if in this matter one could feel certain that his only interest was to maintain the cause of a poor abandoned woman.
But it is only too evident that he desired above all to keep up the ecclesiastical immunities.

This is very evident in his intervention in favor of Waldemar, Bishop of Schleswig.
Yet we must not assume that all was corrupt in the bosom of the Church; then, as always, the evil made more noise than the good, and the voices of those who desired a reformation aroused only passing interest.
Among the populace there was superstition unimaginable; the pulpit, which ought to have shed abroad some little light, was as yet open only to the bishops, and the few pastors who did not neglect their duty in this regard accomplished very little, being too much absorbed in other duties.

It was the birth of the mendicant orders which obliged the entire body of secular clergy to take up the practice of preaching.
Public worship, reduced to liturgical ceremonies, no longer preserved anything which appealed to the intelligence; it was more and more becoming a sort of self-acting magic formula.

Once upon this road, the absurd was not far distant.

Those who deemed themselves pious told of miracles performed by relics with no need of aid from the moral act of faith.
In one case a parrot, being carried away by a kite, uttered the invocation dear to his mistress, "_Sancte Thoma adjuva me_," and was miraculously rescued.