ries. Relics were fetiches. The Holy
Sepulcher and the Holy Land were fetiches; that is, they were thought
to have magical power on account of the spirits of the great dead in
them. Transubstantiation was the application of magic and fetich ideas
to the ceremony of the mass. All the mediaeval religiosity ran to forms
of which asceticism and magic were the core. Cathedral building was a
popular mania of ascetic religion. Pilgrimages had the same character.
We may now regard it as ascertained fact that asceticism, cruelty to
dissenters, fanaticism, and sex frenzy are so interlaced in the depths
of human nature that they produce joint or interdependent phenomena.
That an ascetic who despises pain, or even thinks it a good, should
torture others is not hard to understand. That the same age should
produce a wild outburst of sex passion and a mania of sex renunciation
is only another case of contradictory products of the same cause of
which human society offers many. That the same age should produce
sensual worldlings and fanatical ecclesiastics is no paradox.

+691. Asceticism in Christian mores.+ The ascetic standards and
doctrines passed into the mores of Christianity and so into the mores of
Christendom, both religious and civil. In the popular notion it was the
taboos which constituted Christianity, and those were the best
Christians who construed the taboos on wealth, luxury, pleasure, and sex
most extremely, and observed them most strictly. Such persons were
supposed to be able to perform miracles. In the Middle Ages the casuists
and theologians seemed never to tire of multiplying distinctions and
antitheses about sex.[2191] In fact their constant preoccupation with it
was the worst departure from the reserve and dignity which are the first
requirements in respect to it. A document of the extremest doctrine is
_Hali Meidenhad_,[2192] of the thirteenth century. The aim of the book
is to persuade women to renounce marriage. Marriage is servitude. God
did not institute it. Adam and Eve introduced it by sin. Our flesh is
our foe. Virginity is heaven on earth. Happy wedlock is rare. Motherhood
is painful. Family life is full of trials and quarrels. Virginity is not
God's command but his counsel. Marriage is only a concession (1 Cor.
vii.). This was the orthodox doctrine of the time. Among the religious
heroes of the age not a few were irresponsible from lack of food, lack
of sleep, and the nervous exaltation which they force