of clerical celibacy). Also relating to the subject of clerical celibacy is Canon 27, which calls for bishops and other clergy to refrain from living with women unless they are of relation. This canon is believed to be condemning the practice of Syneisaktism, or spiritual marriage, which was growing more and more popular among ascetic men and women. Canon 36 states, "It has seemed good that images should not be in churches so that what is venerated and worshiped not be painted on the walls." It allegedly forbids pictures in churches (compare the Iconoclastic Controversy in the East); according to Philip Schaff this canon "has often been quoted by Protestants as an argument against image worship as idolatrous; while Roman Catholic writers explain it either as a prohibition of representations of the deity only, or as a prudential measure against heathen desecration of holy things". Canon 36 was the first official statement on art by the Christian Church and so of special interest in the history of Early Christian and medieval art, even if it represents Church policy only within the limits of the synod's jurisdiction of Spain. Recent scholarship argues that, beyond being a prohibition against the use of Christian art as idolatrous as has traditionally been done, the purpose of the council was to counter a disturbing culture of apostasy and loss of communal identity that had arisen in the Spanish Church through the strong integration of the Christian subculture within the dominant pagan culture (the result of a peaceful period of social integration followed by an unusually bloody persecution). In this, Canon 36 was a compromise solution in its silence on the subject of private Christian art. Never adopted outside of Spain (although many other canons of the Synod of Elvira were), Canon 36 is tacit evidence of a significant point of transition in the development of a distinctly Christian artistic culture, one that was leaving the venerable Judaic precedent of the Second Commandment behind as the Church cautiously accepted its increasingly mainstream status and the powerful socio-political dynamic that was a part of this. Canon 38, permits lay baptism under certain conditions, and Canon 53, forbids one bishop restoring a person excommunicated by another. Other provisions relating to images forbade Christian slave-owners from allowing their pagan slaves to keep their personal idols, or "if this is impossible to enforce, they must at least avoid the idols