250 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
and freed woincn, must he kept away from tlie hoaso of a elei'gyman." Similar laws, Avith penalties more or less severe, were passed by the council of Hippo, 393, of Angers, 453, of Tours, 461, of Lerida in Spain, 524, of Clermont, 535, of Braga, 563, of Orleans, 538, of Tours, 56T.' The emperor Justinian, in the twenty-third Novelle, prohibited the bishop having anv woman at all in his house, but the Trull an council of 692 returned simply to the Nieene law." The Western councils also made attempts to abolish the exceptions allowed in the Nicene canon, and forbade clergymen all intercourse with women, except in presence of a companion.
This rigorism, however, which sheds an unwelcome light upon the actual state of things that made it necessary, did not better the matter, but rather led to such a moral apathy, that the Latin church in the middle age had everywhere to contend with the open concubinage of the clergy, and the whole energy of Gregory YIL was needed to restore in a measure the old laws of celibacy, without being sufficient to prevent the secret and, to morality, far more dangerous violations of it." The later ecclesiastical legislation respecting the mulieres svhintroducfm is more lenient, and, without limiting the intercourse of clergymen to near kindred, generally excludes only concubines and those women '•'^ de quibus possit hdberi sitspicioy*
§ 51. Moral CJia/ra^teT of the Clergy in general.
Augustine gives ns the key to the true view of the clergy of the Roman empire in both light and shade, when he says of
' Comp. the relevant canons of these and other councils in the second and thira volumes of Ilefele's Conciliengeschichte.
' Can. 5 : "No clergyman shall have a female in his house, but those allowed in the old canon (Nicacn. c. 3). Even eunuchs are to observe this."
^ "Throughout the whole period," says Milman (Hist, (f Latin Christianity, i. 123), " from Pope Siricius to the Keformatioii, as must appecr in the course of out history, the law [of clerical celibacy] was defied, infringed, eluded. It never ob- "ained anything approaching to general observance, though its violation was at times more open, at times more clandestine."
* So the Concilium Tridentinum, seas. xxv. de reform, cap. 14. Comp. also thf article SuBiNTnoDUCT^, in the 10th volume of Wetzer and Welte's Cath Churcb Lexicon.
§ 51. MOKAL CHARACTEK OF THE CLEKGY IN GENERAL. 251
tlie spiritual office : " There is in tliis life, and especially in this day, nothing easier, more delightful, . lore acceptable to men, than the office of bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, if the charge be administered superficially and to the pleasure of men ; but nothing in the eye of God more wretched, mournful, and damnable. So also there is in this life, and especially in this day, nothing more difficult, nioi-e laborious, more hazardous than the office of bishop, or presbyter, or deacon ; but nothing in the eye of God more blessed, if the baltle be fought in the manner enjoined by our Captain." ' We cannot wonder, on the one hand that, in the better condition of the church and the enlarged field of her labor, a multitude of light-minded and unworthy men crowded into the sacred office, and on the other, that just the most earnest and worthy bishops of the day, an Ambrose, an Augustine, a Gregory jSTazianzen, and a Chrysostom, trembled before the responsibility of the office, and had to be forced into it in a measure against their will, by the call of the church.
Gregory ISTazianzen fiied into the wilderness when his father, without his knowledge, suddenly consecrated him priest in the presence of the congregation (361). He afterward vindicated this ffight in his beautiful apology, in which lie depicts the ideal of a Christian priest and theologian. The priest must, above all, he says, be a model of a Christian, offer himself a holy sacrifice to God, and be a living temple of the living God. Then he must possess a deep knowledge of souls, and, as a spiritual physician, heal all classes of men of various diseases of sin, restore, preserve, and protect the divine image in them, bring Christ into their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and make them partakers of the divine nature and of eternal salvation. He must, moreover, have at command the sacred philosophy or divine science of the world and of the worlds, of matter and
' Epist. 21 ad Valerium : "Nihil esse in hac vita et maxime hoc tempore facilius ct laetitins et hominibus acceptabilius episcopi aut presbyteri aut diaconi oflRcio, si perfunctorie atque adulatorie res agatur : sed nihil apud Deum miserius ct tristius ct damnabilius. Item nihil esse in hac vita et maxime hoc tempore difficilius, laboriosius, periculosiiis episcopi aut presbyteri aut diaconi officio, sed apud Deum nihil boatius, si eo modo miUtetur, quo noster iraperator jubet." This epistle was writteL soon after his ordination to the priesthood, a. d. 391. See Opera, ed. Be.iedL toa\ ii. p. 25,