During the eleventh century the Church succeeded, after long and violent struggles, in enforcing upon its priesthood at least a nominal celibacy, but it did not succeed in improving the ecclesiastical morals. As the celibate party were the more fanatical, and usually applied to priests’ wives the term “concubines,” it was not easy to distinguish lawful or _quasi_-lawful unions from illicit connections. Anyhow, when priests found they could not marry, they generally had no hesitation in taking to themselves concubines, or sometimes a succession of paramours--a custom so commonly recognized that a layman confessing an illicit amour was forbidden to name his erring partner because it would give the priest an opportunity to exploit her frailty. Thus illicit connections on the part of priests were winked at, while marriage was forbidden--an excellent example of straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. This eccentric notion of morality led to horrible abuses. Pope Alexander II declined, in 1064, to deprive of communion a priest who had committed adultery with the wife of his father, and a little later reduced the penance imposed on another priest found guilty of incestuous relations with his own mother. The institution of matrimony afforded to the priesthood perpetual opportunities for exacting money. The remotest degree of blood relationship was found to be perilous, but ingenuity and cash overcame the difficulty. Bishops did not scruple to receive a tribute known as the “cullagium,” which enabled a “celibate” priest to solace his holy duties with wife or concubine. The difficulty remained acute until the fifteenth century, human nature having proved as rebellious as ever. It was only in 1414 that it was finally settled by the Council of Constance, the rigid moralists who formed that conclave being accompanied by an army of prostitutes. The attempt to enforce clerical celibacy, or, rather, the rule which required its observance, was a chief contributing cause of the scandalous state of ecclesiastical morals in the Middle Ages, as, indeed, is expressly stated by Alain Chartier, a French chronicler of the early fifteenth century.