whose seat is in the soul.  It is not only a radiance, but it is a defence:  it protects women from the wrath and passion of men.  With glory irradiating every feature, it says to the boldest, Thus far shalt thou come and no farther.  It is a benediction to the poor and a welcome to the rich.  It shines with such unspeakable loveliness, so rich in blessing and so refined in ecstasy, that men gaze with more than admiration, even with sentiments bordering on that adoration which the Middle Ages felt for the mother of our Lord, and which they also bestowed upon departed saints.  In the immortal paintings of Raphael and Murillo we get some idea of this moral beauty, which is so hard to copy.

So woman passed gradually from contempt and degradation to the veneration of men, when her soul was elevated by the power which Paganism never knew.  But Christianity in the hands of degenerate Romans and Gothic barbarians made many mistakes in its efforts to save so priceless a thing as a human soul.  Among other things, it instituted monasteries and convents, both for men and women, in which they sought to escape the contaminating influences which had degraded them.  If Paganism glorified the body, monasticism despised it.  In the fierce protests against the peculiar sins which had marked Pagan life,—­gluttony, wine-drinking, unchastity, ostentatious vanities, and turbulent mirth,—­monasticism decreed abstinence, perpetual virginity, the humblest dress, the entire disuse of ornaments, silence, and meditation.  These were supposed to disarm the demons who led into foul temptation.  Moreover, monasticism encouraged whatever it thought would make the soul triumphant over the body, almost independent of it.  Whatever would feed the soul, it said, should be sought, and whatever would pamper the body should be avoided.

As a natural consequence of all this, piety gradually came to seek its most congenial home in monastic retreats, and to take on a dreamy, visionary, and introspective mood.  The “saints” saw visions of both angels and devils, and a superstitious age believed in their revelations.  The angels appeared to comfort and sustain the soul in temptations and trials, and the devils came to pervert and torment it.  Good judgment and severe criticism were lost to the Church; and, moreover, the gloomy theology of the Middle Ages, all based on the fears of endless physical torments,—­for the wretched body was the source of all evil, and therefore must be punished,—­gave sometimes a repulsive form to piety itself.  Intellectually, that piety now excites our contempt, because it was so much mixed up with dreams and ecstasies and visions and hallucinations.  It produces a moral aversion also, because it was austere, inhuman, and sometimes cruel.  Both monks and nuns, when they conformed to the rules of their order, were sad, solitary, dreary-looking people, although their faces shone occasionally in the light of ecstatic visions of heaven and the angels.