Thicker grew the darkness as Tarik drove the Gothic fugitives before him on the plains of Xeres, and as the house of Pepin d’Heristel gradually supplanted the long-haired descendants of Clovis. The Austrasian Mayors of the Palace had scanty reverence for mitre and crozier, and it is a proof how little hold the clergy had earned upon the respect and affection of the people, when the usurpers in that long revolution did not find it necessary to conciliate their support. In fact, the policy of those shrewd and able men was rather to oppress the church and to parcel out its wealth and dignities among their warriors, who made no pretence of piety nor deigned to undertake the mockery of religious duties. Rome could interpose no resistance to these abuses, for, involved alternately in strife with the Lombards and the Iconoclastic Emperors, the Popes implored the aid of the oppressor himself, and were in no position to protest against the aggressions which he might commit at home. In Italy, the condition of discipline may be inferred from the fact that, in 721, Gregory II. considered it necessary to call a synod for the special purpose of condemning incestuous unions and the marriages of nuns, which he declared were openly practised,[274] and the canons then promulgated received so little attention that they had to be repeated by another synod in 732.[275] In fact, the vow of chastity was frequently taken by widows that they might escape a second marriage and thus be able to live in shameless license without being subject to the watchful control of a husband, and an edict of Arechis Duke of Beneventum about the year 774 orders that all such godless women shall be seized and shut up in convents.[276] That the secular clergy should consider ordination no bar to matrimony need therefore excite little surprise. There is extant a charter of Talesperianus, Bishop of Lucca, in 725, by which he confirms a little monastery and hospital to Romuald the priest and his wife—“presbiteria sua.” The document recites that this couple had come on a pilgrimage from beyond the Po; that they had settled in the lands of the Convent of St. Peter and St. Martin in the diocese of Lucca, where they had bought land and built the institution which the good bishop thus confirms to them with certain privileges. He evidently felt that there was nothing irregular in their maintaining the connection, and he lays upon them no conditions of separation.[277]