Alexander did not confine himself to this portion of the question, but with ceaseless activity labored to enforce the observance of celibacy in general, and to repress the immorality which disgraced the church throughout Christendom—immorality which led Alain de l’Isle, the “Universal Doctor,” to characterize the ecclesiastics of his time as being old men in their inefficiency and young men in their unbridled passions.[805] Alexander’s efforts were particularly directed to put an end to the practice of hereditary priesthood, and its constant consequence, hereditary benefices. If I have made little allusion to this subject during the century under consideration, it is not that the church had relaxed her exertions to place some limit on this apparently incurable disorder, or that the passive resistance to her efforts had been less successful than we have seen it on previous occasions. The perpetual injunctions of Alexander show at once the universality of the vice, and the determination of the pontiff to eradicate it. At the same time it became a frequent, and no doubt a profitable portion of the duties of the papal chancery, to grant special dispensations when those who held such preferment, or who desired to retain their wives, underwent the dangers and expense of a journey to Rome, and were rewarded for their confidence in the benignity of the Holy Father by a rescript to their bishops, commanding their reinstatement in the benefices from which they had been ejected.[806] The power to grant such dispensations was shrewdly reserved as the exclusive privilege of the papal court;[807] and a high churchman of the period assures us that there was no difficulty in obtaining them.[808] It need not, therefore, surprise us that Alexander’s successor, Lucius III., found the hereditary transmission of the priestly office claimed as an absolute right.[809] And not only did the claims of the papal chancery thus interfere with the execution of the law by its power of granting dispensations, but its appellate jurisdiction was constantly used to avert punishment from the worst offenders. Thus Lucius III., about the year 1181 was obliged to grant to Maurice de Sully, Bishop of Paris, the right to dispossess of their benefices and functions, without appeal, certain notorious concubinarians who, on being threatened with the application of the law, had defied him by interposing an appeal to Rome.[810] This centralization of all power in the papal court, and the unblushing venality of the Roman officials, meet us in every age as the efficient obstacle to the efforts of reforming prelates throughout Europe.