other.[6] As
to the priests, they bent all their powers to accumulate benefices, and
secure inheritances from the dying, stooping to the most despicable
measures for providing for their bastards.[7]

The monastic orders were hardly more reputable. A great number of these
had sprung up in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; their reputation
for sanctity soon stimulated the liberality of the faithful, and thus
fatally brought about their own decadence. Few communities had shown the
discretion of the first monks of the Order of Grammont in the diocese of
Limoges. When Stephen de Muret, its founder, began to manifest his
sanctity by giving sight to a blind man, his disciples took alarm at the
thought of the wealth and notoriety which was likely to come to them
from this cause. Pierre of Limoges, who had succeeded Stephen as prior,
went at once to his tomb, praying:

"O servant of God, thou hast shown us the way of poverty, and
behold, thou wouldst make us leave the strait and difficult path
of salvation, and wouldst set us in the broad road of eternal
death. Thou hast preached to us (the virtues of) solitude, and
thou art about to change this place into a fair and a
market-place. We know well that thou art a saint! Thou hast no
need to prove it to us by performing miracles which will destroy
our humility. Be not so zealous for thy reputation as to augment
it to the injury of our salvation. This is what we ask of thee,
expecting it of thy love. If not, we declare unto thee by the
obedience which we once owed to thee, we will unearth thy bones
and throw them into the river."

Stephen obeyed up to the time of his canonization (1189), but from that
time forward ambition, avarice, and luxury made such inroads upon the
solitude of Grammont that its monks became the byword and scoff of the
Christian world.[8]

Pierre of Limoges was not entirely without reason in fearing that his
monastery would be transformed into a fair-ground; members of the
chapters of most of the cathedrals kept wine-shops literally under their
shadows, and certain monasteries did not hesitate to attract custom by
jugglers of all kinds and even by courtesans.[9]

To form an idea of the degradation of the greater number of the monks it
is not enough to read the oratorical and often exaggerated reproofs of
preachers obliged to strike hard in order to produce an effect. We must
run through the collection of bu