to enforce them, had most occasion to dread their severity. They were
obtruded upon their sees, as the supreme pontiffs were upon that of
Rome, by force or corruption. A child of five years old was made
Archbishop of Rheims. The see of Narbonne was purchased for another at
the age of ten" ("Europe during the Middle Ages," p. 353, ed. 1869).
John X. made pope at the solicitation of his mistress Theodora, the
mother-in-law of the sovereign, and murdered at the instance of
Theodora's daughter, Marozia; John XI., illegitimate son of the same
Marozia, and of the celibate pontiff, Sergius III.; Boniface VII.
expelled, banished, returning and murdering the reigning pope: what
avails it to chronicle these monsters? Below the popes, a clergy as
vicious as their rulers, squandering money, plundered from the people in
dissoluteness and luxury. And the people, what of them?

As late as A.D. 1430 the houses of the peasantry were "constructed of
stones put together without mortar; the roofs were of turf--a stiffened
bull's-hide served for a door. The food consisted of coarse vegetable
products, such as peas, and even the bark of trees. In some places they
were unacquainted with bread. Cabins of reeds plastered with mud, houses
of wattled stakes, chimneyless peat fires, from which there was scarcely
an escape for the smoke, dens of physical and moral pollution swarming
with vermin, wisps of straw twisted round the limbs to keep off the
cold, the ague-stricken peasant with no help except shrine-cure," i.e.,
cure by the touching bone of saint, or image of virgin (Draper's
"Conflict between Religion and Science," p. 265). Even among the
wealthy, the life was coarse and rough; carpets were unknown; drainage
never thought of. The Anglo-Saxon "'nobles, devoted to gluttony and
voluptuousness, never visited the church, but the matins and the mass
were read over to them by a hurrying priest in their bed-chambers,
before they rose, themselves not listening. The common people were a
prey to the more powerful; their property was seized, their bodies
dragged away to distant countries; their maidens were either thrown into
a brothel or sold for slaves. Drinking, day and night, was the general
pursuit: vices, the companions of inebriety, followed, effeminating the
manly mind.' The baronial castles were dens of robbers. The Saxon
chronicler [William of Malmesbury, from whom the quotation above]
records how men and women were caught and dragged into th