the fields the back of the peasant woman was bent in ceaseless
toil. Or again, the lady of the manor would ride forth with her lord
when he went to the hunt, she upon her white palfrey, and he upon his
black charger, and each with hooded falcon on wrist; for the gentle art
of falconry was almost as much in vogue among the women as among the men
of the time. Often it happened that during the course of the hunt it
would be necessary to cross a newly planted field, or one heavy with the
ripened grain, and this they did gaily and with never a thought for the
hardship that they might cause; and as they swept along, hot after the
quarry, the poor, mistreated peasant, whether man or woman, dared utter
no word of protest or make moan, nor did he or she dare to look boldly
and unabashed upon this hunting scene, but rather from the cover of some
protecting thicket. Scenes of this kind will serve to show the great
gulf which there was between the great and the lowly; and as there was
an almost total lack of any sort of education in the formal sense of the
word, it will be readily understood that all that education could mean
for anybody was that training which was incident to the daily round of
life, whatever it happened to be. So the poor and dependent learned to
fear and sometimes to hate their masters, and the proud and haughty
learned to consider themselves as superior and exceptional beings.

With society in such a state as this, the question will naturally arise:
What did the Church do under these circumstances to ameliorate the
condition of the people and to advance the cause of woman? The only
answer to this question is a sorry negative, as it soon becomes
apparent, after an investigation of the facts, that in many cases the
members of the clergy themselves were largely responsible for the wide
prevalence of vice and immorality. It must be remembered that absolution
from sin and crime in those days was but a matter of money price and
that pardons could be easily bought for any offence, as the venality of
the clergy was astounding. The corruption of the time was great, and the
priests themselves were steeped in crime and debauchery. In former
generations, the Church at Rome had many times issued strict orders
against the marriage of the clergy, and, doubtless as one of the
consequences of this regulation, it had become the custom for many of
the priests to have one or more concubines with whom they, in most
cases, lived open