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 CELIBACY

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CELIBACY

with an unfair and misleading emphasis which led to the gravest moral mischief and loss of power in the Church." (The Ministry of Grace, 1902, p. 223.) This, one would think, must be held to relieve the papacy of some of the onus which modern critics would thrust upon it in this matter. Such writers as St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Hilary, etc., could hardly be described as acting in collusion with the supposed ambitious projects of the Holy See to enslave and denationalize the local clergy. Al- though it is true that at the close of the fourth cen- tury, as we may learn from St. Ambrose (De Officiis, I, 1), some married clergy were still to be found, espe- cially in the outlying country districts, many laws then enacted were strong in favour of celibacy. At a Roman council held by Pope Siricius in 386 an edict was passed forbidding priests and deacons to have conjugal intercourse with their wives (Jaffe-Ldwen- feld, Regesta, I, 41), and the pope took steps to have the decree enforced in Spain and in other parts of Christendom (Migne, P. L., LVI, 558 and 728). Africa and Gaul, as we learn from the canons of various synods, seem to have been earnest in the same movement, and though we hear of some miti- gation of the severity of the ordinance of Elvira. 6eeing that in many localities- no more severe penalty was enforced against transgressors than that if they took back their wives they were declared incapable of promotion to any higher grade, it may fairly be said that by the time of St. Leo the Great the law of celibacy was generally recognized in the West. With regard to subdeacons. indeed, the case was not clear. Pope Siricius (3S5-39S) seems to rank them with acolytes and not to require separation from their wives until after the age of thirty when they might be ordained deacons if they had previously, during some short period of trial, given proof of their ability to lead a life of stricter continence. Writers like Punk and Wernz regard them as bound to celibacy in the time of Pope Leo the Great (446). The Council of Agde in Gaul, in 506, forbade subdeacons to marry, and such synods as those of Orleans in 538 and Tours in 567 prohibited even those already married from continuing to live with their wives. As other councils took an opposite line, the uncertainty con- tinued until King Pepin, in 747. addressed a ques- tion upon the subject to Pope Zachary. Even then the pope left each locality in some measure to its own traditions, but he decided clearly that once a man had received the subdiaconate he was no longer free to contract a new marriage. The doubtful point was the lawfulness of his continuing to live with his wife as her husband. During this Merovingian period the actual separation of the clergy from the wives which they had previously married was not insisted on. A law of the Emperor Honorius, in 420, forbids that these wives should be left unprovided for, and it even lays stress upon the fact that by their upright behaviour they baa helped their husbands to earn that good repute which had made them worthy of ordination. However, this living together in the relation of brother and sister cannot have proved entirely satisfactory, even though it had in its favour such illustrious examples as those of St. Paulinus of Nola, and of Salvinianus of Marseilles.

At any rate the synods of the sixth and seventh centuries, while fully recognizing the posit inn of these former wives and according them even the formal designation of bishopess, priestess, deaconess, and Bubaeaconess (episcopissa, presbytera, diaconi&sa, tubdiaconissa), laid down some very strict rules to guide their relations with their former husbands. The bishopess, as a rule, did not live in the same house with the bishop (see the Council of Tours in 567, c >>

xiv). For the lower grades actual separation does not Beem to have been required, although the Council of Orleans in 541, can. xvii, ordained; "ut sacerdotes sive

diaconi cum conjugibus suis non habeant commune lectum et cellulam, while curious regulations were enforced requiring the presence of subordinate clergy in the sleeping apartment of the bishop, archpriest, etc., to prevent all suspicion of scandal (see, e. g., the Council of Tours, in 567, canons xiii and xx). A good deal seems to have been done at the beginning of the Carlovingian epoch to set things upon a more satis- factory footing. To this St. Chrodegang (q. v., formerly the chancellor of Charles Martel, and after 742 Bishop of Metz, contributed greatly by his insti- tution of canons. These were clergy leading a life in common (vita canon ica), according to the rule com- posed for them by St. Chrodegang himself, but at the same time not precluded by their hours of study and prayer from giving themselves like ordinary secular priests to the pastoral duties of the ministry. This institution developed rapidly and met with much en- couragement. In a slightly modified form the Rule of St. Chrodegang was approved by the Council of Aachen, in 816, and it formed the basis of the cathe- dral chapters in most of the dioceses throughout the dominions of Charlemagne.

The influence both of these canons who devoted themselves principally to the public recitation of the Office, as also of those who lived with the bishop in the episeopium and were busied with parochial work, seems to have had an excellent effect upon the general standard of clerical duty. Unfortunately, "the Iron Age", that terrible period of war, barbar- ism, and corruption in high places which marked the break-up of the Carlovingian Empire, followed almost immediately upon this revival. " Impurity, adultery, sacrilege and murder have overwhelmed the world", cried the Council of Trosly in 909. The episcopal sees, as we learn from such an authority as Bishop Egbert of Trier, were given as fiefs to rude soldiers, and were treated as property which descended by hereditary right from father to son (Imbert de la Tour, Les elections 6pics., I, vii; III, iv). A terrible picture of the decay both of clerical morality and of all sense of anything like vocation is drawn in the writings of St. Peter Damian, particularly in his "Liber Gomorrhianus". The style, no doubt, is rhetorical and exaggerated, and his authority as an eyewitness does not extend beyond that district of Northern Italy, in which he lived, but we have evi- dence from other sources that the corruption was widespread and that few parts of the world failed to feel the effect of the licence and venality of the times. How could it be otherwise when there were intruded into bishoprics on every side men of brutal nature and unbridled passions, who gave the very worst ex- ample to the clergy over whom they ruled? Un- doubtedly during this period the traditions of sacer- dotal celibacy in Western Christendom suffered severely, but even though a large number of the clergy, not only priests but bishops, openly took wives and begot children to whom they transmitted their benefices, the principle of celibacy w:us never completely surrendered in the official enactments of the ( hurch.

With Pope St. Leo IX. St. Gregory VII (Hilde- brand),and their successors, a determined and sui ful stand was made against the further spread of cor- ruption. For a while in certain districts where effective interference appeared hopeless, it would seem that various synodal enactments allowed the rural clergy to retain the wives to whom I hey had previously married. See, for example, the Councils of Lisieux

in 1064 (DeUsle in the "Journal ^'^ Savants", 1901,

p. 517), Rouen in 1063 and 1072, and Winchester, this last presided over by Lanfranc, in 1076. In all these we may possibly trace the personal influence of William tin' Conqueror, But despite these conces- sions, the attitude of Gregory VII remained firm, and tin reform which he consolidated has never subse-