With the unlimited opportunities for their gratification, uncanonical practices were at first secretly indulged in and afterwards openly tolerated. The refectory, once noted for frugality and pious exhortation, was now the scene of gluttonous feasts and licentious jesting. Foreign delicacies and wines of exquisite flavor appeared daily on the table. Monks and nuns maintained unholy relations under the same roof. Many priors had acknowledged concubines, and he who restricted himself to a single mistress was regarded as a paragon of ecclesiastical virtue. In contravention of every rule of their order, monks assumed disguises and wandered over the country in search of amorous adventures. Through their agency obnoxious relatives were kidnapped and forced into perpetual confinement, or, if sufficient pecuniary inducements were offered, made to disappear forever from the knowledge of man. In England they frequently figured in disgraceful brawls with other dissipated patrons of lupanars and taverns. The monasteries of Spain, France, and Italy presented an even more disgraceful picture of drunkenness, licentiousness, and disorder. The reputation for dissolute practices sustained by the convent was in no respect inferior to that of the monastery. The nuns notoriously affected all the airs and graces of the most accomplished coquetry. They arrayed themselves in rich garments covered with beautiful embroidery, the work of their own skilful hands. Their chemises of violet silk, their scarlet shoes, their veils of silver tissue, were the delight of their admirers and the abomination of the pious. They wore chains and bracelets of gold and rings set with precious gems. They painted their faces. King Edgar publicly reproved the nuns of his kingdom for their attire of purple and their jewels. The inmates of Fontevrault wore the horned head-dress affected by the fashionable ladies of the time. The spouses of Christ adopted every art to attract the attention of the sinful passer-by. In the orgies which defiled even the houses dedicated to divine worship their shamelessness was proverbial. They bathed in perfect nudity with monks and deacons. They sang bacchanalian songs. Their conversation was spiced with blasphemous ribaldry. The universal prevalence of the evil is proved by the frequency with which it is denounced by the Councils of the Church. The Council of Cologne, held in 1307, was especially severe in its reprobation of the custom by which nuns abandoned for a time the conventual life for a career of debauchery and then resumed their former relations with the Church, without repentance, and, what was even worse, without remonstrance from their superiors.