only they
exercised the administration of justice who led in the wrong-doing.
Often did peasants seek to safeguard wife and daughter from priestly
seduction by accepting none as a spiritual shepherd who did not bind
himself to keep a concubine;--a circumstance that led a Bishop of
Constance to impose a "concubine tax" upon the priests of his diocese.
Such a condition of things explains the historically attested fact, that
during the Middle Ages--pictured to us by silly romanticists as so pious
and moral--not less than 1500 strolling women turned up in 1414, at the
Council of Constance.

But these conditions came in by no means with the decline of the Middle
Ages. They began early, and gave continuous occasion for complaints and
decrees. In 802 Charles the Great issued one of these, which ran this
wise: "The cloisters of nuns shall be strictly watched; the nuns may not
roam about; they shall be kept with great diligence; neither shall they
live in strife and quarrel with one another; they shall in no wise be
disobedient to their Superiors or Abbesses, or cross the will of these.
Wherever they are placed under the rules of a cloister they are to
observe them throughout. Not whoring, not drunkenness, not covetousness
shall they be the ministrants of, but in all ways lead just and sober
lives. Neither shall any man enter their cloisters, except to attend
mass, and he shall immediately depart." A regulation of the year 869
provided: "If priests keep several women, or shed the blood of
Christians or heathens, or break the canonical law, they shall be
deprived of their priesthood, because they are worse than laymen." The
fact that the possession of several women was forbidden in those days
only to the priests, indicates that marriage with several wives was no
rare occurrence in the ninth century. In fact, there were no laws
forbidding it.

Aye, and even later, at the time of the Minnesaenger, during the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, the possession of several wives was considered
in order.[42]

The position of woman was aggravated still more by the circumstance
that, along with all the impediments which gradually made marriage and
settlement harder, their number materially exceeded that of the men. As
special reasons herefor are to be considered the numerous wars and
feuds, together with the perilousness of commercial voyages of those
days. Furthermore, mortality among men was higher, as the result of
habitual excesses