According to Dean Milman, clerical depravity was general in the thirteenth century throughout all the principal European countries. A remarkable number of ecclesiastics were accused at the visitation of the Archbishop of Rouen in 1248 and 1249, but the tenderness of the Church was satisfied with light punishments, or no punishment at all, for serious crimes, while the imaginary sins of the heretic were visited with the most painful of all forms of death. Nor did the Archbishop’s rigour extend to the worst offences of the lower clergy. Milman refers to the case of the Bishop of Liège, who at a public banquet boasted that in less than two years he had had fourteen children.[14] It is related that when it was decreed that priests should dismiss their concubines Pope Innocent ordered the command to be withdrawn, as there was no sin in doing what was done by all priests.[15] In the thirteenth century the Council of Ratisbon lamented the scarcity of priests who led good lives, and so late as 1832 the Archbishop of Malines found it necessary to make a similar complaint.[16] Not only were the Church’s thunders ineffective because the higher clergy could escape them, but the reasons for them failed, even in the Middle Ages, to command universal assent. Sin was condemned rather because it violated an ordinance than because it broke a Divine law, or because it injured society. Some canons of 1476 protested against crimes, not because of their wickedness, but because they might deprive the clergy of the privilege of exemption from the Bishops’ jurisdiction. A scuffle between three priests over a harlot that took place in a house of ill-fame was reprehended, not because of its disgraceful nature, but because it occurred on Ash Wednesday. The solicitation by priests of female penitents was a serious matter for the holy men if committed during the actual confession, otherwise it was a trifle. It was more convenient to punish the women. As late as 1707 the Sorbonne decided that if a woman insisted on denouncing a guilty priest she committed a mortal sin. Usually the Church contended that the personal character of the priest had nothing to do with the sanctity of his office--a doctrine of which unscrupulous men took full advantage. Thus was evolved a standard of morality which bore no relation to moral truth, and readily lent itself to perversion. For many hundreds of years the Church was an open sore, which made thought a crime, purity an eccentricity, and progress a dream. From this festering mass heresy was born, crucified, and rose again. CHAPTER II A CRUSADE AGAINST CHRISTIANS