Chapter 48
Section 48 of History of Rome and the Popes in the Middle Ages, Volume 3, by Hartman Grisar. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 4, Bishops and Clergy, Part 6. Clerical Celibacy. In the law of celibacy, the clergy had, at one and the same time, a precious aid to its efficiency and a preventative against excessive worldliness. In the 6th century, this law was upheld by popes, bishops, and councils as absolutely essential to ecclesiastical discipline.
The rule of continence extended then, as later, to bishops, priests, and deacons, but not to the minor orders. With respect to subdeacons, practice differed. In Rome, they seem to have been early subject to the law of celibacy, though even here the earliest proof of such an obligation is found in the letters of Leo the Great. In most other countries of the West, the law came to be applied to subdeacons only after
the 5th century. Towards the end of the 6th century, Pelagius II issued a stringent admonition to the subdeacons of Sicily, who, perhaps in consequence of Greek influences, made light of the rule. In it, he insisted on their conforming to Roman custom, seeing they belonged to the church province of Rome. Hence they were not to marry, and those who had entered into wedlock before their ordination were to abstain from marital intercourse with their wives. To his
successor, Gregory the Great, this measure seemed, however, too severe, and he accordingly modified it, ruling that in future no bishop should ordain a cleric to the subdeaconate, without previously requiring of him a promise to remain unmarried. This general, gradual extension to subdeacons of the law of celibacy is explained by the increasing part taken by this order in the service of the altar, in consequence of which it also came to be accounted one of the higher orders.
In Rome especially, subdeacons took an honorable place in the sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist, and even now, at the solemn papal mass, it is the subdeacon of the mass who, at the communion, brings the sacred host on a patent to the pope on his throne. It was mainly the close association of the higher orders with the spotless sacrifice, which led to celibacy being demanded of them.
the church's feeling, being that those dedicated to the holiest of all services, should be raised as high as possible above earthly bonds and lusts. When countless members of the laity led a virgin life out of devotion to the spotless lamb they worshipped on the altar, was it not fitting that appointed ministers of the altar, who officiated in the mysteries, should qualify for their duties by embracing the state of celibacy? Such a law can only be
described as a natural outcome of the spirit of the church. The acceptance of this obligation was, moreover, a matter of choice to individual Christians. The church had no desire to ordain any, save those who felt the attraction of the clerical state, of its privileges and responsibilities. From those who had no vocation, she forbore to demand so great a renunciation. The existence in his day of a general law of celibacy for the higher orders is attested by
Jerome. His expressions clearly indicate that in the East, as in the West, in the Patriarchate of Rome, as well as in those of Alexandria and Antioch, chastity was imposed on all clerics in major orders. What is the practice of the churches of the East, he says? Of that of Egypt and of the apostolic see, who all take either virgin priests, or such as our continent, or as such, being married, have ceased to be husbands. Such were Jerome's words against an
opponent of celibacy, namely, the heretic Vigiliantius, the first heretic, in fact, who ventured to challenge the law in question. In tracing such legislation to its inception, we are carried back to the early days of the church. The deviations we find are really exceptions which prove the law. It is noteworthy that the clergy raised no objections when councils began to support the practice by positive laws to this effect. The first Western council known
to have enacted such a law was that of Elvira in 300-306, but it cannot be argued that the practice originated then, or was introduced by this council. As a matter of fact, the council of Elvira is the first one held in the West, of which we possess the axe. Not only the oldest conciliar axe, but also the earliest extant, papal decretal, presupposed clerical celibacy. This decretal is one from Seresius to Himmarius of Tarragona, sent in 385. It insists strongly
on the perfect continents required of all bishops, priests, and deacons. In an epistle to the bishops of Africa, Seresius even states that the practice had been introduced by enactment of the apostles and fathers. In this letter, he makes known to his correspondence the decrees of a Roman council held near the relics of St. Peter the Apostle. From this time onward, papal decretals, such as those of Innocent I and Leo the Great, canons of councils held in the West,
and the works of the Fathers of Ford. Almost year by year, an uninterrupted sequence of testimonies to the existence and observance of this obligation. And when later on, priests, forgetful of honor and duty, sought in their madness to disturb these venerable restraints, the immortal Gregory VII came boldly forward with the ordinances of his predecessors and of the Western councils, to uphold at all costs the Christian ideal and the Church's freedom.
In defending the cause of celibacy, he was indeed, in a sense, defending the Church's freedom, for the independence of the Church herself was in some respect bound up with the moral independence of the clergy, and that exemption from the fetters of family life, from household cares, and countless earthly considerations which their unmarried state conferred on the clergy. The Greeks failed to retain as faithfully as the Latins the ancient
practice of celibacy in its integrity. Among them, the relaxation early introduced took a lasting character. The Greek father Epiphanius, indeed, holds that continents had been ordained by the church, even from apostolic times, but he also shows that in certain neighborhoods, the violation of the precept was already quite usual. Only in the case of bishops did the stern ancient rule continue to be observed in the East, clerics and the two other major orders gradually securing the
right to marry. The so-called Truland Council of Constantinople in 682 demanded continence from priests and deacons only when it was their turn to minister at the altar. Among the decrees on account of which this council was declared invalid by the popes, this one relaxing the ancient practice was certainly not the least. The general rule, originally even in the East, was that when a candidate for holy orders was already married, he should, with his wife's full
consent, cease from further marital intercourse with her. The wife usually took a vow of chastity or retired into a convent, though it was long before mere cohabitation came to be forbidden. Gregory the Great, whilst ordering, agreeably to the canons, the removal of other womenfolk from the bishop's house, expressly allowed the wife to remain. Elsewhere, the same pope tells us of a pious presbyter in the country of Nursia, who, after his ordination, loved his presbytera
as his sister, yet dreaded her as a foe, and therefore always treated her with modest caution. His meaning is that the good priest, in consorting with his wife, was ever fearful of being betrayed into a breach of his obligations. According to St. Jerome, marital intercourse with a wife wedded previous to ordination, at least in the case of bishops, was deemed a crime equivalent to adultery. The church's penalties for such a transgression were by no means lenient.
The laws of the Christian emperors at the church's request were also made to serve the cause of celibacy. It was felt that the help of the secular power would more effectually check the offenses arising from human frailty. One of the most emphatic decrees on celibacy belongs to Justinian I. In his legislative zeal, this emperor outstripped the church and refused to allow a widower with children to be promoted to a bishopric. In practice, however, little account
was made of this new regulation. As for the penalties, two recently discovered imperial decrees may be cited, one of which was issued before the decretal on celibacy by Pope Seresius. Both order the offspring of bishops, priests, and deacons born after their father's ordination to be condemned to penal servitude. These laws bear the stamp of the relations then existing between the church and the newly Christianized empire. What we have said explains the frank
allusions occasionally found in our sources to the promotion to high dignity in the church of the sons of presbyters, bishops, or popes. Pope Felix III is described as an ancestor, or atavus, of Gregory the Great. Pope Agapetus was the son of Gordian, a Roman presbyter. Pope Silvarius as the son of Pope Hormistus. Theodore, bishop of Jerusalem, as the father of Pope Theodore. A deacon as the husband of Petronia, buried at St. Paul's, and so forth.
In all these cases, the children had been born before their father's ordination. The name of Presbytera, already met with once, was the term usually applied to a wife married to a priest before his ordination, the bishop's wife being episcopa. In what close companionship the husband and wife often remain, notwithstanding their strict observance of the canons, is proved by the epitaph of the saintly bishop Cassius of Narny,
where he speaks of his sweetest consort, Fausta, laid to rest in front of his own tomb. End of section 48
