Celibacy of the Clergy
Celibacy is the renunciation of marriage implicitly or explicitly
made, for the more perfect observance of chastity, by all those who
receive the Sacrament of Orders in any of the higher grades. The
character of this renunciation, as we shall see, is differently
understood in the Eastern and in the Western Church. Speaking, for
the moment, only of Western Christendom, the candidates for orders
are solemnly warned by the bishop at the beginning of the ceremony
regarding the gravity of the obligation which they are incurring. He
tells them:
You ought anxiously to consider again and again what sort of a
burden this is which you are taking upon you of your own accord.
Up to this you are free. You may still, if you choose, turn to the
aims and desires of the world (licet vobis pro artitrio ad
caecularia vota transire). But if you receive this order (of
the subdiaconate) it will no longer be lawful to turn back from
your purpose. You will be required to continue in the service of
God, and
with His assistance to observe chastity and to be bound for ever
in the ministrations of the Altar, to serve who is to
reign.
By stepping forward despite this warning, when invited to do so,
and by co-operating in the rest of the ordination service, the
candidate is understood to bind himself equivalently by a vow of
chastity. He is henceforth unable to contract a valid marriage, and
any serious transgression in the matter of this vow is not only a
grievous sin in itself but incurs the additional guilt of sacrilege.
Before turning to the history of this observance it will be
convenient to deal in the first place with certain general
principles involved. The law of celibacy has repeatedly been made
the object of attack, especially of recent years, and it is
important at the outset to correct certain prejudices thus created.
Although we do not find in the New Testament any indication of
celibacy being made compulsory either upon the Apostles or those
whom they ordained, we have ample warrant in the language of Our
Saviour, and of St. Paul for looking upon virginity as the higher
call, and by inference, as the condition befitting those who are set
apart for the work of the ministry. In Matt., xix, 12, Christ
clearly commends those who, "for the sake of the kingdom of
God", have held aloof from the married state, though He adds:
"he who can accept it, let him accept it". St. Paul is even more
explicit:
I would that all men were even as myself; but every one hath
his proper gift from God .... But
I say to the unmarried and to the widows, it is good for them if
they so continue, even as I.
And further on:
But I would have you to be without solicitude. He that is
without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to the
Lord, how he may please God. But he
that is with a wife, is solicitous for the things of the world,
how he may please his wife: and he is divided. And the unmarried
woman and the virgin thinketh on the things of the Lord, that she
may be holy both in body and spirit. But she that is married
thinketh on the things of this world how she may please her
husband. And this I speak for your profit, not to cast a snare
upon you, but for that which is decent and which may give you
power to attend upon the Lord without impediment. (I Cor., vii,
7-8 and 32-35.)
Further, although we grant that the motive here appealed to is in
some measure utilitarian, we shall probably be justified in saying
that the principle which underlies the Church's action in enforcing
celibacy is not limited to this utilitarian aspect but goes even
deeper. From the earliest period the Church was personified and
conceived of by her disciples as the Virgin Bride and as the pure
Body of Christ, or again as the Virgin Mother (parthenos
meter), and it was plainly fitting that this virgin Church
should be served by a virgin priesthood. Among Jews and pagans the
priesthood was hereditary. Its functions and powers were transmitted
by natural generation. But in the Church of Christ, as an antithesis
to this, the priestly character was imparted by the Holy Ghost in
the Divinely-instituted Sacrament of Orders. Virginity is
consequently the special prerogative of the Christian priesthood.
Virginity and marriage both holy, but in different ways. The
conviction that virginity possesses a higher sanctity and clearer
spiritual intuitions, seems to be an instinct planted deep in the
heart of man. Even in the Jewish Dispensation where the priest begot
children to whom his functions descended, it was nevertheless
enjoyed that he should observe continence during the period in which
he served in the Temple. No doubt a mystical reason of this kind
does not appeal to all, but such considerations have always held a
prominent place in the thought of the Fathers of the Church; as is
seen, for example, in the admonition very commonly addressed to
subdeacons of the Middle Ages at the time of their ordination. "With
regard to them it has pleased our fathers that they who handle the
sacred mysteries should observe the law of continence, as it is
written 'be clean ye who handle the vessels of the Lord' "(Maskell,
Monumenta Ritualia, II, 242).
On the other hand, such motives as are dwelt upon in the passage
just quoted from the Epistle to the Corinthians are of a kind which
must appeal to the intelligence of all. The more holy and exalted we
represent the state of marriage to be, the more we justify the
married priest in giving the first place in his thoughts to his wife
and family and only the second to his work. It would be hard to find
more unexceptionable testimony to this point of view than that of
Dr. Döllinger. No scholar of this generation was more intimately
acquainted with the by-ways of medieval history. No one could have
supplied so much material for a chronique scandaleuse like
that which Dr. Lea has compiled in his history of celibacy.
Moreover, when Dr. Döllinger served his connection with the Church
after the Vatican Council, he had absolutely no motive to influence
his judgment in favour of Rome's traditional discipline, if it were
not that he believed that the lesson both of the past and the
present was clear. Nevertheless, when the Old Catholics abolished
compulsory celibacy for the priesthood, Dr. Döllinger, as we are
told by the intimate friend of his, an Anglican, was "sorely
grieved" by the step, and this seems to have been one of the
principal things which kept him from any formal participation in the
Old Catholic communion. In reference to this matter he wrote to the
same Anglican friend:
You in England cannot understand how completely engrained it is
into our people that a priest is a man who sacrifices himself for
the sake of his parishioners. He has no children of his own, in
order that all the children in the parish may be his children. His
people know that his small wants are supplied, and that he can
devote all his time and thought to them. They know that it is
quite otherwise with the married pastors of the Protestants.
The pastor's income may be enough for himself, but it is not
enough for his wife and children also. In order to maintain them
he must take other work, literary or scholastic, only a portion of
his time can be given to his people; and they know that when the
interests of his family and those of his flock collide, his family
must come first and his flock second. In short, he has a
profession or trade, a Gewerbe, rather than a vocation; he
has to earn a livelihood. In almost all Catholic congregations, a
priest who married would be ruined; all his influence would be
gone. The people are not at all ready for so fundamental a change,
and the circumstances of the clergy do not admit of it. It is a
fatal resolution. (A. Plummer in "The Expositor", December, 1890,
p. 470.)
A testimony given under such circumstances carries more weight
than long explanations would do. Neither was it the only occasion on
which the historian so expressed himself. "When a priest", Döllinger
wrote in a letter to one of his Old Catholic friends in 1876, "can
no longer point to personal sacrifice which he makes for the good of
his people, then it is all over with him and the cause which he
represents. He sinks to the level of men who make a trade of their
work [Er rangiert dann mit den Gewerbetreibenden]." (See
Michael, Ignaz von Döllinger, ed. 1894, p. 249.)
Supposing always that the vow of celibacy is faithfully kept, the
power which this practical lesson in disinterestedness must lend to
the priest's exhortations when addressing his people is too obvious
to need insisting upon. Numberless observers, Protestant and
Agnostic as well as Catholic, have borne the obstacles to really
confidential relations and more especially to confession in the case
of the married clergy -- even if this difficulty is often quite
unfairly exaggerated in the many current stories of Anglican
clergymen sharing the secrets of the confessional with their wives
-- are certainly real enough. When the once famous Pčre Hyacinth (M.
Loyson) left the Church and married, this was the first point which
once struck a free-thinker like George Sand. "Will Pčre Hyacinthe
still hear confessions?" she wrote. "That is the question. Is the
secrecy of the confessional compatible with the mutual confidences
of conjugal love? If I were a Catholic, I would say to my children:
'Have no secrets which cost too much in the telling and then you
will no cause to fear the gossip of the vicar's wife'."
Again, with regard to missionary work in barbarous countries, the
advantages which lies with a celibate clergy can hardly need
insisting upon and are freely admitted both by indifferent observers
and by the non-Catholic missionaries themselves. The testimonies
which have been gathered in such a work as Marshall's "Children
Missions" are calculated perhaps, from their juxtaposition, to give
an exaggerated impression, while the editor's bantering tone will
sometimes wound and repel: but the indictment is substantially
accurate, and the materials for a continuation of this standard
work, which have been collected from recent sources by the Rev. B.
Solferstan, S.J., in every respect bear out Marshall's main
contention. Over and over again the admission is made by
well-qualified observers, who are themselves either indifferent or
opposed to the Catholic Faith, that whatever genuine work of
conversion is done, is effected by the Catholic missionaries whose
celibate condition permits them to live among the natives as one of
themselves. See, for example, to speak only of China, Stoddard,
"Life of Isabella Bird", (1906), pp. 319-320; Arnot Reid, "Peking to
Petersburgh" (1897), p. 73; Professor E.H. Parker, "China Past and
Present" (1903), pp. 95-96.
The comparatively slight cost of the Catholic missions with their
unmarried clergy need not be dwelt upon. To take a single example,
the late Anglican Bishop Bickersteth, the much-respected Bishop of
South Tokio, Japan, describes in one of his published letters how he
had " a good deal of talk" with a Catholic vicar Apostolic, who was
on his way to China. Whereupon Bickersteth remarks that "Roman
Catholics certainly can teach us much by their readiness to bear
hardships. This man and his priests are at times subject to the most
serious privations I should fear. In Japan a Roman priest gets
one-seventh of what the Church Missionary Society and the Society of
the Gospel allow to an unmarried deacon. Of course they can only
live on the food of the country." (See "The Life and Letters of
Edward Bickersteth", 2nd ed., London, 1905), p. 214) With regard
again to the effect upon a priest's work the following candid
testimony from a distinguished married clergyman and professor of
Trinity College, Dublin, is very striking. "But from the point of
view of preaching", writes Professor Mahaffy, "there can be little
doubt that married life creates great difficulties and hindrances.
The distractions caused by sickness and other human misfortunes
increase necessarily in proportion to the number of the household;
and as the clergy in all countries are likely to have large families
the time which might be spent in meditation on their discourses is
stolen from them by other duties and other cares. The Catholic
priest when his daily round of outdoor duties is over, comes home to
a quiet study, where there is nothing to disturb his thoughts. The
family man is met at the door by troops of children welcoming his
return and claiming his interest in all their little affairs. Or
else the disagreements of the household demand him as an umpire and
his mind is disturbed by no mere speculative contemplation of the
faults and follies of mankind but by their actual invasion of his
home." (Mahaffy, The Decay of Modern Preaching, London, 1882, p.
42.)
To these general considerations various replies are urged. In the
first place, it is asserted that celibacy is a mere specious device
invented to ensure the subjection of the clergy to the central
authority of the Roman See. Such writers as Heigl (Das Cölibat,
Berlin, 1902) contend that the deprivation of home and family ties
tends to rob the priest of all national feeling and of standing in
the country, and consequently to render him a willing tool in the
hands of the spiritual autocracy of the popes. The historical
summary which follows will help to do justice to this objection. But
for the moment, we may note that St. Dunstan, who more than any
other character in early English history is identified with the
cause of a celibate clergy, was Archbishop of Canterbury from 960 to
988, a period during which the papacy was subjected to oppression
and disorder of the worst kind. In fact the practice of celibacy was
almost universally enjoined long before the resolute energy of Gregory VII
(Hildebrand) built up what it has of late years been the fashion to
call the papal monarchy. Again, the consistently nationalist tone of
such a chronicler as Matthew Pris, not to speak of countless others,
lets us see how mistaken it would be to suppose that celibates are
devoid of patriotism or inclined to lay aside their racial
sympathies in deference to the commands of the pope. And a similar
lesson might be drawn from the Gallicanism of the French clergy in
the seventeenth century, which seemingly was not inconsistent with
at least ordinary fidelity to their vows of continence.
Another objection which has been urged against sacerdotal
celibacy is that the reproduction of the species is a primary
function and law of man's nature, and therefore constitutes an
inalienable right of which no man can deprive himself by any vow. In
view of the fact that social conditions of every sort, as well as
the moral law, necessitate celibacy on the part of millions of the
race, no one takes this objection seriously. So far as any
justification of this position has been attempted, it has been found
in the analogy of the animal or vegetable kingdom, in which the
reproduction of its own kind has been represented as the main object
of created existence. But such a comparison applied to an
intellectual being like man is hardly more than puerile, and if the
argument is pressed we might answer that, as horticulturists are
well aware, some of the most beautiful and highly-developed of the
natural products of our flower-gardens are only to be obtained at
the sacrifice of their fertility. The argument if anything tells the
other way. The one serious objection against the law of clerical
celibacy is the difficulty which its observance presents for all but
men of exceptionally strong character and high principle.
Such writers as Dr. H.C. Lea and M. Chavard have set themselves
to gather up all the scandalous
excesses which have been charged against a celibate priesthood since
the beginning of the Middle Ages. It has been their aim to show that
the observance of continence in a much-exposed life is beyond the
strength of the average man, and that consequently to bind the rank
and file of the clergy by such a law is only to open the door to
irregularities and abuses far more derogatory to the priestly
character than the toleration of honourable marriage could possible
be. They urge that, in point of fact, the law during long periods of
time has become a dead letter throughout the greater part of
Christendom, and that its only result has been to force the priest
into courses of licence and hypocrisy which have robbed him of all
power to influence men for good. As to the historical evidence upon
which such charges are based, there will probably always be much
difference of opinion. The anti-clerical animus which prompts a
certain type of mind to rake these scandals
together, and to revel in and exaggerate their prurient details, is
at least as marked as the tendency on the part of the Church's
apologists to ignore these uncomfortable pages of history
altogether. In any case, it may be said in reply, that the
observance of continence with substantial fidelity by a numerous
clergy, even for centuries together, is assuredly not beyond the
strength of human nature when elevated by prayer and strengthened by
Divine grace. Not to speak of such countries as Ireland and Germany,
where, it might be contended, the admixture with other creeds tends
to put the Catholic clergy unduly upon their mettle, we might turn
to the example of France or Belgium during the last century. No
candid student of history who reviews this period will hesitate to
admit that the immense majority of many thousands of secular priests
in these two countries have led lives which are clean and upright,
in accordance with their professions. We prove it not only by the
good report which they have enjoyed with all moderate men, by the
tone of respectable novelists who have portrayed them in fiction, by
the testimony of foreign residents, and by the comparatively rare
occurrence of scandals, but,
what is most striking of all, we argue from the tributes paid to
their integrity by former associates who have themselves severed
their connection with the Catholic Church, men, for example, like M.
Loyson (Pčre Hyacinthe) or M. Ernest Renan. Speaking of the
wholesale charges of incontinence often levelled against a celibate
priesthood, M. Renan remarks: "The fact is that what is commonly
said about the morality of the clergy is, so far as my experience
goes, absolutely devoid of foundation. I spent thirteen years of my
life under the charge of priests, and I never saw the shadow of a scandal [je
n'ai pas vu l'ombre d'un scandale]; I have known no priests but
good priests. The confessional may possibly be productive of evil in
some countries, but I saw no trace of it in my life as an
ecclesiastic" (Renan, Souvenirs 'Enfance et de Jeunesse, p. 139).
Similarly M. Loyson, when seeking to justify his own marriage,
does not attempt to suggest that the obligation of celibacy was
beyond the strength of the average man, or that the Catholic clergy
lived otherwise than chastely. On the contrary, he writes: "I am
well aware of the true state of our clergy. I know of the
self-sacrifice and virtues within its ranks." His line of argument
is that the priest needs to be reconciled with the interests, the
affections, and the duties of human nature; which seems to mean that
he ought to be made less spiritual and more earthly. "It is only",
he says, "by tearing himself away from the traditions of a blind
asceticism, and of a theocracy still more political than religious,
that the priest will become once more a man and a citizen. He will
find himself at the same time more truly a priest." We are not
contending that the high moral standard conspicuous in the clergy of
France and Belgium is to be found in an equally-marked degree all
over the world. Our argument is that the observance of celibacy is
not only possible for the few called to be monks and enjoying the
safeguards of the monastic life, but that it is not beyond the
strength of a great body of men numbered by tens of thousands, and
recruited, as the French and Belgian clergy mostly are, from the
ranks of the industrious peasantry. We have no wish to deny or to
palliate the very low level of morality to which at different
periods of the world's history, and in different periods of the
world's history, and in different countries calling themselves
Christian, but Catholic priesthood has occasionally sunk, but such
scandals
are no more the effect of compulsory celibacy than the prostitution,
which is everywhere rampant in our great cities, is the effect of
our marriage laws. We do not abolish Christian marriage because so
large a proportion of mankind are not faithful to the restraints
which it imposes on human concupiscence. No one in his heart
believes that civilized nations would be cleaner or purer if
polygamy were substituted for monogamy. Neither is there any reason
to suppose that scandals would
be fewer and the clergy more respected if Catholic priests were
permitted to marry.
HISTORY OF CLERICAL CELIBACY
First Period
Turning now to the historical development of the present law of
celibacy, we must necessarily begin with St. Paul's direction (I
Tim., iii, 2, 12, and Titus, i, 6) that a bishop or a deacon should
be "the husband of one wife". These passages seem fatal to any
contention that celibacy was made obligatory upon the clergy from
the beginning, but on the other hand, the Apostle's desire that
other men might be as himself (I Cor., vii, 7-8, already quoted)
precludes the inference that he wished all ministers of the Gospel
to be married. The words beyond doubt mean that the fitting
candidate was a man, who, amongst other qualities which St. Paul
enunciates as likely to make his authority respected, possessed also
such stability of divorce, by remaining faithful to one wife. The
direction is therefore restrictive, no injunctive; it excludes men
who have married more than once, but it does not impose marriage as
a necessary condition. This freedom of choice seems to have lasted
during the whole of what we may call, with Vacandard, the first
period of the Church's legislation, i.e. down to about the time of
Constantine and the Council of Nicaea.
A strenuous attempt has indeed been made by some writers, of whom
the late Professor Bickell was the most distinguished, to prove that
even at this early date the Church exacted celibacy of all her
ministers of the higher grades. But the contrary view, represented
by such scholars as Funk and Kraus, seems much better founded and
has won general acceptance of recent years. It is not, of course,
disputed that at all times virginity was held in honour, and that in
particular large numbers of the clergy practised it or separated
from their wives if they were already married. Tertullian comments
with admiration upon the number of those in sacred orders who have
embraced continence (De exhortatione castitatis, cap. xiii), while
Origen seems to contrast the spiritual offspring of the priests of
the New Law with the natural offspring begotten in wedlock by the
priests of the Old (In Levit. Hom. vi, no. 6). Clearly, however,
there is nothing in this or similar language which could be
considered decisive, and Bickell, in support of his thesis, found it
needful to appeal mainly to the testimony of writers of the fourth
and fifth century. Thus Eusebius declares that it is befitting that
priests and those occupied in the ministry should observe continence
(Demonst. Evangel., I, C. ix), and St. Cyril of Jerusalem urges that
the minister of the altar who serves God properly
holds himself aloof from women (Cat. xii, 25). St. Jerome further
seems to speak of a custom generally observed when he declares that
clerics, "even though they may have wives, cease to be husbands".
But the passage most confidently appealed to is one of St.
Epiphanius where the holy doctor first of all speaks of the accepted
ecclesiastical rule of the priesthood (kanona tes ierosynes)
as something established by the Apostles (Haer., xlviii, 9), and
then in a later passage seems to describe this rule or canon in some
detail. "Holy Church", he says, "respects the dignity of the
priesthood to such a point that she does not admit to the diaconate,
the priesthood, or the episcopate, no nor even to the subdiaconate,
anyone still living in marriage and begetting children. She accepts
only him who if married gives up his wife or has lost her by death,
especially in those places where the ecclesiastical canons are
strictly attended to" (Haer., lix, 4). Epiphanius goes on, however,
to explain that there are localities in which priests and deacons
continue to have children, but he argues against the practice as
most unbecoming and urges that the Church under the guidance of the
Holy Ghost has always in the past shown her disapproval of such
procedure. But we need hardly insist that all this is very
inadequate evidence (even when supplemented by some few citations
from St. Ephraem and other Orientals) to support the contention that
a general rule of celibacy existed from Apostolic times. Writers in
the fourth century were prone to describe many practices (e.g. the
Lenten fast of forty days) as of Apostolic institution which
certainly had no claim to be so regarded. On the other hand, there
are facts which tell the other way. The statement of Clement of
Alexandria at an earlier date is open to no ambiguity. After
commenting on the texts of St. Paul noted above, and expressing his
veneration for a life of chastity, Clement adds: "All the same, the
Church fully receives the husband of one wife whether he be priest
or deacon or layman, supposing always that he uses his marriage
blamelessly, and such a one shall be saved in the begetting of
children" (Stromateiae, III, xiii).
Not less explicit is the testimony given by the church historian,
Socrates. He declares that in the Eastern Churches neither priests
nor even bishops were bound to separate from their wives, though he
recognized that a different custom obtained in Thessaly and in
Greece (H.E., Bk. I, cap. xi) Socrates tells the story of Paphnutius
rising in the assembly and objecting to an enactment which he
considered too rigorous in behalf of celibacy. It would be
sufficient, he thought, that such as had previously entered on their
sacred calling should abjure matrimony according to the ancient
tradition of the Church, but that none should be separated from her
to whom, while yet unordained, he had been united. And these
sentiments he expressed although himself without experience of
marriage. Some attempt has been made to discredit this story, but
nearly all modern scholars (notably Bishop von Hefele, with his most
recent editor, Dom H. Leclercq) accept it without reserve. The fact
that the attitude of Bishop Paphnutius differs but little from the
existing practice of the Eastern Churches is alone a strong point in
its favour. These testimonies, it will be observed, are from Eastern
sources and indicate, no doubt, the prevailing Oriental discipline.
Wernz expressed the opinion that from the earliest days of the
Church the custom, if not the law, was for bishops, priests, and all
in major orders, to observe celibacy.
Second Period
In the history of clerical celibacy conciliar legislation marks
the second period during which the law took definite shape both in
the East and in the West. The earliest enactment on the subject is
that of the Spanish Council of Elvira (between 295 and 302) in canon
xxxiii. It imposes celibacy upon the three higher orders of the
clergy, bishops, priests, and deacons. If they continue to live with
their wives and beget children after their ordination they are to be
deposed. This would seem to have been the beginning of the
divergence in this matter between East and West. If we may trust the
account of Socrates, just quoted, an attempt was made at the Council
of Nicaea, (perhaps by Bishop Osius who had also sat at Elvira) to
impose a law similar to that passed in the Spanish council. But
Paphnutius, as we have seen, argued against it, and the Fathers of
Nicaea were content with the prohibition expressed in the third
canon which forbade mulieres subintroductas. No bishop,
priest, or deacon was to have any woman living in the house with
him, unless it were his mother, sister, or aunt, or at any rate
persons against whom no suspicion could lodge. But the account of
Socrates at the same time shows that marriage on the part of those
who were already bishops or priests was not contemplated; in fact,
that it was assumed to be contrary to the tradition of the Church.
This is again what we learn from the Council of Ancyra in Galatia,
in 314 (canon x), and of Neo-Caesarea in Cappadocia, in 315 (canon
i). The latter canon absolutely forbids a priest to contract a new
marriage under the pain of deposition; the former forbids even a
deacon to contract marriage, if at the moment of his ordination he
made no reservation as to celibacy. Supposing, however, that he
protested at the time that a celibate life was above his strength,
the decrees of Ancyra allow him to marry subsequently, as having
tacictly received the permission of the ordaining bishop. There is
nothing here which of itself forbids even a bishop to retain his
wife, if he were married before ordination. In this respect the law,
as observed in the Eastern Churches, was drawn gradually tighter.
Justinian's Code of Civil Law would not allow anyone who had
children or even nephews to be consecrated bishop, for fear that
natural affection should warp his judgment. The Apostolic
Constitutions (c. 400), which formed the principal factor of the
church law of the East, are not particularly rigid on the point of
celibacy, but whether through imperial influence or not the Council
of Trullo, in 692, finally adopted a somewhat stricter view.
Celibacy in a bishop became a matter of precept. If he were
previously married, he had at once to separate from his wife upon
his consecration. On the other hand, this council, while forbidding
priests, deacons, and subdeacons to take a wife after
ordination, asserts in emphatic terms their right and duty to
continue in conjugal relations with the wife to whom they had been
wedded previously. This canon (xiii of Trullo) still makes the law
for the great majority of the Churches of the East, though some of
the Eastern Catholic communions have adopted the Western discipline.
In Latin Christendom, however, everything was ripe for a stricter
law. We have already spoken of the Council of Elvira, and this does
not seem to have been an isolated expression of opinion. "As a
rule", remarks Bishop Wordsworth from his anti-celibate standpoint,
"the great writers of the fourth and fifth century pressed celibacy
as the more excellent way with an unfair and misleading emphasis
which led to the gravest and 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. Although it is true that at the close of the fourth
century, as we may learn from St. Ambrose (De Officiis, I, l), some
married clergy were still to be found, especially 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-Löwenfeld, 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
mitigation of the severity of the ordinance of Elvira, 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 Ciricius (385-398)
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 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 Orléans 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 continued until King Pepin,
in 747, addressed a question 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 had
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 Noa, and of Salvinianus of Marseilles.
At any rate the synods of the sixth and seventh centuries, while
fully recognizing the position of these former wives and according
them even the formal designation of bishopess, priestess, deaconess,
and subdeaconess (episcopissa, presbytera, diaconissa,
subdiaconissa), 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, can. xiv). For the lower grades actual separation does not
seem to have been required, although the Council of Orléans in 541,
can. xvii, ordained: "ut sacerdotes sive diacom 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 Carolingian
epoch to set things upon a more satisfactory footing. To this St.
Chrodegang (q.v., formerly the chancellor of Charles Martel, and
after 742 Bishop of Metz), contributed greatly by his institution of
canons. Those were clergy leading a life in common (vita
canonica), according to the rule composed 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 radiply and met with much encouragement. In a
slightly modified from the Rule of St. Chrodegang was approved by
the Council of Aachen, in 816, and it formed the basis of the
cathedral chapters in most of the diocese 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 episcopium 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, barbarism, and corruption in high
places which marked the break-up of the Carolingian 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. 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 evidence
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 beotherwise when there were
intruded into bishoprics on every side men of brutal nature and
unbridled passions, who gave the very worst example to the clergy
over whom they ruled? Undoubtedly during this period the traditions
of sacerdotal 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 was never
completely surrendered in the official enactments of the Church.
With Pope St. Leo IX, St. Gregory
VII (Hildebrand), and their successors, a determined and
successful stand was made against the further spread of corruption.
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 they had
previously been married. See, for example, the Councils of Lisieux
of 1064, 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 the Conqueror. But despite these
concessions, the attitude of Gregory VII
remained firm, and the reform which he consolidated has never
subsequently been set aside. His determined attitude brought forth a
whole literature of protests, amongst others the letter "De
Continentiâ" which is widely attributed to St. Ulric of Augsburg,
though every modern scholar admits it to be a forgery, fabricated
more than one hundred years after St. Ulric's death. The point is of
importance because the evidence seems to show that in this long
struggle the whole of the more high-principled and more learned
section of the clergy was enlisted in the cause of celibacy. The
incidents of the long final campaign, which began indeed even before
the time of Pope St. Leo IX and lasted down to the First Council of
Lateran in 1123, are too complicated to be detailed here. We may
note, however that the attack was conducted along two distinct lines
of action. In the first place, disabilities of all kinds were
enacted and as far as possible enforced against the wives and
children of ecclesiastics. Their offspring were declared to be of
servile condition, debarred from sacred orders, and, in particular,
incapable of succeeding to their fathers' benefices. The earliest
decree in which the children were declared to be slaves, the
property of the Church, and never to be enfranchised, seems to have
been a canon of the Synod of Pavia in 1018. Similar penalties were
promulgated later on against the wives and concubines (see the Synod
of Melfi, 1189, can. xii), who by the very fact of their unlawful
connection with a subdeacon or clerk of higher rank became liable to
be seized as slaves by the over-lord. Hefele (Concilienge-schichte,
V, 195) sees in this first trace of the principle that the marriages
of the clerics are ipso facto invalid.
As regards to the offenders themselves, the strongest step seems
to have been that taken by Nicholas II in 1059, and more vigorously
by Gregory
VII in 1075, who interdicted such priests from saying Mass and
from all ecclesiastical functions, while the people were forbidden
to hear the Mass which they celebrated or to admit their
ministrations so long as they remain contumacious. In the
controversies of this time the Masses said by these incontinent
priests were sometimes described as "idolatrous"; but this word must
not be pressed, as if it meant to insinuate that such priests were
incapable of consecrating validly. The term was only loosely used,
just as if it was also sometimes applied at the same period to any
sort of homage rendered to an antipope.
Moreover the wording of a letter of Urban II (Ep.
cclxxiii) enforcing the decree takes an exception for cases of
urgent necessity, as, for example, when Communion has to be given to
the dying. Clearly, therefore, the validity of the sacraments when
consecrated or administered by a married priest was not in question.
Finally, in 1123, at the First Lateran Council, an enactment was
passed (confirmed more explicitly in the Second Lateran Council,
can. vii) which, while not in itself very plainly worded, was held
to pronounce the marriages contracted by subdeacons or ecclesiastics
of any of the higher orders to be invalid (contracta quoque
matrimonia ab hujusmodi personis disjungi ... judicamus -- can.
xxi). This may be said to mark the victory of the cause of celibacy.
Henceforth all conjugal relations on the part of the clergy in
sacred orders were reduced in the eyes of canon law to mere
concubinage. Neither can it be pretended that this legislation,
backed, as it were, by the firm and clear pronouncements of the
Fourth Council of Lateran in 1215, and later by those of the Council
of Trent, remained any longer a dead letter. Laxity among the clergy
at certain periods and in certain localities must undoubtedly be
admitted, but the principles of the canon law remained unshaken, and
despite all assertions to the contrary made by unscrupulous
assailants of the Roman system the call to a life of self-denying
continence has, as a rule, been respected by the clergy of Western
Christendom.
In England
A few words may here be added in particular about the history of
clerical celibacy upon English soil. Very extreme views have been
put forward by various Anglican writers. Passing over Dr. Lea as
quite untrustworthy, the following statement of a more sober writer,
the Bishop of Salisbury (John Wordsworth) may be taken as a
specimen. After declaring that during the Anglo-Saxon period the
English clergy were undisguisedly married, he adds: "It would be
easy to multiply evidence for the continuance of a practically
married clergy in this country up to the time of the Reformation.
Sometimes I believe that they were privately but still legally
married so that their wives and children might have the benefit of
their property after their death. For all marriages properly
performed in England were valid according to the civil law, unless
they were voided by action in the Bishop's Court, down to the
passing of Lord Lynhurst's Act in 1835, however much they might be
contrary to law" (Ministry of Grace, p. 236). It can only be said
that this is a quite gratuitous assertion , unsupported by any
evidence yet produced, and founded in the main upon that strange
misconception, so well exposed in Professor Maitland's "Roman Canon
Law in the Church of England", that ecclesiastical law in England
differed from, and was independent of, the jus commune (i.e.
the canon law) of the Catholic Church. Objectors may safely be
challenged to produce a single case during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries in which a clerk in sacred orders went through
the marriage ceremony with any woman, or in which is wife or the
children born after his ordination claimed to inherit his property
upon his death. On the other hand, the denunciations of all such
unions as mere concubinage are innumerable, and the evidence for any
great prevalence of these irregular connections, despite the
rhetorical exaggerations of such writers as Gower or Langland, is
relatively slight. Unfortunately, nearly all the best-known popular
histories (Trevelyan's "Age of Wicliffe" might be cited as a
specimen) are written with a strong anti-Roman or anti-sacerdotal
bias, particularly disastrous in matters in which there can be no
question of comparative statistics, but only of general impressions.
With regard to the Saxon and Angevin period again, careful study
of the evidence has convinced the present writer that a very
exaggerated estimate has been formed of the prevalence of marriage
or concubinage among the secular clergy. Two points deserve
especially to be remembered. First, that the Anglo-Saxon word
preost does not necessarily mean a priest but simply a
cleric. The ordinary word for priest in the sense of
sacerdos, was maesse-preost. This is continually
ignored, but the evidence for it is quite unmistakable and is fully
admitted in Bosworth-Toller's "Dictionary" and in the important
monograph, "The Influence of Christianity upon the Vocabulary of Old
English" (1902) by the American scholar Dr. H. MacGillivray. To take
one illustration, Abbot Xlfric writes: "Gemaenes hades preostum is
alyfed ... thaet hi syferlice sincipes brucon" -- i.e. "To clerics
[preostum] of the common order [i.e. to clerks in minor
orders] it is permitted that they enjoy marriage soberly"; and then
he continues: "but in sooth to the others that minister at God's altar,
that is to say mass-priests and deacons (maessepreostum and
diaconum), all conjugal relations are forbidden" (Aelfric,
Homilies). Similarly, where Bede speaks of St. Wilfrid receiving the
tonsure, the Anglo-Saxon translation, as in many similar cases,
renders it, "he waes to preost gesceoren", i.e. he was shorn into a
cleric (preost). Wilfrid's ordination as priest did not take
place until several years later. Now the importance of this will be
appreciated when we find a well-known historian writing thus:
"Celibacy was avowedly not practised by the northern clergy [in
Anglo-Saxon England]. The law of the Northumbrian Priests declares
'if a priest forsake a woman and take another let him be
excommunicate'. A priest might therefore take a wife and cleave to
her without rebuke". (Hunt, The English Church to the Norman
Conquest, 1899, p 383). Now this piece of evidence is quite
inconclusive; the word preost which is here used, may or may
not assume that it refers to any other class of preost, i.e.
cleric, than those in minor orders who were always entirely free to
marry. The second point which it is equally important to remember is
that clerics in minor orders were a very numerous class in Saxon,
Norman and Angevin times. With us there are, practically preparing
for ordination to the priesthood, while such candidates now from
their earliest years lead a life apart from the world in the
seclusion of colleges and seminaries. In the medieval Church things
were very different. Almost all young men with any little education
preferred to enroll themselves in the ranks of the clergy to
receiving the tonsure, hoping that some chance of employment or of a
benefice might come their way. They were still free to marry and
sometimes they married openly. But often, it seems, they entangled
themselves in rather ambiguous relations which in the then state of
marriage law might easily be legitimized afterwards, but which also
might be repudiated and broken off if they desired to receive
ordination.
All this, which up to a certain point was not inconsistent with
good faith, unfortunately prepared the way for easy relapses into
incontinence, and generated a public opinion in which it was not
accounted a reproach to be known as the son of a priest. Undoubtedly
the sons of priests formed a large class. There was a natural
tendency to bring them up also as clerics, and there was no doubt an
immense amount of scheming, not unfrequently successful, to secure
their promotion to the benefices held by their fathers. But it would be a
great mistake to regard these sons of priests as all necessarily
born in flagrant violation of the canons. The situation was a very
complicated one, and it is impossible to pronounce any sober opinion
upon its moral aspects without a careful study, on the other hand,
of the conditions of social, and particularly of student, life,
which an appreciation of the ambiguities of the marriage law, as
regards which the difficulties raised by the sponsalia de
praesenti have long been the despair of canonists. One of the
Constitutions of the Legate Otho, issued in 1237, is particularly
instructive in this connection. He has learnt, he declares, on good
authority that "many clerics [not yet priests, be it noted]
forgetful of the salvation of their souls, after contracting a
clandestine marriage, do not fear to retain the churches (to which
they may previously have been appointed) without putting away their
wives, and to acquire fresh ecclesiastical benefices and to be
promoted to sacred orders contrary to the provisions of the sacred
canons, and finally in due course of time after children have been
reared from this union, to prove at the proper moment, by means of
witnesses and documents, whether they themselves be still living or
have passed away, that a marriage had really be contracted between
the parties". (Wilkins, I, 653.) To meet this, Otho decrees that any
married clerk in possession of a benefice, loses all title to it
ipso jure, and secondly, that all property in possession of
such clerks or priests who have been clandestinely married before
their promotion to Holy orders, is to go to the Church and none of
it to their children. But the whole legal aspect of the celibacy
question in England can best be studied in the pages of Lyndewode's
"Provinciale". (See particularly pp. 16 sqq. and 126-130, of the
standard edition of 1679. The only thing which Lyndewode makes
clear, quoted above, is that the English Church in the fifteenth
century refused to recognize the existence of any such entity as the
priest's "wife". It knew of nothing but concubinae and denied
to these any legal right whatever or any claim upon the property of
the partner of their guilt.
Present Position
With regard to the law of celibacy and its canonical effects in
the Western Church at the present day, only one or two points can be
briefly touched upon. For the details the reader must be referred to
such a work as that of Wernz "Jus Decretalium", II, 295-321. Clerk
in minor orders, as already stated, as free to marry, and by such
marriages they forfeit the privilegia canonis and the
privilegia fori only in part, provided they observe the
required conditions (cf. Decreta Conc. Trid., Sess XIII, cap. vi);
though in our day such observance is practically impossible; but
they are incapable of being promoted to sacred orders unless they
separate from their wives, and make a vow
