244 THIED PERIOD, A.D. 311-590.
apostolic direction, that a bishop should be the husband oi on4 wife,* being taken as a prohibition of successive polygamy, and at the same time as an allowance of one marriage. Besides second marriage, the marrying of a concubine, a widow, a harlot, a slave, and an actress, was forbidden to the clergy. With these restrictions, the "Apostolic Constitutions" and " Canons " expressly permitted the marriage of priests contracted h'fore ordination, and the continuance of it after ordination.* The synod of Ancyra, in 314, permitted deacons to marry even after ordination, in case they had made a condition to that effect beforehand ; otherwise they were to remain single or lose their office.^ The synod of Kew Csesarea, which was held at about the same time, certainly before 325, does not go beyond this, decreeing : " If a presbyter (not a deacon) marry (that is, after ordination), he shall be expelled from the clergy ; and if he practise lewdness, or become an adulterer, he shall be utterly thrust out and held to penance." ' At the general council of Nice, 325, it was proposed indeed, probably by the Western bishop Hosius," to forbid entirely the marriage of priests ; but the motion met with strong opposition, and was rejected. A venerable Egyptian bishop, Faphuuthis, though himself a strict ascetic from his youth up, and a confessor who in the last persecution had lost an eye and been crippled in the knee, asserted with irapressiveness and success, that too great rigor would injure the church and promote licentiousness, and that marriao;e and connubial intercourse were honorable
• 1 Tim. iii. 2, 12 ; Tit. i. 6.
' Lib. vi. cap. 17 (ed. Ueltzen, p. 144) : ^EmiTKonov Kal Trpeafivrepuu Kal oiaKoyov [thus including the bishop] ftwo/xev /xuvoydnovs Ka^icrraa^at . . . fxij d^i'ivai Si auTuls jjiera x^ipoTuv'iav aydfMois oiicnv ert eVl yafiov tpx^'^Siai, etc. Cau. Apost, can. 17 (p. 241); 'O oval ydnois (Tvfx-!r\aKe\s juera T() ^dirTiffixa . . . ov SvvaTai (Jpai fTTiffK-OTTor 17 Trpicr^vTipos ^ SiaKovos ^ oKwi rod KaTa\6yo'j rod UpariKOu. Couip. lan. 18 and can. 5.
' Can. 10. Comp. Dr. Ilefclc, Conciliengeschichte, i. p. 198.
* Can. 1. In Ilaiduin, torn. v. p. 1499 ; Hefele, Conciliengesch. i. 211 sq. Thia canon passed even into the Corpus juris can. c. 9, dist. 28.
' Ilosius of Cordova, who was present at the council of Elvira in Spain, iu 306, where a similar proposition was made and carried (can. 33). In the opinion above (fiyen, Theiuer, Gieseler, Robertson, and Ilefele agree.
§ 50. MAKKIAGE AND CELIBACY OF THE CLERGT 245
and spotless things,' The coimcil of Gangra in Paplilagonia (according to some, not till the year 380) condemned, among several ascetic extravagances of the bishop Eustathins of Sebaste and his followers, contempt for married priests and refusal to take part in their ministry." The so-called Apostolic Ca/tions, which, like the Cotistitutions, arose by a gradual growth in the East, even forbid the clergy, on pain of deposition and excommunication, to put away their wives under the pretext of religion.' Perhaps this canon likewise was occasioned by the hyper-asceticism of Eustathins.
Accordingly we not unfrequently find in the Oriental church, so late as the fourth and fifth centuries, not only priests, but even bishops living in wedlock. One example is the father of the celebrated Gregory l^azianzen, wdio while bishop had two sons, Gregory and the younger Csesarius, and a daughter. Others are Gregory of !Nyssa, who, however, wrote an enthusiastic eulogy of the unmarried life, and lamented his loss of the crown of virginity ; and Synesius (f about 430), who, when elected bishop of Ptolemais in Pcntapolis, expressly stipulated for the continuance of his marriage connection," Socrates, whose Church History reaches down to the year 439,
See the account in Socrates, H. E. i. c. 11, where that proposition to prohibit priestly marriage is called an innovation, a vo/xos veapos] in Sozomen, H. E. i. c. 23, and in Gelasius, Hist. Cone. Nic. ii. 32. The statement is thus sufficiently accredited, and agrees entirely with the ancient practice of the Oriental church and the directiona of the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons. The third canon of the council of Nice goes not against it, since it forbids only the immorality of mulieres subintroducta (comp. vol. i. § 95). The doubts of several Roman divines (Baronius, Bellarmine, Valesius), who would fain trace the cehbacy of the clergy to an apostolic origin, arise evidently from dogmatic bias, and are sufficiently refuted by Hefele, a Roman Catholic historian, in his Conciliengeschichte, vol. i. p. 417 sqq.
' Comp. Hefele, 1. c. i. 753 sqq.
^ Can. 5 (ed. Ueltzen, p. 239) : 'EttiV/cottos % Trpeafiimpos ^ otaKovos ttji/ kavroZ yvvaTKa fj.^ e/c/SaAAeTw ■Kpu(pd(rei euXa/Seiar" ear Se fK^aXy, acpopi^^a^u, iTfi/xivaiv di Ko^atpfiaboo. Comp. Const. Apost. vi. 17.
■• Declaring : " God, the law, and the consecrated hand of Theophilus (bishop of Alexandria), have given me a wife. I say now beforehand, and I protest, that I will neither ever part from her, nor live with her in secret as if in an unlawful connection ; for the one is utterly contrary to religion, the other to the laws ; but I desire to receive many and good children from her" (Epist. 105 ed. Basil., cited in the original Greek in Gieseler), Comp on the instances of married bishops, Bing