Among the people at large the physical consequences of the prevailing doctrine were hardly less pernicious. It justified the personal and public uncleanliness and the neglect of simple sanitary precautions to which they were already prone enough, and thus became to some extent accountable for the unprecedented succession of plagues which decimated the population of Europe again and again throughout the Middle Ages. None of these widespread epidemics suggested sanitary improvement, but they were regarded as “visitations,” and attributed to the wrath of God, or to the malice of Satan. It is not unlikely that such phenomena, even, as the dancing mania, the processions of Flagellants, trials of innocence, and the persecutions of Jews and witches depend in part upon the fact that communities and nations, no less than individuals, lacking real physical hardihood, were often crazed by nervous excitement, and impelled by an overstimulated emotional nature fell an easy prey to weird delusions and morbid fancies, of which a series of moral epidemics was the natural result. BIBLIOGRAPHY. W. E. H. Lecky, “History of European Morals from Augustine to Charlemagne” (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1869), =2=, pp. 107 ff. I. Gregory Smith, “Christian Monasticism from the Fourth to the Ninth Centuries of the Christian Era.” London, A. D. Innes & Co., 1892. Abbot Gasquet, “English Monastic Life.” London, Methuen & Co., 1904. Contains illustrations, maps, and plans. Herbert B. Workman, “The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal from the Earliest Times Down to the Coming of the Friars.” London, Charles H. Kelly, 1913. FOOTNOTES: [5] Lecky gives a striking series of examples in his History of European Morals, vol. =2=, pp. 114-119. CHAPTER V. MONASTERY AND CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS.