The result of all these influences and happenings was that by the beginning of the seventh century Christian Europe had reached a very low intellectual level, and during the seventh and eighth centuries conditions grew worse instead of better. Only in England and Ireland, as will be pointed out a little later, and in a few Italian cities, was there anything of consequence of the old Roman learning preserved. On the Continent there was little general learning, even among the clergy (R. 64 a). Many of the priests were woefully ignorant, [4] and the Latin writings of the time contain many inaccuracies and corruptions which reveal the low standard of learning even among the better educated of the clerical class. The Church itself was seriously affected by the prevailing ignorance of the period, and incorporated into its system of government and worship many barbarous customs and practices of which it was a long time in ridding itself. So great had become the ignorance and superstition of the time, among priests, monks, and the people; so much had religion taken on the worship of saints and relics and shrines; and so much had the Church developed the sensuous and symbolic, that religion had in reality become a crude polytheism instead of the simple monotheistic faith of the early Church. Along scientific lines especially the loss was very great. Scientific ideas as to natural phenomena disappeared, and crude and childish ideas as to natural forces came to prevail. As if barbarian chiefs and robber bands were not enough, popular imagination peopled the world with demons, goblins, and dragons, and all sorts of superstitions and supernatural happenings were recorded. Intercommunication largely ceased; trade and commerce died out; the accumulated wealth of the past was destroyed; and the old knowledge of the known world became badly distorted, as is evidenced by the many crude mediaeval maps. (See Figure 46.) The only scholarship of the time, if such it might be called, was the little needed by the Church to provide for and maintain its government and worship. Almost everything that we to-day mean by civilization in that age was found within the protecting walls of monastery or church, and these institutions were at first too busy building up the foundations upon which a future culture might rest to spend much time in preserving learning, much less in advancing it. [Illustration: FIG. 37. A TYPICAL MONASTERY of SOUTHERN EUROPE]