chastity, and have no fear of condemnation in open synod
for the vice of lechery.... If this evil were secret [he adds], it might
perhaps be borne."[9] His _Liber Gomorrhianus_, addressed to and
approved by St Leo IX., is sufficient in itself to explain the vehemence
of his crusade, though it emphasizes even more strongly the impolicy of
proceeding more severely against the open marriages of the clergy than
against concubinage and other less public vices.[10] Damiani found a
powerful ally in the equally ascetic but far more imperious and
statesmanlike Hildebrand, afterwards Pope Gregory VII. Under the
influence of these two men, five successive popes between 1045 and 1073
attempted a radical reform; and when, in this latter year, Hildebrand
himself became pope, he took measures so stringent that he has sometimes
been erroneously represented not merely as the most uncompromising
champion, but actually as the author of the strict rule of celibacy for
all clerics in sacred orders. His mind, strongly imbued with the
theocratic ideal, saw more clearly than any other the enormous increase
of influence which would accrue to a strictly celibate body of clergy,
separated by their very ordination from the strongest earthly ties; and
no statesman has ever pursued with greater energy and resolution a plan
once formulated. In order to break down the desperate, and in many
places organized, resistance of the clergy, he did not shrink from the
perilous course, so contrary to his general policy, of subjecting them
to the judgment of the laity. Not only were concubinary priests--a term
which was now made to include also those who had openly
married--forbidden to serve at the altar and threatened with actual
deposition in cases of contumacy, but the laity were warned against
attending mass said by "any priest certainly known to keep a concubine
or _subintroducta_."[11]

But these heroic measures soon caused serious embarrassment. If the
laity were to stand aloof from all incontinent priests, while (as the
most orthodox churchmen constantly complained) many priests were still
incontinent, then this could only result in estranging large bodies of
the laity from the sacraments of the church. It became necessary,
therefore, to soften a policy which to the lay mind might imply that the
virtue of a sacrament was weakened by the vices of its ministers; and,
whereas Peter Lombard (d. 1160) concludes that no excommunicated priest
can effect tran