Rome was not only the capital of Christianity, being the residence of the popes, it was also, true to its traditions under the heathen emperors, a new Babel, the European high-school of immorality, and the papal court was its most distinguished center. The Roman empire at its dissolution had left to Christian Europe all its vices. These were cultivated in Rome and from there penetrated into Germany, favored by association of the clergy with Rome. The numerous clergy, consisting to a great extent of men whose sexual desires were increased to the utmost by a lazy and luxurious life, and whom enforced celibacy drove to illegitimate or unnatural satisfaction of their desires, transmitted this immorality to all strata of society. The clergy became a pestilential danger to the virtue of women in cities and villages. Monasteries and nunneries,--and there were countless numbers of them,--frequently differed from public brothels only inasmuch as life within them was still more licentious and dissolute. Crimes, especially infanticide, were frequently committed there with impunity, because only those were permitted to pass judgment who were more often than not connected with the crimes. Sometimes peasants tried to protect their wives and daughters from being seduced by clergymen, by refusing to accept as pastor any one who would not consent to keeping a concubine. This circumstance led a bishop of Constance to impose a concubine tax upon the clergy of his diocese. Such conditions explain the historically authenticated fact, that during the mediæval age described by one writer of romance as a pious and virtuous age, for instance in 1414, at the council of Constance, no less than 1500 prostitutes were present.