§ 13. Thus for about thirty years, ever since King Aldfrid was removed from this life, our province has been involved in such folly and error, that there has not been a single præfect since that time, who has not furnished himself during his præfecture with a monastery of this kind, and involved his wife also in the guilt of such wicked traffic; and thus this wicked custom has prevailed, and the king’s ministers and servants have bestirred themselves to do the like. So that numbers of men have been found, who call themselves abbots and præfects, or ministers or servants of the king, who, although as laymen, they may have learnt a little of the monastic life, not by experience, but by hearsay, yet are utterly without share of that character and profession which is required to teach it; and, indeed, such men, as you know, on a sudden submit to the tonsure, and of their own judgment, from laymen, become not monks but abbots. But, inasmuch as they have no knowledge nor love of the above-named excellence, what can be more applicable to them than that malediction of the Gospel, “If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch?” Such blindness might, in truth, some time or other, be put an end to and retrained by regular discipline, and expelled by pontifical and synodical authority beyond the limits of the Holy Church, if the pontiffs themselves were not found to aid and abet such crimes; for they not only do not take care to annul such unrighteous decrees by righteous ones, but rather do all in their power to confirm them by their own subscriptions, as we have said before, prompted by the same love of money to confirm those wicked writings, as the purchasers themselves were to buy such monasteries. I could tell you much more about these and such like traitors to their own cause, by whom our province is grievously vexed, if I did not know that you are yourself well acquainted therewith. For in what I have written to you already, I have not supposed that I was informing you of a thing which you were before ignorant of, but I wished to advise you in a friendly manner, to correct with all diligence faults, of the existence of which you were already well informed.