he {493} higher offices in army and church, became
apanages of the nobility, and the other liberal vocations were almost
as completely monopolized by the children of the moneyed middle class;
nevertheless it is significant that there were new roads by which men
might rise. No class has profited more by the evolution of ideas than
has the intelligentsia. From a subordinate, semi-menial position,
lawyers, physicians, educators and journalists, not to mention artists
and writers, have become the leading, almost the ruling, body of our
western democracies.

[Sidenote: Clergy]

Half way between a medieval estate and a modern calling stood the
clergy. In Catholic countries they remained very numerous; there were
136 episcopal or archiepiscopal sees in France; there were 40,000
parish priests, with an equal number of secular clergy in subordinate
positions, 24,000 canons, 34,000 friars, 2500 Jesuits (in 1600), 12,000
monks and 80,000 nuns. Though there were doubtless many worthy men
among them, it cannot honestly be said that the average were fitted
either morally or intellectually for their positions. Grossly ignorant
of the meaning of the Latin in which they recited their masses and of
the main articles of their faith, many priests made up for these
defects by proficiency in a variety of superstitious charms. The
public was accustomed to see nuns dancing at bridals and priests
haunting taverns and worse resorts. Some attempts, serious and
partially successful, at reform, have been already described. Profane
and amatory plays were forbidden in nunneries, bullfights were banished
from the Vatican and the dangers of the confessional were diminished by
the invention of the closed box in which the priest should sit and hear
his penitent through a small aperture instead of having her kneeling at
his knees. So depraved was public opinion on the subject of the
confession that a {494} prolonged controversy took place in Spain as to
whether minor acts of impurity perpetrated by the priest while
confessing women were permissible or not.

[Sidenote: Conditions of the Protestant clergy]

Neither was the average Protestant clergyman a shining and a burning
light. So little was the calling regarded that it was hard to fill it.
At one time a third of the parishes of England were said to lack
incumbents. The stipends were wretched; the social position obscure.
The wives of the new clergy had an especially hard lot, being regar