Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/304

292 and there succeeded in persuading Gregory to approve his new order, constituting it a branch of the Benedictines, with a rule based on that of St Benedict, but adding to it many additional severities and privations. Gregory further took it under the Papal protection, assured to it the posses sion of all property it might acquire, and endowed it with that great and constant, but most pernicious and fatal, object of the ambition of all monastic orders, exemption from the authority of the ordinary. Nothing more was needed to ensure the rapid spread of the new association ; and Peter the hermit of Morone lived to see himself &quot; Superior-General &quot; of thirty -six monasteries and more than six hundred monks. Peter, however, cannot be accused of ambition or the lust of power when a monastic superior, any more than when he insisted on divesting himself of the Papacy, to which he was subsequently raised. As soon as he had seen his new order thus consolidated he gave up the government of it to a certain Robert, and retired once again to a still more remote solitude to give himself up more entirely to solitary penance and prayer. Shortly afterwards, iu a chapter of the order held in 1293, the original monastery of Majella being judged to be too desolate and exposed to too rigorous a climate, it was decided that the monastery which had been founded in Sulmona should be the headquarters of the order and the residence of the General-Superior, as it has continued to be to the present day. The next year Peter the hermit of Morone, having been, despite his reluctance, elected Pope by the name of Celestine V., the order he had founded took the name of Celestines. The hermit Pope found time in the few short months of his Papacy to confirm the rule of the order, which he had himself composed, and to confer on the society a variety of special graces and privileges. In the only creation of cardinals promoted by him, among the twelve raised to the purple, there were two monks of his order. He found time also to visit personally the great Benedictine monastery on Monte Casino, where he suc ceeded in persuading the monks to accept his more rigorous rule. He sent fifty monks of his order to introduce it, who remained, however, for only a few months. After the death of the founder the order was favoured and privileged by Benedict XI., and rapidly spread through Italy, Germany, Flanders, and France, where they were received by Philip the Fair in 1300. Subsequently the French Celestines, with the consent of the Italian superiors of the order, and of Pope Martin V. in 1427, obtained the privilege of making new constitutions for themselves, which they did in the 17th century in a series of regula tions accepted by the provincial chapter in 1G67. At that time the French congregation of the order was composed of twenty-one monasteries, the head of which was that of Paris, and was governed by a Provincial with the authority of General. Paul V. was a notable benefactor of the order. But in consequence of later political changes and events the order has been dissolved. According to their special constitutions the Celestines were bound to say matins in the choir at two o clock in the morning, and always to abstain from eating meat, save in illness. The specialities of their rule with regard to fasting would be long and tedious to recount. It cannot ba said that they are more severe than those of sundry other con gregations, though much more so than is required by the old Benedictine rule. But in reading their minute directions for divers degrees of abstinence on various days, it is impossible to avoid being struck by the conviction that the great object of the framers of these rules, beyond the general purpose of ensuring an ascetic mode of life, was to create a speciality, to make a distinguishing difference between what &quot; our &quot; order does and what others do. The Celestinea wore a white woollen cassock bound with a linen band, and a leathern girdle of the same colour, with a scapulary unattached to the body of the dress, and a black hood. It was not permitted to them to wear any shirt save of serge. Their dress in short was very like that of the Cistercians. But it is a tradition in the order that in the time of the founder they wore a coarse brown cloth. The church and monastery of St Pietro in Montorio originally belonged to the Celestiues in Home ; but they were turned out of it by Sixtus IV. to make way for Franciscans, receiving from the Pope in exchange the Church of St Eusebius with the adjacent mansion for a monastery.

1em  CELIBACY is the condition of those who are living a single life. The word is derived from ccdcls, which means, not necessarily, as is very commonly supposed, a bachelor, but one wLo has no existing wife, whether he be a bachelor or a widower. (For authorities on this point, see Facciolati, Totius Latinitatis Lexicon.) Scaliger and Voss derive the word from KOI TT;, a bed, and XctVw, to leave. Some more fanciful etymologists, imagining that c&lels leads a celestial life, have suggested a derivation fiomccelum. The word is sometimes written coeltbs, but the better authorities are in favour of the diphthong æ. From the remotest times, those who have given their attention to the study of the conditions of human life in this world have deemed the married state to be a better thing both for the individual and the society to which he belongs than celibacy ; while from an equally early period those who have professed to understand man s destinies in a future world, and the most proper means of preparing fur them, have, though in no wise condemning marriage, con ceived that celibacy is the better, purer, nobler, and higher condition of life. Lawgivers, sociologists, statesmen, philosophers, and physiologists have held the former view ; devotees, ascetics, priests, the latter. The lawgivers of various countries and ages have striven to discourage celibacy, .as far as it was in the power of law to do so. The mention by Diouysius of Halicarnassus of an ancient law by which all persons of mature age were obliged to marry, may be cited. More authentic is the Ptoman law of the time of Augustus known as the Lex Julia de maritandis Ordinibus. It was afterwards called Papia Poppcea, or Julia Papia, from some new sanctions and amendments under the consuls Papius and Poppaous. Modern legislation has with increased wisdom shrunk from such direct attempts to coerce those subjected to it. But various provisions have in many European countries been enacted or proposed with the view of favouring the preval ence of marriage. Any endeavour to give a satisfactory account of the investigations of physiologists, as bearing on this subject would lead us too far afield into the discussion of topics which fall more conveniently and appropriately under other headings. But it appears from recent statistics that married persons, women in a considerable but men in a much greater degree, have at all periods of life a greater probability of living than the single. The ideas which, in the absence of or in opposition to the deductions of social philosophers and legislators, have found expression in the religious or ecclesiastical observ ances and theories of various ages aud creeds, require and are fitted to be treated, though with the utmost brevity, in a somewhat more historical manner. Beausobre, in his Ilistoire Critique du Manicheisme, lib. vii. cap. 3, shows 