Their fears were only too well founded.

They had taken to flight, but being too lame to walk fast they had not yet crossed the frontier of Touraine when the saint arrived and healed them! Hundreds of similar stories might be collected, statistics might be made up to show, at the accession of Innocent III., the greater number of episcopal thrones occupied by unworthy bishops, the religious houses peopled with idle and debauched monks; but would this give a truly accurate picture of the Church at this epoch?
I do not think so.

In the first place, we must reckon with the choice spirits, who were without doubt more numerous than is generally supposed.

Five righteous men would have saved Sodom; the Almighty did not find them there, but he perhaps might have found them had He Himself made search for them instead of trusting to Lot.

The Church of the thirteenth century had them, and it was for their sakes that the whirlwind of heresy did not sweep it away.
But this is not all: the Church of that time offered a noble spectacle of moral grandeur.