Thus had the Roman Catholic Church, by the corruption and effrontery of its ministers, forfeited the respect of mankind. Its edicts were disregarded. Its lessons were unheard. The pious turned with loathing from the hypocritical exhortations of religious teachers whose lives were stained with every crime, and whose conduct presented examples of flagrant iniquity, which fortunately had few parallels outside of their profession. The reverence once attaching to the Vatican was sensibly impaired. While its policy encouraged the promotion of the humble, its authority necessarily suffered through the enrolment into the priesthood of men without education, refinement, honor, decency, or independence. Public respect could not be retained by a class degraded by servile associations and still subject to the arbitrary caprices of a secular lord. As in every community are to be found many individuals to whom religion is a necessity, so in the Provençal cities and villages devout persons turned from the ancient and discredited hierarchy to other quarters for the inestimable consolations of forgiveness and hope. Such conditions infallibly generate heresy, and the eagerness and unanimity with which heterodox opinions were adopted in that populous region demonstrated at once the extent of the evil and the necessity for the radical measures by which its removal was accomplished. The centre of intellectual culture in Southern France was the University of Montpellier. It has been well said that the history of the faculty of that famous institution is to a great extent the history of medicine in Europe. During the early part of the twelfth century, Montpellier was the most important emporium of France. The trade of the entire country converged to that point. Its commercial establishments were upon a colossal scale. Its population was cosmopolitan. The conquests of Ferdinand and Jaime, the occupation of Cordova, Seville, Majorca, and Valencia had attracted to Languedoc, and especially to its most thriving city, tens of thousands of Mohammedan refugees. The Jews had long been numerous in that region, and were already conspicuous for wealth, intelligence, and power.