But perhaps the most convincing evidence of the debased morality of the clergy, and of the low standard which even the most zealous prelates were forced to adopt, is to be found in a curious fabrication by the authors of the False Decretals. The collection of decretals which they put forth in the names of the early popes embodied their conception of a perfect church establishment, as adapted to the necessities and aspirations of the ninth century. While straining every point to throw off all subjection to the temporal power, and to obtain for the hierarchy full and absolute control over all ecclesiastical matters and persons, they seem to have felt it necessary to relax in an important point the rigor of the canons respecting sacerdotal purity. Gregory the Great had proclaimed in the clearest and most definite manner the rule that a single lapse from virtue condemned the sinner to irrevocable degradation, and rendered him forever unfit for the ministry of the altar.[306] Yet “Isidor Mercator” added to a genuine epistle of Gregory a long passage elaborately arguing the necessity of forgiveness for those who expiate by repentance the sin of impurity, “of which, among many, so few are guiltless.”[307] The direct testimony is notable, but not less so is the indirect evidence of the prevalent laxity which could induce such a bid for popularity on the part of high churchmen like those concerned in the Isidorian forgeries. Evidence, also, is not wanting, that the denial of the appropriate and healthful human affections led to the results which might be expected of fearful and unnatural crimes. That the inmates of monasteries, debarred from female society, occasionally abandoned themselves to the worst excesses, or, breaking through all restraint, indulged in less reprehensible but more open scandals, is proclaimed by Charlemagne, who threatened to vindicate the outrage upon religion with the severest punishment.[308] Nor were the female convents more successfully regulated, for the council of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 836, states that in many places they were rather brothels than houses of God; and it shows how close a supervision over the spouses of Christ was thought requisite when it proceeds to direct that nunneries shall be so built as to have no dark corners in which scandals may be perpetrated out of view.[309] The effect of these efforts may be estimated from a remark in a collection of laws which bears the name of Erchenbald, Chancellor of Charlemagne, but which is rather attributable to the close of the ninth century, that the licentiousness of nuns commonly resulted in a worse crime—infanticide;[310] and, as this is extracted textually from an epistle of St. Boniface to Ethelbald, King of Mercia,[311] it is presumable that the evil became notorious simultaneously with the reform under the early Carlovingians, and continued unabated throughout their dynasty. One device to subjugate nature, adopted in