The theory of perpetual segregation from the world was thus established, and it accomplished at last the objects for which it was designed, but it was too much in opposition to the invincible tendencies of human nature to be universally enforced without a struggle which lasted for nearly a thousand years. To follow out in detail the vicissitudes of this struggle would require too much space. Its nature will be indicated by occasional references in the following pages, and meanwhile it will be sufficient to observe how little was accomplished even in his own age by the energy and authority of Gregory. It was only a few years after his death that the council of Paris, in 615, proves to us that residence in monasteries was not considered necessary for women who took the vows, and that the civil power had to be invoked to prevent their marriage.[241] Indeed, it was not uncommon for men to turn their houses, nominally at least, into convents, living there surrounded with their wives and families, and deriving no little worldly profit from the assumption of superior piety, to the scandal of the truly religious.[242] St. Isidor of Seville, about the same period, copies the words of St. Augustin in describing the wandering monastic impostors who lived upon the credulous charity of the faithful;[243] and he also enlarges upon the disgraceful license of the _acephali_, or clerks bound by no rule, whose vagabond life and countless numbers were an infamy to the western kingdoms which they infested.[244] The quotation of this passage by Louis-le-Débonnaire, in his attempt to reform the church, shows that these degraded vagrants continued to flourish unchecked in the ninth century;[245] and, indeed, Smaragdus, in his Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, assures us that the evil had rather increased than diminished.[246] * * * * *