At the same time he endeavored to suppress the most flagrant abuse connected with solicitation--an abuse which, more than anything else, smoothed the path for the seducer--the absolution of the woman by her partner in guilt. Alexander VII, in 1665, had only gone so far as to condemn the proposition that this absolution relieved her from the obligation of denouncing her seducer--a proposition which proves how audacious were the laxer moralists of the period who asserted it.[228] Benedict now formally prohibited the guilty confessor from hearing the confession of his accomplice, except on the death-bed when no other confessor could be had; he deprived him of the power of granting absolution, which consequently was invalid, and the attempt to do so imposed _ipso facto_ excommunication, strictly reserved to the Holy See.[229] As this excommunication suspended all the functions of the priest until removal, its observance would have gone far to check any abuse that was not incurable, but neither priest nor penitent paid to it the slightest attention. It is impossible to trace, in the business of the Spanish Inquisition, any result from Benedict's well-meant legislation. Trials for solicitation continued as numerous as ever, and the only difference observable is that, in the second half of the eighteenth century, the sentences almost invariably assume that the culprit has incurred excommunication for absolving his accomplice; that, until he obtains absolution from this, he must abstain from using his functions, that he must consult his conscience as to his ministrations hitherto while under this irregularity, and that his penitents must be discreetly warned to repeat their confessions which, having been made to him, were invalid. This continued to the end and is a feature in the case of Fray Josef Montero, the last one sentenced by the Córdova tribunal, April 24, 1819.[230] [Sidenote: _MORALITY DISREGARDED_]