that men gaze
with more than admiration, even with sentiments bordering on that
adoration which the Middle Ages felt for the mother of our Lord, and
which they also bestowed upon departed saints. In the immortal paintings
of Raphael and Murillo we get some idea of this moral beauty, which is
so hard to copy.

So woman passed gradually from contempt and degradation to the
veneration of men, when her soul was elevated by the power which
Paganism never knew. But Christianity in the hands of degenerate Romans
and Gothic barbarians made many mistakes in its efforts to save so
priceless a thing as a human soul. Among other things, it instituted
monasteries and convents, both for men and women, in which they sought
to escape the contaminating influences which had degraded them. If
Paganism glorified the body, monasticism despised it. In the fierce
protests against the peculiar sins which had marked Pagan
life,--gluttony, wine-drinking, unchastity, ostentatious vanities, and
turbulent mirth,--monasticism decreed abstinence, perpetual virginity,
the humblest dress, the entire disuse of ornaments, silence, and
meditation. These were supposed to disarm the demons who led into foul
temptation. Moreover, monasticism encouraged whatever it thought would
make the soul triumphant over the body, almost independent of it.
Whatever would feed the soul, it said, should be sought, and whatever
would pamper the body should be avoided.

As a natural consequence of all this, piety gradually came to seek its
most congenial home in monastic retreats, and to take on a dreamy,
visionary, and introspective mood. The "saints" saw visions of both
angels and devils, and a superstitious age believed in their
revelations. The angels appeared to comfort and sustain the soul in
temptations and trials, and the devils came to pervert and torment it.
Good judgment and severe criticism were lost to the Church; and,
moreover, the gloomy theology of the Middle Ages, all based on the fears
of endless physical torments,--for the wretched body was the source of
all evil, and therefore must be punished,--gave sometimes a repulsive
form to piety itself. Intellectually, that piety now excites our
contempt, because it was so much mixed up with dreams and ecstasies and
visions and hallucinations. It produces a moral aversion also, because
it was austere, inhuman, and sometimes cruel. Both monks and nuns, when
they conformed to the rules of their order, were sad, soli