806 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
ecclesiastical burial.1 The Fourth Lateran solemnly enjoined ecclesiastics against pronouncing the death sentence or exe cuting it, and the same council forbade surgery also, so far as it involved cutting and burning, to deacons and subdeacons as well as to priests.
The period opens with the dark picture of clerical morals by Peter Damiani who likened them to the morals of the Cities of the Plain. Bernard, a hundred years later, in condemning clergymen for the use of military dress, declared they had neither the courage of the soldier nor the virtues of the clergyman.2 A hundred years later still Grosseteste, in describing the low moral and religious state of the English people, made the immoral lives of the clergy responsible for it.
Dice were played even on the altars of Notre Dame, Paris,3 and dice-playing is often forbidden to priests in the acts of synods. Wine-drinking to excess was also a fault of the clergy, and Salimbene knew Italian clerics who sold wine and kept taverns.4 According to Caesar of Heisterbach, wine often flowed at the dedication of churches. A Devonshire priest was accustomed to brew his beer in the churchbuilding.
The most famous passage of all is the passage in which Jacob de Vitry describes conditions in Paris. Fornication among clergymen, he says, was considered no sin. Loose women paraded the streets and, as it were by force, drew them to their lodgings. And if they refused, the women pointed the finger at them, crying " Sodomites." Things were so bad and the leprosy so incurable that it was con sidered honorable to have one or more concubines. In the same building, school was held upstairs and prostitutes lived below. In the upper story masters read and in the lower story loose women plied their trade. In one part of the
1 Rouen, 1083 ; Soissons, 1079 ; Clermont, 1095 ; Fourth Lateran ; Trevee, 1227 ; Rouen, 1231. The Constitutions of Otho, 1237, etc.
2 De consid., III. 5. habit u milites, qucestu clericos, actu neutrum exhibent.
3 Chart, univ. Paris, I. No. 470.
4 Coulton's ed., 272 sqq.
§ 126. THE LOWER CLEKGY.
building women and their procurers disputed and in another part the clergy held forth in their disputations.1
The Fourth Lateran arraigned bishops for spending the nights in revelry and wantonness. The archbishopric of Rouen was occupied for 113 years by three prelates of scan dalous fame. Two of them were bastards of the ducal house and all rivalled or excelled the barons round about in turbu lence and license. A notorious case in high places was that of the papal legate, Cardinal John of Crema. He held a coun cil which forbade priests and the lower clergy to have wives or concubines ; but, sent to the bishop of Durham to remon strate with him over the debauchery which ruled in his palace, the cardinal himself yielded to a woman whom the bishop provided. The bishop regarded it as a jest when he pointed out the cardinal in the act of fornication.
Marriage and concubinage continued to be practised by the clergy in spite of the Hildebrandian legislation. Innocent III. agreed with Hildebrand that a priest with a family is divided in his affections and cannot give to God and the Church his full allegiance in time and thought.2 Writers, like Salimbene and C;esar of Heisterbach, were severe on married priests. According to the Fourth Lateran, bishops not only violated the canons of the Church themselves by committing the "crime of the flesh," as Gregory VII. called it, but winked at their violation by priests for a money-compensa tion. A common saying among priests was, si non caste, caute; that is, " if not chaste, at least cautious." In this way Paul's words were misinterpreted when he said, " If they can not contain, let them marry." Bonaventura, who knew the facts, declared " that very many of the clergy are notoriously unchaste, keeping concubines in their houses and elsewhere or notoriously sinning here and there with many persons." 3
Conditions must have been bad indeed, if they equalled the priestly customs of the fourteenth century and the example set by the popes in the latter half of the fifteenth. Who will
1 See text ; Rashdall, Universities, II. 690.
2 Ep., I. 469, VI. 103, etc., Migne, 214. 436 ; 215. 110.
8 Libellus apologet. and Quare fratres Minores prcedicant.