It is by no means my intention to hold solely dogmatic Christendom of the middle ages and the Christian priest responsible for the monstrous superstition into which, according to the above description, Christian religion had degenerated in the domain of medicine. This superstition resulted from the cooperation of quite incongruous factors; but we can by no means exempt the Christian priest entirely from blame, in that he assisted very materially in furthering it. For we must bear in mind that the Christian cloister of the middle ages was not only the last refuge of humanistic culture, but the science of medicine found an asylum of preeminent importance within its precincts. Medicine had taken refuge in the cloister from the storms and tribulations which followed the political collapse of antiquity and from the excitement of national migrations, and had here attained a high degree of perfection. In fact, we may contend, without exaggeration, that at certain periods of the middle ages the Christian monastery had the importance as a medical school which was later on claimed by the university; for the Christian monks not only nursed the sick and practised medicine, but also took an interest in its scientific development. They were well acquainted with the medical classics of ancient times, such as Hippocrates, Herophilus, Dioscorides, Galen, Paul of Ægina, and others, as well as with the ancient medical celebrities of second and third rank. Briefly, medical knowledge in its entirety was contained in the cloisters of the middle ages; the cloisters, indeed, furnished a considerably larger quota of the medical profession than the laity. In such a state of affairs it might have been expected that the monks and priests should have applied their extensive medical knowledge to combat the terrible abuses which had invaded medicine in connection with the names and the bones of the saints. But this they never did, neither during the middle ages or later on. Priesthood has never seriously attempted to promote medical enlightenment. On the contrary, plenty of writings exist in which the crassest superstition in medico-physical affairs was defended by the clergy, who quite frequently exhibit the same spirit while practising medicine. Medical relief obtained by entirely terrestrial remedies they speedily placed to the credit of the saints, as was done, for instance, by the monks of Monte Cassino, when (as we have seen above) they persuaded the emperor Henry II. that not the temporal hands of the friar physicians had performed an operation for stone upon him, but that St. Benedict in person had, with his own holy hands, extracted the stone from the imperial bladder.