 Thus, for a married man to become a priest, his wife had to agree to abstain from all sexual relations.This discipline added to the legislation of various councils, particularly the Council of Elvira, the date of which cannot be determined with precision, but believed to have been in the first quarter of the fourth century, in Spain.While priests of the East and West were required to refrain from all sexual contact by virtue of their presiding at sacrifices, this was an exceedingly difficult discipline to maintain.