At sixteen, Theresa’s poor health made it necessary for her to return to her father’s house.  When she recovered she spent some time with her uncle, afterwards a monk, who made her read good books, and impressed upon her the vanity of the world.  In a few months she resolved to become a nun,—­out of servile fear rather than love, as she avers.  The whole religious life of the Middle Ages was based on fear,—­the fear of being tortured forever by devils and hell.  So universal and powerful was this fear that it became the leading idea of the age, from which very few were ever emancipated.  On this idea were based the excommunications, the interdicts, and all the spiritual weapons by which the clergy ruled the minds of the people.  On this their ascendency rested; they would have had but little power without it.  It was therefore their interest to perpetuate it.  And as they ruled by exciting fears, so they themselves were objects of fear rather than of love.

All this tended to make the Middle Ages gloomy, funereal, repulsive, austere.  There was a time when I felt a sort of poetic interest in these dark times, and called them ages of faith; but the older I grow, and the more I read and reflect, the more dreary do those ages seem to me.  Think of a state of society when everything suggested wrath and vengeance, even in the character of God, and when this world was supposed to be under the dominion of devils!  Think of an education which impressed on the minds of interesting young girls that the trifling sins which they committed every day, and which proceeded from the exuberance of animal spirits, justly doomed them to everlasting burnings, without expiations,—­a creed so cruel as to undermine the health, and make life itself a misery!  Think of a spiritual despotism so complete that confessors and spiritual fathers could impose or remove these expiations, and thus open the door to heaven or hell!

And yet this despotism was the logical result of a generally accepted idea, instead of the idea being an outgrowth of the despotism, since the clergy, who controlled society by working on its fears, were themselves as complete victims and slaves as the people whom they led.  This idea was that the soul would be lost unless sins were expiated, and expiated by self-inflicted torments on the body.  Paul taught a more cheerful doctrine of forgiveness, based on divine and infinite love,—­on faith and repentance.  The Middle Ages also believed in repentance, but taught that repentance and penance were synonymous.  The asceticism of the Church in its conflict with Paganism led to this perversion of apostolic theology.  The very idea that Christianity was sent to subvert,—­that is, the old Oriental idea of self-expiation, seen among the fakirs and sofis and Brahmins alike, and in a less repulsive form among the Pharisees,—­became once again the ruling idea of theologians.  The theologians of the Middle Ages taught this doctrine of penance and self-expiation with peculiar zeal and