It would have been better had Rome triumphed by gentleness, by education and holiness, but unhappily a soldier may not always choose his weapons, and when life is at stake he seizes the first he finds within his reach.

The papacy has not always been reactionary and obscurantist; when it overthrew the Cathari, for example, its victory was that of reason and good sense.
The list of the heresies of the thirteenth century is already long, but it is increasing every day, to the great joy of those erudite ones who are making strenuous efforts to classify everything in that tohu-bohu of mysticism and folly.

In that day heresy was very much alive; it was consequently very complex and its powers of transformation infinite.

One may indicate its currents, mark its direction, but to go farther is to condemn oneself to utter confusion in this medley of impulsive, passionate, fantastic movements which were born, shot upward, and fell to earth again, at the caprice of a thousand incomprehensible circumstances.

In certain counties of England there are at the present day villages having as many as eight and ten places of worship for a few hundreds of inhabitants.