feeling of pious men about the growth of external mechanical religion and superstitious observances.
Moreover, the Church had become too clerical. There were far too many priests, all with their immunities, cut off from the general life, and by no means in all cases setting good examples.
Again, the Church was regarded as a means of extortion. The ecclesiastical courts, with their numerous officials prowling and spying about the country, were so great a nuisance that it was a problem often discussed in the Middle Ages whether it was by any means possible for an archdeacon to be saved. Besides the local courts, there were papal collectors going about gathering money for the Crusades and other purposes, and extending on all sides the papal jurisdiction. The natural result followed that the Church grew unspiritual, because it was an organisation not concerned primarily with the spiritual life of man, but covered the whole life of society, took it all under its survey, had something to say about everything that was done by the State, and left no portion of man's life, however small and simple, untouched by its claim to jurisdiction. There was little preaching in those days; religion was external and mechanical. If men would only go to church, attend the ceremonies, make their confessions, say their prescribed prayers, that was all that was necessary.
Such was the state of things in the Church. But the twelfth century had produced a number of tendencies which had tended to arouse a sense of dissatisfaction in men's minds. The Crusades had introduced men to a world which they had never known before.
