substantiation, St Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) agrees with
all the later Schoolmen in granting him that power, though to the peril
of his own soul.[12] For, by the last quarter of the 13th century, the
struggle had entered upon a new phase. The severest measures had been
tried, especially against the priests' unhappy partners. As early as the
council of Augsburg (952) these were condemned to be scourged, while Leo
II. and Urban II., at the councils of Rome and Amalfi (1051, 1089),
adjudged them to actual slavery.[13] Such enactments naturally defeated
their own purpose. More was done by the gentler missionary zeal of the
Franciscans and Dominicans in the early 13th century; but St Thomas
Aquinas had seen half a century of that reform and had recognized its
limitations; he therefore attenuated as much as possible the decree of
Nicholas II. His contemporary St Bonaventura complained publicly that he
himself and his fellow-friars were often compelled to hold their tongues
about the evil clergy; partly because, even if one were expelled,
another equally worthless would probably take his place, but "perhaps
principally lest, if the people altogether lost faith in the clergy,
heretics should arise and draw the people to themselves as sheep that
have no shepherd, and make heretics of them, boasting that, as it were
by our own testimony, the clergy were so vile that none need obey them
or care for their teaching."[14] In other passages of his works St
Bonaventura tells us plainly how little had as yet been gained by
suppressing clerical marriages; and the evidence of orthodox and
distinguished churchmen for the next three centuries is equally
decisive. Alvarez Pelayo, a Spanish bishop and papal penitentiary, wrote
in 1322 "The clergy sin commonly in these following ways ... fourthly,
in that they live very incontinently, and would that they had never
promised continence! especially in Spain and southern Italy, in which
provinces the sons of the laity are scarcely more numerous than those of
the clergy." Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly pleaded before the council of
Constance in 1415 for the reform of "that most scandalous custom, or
rather abuse, whereby many [clergy] fear not to keep concubines in
public."[15]

Meanwhile, as has been said above, the custom of open marriage among
clergy in holy orders (priests, deacons and subdeacons) was gradually
stamped out. A series of synods, from the early 12th century onwards,
declared such marriage