Wretched as was the physical condition of the people of Europe, their moral state was even more deplorable. The revolting characteristics and manners of the clergy have already been considered in these pages. Under such instructors, whose admonitions were so palpably at variance with their unholy lives, it cannot be wondered at that society was permeated with treachery and hypocrisy. It is one of the most remarkable of mental phenomena that man should earnestly solicit the intercession of the members of a sacred profession with Heaven, while at the same time he demonstrates unequivocally by his actions that he has no respect for their calling and no faith in their prayers. Such was largely the case of the Roman Catholics of the Dark Ages. They lavished their wealth with unstinted profusion upon the Church. They greeted her ministers with servile tokens of respect and homage. They sought her advice in worldly affairs; they obeyed her oppressive edicts; they voluntarily relinquished their natural rights at her despotic bidding. But when opportunity offered, the insincerity of these professions became unmistakably evident. In the midst of the apparent blind and devoted subserviency to the principles of a debased religion, ancient Pagan ideas were constantly manifesting themselves. The worship of fairies, often scarcely concealed, was widespread throughout the Christian world. The knight placed far more confidence in his armor, consecrated by heathen ceremonies, than in the reliquary that was attached to his saddle-bow or the Agnus Dei suspended about his neck. The anxious housewife on the eve of a feast preferred to address her petitions to some popular and beneficent Pagan spirit, accustomed to good living and luxury, than to a female saint with whom abstinence was a duty, and whose life had been passed amidst the privations of the convent or the hermitage.