Luke Wadding, the pious Franciscan annalist, begins his chronicle with this appalling picture.

The advance in historic research permits us to retouch it somewhat more in detail, but the conclusion remains the same; without Francis of Assisi the Church would perhaps have foundered and the Cathari would have won the day.

The _little poor man_, driven away, cast out of doors by the creatures of Innocent III., saved Christianity.
We cannot here make a thorough study of the state of the Church at the beginning of the thirteenth century; it will suffice to trace some of its most prominent features.
The first glance at the secular clergy brings out into startling prominence the ravages of simony; the traffic in ecclesiastical places was carried on with boundless audacity; benefices were put up to the highest bidder, and Innocent III.

admitted that fire and sword alone could heal this plague.[1] Prelates who declined to be bought by _propinae_, fees, were held up as astounding exceptions![2] "They are stones for understanding," it was said of the officers of the Roman _curia_, "wood for justice, fire for wrath, iron for forgiveness; deceitful as foxes, proud as bulls, greedy and insatiate as the minotaur."[3] The praises showered upon Pope Eugenius III.

for rebuffing a priest who, at the beginning of a lawsuit, offered him a golden mark, speak only too plainly as to the morals of Rome in this respect.[4] The bishops, on their part, found a thousand methods, often most out of keeping with their calling, for extorting money from the simple priests.[5] Violent, quarrelsome, contentious, they were held up to ridicule in popular ballads from one end of Europe to the 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.