threatened Witiza with dethronement if he should not abrogate his iniquitous legislation, the monarch retorted with a promise to repeat the exploits of his predecessor Alaric, in sacking and plundering the Apostolic city. It is a little singular, however, that one of the first acts of the usurper, Don Roderic, in 711, was the repeal of this obnoxious law.[259] If he had any intentions of undertaking the reform of his subjects’ morals, however, his adventure with Count Julian’s daughter and the Saracenic invasion caused its indefinite postponement. * * * * * Italy was almost equally far removed from the ideal purity of Jerome and Augustin. In the early part of the sixth century was fabricated an account of a supposititious council, said to have been held in Rome by Silvester I., and the neglect of celibacy is evident when it was felt to be necessary to insert in this forgery a canon forbidding marriage to priests, under penalty of deprivation of functions for ten years.[260] Even in this it is observable that there was no thought of annulling the marriage, as subsequently became established in orthodox doctrines. Nothing can be more suggestive of the demoralization of the Italian church than the permission granted about the year 580 by Pelagius II. for the elevation to the diaconate of a clerk at Florence, who while a widower had had children by a concubine. What renders the circumstance peculiarly significant is the fact that the Pope pleads the degeneracy of the age as his apology for this laxity.[261] * * * * *