In Aubrey's "Rise and Growth of the English People," the indictment against the convents and the monasteries is equally severe. See Vol. I., p. 80 and 81.
In Lecky's "History of European Morals," we have exactly the same arraignment of this unnatural and polluting system.
In Bower's "History of the Popes," in Hallam's "Constitutional History of England," and in every trustworthy account of the system of enforced celibacy we have the same horrible, but natural, description of the lives led by those full-sexed members of both sexes, who cannot mate legally and decently, but who are given access to each other under cover of night, behind the curtain of thick walls, and with the assurance that, so long as no scandal leaks out, no notice will be taken of what is done inside the "holy" brothel.
The very language in which the virgin girl is made to pledge herself as "the spouse of Christ," is so abominably obscene and suggestive that it is bound to plant impure curiosity in her mind—and, with a girl, impure curiosity is the lure to the fall. Not especially wishing to be again indicted for quoting the Pope's nasty language, I will forbear. Even in the Latin, it is so vile, lewd, lascivious, filthy, and nasty, that I marvel how any white woman, under any circumstances, can allow a beast of a man to use that language to her, and not slap his face.
The language is quoted in "Pope, or President," pages 86 and 360. The "Nun Sanctified," of "Saint" Alphonsus Liguori, and the Theology of Peter Dens will give the reader a fairly correct idea of what sort of a slave the priests make of a woman, after she has been ensnared into taking the black veil.
In the famous investigation of the convents of Tuscany, in 1775, one of the nuns gave testimony which, is singularly piquant and unique. Besides, it remained uncontradicted. The name of the witness was Sister Flavia Peraccini. After telling of many escapades she had witnessed inside the convents, and of many merry times the priests and the nuns had with one another, Sister Flavia Peraccini deposed—
"A monk said to me that if a nun's veil were placed on one pole, and a monk's cowl on another, so great is the sympathy between the veil and the cowl they would come together, and unite." ("Unite" is the modest word: "copulate," is meant.)
"I say," continues the Sister, "I say, and repeat it, that whatever the Superiors know, they do not know the least portion of the great evils that pass between the monks and the nuns."
The foregoing is a mere trifle compared to the whole amount of the undisputed testimony taken by Duke Leopold of Tuscany in 1775. Have men and women changed? Is human nature the same?
It was for all people and all ages that the inspired writer wrote—