Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/100

82 soil already partly prepared for the reception of their teaching by the primitive beliefs and customs of the people; and from these lands, by channels of which we are imperfectly informed, they passed into Sicily, Italy, France, and even Germany; and from the end of the tenth century onward there is hardly a generation in which the catholic church was not troubled by the appearance of their spiritual offspring which it confused under the familiar and infamous name of Manicheans.

The success of the heretics was assisted by several circumstances in the ecclesiastical condition of the west. Their views of Christian brotherhood were eagerly welcomed by people who groaned under the pretensions of an unworthy priesthood; their other heresy, the enforcement of celibacy, was already the kernel of faith among the stricter churchmen. That horror for the married state which the saint Augustin had retained from his youthful Manichaism, had already subverted the Christian idea of family life. It was the instrument which the reformers of the tenth and eleventh centuries again borrowed from the heretics, and by which they strove to purify the priesthood; for however the doctrine of celibacy was theoretically admitted, the authority of the church had hitherto interfered but little with the domestic relations of the clergy. Pope Hadrian the Second in the ninth century was himself a married man. The clergy of Milan claimed their right as depending on the express rule of saint Ambrose. In Germany, England, and France the parish priests lived openly and without blame with their wives. The reversal of this state of things, the work of Hildebrand, was undoubtedly designed with the sagacity of a statesman; but if his success established the church as a political power, it did not promote the morality of the clergy.

The defenders of the old custom at Milan were quick