2. The second step was the prohibition of marriage and conjugal intercourse after ordination. This implies the incompatibility of the priesthood with the duties and privileges of marriage. Before the Council of Elvira in Spain (306) no distinction was made in the Latin church between marriages before and after ordination. [748] 48 But that rigoristic council forbade nuptial intercourse to priests of all ranks upon pain of excommunication. [749] 49 The Council of Arles (314) passed a similar canon. [750] 50 And so did the Council of Ancyra (314), which, however, allows deacons to marry as deacons, in case they stipulated for it before taking orders. [751] 51 This exception was subsequently removed by the 27th Apostolic Canon, which allows only the lectors and cantors (belonging to the minor orders) to contract marriage. [752] 52
At the Oecumenical Council of Nicaea (325) an attempt was made, probably under the lead of Hosius, bishop of Cordova--the connecting link between Elvira and Nicaea--to elevate the Spanish rule to the dignity and authority of an oecumenical ordinance, that is, to make the prohibition of marriage after ordination and the strict abstinence of married priests from conjugal intercourse, the universal law of the Church; but the attempt was frustrated by the loud protest of Paphnutius, a venerable bishop and confessor of a city in the Upper Thebaid of Egypt, who had lost one eye in the Diocletian persecution, and who had himself never touched a woman. He warned the fathers of the council not to impose too heavy a burden on the clergy, and to remember that marriage and conjugal intercourse were venerable and pure. He feared more harm than good from excessive rigor. It was sufficient, if unmarried clergymen remain single according to the ancient tradition of the church; but it was wrong to separate the married priest from his legitimate wife, whom he married while yet a layman. This remonstrance of a strict ascetic induced the council to table the subject and to leave the continuance or discontinuance of the married relation to the free choice of every clergyman. It was a prophetic voice of warning. [753] 53
The Council of Nicaea passed no law in favor of celibacy; but it strictly prohibited in its third canon the dangerous and scandalous practice of unmarried clergymen to live with an unmarried woman, [754] 54 unless she be "a mother or sister or aunt or a person above suspicion." [755] 55 This prohibition must not be confounded with prohibition of nuptial intercourse any more than those spiritual concubines are to be identified with regular wives. It proves, however, that nominal clerical celibacy must have extensively prevailed at the time.
The Greek Church substantially retained the position of the fourth century, and gradually adopted the principle and practice of limiting the law of celibacy to bishops (who are usually taken from monasteries), and making a single marriage the rule for the lower clergy; the marriage to take place before ordination, and not to be repeated. Justinian excluded married men from the episcopate, and the Trullan Synod (a.d. 692) legalized the existing practice. In Russia (probably since 1274), the single marriage of the lower clergy was made obligatory. This is an error in the opposite direction. Marriage, as well as celibacy, should be left free to each man's conscience.
3. The Latin Church took the third and last step, the absolute prohibition of clerical marriage, including even the lower orders. This belongs to the next period; but we will here briefly anticipate the result. Sacerdotal marriage was first prohibited by Pope Siricius (a.d. 385), then by Innocent I. (402), Leo I. (440), Gregory I. (590), and by provincial Synods of Carthage (390 and 401), Toledo (400), Orleans (538), Orange (441), Arles (443 or 452), Agde (506), Gerunda (517). The great teachers of the Nicene and post-Nicene age, Jerome, Augustin, and Chrysostom, by their extravagant laudations of the superior sanctity of virginity, gave this legislation the weight of their authority. St. Jerome, the author of the Latin standard version of the Bible, took the lead in this ascetic crusade against marriage, and held up to the clergy as the ideal aim of the saint, to "cut down the wood of marriage by the axe of virginity." He was willing to praise marriage, but only as the nursery of virgins. [756] 56
Thus celibacy was gradually enforced in the West under the combined influence of the sacerdotal and hierarchical interests to the advantage of the hierarchy, but to the injury of morality. [757] 57
For while voluntary abstinence, or such as springs from a special gift of grace, is honorable and may be a great blessing to the church, the forced celibacy of the clergy, or celibacy as a universal condition of entering the priesthood, does violence to nature and Scripture, and, all sacramental ideas of marriage to the contrary notwithstanding, degrades this divine ordinance, which descends from the primeval state of innocence, and symbolizes the holiest of all relations, the union of Christ with his church. But what is in conflict with nature and nature's God is also in conflict with the highest interests of morality. Much, therefore, as Catholicism has done to raise woman and the family life from heathen degradation, we still find, in general, that in Evangelical Protestant countries, woman occupies a far higher grade of intellectual and moral culture than in exclusively Roman Catholic countries. Clerical marriages are probably the most happy as a rule, and have given birth to a larger number of useful and distinguished men and women than those of any other class of society. [758] 58
[730] The passages 1 Tim. 3:2, 12; Tit. 1:5, where St. Paul directs that presbyter-bishops and deacons must be husbands of "one wife" (mias gunaikos andris), are differently interpreted. The Greek church takes the words both as commanding (dei) one marriage of the clergy (to the exclusion, however, of bishops who must be unmarried), and as prohibiting a second marriage. The Roman circle understands Paul as conceding one marriage to the weakness of the flesh, but as intimating the better way of total abstinence (Comp. 1 Cor. 7:7, 32, 33). Protestant commentators are likewise divided; some refer the two passages to simultaneous, others to successive polygamy. The former view was held even by some Greek writers, Theodore of Mopstueste and Theodoret; but the parallel expression henos andros gune, 1 Tim. 5:9, seems to favor the latter view, since it is very unlikely that polyandry existed in apostolic churches. And yet Paul expressly allows without a censure second marriage after the death of the former husband or wife, Rom. 7:2, 3; 1 Cor. 7:39; 1 Tim. 5:14. For this reason some commentators Matthies, Hofmann, Huther in Meyer's Com. understand the apostle as prohibiting concubinage or all illegitimate connubial intercourse.
[731] 1 Cor. 9:5: "Have we no right (hexousian)to lead about a wife that is a believer (adelphen gunaika ), even as the rest of the apostles (hoi loipoi ap.) and the brothers of the Lord (hoi adelphoi t. Kuriou), and Cephas.?" The definite article seems to indicate that the majority, if not all, the apostles and brothers of the Lord were married. The only certain exception is John, and probably also Paul, though he may have been a widower. Tertullian in his blind zeal argued that gunaika is to be rendered mulierem, not uxorem (De Monog. c. 8), but his contemporary, Clement of Alex., does not question the true interpretation, speaks of Peter, Paul, and Philip, as married, and of Philip as giving his daughters in marriage. Tradition ascribes to Peter a daughter , St. Petronilla.
[732] Acts 21:8, 9.
[733] 1 Tim. 4:1-3.
[734] Comp. Heb. 13:4: "Let marriage be had in honor among all, and let the bed be undefiled" (Timios ho gamos en pasi, kai koite amiantos).
[735] Ep. ad Phil. c. 11. Some think that incontinence or adultery is referred to; but the proper readings philarguria, avaritia, not pleonexia.
[736] Adv. Haer. I. 13, 5 (ed. Stieren I. 155
[737] Strom. VII. 12, 1). 741.
[738] Ad Uxor. 1. 7: 1, Ut quod in matrimonionon valuimus, in viduitate sectemur. This clearly implies the continuance of sexual intercourse. Tertullian lays down the principle: "Defuncto viro matrimonium defungitur."
[739] Cyprian, Epist. 52, cap. 2, Oxf. ed. and ed. Hartel (al. 48). He paints his schismatical opponent in the darkest colors, and charges him with kicking his wife in the state of pregnancy, and thus producing a miscarriage, but he does not censure, him for his marriage.
[740] Hist. Eccl. V. 22: "in the East all clergymen, and even the bishops themselves to abstain from their wives: but this they do of their own accord, there being no law in force to make it necessary; for there have been among them many bishops who have had children by their lawful wives during their episcopate."
[741] In a letter to the Egyptian in monk Dracontius, who had scruples about accepting a call to the episcopate.
[742] This is substantially also the position of Eusebius, Epiphanius, and Chrysostom, as far as we may infer from allusions, and their expositions of 1 Tim. 3:2, although all preferred celibacy as a higher state. See Funk, l.c. p. 305. The Synod of Gangra, after the middle of the fourth century, anathematized (Can. 4) those who maintained that it was wrong to attend the eucharistic services of priests living in marriage. See Hefele I. 782, who remarks against Baronius, that the canon means such priests as not only, had wives, but lived with them in conjugal intercourse (mit denselben ehelich leben). TheCodex Ecclesiae Rom ed. by Quesnel omits this canon.
[743] Lundy (Monumental Christianity, N. Y. 1876, p. 343 sqq.) quotes the following inscriptions of this kind from Gruter, Bosio, Arringhi, Burgon, and other sources: "The place of the Presbyter Basil and his Felicitas. They made it for themselves." "Susanna, once the happy daughter of the Presbyter Gabinus, Here lies in peace joined with her father." "Gaudentius, the Presbyter, for himself and his wife Severa, a virtuous woman, who lived 42 years, 3 months, 10 days. Buried on the 4th after the nones of April, Timasius and Promus; being consuls." "Petronia, the wife of a Levite, type of modesty. In this place I lay my bones; spare your tears, dear husband and daughters, and believe that it is forbidden to weep for one who lives in God. Buried in peace, on the third before the nones of October." The names of three children appear on the, same tablet, and are no doubt those referred to by Petronis; hers, with the consular dates of their burial. Her own interment was a.d. 472. Gruter and Le Blant both publish a very long and elaborate inscription at Narbonne, a.d. 427, to the effect that Rusticus the Bishop, son of Bonosius a Bishop, nephew of Aratoris another Bishop, etc., in connection with the presbyter Ursus and the deacon Hermetus began to build the church; and that Montanus the sub-deacon finished the apse, etc.
[744] He asks the Catholics with indignation: "Quot enim et digami praesident apud vos, insultantes utique apostolo, certe non erubescentes, cum haec sub illis leguntur? .... Digamus tinguis? digamus offers?"De Monog. c. 12.
[745] Philosoph. IX. 12.
[746] Const. Ap. VI. 17.
[747] Can. 17, 18, 19, 27. The Jewish high-priests were likewise required to marry a virgin of their own people. Lev. 21:16.
[748] Admitted by Prof. Funk (R. Cath.), who quotes Innocent, Ep. ad Episc. Maced. c. 2; Leo I. Ep. XII.c. 5. He also admits that Paul's direction excludes such a distinction. See Kraus, Real-Enc. I. 304 sq.
[749] Can. 33 Placuit in totum prohibere episcopis, presbyteris, et diaconibus, vel omnibus clericis positis in ministerio, abstinere se a conjugibus suis, et non generare filios; quicunque vero fecerit, ab honore clericatus exterminetur." Hefele says (I. 168): " This celebrated canon contains the first law of celibacy. "It is strange that the canon in its awkward latinity seems to prohibit the clergy to abstain from their wives, when in fact it means to prohibit the intercourse. On account of the words positis in ministerio, some would see here only a prohibition of sexual commerce at the time of the performance of clerical functions, as in the Jewish law; but this was self-understood, and would not come up to the disciplinary standard of that age. How little, however, even in Spain, that first law on celibacy was obeyed, may be inferred from the letter of Pope Siricius to Bishop Himerius of Tarragona, that there were, at the close of the fourth century, plurimi sacerdotes Christi et levitu living in wedlock.