On the matrimony and continency of the Spanish clergy, there has been much acrimonious disputation: one party contending that strict celibacy was obligatory on them from the apostolic times; the other, that marriage was permitted to them, under certain restrictions, no less than to laymen. One of the most singular characteristics of the early councils of Spain is the permission granted to bishops and other ecclesiastics to follow any honourable branch of commerce, but in their own districts. Persons consecrated to God were acknowledged and protected by the early church; but monasteries were not introduced into Spain during the first four centuries. The women who took, in the hands of the bishop and before the altar, the vows of virginity; and the men who, in the same manner, subjected themselves to the obligations of continence and religious contemplation, passed their lives sometimes in their own houses, but generally in communities of two or three in the abodes of aged ecclesiastics. The former assumed the veil from their first profession, as a public sign of their calling. But lest war should be sworn before the strength of the enemy was known, the council of Saragossa decreed that no woman should utter the irrevocable vow, or assume the veil, before the age of forty years, though previous to that period chastity was strongly recommended, and its observance consecrated. Some of the provisions, especially of the first council, will appear unreasonably severe. We must, however, take into consideration the prevalence of idolatry at the beginning of the fourth century, and the anxiety of the fathers of Illiberis to preserve their flocks from the infection of paganism. The canons which regard the remarriage of the widows of ecclesiastics are sufficiently absurd. The sixty-seventh, which prohibited Christian women from keeping long-haired slaves, requires explanation. These slaves were males, generally of Gaul or Germany, and their ostensible business was to dress the hair of the rich ladies; their real one--such was the depravation of manners produced by paganism--was to gratify the licentious desires of their mistresses. But the gradual decline of heathenism, no less than the increasing influence of Christianity, purified the female mind. [Sidenote: [380-395 A.D.]]