Note 980 — XXIV. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

Usque adeo nonnullorum clericorum corruptela excrevit, ut morum atque honestatis vestigia apud eos pauca admodum remanserint.—Constit. Brandae § 1 (Op. cit. XI. 385). This condition of affairs was not the result of any abandonment of the attempt to enforce the canons. Local synods were meeting every year, and scarcely one of them failed to call attention to the subject, devising fresh penalties to effect the impossible. The result is shown in the lament of the council of Cologne in 1423—“Quia tamen, succrescente malitia temporis moderni, labes hujusmodi criminis in ecclesia Dei in tantum inolevit, quod scandala plurima in populo sunt exorta, et verisimiliter exoriri poterunt in futurum, et ex fide dignorum relatione percepimus quod quidam ecclesiarum prælati et alii, etiam capitula ... tales in suis iniquitatibus sustinuerunt et sustinent.” So far, however, were the decrees of the council from being effective, that the Archbishop was obliged to modify them and to declare that they should only be enforced against those ecclesiastics who were notoriously guilty, and who kept their concubines publicly.—Concil. Coloniens. ann. 1423 can. i. viii. (Hartzheim V. 217, 220).