Society in Europe, in the eleventh century, was nearly as dark and degraded as it was on the fall of the Merovingian dynasty.  In some respects it had reached the lowest depth of wretchedness which the Middle Ages ever saw.  Never had the clergy been more ignorant, more sensual, and more worldly.  They had not the piety of the fourth century, nor the intelligence of the sixteenth century; they were powerful and wealthy, but exceedingly corrupt.  Monastic institutions covered the face of Europe, but the monks had sadly departed from the virtues which partially redeemed the miseries that succeeded the fall of the Roman Empire.  The lives of the clergy, regular and secular, still compared favorably with the lives of the feudal nobility, who had, in addition to priestly vices, the vices of robbers and bandits.  But still the clergy were notoriously ignorant, superstitious, and sensual.  Monasteries sought to be independent of all foreign control and of episcopal jurisdiction.  They had been enormously enriched by princes and barons, and they owned, with the other clergy, half the lands of Europe, and more than half its silver and gold.  The monks fattened on all the luxuries which then were known; they neglected the rules of their order and lived in idleness,—­spending their time in the chase, or in taverns and brothels.  Hardly a great scholar or theologian had arisen among them since the Patristic age, with the exception of a few schoolmen like Anselm and Peter Lombard.  Saint Bernard had not yet appeared to reform the Benedictines, nor Dominic and Saint Francis to found new orders.  Gluttony and idleness were perhaps the characteristic vices of the great body of the monks, who numbered over one hundred thousand.  Hunting and hawking were the most innocent of their amusements.  They have been accused of drinking toasts in honor of the Devil, and celebrating Mass in a state of intoxication.  “Not one in a thousand,” says Hallam, “could address to one another a common letter of salutation.”  They were a walking libel on everything sacred.  Read the account of their banquets in the annals which have come down to us of the tenth and eleventh centuries, when convents were so numerous and rich.  If Dugdale is to be credited, their gluttony exceeded that of any previous or succeeding age.  Their cupidity, their drunken revels, their infamous haunts, their disgusting coarseness, their hypocrisy, ignorance, selfishness, and superstition were notorious.  Yet the monks were not worse than the secular clergy, high and low.  Bishoprics and all benefices were bought and sold; “canons were trodden under foot; ancient traditions were turned out of doors; old customs were laid aside;” boys were made archbishops; ludicrous stories were recited in the churches; the most disgraceful crimes were pardoned for money.  Desolation, according to Cardinal Baronius, was seen in the temples of the Lord.  As Petrarch said of Avignon in a better age, “There is no pity, no charity, no faith, no fear of God.  The air, the streets, the houses, the markets, the beds, the hotels, the churches, even the altars consecrated to God, are all peopled with knaves and liars;” or, to use the still stronger language of a great reviewer, “The gates of hell appeared to roll back on their infernal hinges, that there might go forth malignant spirits to empty the vials of wrath on the patrimony even of the great chief of the apostles.”