On the grounds of such data Joseph Löhr has quite recently made a very successful attempt to estimate accurately the moral status of the clergy in the Lower Rhine provinces, particularly Westphalia.[556] He has based his examination more particularly on the records of the Archdeaconry of Xanten concerning the fines levied on the clergy for all sorts of offences. The accounts “cover a period of about one hundred years.”[557] In the 16th century we find a quite disproportionate increase in the number of offenders. There are, however, traces, over a long term of years, of a distinct weakening of ecclesiastical discipline which made impossible any effective repression of the growing evil. A glance at the conditions prevailing in the 15th century in the regions on which Löhr’s researches bear is very instructive. It enables us to see how extravagant and untrue were--at least with regard to these localities--the frequent, and in themselves quite incredible, statements made by Luther regarding the utter degradation of both clergy and religious owing to the law of celibacy. “Of a total of from 450 to 600 clergy in the Archdeaconry of the Lower Rhine (probably the number was considerably higher) we find, up to the end of the 15th century, on an average, only five persons a year being prosecuted by the Archdeacon for [various] offences.”[558] “Assuming a like density of clergy in Westphalia, the number prosecuted by the ecclesiastical commissioner in 1495 and in 1499 would amount roughly to 2 per cent., but, in 1515, already to 6 per cent.”[559]