
or not it is wisdom to force the observance of a vow of perpetual
chastity upon young men and women who may have taken such a vow without
duly considering their own temperaments, or who have been compelled to
take it against their wills. Despite the scandals,--scandal has always a
noisy tongue,--there should be no doubt that in the great majority of
cases the vow of chastity was sincerely kept. Within its own limits the
Church discouraged and was soon utterly to forbid marriage; what did it
do to sanctify and to protect marriage outside of the ranks of the
clergy?

Marriage was made one of the seven great sacraments of the Church, and
the breach of the marriage tie was one of the sins most severely
punished. Adultery had been severely punished under the customary laws
of the Franks, usually by the death of both parties with frightful
tortures; and the Church added to the physical punishment inflicted by
the civil law in this world the threat of eternal torments in the next.
Nevertheless, according to the testimony of many who are satirists and
of some who are not, it was the unmarried priest who was the most
frequent offender. An anecdote will illustrate the prevailing looseness
of clerical morals. Wace tells us that a sacristan of Saint-Ouen, in
Rouen, fell in love with a lady who lived across the little river Robec.
As he was stealing across to meet her one dark night, his foot slipped
on the plank by which he was crossing the stream, and he tumbled therein
and was drowned. A devil was just about to pitchfork his soul and carry
it off when an angel appeared, contending that the sacristan had not yet
committed the sin. The case was submitted to Duke Richard, who ordered
that the soul should be returned to the body, and that he would then
judge