Message #160189

[Azrael]

theirs was the leading part in the Christianization of Europe; in a world made up largely of robber barons and their serfs the monasteries were little islands of fraternity and peace in whose libraries the monks labored over their illuminated manuscripts and from which they went forth to carry their messages of human brotherhood. But they could not escape the fate that makes the spirit's triumph transient and breeds failure from success. They mingled with the world too much, too much with politics; their monasteries became too powerful to preserve their simple rules of life. By 1354 it is estimated that the order had acquired thirty-seven thousand monasteries and had numbered among its members twenty emperors, ten empresses, forty-seven kings and fifty queens, twenty-four popes, two hundred cardinals, more than one thousand canonized saints, seven thousand archbishops, and fifteen thousand bishops. No order could fail to be corrupted by such a superfluity of worldly glory.

As the system of feudalism developed, all care for the cultural development of the common people was abandoned. Popular reverence for the Bible was excessive, popular knowledge of its contents was abysmally small. More and more it was devoted

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