Though the thirteenth century was fruitful in faith and Christian observances, still the Christians of that age were neither so numerous nor so influential as, in order to shame our present day, is often averred. The Crusades, that great outbreak of Christian zeal, had introduced tastes, passions, and habits of great licence into all classes. I find, in a learned and judicious 'History of St. Louis,' to which the French Academy has lately awarded a prize, the following faithful and authentic summary of the moral disorders of the time: '"People start on these sacred expeditions in order to become holy," says Rutebeuf, the contemporary poet, "and they come back--those who do come back--reprobate vagabonds." {11} Their faith was tainted by association with the Mussulmen, and their lives by the manners and customs of the East. The clergy even did not escape corruption. ... The priests were so despised by the laity that they looked down upon them as if they had been Jews, saying, "I'd rather be a priest than do so-and-so." The young priests, when they appeared in public, hid the tonsure, which they wore close to the forehead, by drawing the hair from the back of the head over it. The nobles no longer allowed their sons to take holy Orders; they found it more convenient to appoint to the churches the children of their vassals, from whom they could exact some share of the pecuniary dues. The bishops had no chance of choosing their own priests, but were reduced to accept any who would condescend to enter such a discreditable profession.' At the same time, the luxury of the higher orders of the clergy was a subject of great scandal. 'The councils of the Church had often attempted to check it, and in 1179 the third Council of Lateran suggested the following regulation as a reform: "The archbishops on their journeys shall have at the utmost from forty to fifty horses, the cardinals twenty-five, the bishops twenty or thirty, the arch-deacons seven, and the deans and their inferiors two." The progress of the legates of the Holy See was justly dreaded as causing absolute ruin. "Wherever they went," says Abbe Fleury, "they exacted magnificent entertainment from the bishops and abbots; and in order to defray these expenses the monasteries were sometimes even compelled to sell the sacred vessels from their churches." [Footnote 2] [Footnote 2: Faure, 'Histoire de Saint Louis,' vol. i. p. 38.] {12}