§ 111.1. =The Moral Condition of the Clergy= was in general very low. The bishops mostly lived in open concubinage. The lower secular clergy followed their example, and had toleration granted by paying a yearly tax to the bishop. The people, distinguishing office and person, made no objection, but rather looked on it as a sort of protection to their wives and daughters from the dangers of the confessional. Especially in Italy, unnatural vice was widely spread among the clergy. At Constance and Basel it was thought to cure such evils by giving permission to priests to marry; but it was feared that the ecclesiastical revenues would be made heritable, and the clergy brought too much under the State.--The mendicant orders were allowed to hear confession everywhere, and when John de Polliaco, a Prussian doctor, maintained that the local clergy only should be taken as confessors, John XXII., in A.D. 1322, pronounced his views heretical. § 111.2. The French concordat of A.D. 1516 (§ 110, 14), which gave the king the right of appointing commendator abbots (§ 85, 5), to almost all the cloisters, induced many of the younger sons of old noble families to take orders, so as to obtain rich sinecures or offices, which they could hold _in commendam_. They bore a semi-clerical character, and had the title of =abbé=, which gradually came to be given to all the secular clergy of higher culture and social position. In Italy too it became customary to give the title =abbate= to the younger clergy of high rank, before receiving ordination. § 112. MONASTIC ORDERS AND SOCIETIES. The corruption of monastic life was becoming more evident from day to day. Immorality, sloth, and unnatural vice only too often found a nursery behind the cloister walls. Monks and nuns of neighbouring convents lived in open sin with one another, so that the author of the book _De ruina ecclesia_ (§ 118, 4, c) thinks that _Virginem velare_ is the same as _Virginem ad scortandum exponere_. In the Benedictine order the corruption was most complete. The rich cloisters, after the example of their founder, divided their revenues among their several members (_proprietarii_). Science was disregarded, and they cared only for good living. The celebrated Scottish cloister (§ 98, 1) of St. James, at Regensburg, in the 14th century, had a regular tavern within its walls, and there was a current saying, _Uxor amissa in monasterio Scotorum quæri debet_. The mendicants represented even yet relatively the better side of monasticism, and maintained their character as exponents of theological learning. Only the Carthusians, however, still held fast to the ancient strict discipline of their order.