We may fairly conclude that the discipline of the church in these matters was reasonably well maintained by the Saxon clergy, with the exception of the monasteries, the morals of which institutions appear to have been deplorably and incurably loose. About the middle of the seventh century John IV. reproves the laxity of the Saxon monasticism under which the holy virgins did not hesitate to marry.[390] In 734 we find Bede, in an epistle to Ecgberht of York, advising him to create suffragan bishoprics and to endow them from the monastic foundations, of which there were a countless number totally neglectful of all monastic discipline, whose reformation could apparently be accomplished in no other way.[391] St. Boniface, whose zeal on the subject has already been sufficiently made manifest, about the year 746 paused in his reformation of the French priesthood to urge upon Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, the necessity of repressing the vices of the Saxon ecclesiastics. He dwells at considerable length upon their various crimes and misdemeanors—drunkenness, unclerical garments, neglect of their sacred functions, &c.—but he does not accuse them of unchastity, which he could not well have avoided doing had there been colorable grounds for such a charge. In fact, the only allusion connected with the question in his epistle is a request that some restrictions should be laid upon the permissions granted to women and nuns for pilgrimage to Rome, on account of the attendant dangers to their virtue; in illustration of which he states the lamentable fact that scarcely a city in Lombardy, France, or the Rhinelands but had Saxon courtesans derived from this source, to the shame and scandal of the whole church.[392] Pope Zachary seconded these representations, and in 747 Cuthbert, yielding to the impulsion, held the celebrated council of Clovesho, which adopted thirty canons on discipline, to remedy the disorders enumerated by Boniface. Among these, the only ones directed against unchastity relate solely to the nunneries, which were represented as being in a condition of gross immorality.[393] The council does not spare the vices of the secular clergy, and its silence with respect to their purity fairly permits the inference that there was not much to correct with regard to it, for had licentiousness been so prevalent that Cuthbert had feared to denounce it, or had sacerdotal marriage been passed over as lawful, the zeal of St. Boniface would have led to an explosion, and Zachary would not have sanctioned the proceedings by his approval.