Motives such as these continued to inspire the enthusiastic Christian throughout the Dark Ages following the fall of Rome; but, as Europe became outwardly converted to the Catholic Faith, it was not paganism from which the monk fled, but the mockery of his own beliefs that he found in the lives of so-called Christians. The corruption of imperial courts, even those of a Constantine or Charlemagne, the cunning cruelty of a baptized Clovis, the ruthless selfishness of a feudal baron or Norman adventurer fighting in the name of Christ: all these were hard to reconcile with a gospel of poverty, gentleness, and brotherhood. Even the light of pure ideals once held aloft by the Church had begun to burn dim; for men are usually tolerant of evils to which they are accustomed, and the priest who had grown up amid barbarian invasions was inclined to look on the coarseness and violence that they bred as a natural side of life. As a rule he continued to maintain a slightly higher standard of conduct than his parishioners, but sometimes he fell to their level or below. The great danger to the Church, however, was, as always in her history, not the hardships that she encountered but the prosperity. The bishops, ‘overseers’ responsible for the discipline and well-being of their dioceses, became in the Middle Ages, by reason of their very power and influence, too often the servants of earthly rulers rather than of God. Far better educated and disciplined than the laymen, experienced in diocesan affairs, without ties of wife and family, since the Church law forbade the clergy to marry, they were selected by kings for responsible office in the state. Usually they proved the wisdom of his choice through their gifts of administration and loyalty, but the effect on the Church of adding political to ecclesiastical power proved disastrous in the end. Their great landed wealth made the bishops feudal barons, while bishoprics in their turn came to be regarded as offices at the disposal of the king; a bad king would parcel them out amongst his favourites or sell them to the highest bidders, heedless of their moral character. Thus crept into the Church the sin of ‘simony’ or ‘traffic in holy things’ so strongly condemned by the first Apostles, and, following hard on the heels of simony, the worldliness born of the temptations of wealth and power. The bishop who was numbered amongst a feudal baronage and entertained a lax nobility at his palace was little likely to be shocked at priests convicted of ignorance or immorality, or to spend his time in trying to reform their habits.