The schools of Moslem Spain and Sicily had long been the resort of students, ambitious of literary attainments and distinction, from every country in Europe. Princes of Castile and France had for generations enjoyed the benefits of the educational advantages to be obtained in the Spanish Peninsula. The proximity of the polished and luxurious towns of Sicily to the ancient seat of Roman greatness and power had produced a corresponding effect, less evident and less durable, it is true, but still most civilizing and beneficial, upon the ferocious barbarism which had succeeded the cruel and shameless vices of the Cæsars. The sacerdotal order had profited more largely than all others by the learning of the Mohammedans. Pope Sylvester II., the most accomplished ecclesiastic of his time, whose prodigious acquirements caused him to be accused of sorcery and led to his assassination by poison, was educated at the University of Cordova. Roger Bacon, another reputed wizard, had deeply imbibed the heretical but fascinating opinions of the sages of the Tagus and the Guadalquivir. In almost every European monastery, whose inmates, corrupted by wealth and depraved by sensual indulgence, had abandoned the ascetic habits of the cloister, the infidel works of the Arabian philosophers were studied with curiosity and delight by jovial monks, long strangers to the vows inculcated as cardinal precepts by the regulations of their order. With the secular clergy, whose ostentatious luxury was proverbial, the case was even worse. While considerations of policy and self-interest prevented the avowal of principles totally at variance with the tenets of their profession, the fact that those principles were entertained was far from being a secret. The influential prelates of the Church, ignorant or heedless of the prejudicial effects which must inevitably ensue from familiarity with the works of the Moslem philosophers, did not vigorously attempt to suppress them until the mischief they had produced was almost irreparable. The unbelief and moral obliquity of the clergy reacted upon their flocks. The latter saw--first with surprise, then with indifference--the ill-concealed skepticism and open immorality of their spiritual counsellors. As a result of this lax and inconsistent behavior, society became permeated with hypocrisy. The popular tales of the Middle Ages, many of them undoubtedly founded on fact, indicate only too plainly the estimation in which the clergy were held by the people. That such pictures of ecclesiastical life could be drawn and published without interference or punishment shows not only the extent of the evil, but the recognition of its existence by every class of the community. The licentious stories of the mediæval writers were read or repeated with delight both in the palace of the noble and the hovel of the serf. One of the most remarkable of these collections owes its origin to the patronage of Louis XI., the Most Christian King of France.