Towards the close of his restless life, however, Archbishop Diego found time, amid his military, political, and ecclesiastical schemes of aggrandizement, to undertake the much needed reform of a single monastery. The Abbot of S. Pelayo de Antealtaria was a paragon of brutish sensuality, who wasted the revenues of his house in riotous living and took no shame in a numerous progeny. The archbishop remonstrated with him long and earnestly, both in public and private: seven times in the general chapter of the diocese he admonished and threatened the offender without result. At length, in 1130, after forbearance so remarkable, Diego held a chapter in the abbey for his trial, when he was proved by competent witnesses to have kept no less than seventy concubines. He was accordingly deposed, but was so far from being canonically punished that a benefice in the abbey lands was assigned for his support. A new abbot was then appointed, who swore to observe the Benedictine rule as far as he should find himself able to do so.[767] It is a significant commentary on the state of discipline and opinion to find so weak an effort to remove and punish the grossest licentiousness characterized by the biographer of Diego with the warmest expressions of wondering admiration as a work which doubtless gave ineffable satisfaction to the Divine Omnipotence, and which was without example in previous history. It is very evident that the pontiffs who so energetically enforced the rule of celibacy throughout the rest of Europe were content to offer little opposition to the obstinacy of the Celtiberian priesthood. We can safely conclude, indeed, that matters were allowed to remain virtually undisturbed, and that the clergy were permitted to retain their wives. A council held in Gallicia in the early part of the thirteenth century, for the purpose of reforming ecclesiastical discipline, preserves absolute silence on the subject of marriage and concubinage;[768] and, about the middle of the same century, we find Alfonso the Wise of Castile obliged to formally interdict matrimony to those in holy orders. In the elaborate code drawn up by that monarch and known as “Las Siete Partidas,” there is a law punishing sacerdotal marriage with deprivation of function and benefice; while the wives, if vassals of the church, are to be reduced to servitude, and if serfs, are to be sold and the proceeds appropriated for the benefit of the church of the offender. The wording of the law would seem to indicate that it was an enactment intended to repress existing disorders, and not merely a well-known provision inserted in the code for the purpose of completing a compilation of statutes;[769] while the existence in secular legislation of such invasions of the province of ecclesiastical law is a convincing proof of the continued independence of Rome asserted by the Spanish church and state. The prelates were further authorized to command the assistance of the secular power in enforcing