[50] When the sailors of Columbus returned from the new world they brought with them a disease of an unknown character, which speedily found its way into every part of Europe. None were exempt; the king on his throne, the beggar in his hovel, noble and peasant, priest and layman alike succumbed to the dire influence which made Christendom one vast charnel house. Of it, Montesquieu said: “It is now two centuries since a disease unknown to our ancestors was first transplanted from the new world to ours, and came to attack human nature in the very source of life and pleasure. Most of the powerful families of the South of Europe were seen to perish by a distemper that was grown too common to be ignominious, and was considered in no other light than that of being fatal. Works, I, 265.
[51] St. Ambrose and others believed not that they (women) were human creatures like other people. Luther.—Familiar Discourses, p. 383.
[52] When a woman is born it is a deficit of nature and contrary to her intentions, as is the case when a person is born blind or lame or with any natural defect, and as we frequently see happens in fruit trees which never ripen. In like manner a woman may be called a fortuitous animal and produced by accident.
[53] Cajetan, living from 1496 to 1534, became General of the Dominican Order and afterwards Cardinal.
[54] “The Father alone is creator.”
[55] By decree of the Council of Lyons, 1042, barons were allowed to enslave the children of married clergy.—Younge.
[56] In 1108 priests were again ordered to put away their wives. Such as kept them and presumptuously celebrated mass were to be excommunicated. Even the company of their wives was to be avoided. Monks and priests who for love of their wives left their orders suffering excommunication, were again admitted after forty days penance if afterwards forsaking them.
[57] Dulaure.—Histoire de Paris, I, 387, note.
[58] The abbot elect of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, in 1171, was found on investigation to have seventeen illegitimate children in a single village. An abbot of St. Pelayo, in Spain, in 1130, was proved to have kept no less than seventy mistresses.—Hist. European Morals, p. 350.
[59] A tax called “cullagium,” which was a license to clergymen to keep concubines, was during several years systematically levied by princes.—Ibid 2, 349.