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 immersed in secular business that they paid little heed to the maintenance of discipline. The monasteries, bishoprics, chapters, all were landowners, and all constantly at law with the neighbouring towns and landlords. In the eyes of Europe at that time, monastic bodies and bishops were little else but large landowners, and were treated as such. When it was proposed to make a certain pious abbot of Cluny a bishop, he fell on the ground exclaiming, "You may turn me out of my monastery and make me a disgraced monk, but make me a bishop, never, never!"

The secularisation of the ecclesiastical organisation, moreover, had led to the degeneration of religion into superstition. The multiplication of saints and relics, indulgences and mechanical confessions had turned religion into an external thing. Perhaps we do not realise how the multiplication of saints and relics and holy places affected the minds of thinking men with something akin to terror. A certain abbot died in the odour of sanctity, and after his death miracles began to be wrought at his tomb, whereupon his successor in the office came with all the monks of the monastery and adjured the dead saint to leave off working miracles. "If thou workest miracles," he said, "thou wilt draw multitudes of people to visit this quiet spot, who will bring the world with them and turn it into a fair. We know what manner of life thou didst live here, and do not require these miracles; do leave off working them. If thou dost not abstain, I declare to thee that I will have thy bones dug out of thy grave and cast into the river lest they bring disaster on this place." Such was the