Clerical Celibacy in the West:

c.1100–1700

Helen Parish
Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700
This page has been left blank intentionally
Clerical Celibacy in the West:
c.1100–1700

Helen Parish
University of Reading, UK
© Helen Parish 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored

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mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission
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Helen Parish has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Parish, Helen L.
Clerical celibacy in the West, c.1100–1700. – (Catholic Christendom, 1300–
1700)
1. Celibacy – Christianity – History.
I. Title II. Series
253.2’524–dc22

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parish, Helen L.
Clerical celibacy in the West, c.1100–1700 / Helen Parish.
p. cm. – (Catholic christendom, 1300–1700)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-3949-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4094-0263-3
(ebook) 1. Celibacy – Christianity – History. 2. Clergy – Sexual behavior. I.
Title.
BV4390.P37 2009
253’.2524–dc22
2009043768

ISBN 9780754639497 (hbk)

ISBN 9781409402633 (ebk)

V
 Contents

Series Editor’s Preface   vii

Acknowledgements   ix
Abbreviations   xi

Introduction – ‘For the sake of the kingdom of heaven’?:

Shaping the Celibacy Debate   1

1 ‘If there is one faith, there must be one tradition’:

Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church   15

2 ‘Preserving the Ancient Rule and Apostolic Perfection’?:

Celibacy and Marriage in East and West   59

3 ‘A concubine or an unlawful woman’: Celibacy, Marriage,

and the Gregorian Reform   87

4 ‘In marriage they will live more piously and honestly’:

Debating Clerical Celibacy in the Pre-Reformation Church  123

5 ‘The whole world and the devil will laugh’: Clerical Celibacy
and Married Priests in the Age of Reformation   143

6 ‘Contrary to the state of their order and the laudable customs of

the church’: Clerical Celibacy in the Catholic Church after the
Reformation   185

Conclusion – ‘One of the chief ornaments of the Catholic clergy’?:

Celibacy in the Modern Church   209

Bibliography   235
Index   277
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Series Editor’s Preface
The still-usual emphasis on medieval (or Catholic) and reformation (or
Protestant) religious history has meant neglect of the middle ground,
both chronological and ideological. As a result, continuities between the
middle ages and early modern Europe have been overlooked in favor of
emphasis on radical discontinuities. Further, especially in the later period,
the identification of ‘reformation’ with various kinds of Protestantism
means that the vitality and creativity of the established church, whether in
its Roman or local manifestations, has been left out of account. In the last
few years, an upsurge of interest in the history of traditional (or catholic)
religion makes these inadequacies in received scholarship even more
glaring and in need of systematic correction. The series will attempt this
by covering all varieties of religious behavior, broadly interpreted, not just
(or even especially) traditional institutional and doctrinal church history.
It will to the maximum degree possible be interdisciplinary, comparative
and global, as well as non-confessional. The goal is to understand religion,
primarily of the ‘Catholic’ variety, as a broadly human phenomenon,
rather than as a privileged mode of access to superhuman realms, even
implicitly.
The period covered, 1300–1700, embraces the moment which saw
an almost complete transformation of the place of religion in the life of
Europeans, whether considered as a system of beliefs, as an institution,
or as a set of social and cultural practices. In 1300, vast numbers of
Europeans, from the pope down, fully expected Jesus’s return and the
beginning of His reign on earth. By 1700, very few Europeans, of whatever
level of education, would have subscribed to such chiliastic beliefs. Pierre
Bayle’s notorious sarcasms about signs and portents are not idiosyncratic.
Likewise, in 1300 the vast majority of Europeans probably regarded
the pope as their spiritual head; the institution he headed was probably
the most tightly integrated and effective bureaucracy in Europe. Most
Europeans were at least nominally Christian, and the pope had at least
nominal knowledge of that fact. The papacy, as an institution, played a
central role in high politics, and the clergy in general formed an integral
part of most governments, whether central or local. By 1700, Europe was
divided into a myriad of different religious allegiances, and even those areas
officially subordinate to the pope were both more nominally Catholic in
belief (despite colossal efforts at imposing uniformity) and also in allegiance
than they had been four hundred years earlier. The pope had become only
one political factor, and not one of the first rank. The clergy, for its part,
viii Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

had virtually disappeared from secular governments as well as losing much

of its local authority. The stage was set for the Enlightenment.

Thomas F. Mayer,
Augustana College
 Acknowledgements
This project had its roots in a pleasant conversation with Thomas Mayer, rather
longer ago than I would like to admit. At the time, and perhaps lulled into a
false sense of security and optimism by the summer sunshine, the scale of the
undertaking was perhaps less apparent than it should have been. As a result,
friends, family, and colleagues have heard more about the history of the church,
the discipline of celibacy, and the marriage of priests, than they might have
thought necessary. Their forbearance is much appreciated. I am particularly
grateful to staff in the History department at the University of Reading who have
provided much encouragement and intellectual stimulation along the way, and
to the numerous friends outside the university who have resisted the temptation
to ask ‘but why?’ in response to a description of my research plans. Colleagues
with interests in medieval and early modern history have tolerated with good
humour my intrusions onto their turf, and provided a gentle guiding hand that has
preserved me from many egregious errors. Any that remain are entirely my own
work. I am particularly grateful to Frank Tallett, who read the later parts of the
book in an earlier draft and provided many helpful suggestions for improvement,
and to Felicity Heal, who cast an expert eye over the Reformation material.
I am indebted to the patience of staff in the Reading University Library, and
to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the British Library for permission to use
their collections. The text of this book was completed during a period of research
leave funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council; I am appreciative
of their financial support, and of the accompanying sabbatical provided by the
Department of History at Reading. Tom Mayer and Tom Gray at Ashgate have
offered friendly encouragement from the early days of this project, and provided
valuable advice.
A period as head of department in Reading allowed administrative matters to
intrude into already precious research time, but perhaps also provided valuable
insights into the machinations that might have underpinned the bureaucracy
and conciliar discussions of the medieval and early modern church. The birth
of my daughter, Ruth, in December 2007, presented an entirely different set of
preoccupations, but for the very best of reasons. Already, at two years, she is
capable of demonstrating in a multitude of ways that there are many things in life
that are much more important than the history of clerical celibacy. Her response
to the first complete typescript of this book was to enjoy the many possibilities
for destruction and reconstruction that it afforded, but I dedicate the final product
to her, in the hope that one day she will read and enjoy what follows.

Helen Parish, January 2010

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 Abbreviations
AAS Acta apostolicae sedis
CCCC Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
CIC Corpus Iuris Canonici in tres partes distinctum
CJC Corpus Juris Civilis: Codex Justiniani
Corp. Cath. Corpus Catholicorum
Corp. Ref. Corpus Reformatorum
Ep. Epistola(e)
LW Luther’s Works (American Edition)
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
PG Patrologia Cursus Completus: Series Graeca
PL Patrologia Cursus Completus: Series Latina
WA Weimarer Ausgabe: Martin Luther Werke
WABr Martin Luthers Werke. Briefweschel
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 INTRODUCTION

‘For the sake of the kingdom of

heaven’?: Shaping the Celibacy
Debate
In February 1549, the passage of a bill through the upper house of the
English parliament was secured against the objections of eight bishops and
four secular Lords. It would be ‘better for the estimation of priests and other
ministers in the church of God to live chaste, sole and separate from the
company of women and the bond of marriage’ the Act declared, ‘that they
might better attend to the ministration of the Gospel, and be less intricated
and troubled with the charge of household’. The English legislation was
not, however, a defence of the discipline of obligatory clerical celibacy.
Since, it was suggested, many of the clergy did not keep to this ‘chaste and
sole life’, it would be to the good of the realm if those priests who could
not contain were permitted to marry. Of all the acts of the Edwardian
Reformation, the abrogation of the law of celibacy was perhaps the one
with which cooperation was most evidently voluntary. However, this was
no minor issue. The legalisation of clerical marriage in England was a
highly visible sign of doctrinal change, a tangible break with the discipline
and laws of the Catholic church, and an act of iconoclasm which shattered
both the medieval image of priesthood, and the established economy of
sexuality and the sacred. Increasingly vocal demands for the abrogation
of the law of celibacy spilled from the pages of printed books published
in defence of the Reformation, and this polemical debate was conducted
against a backdrop of the reality of clerical marriage in western Europe for
the first time since the eleventh century.
Early Modern writing on clerical celibacy, both Catholic and Protestant,
owed much in terms of content and structure to earlier manifestations
of the same controversy. Each generation might have stamped its own
considerations and concerns upon the discussion of clerical celibacy, but the
fundamentals of the debate had, and have, remained remarkably consistent.


  2 & 3 Edward VI c.21.

  For further discussion of the English context, see H.L. Parish, Clerical Marriage and
the English Reformation (Aldershot, 2000); E.J., Marriage and the English Reformation
(Oxford, 1994).
 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

Questions of scriptural mandate, apostolic precedent, ecclesiastical

tradition, sacramental function and pastoral role were repeatedly aired
and analysed, and the rationale behind obligatory clerical celibacy, and
the desirability or acceptability of a married priesthood, considered and
contested. The nature of the debate reflects the breadth and complexity of
the issue. As one recent commentator has suggested, ‘theology, scripture
and history do not provide unambiguous arguments for the obligatory
union of priesthood and celibacy’. The malleability of the evidence has
created an enduring controversy, in which scripture and tradition become
a palimpsest, as successive protagonists layer the experience of their age
upon the texts of the past. Yet the history of clerical celibacy can be made,
at one level, remarkably simple. Early Christians lived in an age in which
family and fertility were prized, but in which it was also possible to lead
a life that was so firmly centred on discipleship that marriage was not an
option. Christ had spoken of those who ‘made themselves eunuchs for the
sake of the kingdom’, and contemporary philosophy, both Christian and
non-Christian, set great store by the prioritisation of the spiritual over the
material and physical. As the faith spread, some believers found fulfilment
in a life of withdrawal and isolation, while others assumed positions
of leadership in the nascent Christian communities and churches. The
development of a Christian ministry that was permanent and perpetual
brought with it assumptions about the conduct and character of the
presbyter, informed by Scripture, especially the Pauline epistles, but also
by questions about the nature of ministry and the emerging sacrificial
function of the priest. These assumptions provided the foundation for
the insistence upon, first, clerical continence, and then clerical celibacy, in
the Latin church, although it was only after the eleventh century that the
discipline was universally enforced. The advent of the Reformation, and
evangelical criticisms of the laws and traditions of the Catholic church,
reawakened the debate over clerical marriage, and paved the way for the
presence of a married ministry in the Latin church for the first time in
half a millennium. The reassertion of clerical celibacy at the Council of
Trent established the issue as a permanent marker of the divisions within
Christendom, and defined a discipline for the Catholic church which has
continued to the present day.
However, the history of clerical celibacy, both the ideal and the reality,
has as times a Delphic ambiguity to it. What, exactly, does the phrase
‘clerical celibacy’ mean? Only by considering this question does it become
apparent at what point, and with what consequences, practice became
obligation. An understanding of the meaning of ‘clerical celibacy’ also


  J.E. Dittes, ‘The Symbolic Value of Celibacy for the Catholic Faithful’, in W. Bassett
and P. Huizing (eds), Celibacy in the Church (New York, 1972), p. 84.
 introduction 

helps to explain the basis upon which it has been possible for successive
generations of protagonists, on both sides of the debate, to lay claim
to ‘apostolic’ precedent, and what implications this has had for the
understanding of history and tradition in the church. And, looking briefly
beyond the discipline and practice of the Latin church, a consideration
of the nature of clerical celibacy illuminates the apparently divergent
traditions of East and West, and how it is that the church in East came to
adopt a model of married priesthood and celibate episcopate. As Roman
Cholij, writing in the context of praxis in the East, demanded, why can a
priest be married, if it is wrong for a priest to marry?  The term celibacy,
caelebs, in its literal meaning, indicates the single life; a celibate clergy is,
therefore, an unmarried ministry, and in the twenty-first century Catholic
church, clerical celibacy is evidenced in the ordination of men who commit
to remain unmarried. No individual may be presented for ordination and
service in a diocese until ‘in a prescribed rite he has assumed publicly and
before God and the Church the obligation of celibacy’. This is the form in
which the term is most commonly understood in the equation of ordination
to the Catholic priesthood with the renunciation of marriage.
When applied to the history of the church, however, clerical celibacy thus
defined is an inadequate concept. Since it is evident that the early Christian
priesthood comprised both married and unmarried men, there is, with this
definition, no obvious root for the law of clerical celibacy in the practice
of the primitive church. By searching in the past for the modern discipline
of the church, it is easy to conclude that the origins of clerical celibacy lie
in the post-apostolic period, possibly as late as the eleventh century. Yet
it is clear that there were not only unmarried men in the service of the
primitive church, but also married men who, after ordination, led a life of
continence within marriage. The practice of prohibiting marriage to men
after they received holy orders, and denying the possibility of re-marriage
to married priests whose wives pre-deceased them, raises the possibility
that the rejection of such unions embodied an underlying principle of
clerical continence. Marriage (or re-marriage) after ordination was rejected
on the basis either that it implied an inability to live in continence, or that
such unions would not be valid because the discipline of clerical continence
required that they be unconsummated. The assumption that continence
would be demanded of all who entered higher Christian orders might then
provide a backdrop to the legislation of the Latin church which excluded
married men from the ministry. It is this process of definition and redefinition
which has reinvigorated the debate over the apostolic origins of clerical
celibacy. Defined as ‘unmarried’, the celibate priesthood has been argued to


 R. Cholij, Clerical Celibacy in East and West (Worcester, 1988), preface.

  CIC 132.2 and 132.3, Code of Canon Law 1037.
 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

be an invention of the medieval church; defined as ‘continent’ the celibate

priesthood has been presented as the practice of primitive Christianity.
It is this seemingly semantic distinction that lies at the heart of some of
the most violent printed exchanges on the history of clerical celibacy, and
which has shaped the debate over clerical celibacy and marriage for centuries.
The representation of clerical celibacy as innovation provided a springboard
for critics of the ecclesiastical reforms of the eleventh century, while the
view that clerical continence was the tradition of the church underpinned
the assertions of the reformers that what they demanded was a rigorous
enforcement rather than a new direction. The question of the apostolic
origins of clerical celibacy was revisited by both Catholic and Protestant in
the early modern period, each determined to locate evidence of departure
from the traditions of the primitive church and the law of Scripture in the
disciplines and dogmas of the other. Evangelical critics argued that clerical
celibacy had its origins in the mind of the medieval papacy, and concluded
that this was simply another example of innovation in the Catholic church,
a sign of decay and disregard for the apostolic heritage, a departure from the
scriptures, and evidence of the presence of Antichrist on the throne of St Peter.
At the hands of Catholic propagandists, the first generation of evangelical
clergy wives were depicted as no better than concubines, testimony to the
lack of moral integrity that attracted individuals to the Reformation, and
proof that Protestantism was little more than the reincarnation of earlier
heresies already condemned by fathers, popes, and doctors of the church.
Nineteenth century polemical and academic exchanges on the subject were
again dominated by the question of whether or not the roots of clerical
celibacy lay in the practice of the primitive church. The centrality of the
‘apostolic origins’ question to the celibacy debate in successive generations


  The modern debate is most effectively played out in the pages of C. Cochini, The
Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (San Francisco, 1995); Cholij, Clerical Celibacy in
East and West; S. Heid, Clerical Celibacy in the Early Church. The Beginnings of Obligatory
Continence for Clerics in East and West (trans. Michael J. Muller) (San Francisco, 2001);
A.M. Cardinal Stickler, The Case for Clerical Celibacy. Its Historical Development &
Theological Foundations (trans. B. Ferme) (San Francisco, 1995); R. Gryson, Les origins du
celibate ecclesiastique (Gembloux, 1970).

  See especially G. Bickell, ‘Der Colibat eine apostolische Anordnung’, Zeitschrift fur
Katholische Theologie, 2 (1878): 20–64; Bickell, ‘Der Colibat dennoch eine apostolische
Anordnung’, Zeitschrift fur Katholische Theologie, 3 (1879): 792–9; F.X. Funk, ‘Der
Colibat keine apostolische Anordnung’, Tübinger theologische Quartalschrift, 61 (1880):
202–21; Funk, ‘Colibat und Priesterehe im Christlichen Alterum’, in Kirchengeschichtliche
Abhandlungen und Unterschungen, I (1897): 121–55; E.F. Vancandard, ‘Les origines du
Celibat Ecclesiastique’, Etudes de Critique d’histoire religieuse 1st ser. (Paris 1905; 5th
edition Paris 1913) 71–120; ‘Celibat’ in Dictionnaire de theologie catholique, 2 (Paris,
1905): 2068–88; H. Leclerq, ‘La legislation concilaire relative au celibat ecclesiastique’ in
the extended French edition of Conciliengeschichte by C.J. von Hefele, vol. 2 part 2 (Paris
 introduction 

positions the consideration of the practice and precedents established in

scripture and the patristic era as a necessary preamble to the analysis of
the history of the controversy in the medieval and early modern church.
Refracted through the prism of competing polemical concerns, biblical and
patristic texts were open to a multiplicity of interpretations. The intention
of the councils and synods of the church were readily obfuscated by the (at
times) limited availability of accurate narratives, and this same process by
which a narrative of the ecclesiastical past was constructed in the service of
the needs and concerns of the present.
The question of the ‘origins’ of clerical celibacy is not confined to
chronology alone. The debate over the foundations of the principle of
clerical continence or clerical celibacy in any age has revolved around
the fundamental question of why it was that abstinence from sexual
relations and marriage carried with it a reputation for holiness, or implied
characteristics that were necessary to the priesthood. Two routes to this
question are readily identifiable. The first is the argument that freedom
from marriage equipped the priest with the ability to devote himself to
the service of God, the service of the church, and the service of his flock.
This practical value accorded to clerical celibacy was given expression
in the Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests at the Second Vatican
Council, but also in the 1549 Act which legalised clerical marriage in
England: it was preferable that priests remained unmarried so that ‘they
might better attend to the ministration of the Gospel, and be less intricated
and troubled with the charge of household’. The second approach argues
from the assumption that purity, by which is understood sexual purity, is
a necessary companion to the sacred function of the priest. Drawing upon
the precedent of the Levitical priesthood, and the sacrificial role of the
priest at the altar, continence, or celibacy, emerged as a requirement for
all who would fulfil such duties in the church. The function of the priest
as mediator between God and man has certainly been used to justify the
demand for continence from clergy in higher orders in both East and West.
J.P. Audet, for example, concluded that the decisive factor behind the law
that imposed continence upon the clergy was ‘the encounter, within the same
pastoral consciousness, of the double perception of impure and sacred, the
first being present in the shadows, under the form of sexual activity, and
the second, in full light, under the form of service of the sacramenta’. The

1908), appendix 6 1321–48; ‘Celibat’ in Dictionnaire d’Archeologie chretienne et de liturgie,

2 (Paris, 1908) 2802–32; discussed in Conclusion below.

  For a discussion of the ‘cultic purity’ question, see B. Verkamp, ‘Cultic Purity and the
Law of Celibacy’, Review for Religious, 30 (1971): 199–217.

  J-P. Audet, Mariage et celibat dans le service pastoral de l’Eglise, Histoire et
Orientation (Paris, 1967), p. 114.
 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

defence of clerical celibacy on the basis of the ‘cultic purity’ demanded of

those who serve at the altar dominated the literature on clerical marriage in
the period of the eleventh century reforms, and continued to be debated in
the early modern period. The path to Donatism was repeatedly blocked by
the medieval church, in the assertion that the moral conduct of the priest
made no difference to the efficacy of the sacrament. However, evangelical
polemicists in the sixteenth century capitalised upon the vocabulary of
Catholic devotional and disciplinary writing to argue that the concubinary
priest who handled the body and blood of Christ in the consecrated elements
did not only dishonour himself, and commit an act of sacrilege, but also
called into question the theology and sacramental structure of the church.10
The argument from ‘cultic purity’ has become rather less dominant in the
modern church as the value of clerical celibacy is commonly articulated on
the basis of the relationship of the priest with Christ, and in particular the
function of the priest in alter Christus. The Code of Canon Law (1983),
for example, describes priests as those who ‘are consecrated and deputed
to shepherd the people of God, each in accord with his own grade of
orders, by fulfilling in the person of Christ [in persona Christi] the Head
the functions of teaching, sanctifying, and governing’.11 The sharing of
the ordained priest in the office and priestly function of Christ requires
the commitment and character that celibacy manifests, and this spiritual
union and rejection of material concerns is presented as a fundamental
part of the identity and nature of the priesthood.
The issue of clerical celibacy is, at its narrowest level, a debate over
the ordination of married men to the priesthood, and the marriage of men
once they have received higher orders. It is an issue, however, which is
rarely seen or understood in this narrow definition; the history of clerical
celibacy is more than a narrative of the evolution of a discipline. The
capacity for the debate to spill out into areas of sacraments and sexuality,
priesthood and politics, history and hermeneutics, has imbued the issue
with a life which is still vigorous and active. Each generation has brought
its own context to the controversy, even where the basic principles and
preoccupations have remained remarkably consistent. Questions of
scriptural interpretation, apostolic precedent, the nature and order of the
priesthood, the value of celibacy to the faithful in practical and symbolic
terms, and the desirability and attainability of a celibate priesthood feature
as prominently in modern writing on the topic as they did in the literature

10
 See chapter 5 below.
11
  M.J. Scheeben, Die Mysterien des Christentums (Mainz, 1931), pp. 543–6; Code of
Canon Law (1983), c.1008; see also John Paul II, Da Vobis, 25 March 1992 c.29; Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Zur Gemeinschaft Gerufen, die Kirche heute
verstehen (Freiburg, 1991), pp. 98ff.
 introduction 

of the medieval and early modern periods. The contributions of each era
to the debate rapidly became part of the corpus of material available to
successive generations, as the history of clerical celibacy was remodelled
and reworked in light of contemporary pressures and emergent concerns.
Critics of obligatory clerical celibacy in the eleventh century, for example,
provided evangelical polemicists in the sixteenth century with a vocabulary
and framework for an assault upon the papal church and its laws, and
the lexicon of Reformation debate was to shape the content and approach
of nineteenth century controversy. But more immediate, personal, or local
concerns could also intrude into the debate. The radical rhetoric of Peter
Damian in defence of a specific image and form of church and clergy, the
proclivities and preoccupations of princes and popes, the turmoil that faced
the clerical estate in post-revolutionary France, and the personal concerns of
individual authors have all done much to shape the historical controversy.
English-language writing on the history of clerical celibacy continues to
be dominated by the work of the nineteenth century American author, Henry
Charles Lea. Despite the opening assertion that ‘it has been my intention
to avoid polemics’, Lea’s work remained determinedly critical of the law of
celibacy in particular, and indeed of the Catholic church more generally. It
remains, however, the starting point for many modern investigations of the
subject. His History of Sacerdotal Celibacy was, perhaps, the product of
Lea’s outlook and environment. Philadelphia in the civil war era was a city
with a large Catholic immigrant population, and one in which the position
of the church was already hotly disputed. The priest William Hogan had
been excommunicated after falling foul of the bishop, Henry Conwell, in
the 1820s, but resurfaced after two marriages and a stint on the public
lecture tour, putting his criticisms of the church into print in the middle
decades of the century in strident criticisms of the history of ‘popery’, and
its pillars, auricular confession and monasticism.12 Perhaps encouraged by
the atmosphere in the city, Lea the publisher became Lea the historian,
and turned his energies to the history of the Christian church and canon
law.13 It was, he believed, in the history of its laws that the nature of an
institution was best understood, and this principle guided the composition
of Lea’s massive History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, and the
later History of the Inquisition in Spain. The first edition of the History

12
  W. Hogan, A Synopsis of Popery as It was and Is (Hartford 1847) and Auricular
Confession and Popish Nunneries (2 vols, Hartford 1847).
13
 E. Sculley Bradley, Henry Charles Lea. A Biography (Philadelphia, 1931); E. Peters,
‘Henry Charles Lea 1825–1909’, in H. Damico and J. Zavadil (eds), Medieval Scholarship:
Biographical Studies in the Formation of a Discipline. Volume One: History (New York,
1995), pp. 89–100; J.M. O’Brien, ‘Henry Charles Lea: The Historian as Reformer’, American
Quarterly, 19 (1967): 104–113; see also W. Ullmann’s historical introduction to the Harper
Torchbook edition of The Inquisition of the Middle Ages (1969).
 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

of Sacerdotal Celibacy was printed in 1867, and, for all its flaws, was
based upon extensive research in the primary sources, including the newly
available volumes of Migne’s Patrologia Latina. Indeed Lea, responding
to his critics, asserted the primacy of such materials over the subjective
interpretations that were presented in recent writing, and defended his
decision to present the facts as he found them, rather than engaging in the
polemic that had characterised the mid-century debates.14 The History of
Sacerdotal Celibacy was an account of the theory and practice of clerical
celibacy across a broad chronological sweep from the primitive church to
the Christianity of Lea’s own day, drawing upon the laws of the church, the
criticisms of its opponents, and a range of authoritative and more minor
sources that lent substance to the narrative and colour to his criticisms. The
history of clerical celibacy, through Lea’s pen, was presented as a history
of the expansion of an institution, a history of decay and decline, and a
history of ecclesiastical immovability in the face of clerical immorality. The
Catholic church, he concluded, had long been in error in its insistence that
a priest must live in celibacy, and although radical change was necessary,
it was not, in any likelihood, imminent.
Lea’s sense that the sources should be allowed to speak for themselves has
parallels in the work of the Hungarian theologian Augustin de Roskovány,
although it is immediately apparent that the sources in question spoke with
little unanimity on the subject of clerical celibacy. Roskovány, bishop of
Neutra, had compiled a massive collection of ‘monumenta’ and literature
devoted to the history of clerical celibacy, from which he adduced that the
law of the church had its origins in the age of the apostles. For each era in
the history of the church, a list was provided of works and commentaries
written in favour of, or against, the law of celibacy, in a summary of
scholarly and popular literature that ran into the thousands. Roskovány’s
compilation amounts to an extensive if not exhaustive bibliography for the
history of clerical celibacy until the late nineteenth century, and despite its
flaws and shortcomings, the weight of the volumes alone is testimony to
the capacity of the subject to inspire debate and controversy. It is possible
to chart through its pages, for example, the rising tide of criticism and
complaint in the sixteenth century as the evangelical assault upon the
laws and traditions of the medieval church sought to erode the edifice
of half a millennium of clerical celibacy, while Catholic churchmen and
propagandists mounted a spirited defence of the necessity and narrative of
the discipline. In Roskovány’s eyes, the sources that he presented exposed
the roots of the law of celibacy in the precedent of the primitive church;
for Lea those same sources provided evidence of disunity, innovation, and
infidelity in Catholic history.

14
  O’Brien, ‘Henry Charles Lea’, 108–10.
 introduction 

These themes of tradition and innovation have continued to guide

modern scholarship on the history of clerical celibacy. The battleground,
and indeed the armoury, was still remarkably similar nearly a century
after the publication of Lea’s work. Georg Denzler, in his Das Papsttum
und der Amstzolibat (1973) promised an annotated bibliography of papal
laws and literature that would correct some of the misconceptions and
misrepresentations that had marred the works of Lea and Roskovány.
Again, it was argued, the intention was to allow the sources to speak for
themself. But Denzler clearly regarded clerical celibacy as a post-apostolic
innovation, and one that had done untold damage to the morality and
reputation of the Catholic church. There was no biblical warrant, he
suggested, for the assumption that celibacy was necessary to the fulfilment
of the obligations of Christian ministry, even if such a ministry were
taken to require some form of ritual purity. The law of celibacy, as the
second part of the work was clearly intended to prove, was imposed at
the instigation of the papal, not the primitive church, and the repeated
efforts that were necessary to enforce the discipline were testimony to the
dangers inherent in such innovation.15 Jean Paul Audet, in his study of
the Structures of Christian Priesthood, argued that a married priesthood
was an accepted aspect of the life of the church well beyond the apostolic
era, undermined only by the false equation of holiness with chastity that
characterised the thought of the early Christian centuries. Clerical celibacy
was the natural consequence of the assumption that abstinence presented
a path to purity, but this was not, he argued, a natural assumption. To
permit clerical marriage would be to restore the discipline and tradition
of the church of the apostles. Roger Gryson, similarly, took issue with the
‘apostolic origins’ thesis, arguing that it was in a negative, and flawed, view
of sexuality in which the origins of the law of celibacy were to be found.
Such attitudes, he suggested, came from outside Christianity, setting the
discipline of the church on a collision course with the views on marriage
contained in scripture and apostolic tradition.16
The evolution of the law of celibacy in the primitive church and
beyond has continued to command substantial attention. By far the most
comprehensive contribution to the modern analysis of the legislation is
Martin Boelens’ Die Klerikerehe in der Gesetzebung der Kirche unter
besonder Berucksichtilgung der Strafe, from which obligatory celibacy

15
  G. Denzler, Das Papsttum und der Amstzolibat. Erster Teil: Die Zeit bis zue
Reformation; Zweiter Teil: Von der Reformation bis in die Gegenwart (Papste und Papsttum,
Band 5 I, II: Stuttgart, 1973, 1976).
16
 Audet, Mariage et celibat; Gryson, Les Origines; for an assertion of the ‘apostolic
origins’ thesis, heavily informed by Bickell’s nineteenth-century work, see H. Deen, Le Celibat
des pretres dans les premiers siecles de l’Eglise (Paris, 1969).
10 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

emerges as a harsh discipline, subject to vigorous enforcement, but based

upon erroneous assumptions about the relationship between celibacy,
purity, and sacramental function.17 Samuel Laeuchli’s study of the Council
of Elvira did much to re-establish the place of the fourth century synod
in the history of clerical celibacy, but also argued that the imposition of
sexual discipline upon the clergy was not simply a reflection of ascetic
trends in Christian and non-Christian thought, but a manifestation of the
determination of the church in Spain to exercise and extend its authority.18
A rather longer chronological sweep is taken in Charles Frazee’s account
of the ‘Origins of Clerical Celibacy in the Western Church’, which
encompassed not only the legislation of the fourth century, but also the
vigorous attempts to impose clerical celibacy in the eleventh and early
twelfth centuries.19 The importance of this latter period, long recognised in
the more polemical histories of clerical celibacy, has received rather more
even-handed analysis and interpretation in recent studies of the medieval
reforming popes, and the church as a whole. Vacandard’s study of the
early history of clerical celibacy encouraged a reappraisal of the discipline
of the medieval church, and exerted a profound influence over Augustin
Fliche’s investigation of the so-called Reforme Gregorienne.20 The most
lucid study of the literature on marriage and celibacy in the ‘Gregorian’
era remains Anne Llewellyn Barstow’s Married Priests and the Reforming
Papacy, but understanding of the priorities and scope of the reforms has
been further enhanced by more recent contributions, particularly the series
of essays contained in Michael Frassetto’s Medieval Purity and Piety:
Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform.21 The breadth
and depth of debate over the issue is here immediately apparent, ranging
from questions of cultic purity and monastic spirituality, to the history of

17
  M. Boelens, Die Klerikerehe in der Gesetzebung der Kirche unter besonder
Berucksichtilgung der Strafe: Eine rechtsgeschichtliche bis zum Jahre 1139 (Paderborn,
1968); see also Boelens, ‘Die Klerikereche in der kirchlichen Gesetzgebung zwischen den
Konzilien von Basel und Trent, Archiv fur katholisches Kirchenrecht 138 (1969): 62–81;
M. Dortel-Claudot, ‘Le Pretre et le Mariage: Evolution de la legislation canonique des
Origines au XIIe Siecle’, L’Année Canonique, 17 (1973): 319–44.
18
 S. Laeuchli, Power and Sexuality: the Emergence of canon law at the synod of Elvira
(Philadelphia, 1972).
19
  C.A. Frazee, ‘The Origins of Clerical Celibacy in the Western Church’, CH 41 (1972).
20
 A. Fliche, La reforme gregorienne (Paris and Louvain, 1924–37).
21
 A.L. Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy, The Eleventh Century
Debates (Lewiston, NY, 1982); M. Frassetto, Medieval Purity and Piety: Essays on Medieval
Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform (New York and London, 1998). See also, J. Brundage,
‘Sexuality, Marriage and the reform of Christian Society in the thought of Gregory VII’, Studia
Gregoriani, 14 (1991): 69–73; F. Liotta, La Continenza dei chierici nel penserio canonistico
classico da Graziano a Gregorio IX (Milan, 1971).
 introduction 11

doctrine, canon law, and the understanding of both marriage and clerical
status in medieval society. The assertion that the origins of the law of
celibacy lie outside the first Christian centuries has certainly sharpened
appreciation of the Gregorian reforms, and positioned the debates over
clerical celibacy in this period more firmly within their wider context.
Images of clerical celibacy as ideal, clerical celibacy as tradition, and
clerical celibacy as obligation have continued to shape writing on the
subject throughout its history. Attempts to locate the origins of the modern
discipline in the constraints of Levitical law, the model of the Old Testament
priesthood, the life of Christ, or the practice of the apostles have positioned
the consideration of Judaeo-Christian attitudes to sex, marriage, and the
body as the starting point for debate. Speculation over the apostolic origins
of clerical celibacy has secured for the primitive church, patristic writings,
and the councils and synods of the first Christian centuries, a position of
pre-eminent authority in discussions of the relationship between ministry
and marriage in the church. The following chapter presents an overview
of the texts and contexts that were to prove so critical to subsequent
participants in the celibacy debate. The intention is not to attempt to prove
that clerical celibacy is (or is not) ‘apostolic’ in its origins – the abundance
of literature on this topic exposes both the heat of polemical controversy
and the apparently irreconcilable differences in approach and outcome
– but to establish the practices and precedents that were to be so central
to later writers. The seemingly divergent traditions of East and West, on
occasion sharpened and polemicised, shared, in many respects, the same
inheritance. In theory and in practice, the example of the Greek church has
rarely been ignored in the Latin west, and recent scholarship, particularly
that of Roman Cholij, has restored the analysis of clerical celibacy ‘in
east and west’ as a necessary precursor to the understanding of either
tradition. The basic assertion that the married clergy of the Greek church
amount to a conclusive argument against the law of celibacy that obtains
in the west is too simplistic, but still a commonplace in medieval and early
modern debate, and indeed in some later scholarship. A consideration of
the origins of Greek praxis, and perhaps particularly of the representation
of that practice, has the potential to shed light upon the debates within the
Latin church.22
The forceful imposition of celibacy upon the Latin clergy in the eleventh
century provided a more definite assertion of the principles that were
argued to underpin the unmarried priesthood, presented a history of the
early church in which ascetic values were tied to the service of the altar, and
embedded the image of the celibate, rather than simply continent, priest
in the minds of the faithful. The Gregorian era was significant in its own

22
 See chapter 2 below.
12 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

right, but also within the narratives of clerical celibacy constructed in the
early modern period and beyond. Viewed through the mirror of evangelical
history writing, this period in the history of church emerged as a defining
moment in the evolution of sacerdotalism and papal power, but also in
the history of false faith and doctrine, innovation and invention, and the
rise of Antichrist within the medieval Catholic church. The legislation and
debates of the eleventh and twelfth centuries provided evangelical writers
in the sixteenth century with a vocabulary, and a version of events that
fitted their polemical and, at times, political needs.23 Reformation dialectic
on marriage, ministry, and the sacraments imbued the celibacy issue with a
broader, and popular significance, but calls for change in the law had been
articulated a century before the division of Christendom, in the polemical
exchanges of the fifteenth century, particularly in the dialogue between
Saignet and Gerson.24 It was with the advent of Protestantism, however,
that the debate over clerical celibacy was conducted once again in a context
in which a married priesthood was not only argued to be legitimate, but
was rapidly becoming a practical reality in parts of the Latin church.
Clerical marriage was for many a highly visible sign of the rejection
of Catholic discipline and practice, for some a badge of confessional
affiliation, and for evangelical polemicists both a solution to the ills of
the church and a manifestation of the authority of biblical precedent over
medieval practice.25 The Catholic church was strident in its response, but
the simple anathema sit at the Council of Trent did not bring to an end
the debate over clerical marriage and celibacy.26 Criticism and crisis were
not, in themselves, sufficient grounds to change Catholic tradition, and
political and pastoral pressures in the centuries that followed did not force
a universal modification of the law of the church.27
The debate over clerical celibacy and marriage had its origins in the early
Christian centuries, and is still very much alive in the modern church.28
The content and shape of controversy remain remarkably consistent, but

23
 See chapter 3 below.
24
 See chapter 4 below.
25
 See chapter 5 below.
26
 See chapter 6 below.
27
 See Conclusion below.
28
 Recent contributions to the debate have been both academic and more personal in
tone and content. See, for example, C. Fairbank, Hiding Behind the Collar (Frederick, MD,
2002), and P. Jenkins, Paedophiles and Priests (Oxford, 2001), which use personal testimony
in the consideration of what is portrayed as the moral crisis of modern Catholicism. Similarly,
R. Schoenherr, Goodbye Father: The Celibate Male Priesthood and the Future of the Catholic
Church (Oxford, 1997) examines the future of the celibate priesthood in the light of current
challenges, but gives little attention to the historical origins of clerical celibacy. A fuller
discussion of the modern debates may be found in Conclusion.
 introduction 13

each age has selected and shaped the sources that underpin its narrative,
and imbued an ancient issue with an immediacy and relevance. The basic
question of whether, and why, continence is demanded of those who serve
at the altar has been asked, and answered, in much the same terms, but
the implications of that question, and of the answer given, have changed
with each generation. Concluding his study of the history of sacerdotal
celibacy, Henry Charles Lea expressed his hope that the Catholic church
would modify the obligation to celibacy expected of its priests, but also his
belief that in order for this to happen, ‘the traditions of the past must first
be forgotten; the hopes of the future must first be abandoned’. However,
the debate over clerical celibacy and marriage demonstrates the extent to
which the traditions of the past have not and, on this issue, cannot, be
forgotten. Continence and celibacy, tied to the sacramental and pastoral
function of the priest, imposed by the law and authority of the church, has
remained a historical issue. To ground the unmarried Christian ministry in
the priesthood of the Levites was to lay claim to the traditions and history
of the Hebrews. To debate the origins of clerical celibacy in the primitive
church was to revisit the history of the apostles and Fathers. To represent
clerical celibacy as innovation was to turn to the records of the councils
and synods of the church and the pages of papal history. To defend the
marriage of priests as the restoration of the church to its former purity was
to reconstruct and rewrite the narrative of the medieval past. Celibacy and
marriage are intensely personal and private matters, but in the context of
the Christian priesthood, very public, and at times polemical statements.
The commitment to a life of celibacy demanded of the Catholic clergy
reaches to the heart of the individual, but also to the heart of the history of
the church that he serves, and clerical celibacy continues to be defined in
relation to Scripture, apostolic tradition, ecclesiastical history, and papal
authority. ‘The Latin Church has wished, and continues to wish’, Pope
John Paul II reminded the priests of the church, ‘referring to the example
of Christ the Lord himself, to the apostolic teaching and to the whole
Tradition that is proper to her, that all those who receive the sacrament of
Orders should embrace this renunciation “for the sake of the kingdom of
heaven”.’29

29
  Holy Thursday, 1979.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 CHAPTER 1

‘If there is one faith, there must be

one tradition’: Clerical Celibacy and
Marriage in the Early Church
Central to the medieval and early modern debates surrounding the
legitimacy and necessity of a celibate priesthood was the issue of whether
the origins of clerical celibacy were to be found in the church of the
apostles. The significance of biblical and apostolic precedent turned the
example of the first centuries of the Christian era into a hunting ground
for churchmen and protagonists on both sides of the debate. This focus
is equally evident in modern scholarship, with recent studies of clerical
celibacy returning to the theme of the inheritance of the primitive church,
either as a necessary preamble to an understanding of the present and
historical discipline, or as a topic in its own right. As Stefan Heid has
demonstrated, this approach is not without its problems; there are dangers
in any attempt to read backwards from the modern discipline in an attempt
to find an identical praxis in the early history of the church, not least
if the apparent absence of a universal obligation to remain unmarried
is read as an equal absence of any motivation or inclination towards a
celibate clergy. The assertion that there was no coherent and binding
prohibition of marriage to the clergy of the early church becomes, in this
approach, a validation of the assumption that compulsory celibacy in the
modern church is the culmination of the erosion of clerical freedom by an


 See, for example, R. Cholij, Clerical Celibacy in East and West (Leominster, 1988);
C. Cochini, The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (San Francisco, 1990); Stefan Heid,
Celibacy in the Early Church. The Beginnings of a Discipline of Obligatory Continence for
Clerics in East and West (San Francisco, 2001); R. Gryson, ‘Dix ans de recherches sur les
origines du célibat ecclésiastique’, Revue Théologique de Louvain 11 (1980): 164–5; Gryson,
les Origines du Celibat Ecclesiastique du Premier au Septieme Siecle (Gembloux, 1970); L.
Legrand, ‘St Paul and Celibacy’, in J. Coppens (ed.) Priesthood and Celibacy (Milan, Rome,
1972), pp. 427–50; E-F. Vacandard, Celibat Ecclesiastique (DTC 2, 2068–88); Vacandard,
Les Origines du Celibat Ecclesiastique (Paris, 1905); Charles A. Frazee, ‘The origins of
clerical celibacy in the Western Church’, Church History, 41 (1972): 149–67.

  Heid, Celibacy, p. 14.
16 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

increasingly institutional papal church in the centuries that followed. Such

an approach has been substantially undermined by the contributions of
Christian Cochini and Roman Cholij to the debate. Rather than searching
for complete parallels between ancient and modern, Cholij and Cochini
have suggested that the presence of a continent, if not unmarried, higher
clergy in the primitive church requires that we ask a rather different question
of the history of clerical celibacy. The issue, they suggest, is not whether
a married man might be ordained as a priest (as many undoubtedly were)
but whether enduring and exclusive continence was required of all those,
married and unmarried, who entered higher orders. In whatever form the
question is posed, however, it is clear that the precedent provided by the
primitive church remains a critical component of the argument over the
origins and history of clerical celibacy.
The debate over the ‘apostolic origins’ of clerical celibacy does not
limit the chronology and polemical geography of the controversy to the
immediate post-Christian era. It is, for example, evident that continence
and celibacy had been prized among certain pre-Christian groups, and
it was not just the primitive church, but also Jewish tradition that was
used to provide fuel for subsequent debate and legitimation for later
legislation. The Judaic precedent was to become particularly important
as an argument for clerical celibacy developed from the principle that the
Christian priesthood was a continuation of the Aaronic priesthood of the
Old Testament. The requirement that the priests of the Old Law abstain
from their wives during their period of service in the temple (Lev. 8:33)
coupled with, for example, the expectation that the same demand was
made of participants in a holy war, lent weight to the assertion that there
was a link between sacred function, the encounter with the divine, and
moral purity. Thus, for the duration of the revelation of God on Mount
Sinai, Moses instructed that the Israelites refrain from sexual intercourse
(Exodus 19:15). When David led his troops against the Philistines, the
fact that they had abstained from intercourse permitted them to partake
of the consecrated bread (1 Sam. 21:4–6). Yahweh would abide with his
troops, it was promised, if the holiness of the camp was maintained (Deut.
23:10–15). The obligations imposed in the Pentateuch were underpinned


  This is the natural conclusion to be drawn from, for example, J-P Audet, Mariage et
Celibat dans le service pastorale de l’eglise (Paris, 1967); A. Franzen, Zölibat und Priesterehe
in der Auseinandersetzung der Reformationszeit und der katholischen Reform des 16.
Jahrhunderts (Munster, 1969), and Gryson, Les Origines.

  Cochini, Apostolic Origins; Cholij, Clerical Celibacy.

 See, for example, Peter Lombard, Libri Quatuor Sententiarum, IV.d.24, 9 [PL 192].

  The demand for purity extended beyond conjugal activity to include skin disease,
contact with a corpse, and nocturnal emissions (Deut. 23:10, Lev. 15:16–19).
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 17

by the assumption that the priest occupied a sacred sphere, and reinforced
the sense of separation between priest and layman. A priest was set apart
from his people by divine mandate: ‘Thus shalt thou separate the Levites
from among the children of Israel: and the Levites shall be mine’ (Num.
8:14; Deut. 10:8). This separateness extended to laws which constrained
the marriage of priests. It was forbidden for a priest to marry a woman
who had been divorced, or who had been a prostitute, ‘for he is holy unto
his God’ (Lev. 21:7). The sons of Aaron were deemed to be ceremonially
unclean and not permitted to handle the sacred elements at the tabernacle
until they had washed in the evening (Lev. 22:4–6), and it was unlawful
for an individual to approach the sacred in a state of uncleanness. The
demands placed upon the priests, and the constructs of purity upon which
they were based, established the requirements of the state of holiness in
which the priests dwelled, separate from the life of the people. Entry
to that state was made possible by ritual purification, usually through
washing, which has led Gerard Sloyan to suggest that the purity required
of the priestly legislation was not contingent upon ethical virtue; rather,
Sloyan suggests, the ritually fit person is not the one who has abstained
but the one on whose body or clothing there remains no trace of such
engagement.
However, these stringent regulations did not amount to a complete
deprecation of the physical, nor to a total rejection of the value of marriage.
The universal nature of marriage in Jewish custom, the assertion in Genesis
that it was not good for man to be alone, and the command to ‘be fruitful
and multiply’ (Gen. 1:28) suggested that marriage and procreation were
part of the divine plan. Indeed, inherent in the limitations placed upon
the marriage of the Levites, for example in the obligation that a priest
marry a virgin of his own people (Lev. 21:13–14), was the existence of the
married priesthood itself, in which the office of the priest was hereditary.
Sexuality was thus undoubtedly an important element in human life, but
one that was to be controlled in proximity to the holy. Sacred and sexual
activities were regarded as mutually exclusive, but the expectation was
that continence and ritual purity would be practised for a specific time.
The abstinence required of a priest before he served at the Temple was
temporary rather than perpetual; there was, it has been argued, no sense in
which marriage itself was ‘morally contaminating’, and no sense in which
virginity was expected to be a permanent state. The legacy provided to the


  Gerard Sloyan, ‘Biblical and patristic motives for the Celibacy of Church Ministers’,
in W. Bassett and Peter Huizing (eds), Celibacy in the Church (New York, 1972), pp. 13–29,
especially pp. 15–16.

  W. Phipps, Clerical Celibacy. The Heritage (London and New York, 2004), p. 9; there
is, Phipps notes, no Hebrew word for perpetual virginity.
18 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

emergent Christian churches was in this sense ambivalent. The controls

exerted over the conduct of the Levitical priesthood implied a relationship
between sacred function and sexual abstinence, yet it is abundantly clear
that marriage was held in high esteem and was certainly not prohibited
to those who served at the temple. And as Christian Cochini has already
noted, this insistence upon a liturgical ‘purity’ from those who served at
the altar was alone among the Levitical prohibitions in its retention in
the apostolic church; ‘if we go back to the Old Testament’s prescriptions
concerning the sanctity of priests, we cannot help but be struck by the
fact that only sexual interdictions survived the deep mutations that put a
definitive end to the rules of purity and impurity’. The means by which
such purity was to be preserved, for example in the avoidance of contact
with the bodies of the dead, or in the ritual cleanness attained by washing,
were not detailed in the new law, yet the Levitical insistence upon sexual
abstinence was to remain a critical part of the foundations of the obligation
to celibacy placed upon ministers in the Christian church.
One of the more problematic precedents for the association of celibacy
with holiness and access to the sacred lies in the Essene communities in the
centuries immediately prior to the birth of Christ. It has been suggested
that the response of many Jews to the changes in the world around them
in this period encouraged the radicalisation of the sexual codes that were
already apparent in Levitical law.10 The accounts by two Jewish writers,
Josephus and Philo, and by Pliny the Elder, all suggest that the Essenes
led a communal life in which celibacy was both strictly observed, and
indeed demanded of certain members for an indefinite period. Such a life
of purity would reach fulfilment in the inheritance of the promised land.
Yet the evidence is far from conclusive; the most famous documentary
record, the Dead Sea Scrolls, makes no such link between the priestly
sect and an obligation to complete continence, and the presence in the
Qumran cemetery of the bodies of men and women and children suggests
a separation that was less than complete. The validity of the Scrolls
(and indeed the forensic excavations) as a record of Essene life has been
vociferously challenged, particularly given this divergence between the
textual and physical evidence.11 Marriage appears to have been deferred
rather than disavowed in the community, although it is worthy of note


  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 429; see also J. Coppens ‘Le Sacerdoce
Veterotestamentaire’, in Coppens (ed.) Sacerdoce et Celibat (Gembloux/Louvain, 1971),
pp. 3–21.
10
  P. Brown, The Body and Society. Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early
Christian Society (New York, 1988), p. 34.
11
 N. Golb, Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? The Search for the Secret of Qumran
(New York, 1985).
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 19

that even if perpetual celibacy was not required, the postponement of

marriage beyond the age of puberty was unusual.12
There are also dangers in extrapolating from the Essene example to
assume that such practices were common, or served as the building blocks
of later Christian monasticism. The relationship between the Qumran
community, the Scrolls, and the Essenes remains uncertain, and the
account of Essene life provided by Philo may well be less than typical. It is
not clear why the Essenic life of continence was expected of, or attractive
to, specific sections of Jewish society.13 However, some degree of influence
of Persian and neo-Pythagorean thought on Jewish communities would
not be out of place, and would certainly accommodate effectively the
structures described in Philo’s narrative of the Essenes. There were clearly
those who perceived celibacy through the mirror of asceticism, and
articulated the more radical principle that sexual intercourse debased and
constrained the soul, and that its freedom could be won only through
the practice of complete continence. The ascetic imperative of the Stoic
and Epicurean philosophies, and even the celibacy of Indian monasticism,
exerted a profound influence over the Mediterranean world.14 Platonic
assertions of the superiority of the soul over the body, and the moral
peril of sexuality, established a dichotomy between idea and matter that
extended into the thought of the first Christian centuries. The nascent
religion was born into a world already ‘fertilised with sexual asceticism’,15
both in this separation of spiritual and material, and in the separate life
of religious communities.
The association of prophetic authority, continence, and repentance
in the life of, for example, John the Baptist, perhaps exemplified this
trend in the minds of early Christian writers and observers of the new
religion. Certainly, the fact that Christ was unmarried at the start of his
fourth decade occasioned little comment. However, despite the absence
of a clear statement on the subject, both the personal example and the
instruction of Jesus were to prove central to later debates over the merits
and necessity of a celibate priesthood. While the proponents of clerical
marriage posited that the Gospels provided little direct evidence that the
prohibition of marriage was expected by Christ or practised with any
rigour in the first Christian centuries, defenders of clerical celibacy have

12
  G. Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls in English (Harmondsworth, 1968), pp. 103ff.
13
 A. Marx, ‘Les Racines du celibat essenien’, Revue de Qumran, 7 (1970): 323–42;
S.D. Fraade, ‘Ascetical Aspects of Ancient Judaism’, in A. Green (ed.) World Spirituality vol.
13: Jewish Spirituality from the Bible to the Middle Ages (New York, 1986), pp. 253–88.
14
  See W. Phipps, ‘Did Ancient Indian Celibacy Influence Christianity?’, Studies in
Religion, 4 (1974): 49–50.
15
 Elizabeth Abbott, A History of Celibacy (Cambridge Mass: 2001), p. 44.
20 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

argued it to be a necessary feature of a priesthood modelled on Christ.

An unmarried Christ is often assumed in writings on clerical celibacy and
marriage,16 and the Second Vatican Council echoed this long tradition in
its commendation of those priests who ‘have freely undertaken celibacy
in imitation of Christ’.17 There is little agreement, however, as to why (or
if) Christ remained celibate. The commendation of those who remained
unmarried ‘for the sake of the kingdom’ (Matt. 19:12) might point to a
more general preference for virginity or celibacy over marriage, but, as
Gerald Sloyan has indicated, precisely what conduct was expected from
the early followers of Christ is still less than perspicuous from this text.
Jesus’ teaching on the indissoluble nature of marriage (Matt.19:10), for
example, suggests a respect for the merits and bonds of matrimony, but
his praise for those who had ‘made themselves eunuchs’ has continued to
be regarded through the centuries as a biblical and apostolic warrant for
the discipline of clerical celibacy.18
Such claims, however, remain contested, and the apparently
contradictory voice of scripture on the subject has served to enliven the
debate over the biblical foundations of clerical celibacy. The assertion
of a scriptural mandate for either clerical marriage or clerical celibacy
tends to focus around a relatively small selection of key passages from the
Gospels and Epistles. Two texts might be described as eschatological in
their tone: Mark 10:29 and Luke 14:26. A third, taken from Matthew’s
Gospel, is the widely debated reference to those who made themselves
‘eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom’. All three imply some benefit from
the renunciation of marriage or family life, but historically there has been
little agreement as to the precise meaning, and indeed wider implications,
of these texts. The vocabulary is problematic, as is the extent to which
the injunctions or commendations were to be applied to the wider

16
  See, for example, A-M Cardinal Stickler, The Case for Clerical Celibacy. Its Historical
Development & Theological Foundations (trans. Fr Brian Ferme) (San Francisco, 1995); K.
Niederwimmer, Askese und Mysterium. Ubere Ehe, Ehescheidung und Eheverzicht in den
Anfangen des christlichen Glaubens (Gottingen, 1975) p. 40, quoted in Heid, Celibacy, p. 24.
17
  Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, 16; cf John Paul II, letter to Priests, 9
April 1979, c.8. In his study of early asceticism and attitudes to virginity, Peter Brown notes
that it was at least a century before the followers of Christ began to model their own celibacy
upon his example: Brown, Body and Society, p. 41; Ignatius, Letter to Polycarp 5.2 [PG 5].
18
  Mark 10:2–12; Sloyan, ‘Biblical and Patristic’, 17; Pope John Paul II, The Theology
of Marriage and Celibacy, (Boston, 1986) pp. 90, 102; Pope Paul VI, Priestly Celibacy, c.6,
20–1. The debate over the marriage (or celibacy) of Christ has continued in academic and
popular literature. See, for example, Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (New
York, 1914), vol. 2, p. 397 for the argument that the divinity of Christ prevented his marriage;
Charles Davis’ contention that that evidence points to a married Christ (the London Observer,
28 March 1971, p. 25); R.J. Bunnik, ‘The Question of Married Priests’, in Cross Currents
XV.4 (Fall, 1965): 407–14; J. Blenkinsopp, Celibacy, Ministry, Church (New York, 1968).
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 21

community of followers of Christ, or a smaller group within it. The literal

interpretation has some famous devotees, most famously Origen, but a
multiplicity of other meanings are inferred. Thus Edward Schillebeeckx
suggests that the ‘eunuchs’ of Matthew’s Gospel were not the unmarried,
but the unmarriageable, whose inability or failure to procreate was
unacceptable under the Old Law.19 The term ‘eunouchos’ has been taken
to mean not those who, literally or figuratively, castrated themselves for
the sake of the kingdom, but rather those with a military commission,
which need not imply emasculation.20 Such variation in the interpretation
of what was to become a critical verse in the celibacy debate has led
others to argue that the phrase comes not from Jesus at all, but from
local Encratite groups whose rejection of the body was widely known.21
Stefan Heid proposes a solution that occupies the middle ground between
those who reject the authenticity of the record and those who argue for
a strict interpretation, arguing that the strict understanding of the word
‘eunuch’ makes little sense in the context of the first followers of Christ.
Instead, in Heid’s exegetical framework, it is assumed that although some
of the first Christians and indeed immediate circle of Christ’s disciples
were married, they lived in an ‘unmarried’ state, or separate from their
wives. Eunuchs in this context were the unmarried disciples, or even
Jesus himself, those who had abandoned their previous life, and adopted
a form of ‘spiritual castration’, choosing to lead a life of continence.22
Heid goes as far as to suggest that in this analysis it is possible to see the
beginnings of the obligations placed upon the clergy to be celibate, in a
gospel narrative of men, both married and unmarried, who were willing

19
  E. Schillebeeckx, Clerical Celibacy Under Fire. A Critical Appraisal (London and
Sydney, 1968), p. 12; William Phipps suggests that the ‘eunuchs’ were not the unmarriageable,
but those who had become estranged from their spouses but rejected divorce, and therefore
lived in continence: Phipps, Clerical Celibacy, p. 24; Brown, Body and Society, p. 42; Jean-
Paul Audet, Mariage et Celibat dans le service pastoral de l’Eglise (Paris, 1967), pp. 50–51
argues that the passage refers to those who were continent, and continent through their own
volition; for a discussion of several interpretations, see J. Blinzer, ‘“Zur Ehe unfahig ...”
Auslegung von Mt. 19,12’ in Gesammelte Ausfatze 1 (1969): 30–40.
20
  Sloyan, ‘Biblical and Patristic’, 19; for a more detailed discussion of the passage,
see Q. Quesnell, ‘Make themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven (Mt. 19:12)’,
Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 30 (July, 1968): 335–8. The literal understanding was sufficiently
widespread that the church was moved to condemn mutilation in the fourth century. Origen’s
actions were recorded by Eusebius, but the authenticity of the account has been questioned
(see, for example, Daniel F. Caner, ‘The Practice and Prohibition of Self Castration in Early
Christianity’, Vigilae Christiani, 51 (1997): 396–415). Patristic commentators tended to assume
continence rather than castration was implied here. For a further discussion, see D.S. Bailey,
Sexual Relations in Christian Thought (New York, 1959) pp. 72ff, especially note 11.
21
 See Niederwimmer, Askese und Mysterium, pp. 57ff, for further discussion.
22
  Heid, Celibacy, p. 26.
22 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

to forswear physical procreation for the sake of the kingdom. There is

little or no sense of obligation here, but from elsewhere in the Gospels,
including Mark 10:29 (para Matt. 19:29 and Luke 18:29), it is apparent
that leaving home and family in order to lead a life of discipleship was to
be rewarded in the life to come, notwithstanding Christ’s insistence upon
the indissoluble nature of the marriage bond. Luke’s Gospel is cited in, for
example, Pope Paul VI’s commentary on clerical celibacy, to underpin the
assertion that Christ held out such a promise for those who surrendered
everything to follow him.23 The suggestion that it was in a life freed from
the cares of family that devotion to God might best be expressed has
certainly proved persuasive across the centuries. Writing in the early third
century, Tertullian described the conduct of certain clerics for whom the
service of God was made possible by the renunciation of marriage, and
more than a millennium later Francis Bacon commented that ‘a single life
does well with churchmen, for charity will hardly water the ground when
it must first fill a pool’.24 Celibacy appeared to have benefits both for
the priest at his devotions and for the congregation who enjoyed the full
attention of a minister unencumbered by the cares of marriage. However,
this rejection of the demands of spouse and family in order to facilitate a
deeper devotion to God has not always found such favour among scholars
and commentators. John Calvin, for example, wrote that he had married
in order that he might be better able to devote himself to God, freed from
the domestic distractions of daily life.25
The generality of the calling to the renunciation of marriage is less
than apparent in these passages alone, as is any specific association
between chastity and the requirements of Christian priesthood. It is not
immediately evident that sexual abstinence, rather than a more general
rejection of family ties, is required, and the Gospels do not assert that
the exercise of sexuality is unfitting for those who preach the word.
Where detachment from worldly affairs was lauded, it certainly served
to validate the single life, but no obvious connection was made here
between such a life and ministry within the church. These renunciatory
statements of Christ might be seen as a step away from the assumption
that all adult males would marry towards to the assertion that a devotion

23
  Paul VI, Priestly Celibacy, c. 22. For a fuller discussion of this text, see pp. 222–3
below.
24
  Tertullian, De Exhort. Cast. 13 [PL 2.920]; W.P. Le Saint, Tertullian, Treatises on
Marriage and Remarriage (Westminster, Md., 1951), pp. 42–64; C. Tibiletti, ‘Verginità
e matrimonio in antichi scrittori cristiani’, Annali della Facolt� di Lettere e Filosofia
dell’Universita di Macerata 2 (1969): 9–217; Francis Bacon, Of Marriage and Single Life,
J. Pitcher (ed.), The Essays of Francis Bacon (Penguin Classics, 1985) p. 81; see also Pope
Pius XIII, Holy Virginity (1954), c. 20–1.
25
  J. Calvin, Jean Calvin Opera (Brunswick, 1871), vol. 10a:228.
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 23

to the kingdom of God might encourage the avoidance of married life,

but it is less clear that they provides a scriptural mandate for celibacy as
a precondition for entry into the priesthood or the kingdom.26 Indeed,
several commentators have noted the lack of any cogent link between
sexual abstention and priesthood in the Gospels; while these passages
might be marshalled in support of a calling to celibacy, they do not appear
to have been directed towards a specific group in society, and nor do they
impose obligatory continence upon the followers of Christ.27 However, if
the teachings of Christ did not establish a binding link between the service
of the church and celibacy, they still left open the belief that a life of faith
might make marriage impossible or unnecessary. Celibacy was for many
a consequence of a life of total surrender to the divine will, but it was
not (yet) something that was imposed upon those who felt called to the
ministry and preaching of the word.
Debate over the biblical origins of clerical celibacy was not confined
to the words and example of Christ alone. Among the first generation of
followers of Christ, it is St Paul whose attitude to marriage has been the
most closely studied and debated. Paul’s letters predate the composition
of the Gospel narratives, and therefore offer one of the earliest accounts
of the life and faith of the primitive church. However, the experience of
Paul was rather different from that of the early Christians in Palestine,
and his preoccupations were shaped by specific problems and by his own
position. A sense of the imminent return of Christ certainly coloured his
expectations of Christian life, but his epistles are also a response to a very
particular set of concerns to do with human conduct in the period prior
to the parousia.28 Most critical, but also perhaps most ambiguous, among
Paul’s writings on the subject, is the seventh chapter of the first Epistle
to the Corinthians, written in AD54 in response to questions received
from the church in Corinth relating to social order, including marriage
and sexual conduct.29 These themes dominated this epistle to a far greater

26
  Frazee, ‘Origins’, 149; Audet, Mariage, p. 49.
27
  Sloyan for example suggests that both Mark’s and Luke’s Gospels pointed to the
more general surrender of family ties rather than the specific renunciation of marriage (Luke
is alone in including ‘wife’ among the list of family members) and argues that there is no
foundation here for the argument that these sayings of Christ were intended to relate to a
specific class: ‘Biblical and Patristic’, 10. Schillebeeckx offers some clarification here, in the
observation that the vocabulary might be dictated by the audience: for readers of Mark’s
and Matthew’s Gospels, the instruction to leave one’s house would imply also one’s wife; for
Luke’s audience, it would have been necessary to make this clear: Clerical Celibacy, p. 14.
28
  Brown, Body and Society, 44ff; Sloyan, ‘Biblical and Patristic’, 21.
29
 L. Legrand, ‘Saint Paul et le celibat’, in J. Coppens (ed.), Sacerdoce et Celibat
(Gembloux/Louvain, 1971), pp. 315–31; C.B. Cousar, The Letters of Paul. Interpreting
Biblical Texts (Nashville, 1996); J. Murphy-O’Connor, Paul the Letter-Writer: His World,
24 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

extent that any of Paul’s other writings, and indeed most of the epistolary
section of the New Testament, but despite the critical place the letter, and
especially this chapter, assumed in the history and study of clerical celibacy,
it contains no explicit observations on the continence or otherwise of the
apostles, or any leaders of the church. From Paul’s response, it would
seem that some of the community in Corinth had begun to adopt a strict
form of life, abstaining from their spouses, renouncing marriage, and
leading a life of perpetual continence.30 Paul’s Epistle opened with what
has become an infamous statement in defence of chastity: ‘it is not good
for a man to touch a woman’ (I. Cor. 7:1), but what follows does much to
uphold the value of marriage, particularly for those who might not be able
to contain. Both marriage and celibacy were described as holy, and gifts
from God (I. Cor. 7:14, 34) and in the face of the potentially short time
before the second coming, he advised, it would be better for the married
to remain married, and the unmarried to refrain from marriage. In the
absence of any clear directive from Jesus on celibacy (I. Cor. 7:10, 25),
Paul counselled a moderate approach. Stopping short of suggesting that
sexual relations within marriage were in any way defiling, Paul portrayed
marriage, like much human activity, as a distraction from prayer (I. Cor.
7:5, 32, 34). However, it would be ill advised, he warned, for married
men and women to withhold themselves from each other except on a
temporary basis in order to allow time for prayer (I. Cor. 7:5), and only
with the mutual consent of both parties.31 The gift of continence had not
been given to all, and therefore marriage was the appropriate remedy
for those who might otherwise ‘burn with passion’ (I. Cor. 7:9). This
apparently ambivalent attitude to marriage, in which it appeared to serve
as remedy for fornication rather than a positive good, was, as Brown
suggests, ‘a fatal legacy’ for the future, raising the spectre that a married
Christian might be only ‘half’ a Christian.32
The Epistle to the Corinthians contained a series of observations that
did much to fuel the debate over marriage and celibacy in context of
the Christian priesthood, and sexual conduct more generally. Whether

His Options, His Skills (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1995); W. Deming, Paul on Marriage
and Celibacy: The Hellenistic Background of I Corinthians 7 (Cambridge/New York/
Oakleigh, 1995), argues that in fact Paul was writing against extreme views of celibacy. I.
Cor. 7 is the passage cited most frequently in, for example, Pope Pius XII’s encyclical On
Holy Virginity, and featured prominently in patristic writing on celibacy as well as in the
Reformation debates over clerical marriage.
30
 N. Baumert, Ehelosigkeit und Ehe in Herrn: Eine Neuinterpretations von I Kkor 7
(Wurzburg, 1984) pp. 20ff.
31
  Phipps, Clerical Celibacy, p. 61, suggests that Paul made this recommendation not
with any real enthusiasm, but as a concession to the ascetically minded Corinthians.
32
  Brown, Body and Society, p. 55.
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 25

the letter is read as a commendation of sexual asceticism or as evidence

of the Christological foundations of celibacy, it is immediately apparent
why Paul’s correspondence with the church in Corinth should assume
such a prominent place in subsequent debate.33 However, it is in Paul’s
other writings that his views on marriage and the ministry are more
transparent. The letters to Timothy and Titus, for example, are a more
obvious and indeed ‘fundamental and perennial reference point for the
discussion of clerical continence’,34 not least because these letters do relate
rather more explicitly to the character and conduct expected of aspiring
candidates for the ministry. Deacons, elders and bishops, Paul urged, were
to be temperate, hospitable, beyond reproach, and significantly ‘mias
gynaikos aner’ (I. Tim. 3:12; Tit. 1:5–9; 1 Tim. 3:8–12). They were to be
experienced in the running of a household, in order that they might better
understand and fulfil the demands of their congregations. In these words
it might appear that Paul offers the most concrete evidence that marriage
was permitted to, and even encouraged for, those who preached the word.
But even here the phrasing is unclear. Paul’s recommendation might be
interpreted as a demand that the minister be monogamous (rather than
bigamous), that he be married only once (rather than digamous), or, as
some later commentators claimed, that the clergy should be drawn only
from the ranks of the married. Certainly it is possible that there were
perceived advantages in appointing married men as leaders of the early
Christian communities, although with no understanding that marriage
would be essential to ministry. Edward Schillebeeckx proposes that
given the domestic nature of the early church, and the reliance upon the
homes of the faithful as a meeting place for the congregations, it was
natural to expect that the leaders of the church would share the attributes
of the head of a family; a faithful husband who attended to the needs
and the discipline of his children.35 However, it is less clear whether the
characteristics expected of ministers of the church in the Pauline letters
were simply that, expected, or whether they were intended to be rather
more prescriptive. Given that the intended recipients of the letters were

33
  For the suggestions that it was celibacy rather than asceticism that was at stake here,
see Heid, pp. 38–9, in debate with Niederwimmer, Askese und Mysterium, p. 113.
34
  Heid, Celibacy, p. 41; see also his ‘Grundlagen des Zolibats in der fruhen Kirche’, in
K.M. Becker and J. Eberle (eds), Der Zolibat des priesters (St. Ottilien, 1995), pp. 51–68.
35
  Schillebeeckx, Clerical Celibacy, p. 9; H-J. Klauck, Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche
im fruhen Christentum, (Stuttgart, 1981) pp. 66ff; cf. Phipps, Clerical Celibacy, p. 73, who
argues that fidelity in a marriage was more critical than whether it was a second marriage.
A candidate for church offices was required to show that he could exercise leadership in the
household and in the family of the church, hence the terminology of the priest as ‘father’. See
also Sloyan’s interpretation of the phrase as ‘a one-woman man’, implying a reputation for
fidelity: ‘Biblical and Patristic’, 22.
26 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

not ministers in the church but rather the wider congregation involved in
their selection, Heid suggests that Paul’s recommendation concerning the
conduct of church leaders was certainly intended to shape the choice of
candidates after proper examination. The letters to Titus and Timothy set
out impediments to orders, in the hope that those who were appointed
would be ‘above reproach’; candidates did not need to demonstrate that
they were married, but they needed to prove that they had been married
only once.36 The prohibition of orders to digamists was certainly the
practice of the early church, but the more extreme interpretation of the
passage as a suggestion that the clergy might be forced to marry did
become a staple for Catholic writers seeking to discredit the evangelical
legalisation of clerical marriage on the basis of the Pauline epistles.37
Importantly for the defenders of the apostolic origins of clerical celibacy,
this concern that bishops, priests and deacons should be married only
once would imply that the ministry was not the exclusive preserve of
married men in the first decades after Christ, and that the prohibition of
second marriages for the clergy was rather part of a wider discipline of
continence imposed upon the first generation of church leaders.
St Paul died around 60AD, although letters attributed to him
continued to be written after this date.38 But the legacy and reputation
of Paul remained significant, albeit as contested as the interpretation of
his letters. Within the context of the debate over the origins of clerical
celibacy, Paul’s own actions, as well as those of the other early followers
of Christ, were to assume a position of importance. However, despite the
forceful statement that he wished that ‘all men live as I do’, Paul gave
little clue as to his own marital status, and the sources are frustratingly
ambiguous.39 Later commentators, particularly in the polemical vein,
have been rather more definite, although their combined arguments are

36
  Heid, Celibacy, pp. 42–5, and his summary of H. Schlier, ‘Die Ordnung der Kirche
nach den Pastoralbriefen’, in K. Kertelge (ed.), Das Kirchliche Amt in Neuen Testament
(Darmstadt, 1977), and A. Harnack, Enstehung und Entwicklung der Kirchenverfassung und
des Kirchenrechts in den zwei ersten Jahrhunderten (Darmstadt, 1980); see also G. Bickell,
‘Colibat eine apostoliche Anordnung’, Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 2 (1878): 26–64,
especially at 28.
37
 See, for example, Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, pp. 12–13, 75–8, with a focus on the
Council of Trullo; H. Deen, Le Celibat des Pretres dans les premiers siecles de l’eglise (Paris,
1969) pp. 33–4; Stickler, Clerical Celibacy, p. 91; on Catholic suggestions that Protestantism
would usher in compulsory marriage for priests, see H.L. Parish, Clerical Marriage and the
English Reformation (Aldershot, 2000) pp. 60–62.
38
  D. Guthrie, New Testament Introduction (Nottingham, 1990), which defends Pauline
authorship, and Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New Haven,
1997) provide an introduction to ongoing debates over the authorship of the epistles.
39
  For a discussion of the controversial ‘letter of Ignatius to the Phladelphians’, see
Parish, Clerical Marriage, pp. 64–6.
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 27

ultimately no more conclusive. St Jerome, for example, in his Letter to

Eustochium rejected any suggestion that Paul had married ‘because when
he writes about continence and advises perpetual chastity, he argues from
his own case’. In contrast, Ambrose and Clement of Alexandria were both
convinced that Paul had been married, although disagreed over the equally
vexed question of whether his wife had still been alive at the time of his
conversion.40 The debate continued in later periods of controversy over
celibacy and marriage. In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther believed it to
be more likely that Paul had married, given Jewish custom of the time, but
that at the time of writing to the Corinthians, he counted himself among
the unmarried. By contrast, Catholic writers objected to any assertion
that the apostle was the ‘patrone of maried priests’.41 The assumption
that men would marry under Judaic law might well suggest the likelihood
that Paul had been married, but need not lead to the assumption that he
was still married at the time of conversion or at the time of writing to the
Corinthians. Thus, Gerard Sloyan argues that although the law expected
marriage, Paul might well have had a preference for the unmarried life,
albeit not linked explicitly to his apostolic work.42 Both Jean-Paul Audet
and Edward Schillebeeckx conclude that Paul’s celibacy was that of a
man who had either left his wife, or been left by her, by the time of his
conversion or by the time the letter to the Corinthians was composed.43
It was this latter question of the continuation, and particularly the
continued use, of marriage by Paul and the first apostles that was rather
more critical, particularly to later commentators confronted by priests
who wished to marry after ordination. While it was clear that married
men had made up some of the first followers of Christ, and that the
leaders of the early church might well have been drawn from the ranks
of the married, this precedent did not necessarily support a contract of
marriage after ordination, or the continued use of marriage after entry
into higher orders. It was these questions that were to form the basis of
the earliest ecclesiastical legislation on the subject of clerical marriage
in the western church. Again, the ongoing debate over the marriage
of the first followers of Christ, and their relationship with their wives

40
  Ep. 22.20; CSEL 54.170–1; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata III.6 [PG 8], although
Clement suggests that after their calling the apostles treated their wives as sisters; Ambrose,
De Virginitate [PL 16.315a].
41
 Luther, LW 54:353–4; Thomas Martin, A traictise declaryng and plainly prouyng,
that the pretensed marriage of priestes, and professed persones, is no mariage, but altogether
vnlawful (London, 1554), sig.Hh1r.
42
 Sloyan ‘Biblical and Patristic’, 19–20.
43
  Schillebeeckx, Marriage: Human Reality and Saving Mystery (New York, 1965),
p. 128; Audet, Mariage, p. 69.
28 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

after their calling, exposes the biblical evidence as less than conclusive;
it is certainly a controversy that has continued to be invigorated by the
reappearance of clerical celibacy on the polemical agenda in the medieval,
modern and early modern church. There are clear references to women
who accompanied the early apostles on their travels, most evident in
Paul’s assertion ‘do we not have the right to be accompanied by a sister
as wife, as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas’.44
However, the vocabulary used to describe such women (or wives) in the
epistles or the gospels is disputed, and for the defenders of the apostolic
origins of clerical celibacy, not consonant with the claims of, for example,
Peter to have ‘left everything and followed you’.45 The term ‘gune’, while
used to describe a woman, might more commonly be understood as
‘wife’; Luke the evangelist used the word to refer to particular women
who were the spouses of his subject, but also more generally to describe
married and unmarried women.46 In some cases, the evidence is more
explicit. The gospel narrative of the healing of Peter’s mother in law is in
itself testimony to his marriage (Mark 1:29–31), but the role of his wife
in his mission, or indeed the survival of his marriage after his calling,
are less transparent.47 Among later patristic commentators, Clement of
Alexandria suggested that the women who accompanied the apostles
were a vital part of their mission, allowing the gospel to be preached more
effectively to other women. Arguing that all apostles were married men,
Basil upheld their wives as examples of Christian life to those for whom
asceticism has no appeal.48 However, others were less enthusiastic about
the possibility that the wives of the married apostles had any role to play
in the life of the church. Tertullian concluded that the women described
in the Gospels were simply in the service of the apostles, rather than
their wives, and that their role was correspondingly limited. Although he
accepted that Peter had been married, Tertullian argued that all the other

44
 I. Cor. 9:4–5; this text was of course a subject of consideration for the medieval
church in its insistence upon continence for the clergy: see, for example, Gratian, Decretum,
in Corpus iuris canonici in tres partes distinctum, A. Naldi (ed) (3 vols, Lyons, 1671),
P. 1.Dist 31.c.11.
45
  Matt. 19:27; Heid, Celibacy, p. 31.
46
  See, for example, Luke 8:1–3.
47
  For further discussion, see Gryson, Les Origines, pp. 9–10; later apocryphal writings,
including the Acts of Peter, asserted that St Petronilla was Peter’s daughter. Audet argues for
a clear distinction between the ‘genuine’ narratives of the lives and deeds of the apostles that
make no such claims, and the later writing, primarily from the second and third centuries,
in which the continence of the first followers of Christ is more frequently considered: Audet,
Mariage, p. 64.
48
  Basil, De Renuntatione Saeculi 1.
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 29

apostles had practised continence or remained virgins.49 Likewise, Jerome,

writing against Vigilantius and his defence of marriage for the clergy,
conceded that Peter had been married, but denied that this provided any
precedent for the legitimacy of the unions of priests, because either he had
ceased to exercise his marriage after being called to preach, or his wife
had died.50 Jerome also asserted that John, ‘the disciple that Jesus loved’,
was held in such esteem because he had remained a virgin, and made the
argument from silence that where no explicit mention was made of a wife
in scripture, the apostles should be assumed to have been unmarried.51
Such silence was not, however, entirely conclusive. Were it not for the
record of Christ healing Peter’s mother-in-law, there would be no formal
mention of his marriage in Scripture, yet it is clear that he had a wife. Other
patristic commentators present a mixed picture of the marital status of the
apostles. The virginity of John appeared to be assumed through tradition,
while Epiphanius, for example, listed Andrew and James the son of
Alpheus among the married, although the latter with no direct scriptural
support.52 Indeed the Gospels remained tantalisingly silent on the subject
of the marriage of James the brother of John, Andrew, Matthew, Thomas,
Bartholomew, Simon and Jude. Confusion resulting from the potential
conflation of the biographies of Philip in the Gospels (John 1:45) and
Philip the deacon (Acts 6:5) introduces a further complication, although
Cochini concludes that the weight of evidence points to both as married
men.53 In light of such varied interpretations, Jean-Paul Audet is sensibly
cautious about assuming that any of the apostles went further than Christ
had done towards continence in the service of the Gospel.54 Given that
the precise views of Christ on marriage and virginity have been as hotly
disputed as the actions of his followers, it is perhaps no surprise that these
apparent ambiguities have fuelled centuries of polemical controversy.

49
  Miscellanies 3.53; Tertullian, De Monogamia 8; cf. Jerome, Adv. Jov. I.26; for a
more detailed discussion, see Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 80. Audet dismissed Tertullian’s
assumptions as lacking in any evidential basis and the consequence of the fact that Tertullian
‘had montanism on the brain’.
50
  Jerome, Adv. Jov. 1.26 [PL 23.246b] cf Epist. 118.4, where the suggestion is that he
left his wife when called. See Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 66.
51
  Jerome, Adv. Jov. 1.26 (PL 23.246a–c); see also Epiphanius, Adv. Haer. 58 [PG
41.1061a].
52
  Adv. Haer. 78 [PG 42.720a, 714c]; Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 68–9.
53
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 69.
54
 Audet, pp. 64–5; compare with Vern Bullough’s suggestion that there was no
systematic treatment of sexuality in the Christian scripture: V.L. Bullough, ‘Introduction:
The Christian Inheritance’, in V.L. Bullough and J. Brundage (eds), Sexual Practices and the
Medieval Church (Buffalo: Prometheus, 1982) p. 4.
30 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

Whatever the precedent set by the example of the unmarried and

married apostles, by the second century there was a sense in the works of
Christian and non-Christian writers that at least some of the adherents of
the new religion practised a form of continence. Galen, in the second half
of the century described a ‘restraint from intercourse’ as a characteristic of
Christian believers, while Justin Martyr in his Apology identified the strict
sexual code of its members as a defining feature of the faith.55 Peter Brown
writes of a parting of the ways between Jewish and Christian leaders on
the subject of marriage and continence in the mid-second century; the
martyrdom of Peter and Paul marked the shift from a Jewish to a Gentile
leadership in the church, and a pagan ‘ascetic syncretism’ gradually exerted
a more powerful influence over the growing church.56 Despite the paucity
of evidence for the nature of religious life in the second century after
Christ, it is possible to glean some insight into attitudes to marriage and
continence, and the discipline of the clergy, from the pastoral letters and
apologetic writings of the time. Christian ministry and belief may have
lacked a rigid institutional structure and organisation, but it is in this period
that it is possible to see a greater unification of religious life, and a gradual
shift towards uniformity in faith and discipline.57 Such developments
within the church were accompanied by challenges and influences outwith
its embryonic structures, which were, in relation to clerical discipline,
most evident in ascetic movements, including Encratism.58 The hostility
to marriage that characterised such groups was roundly condemned by
orthodox authorities, but views of sexuality, continence and ministry
in the second century and beyond continued to be shaped by a mix of
biblical, orthodox and more controversial views of humanity, the body,
and the service of the word. Clerical discipline in the west, including
its ascetic constructs, was defined not only in relation to the needs and
priorities of the church, but also as a result of the imperative to reclaim
certain practices from the more radical groups whose particular form of
asceticism was rejected as erroneous. Although central to the history of
the church in its own right, this period was also critical to the evolution
of later debates over clerical celibacy and continence; controversialists in

55
  Quoted in Brown, Body and Society. Brown contrasts such statements with the
attitude of first-century writers such as Ignatius of Antioch who were unwilling to allow
celibacy and continence to become a divisive issue in the church (Letter to Polycarp 1.2).
56
  Brown, Body and Society, p. 61; Phipps, Clerical Celibacy, chapter 5.
57
  For further discussion of these themes, see H. Chadwick, The Early Church (Penguin
1968), chs 3 and 4; Heid, Celibacy, pp. 58ff.
58
  The link between clerical continence and the views of Encratite groups hostile to
marriage has been made by, for example, K. Muller, Aus der Akademischen Arbeit: Vortage
und Aufsatze (Tubingen, 1930) p. 79; Abbott, History of Celibacy, pp. 49–54, suggests that
Christianity was born into a world in which there was already a strong ascetic current.
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 31

subsequent centuries continued to regard the testimony of the Fathers as

authoritative, even if not normative, in the dispute over the origins and
necessity of the continence discipline.
Among the epistolary evidence of the second and third centuries in
the west, the name of Tertullian looms large. It is with his writings, it
has been suggested, that we see the ‘first consequential statement ... of
the belief that abstinence from sex was the most effective technique with
which to achieve clarity of the soul’.59 An orator in the North African
city of Carthage, Tertullian converted to Christianity around 195, and
(in Jerome’s account at least) was ordained a priest prior to his drift
into heresy. If he remained a layman, he was a layman with strong
theological interests. The interpretation of his writings is coloured by two
difficulties; a master rhetorician, Tertullian displayed a marked tendency
towards exaggeration in form and content, and as an enthusiast for the
Montanism in the early third century, his writings cannot always be taken
as an accurate record of the prevailing Christian orthodoxy of the time.
His counsels on continence and celibacy come from this later period, but
can still shed a useful light upon the general mores of the age.60 From his
De Exhortatione Castitatis, written to dissuade a widow from a second
marriage, it would seem that continence had already become, in the eyes
of some, a key part of ministry: ‘Quanti igitus et quanta in ecclesiasticis
ordibinus de continentia censentur, qui deo nubere maluerunt, qui carnis
suae honorem restituerunt’.61 His formulation that there are those among
this group who ‘prefer to marry God’ has been argued by Bickell, and more
recently Heid, to be indicative of the self-nature of clerical continence,
for both married and celibate clergy, in the second century; the bishops
of the church were chosen from those men who had been married only
once, or those who were virgins.62 For Tertullian, the argument in favour
of a continent clergy was both practical and moral, and tied in with
the purity expected of those who served at the altar of God. Tertullian
suggested that the apostles had been sent to preach the ‘sanctity of the

59
  The writers of the East are considered in more detail in chapter 2; see also Brown,
Body and Society, p. 78, quoting De Ieiunio 5.1.
60
  For a fuller discussion of the ‘orthodoxy’ of Tertullian, see Douglas Powell, ‘Tertullianists
and Cataphrygians’, Vigiliae Christianae, 29 (1975): 33–54 and David Rankin, Tertullian and
the Church (Cambridge, 1995), p. 27. After his conversion to Montanism, Tertullian wrote to
his wife of the high value of celibacy over marriage: Tertullian, To His Wife 1.2–3.
61
  13.4 (CCL 2.1035); see also Gryson, Origines, p. 30; for the opposing view, see
Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 143–6.
62
  De Exhortatione Cast. 11.12, but with the qualifier ‘aut etiam’ which implied that
the latter was more unusual. Bickell, ‘Der Colibat’, 38–9; Heid, Celibacy, p. 74; see also
L. Crouzet, ‘Le celibat et la continence dans l’Eglise primitive: leurs motivations’, in Coppens,
Sacerdoce et Celibat, pp. 333–71.
32 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

flesh’ and therefore abided in a manner (i.e. without their wives) that was
a living example of this model. Re-married men were not to be admitted
to the priesthood (or re-married women to widowhood) in order that the
altar might remain pure.63 The extrapolation of clerical continence from
these phrases has certainly been questioned by those who argue against
the early origins of the discipline. Cochini advocates a more moderate
interpretation, suggesting that Tertullian instructed his friend that by
refusing a second marriage he could be ordained; some men were deemed
appropriate candidates for holy orders because they were continent,
although not lifetime celibates.64 There were evidently married bishops in
the second century, openly referred to by Polycarp and Irenaeus, but also
those for whom celibacy was clearly a badge of honour, or an epithet to
be acquired.65 Contemporaries of Tertullian certainly voiced objections to
the esteem in which celibacy was held in the first and second centuries.
Perhaps the most famous is the letter of Ignatius, cited above, in which
he condemned the boasting of a man who lived in continence. There
is, however, little to suggest here that Ignatius’ criticism was levelled
against the continent; more likely it was any hint of boastfulness that
was unwelcome.66 In a more detailed analysis of the Greek text, Cochini
identified two possible interpretations, the first implying that it would be
detrimental to the individual if the news of his conduct were to go any
further than the bishop’s ears, the second warning of the consequences if
an individual believed himself to be superior to the bishop. Since there
was nothing to suggest that the church was unsupportive of the virginal
state, there seems no reason why a celibate priest should have to keep his
life-style a secret. The more plausible interpretation, and that advanced
by Cochini, is that Ignatius was critical of those who regarded themselves
as superior on account of their virginity, a view that came to be associated

63
  De Monogamia 8.4–7; De Exhort. Cast. 7.1; Sloyan warns that this final assertion
is based upon a biblical citation that Tertullian appears to have invented (sacerdotes mei non
plus ubent) which does not feature in Leviticus.
64
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 145.
65
  Polycarp, Letter to the Philippians 11.4 [printed in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol.
1, A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (eds) (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature
Publishing Co., 1885)]; Irenaeus, Against Heresies I.13.5 [PG7]; See also Sloyan, ‘Biblical
and Patristic’, 23; H. Leclerq, ‘Celibat’ in Dictionnaire d’Archeologie Chretienne et Liturgie
(Paris, 1896), 2.2808.
66
  For various interpretations of this passage, and a modern commentary on the text,
see St Irenaeus of Lyons against the heresies, D.J. Unger and J.J. Dillon (eds) (Newman Press,
1992), and Gryson, Les Origines, p. 22. Ignatius instructed Polycarp to advise the Christian
community that ‘if somebody is capable of passing all his days in chastity, in honour of
the Lord’s body, let him do so without boasting; for if he boasts of it he is lost, and if the
news gets beyond the bishop’s ears it is all over with his chastity’ (M. Staniforth (ed.), Early
Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers (Middlesex, 1968), p. 129).
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 33

with heresy in later centuries.67 The key issue, at least insofar as later
arguments over the apostolic origins of clerical celibacy are concerned, was
less whether the clergy were married or not, but whether they continued
to use their conjugal rights, but it is less than obvious whether this was a
distinction that was in practical force as early as the second century.68
By the fourth century, the debate over the use of marriage by ordained
priests was becoming rather more nuanced. The notion of conjugal chastity
was to feature in the writings of Ambrose, bishop of Milan (c.333–397), in
a context that suggests that it was an issue over which there was a diversity
of opinion. In his Letter to the church of Vercelli, Ambrose returned to the
contested passages in the Pauline epistles in order to address the intention
behind the suggestion that the bishop should be the husband of one wife. He
debated the necessary qualities of those called to high office in the church,
and argued that Paul’s recommendation had in no way been intended
to exclude unmarried men from ordination, but rather to encourage the
appointment of those who, through ‘conjugal chastity’, remained in grace
of their baptism. Thus, although it was perfectly acceptable to ordain
married men, and even married men who had fathered children, Ambrose
did not countenance marriage after an individual had been elevated
to a bishopric, and assumed that those appointed would refrain from
intercourse even within marriage. This requirement was spelled out more
clearly in the De Officiis Ministrorum, in which Ambrose advised that
those who were called to the priesthood must know that ‘the ministry
must be immune from possible conjugal relations’, on the basis that this
purity that was required of the clergy was necessary to the exercise of this
sacred function. The law of the New Testament, he argued, demanded
perpetual service of the priest, and therefore perpetual chastity. Peter
Brown suggests a divergence between ideal and reality here; although
there was clearly a current of thought that favoured a celibate clergy,
Ambrose was well aware that the best that he could hope for at a local
level was that the clergy might have ‘had sons, and not continue to have
sons’. The ministry of married priests was a necessity outside the large
diocesan centres if local churches were to be served, although the ideal
of a celibate priesthood appeared to be gathering some momentum. The
suggestion that it was the perpetual character of priestly function that
required celibacy was echoed in the works attributed to Ambrosiaster,
and often published with those of Ambrose; as the ‘representatives of

67
  Cochini cites the condemnation at the council of Gangres (340) of those who refused
to accept the sacrament from married clergy: Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 140–41.
68
  J. Colson, Les Fonctions ecclesiales aux deux premiers siecles (Paris, Desclee de
Brouwer, 1954), p. 228 n.2; cited in Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 141.
34 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

God’ the priest was obliged to lead a life of purity that was not demanded
of the laity, and to do so in perpetuity.69
The full implications of this intellectual current were to become
apparent in the next two generations of Christian thought and apologetic.
Ambrose’s understanding of the relationship between church and society
was to resonate in the thought of Augustine, and his interpretation of
the Pauline epistle was to be echoed in the writings of Jerome, and in
the eventual papal intervention in the debate by Siricius. Evidence of a
more negative general attitude to sexuality and marriage is identifiable in
the records of the early church and in patristic writing, but also in the
doctrine and practice of emergent ascetic groups including the Encratites,
and followers of Marcion and Tatian. The more extreme amongst them
were ultimately condemned by the church, but their influence in practical
and polemical terms was still potent. To many in such groups, contact with
women was defiling, sex the invention of the devil, and the sacraments
reserved for those who renounced both marriage and the use of marriage.
To undermine what Peter Brown refers to as the ‘unidirectional’ process
of procreation to which humans contributed was to bring to an end
human society in anticipation of the return of Christ, and to make a
powerful symbolic gesture via an ‘attitude of noncollaboration with all
the Creator’s purposes’. Human sexuality was not a remedy for death
in the propagation of the species, but a cause of death as the means by
which mankind first lost its freedom.70 The full potential of this theology
was most obviously realised in the Manichaean dualism, but the dividing
line between orthodoxy and heterodoxy was less than clear, and the
influence of Manichaean thought on the developing church is apparent
both in the condemnation of dualist heresies, and in the thought of

69
  Ep. 63.62–3 [PL 16.1257]; De Officiis Ministrorum, 1.50 [PL 16:104a–5b]. In
his condemnation of the heresies of Jovinian, Ambrose argued that Christ had honoured
virginity by choosing a virgin as his mother [PL16:1124], and in his treatise On Educating
Virgins argues that Mary called all to virginity [5.36]. Marriage itself was a ‘galling burden’
and those who entered into it entered into a form of bondage: De Vidius XIIII.31; XV.88;
XI.69; De Virginitate I.6; Brown, Body and Society, p. 357–8; on Ambrosiaster, see Cochini,
Apostolic Origins, pp. 222–4 ; PL 17.497a–d; CSEL 50.414–5.
70
 A. Voobus, Celibacy. A Requirement for Admission to Baptism in the Early Syriac
Church (Stockholm, 1951), pp. 19ff; L.W. Barnard ‘The Origins and Emergence of the
Church in Edessa during the First Two Centuries AD’, Vigiliae Christianae, 22. 3 (Sept.
1968): 161–75; Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, (E. Evans trans and ed.) (Oxford, 1972),
4:24–34; Clement, Stromata III.c.12, c.17, in Ante-Nicene Fathers. Vol. 2: The Fathers of
the Second Century, A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (eds) (Edinburgh, 1865); Justin Martyr,
Apology 1 c.29 [PG.6]; Tatian, On Perfection According to the Saviour, in Ante-Nicene
Fathers, vol. 2, p. 84; Brown, Body and Society, pp. 83–7.
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 35

authoritative figures within the orthodox church.71 Marriage and sex

were spoken of with disdain by both orthodox and heterodox. Arnobius
the Elder denounced ‘obscenitas coeundi’, an Egyptian monk suggested
that a priest lost his dignity if he was unchaste, and Augustine presented
sexual desire as a permanent reminder of the sin and shame of mankind
descended from Adam.72 This sense that sex was inherently sinful, and
more particularly that intercourse might render an individual impure,
was to underpin some of the most determined demands for a celibate
priesthood.73 With the disparagement of marriage, virginity was to
become the ‘pinnacle of Christian achievement’, although not necessarily
one that was accessible to all. The ascetic heights climbed by a minority
were a symbol of perfection, rather than a practical possibility for the
majority, and attempts to enforce celibacy on the priesthood became a
‘manifestation of prestigious separation from other Christians’.74 Such
separation could be that of distance between a priestly caste and Christian
laymen, or the physical separation from the world that characterised the
life of renunciation and poverty adopted by the desert fathers. But one of
the most visible signs of withdrawal from the temptations and distractions
of the world was the rejection of marriage, and the adoption of a strict
sexual abstinence, whether in the practice of primitive monasticism, the
cultivation of the ascetic impulse within the church, or the rejection of the
prevailing orthodoxy in a search for a deeper spiritual experience.
Interaction between orthodox and heterodox ideas concerning marriage
and sexuality are equally apparent in the fourth century in the writings of
St Jerome. His works dominate many modern studies of celibacy in the
patristic period, not least that of H.C. Lea, who suggested that Jerome did
more than anyone to establish celibacy as the only acceptable form of life

71
  The most obvious example of this intellectual cross-current is Augustine, who
converted from Manichaeism in 387. Despite his subsequent denunciations of the heresy, some
scholars still argue that his earlier experience continued to exert a profound influence over
his later work. See, for example, A. Adam, ‘Das Fortwirken des Manichäismus bei Augustin’,
Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte, 69 (1958): 1–25; F. Beatrice, ‘Continenza e matrimonio
nel Christianesimo primitivo’, in R. Cantalamassa (ed.), Etica sessuale e Matrimonio nel
Cristainesimo delle Origimi (Milan, 1976), pp. 43–7.
72
 Arnobius, Contra Nationes 3.9; Gryson, Les Origines, p. 51; Augustine, City of God
14:17–18. Modern writers have emphasised this negative view of marriage that was common
in this period: Muriel Porter, Sex, Marriage and the Church. Patterns of Change (Victoria,
Aus., 1996), pp. 17–22; Brown, Body and Society, pp. 242–54.
73
  B. Lohkamp, ‘Cultic Purity and the Law of Celibacy’, Review for Religious, 30
(1971): 119–217; J.E. Lynch, ‘Marriage and Celibacy of the Clergy: The Discipline of the
Western Church: An Historico-Canonical Synopsis’, The Jurist, 32.1 and 2 (1972): 14–38
and 189–212; Frazee, ‘Origins’, 149–67; M. Douglas, Purity and Danger. An Analysis of
Concept of Pollution and Taboo (Routledge, 2002).
74
  Brown, Body and Society, p. 254.
36 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

for those who entered into the ministry.75 Jerome’s polemic against Jovinian,
Vigilantius, and Helvidius on a variety of subjects including marriage and
clerical celibacy rearticulated, albeit in a more vigorous form, his more
pastoral epistolary encouragements to virginity and chastity addressed
to his female correspondents. His views on clerical celibacy were closely
associated with the high esteem in which he held virginity and chastity for
all Christians; those who lived as virgins on earth, he proposed, would
gain the promise of a ‘head start’ in paradise.76 From his work it is possible
to glean not only a picture of Christian asceticism and cult of the virginity
of the age, but also a (rather more fragmentary) picture of the attitudes of
those who sought to establish virginity and marriage on an equal footing.
Insights into the views of those who took up the defence of marriage
in the face of such outpourings come almost entirely from the vigorous
denunciations that Jerome wrote of such views. In 393 he composed a
powerful and vitriolic response to a pamphlet written by a monk, Jovinian,
who had argued for the equality of virginity and marriage as Christian
callings. Jovinian had criticised strongly those clergy who boasted of the
dignity that celibacy gave them, as well as the proponents of celibacy who,
he alleged, had twisted Scripture in order to root their erroneous views
in authoritative text. Married clergy were equally deserving of respect
as their celibate colleagues, he argued, and all who remained faithful to
their baptismal vows would find equal reward in heaven. Scripture was,
after all, replete with examples of holy men and women who had fulfilled
their calling in wedlock, including Abraham, Sarah, and Simeon, several
disciples were married, and Christ had honoured marriage at the feast in
Cana.77 Jerome’s reply has been described as ‘one of the most blistering
denunciations in all of patristic literature’.78 Rebutting Jovinian, Jerome
argued for a scriptural mandate for celibacy, found in the example of Old
Testament figures such as Elijah, and the apostles and disciples of the
New Testament who, he claimed, were themselves celibate. It would be
better for the faithful Christian to refrain from intercourse as an occasion
of sin that threatened salvation, Jerome believed, but for those who were
married, the primary function of their union was the birth of those who

75
  H.C. Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church (third edition, 2
vols, London, 1907), vol. I, p. 13: ‘No Doctor of the Church did more than St Jerome to
impose the rule of celibacy on its members, yet even he admits that at the beginning there was
no absolute injunction to that effect’.
76
  Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum 1.36 in PL 23.
77
  Jerome, Adv. Jov. 1.3.
78
  James A. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago and
London, 1987), p. 85. The pamphlet was not well received; Jerome’s friend Pammachius withdrew
it from circulation. Jerome, Epist. 48 (CSEL 54.347); Brown, Body and Society, p. 377.
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 37

might lead a virginal life. Not even the suffering of martyrdom could
cleanse the soul of a Christian woman from the stain of marriage.79 The
parable of the soil that yielded three different yields, one hundred fold,
sixty fold and thirty fold, was interpreted by Jerome as a figure of the
reward awaiting three groups of Christians, consecrated virgins, chaste
widows, and finally pious spouses.80
This conviction that virginity was a higher way of life was to shape
Jerome’s attitudes to clerical marriage. In his Commentary on the Epistle
to Titus he used the example of the purity that was demanded of the priests
of the Old Law to argue that such obligations were all the more incumbent
upon the priests of the New Law, whose daily intercession bound them
to a life of abstinence. Laymen might benefit from temporary continence,
but those who served at the altar were expected to make a perpetual
commitment, in order that they might be protected from distractions of
the eye and temptations of the mind, and lead the life of purity that was
demanded of those who administered the sacraments.81 Marriage was a
diversion, particularly for a priest who was obliged to lead a life of prayer. A
married man, Jerome suggested, might be ordained a priest if he professed
continence, but any priest who fathered children after ordination was
guilty of adultery. ‘Either’, he challenged Jovinian, ‘you allow priests to
exercise their nuptial activity so that there is no difference between virgins
and married people, or if priests are not allowed to touch their wives,
they are holy precisely because they imitate virginal purity.’ The exalted
position of virginity over marriage was confirmed by, but also required,
married clergy living in continence.82 The fact that there were married men
serving as priests in the church in the first place was not evidence of any
divine mandate, but simply a result of the exigencies of an age in which
there was a shortage of men called to serve; the holiness of the priest was

79
  Despite the weight lent to scriptural precedent, Jerome also made use of idea more
commonly linked with Stoicism. See, for example, Adv. Jov. 1.49; Adv. Jov. 1.3, 1.13,
1.16, 1.26, 1.28 [PL 23.229–30, 246, 247, 249]; Jerome, Epist. 22.19 [PL 22.406]; ‘I praise
marriage and wedlock but I do so because they produce virgins for me, I gather roses from
thorns, gold from earth, and pearl from the shell’: Ep. 22 to Eustochium in St. Jerome: Letters
and Select Works, W.H. Fremantle (trans.), Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers,
ser. 2, vol. VI (Edinburgh, 1892); P. Delehaye, ‘Le Dossier Antimatrimonial de l’Adversus
Jovinianum et son influence sur quelques ecrits latins du XII siecle’, Medieval Studies 13
(1951): 65–86.
80
  Jerome, Ep. 48.2; 123.9.
81
  Jerome, Comm. In Tit. [PL 26:603b–4a]; Adv. Jov. 1.14, perhaps influenced by Pope
Siricius’ exposition of the rationale behind clerical continence. For further discussion, see
D.G. Hunter, ‘Rereading the Jovinianist Controversy: Asceticism and Clerical Authority in
Late Ancient Christianity’, in Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33.3 (2003):
453–70, especially 465.
82
  Jerome, Adv. Jov. 1.34.
38 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

predicated upon his lifelong virginity.83 Jerome was similarly strident in his
denunciation of the views of Vigilantius, and his rejection of Vigilantius’
views on faith and practice in the Gallic church has been likened to an
‘unpleasant fly-sheet’ in its tone and content.84 Jerome mocked Vigilantius
for his apparent assertion that no men should be ordained unless they
were married and had children, derided his refusal to credit clerics with
chastity, and suggested that he revealed the manner of his own living ‘by
engaging in wicked speculation about others’. Vigilantius, he claimed, and
those bishops who supported him, would refuse to ordain a man unless
he brought with him a pregnant wife or wailing infants.85 The apparent
enthusiasm of Vigilantius for clerical marriage no doubt contributed to his
acquisition of the dubious epithet ‘Protestant of his age’, and Jerome and
Vigilantius both certainly had a presence in the early modern debate over
clerical celibacy.86 But the polemical controversy between the two was very
much rooted in the ideas and tensions of their age; the evident presence
of married clergy (and indeed married clergy who did not abstain from
conjugal relations) in the fourth century church, and the growing tensions
in the Gallic church between the critics and proponents of asceticism which
were increasingly difficult to resolve.87
One of the most striking attempts to reconcile the lofty demands of
Christian asceticism, religious calling, and human experience, is apparent
in the personal struggle of Augustine of Hippo and his writings on human
sexuality, marriage, and religious faith. Of all the writers of the age
who tackled the issue of continence, Augustine provided his reader with
perhaps the most detailed insight into his own life. As bishop of Hippo, he
participated in the Council of Carthage at which the discipline of celibacy
was imposed upon the clergy, on the basis of apostolic precedent, but
Augustine was a man who had been promised in marriage himself, who
had maintained a concubine, and fathered a son, in a series of relationships
which underlay his famous plea ‘da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed
noli modo’.88 An adherent of Manichaeism in his youth, Augustine was

83
  Jerome, Adv. Jov. 1.34.
84
  J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome, His Life, Writings and Controversies (New York: Harper and
Row, 1975), p. 289; the full text of the Contra Vigilantium is in PL 23:353–68.
85
  Contra Vig. 2 [PL 23:355, 356, 368].
86
 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, J.B. Bury (ed.)
(8 vols, London, Methuen 1909), vol. 3 p. 489. The use of the controversy between Jerome
and Vigilantius during the Reformation is discussion on p. 168 below.
87
  C. Stancliffe, St Martin and his Hagiogapher: History and Miracle in Sulpitius
Severus (Oxford, 1983), chapter 21.
88
 Augustine, Confessions 8.7.17 [Library of Christian Classics volume 7, A.C. Outler
(ed.)]. Modern biographies of Augustine include P. Brown, Augustine of Hippo (Berkeley,
1967); J. O’Donnell, Augustine: A new biography (New York, 2005); G. Matthews, Augustine
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 39

reconciled with orthodoxy while studying in Milan, under the influence of

his mother, Monica, and St Ambrose, and following a damascene moment
in the summer of 386. He committed his life to the church, its service as
a priest, and to a celibate life, and wrote extensively on marriage and
virginity.89 His admiration for both virginity and continence is apparent;
writing on the ‘good’ of marriage against the heretic Jovinian, Augustine
rejected the proposal that marriage and virginity were of equal merit,
arguing for the superiority of the latter. Marriage had admittedly been
ordained by God and its value reinforced by Christ, and the total rejection
of marriage by some heretical groups was to be condemned, but Augustine
argued that even if marriage were indeed ‘good’, virginity was better
still.90 It was in virginity, or in the renunciation of physical passions, that
victory over sin might be attained, although it was nigh impossible to
remove the impulse and therefore the danger or occasion of sin. Sexual
desire, he postulated, was the result of original sin, the consequence of the
expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden which continued to be passed from
generation to generation by the procreative act.91 From this perspective,
Augustine’s advocacy of clerical celibacy or continence appears all the
more considered. The tendency to see all sexual activity as accompanied
by ritual pollution placed a clear obligation upon all Christians, but
particularly the clergy, to avoid such physical causes of contamination.92

(Oxford, 2005); for a modern edition of the Life of St Augustine, see H.T. Weiskotten, The
Life of Saint Augustine: A Translation of the Sancti Augustini Vita by Possidius, Bishop of
Calama (Merchantville, NJ, 2008); D.S. Bailey, Sexual Relations in Christian Thought (New
York, 1959) discusses the impact of Augustine.
89
 See particularly De Continentia, De Bono Coniugali, De Sancta Virginitate, De
Bono Viduitatis, De Coniugiis Adulterinis, De Nuptiis et Concupiscientia.
90
 Since the union of man and woman was the result of lust, it had its origins in sin
even within marriage: Augustine, De Nuptiis at Concupiscientia 1.4. Porter emphasises the
central role of procreation in marriage, which was offered to those who could not contain,
and proposes a clear link between Augustine’s views and those expressed in the modern day
Roman Catholic church, particularly in Humanae Vitae (1968). William Phipps complains
that Augustine, even more than Jerome, was responsible for ‘molding the prevailing sin-
sex syndrome’ that has affected billions of churchgoers: Phipps, Clerical celibacy, p. 107;
M. Muller, Die Lehre des hl. Augustinus von der Paradiesesehe und ihre Auswirkung in
der Sexualethik des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts bis Thomas von Aquin (Regensburg, 1954).
Augustine did, however, defend the merits of marriage against those who were more forceful
in their condemnations, including Manichaeans and Priscillianists: Augustine, De Haeresibus
87; D. Callam, ‘Clerical Continence in the Fourth Century: Three Papal Decretals’, Theological
Studies, 41 (1980): 3–50.
91
 Augustine, De Civitate Dei 14.9; De Nuptiis et Concupiscentia 1.23.15; for the
suggestion that infants are subject to original sin by the ‘contagion’ of procreation rather
than their own mind, see Opus imperfectum contra Iulianum 4.98, De Peccatorium Meritis
c.57; City of God 14.17.19.
92
  Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, p. 82.
40 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

That said, Augustine was all too aware of the very practical problems
confronted by the church in North Africa. The higher orders were not
closed to married men, but rather it was to be expected that should a
married man be ordained as a priest, he would be the recipient of the
necessary divine grace that would enable him to live in continence.93
The writings of Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine and their contemporaries
were to exert a profound influence on subsequent debates over clerical
celibacy and marriage. Patristic testimony, argued to provide clear insights
into the faith and the tradition of the early church, has proved particularly
valuable to those theologians and controversialists seeking to establish the
origins of the obligation to clerical celibacy in the primitive church. Thus,
Cardinal Stickler argues that the evidence from patristic writings points not
to clerical celibacy as an innovation, but rather as an unbroken tradition,
handed down orally long before it was fixed in the written laws of the
church.94 Others have argued that the writings of the Fathers are evidence
of the fourth century ‘onslaught’ of the ideal of asceticism, undermining
the married ministry established in the New Testament, in which men
proved their ability to govern the church by the manner in which they ran
their household. The view of Jerome, Ambrose and Augustine in particular
have drowned out other voices to the extent that celibacy appears to be at
the core of Christianity. Indeed, their opponents argue, the only evidence
of opposition to the cult of virginity that they established comes from
their own condemnations of the heresies of Vigilantius, Helvidius and
Jovinian, with the result that celibacy carried the day.95 Similarly divergent
interpretations of the patristic testimony are to be found in the debates
over clerical celibacy at other critical periods in the history of the church,
particularly in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and in the controversies of
the Reformation.96 The importance that subsequent generations attached to
the writings of the Fathers is recognised in Christian Cochini’s discussions
of the ‘catalogues’ of patristic texts that were produced to facilitate the
composition of more accurate histories of clerical celibacy. As early as
the Council of Trent, he demonstrates, theologians were commissioned
to compile collections of patristic material in order to examine and rebut
Protestant objections to the enforcement of clerical celibacy. The first
systematic catalogue of such materials was published in 1631, and these
early collections and commentaries on the patristic period were greatly

93
 Augustine, De Conjugiis Adulterinis 2.20.22.
94
  See, for example, Stickler, Case for Clerical Celibacy, p. 37–40.
95
  See, for example, Porter, Sex, Marriage and the Church, p. 26; Phipps, Celibacy,
pp. 88 and 109, where he is particularly critical of Abbott, History of Celibacy, p. 17;
Bullough ‘Introduction’, in Bullough and Brundage (eds) Sexual Practices, p. 8.
96
 See chapter 3 and chapter 5 below.
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 41

enriched and expanded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.97 The

foundations upon which the historical debate over the celibacy of the
clergy was constructed are tantalisingly narrow, but from these origins a
vast literature has been spawned.
The words of the Fathers, while regarded by many subsequent
commentators as intrinsically valuable in the evolution of the obligation to
priestly continence, did not of themselves establish the law of the church.
Their writings must therefore be considered alongside the early conciliar
legislative framework, and the decrees of the popes, which sought to
impose sexual discipline upon the clergy. A handful of conciliar decrees
and papal instructions have provided the focus for those investigating the
origins and evolution of compulsory clerical celibacy across the centuries;
like the writings of the Fathers, these texts have assumed a significance
even in the minds of those who would not otherwise have accorded
authority to such sources, precisely because they have become part of the
lexicon of debate.98 Controversy over the immediate (and indeed longterm)
effectiveness of these attempts to regulate the conduct of the clergy has a
narrative as lengthy as the history of the discipline itself, but whether or
not the enforcement of sacerdotal celibacy was practicable, it is evident
that calls for such a discipline were becoming more insistent by the end of
the fourth century. The asceticism counselled by figures such as Ambrose
and Augustine, coupled with the changing demography of church leaders
– it was the appointment of a wealthy landowner as bishop of Vercelli
in 396 that occasioned Ambrose’s laudatory comments on the value of
virginity – pushed the issue to the foreground.99 It is also possible to see
in this period the increased use of what might be termed a ‘sacrificial’
language in relation to the eucharist, and a sacerdotal terminology in
relation to the clergy, which itself contributed to a growing insistence that

97
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 137; referring to Georg Calixtus, De Conjugio
Clericorum (1631); F.A. Zaccaria, Storia Polemica del celibato sacro da contraporsi ad
alcune detestabili opera uscite a questi tempi (Rome, 1774); A. Roskovany, Coelibatus et
Breviarum: duo gravissima clericorum official e monumentis omnium seculorum demonstrate
(vols 1–4 Pestini, 1861; vols 5–8 Nitrae 1877; vols 9–10 Nitrae 1881); Supplementa ad
collections monumentorum et literaturae (vols 3–4 Nitrae, 1888); Johann Anton Theiner
and Augustine Theiner, Die Einfuhrung der erzwungenen Ehelosigkeit bei den christlichen
Geistlichen und ihre Folgen. Ein Beitrag zur Kirchengeschichte (3 vols Altenburg, 1828);
Bickel, ‘Der Zolibat’.
98
  Despite the evangelical insistence upon the principle of sola scriptura for example,
the defenders of clerical marriage in the era of the Reformation peppered their works with
reference to the Fathers, Councils, and decrees of the popes. For a fuller discussion of this,
see chapter 5 below; Parish, Clerical Marriage, chapter 3; S. Greenslade, ‘The authority of the
Tradition of the Early Church in Early Anglican Thought’, Oecumenica (1971–2): 9–33.
99
  D. Callam, ‘Clerical Continence in the Fourth Century: Three Papal Decretals’,
Theological Studies, 41 (1980): 3–50.
42 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

the purity expected of the priests of the Old Testament be demanded of

the priests that served at the altars of the Christian church.100
Events at the Council of Elvira (c.305) generally provide the starting
point for studies of the institutional origins of clerical celibacy. Debate over
the apostolic origins of priestly continence and celibacy continues, but at
Elvira it is possible to see the first concerted, and indeed controversial,
attempt by a council of the church to impose sexual discipline on its
clergy.101 The relative paucity of prior evidence obfuscates the issue of
innovation at the Council, and while it is clear the bishops who met
at Elvira reached a decision on the question of married clergy, it is less
obvious whether this was a break with tradition, or a simple consolidation
of existing practice. The fact that some attempt was made to regulate
clerical marriage certainly suggests that there was still a substantial
number of married priests in the church, but whether these men made up
the minority or majority of clergy in higher orders is less certain.102 The
significance of the council for the development of clerical celibacy is also
contested, despite its prominent position in the history of the discipline.
Funk’s proposal that Elvira marked a watershed in the history of clerical
celibacy has been downplayed more recently by John Lynch, who argues
that the critical canon was an ‘isolated event’ rather than the true starting
point for subsequent legislation, and by Samuel Laeuchli, who sees the
decrees of the council as the outworking of a ‘patristic crisis of sexuality’
which had its origins in the decades and centuries prior to the council.103
The gathering of bishops at Elvira, in southern Spain, was the first
formal ecclesiastical council held in Spain, and the earliest surviving
to hand down disciplinary canons. There were nineteen bishops in
attendance, twenty four priests, and a number of deacons and laypersons.
The council promulgated 81 decrees, which covered a vast array of
topics relating to liturgy, sacrament, and clerical discipline. It met at the
instigation of bishop Ossius of Cordoba, but was presided over by the
most senior bishop in attendance, Felix of Accitum, and the content of its
decrees no doubt reflected the context in which the council was convened,

100
 Lynch, ‘Marriage and Celibacy’, 18–19; R. Aubert (ed.), Sacralisation and
Secularisation (Concilium 47, New York 1969).
101
  For a summary of recent contributions to the ‘apostolic origins’ debate, see above,
n. 1.
102
  Gryson, for example, suggests that the married men were in the majority: Gryson,
Les Origines, p. 42.
103
  Funk, ‘Colibat und Priesterehe im Christlichen Altertum’, Kirchen Geschichtliche
Abbandlungen und Untersuchungen, 1 (1897): 121–2; Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 160;
Lynch, ‘Marriage and Celibacy’, 23; S. Laeuchli, Power and Sexuality. The Emergence of
Canon Law at the Synod of Elvira (Philadelphia, 1972), p. 106, with reference to E.R.
Dodds, Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (Cambridge, 1965).
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 43

and the problems confronted by the Iberian church in the early fourth
century.104 For historians of clerical celibacy, the most significant canon is
the thirty-third, although it is worth nothing that several others relate to
the conduct of the clergy, and particularly their sexual conduct, and nearly
half the canons deal with sexual relations more generally. The canons
are not ordered by subject, and the lack of clear structure to the topical
sequence of the decrees may imply that rather than proceeding according
to a pre-prepared agenda, each member of the assembly was able to
initiate a discussion.105 Canon 33 instructed that the clergy were not to
have intercourse with their wives: ‘Placuit in totum prohibere episcopis,
presbyteris et diaconibus vel omnibus clericis positis in ministerio abstinere
se a coniugibus suis et non generare filios. Quicumque vero fecerit, ad
honore clericatus exterminetur’.106 The canon should, Cochini argues
convincingly, be read as an attempt to regulate the conduct only of those
in orders down to the subdiaconate, and be understood as referring not to
single men, but to those married men who had been ordained. The canon
makes no attempt to ground its demands in other legislation, but Cochini
rejects any notion that the bishops imagined that they were innovating in
their decision. Given the potential magnitude of the decree, he suggests,
the bishops surely believed that they were acting in accordance with
current praxis rather than making new demands.
The interpretation of the canon is complicated by the double
negative contained in its formulation, which Cochini ascribes to an
error in transcription, and Heid suggests causes little real difficulty once

104
 A.W. Dale, The Synod of Elvira and Christian Life in the Fourth Century (London,
1882); L. Duchesne, ‘Le concile d’Elvira et les flamines chrétiennes, Mélanges Renier (Paris,
1887), pp. 159–74; Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 158; Laeuchli, Elvira, p. 3; C.J. Hefele and
H. Leclerq (eds), Histoire des Conciles d’apres les documents originaux (vol. 1, Paris, 1907).
The precise date of the council is not known: Hefele-Leclerq suggest 305, Laeuchli suggests
309, and Duchesne proposed a date between 300 and 303. See also E. Griffe, ‘Le Concile
d’Elvire et les origins de celibate ecclesiastique’, Bulletin de Litterature Ecclesiastique, 77
(1976) 123–7. Several canons were added later to the records of the council, and there are
suggestions that canon 33, which dealt with clerical celibacy, might be one of these: M. Migne,
‘Concile ou collection d’Elvire’, Revue d’Histoire Ecclesiastique, 70 (1975): 361–87. For a
full discussion of the issue, see Heid, Celibacy, pp. 109–10.
105
  Canon 27, for example, enjoins that no cleric is to live with a woman who is not of his
kin. Laeuchli suggests that forty-five per cent of the canons address sexual issues, but that this
reflected a spontaneous drift in discussions from the major issues of apostasy to more specific
matters to do with discipline. Married clergy were the subject of canons 30, 33, 65 and 81.
106
  ‘it has seemed absolutely good to forbid the bishops, the priests and the deacons
i.e. all clerics in the service of the ministry to have intercourse with their wives and procreate
children; should anyone do so, let him be excluded from the honour of the clergy’. Translation
from Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 159; see also his discussion of the original text and of the
commentary provided by E. Griffe, ‘A propos du canon 33 du concile d’Elvire’, Bulletin de
Litterature Ecclesiastique, 74 (1973): 142–5.
44 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

contextualised.107 However, Heid also argues forcefully, on the basis of the

formulation of the canon, that the council intended that the continence of
married clergy be permanent, rather than required simply for the time of
service at the altar; ‘ministerium’ referred to the office and not to the daily
sacred ministry. The term ‘ministerium’ might also be taken to refer to the
particular functions of priests and those in higher orders, which were not
fulfilled by, for example, lectors. This would certainly tie the continence
of the clergy to their sacramental function, and the belief that those who
performed such a significant role in the church should maintain a kind
of ritual purity by abstaining from their wives.108 It seems clear that the
Fathers at Elvira did not demand celibacy of Spanish clerics, but the precise
meaning of the canon is still debated. However, the council was secure
enough in its intent to impose a severe penalty for disobedience which
was articulated more precisely than the punishment to be meted out to,
for example, an unmarried priest who cohabited with a woman who was
not of his kin (c.27).109 Certainly, the canon does not correspond exactly
with clerical celibacy as it is understood in the modern church, but neither
is this first written law the earliest sign that celibacy, or continence, was
expected of those in higher orders.110 The imperative was not so much the
imposition of celibacy, but the prohibition of the sexual act to those in
orders; the canon demanded continence from the married clergy of Spain,
and established that ordination required that the marital relationship be
conducted without sexual intercourse. As the earliest apparent reference to
a requirement for perfect continence from those clergy who were already
married, however, the 33rd canon of the Council of Elvira was to acquire
a central position in debates over the origins of clerical celibacy in the
centuries that followed, as testimony to the existence of a married clergy
in western Europe at the start of the fourth century, and to the probable
earlier origins of attempts to regulate clerical marriages that made the
decisions at Elvira appear as consolidation rather than innovation.
Despite its reputation in subsequent histories, the Council of Elvira
was a local synod, and its decrees did not command the obedience of
churches outside its area of jurisdiction. The broader influence of the
33rd canon lies in part in the efforts of bishop Ossius, whose likely
participation at the council of Arles and at the first ecumenical council

107
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 160; Heid, Celibacy, p. 111; for a fuller discussion
see Griffe, ‘Concile d’Elvire, 124–6.
108
  Heid, Celibacy, p. 112; Audet, Mariage, p. 20; Gryson, Les Origines, p. 40; and
particularly B. Verkamp, ‘Cultic Purity and the Law of Celibacy’, Review for Religious, 30
(1971): 199.
109
 Laeuchli, Elvira, p. 95.
110
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 160.
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 45

at Nicaea in 325 might explain some of the similarities in the discussions

and resultant canons.111 However, it is also possible to identify similar
preoccupations in the decrees of other local and regional councils. The
first Council of Arles, convened in 314, had as its primary function a
solution to the Donatist controversy, but its 29th canon sought to regulate
the conduct of married priests, and with some accounts claiming that
there were 600 bishops in attendance, the council was more than simply
a local assembly.112 The canon made similar demands of the clergy to
those required at Elvira: ‘moreover [concerned with] what is worthy,
pure, and honest, we exhort our brothers [in the episcopate] to make
sure that priests and deacons have no relations with their wives, since
they are serving the ministry every day. Whosoever will act against this
decision will be deposed from the honour of the clergy’. However, the
records of the council have been transmitted in several different sources
and formats, and the accuracy of each account, and indeed the list of the
canons of the council, is disputed. The ‘Letter to Sylvester’ details only
nine canons, the ‘Canons to Sylvester’ some twenty-two.113 Cochini, in
seeking to resolve some of these ambiguities, notes that although the 29th
canon reads as an exhortation, it carried with it a punitive weight. Its
compass echoed that of the decree at Elvira, but its motives were more
clearly articulated, in explaining that for those priests whose function is
fulfilled on a daily basis, abstaining from intercourse is both worthy and
pure. The general tenor is such, however, that it seems plausible again
that the bishops believed that they were defending a principle rather than
creating a new law. The similarity with the Council of Elvira, and the
references to the Donatists in the other ‘disputed’ canons all point to an
early fourth century context and preoccupations.114
A similarly complex narrative exists for the Council of Ancyra, a
gathering of bishops from Asia Minor and Syria in the same year. The

111
  V. de Clerq, Ossius of Cordova (Washington, 1954), pp. 277–8; Hefele-Leclerq,
Conciles, I.1.621, write of the resemblances between the legislation at Elvira and Nicaea
‘cette coincidence porterait a faire croire que c’est un des Peres d’Elvire, Osius, qui proposa
au concile de Nicee le loi sur le celibat’.
112
  Translation from Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 161; the council is discussed by
Eusebius, Church History, 10.5.21–24, C. Munier, Concilia Galliae a.314–a.506 (Turnhout:
Brepols, 1963), pp. 14–22; P. Coustant, Epistolae Romanorum pontificum, et quae ad eos
scriptae sunt, a S. Clemente I. usque ad Innocentium III. . . ., vol. 1 (Brunsbergae, 1721), De
Clercq, Ossius of Cordova; J.M. O’Donnell, The Canons of the First Council of Arles, 314
AD (Washington, 1961).
113
  C. Munier, Concilia Galliae, pp. 4–6, pp. 9–13. Lea argues that the celibacy canon
is to be found in only one of the manuscript sources, repeating Mansi’s suggestion that it
belongs to a later synod. Mansi 2.474; cf. Hefele-Leclerq, Conciles, I.i.295.
114
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 162.
46 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

canons were transmitted in at least six versions to a Greek and Latin

audience, but there is less dispute over their content, and the variant
sources are in agreement that the tenth addressed the issue of clerical
continence and marriage.115 However, its content diverges substantially
from the early conciliar decisions on the subject in the West. The bishops
agreed that those deacons who announced at the time of their ordination
that they were unable to live a celibate life and who later married would
be permitted to remain in orders, but those who did not make such a
declaration would be deprived of their ecclesiastical function if they later
married. The interpretation of the canon in subsequent generations was
less than straightforward. By the sixth century, one edition of the canons
appeared to suggest that the bishop had no such right to dispense, and
later Byzantine councils make no reference to the possibility that a deacon
might petition for a later marriage at the time of his ordination.116 It seems
unlikely that the Council of Ancyra marked a decisive and considered
deviation from the discipline of Latin Christendom, but its tenth canon
was to provide valuable ammunition for those in later generations who
sought to establish a precedent for the legality of marriage after ordination
when the issue became critical in the life of the church.117
The first ecumenical council of the church, held at Nicaea in 325, was,
despite its association with the condemnation of Arius, dominated by
disciplinary decrees intended to regulate the conduct of the clergy. Accorded
ecumenical status, the decrees of the council were as influential in the West
as in the East, and featured prominently in canonical collections.118 The
majority of the twenty decrees impacted upon clerical life and discipline,
and the third decree specifically tackled the question of ‘women who live
with clerics’. The Fathers agreed that ‘the great Council has stringently
forbidden any bishop, priest, deacon, or any of the clergy, to have a

115
  R.B. Rackam, ‘The Texts of the Canons of Ancyra’, in Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica
(Oxford, 1891); Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 168ff.
116
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 171–2 notes that when the canons of Ancyra were
confirmed by the Fathers at Trullo, they did not repeat this clause allowing subsequent
marriage. Likewise, Roman Cholij suggests that if the concession were indeed authentic, it
fell into disuse shortly after the council: Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, pp. 12–13.
117
 See for example the eleventh century Tractatus pro clericorum conniubio and the
protests of a group of Normandy clergy against the imposition of clerical celibacy, and in
the sixteenth century Peter Martyr’s use of the council in his Defensio Doctrinae Veteris
et Apostolicae de Sacrosanto Eucharistiae Sacramento (Zurich, 1559), sig.u2r, G5v. The
proceedings and records of the council are discussed in more detail in chapter 2, pp. 92–4.
118
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 186ff gives numerous examples of later councils and
papal letters that echoed the words of the decree at Nicaea, including councils at Hippo 393,
Toledo 400, Arles 442–506, the Directa of Pope Siricius to Himerius, and Pope Leo’s Letter to
Rusticus of Narbonne: L.D. Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325–787), (Liturgical
Press, 1983); N.P. Tanner, The Councils of the Church: A Short History (New York, 2001).
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 47

woman living with him, except a mother, sister, aunt, or some such person
who is beyond all suspicion’, although the decree is tantalisingly imprecise
about who these women might be.119 If the decree referred to the wives
of the clergy, it appeared to assume that priests continued to live with
their wives, but made no reference to whether they lived in continence,
or indeed whether such marriages had been entered into before or after
ordination.120 The decree was certainly cited in support of compulsory
clerical celibacy in subsequent generations. Some five hundred years after
the council, Ratramnus used the Nicene decree to defend clerical celibacy
in the western church, arguing that the reference to ‘virgins subintroductae’
in its third canon was a prohibition of marriage to the clergy.121 In 1022,
at the Synod of Pavia, the pope’s opening address referred to the ‘law of
Nicaea’ to justify the exclusion of all women from the homes of priests
and the removal of married clergy from their benefices.122 In contrast,
Bishop Otto of Constance was to find in 1075 that his attempt to enforce
the celibacy legislation promulgated at the Lenten Synod left him open to
the accusation that the pope had departed from the sentiments expressed
at Nicaea, which was in this instance being cited in defence of those
priests who were married.123 The precise mind of the bishops at Nicaea is
all the more difficult to fathom as a consequence of the development of
the legend of Paphnutius, a bishop alleged to have attended the council,
who intervened at the eleventh hour to prevent the passage of legislation
that would have denounced clerical marriage on the basis that it were
better for those who could not live in chastity to marry.124 Paphnutius,
although in all likelihood a fictional character, was to feature prominently
in later debates over clerical celibacy, and although he became famous for
his defence of marriage, the story served to lend weight to the suggestion
that the council had adopted a negative stance with regard to the wives
of the clergy.
It was not the ecumenical council of Nicaea, but the smaller assembly
of bishops in Carthage in 390 that was to provide the locus classicus for
later writers seeking to locate obligatory clerical celibacy in the decrees of

119
  Hefele-Leclerq, Conciles, I.1.503–28; J. Alberigo, J. Dossetti, P. Joannou, C. Leonardi
(eds) Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1962), p. 6 (the
Latin text does not mention deacons).
120
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 186.
121
 Ratramnus, Contra Graecorum Opposita c.6 [PL 121.324–32].
122
 L. Weiland (ed.), MGH Legum Section IV, Constitutiones et acta publica
imperatorum et regum (Hanover, 1893), vol. 1 no. 34, pp. 70–88.
123
  H.E.J. Cowdrey (ed.), The Epistolae Vagantes of Pope Gregory VII (Oxford, 1972),
No. 9.
124
  For a full discussion of the story and its development, see chapter 2, pp. 69–70.
48 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

the early church. Some 390 bishops were in attendance, but the overall
purposes of the council have been described as ‘modest’.125 However,
its decisions were incorporated into the Codex Canonum Ecclesiae
Africanae of 419, and thereafter much more widely disseminated through
the work of Denys the Minor.126 The Carthage canon paid lip-service to
early conciliar attempts to impose the rule of continence and chastity,
but recommended that the application of the rule to bishops, priests
and deacons be emphasised, and that these higher clergy be exhorted
to obedience. The clergy of the Christian church were compared to the
Levitical priesthood, and expected to observe perfect continence because
of their sacramental function. All were obliged to abstain from conjugal
intercourse with their wives, in keeping with ‘what the apostles taught
and what antiquity observed’.127 Clerical continence was predicated upon
the liturgical and sacramental function of the priest, and was presented
as a long-standing obligation. The decision at Carthage was to provide
the basis for arguments in favour of clerical celibacy (not only clerical
continence) in the era of the Gregorian reform, and in the aftermath of
Protestant advocacy of clerical marriage in the sixteenth century.128 For
those seeking evidence of the apostolic origins of clerical celibacy, a fourth
century council which affirmed that its deliberations had been guided by
teachings of the first followers of Christ was a compelling source. For
those who defended clerical marriage, the decree at Carthage, like those
of other fourth century assemblies of the church, testified to the continued
presence of married men in Christian ministry.
Neither the Council of Nicaea nor the Council of Carthage had
imposed celibacy upon the clergy as a whole. The most significant step
towards the formalisation of the discipline of clerical continence in the
fourth century was taken not in conciliar assembly, but at the instigation

125
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 3; Munier, Concilia Africae, p. 149; Hefele-Leclerq,
Conciles, II.1.76–8.
126
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 4.
127
  Mansi, Sacrum Conciliorum, vol. 3, 692D–693A; F.L. Cross, ‘History and Fiction
in the African Canons’, Journal of Theological Studies, 12 (1961): 227–47. A subsequent
council in Carthage in 401 added the sanction that those who did not cease having relations
with their wives were to be deprived of their ecclesiastical functions [canon 3; Mansi, Sacrum
Conciliorum, vol. 3, 969A).
128
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 4, referring to MGH Libelli de Lite Imperatorum et
Pontificum Saeculius XI et XII, II (Hanover, 1892) pp. 7ff, Concilium Tridentium Diariorum,
Actorum, Epistolarum, Tractatuum Nova Collectio, Societas Goerresiana (ed.) (Freiburg im
Breisgau 1965), vol. IX pt. 6, pp. 380–82 and 425–70, and ‘Responsum a Pio IV datum consiliariis
electorum et principum imperii, qui sacerdotum conjugia petebant’, in L. Leplat, Monumentorum
ad Historiam Concilii Tridentini Amplissima Collectio VI (Louvain, 1876) p. 336.
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 49

of Pope Siricius.129 His views were articulated in a letter addressed to

bishop Himerius of Tarragona, in response to a series of questions
that the bishop had earlier sent to pope Damasus in the context of the
Priscillianist controversy.130 Clearly, the issue of married clergy was still
of concern, although the only limitation placed on ordination was the
refusal to admit re-married men to major orders; the pope stopped short
of prohibiting the ordination of those who had entered into monogamous
marriage. However, Siricius was strident in expressing his concern about
the number of priests and deacons who appeared to have fathered
children after their ordination, and in his condemnation of monks and
nuns who were guilty of ‘sacrilegious passion’. Rejecting the appeals of
such men to the precedent provided by the temporary abstinence expected
of the priests of the Old Testament, Siricius instructed that ‘all priests and
deacons are bound by the indissoluble law of these provisions, in such a
way that from the day of our ordination we subject both our hearts and
our bodies to sobriety and purity’. God had demanded of the priests of the
Old Law ‘be ye holy for I am Yahweh your God’, and such an obligation
was all the more incumbent upon the priests of the new law. The pope
instructed that for any priest or deacon who failed to live in continence
there was to be no mercy, and that all pardon should be refused ‘for one
must cut out with a knife wounds that resist all remedies’.131 The pope
made no reference to the decrees of earlier councils on the subject, but
his letter was clearly occasioned by the anxiety of bishop Himerius over
the apparent violation of agreed codes of conduct for the clergy. Siricius
did, however, anchor his exhortations in biblical and apostolic precedent,
suggesting that he did not regard his instruction as a new departure for
the Roman or Spanish church.
The demands of the pope were repeated a year later. Following a
council held in Rome in 386, letters were sent out to the bishops who
were unable to attend, and to those of other provinces, detailing its
determinations. The opening phrases made clear that the decisions of the
council were not innovations, but an attempt to ensure that the church
remained faithful to the practice of the apostolic church, ‘the question
is not one of ordering new precept, but ... to have people observe those

129
 Lynch, ‘Marriage and Celibacy’, 24.
130
  PL 13.1131b–1147a; P. Coustant, Epistolae Romanorum Pontificum (Paris, 1721),
pp. 623–38.
131
 Siricius, Ad Himerium c.7 n. 11 [PL 13.1138a–39a, 1140–1]; The letter has been
referred to as a ‘milestone in the history of celibacy’, Heid, Celibacy, p. 218. Translation from
Lynch ‘Marriage and Celibacy’, 26, who notes that the fact that clergy were appealing on the
ground of ignorance suggests that the legislation passed at Elvira had been forgotten. See also
Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 8ff.
50 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

that ... have been neglected’.132 The ninth canon of the Roman council
called upon the bishops to act in order to put an end to the ‘scandal’ that
afflicted the church and which had occasioned a good deal of criticism
from outside its members. The source of the scandal was the conduct of
the clergy, and the decree set forth the argument, based upon biblical and
patristic sources, that the priests of the church, who were bound to serve
God every day, were therefore required to lead a life of perpetual sexual
abstinence in order to devote themselves to prayer. The pope demanded
continence from all in higher orders ‘as it is worthy, chaste and honest to
do so’ on the basis of Levitical law, and particularly the Pauline injunction
contained in I. Cor 7:5. He rejected the argument that the ‘husband of one
wife’ phrase in the Letter to Timothy was simply a bar to the ordination
of digamists, arguing that Paul did not commend a man ‘persisting in his
desire to beget’ but counselled a commitment to matters spiritual rather
than unspiritual (Rom. 8:8–9).133 Continence was an obligation, and a
permanent obligation for those who were required to make themselves
available for the service of the altar on a daily basis.134
The same demands were made in a second Roman synod, the decisions
of which have been attributed variously to Siricius, his predecessor
Damasus, and the later Pope Innocent I (401–17).135 A papal decretal
was composed as a response to a series of questions from bishops, this
time from Gaul, and clerical continence was again high on the agenda.
Concern was expressed that the higher clergy failed to heed the obligation
to continence, and therefore violated not only the decrees of the church
but also the divine ordinance in scripture.136 In his decretal Dominus Inter,
addressed to the Gallic bishops, the pope protested that ‘many bishops in
various churches have challenged the tradition of the fathers, out of human

132
  The decretal Cum in Unum is preserved only in the records of a fifth century African
council which discussed it; Gryson, Les Origines, p. 139, Hefele-Leclerq Conciles II.68ff
[PL 13.1156a] ‘non quae nova praecepta aliqua imperent, sed quibus ea qaue per ignasiam
desidiamque aliquorum neglecta sunt, observari cupiamus, quae tamen apostolic et partum
constitutione sunt constituta sicut scriptum est State et temete traditions nostra sive per
verbum, sive per epistolam’ (2 Thess.2:14).
133
  PL 13.1160a–1161a.
134
 Siricius was not alone in this interpretation of the Pauline epistle; Cochini cited
a similar exegesis in the writings of Epiphanius of Salamis: ‘the man who goes on living
with his wife and begetting children is not admitted [by the church] as deacon, priest, and
subdeacon, even if he is married only once, but [only the one ‘who being monogamous,
observes continence or is a widower’, Panarion (Adversus Haereses 79.4).
135
  PL 13.1181a–94c; Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 13 citing Coustant, Epistolae,
pp. 685–700 and E.C. Babut, La Plus Ancienne Decretale (Paris 1904), pp. 69–87. See also
Gryson, Les Origines, pp. 127ff, and Lynch ‘Marriage and Celibacy’.
136
  Coustant, Epistolae, pp. 689–91; PL 13.1184a–85b, especially 1184b ‘quos non
solum non sed et scriptura divine compellit esse castissimos’.
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 51

presumption and to the detriment of their reputation’, particularly in

relation to the conduct of the clergy, and the requirement to continence.137
Communicating the decisions taken at the Roman Synod of the same year,
the pope wrote that the church considered two groups of candidates for
ordination: those who had remained virgins after baptism as infants, and
those baptised as adults who had married only once, and had remained
chaste. The latter, as a condition of ordination, were to promise to live in
continence, in order to tend to the pastoral needs of widows and virgins, to
avoid the temptations of the flesh that might distract them from the service
of God, and to preserve the purity that was necessary for the successors
of the priests of the Old Law, who offered sacrifice daily. The dignity of
the clergy required that they provide an example to the faithful, and, the
pope asserted, ‘not only we, but the sacred scriptures compel them to be
perfectly chaste, and the Fathers commanded that they observe bodily
continence’. This requirement to purity in the handling of the sacraments
and the administration of baptism must be permanent, ‘for they must be
ready at all times’.138 The tone and content of the letter certainly suggested
a hardening of papal attitudes to clerical marriages and conduct, perhaps
in light of the Jovinianist controvsery, and a more explicit enunciation of
views that had previously been implied rather than stridently stated.139
The attempts of Siricius to enforce continence upon the married clergy
were echoed in the labours of his successors, and in subsequent councils,
which suggests that if not novel, the requirement was at least unpopular or
unheeded in some quarters.140 Dominus Inter concluded with the demand

137
  The document is most commonly attributed to Pope Siricius, although some sources
suggest that it was composed by Pope Damasus. For further discussion, see P. Pampaloni,
‘Continenza e celibate del clero: Leggi e motive nelle fonti canonistiche dei sec IV et V’, Studia
Patavina 17 (1970): 18–19; Gryson, Les Origines, pp. 127–31; PL 13.1182–1188, quoting
1182a ‘scimus fraters charissimi, multos episcopos per diversas ecclesias ad famam pessimam
nominis sui humana praesumptione partum traditionem mutare properasse, atque per hanc
causam in haeresis tenebras cecidisse ...’; see also D.G. Hunter, ‘Reading the Jovinianist
Controversy: Asceticism and Clerical Authority in Late Ancient Christianity’, Journal of
Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33.3 (2003): 453–70; Hunter, ‘Clerical Celibacy and
Veiling of Virgins: new Boundaries in Late Ancient Christianity’, in W.E. Klingshirn and
M. Vessey (eds), The Limits of Ancient Christianity: Essays on Late Antique Thought and
Culture in Honour of R.A. Markus (Ann Arbor, 1999), pp. 139–52.
138
 Siricius, Ad Gallos Episcopos, Ep. 10.3 [PL 13.1184b–5a, 1187].
139
  Hunter, ‘Jovinian’, 453.
140
  Innocent I Ep. 2 (to Vitricius of Rouen) [PL 20.475–7]. Ep. 6 [PL 20.496] which
recalled the injunctions of Siricius; Leo Ep. 14 [PL 54.672]; Ep. 167 [PL54.1204a]; Gregory
I Ep. 1, 20 in MGH Epist 1–1, 76, 31–2; 9, 110; Ep. 2 1; 116, 21–4]. The council of Toledo
(400) made reference to clerics who still claimed ignorance of the obligation to continence
[canon 1; Vives 20]; see also Co. Agde (506) c.16 in D.C. Clercq (ed.) Concilia Galliae, in
CCSL 148 (Turnhout, 1963), p. 125; co.Epaone (517) c.37 in Concilia Galliae, pp. 34, 233.
52 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

that there must be one, unified faith in the church, and ‘if there is one faith
there must be one tradition as well. If there is one tradition, one discipline
must be observed in all churches’.141 Establishing clerical continence or
celibacy as a discipline that was observed in all churches was to present a
substantial challenge to the successors of Siricius.
The debate surrounding attitudes to clerical continence in the first four
centuries, and the legislation enacted to enforce it, are evidence of the
concern to regulate the conduct of the clergy, but also of the continued
presence of married priests and bishops in the patristic era. At the close
of the second century, bishop Polycrates of Ephesus addressed a letter
to the pope and church of Rome in which he commended the ‘tradition
of my relatives’, as the eighth in an Episcopal line.142 Gregory of Nyssa
had married, probably before his appointment as bishop, and Hillary of
Poitiers was both married and a father.143 Anastasius, pope between 399
and 402, may have been father to his successor, the fifth century pope
Felix III was the great-great-grandfather of Gregory the Great, and, as
late as the sixth century, it was possible for the son of a priest to occupy
the throne of St Peter.144 Legislation in sixth century Gaul intended to
regulate the conduct of the wives of the bishops suggests that married men
continued to hold high ecclesiastical office, and regulatory interventions
were common in meetings of the regional and universal churches.145
Early in his pontificate, Pope Innocent I addressed a letter to Vitricius
of Rouen (February 404) in which he echoed Siricius’ concerns about
the conduct of the clergy. In order that the church might maintain what
was ‘pure, worthy and honest’, he wrote, it was imperative the priests

The councils held in Gaul in the fifth and sixth centuries do continue to make reference to the
wives of the clergy as ‘episcopa’, ‘presbyteria’ and ‘diaconissa’, and the requirement that they
give their consent at the time of their husband’s ordination: see, for example, canon 16 of
the Council of Agde ‘san esi soniugati iuuenes consenserint ordinary, etiam exorum uluntas
ita requirenda est, ut sequestrate mansionis cubiculo, religion praemissa, posteaquam partier
conuersi fuerint, ordinentur’ [Corpus Christianorum 148.281].
141
  ‘si ergo una fides est, manere debet et una traditio. Si una traditio est, una debet
disciplina per omnes ecclesias custodiri’ [PL 13.1188a].
142
 Eusebius, Historica Ecclesiastica V.24.6–7, [English Translation in A. Roberts and
J. Donaldson (eds) Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2 (Edinburgh, 1885) vols 1 and 2.
143
  Gregory Nazianzen, Ep. 197 [PG 37.321a–24b; Venantius Fortunatus, Vita Sanci
Hilarii III.VI.XIII; quoted in Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 93–5.
144
  Jerome, Ep. 130.16 [PL 22.1120a], Gregory, Homiliae XI in Evangelio, II.38.15
[PL 76.1291b]. Pope Agapetus (535–6).
145
  B. Brennan, ‘Episcopae: Bishops’ Wives Viewed in Sixth Century Gaul’, Church
History 54.3 (1985): 313–23; a year’s continence was necessary before a married man could
be appointed deacon, and the consent of the wife was required prior to ordination. Husband
and wife were instructed not to share a bedroom, and those clergy who did return to conjugal
relations were viewed as guilty of incest.
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 53

and deacons abstain from relations with their wives. Such a requirement
was incumbent upon the clergy in accordance with the law of the Old
Testament, but also under the demands of the new law, which required
that priests be ready to serve on a daily basis. St Paul, Innocent claimed,
had countenanced temporary abstinence for the laity as a precondition for
prayer, but for the clergy who led a life of prayer, this abstinence was to
be perpetual. The ‘ceaseless sacrifice’ of the priests imbued this obligation
with an even greater significance, because ‘if anyone has been soiled by
carnal concupiscence, how would he dare to offer the sacrifice? Or with
what conscience does he believe [his prayers] would be granted?’ A priest
might be the ‘husband of one wife’, but the apostle did not countenance
a continuation of sexual desire within marriage, but rather commended
continence ‘because those who are unspiritual cannot please God’.146 The
following year a similar letter was sent to Exuperius of Toulouse, referring
again to the instructions of Siricius, and repeating the references to the
purity expected of the priests of the Old Law, and the Pauline injunction
to abstain for the purposes of prayer. The pope conceded that there might
still be some who were ignorant of the law in this respect, but demanded
that those who were simply disobedient be expelled from their offices.147
Despite their insistence that the law of continence was both longstanding
and widely promulgated, the popes continued to receive questions from
local bishops on the subject. Leo the Great replied to a letter from Rusticus
of Narbonne in 458/9 which had again raised the question of whether
it was permitted for married priests to continue in conjugal relations.
The pope responded with a reminder that continence was required of
all higher clergy, who, if married, must live with their wives ‘as if they
did not have them’, changing the nature of their union from ‘carnal to
spiritual’.148 The issue was again debated at councils of the church in the
fifth and sixth centuries. At Toledo in 400, the first canon of the council
reinforced the expectation that deacons must lead continent lives, and the
continence requirement was detailed in several Gallican councils of the fifth
century.149 The seventeenth council of Carthage, held in 419, produced a
collection of some 133 canons, renewing the decisions reached by earlier
African councils. The Codex Canonum Ecclesiae Africanae contained five
canons that imposed clerical continence, ascribed to earlier councils held

146
  Ep. Ad Victriciun Episcopum Rothomoagensem IX.12 [PL 20.475c–477a], see
especially at 476b ‘qui si contaminates fuerit carnali concupiscentia, qho pudore sacrificare
usurpabit? Aut qua conscientia quove merito exaudiri se credit’.
147
  Ep. Ad Exuperium Episcopum Tolosoanum [PL 20.496b–98a]; cf Ep Ad Maximum
et Severum Episcopos per Brittios [PL 20.650b–c].
148
  PL 54.1204a.
149
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 270ff.
54 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

in Carthage and Hippo. Continence was demanded of all priests in the

service of the sacraments, and subdeacons, deacons, priests, and bishops
were to abstain from their wives under threat of deprivation.150
Still the issue at stake was less the celibacy of the clergy, the
expectation that the priests of the church would be unmarried, and more
the continence of married clergy after their ordination. J-P Audet warns
students of ecclesiastical history against the alluring assumption that the
church was from the outset inexorably moving in the direction of a law
of perfect celibacy for its priests, and that the married clergy of the early
church were simply the ‘residue’ of practical considerations that would
soon be overcome.151 It is certainly apparent that the first generation of
Christian ministers were not trained and organised professionals, most
were married, their household providing a meeting place for the faithful,
and many had children.152 However, there were certainly some for whom
religious obligation brought with it a reluctance to marry, or a decision
to practise marital continence, both inside the nascent church and outside
it. Christians of the second and third centuries faced the problem of
reconciling baptism, marriage, and a life of religious service. For those
who were to find themselves outside the church, including Encratites and
Gnostics, the solution was a life of celibacy; for those inside the church,
there was a need to balance the defence of marriage from its critics with the
emerging sense that marriage was a remedy for those who could not live
in the ideal state of virginity.153 The assertion of a biblical justification for
a life of celibacy in the service of the kingdom of God, and the argument
that marriage and ministry were not easy bedfellows, were easily modified
to suggest that holiness and sexuality were mutually exclusive. The
influence of monasticism in reshaping the model of Christian perfection
further served to associate religious devotion with the renunciation of
the flesh, and at a practical level provided a group of chaste men who
could be called upon to fill ecclesiastical office. At the same time, the
physical location of the church gradually shifted from the home to the
dedicated building, in which pastoral married domesticity came to be less
important than the sacred function of the priest. As those proximate to
the holy, priests were expected to lead a life that met the requirements of
this access to the sacred, a life modelled upon the precedent of the priestly

150
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 267–9.
151
 Audet, Mariage, p. 4 criticises those who would see the history of clerical celibacy as
a long and eventually hard-won battle to eliminate this ‘residue’ of married priests.
152
  H. Von Camenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church
of the First Three Centuries, (Peabody, Mass., 1997); Audet, Mariage, p. 4; Frazee, ‘Origins’,
151ff.
153
  Schillebeeckx, Clerical Celibacy, pp. 19–21.
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 55

caste of the Levites. Thus, in the third and fourth centuries the liturgical
lexicon, and the vocabulary used to describe the priest, acquired a more
sacral and sacrificial tone, a tone reflected in the writings of the Fathers
and the popes, the decrees of the councils described above, and even in
the observations of the laity on the priests who served them. The function
of the bishop, in particular, was defined increasingly by his liturgical role
rather than his didactic obligations, and as a deeper sense of the sacred
came to be attached to the celebration of the eucharist, the position and
perfection of the priest were pushed to the fore. Purity and perfection
were closely associated with sexual abstinence, with the result that the
‘decisive factor’ in requiring continence from the clergy was, as Audet
suggests, ‘the encounter, within the same pastoral consciousness, of the
double perception of impure and sacred, the first being present in the
shadows under the form of sexual activity, and the second, in full light,
under the form of service of the sacramenta.154
The debate over the ‘apostolic’ origins of clerical continence and
celibacy is a vibrant one, and has been for the last millennium. Just as
Siricius, Jerome, Leo and the early councils of the church argued for a
scriptural mandate for the boundaries that they placed upon the conduct
of the higher clergy, so the reformers and opponents of reform of different
types in the period between 1100 and 1700 continued to argue that their
beliefs were rooted in the practice of the primitive church. The nineteenth
century debate between Bickell and Funk reinvigorated these attempts
to recover, reconstruct, and repossess the precedent of the apostles,
and twentieth-century scholarship has continued in this vein.155 Among
those who argue for the novelty of the discipline, there is a sense of the
history of celibacy as a shift from freedom of choice to obligation in the
law of the church after the apostolic period. Roger Gryson sought to
demonstrate that the primitive church was staffed with more married
priests than unmarried priests, and rooted the obligation to celibacy in
non-Christian texts rather than the New Testament and the example of
the apostolic church. There was, he believed, a fundamental discontinuity
between the discipline of the church and the mandate of scripture, and a
later preoccupation with ritual purity that was used to impose obligatory
celibacy upon a historically married clergy.156 Audet depicts a married

154
  Pope Innocent, Ep. 38 [PL 20.605b]. For a more detailed discussion of these themes
than space here allows, see E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (trans.
J.W. Swain) (London, 1915); Audet, Mariage, chapter one, quotation at p. 114; Abbott,
Celibacy, pp. 111–12, 207ff; Brown, Body and Society, Epilogue; Frazee, ‘Origins’, 151ff;
Porter, Sex, Marriage and the Church, pp. 28ff.
155
  The nineteenth-century debates are discussed in chapter 7.
156
  Gryson, Les Origines, passim.
56 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

priesthood as the ‘dominant reality’ of the third century church, but

one which was to be unbalanced by the elevation of virginity and the
sacralisation of ecclesiastical function in the decades that followed.157
Charles Frazee likewise sees a difference between the ascetic value of
celibacy which might be used to argue in defence of the discipline, and
the legislation and preoccupations that established the discipline in law
in two critical periods in the life of the church, the fourth and eleventh
centuries.158 If the ‘origins’ of clerical celibacy are argued to be found
in the laws of the church, particularly for example the law established
at Elvira, the moral conduct of the clergy becomes a matter of an
institutional obligation that saw the position of married clergy eroded
by the apparently superior character of their unmarried colleagues.159 In
contrast, as we have seen, Roman Cholij, Christian Cochini, and Stefan
Heid have argued convincingly that the modern law of celibacy has firm
roots in the continence discipline of the early church. The dedication of
the priest to God was evidenced in his commitment to live in marital
continence after ordination, and in this respect it mattered little whether
the priest was married prior to ordination or not; the prohibition of the use
of marriage, and of subsequent marriages, created in effect a priesthood
in which purity won by abstinence was prized. Rather than searching for
an unmarried priesthood in the first Christian centuries, it is possible to
locate in the insistence of the early church upon clerical continence the
origins of the modern law. The insistence upon clerical continence after
ordination presented an implicit objection to marriage after ordination,
by effectively prohibiting the consummation of such unions. This
apparent cause and effect relationship between the law of continence and
the prohibition of marriage to those in holy orders makes it possible to
identify the principle of the law of celibacy in the continence discipline of
the primitive church. The ‘apostolic origins’ debate revolves around the
interpretation of scripture, conciliar decrees, and papal pronouncements,
but also, and more particularly, the understanding of the multiple meanings
and implications of continence for the clergy. Indeed, concluding his
summary of the modern debate, Stefan Heid concedes that the ‘advances
in scholarship’ made in his work lie not in its overall conclusions, but
in its elaboration or correction of the interpretation of particular source
texts.160 This process of reinterpretation and reworking of a limited
body of evidence has been the hallmark of the controversy over clerical

157
 Audet, Mariage, pp. 13–22.
158
  Frazee, ‘Origins’, 149–50.
159
 See also Franzen ‘Zolibat’; G. Denzler, Papsttum: Geschichte und Gegenwart
(1997); B. Kottin, Der Zolibat in der Alten Kirche (Munster, 1970).
160
  Heid, Clerical Celibacy, p. 23, n. 19.
 Clerical Celibacy and Marriage in the Early Church 57

celibacy throughout its history; on each occasion that the issue has proved
controversial, the similarities in the foundation of the arguments in each
generation are striking. Pope Siricius’ attempt to suppress diversity of
opinion so that there might be one faith, one tradition, and one discipline,
was, rather than the final word on the subject, just one line in the dialogue
of debate.
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 CHAPTER 2

‘Preserving the Ancient Rule and

Apostolic Perfection’?: Celibacy and
Marriage in East and West
The history of clerical marriage in the Eastern churches is not only
a compelling narrative in its own right, but has assumed a position of
importance in the debates over the origins and necessity of clerical celibacy
in the Latin church. While the modern Latin church demands a complete and
permanent commitment to celibacy from its priests, the Orthodox church
requires such a commitment only from its bishops, and in the expectation
that those entering the priesthood will be either married men or members
of monastic communities. Notwithstanding the apparent divergence in
practice, the ecclesiastical legislation underpinning each tradition claimed
a foundation in the precedent provided by the early church and councils;
both the law of celibacy in the West and the married priesthood of the East
were argued to be rooted in the canons and praxis of the first centuries
of Christianity. Possession of the apostolic heritage was a significant
component in the defence of clerical celibacy and continence in the West,
but also a priority for those who legislated for a married priesthood in
the East. Thus, the incontrovertible presence of a married priesthood in
the East provided ammunition for those who would contest the validity
and origins of the law of celibacy in the West, while the enforced celibacy
of the Latin clergy was roundly condemned as a corrupting innovation
by protagonists in the East. The married clergy of the Greek church were
vigorously denounced by the leaders of the ecclesiastical reforms of the
eleventh century, held up as exempla by the defenders of clerical marriage
during the Reformation, and have been used as evidence both for and
against the apostolic origins of clerical celibacy in more recent debates.
The discussion of the example of the Greek church raises questions about
the ecumenicity of particular church councils, the accuracy of the historical
narrative of key events, the authenticity of vital documents and collections,
the relationship of clerical celibacy and marriage to the established tradition
of continence in the early church in East and West, and the extent to which
the principle of the celibate priesthood is embedded in both traditions. The
narrative of the origins of clerical marriage in the East is thus significant
60 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

not only within that particular tradition, but also to the history of clerical
celibacy and marriage in the wider church.
The articulation of the ascetic impulse in the writing of the Latin fathers
in the third and fourth centuries charted in chapter one has clear echoes
in the letters and treatises of their contemporaries in the East; indeed for
peregrinatory figures such as Jerome, the distinction between east and west
is perhaps an artificial construct. From the writings of the Greek Fathers,
it is clear that questions were being asked as early as the second century
about the relative merits of virginity and marriage, and the necessity that
those who approached the altar should be of a pure character. Later in
the century, pressure from heretical groups including the Valentinians,
prompted further discussion of the position of marriage in the church and
particularly among the clergy. Clement of Alexandria, commenting upon
the ‘husband of one wife’ passage in Paul’s Letter to Timothy, encouraged
the ‘respectable’ use of marriage by priests, deacons, and laymen, who
would be ‘saved by begetting children’. Cochini presents this section of
the Stromata as a defence of the sanctity of monogamy in the face of the
criticisms of the ascetics, although earlier commentators tended to focus
upon the question of differentiation between priest and layman in the use of
marriage. Cochini’s interpretation is convincing; Clement would certainly
have been aware that his audience was susceptible to the views of Gnostic
teachers in the School of Alexandria, and he was highly critical of their
teaching on marriage and creation. The use of marriage was, he argued,
permitted in the service of God, and marriage was therefore no obstacle to
the attainment of Christian perfection for either the faithful or their leaders.
Evidence of the more radical ascetic impulse in the Alexandrian schools
is most apparent in the life and writings of Origen, who had reportedly
accepted castration in his early twenties, although subsequently preached
against such a literal interpretation of Christ’s praise for those who ‘made
themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom’. However, virginity was
still lauded in Origen’s writings as a state which provided a bridge between


 See for example Ignatius, ‘Letter to Polycarp’ c.5, discussed in chapter one above.

  C. Cochini, The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (San Francisco, 199) pp.
147, 150–51, citing G. Bickell, ‘Der Colibat eine apostolische Anordnung’, Zeitschrift
fur Katholische Theologie, 2 (1878): 20–64 and ‘Der Colibat dennoch eine apostolische
Anordnung’, Zeitschrift fur Katholische Theologie, 3 (1879): 792–99; F.X. Funk, ‘Der
Colibat keine apostolische Anordnung’, Tübinger theologische Quartalschrift, 61 (1880):
202–21 and ‘Colibat und Priesterehe im Christlichen Alterum’, in Kirchengeschichtliche
Abhandlungen und Unterschungen, I (1897): 121–55; E.F. Vacandard, Les Origines du
Celibat Ecclesiastique (Paris, 1905).

  Clement, Stromata [PG 9] 3.6.52.4; 7.11.64.2; P. Brown, Body and Society Men,
Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christian Society (Columbia, 1988), chapter 6.

  Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew [PG 13]: 15:1–3.
 Celibacy and Marriage in East and West 61

earth and heaven. Just as God had come into the world through the body
of a virgin, he wrote, so those who committed themselves to perpetual
continence acquired a special position as representatives of the divine. In
his sermons on Numbers and Levicitus, Origen presented freedom from sin
as a necessary precondition for those in the service of the Lord. Perpetual
prayer and sacrifice required a perpetual chastity, which was not possible
for those who were married, even if they were to follow the instructions
of the apostle and abstain from one another, on a temporary basis, in
order to make time for prayer. Complete chastity was, therefore, required
of those who served as priests under the new law. Even if continence
was not demanded explicitly of the clergy by law, it is apparent that by
the third century the connection between ministry and chastity was being
articulated strongly in the schools of the East.
Such views continued to be expressed in the writings of the Fathers
in the East in the centuries that followed. Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea,
devoted one section of his Demonstratio Evangelica (c.315) to the nature
and dignity of the Christian priesthood. While the priests of the Old Law
were permitted, even expected, to be married men with families, Eusebius
argued that for those devoted to Christian ministry it would be fitting to
abstain from the use of their marriage. There was much in Scripture in
praise of Christian marriage, but, he suggested, the specific calling of the
priest required a total commitment to service which was not possible for
those still encumbered by the demands of matrimony. Eusebius’ Church
History certainly provided evidence of the continued presence of married
men among the leaders of the church, evidence which was to be cited by
the defenders of clerical marriage in later generations, but his own writings
testify to a preference, if not a requirement, for clerical continence. Such
preferences, however, continued to be balanced against the asceticism of
heretical groups, and even writers who argued for the positive contribution
of a continent priesthood were often also forceful in their defence of the
benefits of marriage. Epiphanius of Constantia, writing in the late fourth
century, was strident in his criticisms of those such as the Montanists


  Brown, Body and Society, pp. 161–76.

  Origen Homilies on Numbers [PG 12] 23.3; Homilies on Leviticus [PG 12] 6.6.

  The practical situation was most likely rather more complex. As Audet notes, the ideals
expressed by Origen were not necessarily grounded in the reality of the times in which he lived:
J-P Audet, Mariage et Celibat dans le service pastorale de l’eglise (Paris, 1967), pp. 10–11.

 Eusebius, Demonstratio Evangelica [PG 22.81]; Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp.
180–81; E. Schillebeeckx, Clerical Celibacy Under Fire. A Critical Appraisal (London and
Sydney, 1968), p. 25.

  For the identification of married bishops, see Eusebius, Historica Ecclesiastica [PG
20] V.24.26–7; Audet, Mariage, pp. 20–22.
62 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

who disparaged Christian marriage, but also clear in his articulation of

the merits of virginity and chastity. In the Expositio Fidei, Epiphanius
presented virginity as the foundation of the church, and extolled the value
of continence and widowhood. Chastity was identified as a central part
of Christian priesthood, and those who served in the church were to be
chosen ideally from the ranks of the virgins, or monastics, or, failing that,
the widowed or continently married. Those ordained to the priesthood
who went on to father children, he claimed, did so out of human weakness
rather than custom.10 The intention here was not to disparage marriage,
and Epiphanius argued in his writings against heresy that both marriage
and virginity were states commended by God. However, continence,
including continence within marriage, was presented as a precondition for
admission to the clerical estate, except in cases of pastoral need.11
The continence that was demanded within marriage from priests who
had taken wives prior to their ordination was, in the eyes of many, as
strict a discipline as celibacy. Commenting upon Paul’s Letter to Timothy
and the recommendation that the bishop be ‘the husband of one wife’,
for example, St John Chrysostom argued that there was in reality no
difference between an unmarried and married bishop in the manner of
their living. A married bishop, if he were to devote himself fully to the
service of God, was expected to live as if he had no wife. Marriage was
not a bar to salvation, and where necessary conditions prevailed, it was
permissible for a married man to serve as a bishop in the church ‘though
it is difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven, there have
frequently been rich people who did so; the same is true for marriage’.12
As Cochini reminds us, such sentiments present an indirect witness to the
practice of the fourth century church rather than a canonical statement on
the subject of clerical marriage and continence.13 However, the weight of
evidence from the patristic writings suggests that clerical continence was
at least widely assumed, and this apparent expectation that the married
clergy would practice continence was commented upon by Jerome in his
response to the complaints of Vigilantius. The custom in the East, Jerome
argued, was, by this time, clerical celibacy, as demonstrated in the churches
of Antioch and Alexandria. Despite this optimism, however, even in the
fifth century there was still a variety of local custom. Socrates’ Historia

10
 Epiphanius, Expositio Fidei [PG 42] 823ff.
11
 Epiphanius, Expositio Fidei c.21; Adversus Haeres [PG 41], cc.48 and 59.
12
  Commentary on the First Epistle to Timothy c.3 [PG 62.549a]; a rather less positive
view of marriage was presented in Chrysostom’s writings on virginity, in which he suggested
that the virgin life was as superior to marriage as heaven was to earth: Lib.de Virg. C.x. For
a fuller discussion, see Brown, Body and Society, chapter 15.
13
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 292.
 Celibacy and Marriage in East and West 63

Ecclesiastica described the separation of priests from their wives as a

novelty, and presented a picture of priests and bishops who continued to
live with their wives ‘as sister and brother’ in the church of Thessalony,
Greece, and Macedonia.14
More concrete evidence concerning the canonical status of married
clergy in the East is to be found in the records of provincial and ecumenical
councils that defined the discipline of the church over a period of five
centuries until the decision reached at the Council in Trullo (692), which
established a distinctive praxis, if not sentiment, in the eastern churches.
The first council at which clerical celibacy and continence were discussed
in detail was the Council of Ancyra held in 314. The deliberations of the
council were to be far-reaching in both chronological and geographical
terms. Although attendance was small, with only around a dozen bishops
present, the lists of subscriptions suggest a broad representation of churches
in Asia Minor and Syria. The decrees of the council were transmitted in
a number of manuscript versions, and their content varies, particularly
on the subject of the marriage of clergy. The oldest Greek text dates from
the tenth century, but three Latin manuscript versions from the period
between the mid-fifth and early sixth centuries are extant, of which the
version of Denys the Minor is the most commonly used.15 In this text,
the tenth canon permitted, with Episcopal concession, the marriage of
deacons. The council determined that deacons, prior to their ordination,
were permitted to declare an intention to marry, but that those who did
not make such a declaration were to be prohibited from entering into a
subsequent marriage on pain of deprivation.16 The permission to marry
was based upon notice of intention and individual capacity; such marriages
were admitted where the ordinand did not believe that he had the ability to
maintain a life of chastity outside marriage: ‘Quicumque Diaconi constituti
in ipsa constitutione testificati sunt et dixerunt oportere se uxores ducere,
com non possint sic manere, ii si uxorem postea duxerint sint in ministerio
eo quod hoc sit illis ab episcopo concessum’. Such a concession was clearly
out of line with the emerging canonical tradition in the West, which did not

14
  Jerome, Adversus Vigiantium [PL 23] l. c.2; Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica [PG 67]
5.22.
15
  P. Joannou, Discipline générale antique. t.I, ptie. 1. Les canons des conciles
oecuméniques (IIe–IXe s.)–t.1, ptie. 2. Les canons des synodes particuliers (IVe–IXe s.)–
t.II. Les canons des pères grecs (Grottaferrata, 1962–4), II.2. p. 64; Hefele-Leclerq offer
a summary: Histoire des Conciles d’Apres les Documents Originaux, C.H. Hefele and
J. Leclerq, (eds) (19 vols, Paris, 1907–52). I.i.299 n. 1; see also R.B. Rackam, ‘The texts of
the canons of Ancyra’, in Studia Biblica et Ecclesiastica, 3 (1891): 139–216, and Cochini,
Apostolic Origins, pp. 169ff.
16
  Hefele-Leclerq, Conciles, I.1.213–3 c.10.
64 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

provide for subsequent marriages after ordination.17 However, Christian

Cochini’s closer study of the surviving versions of the Ancyran decrees
raises the possibility that the Fathers at the council did not intend that the
tenth canon should permit such unions. In a sixth-century Latin translation
of the canons undertaken by Archbishop Martin of Duma, and perhaps
manipulated in order to ensure concordance with the law of the West, the
tenth canon demanded that chastity be promised by deacons at ordination,
and that without this promise, the candidate should not be ordained. Such
an understanding is not without its problems.18 It is possible, for example,
that the Archbishop was working from a different version of the decrees,
not least because, as Cochini notes, the tenth canon in the form that Denys
presented it was not confirmed by subsequent councils of the Byzantine
church, or indeed in imperial law.19 In the absence of any references to
the post-ordination marriage of deacons at later councils, Cochini’s
contention that the intention of the fathers at Ancyra was to separate those
subdeacons who wished to marry and continue to exercise the functions of
the subdiaconate from those who were prepared to commit to celibacy and
therefore be ordained deacons seems convincing.
Shortly after the Council of Ancyra, another assembly of bishops took
place in Neocaesarea. The council promulgated fifteen canons, later given
ecumenical authority at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the first of which
prohibited the marriage of priests after ordination. Those who transgressed,
like those found guilty of fornication, were to be subject to deprivation.20
The canon made no mention of clergy in other orders, particularly the
deacons who had been the focus of the discussions at Ancyra, and,
interestingly, given the law of clerical continence that was taking shape
in the West, the Fathers made no mention of the use of marriage after
ordination. On this basis, H.C. Lea argued that there was nothing in the
canons of Ancyra or Neocaesarea that threatened to disturb the conjugal
relations of clergy and their wives, lending weight to his assertion that
any such law would clearly be regarded as an innovation.21 However, it

17
 See for example Council of Elvira discussed at pp. 41–3 above.
18
  C.W. Barlow, Martini Episcopi Bracarensis Opera Omnia (New Haven, Conn.,
1950), p. 85; Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 171ff.
19
 R. Gryson, les Origines du Celibat Ecclesiastique du Premier au Septieme Siecle
(Gembloux, 1970), p. 125, conceded that the concession, if it were ever made, soon fell into
abeyance.
20
  Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissa Collectio, J.D. Mansi (ed.), continued and
reprinted by L. Petit and J.P. Martin (53 vols in 60, Paris/Leipzig: Weller, 1901–1927). pp.
539–51; Joannou, Discipline, I.2.75; D. Constantelos, ‘Marriage and Celibacy of Clergy in
the Orthodox Church’, in W. Bassett and Peter Huizing (eds), Celibacy in the Church (New
York, 1972), pp. 30–38, especially p. 33.
21
  H.C. Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy (2 vols, London 1907) vol. 1, p. 47.
 Celibacy and Marriage in East and West 65

would be valid to assume that the absence of such a prohibition, in a

conciliar decree directed against marriage after orders, need not imply an
acceptance of the continued use of marriage by those priests who had
taken wives prior to entering the church. After all, the connection between
the requirement to continence after ordination and the prohibition of
subsequent marriages presumably lies in the use of marriage; subsequent
marriages could be considered invalid on the basis of non-consummation if
permanent abstinence was demanded from those clergy who were married
at the time that they had received orders.
Part of the reasoning that underpinned Lea’s interpretation of the
canons of Ancyra and Neocaesarea was the determination to demonstrate
that the participants at the Council of Nicaea (325) could not have
intended its decrees to be read as an attack on clerical marriage, since such
an innovation would have required a more explicit articulation than the
Nicene canons offer. It is easy to see why the deliberations of the council
were so critical to protagonists on both sides of the debate over clerical
celibacy. With ecumenical authority, its canons rapidly acquired a prominent
position in the canonical collections, and were repeatedly referenced by
subsequent councils and popes. To lay claim to the inheritance of the first
great ecumenical council was to lend substantial weight to any argument
over the origins of the law of celibacy. The decisions taken at Nicaea, but
also the legend that developed surrounding the apparent intervention of
one ‘Paphnutius’ in the discussion of clerical discipline, exerted a profound
influence over both subsequent legislation, and the shape of later debates
over the validity and historicity of the celibacy rule. However, the debate
over the view of the Nicene fathers on clerical marriage revolved around
not only the figure of Paphnutius and his involvement in the discussions, but
also the vocabulary and meaning of the third canon agreed at the council.
In Lea’s interpretation, the reference in the third canon to ‘subintrodoctam
mulierem’ was deliberately constructed to exclude the wives of priests;
these women, along with the mothers, sisters, and aunts of priests were
‘above suspicion’. The Fathers at Nicaea, he concluded, had no intention
of preventing the cohabitation of married clergy with their wives, and
the canon offered no support to those who would seek to root clerical
celibacy in the discipline of the fourth century church. It was only when
later writers attempted to apply the words of the canon to clerical wives
that the apparent dichotomy between the third canon and the narrative of
Paphnutius’ intervention became problematic.22
In contrast, Christian Cochini concludes that there was a common
consensus in subsequent synods and councils that the intention of the third
canon was indeed to preserve the chastity of the higher members of the

22
 Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, pp. 48–9.
66 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

clergy, who were obliged to live in perfect continence, by isolating them

from the temptations of women. It was only permitted for a priest to live
with his wife after his ordination if she also promised continence, and the
consequence of such a promise was that she would no longer be regarded
as ‘suspicious’.23 This is certainly a persuasive explanation for the omission
of clerical wives from the third canon, especially if the text is taken to refer
only to those clergy who were not permitted to exercise their marriage
rights. Higher clergy, whether married-continents or celibates, would be
subject to the canon, but those who were married and in lower orders would
not, because the use of marriage remained open to them. The third canon
was based upon, and consolidated, already-established expectations about
the relationship between married priests and their wives, and particularly
the assumption that those who received higher orders would commit to
perpetual continence. If the Fathers at Nicaea did not believe themselves
to have innovated in relation to the position of the married clergy, it seems
plausible that their conclusions were informed by a recognised law and
practice, and that no further clarification was required. The likely presence
at the Council of Nicaea of Bishop Ossius of Cordoba has led both Gryson
and Hefele-Leclerq to conclude that it was the Council of Elvira that provided
the impetus behind the discussion of clerical celibacy in 325, and in the
western canonical tradition the third canon is commonly bound up with
the discipline of clerical celibacy that dates to Elvira. When more forceful
action was taken in the Latin church of the eleventh and twelfth centuries
to eradicate clerical immorality and incontinence, the wives of the clergy
ceased to be regarded as above suspicion, and this shift in perception was
reflected in later summaries of the Nicene canon.24 However the trajectory
in the East was rather different. The practice which had been affirmed at
Ancyra and Neocaesarea would enable the third canon at Nicaea to be
accepted as the custom of the church, and subsequent references to the third
canon in the East, including fifth century Theodosian Code, tended to make
explicit reference to clerical wives in the list of women with whom clergy

23
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 194; see also R. Cholij, Clerical Celibacy in East and
West (Leominster, 1988), pp. 81–2.
24
  The similarity in the tone of the legislation at the two councils led Hefele-Leclerq to
conclude (I.1.621) that ‘cette coincidence porterait a faire croire que c’est un des Peres d’Elvire,
Osius, qui proposa au concile de Nicee la loi sur le celibat’; cf Gryson, Origines, pp. 87ff;
Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, pp. 79ff. See, for example, the third canon of the Lateran Council
of 1123: ‘We absolutely forbid priests, deacons, and subdeacons to associate with concubines
and women, or to live with women other than such as the Nicene Council for reasons of
necessity permitted, namely, the mother, sister, or aunt, or any such person concerning whom
no suspicion could arise’: H.J. Schroeder, Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text,
Translation and Commentary (St. Louis, 1937), pp. 177–94.
 Celibacy and Marriage in East and West 67

could be permitted to reside.25 However, at the Council in Trullo of 692,

it was suggested that the Nicene canon was intended to apply to celibate
clergy alone; the failure to mention clerical wives implied that the canon was
of more limited scope. At the second Council of Nicaea in 787, and in the
views of later canonists, it was assumed that the third canon of 325 referred
only to unmarried bishops, celibates and monastics, and was not intended
in any way to limit the activity of married clergy and their wives.26
At a superficial level, there is some common ground to be found in the
assumption that the third canon did not apply to the wives of the clergy, but
this common ground is narrow, and masks a fundamental disagreement.
For Lea, clerical wives were not mentioned because the council made
no attempt to regulate clerical marriage and its use, but for Cochini and
Cholij the absence of any explicit reference to married clerics simply
reflected the assumption that such women were already above suspicion
by virtue of their promised continence. When confronted by the story of
a debate during the council, in which Paphnutius intervened to prevent
the prohibition of clerical marriage, the implications of this disagreement
are apparent. In Lea’s eyes, the Paphnutius legend was unsettling only for
those later writers struggling to find evidence of a celibate priesthood in
the early church. If it is accepted that the third canon made no attempt to
regulate clerical marriage, the account of Paphnutius’ intervention can be
readily accommodated. However, if it is argued that the council attempted
to legislate for clerical celibacy, the persuasive powers of Paphnutius
in convincing the bishops to do otherwise are more problematic. Such
tensions in the evidence might explain why the apparent contribution
of an obscure figure to discussions at one council was to exert such a
powerful influence over the writing of the history of clerical celibacy and
marriage in the centuries to come. From rather uncertain beginnings, the
legend of Paphnutius’ defence of clerical marriage was to become a staple
of the debate over the law of celibacy in the twelfth century, during the
Reformation, and indeed in more recent scholarship. The legend was

25
  J. Lynch, ‘Marriage and Celibacy of the Clergy. The Discipline of the Western Church:
An Historico-Canonical Synopsis’, The Jurist, 32 (1972): 14–38, especially 24.
26
  For a fuller discussion, see Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 83; canon 18. ‘Be
irreproachable even for those outside, says the divine apostle. Now for women to live in the
houses of bishops or in monasteries is a cause for every sort of scandal. Therefore if anybody
is discovered to be keeping a woman, whether a slave or free, in the bishop’s house or in a
monastery in order to undertake some service, let him be censured, and if he persists let him
be deposed. Should it happen that women are living in the suburban residence and the bishop
or monastic superior wishes to journey there, no woman should be allowed to undertake
any sort of work during the time that the bishop or monastic superior is present; she should
stay on her own in some other area until the bishop has retired, in order to avoid all possible
criticism’, in Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, Norman P. Tanner (ed.) (London, 1990).
68 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

certainly not part of the canonical record of the council, but its polemical
potential ensured it a prominent position in the hermeneutic of the third
Nicene canon.
The story was widely disseminated through the Greek historian
Sozomen’s assertion that Paphnutius had intervened at the Council of
Nicaea in order to stall an attempt to impose absolute continence upon
married clerics. Paphnutius’ intervention was critical to the understanding
of the third canon, because if such an attempt was made, it would imply
that the contested canon was not intended to refer to married priests and
their wives. The origins of the story lay not in Sozomen’s work, but in
the rather more detailed narrative presented in Socrates’ Ecclesiastical
History. The legend ran thus:

Paphnutius then was bishop of one of the cities in Upper Thebes: he was a
man so favoured divinely that extraordinary miracles were done by him. In the
time of the persecution he had been deprived of one of his eyes. The emperor
honoured this man exceedingly, and often sent for him to the palace, and kissed
the part where the eye had been torn out. So great devoutness characterized the
emperor Constantine. Let this single fact respecting Paphnutius suffice: I shall
now explain another thing which came to pass in consequence of his advice,
both for the good of the Church and the honor of the clergy. It seemed fit to the
bishops to introduce a new law into the Church, that those who were in holy
orders, I speak of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, should have no conjugal
intercourse with the wives whom they had married while still laymen. Now
when discussion on this matter was impending, Paphnutius having arisen in
the midst of the assembly of bishops, earnestly entreated them not to impose
so heavy a yoke on the ministers of religion: asserting that ‘marriage itself is
honorable, and the bed undefiled’; urging before God that they ought not to
injure the Church by too stringent restrictions. ‘For all men,’ said he, ‘cannot
bear the practice of rigid continence; neither perhaps would the chastity of
the wife of each be preserved’: and he termed the intercourse of a man with
his lawful wife chastity. It would be sufficient, he thought, that such as had
previously entered on their sacred calling should abjure matrimony, according
to the ancient tradition of the Church: but that none should be separated from
her to whom, while yet unordained, he had been united. And these sentiments
he expressed, although himself without experience of marriage, and, to speak
plainly, without ever having known a woman: for from a boy he had been
brought up in a monastery, and was specially renowned above all men for
his chastity. The whole assembly of the clergy assented to the reasoning of
Paphnutius: wherefore they silenced all further debate on this point, leaving it
to the discretion of those who were husbands to exercise abstinence if they so
wished in reference to their wives. Thus much concerning Paphnutius.27

27
 Socrates, Hist. Ecc. [PG 67] 1.11; see Sozomen’s similar account, Lib.1 c.22 [Die
Griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der Ersten drei Jahrhundert, 50.44].
 Celibacy and Marriage in East and West 69

The Fathers at Nicaea, in this account, had determined to introduce a new

law, which would require total continence from clergy who had married
prior to their ordination. While such continence was, it appeared, possible
for Paphnutius, whose credentials were here presented, he articulated
a concern that the inability of all men to live in continence might bring
scandal and immorality into the church. If such a debate did take place, it
was evidence of both the novelty of clerical continence and celibacy, and of
a deep-seated concern that attempts to regulate the lives of married clergy
ran counter to biblical authority and might present an occasion for sin. In
this respect, it is easy to see why Paphnutius became such a popular figure
in arguments against clerical celibacy. Despite its condemnation by Pope
Gregory VII, the story of Paphnutius found its way into canonical collections
in the West, including Gratian’s Decretum.28 It was a prominent part of the
condemnation of the eleventh century reform of clerical marriage in the
Rescript of Ulric, and was cited by William Tyndale, Martin Luther, and
Philip Melanchthon in their defences of clerical marriage in the sixteenth
century.29 The story has continued to be debated in more recent scholarship.
Paphnutius had a key role to play in nineteenth century exchanges on the
history of clerical celibacy, and the story of his intervention at Nicaea was
detailed in both von Hefele’s Conciliengeschichte (1855), and in Funk’s
continuation. Von Hefele argued that the law which Paphnutius sought
to block was that which had been accepted and promulgated at Elvira,
and that Paphnutius’ views were in keeping with the praxis of the East
established at Ancyra and outlined in the Apostolic Constitutions. His
intervention was a defence of tradition, and an attempt to prevent the
implementation of the novel laws of the West which imposed continence
upon the married clergy. Elphège Vacandard cited the legend in his study
of clerical celibacy for the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (1905),
and Roger Gryson argued that the stance taken by Paphnutius was readily
accommodated into the practice of the Eastern church.30
However, the veracity of the legend of Paphnutius has been vigorously
challenged. As the story became popular in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, and was reproduced in pamphlets directed against the imposition
of clerical celibacy, Gregory VII intervened to condemn the narrative as a
fiction. Bernold of Constance, in his exchange with Alboin in the 1070s,
argued that the story must be false, since it was incompatible with the

28
  Pars I Dist 31 c.12, based upon the narrative in Cassiodorus’ compilation, the
Historia Tripartita.
29
  For a discussion of the Rescript, see pp. 171–2 below; On reformation uses see pp.
171–2 below, and H.L. Parish, Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation (Aldershot,
2000) pp. 90, 94.
30
  Gryson, Les Origines, p. 92.
70 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

third canon of the council, and concluded that Sozomen had presented
inaccurate information.31 Baronius’ Annales, printed between 1588 and
1607, dismissed the story altogether. The third canon at Nicaea had made
no mention of the wives of the clergy, he argued, and it was clear that a law
of celibacy had been agreed, making it impossible to argue that Paphnutius
had prevented its passage. Baronius’ assertions were vigorously criticised
in a strident response from the Lutheran Georg Calixtus, but the authority
of Sozomen’s narrative continued to be questioned. The seventeenth
century editor of Sozomen’s history, Valesius, dismissed the story as an
invention, lacking any foundation in the records of the council, while the
Augustinian Christian Lupus argued that Paphnutius’ comments referred
to the subdiaconate alone, and were not intended to countenance clerical
marriage for those in higher orders.32 Robert Bellarmine simply rejected
the story as an invention on the part of Socrates, who on this occasion,
he argued, had betrayed his sympathies for the Novatian heresy. In the
eighteenth century, Zaccaria’s Storia polemica del celibato sacro cited the
legend, but accorded it no authority. The most fundamental criticisms
are of the insubstantial nature of the evidence. The figure of Paphnutius
is not mentioned in other authoritative sources, particularly Eusebius’
Ecclesiastical History, and although Socrates claimed to have received
information about the council from a personal source, the passing of
time makes this assertion dubious. There is a reference to Paphnutius and
to the deliberations at Nicaea in the history of the council composed by
Gelasius of Kyzikos (d. c.475), who suggested that in light of the warnings
of Paphnutius about the dangers inherent in imposing celibacy upon a
clerical estate that was unable and unwilling, the council opted to demand
only optional celibacy for the benefit of the church.33 However, the paucity
of evidence to support Socrates’ narrative has led many to condemn the
story as a fabrication, and a fabrication that was apparently recognised
as such in the centuries that followed.34 In 1968, the Paphnutius story
was dismissed in a detailed examination of its origins and foundations by
Friedhelm Winkelmann as a ‘progressive hagiographical confabulation’.
The legend, he claimed, had evolved and become corrupted over time,
rendering the identification of the real Paphnutius increasingly complex.
Greek sources certainly record figures of that name in the early fourth
century, but none held an Episcopal title. Indeed this status, Winkelmann

31
  For a fuller discussion of Bernold see p. 116 below.
32
  C. Lupus, Synodorum generalium et provincialium statuta et canones cum notis et
historicis dissertationibus (Louvain, 1665–73).
33
  Gelasius of Kyzikos, Historia Concilii Nicaeni XXXII [PG 85:1336–7].
34
  A.M. Cardinal Stickler, The Case for Clerical Celibacy. Its Historical Development
& Theological Foundations (tr. Brian Ferme, San Francisco, 1995), pp. 62–3.
 Celibacy and Marriage in East and West 71

argued, was accorded first by Rufinus, and later cemented by Socrates and
Sozomen, who positioned Paphnutius in Thebes. The most accurate lists
of participants at the council do not include the name of Paphnutius, and
even in the variants in which his presence is recorded there is a marked
lack of consistency.35
Given the importance attached to the Council of Nicaea throughout the
history of the church, it would be expected that the story of Paphnutius would
acquire a similar authority as part of the history of the council. However,
in neither East nor West was there an attempt to ground any subsequent
legislation on Paphnutius’ intervention. Christian Cochini effectively
undermines the arguments of Gryson that the practice recommended by
Paphnutius was to become the discipline of the Greek church, on the basis
that there is no evidence that early canonical tradition in the East permitted
the use of marriage after ordination. When the Trullan Fathers legislated for
temporary continence for the married lower clergy, this was done without
any reference to the Paphnutius legend, despite the support that it might
have offered for their stance. Either the story was unknown in the East, or
it was known, but recognised as a fabrication and therefore excluded from
both subsequent conciliar deliberations, and from commentaries on canon
law, including the Canonum Adauctum of the twelfth century.36 The failure
of the Trullan Council to make use of the Paphnutius story might also be
attributed to the interpretation of the ‘discretion’ that Socrates asserted
was accorded to married priests with regard to abstinence. If this discretion
is seen, as Roman Cholij does, as being exercised in relation to strict and
perpetual continence, rather than temporary continence, Paphnutius’
suggestion is more evidently in keeping with contemporary practice, as
Socrates described it.37 However, even this position is not concordant
with the law of the eastern church as laid down in Trullo, which explains
the silence of the council on the subject, and further undermines Hefele’s
assertion that Paphnutius’ demands were in harmony with the practice of
the Greek church. Even in the polemical exchange between Nicetas and
Humbert in the eleventh century, no mention was made of Paphnutius in
defence of the tradition of the Greek church.38
The position of married priests in the Eastern church was defended
at the Council of Gangres, which met in 340. Some twenty canons were

35
  F. Winkelmann, ‘Paphnutios, der Bekenner und Bischof’, Probleme der Koptischen
Literatur, 1 (1968): 145–53; E. Honigmann, ‘The Original Lists of the Members of the
Councils of Nicaea, the Robber-Synod, and the Council of Chalcedon’, Byzantion, 16
(1942/3): 20–28.
36
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 199–200; Stickler, Clerical Celibacy, p. 64.
37
  Hist. Ecc. V.22 [PG 67. 637a] quoted in Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 85.
38
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 88.
72 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

promulgated by this assembly of thirteen bishops, and both the synodal

letter and the content of the canons suggest that the main focus of the
council was the threat posed by the Eustathian heresy.39 The fourth canon
stated ‘if anyone affirms that one should not receive communion during
the holy sacrifice celebrated by a married priest, let him be anathema’.40
It is clear that there were married clergy who continued to officiate at the
altar, presumably those who had married prior to ordination, but also
that there was some debate surrounding the legitimacy of their service.
Such debate was liable to have been spawned by the Eustathian antipathy
toward marriage, and in particular the proposition that communion was
not to be received from the hands of married priests; there is certainly
nothing in the canon to suggest that the council intended to legislate in
favour of clerical marriage after ordination. Neither is there any obvious
sense that the canon was intended to permit the continued use of marriage
by those priests who had taken orders after marriage. As Cochini suggests,
the most likely target were either widows or continent married clergy,
whose position had perhaps been undermined by the criticisms of radical
heretics who saw marriage in a negative light.41 The canon was not used to
support the Trullan decision on married priests, but it did, however, cause
problems for later writers seeking to demonstrate the antiquity of the law
of clerical celibacy, and argue against the celebration of the sacraments
by married clerics. Manegold of Lautenbach’s Liber ad Geberhardum,
composed in 1086 to counter Wenric of Trier’s polemic against Pope
Gregory VII, argued that the pope had been too lenient in his treatment
of the married clergy. With the weight of patristic testimony on his side,
Manegold argued, Gregory should have mounted a more determined
campaign against clerical marriage. In particular, the pope was quite
justified in his instruction that the faithful were to refuse the sacraments
of married clergy, the decree of Gangres notwithstanding.42 Such views on
the sacraments of married priests were echoed in the work of Bernold of
Constance, thus necessitating his rather dismissive attitude towards the

39
  For further information, and detail on the date of the council, see Joannou, Discipline,
1.2.92; the council featured in the collections of Dionysius and Isidore, and through the latter
its decrees found their way into Gratian’s Decretum, Dist XXVIII c.15.
40
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 91; Hefele-Leclerq, Conciles, I.1.1034 c.4.
41
  Mansi, Sacrum Conciliorum, v.2.1095ff; Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 201–2;
citing C. Knetes, ‘Ordination and Matrimony in the Eastern Orthodox Church’, Journal
of Theological Studies, 11 (1910): 481–513 for a discussion of criticisms of marriage and
married clergy; see also Schillebeeckx, Clerical Celibacy, p. 24.
42
  Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum saeculis XI. et XII. Conscripti I, Ernst
Dümmler, Friedrich Thaner, Lotkar von Heinemann (eds) (Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae
Historica, 1891), pp. 308–430 especially c.2.
 Celibacy and Marriage in East and West 73

canon of Gangres that seemed to stand in opposition.43 The Council of

Gangres was widely cited in defence of clerical marriage, or at least in
defence of the validity of the celebration of the sacraments by married clergy
during the era of the Gregorian reform. The Italian author of the Tractatus
pro clericorum connubio certainly saw the fourth canon as evidence that the
eleventh century injunctions against the sacraments of married clergy were
erroneous and ran contrary to the traditions and canons of the church.44
The canons had already acquired a new polemical weight during the ninth
century, when the patriarch of Constantinople, Photius, condemned the
‘errors’ of the Latin church and its clergy in Bulgaria, and particularly the
perpetual and compulsory celibacy demanded of priests. Pope Nicholas’
reply to the questions of the recently converted Boris I suggested that the
married clergy were reprehensible, although their position in the church
was not to be denied. The issue appeared to be one of continence rather
than marriage; it was the continued use of marriage to which the pope
objected, and even then he stopped short of suggesting that the sacraments
of incontinent clergy (in either geographical context) were invalidated by
their actions.45 It was this assertion of the efficacy of the ministrations of
married clergy that was to make the fourth canon so significant, and its
use by Greek commentators in their criticisms of the law and practice of
the Latin clergy was focused primarily around this issue, rather than the
question of whether the use of marriage was permitted to the priesthood.46
However, even if the impact of the council upon the praxis of the Greek
church was minimal, its concrete denunciation of those who refused the
ministrations of married clergy was to ensure that its fourth canon occupied
a significant place in later debates over clerical celibacy in the West.
A century later, at the fourth ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451),
the focus of the discussion was the issue of the marriage of lectors and
cantors. More than five hundred bishops, the majority drawn from the

43
  Bernold of Constance, Apologeticus, 17–19 in LdL II, esp. 83.
44
  Tractatus pro Clericorum Connubio, LdL III.591–2; see also Burchard, Decretum
3.75 [PL 140:689].
45
  Responsa Nicolai ad Consulta Bulgarorum, [PL 119.978–1016, especially 1006d].
Anne Barstow, in her study of married clergy in the era of the Gregorian reform, has highlighted
a neglected chapter in the history of the debate. The monk Ratramnus responded to the
arguments advanced by the pope, and in his defence of papal primacy also set out a defence of
clerical celibacy in his Contra Graecorum Opposita [PL 121.324–32] chapter 6. Despite the
evident esteem in which marriage was held by Christ and the disciples, he argued, it was not
possible for a priest to serve both God and his wife. The decree at Nicaea then, Ratramnus
argued, became a prohibition of clerical marriage, because the wives of the clergy were not
mentioned in the list of those women who were above suspicion. A.L. Barstow, Married Priests
and the Reforming Papacy, The Eleventh Century Debates (Lewiston, NY: 1982), pp. 36–7.
46
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, pp. 94–5.
74 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

East, attended debates over issues of doctrine and practice that ranged from
the humanity and divinity of Christ to a variety of disciplinary questions.47
The fourteenth canon attempted to impose limitations upon the women
that cantors and lectors might take as their wives,

Since in certain provinces readers and cantors have been allowed to marry, the
sacred synod decrees that none of them is permitted to marry a wife of heterodox
views. If those thus married have already had children, and if they have already
had the children baptised among heretics, they are to bring them into the
communion of the catholic church. If they have not been baptised, they may no
longer have them baptised among heretics; nor indeed marry them to a heretic
or a Jew or a Greek, unless of course the person who is to be married to the
orthodox party promises to convert to the orthodox faith. If anyone transgresses
this decree of the sacred synod, let him be subject to canonical penalty.48

However, the council made no clear statement on clerical continence after

ordination, either for the higher clergy or for those in lower orders to
whom the fourteenth canon applied. There was no obvious attempt made
to prohibit marriage to cantors and lectors, but the decree does not make
clear whether such marriage were part of a longstanding ecclesiastical
tradition, or simply tolerated under local practice and custom in some
parts of the church. Again, perhaps, the significance of the canon to the
debate was to lie in its exploitation by later writers and canonists. The
author of the Tractatus pro clericorum connubio, arguing that marriage
was permitted to those in holy orders who had not made a promise of
continence, cited the Council of Ancyra and the ratification of its decrees
at Chalcedon in support of the legality of clerical marriages.49 The freedom
to marry in lower orders, which appeared to be implicitly accepted at
Chalcedon, was certainly accepted as part of the apostolic tradition by the
Fathers in Trullo in 691.
It was at the Council in Trullo that the most significant, and also the
most controversial, statement on clerical marriage in any of the councils of
the Eastern church was to be made. The council in Trullo (literally, ‘in the
hall’) was convoked late in 691, with the purpose of promulgating decrees
that would enforce the decisions taken at the fifth and sixth ecumenical
councils of 553 and 680–1. Some two and a half centuries had elapsed since
the enactment at Chalcedon of the previous disciplinary decrees intended
to regulate the conduct of the clergy, and the determination of the Trullan
council to attempt to breathe new life into the traditional laws of the

47
  Tanner, Ecumenical Councils, pp. 75–6.
48
  Tanner, Ecumenical Councils, p. 76.
49
  MGH LdL, vol. 3, p. 592.
 Celibacy and Marriage in East and West 75

church is therefore understandable. The church was also confronted by the

deepening divisions opened up by the Monothelitic controversy, political
uncertainty, and the advance of Islam which had left Constantinople as the
sole surviving patriarchate. The decrees were focused primarily on matters
of discipline, and took what Cholij has described as a hostile stance towards
other churches, including those of Rome and Armenia.50 The opening
decree of the council revealed an expectation that it would be treated as an
ecumenical council, but the failure of several of its decisions, particularly
those relating to the celibacy of the clergy, to find favour in Rome left its
decrees without papal ratification. Both Pope Sergius II and Pope John
XII refused to confirm the canons, and when papal approval was finally
obtained from Adrian I, it was limited to those canons which were deemed
to be in accordance with the already established laws and traditions of
the church.51 The reception of the canons in the western tradition was
generally hostile; Bede referred to the council as a ‘reprobate’ synod, and
Paul Casinensis as ‘erratic’. Writing in the eleventh century, Humbert
was equally dismissive, although some of the canons were presented in
Gratian’s Decretum.52 The text of the canons was published in the West in
the sixteenth century, and their position as part of the canonical tradition
of the eastern, although not universal church, accepted by Pope Sixtus V.
However, the refusal of the popes to give their full assent to the Trullan
decrees did not limit their impact and force in the East; the canons were
deemed to be of ecumenical standing at the second Council of Nicaea in
787 (although at least partially in the mistaken assumption that they had
the authority of the pope). The discipline that they established for the
married clergy has endured until the present day, and the synod in Trullo
is often regarded as the final statement on ecclesiastical discipline in the
East.53

50
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, pp. 5ff.
51
  Cholii, Clerical Celibacy, p. 6; Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 1933; Mansi,
Conciliorum, XII 3c and 164, 982; H.J. Hefele, Conciliengeschichte (Freiburg im Breisgau,
1973) 3.345–8.
52
  ‘Council in Trullo’, in C.G. Hebermann (ed.), Catholic Encyclopedia volume 4:
Clandestinity – Diocesan Chancery (15 vols, New York: Appleton, 1907–12); Paul Casinensis,
Historia gentis Langobardorum, in Scriptores rerum Langobardicarumet Italicarum saec.
VI–IX, Georg Waitz (ed.) (Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1878), pp. 45–187;
PL 145:402; Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 8.
53
  For discussion of the ‘ecumenical’ nature of the council, see Hefle-Leclerq, Conciles,
III.i.560ff; Barstow, Married Priests, pp. 28–9; Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 396ff, Cholij,
Clerical Celibacy, pp. 62ff; A. Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire (Madison Wisconsin,
1952), pp. 225ff; E.F. Vacandard, Les Origines du Celibact Ecclesiastique (Etudes de Critique
et d’histoire religieuse, 1re ser., Paris, 1905), p. 101.
76 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

The council affirmed obligatory celibacy for bishops, and prohibited

marriage to those in holy orders, but its import lay in the sanction that
it offered to the continued use of marriage by priests and deacons.54
The third canon was directed against those clergy who had entered into
second marriages, and those who had married women who were deemed
inappropriate spouses for priests. Reform was deemed necessary in order
that priests might be ‘pure and blameless’, and those who did not repent
of their sins were to be removed from office:

that he who has been joined in two marriages after his baptism, or has had a
concubine, cannot be bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, or at all on the sacerdotal
list; in like manner, that he who has taken a widow, or a divorced person, or a
harlot, or a servant, or an actress, cannot be bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, or
at all on the sacerdotal list.55

There was nothing particularly novel in this condemnation of twice-

married clerics; the issue of digamy had been addressed in previous
councils and in patristic literature in both East and West.56 As Cholij has
argued, the issue here seems to have been one of continence rather than
the illicit nature of such unions. To enter into a second marriage was to
concede to the demands of the flesh over those of the spirit, and there was
already an expectation that those who had taken holy orders would not
re-marry after the death of their spouse.57 If continence was demanded of
those in orders, including those clergy who had married prior to entering
the church, such a commitment surely extended also to the prohibition of
marriage, and indeed second marriage, after ordination.
This suggestion that the third canon, in its attempts to regulate the
marriages of priests, was inspired by the assumption that continence was
to be expected of all in higher orders makes sense in the context of the sixth
Trullan canon. Cholij suggests that there was little that was innovative
or indeed controversial about the sixth canon, which simply articulated
the natural consequences of the decision expressed at Elvira nearly four
centuries previously to demand continence from all who entered into higher

54
  The council and its decrees have been well studied by scholars in both East and
West. The fullest and most recent survey is that of Roman Cholij, but see also V. Laurent,
‘L’Oeuvre Canonique du Concile in Trullo 691–2’, Revue des Etudes Byzantine, 23 (1965):
7–41; Vacandard Les origines, p. 101; Joannou, Discipline, I.1.98.
55
  The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church, (tr. H.R. Percival), in
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series, P. Schaff and H. Wace (eds) (repr. Grand Rapids
MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1955), pp. 362–3.
56
 As, for example, at the Council of Ancyra 314.
57
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, pp. 15ff; the decree of the Council of Neocaesarea ‘if a
presbyter marry, let him be deposed’ [Joannou, Discipline, 1.2.75].
 Celibacy and Marriage in East and West 77

orders. The marriage of priests in higher orders had been prohibited at the
council of Neocaesarea, and even in the contested canons of the Council
of Ancyra it was established that clergy were not permitted to marry once
they had been ordained priest. The Fathers at the council were at pains
to establish the apostolic foundations of the tradition that they defined,
arguing that it had been determined in the Apostolic Canons that of ‘those
who are advanced to the clergy unmarried, only lectors and cantors are able
to marry’. On this basis, the council instructed that ‘it is in nowise lawful
for any subdeacon, deacon or presbyter after his ordination to contract
matrimony but if he shall have dared to do so, let him be deposed. And if
any of those who enter the clergy, wishes to be joined to a wife in lawful
marriage before he is ordained subdeacon, deacon, or presbyter, let it be
done’. The Fathers at Trullo also considered the obligatory nature of the
celibacy discipline for bishops, and the position of Episcopal wives. The
twelfth canon expressed the concern that those bishops who continued to
live with their wives were a cause of scandal in the church, and suggested
that would be better if the Episcopal state were beyond reproach. Canon
48 required that the wife of a bishop, upon his elevation and consecration,
be removed to a monastery where she would enjoy the provision of the
bishop, and might in some instances prove herself worthy to be appointed
as a deaconess.58 The separation of bishops from their wives was already
common practice in, for example, the church of Gaul, but the most likely
basis for the legislation at Trullo was the law of Justinian a century before
which had condemned cohabitation in an attempt to ensure that the
property of the church was not dispersed to the family of the bishop.59 The
canon did not close the ranks of the episcopate to married men, and there
was nothing in the text of the canon to suggest that only celibates were
eligible for Episcopal appointment. However, the fear that a married bishop
might be tempted to alienate the lands of the church to the benefit of his
family fuelled a developing tendency to assume that celibates, rather than
continent priests, were preferable. The fact that the Trullan canon required
that married bishops separate from their wives implied an acceptance of the
principle that married men might be appointed to high office, but in later
centuries it was to become the established norm that monastic communities
would supply candidates for the episcopate. Ample precedent was to be
found in the example of the monastic leaders of the early church, and

58
  Joannou, Discipline, I.i.138–9; I.i.186.
59
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 108; Corpus Juris Civilis: Codex Justiniani Repetitae
Praelectionis a 534; Digesta a.533; Institutiones Junstiniani a.533, P. Kreuger, T. Mommsen,
R. Schoell, G. Kroll (eds) (3 vols, Berlin: Berolini: Weidman, 1877), III. 615–16. This situation
was not unique to the Greek church; Cholij makes the useful comparison here between the
concerns expressed by the emperor and those articulated by Pope Pelagius [PL 79.414].
78 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

Cholij suggests that even a century before the council in Trullo there was
a preference for the appointment of monastic bishops. By the fourteenth
century, it was rare for secular clergy to secure such appointments, not least
because the expectation that secular clergy would marry before receiving
orders encouraged celibates to take the monastic habit.60
However, it was the thirteenth canon which was to give the council in
Trullo its defining position in the history of the church, and the history of
clerical celibacy and marriage in particular. The canon is significant not only
for its impact upon subsequent debate and practice in the eastern church,
but also because of its representation of the ‘apostolic’ origins of the married
priesthood, and a married priesthood that was not required to live in perfect
continence. Given its importance, the text is worth reading in full:

Since we know it to be handed down as a rule of the Roman Church that

those who are deemed worthy to be advanced to the diaconate or presbyterate
should promise no longer to cohabit with their wives, we, preserving the
ancient rule and apostolic perfection and order, will that the lawful marriages
of men who are in holy orders be from this time forward firm, by no means
dissolving their union with their wives nor depriving them of their mutual
intercourse at a convenient time. Wherefore, if anyone shall have been found
worthy to be ordained subdeacon, or deacon, or presbyter, he is by no means
to be prohibited from admittance to such a rank, even if he shall live with a
lawful wife. Nor shall it be demanded of him at the time of his ordination that
he promise to abstain from lawful intercourse with his wife: lest we should
affect injuriously marriage constituted by God and blessed by his presence, as
the Gospel saith: “What God hath joined together let no man put asunder;”
and the Apostle saith, “Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled;” and
again, “Art thou bound to a wife? seek not to be loosed.” But we know, as
they who assembled at Carthage (with a care for the honest life of the clergy)
said, that subdeacons, who handle the Holy Mysteries, and deacons, and
presbyters should abstain from their consorts according to their own course
[of ministration]. So that what has been handed down through the Apostles
and preserved by ancient custom, we too likewise maintain, knowing that
there is a time for all things and especially for fasting and prayer. For it is meet
that they who assist at the divine altar should be absolutely continent when
they are handling holy things, in order that they may be able to obtain from
God what they ask in sincerity.
If therefore anyone shall have dared, contrary to the Apostolic Canons, to
deprive any of those who are in holy orders, presbyter, or deacon, or subdeacon
of cohabitation and intercourse with his lawful wife, let him be deposed. In like
manner also if any presbyter or deacon on pretence of piety has dismissed his

60
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, pp. 111–12; J. Dauvillier, C. de Clerq, Le Mariage en Droit
Canonique Oriental (Paris, 1936).
 Celibacy and Marriage in East and West 79

wife, let him be excluded from communion; and if he persevere in this let him
be deposed.61

Thus the Fathers at Trullo provided a defence of, and justification for, the
continued use of marriage after ordination. The thirteenth canon was not
a simple articulation of the principle that married men might be ordained,
but moved significantly beyond this in asserting that the higher clergy
had no obligation to perpetual and complete celibacy. The ‘legitimate
marriages’ of men in holy orders were not to be undermined by the law of
the church. There was a strident rejection of the obligatory and perpetual
continence that was demanded of the Latin clergy; while it was ‘meet
that they who assist at the divine altar should be absolutely continent
when they are handling holy things’, such continence was temporary. The
apostolic tradition had taught that those who carried the responsibility for
intercession, and who touched the sacred objects, should be pure, but had
also counselled a specific time for prayer and fasting, rather than a perpetual
commitment. This principle of temporary continence, Cholij argues, was
the ‘hinge on which all the rest of the Greek discipline hangs’.62
It was, however, a rather creaky hinge, not least because the thirteenth
canon required a more explicit and indeed creative articulation of its
‘apostolic’ origins if it was to be viewed as concordant with the traditional
practice of the church. In order to locate a canonical precedent, the Trullan
Fathers turned once more to the Apostolic Canon, but also to a more
awkward manipulation of the canons of earlier councils, in order to
establish a continuity of law and practice. It was argued to be contrary
to the Apostolic Canon, for example, to deprive a priest in holy orders of
the right to cohabit and enjoy conjugal relations with his wife, and those
clergy who put away their wives ‘on pretence of piety’ were to be excluded
from their offices. However, as recent commentators have noted, there
was a degree of inconsistency in the postulations of the Fathers, not least
in the fact the sixth Trullan canon demanded that bishops should dismiss
their wives and place them in convents.63 Equally, there was nothing in
the Apostolic Canons that sanctioned the anathematisation of those who
prevented married clergy from exercising their marital rights. If the canon
was conceived a riposte to Latin practice, it was based upon a rather shaky
understanding of the practice of the Western church in the seventh century
if it was assumed that married clergy were forced to live apart from

61
  The Seven Ecumenical Councils, pp. 356–408.
62
  Joannou, Discipline, I.i.140–3; Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 405; Cholij, Clerical
Celibacy, p. 115.
63
  Hefele-Leclerq, Conciles. III.i.565 note 1; Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 100; Cochini,
Apostolic Origins, p. 406.
80 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

their wives.64 The primary purpose behind the embedding of the Trullan
legislation in the precedent of the Apostolic canon was most likely to have
been the attempt to assert an apostolic authority that was not immediately
apparent for the thirteenth canon.
A similar process can be seen at work in the references made to other
early councils of the church in order to justify the use of marriage after
ordination. It was at Trullo, for example, that it was first argued that
the third canon of Nicaea (325) applied only to those clergy who had
already made a commitment to celibacy, although there was no mention of
the alleged intervention of Paphnutius at the council in defence of clerical
marriage. From the context, it is apparent that the confirmation of the
Nicene canons in the fifth canon of the Trullo synod implied the inclusion
of the wives of clerics among the groups of women who were not regarded
as ‘suspicious’ by the Fathers at Nicaea, although it is worth noting that
the Trullan synod was unique in its assertion that perfect continence was
not required in this situation.65 More significantly, the Council of Carthage
(419) was presented as the basis of the thirteenth canon, alongside the texts
of councils held at Carthage in 390 and 401, which were manipulated in
order that they might be counted as consonant with the Trullan canon.
The evidence of the Carthaginian canons presented in the Trullan text is,
at least superficially, a conflagration of two canons from two councils;
the second canon of the Carthage Council of 390, and the fourth canon
of the council that was convened a decade later in 401. The consequence
of this misconception or misrepresentation is evident in the assertion that
the Carthaginian Council of 390 permitted the continued use of marriage
after holy orders; it was this same council which was so significant in
the development of an argument in favour of perpetual continence in the
west.66 The pivotal role accorded to the Carthage canons in East and West
is not surprising if it is considered that the discipline in both churches
was predicated upon the assumption that there was some kind of intrinsic
association between the continence of the priest (whether married or not)
and the fulfilment of his liturgical role, but the practice established at Trullo
marked a significant divergence in the understanding of how this was to be
achieved, in advocating a temporary rather than perpetual continence in
preparation for the exercise of priestly function.
The justification for this, and indeed for much of the celibacy legislation
enacted at Trullo, was the ‘Apostolic Canons’, a collection of 85 canons
which formed part of the ‘Apostolic Constitutions’ of the fourth and fifth
centuries. Although widely used, particularly in the East, the provenance,

64
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 100.
65
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 193.
66
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 122; Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 3ff.
 Celibacy and Marriage in East and West 81

and particularly the authenticity of the canons has been disputed, and their
reliability as a statement of the practice of the apostolic church called into
question. The descriptor ‘apostolic’ is attached to a number of collections
of statements on doctrine and practice dating from the fourth and fifth
centuries, on some occasions rather optimistically. The Canons of the
Apostles, composed in Egypt or Syria around the turn of the fourth century,
for example, have been dismissed as ‘pseudoapostolic’ by at least one
modern commentator. Although clearly limited as a source for the study
of the apostolic church, the canons do offer insights into the practice and
preoccupations of the fourth century, and still hold some significance for
modern scholars given the weight that was attached to them in the east.67
In the passages of the canons that address the issue of married clergy, the
assumption is that it was the unmarried who were deemed most appropriate
to take on the office of bishop, and that those who were married would
be committed to a life of continence. However, it was not this collection,
but rather the Apostolic Constitutions of the late fourth century that
were to become so important in the context of the Trullan canons. The
Constitutions themselves were drawn from a variety of earlier documents,
including the third century Didascalia, and were commonly associated
with the name of Clement of Rome. They were widely used in the East,
but the first Latin edition of the text was not published until 1578.68 One
chapter was devoted to the question of clerical marriage and continence,
and included a detailed consideration of the Pauline recommendation that
the bishop should be the husband of one wife. Digamists were excluded
from holy orders on this basis, and those who had been ordained were not
permitted to enter into a subsequent marriage. The way in which a cleric
governed his household and family was deemed to be a measure of his
fitness for office, and any priests in orders who attempted to put away their
wives were threatened with excommunication.69 The question of whether
married men ordained as priests were permitted to continue in the use of
their marriages was not addressed, although Cochini argues forcefully that
the prohibition of marriage after ordination certainly resonates with the law
of continence that had been established in the West and advanced by Pope

67
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 203; see also F.X. Funk, Didascalia et Constitutiones
Apostolorum (2 vols, Paderborn 1905); J.W. Bickell, ‘Apostolischen Kirchenordnung’, in
Geschichte des Kirchenrechts (Giessen, 1843), pp. 107–32.
68
  F. Turrianus, Apostolicarum Constitutionum et Catholicae Doctrinae Clementis
Romani Libri VIII (Antwerp, 1578). For a further consideration of Turrianus and his work,
see p. 202 below.
69
  PG 1 956a; PG 1 957; Vacandard, Les Origines, p. 2077; Funk, Didascalia 2.2.33–4.
This same theme was taken up in the fourteenth century by Theodore Metochites, Miscellanea
Philosophia et Historica, C. Muller and T. Kiessling (eds) (Leipzig, 1821), pp. 370–77.
82 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

Siricius.70 The Constitutions themselves were not viewed as problematic

in the West, but the Apostolic Canons contained in the eighth book of the
Constitutions were more controversial. The canons were claimed to have
their origins in councils held in Antioch and Laodicaea, although their
authentic canonicity and therefore authority was undermined after their
rejection by Pope Gelasius I in the late fifth century. The first fifty canons
were translated into Latin by Denys the Minor in the sixth century, and
this subset of the Apostolic Canon did circulate more widely and enjoyed
rather better repute. However, all 85 canons were accepted as authentic in
the East, even sustaining a pre-eminent position above the Nicene canons
in the conclusions of the synod in Trullo, at which they were used to assert
the apostolic origins of several decrees.71 In defence of the third canon,
against the ordination of digamists, the Trullan decree cited canons 17 and
18 of the Apostolic Canons, which had excluded from orders those who,
once baptised, had entered into second marriages or who had maintained
a concubine, and laid down the qualities demanded of the wife of a bishop.
In denying higher clergy the liberty to marry after ordination (Trullo can.
6), canon 26 of the Apostolic Canon was used to justify the limiting of
marriage to those in lower orders.
The sixth of the Apostolic Canons was to prove more complex in its
interpretation, and acquired a significance not only in the Greek church,
but also in the debates over clerical marriage between East and West in
the eleventh century. The canon addressed the issue of cohabitation of
married clergy and their spouses, and instructed ‘let no bishop, priest, or
deacon send his spouse away under pretext of piety; if he does so let him
be excommunicated, and if he persists, let him be deposed’.72 Although the
canon clearly required that the married clergy continue to live with their
wives, there was no explicit instruction as to the use of marriage, and Cholij
is quick to assert that the context of the Apostolic Canons leaves the matter
in no doubt. The practice of the churches of Rome, Africa and Gaul at this
time was of marital continence after ordination, and such an interpretation
would be entirely in keeping with the sentiments expressed by Pope Leo
in his letter to Rusticus, which criticised those clergy who dismissed their
wives, and recommended that they should continue to live with them,

70
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 309–10. Cochini notes that there are variations in the
Latin rendering of the text in the early modern period, with at least one translation suggesting
that it was indeed legitimate for married clergy to continue in the use of their marriage.
This edition, published in 1672, however, he regards as inferior in its understanding and
interpretation of the Greek.
71
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 11; Cochini, Apostolic Origins, pp. 203ff; Joannou,
Discipline, 1.2.121.
72
  Joannou, Discipline, 1.2.10.
 Celibacy and Marriage in East and West 83

but ‘have them as if they had them not’.73 However, a rather different
interpretation was placed upon the sixth canon by the Fathers in Trullo,
who argued that it not only threatened with excommunication any priest
who dismissed his wife, but also anathematised anyone who attempted to
deprive priests, bishops or deacons of ‘cohabitation and conjugal relations
with his lawful wife’. Such an assertion was, unsurprisingly, condemned
in the mid-eleventh century by Cardinal Humbert in his exchange with
Nicetas. Humbert attempted to break apart the association between the
Apostolic Canons and the thirteenth canon of the council in Trullo, arguing
that while the sixth Apostolic Canon was clear in its intention that married
clergy should not put away their wives, their obligation was to provide
food and other necessary items, but to abstain from carnal relations.74
The attempt of the Trullan council to bestow an apostolic authority upon
the decision to allow married clergy to use their marriages was roundly
dismissed, and the fidelity of the West to the traditions of the apostles
strongly articulated.
The assumption extrapolated from the Apostolic Canon by the Fathers
at Trullo that the Latin church was guilty of separating married clergy
from their wives was to become a critical part of the debate between pope
and patriarch in the eleventh century. Nicetas, in his Libellus Contra
Latinos, demanded of the church of Rome ‘who is it that taught you to
prohibit and dissolve the marriage of priests? Which of the Doctors of
the Church taught you such depravity?’ and fell back upon the authority
of the Apostolic Canons to defend the tradition of the East. The Latin
church, he alleged, dishonoured marriage by its insistence upon clerical
celibacy, and imposed upon an unwilling or unable clergy an impossible
discipline that simply opened the door to immorality.75 The thirteenth
canon of Trullo continued to be the primary authority cited in defence of
Greek praxis, although it was, of course, not a canon which was accepted
as authoritative in the West. The reply to Nicetas from Humbert alleged
that the Greek church forced its clergy into marriage, and that celibacy
was the solution to, not the cause of, clerical misconduct. The Adversus
Nicetam portrayed the Greek church as a brothel, and for the first time
articulated the link between clerical marriage and heresy, in accusing
Nicetas and his church of Nicolaitism. There was no hint of any respect
for the Trullan decrees and their claims to apostolicity.76 However, the
example of the Greek church continued to be marshalled in the defence of
clerical marriage in the West. The married Archbishop of Spalato refused

73
 See p. 53 above and also Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 99.
74
  PL 143.997d.
75
  PL 143.981ff.
76
  PL 143.996–1000.
84 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

to give up his wife, arguing, not entirely accurately, that such marriages
were permitted in the Greek church, and Peter Damian was compelled
to denounce the use of the canons of Trullo in defence of marriage in
the Latin church on the basis that the decrees of the council had not
been approved by the pope.77 The practice of the East was raised at the
Fourth Lateran Council, and again at the Council of Florence in 1439, but
without any judgement being passed, and without debate. The example of
the married clergy of the Greek church was to become critical again in the
context of Reformation debates over clerical marriage and in the dialogues
between the Tübingen Lutherans and the patriarch in the second half of
the sixteenth century.78 However, the foundations of the Greek discipline
were also re-examined, and found wanting by more hostile writers. Caesar
Baronius, in his history of the church, examined the thirteenth canon and
the text from Carthage upon which it purported to be based, and argued
that the Fathers in Trullo had been guilty of falsifying the evidence of
the apostolic church to support their ill-conceived opinions.79 The same
period also witnessed a revival of papal interest in the practice of the East,
with what Roman Cholij identifies as the first intervention by Rome in
the discipline of Catholic priests in the Oriental churches, although the
sixteenth century popes, and their successors clearly did not wish to be
seen to innovate in their interventions in local rites when the question of
clerical marriages arose.80
Commentators and canonists in both East and West were well aware
of the geographical variations in the practice that prevailed. The canons at
Trullo were at least in some respects a thinly veiled criticism of the celibacy
legislation of the Latin church, and although the Trullan decrees were
accorded neither approval nor authority in the West, the example of the
Greek church continued to punctuate debates within Latin Christianity,
and shape exchanges between the two churches in the centuries that
followed. It is certainly worth noting that there was a good deal of common
ground despite the controversial nature of the thirteenth canon of Trullo.
Practice in East and West was to exclude from ordination any man who
had been married more than once, and to demand that the wives of the
clergy be women of suitable moral standing.81 Neither church permitted
marriage after ordination, and both demanded continence of bishops. The

77
  Barstow, Married Priests, p. 55, although noting the lack of concrete evidence on the
Spalato story, which comes from Lea.
78
 See p. 174 below.
79
  Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, G.D. Mansi (ed.) (30 vols, Lucca, 1738–59), vol. I:499.
80
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 168; for a fuller discussion, see pp. 224–5 below.
81
  The ruling that excludes digamists from higher orders was challenged in more modern
times, and spawned a lively debate in Gregorios o Palamas, vols 2 and 3; Ekklesiastikos Kyrex
 Celibacy and Marriage in East and West 85

thirteenth Trullan canon did not in itself create a married priesthood in

the East; there were clearly married clergy in both the Latin and Greek
tradition, although it is evident that these married priests were expected
to live in perpetual continence after ordination, in the West. As Cholij has
demonstrated, the established practice in the Latin church by the seventh
century was effectively summarised in the third, sixth and twelfth canons
of the Council in Trullo. In these circumstances, in which continence was
demanded after ordination and chastity was to be preserved, there was no
question of the use of marriage or of entering into marriage after orders,
because such unions would remain invalid on the simple basis of non-
consummation. ‘The principle of a celibate priesthood’, Cholij asserts, is
evident in the Trullan decrees, and throughout the Byzantine church in
the prohibition of marriage after ordination, and also in the demand for
temporary continence even from those married clergy who were able to
continue in the use of their marriages after ordination in the aftermath
of 692.82 The point of fracture between East and West lay in the question
of whether it was the law of perpetual continence that provided the true
impediment to marriage after ordination. Where the Latin church saw the
two as inextricably linked, and came to regard clerical celibacy as the best
guarantor of clerical continence, in the East it was assumed that marriage
provided the only such assurance, and therefore only married men were
deemed suitable for entry into holy orders. Continence was demanded in
both East and West, but was preserved by different means.
From this significant difference came the assumption that marriage was
a necessary part of Christian priesthood in the East. There was nothing in
the Trullan decrees that prevented the ordination of celibates, although
the thirteenth canon appeared to anticipate that priests would be married.
Such was the importance attached to marriage that Nicetas suggested that
it would be appropriate for priests who were widowed to resign from their
cure, and despite the apparent misconceptions upon which the argument
was based, many clergy did retire to monasteries after the death of their
wife.83 From the twelfth century, married clergy, although permitted the
use of their marriages, were required to practise temporary continence
before service at the altar. It was assumed, however, that candidates for
ordination would have taken wives, and even suggested that those who

vol. 8; Ekklesiastikos Pharos, Vol.1; Ekklesiastike Aletheia, vol. 33. For a fuller discussion of
these debates, see Constantelos, ‘Marriage and Celibacy’, 37.
82
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 2.
83
  PL 143.981; Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, pp. 138ff. The question of the remarriage of
widowers has been debated more recently. For a survey of the twentieth-century arguments,
see Constantelos, ‘Marriage and Celibacy’, 37.
86 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

were unmarried were ‘not worthy to be a priest’.84 Those with a preference

for celibacy either took the monastic habit, or pursued a career as a monk
in all but name in the Episcopal tribunal. Particularly in rural areas, clerical
dynasties created by the ordination and appointment of the sons of priests
(a practice condemned in the West) were almost expected, and by the early
twentieth century the law prohibited the nomination of a celibate priest
to a parochial curacy. The basis of the perpetual continence demanded
of the Latin clergy was the daily nature of the service and prayer that
they offered, particularly as the daily celebration of the eucharist became
common practice. Such frequent liturgical celebration, combined with
the obligation only to temporary abstinence in the East, was perhaps
sustainable in urban parishes, but rather more problematic in areas served
by a small number of priests, where either daily celebration was not
possible, or the continence demanded of the priest was, to all intents and
purposes, perpetual. Such practical problems are perhaps a manifestation
of the same concerns that preoccupied the Latin church in the medieval
period. The legacy of the apostolic church when it came to the celibacy
of the clergy was sufficiently contested (and prized) that the disciplines
of both East and West were claimed to be anchored in the traditions of
the first centuries, but in the centuries that followed, the outworking of
these claims took on a different form. The guiding principle, though, was
not as divisive as its outward manifestation in the married ministry of
the East and the celibate priesthood of the West might suggest. As Cholij
concludes, even after Trullo, the discipline of the East held that where
temporary continence was not practised, the exercise of the ministry was
prohibited.85 In the Latin West, the sacred function of the priest carried with
it an obligation to celibacy; the perpetual nature of that sacred function
demanded a perpetual continence if the sacraments of the church were to
be celebrated. The married ministry of the Eastern church might appear
to stand in stark contrast to perpetual continence of Latin priests, but the
law which committed them to temporary continence was constructed on
the same foundations as the celibacy obligation which bound the clergy of
the Roman church.

84
  Statutes of Gergios of Kiev, quoted in Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 134.
85
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 202.
 CHAPTER 3

‘A concubine or an unlawful
woman’: Celibacy, Marriage, and
the Gregorian Reform
The practice of the apostolic church acquired an authoritative, if not
normative, position in debates over clerical celibacy within the medieval
church. Its legacy, however, was a complex one. In the centuries that
followed, married men continued to service as priests, but against a
backdrop of increasing efforts to regulate their conduct, and a more
confident insistence on the part of popes, bishops and councils that the
precedent of the Old Law and the demands of the New placed an obligation
to purity, equated with continence, upon those who served at the altar. The
records of the early church provided ammunition for what was at times an
eristic dialogue between protagonists on both sides of the celibacy debate,
but despite the centrality of ‘apostolic precedent’ in the literature, the
picture that it provides is incomplete. The continence issue continued to
confront the institutional and local church as it embraced its mission in the
world; the development of the requirement to compulsory clerical celibacy
remains ‘one of the central problems of church history and a question of
great controversy’. Both those writers seeking to establish the continence
demanded by the early church as the foundation for modern-day clerical
celibacy, and those who argue for the entirely post-apostolic origins of
the discipline, are compelled to look beyond the testimony of the patristic
era to a period in the history of the church that each side recognises as a
potential turning point in the development of the unmarried priesthood.
Concerns over clerical continence did not disappear in the centuries that
followed the attempts to regulate the conduct of priests at the council
of Elvira and beyond, but the debate reached a new climax during the
eleventh- and twelfth-centuries ecclesiastical reforms, and particularly in
the pontificate of Hildebrand, Gregory VII.
From the perspective of subsequent writers on the history of clerical
celibacy, the person of Gregory was to bestride the issue like a Colossus,
but the roots of the debate were spread more widely and deeply. The purity


  M. Frassetto ‘Introduction’, in Frassetto (ed.), Medieval Purity and Piety. Essays on
Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform (New York and London, 1998), p. x.
88 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

of the clergy had certainly been an issue in the Carolingian church, and
one recent commentator has identified clerical celibacy as a prominent
feature of ninth-century religious thought. Bishop Theodulf of Orleans,
for example, argued that the perpetual ministry of the Christian priest
demanded a permanent commitment to celibacy, for those who handle
the ‘immaculatam corpus et sanguine domini’. Gone was the hereditary
priesthood of the Levites, replaced by men from ‘all peoples’ who were
called to baptism, and created not by procreation, but by imitation of
the priesthood of Christ. The anointing of the hands of the priest was
part of the liturgy of ordination, a symbol of sacrificial function, but also
of the purity of those who would consecrate kings. Priestly celibacy was
not simply a matter of ecclesiastical discipline, but of political import and
social function. Agnellus’ ninth century Pontifical Book of the Church
of Ravenna, composed in the context of Carolingian antipathy towards
clerical marriage, examined examples of earlier married churchmen which
appeared to stand in accordance with the ‘husband of one wife’ provision
in I. Tim. 3:2. Although his Vita of the eighth-century married bishop
Sergius had the potential to enhance the reputation of married priests in
subsequent generations, at least one of the miracles recorded paid lip-
service to the idea that the clerical wife occupied too much space in the
church. Beyond the Carolingian precedent, the origins of the ‘Gregorian
reform’ have been located in the Cluniac monastic renewal that preceded
it, and, conversely, in the challenges to conventional modes of morality
raised by heterodox voices in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
The positioning of clerical celibacy at the centre of the reform movement
owes much to the work of Vacandard and Fliche, who presented the first


  M. De Jong, ‘Imitatio Morum. The Cloister and Clerical Purity in the Carolingian
World’, in Frassetto (ed.), Purity and Piety, pp. 49–80.

  Theodoulf, Capitulare II.8.4. in Capitularia regum Francorum, Alfred Boretius (ed.)
(Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1883), Ep. I.170.

  J.L. Nelson, ‘Kingship, Law and Liturgy in the Political Thought of Hincmar of
Rheims’, English Historical Review, 92 (1977): 241–79; P. Beaudette, ‘In the World but not
of it: Clerical Celibacy as a Symbol of the Medieval Church’, in Frassetto (ed.) Purity and
Piety, chapter 2; De Jong, ‘Imitatio Morum’; A. Dresdner, Kultur-und Sittengeschichte der
Italienischen Geistlichkeit im 10 un 11 Jahrhundert (Breslau, 1890).

  D. Elliott, ‘The Priest’s Wife. Female Erasure and the Gregorian Reform’, in C.H.
Berman (ed.), Medieval Religion. New Approaches (London and New York, 2005), pp. 123–
56, especially 127ff.

  H.E.J. Cowdrey, The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform (Oxford, 1970); A. Fliche,
La Reforme Gregorienne (3 vols, Paris, 1927–37); M. Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular
Movements from the Gregorian reform to the reformation (Oxford, 1992); R.I. Moore,
The Origins of European Dissent (Oxford, 1985); A. Dondaine, ‘L’origine de le’heresie
medievale’, Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia 6 (1952): 47–78; A. Borst, Die Katharer
(Stuttgart, 1953).
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 89

detailed surveys of the attempts made to regulate the conduct of the clergy
in the century between 1050 and 1150. H.C. Lea’s History of Sacerdotal
Celibacy was typically untimid in its assertion that the law of celibacy was
the most ambitious and damaging innovation on the part of the reforming
popes. A ‘blunder’ driven through in the ‘stormy pontificate’ of Gregory
VII, he argued, the destruction of the married priesthood was accomplished
within half a century, as ‘the sacrament of marriage [became] powerless in
comparison with vows of religion’. Such a focus upon the morality and
conduct of the clergy as the driving force behind the papal programme
is not without its critics. Gerd Tellenbach, for example, has suggested
that celibacy was a secondary concern, while Norman Cantor’s study of
the English church dismissed the notion that the imposition of clerical
celibacy might serve as a barometer for the impact of papal reform in the
country. And if the eleventh century did not mark the beginning of the
controversy, neither did it mark the end. Debates over the celibacy of the
clergy certainly did not come to a conclusion with the legislation enacted
by Gregory; Filippo Liotta has charted a controversy that continued into
the thirteenth century, while Anne Barstow, in the most substantial modern
study of the Gregorian legislation and particularly its impact, focuses in
much-needed detail upon the views of those who came to the defence
of clerical marriage in the face of the reform.10 However, the era of the
‘Gregorian reform’ has continued to occupy a central place in the history
and historical narrative of clerical celibacy, whether through the character
of the popes, the enactment of decrees regulating the conduct of the clergy,
or the burgeoning polemical debate over marriage and celibacy. The figure
of Gregory VII and his contemporaries loomed large in the controversies


  E.F. Vacandard, ‘Les Origines du Celibat Ecclesiastique’, Etudes de Critique
et d’Histoire Religieuse (Paris, 1906); Fliche, La reforme gregorienne, pp. 1924–37;
G. Tellenbach, Libertas. Kirche und Weltordnung im Zeitalter des Investiturstreites (Stuttgart,
1936); B. Verkamp, ‘Cultic Purity and the Law of Celibacy’, Review for Religious, 30 (1971):
199–217.

  H.C. Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy (2 vols, London, 1907) vol. 1, pp. 242, 264–5.

 N.F. Cantor, Church, Kingship and Lay Investiture in England 1089–1135 (Princeton,
1958); C.N.L. Brooke ‘Gregorian Reform in Action: Clerical Marriage in England 1050–
1200’ and ‘Married Men among the English Higher Clergy 1066–1100’, both in Cambridge
Historical Journal, 12.1 1–21 and 12.2 187–8 (1956), quoted in A.L. Barstow, Married
Priests and the Reforming Papacy, The Eleventh Century Debates (Lewiston, NY: 1982),
p. 10; J. Lynch, ‘Marriage and Celibacy of the Clergy: The Discipline of the Western Church.
An Historico-canonical synopsis’, The Jurist, 32.1 and 32.2 (1972): 14–38 and 189–212.
10
  Filippo Liotta, La Continenza dei chierici nel penserio canonistico classico da
Graziano a Gregorio IX (Milan, 1971); for a study of the families of the married clergy, see
Bernard Schimmelpfennig, ‘Zolibat und Lage der ‘Priestersohne’ vom 11 bis 14 Jahrhundert’,
Historische Zeitschrift, 27 (1978): 2–44; Barstow, Married Priests.
90 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

of the Reformation, and the rhetoric of eleventh-century literature and

legislation entered into the vocabulary of subsequent generations.11
In his study of the foundations of the law of celibacy in the church,
Edward Schillebeeckx conceded that ‘the Latin church until the twelfth
century allowed its clerics to be married but required them to practice
complete continence. Because of this psychologically abnormal situation,
the law of continence remained … a dead letter’.12 The requirement to
continence laid down at successive councils and synods from the fourth
century had reflected the weight attached to the symbolic value of celibacy,
but the practical and ascetic concerns of the twelfth century turned this
symbol into reality. Certainly, there was no overtly articulated obstacle to a
priesthood of married men in the intervening centuries, and Schillebeeckx’s
comment that the law was a ‘dead letter’ carries some weight. The evidence
is less than precise, but it still seems likely that many of clergy in the western
church between the sixth and tenth centuries were married men, often in
rural parishes and appointed by laymen who owned the land on which the
church was built, and leading a life almost indistinguishable at first glance
from that of their parishioners.13 However, as the land of the church fell
into private hands, concerns over the alienation of ecclesiastical property
were articulated increasingly strongly, and married clergy were identified
by many as the root of the problem. As early as the sixth century, Pope
Pelagius had instructed that any married man appointed as bishop should
promise that his children would not inherit the property of the church, but
by the tenth century this law appeared to be honoured largely in the breach.
Ratherius of Verona dedicated two lengthy treatises to the problems caused
by married clergy, detailing his attempts to impose financial penalties
upon those who refused to live apart from their wives, and bemoaning the
apparently common practice of the marriage of priests to the daughters
of other clergymen in order to maintain family control over church

11
  For the treatment of this period at the hands of early modern polemicists, see pp.
176–8.
12
  E. Schillebeeckx, Clerical Celibacy Under Fire. A Critical Appraisal (London and
Sydney, 1968), p. 42; Charles Frazee suggests that the authorities were happy to ignore the
actual state of affairs and conduct of married clergy: ‘The origins of clerical celibacy in the
western church’, Church History, 57 (1988): 158.
13
  R.J. Bunnik, ‘The Question of Married Priests’, Cross Currents, XV.4 (Fall, 1965):
418; S. Bailey, Sexual Relations in Christian Thought (New York, 1959), p. 148; Barstow,
Married Priests, p. 37; Frazee, ‘Origins’, 159; F. Kempf, The Church in the Age of Feudalism,
suggests that it was all the more necessary for a priest to have a family in order to farm
the land; Albert Dresdner makes the same point, but in relation to exploitative landowners
who left the clergy impoverished without marriage and the additional income that it might
bring: Dresdner, Kultur-und Sittengeschichte, pp. 149–57; M. Dortel-Claudot, ‘Le Pretre et le
marriage: evolution de la legislation canonique des origins au XII siècle’, L’Année Canonique,
17 (1973): 319–44.
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 91

offices.14 Long-standing dynasties of clerical and Episcopal families were

particularly common where the authority of the institutional church was
weakest, outside the urban centres.15 The legal position of the children of
priests, however, was ambiguous. Emperor Otto I instructed that the sons
of clergymen were to be excluded from certain lay offices, and were to be
deemed ineligible themselves for ordination, but when the council of Tours
(925) considered an appeal from two priests, father and son, for the return
of detained tithes, it granted the income to them and their successors in
perpetuity, suggesting a legal recognition of their legitimacy.
Legitimacy and custom, however, did not confer respect or immunity
from criticism. There were complaints in tenth-century England that the
married clergy ‘decorate their wives with what they should the altars’
and that clerical wives were the ‘snares of the devil’.16 The eradication of
the hereditary benefice was, Kemp suggests, a formidable task for those
who sought to abolish the married priesthood and the ‘associated evil’
of ecclesiastical offices that passed from father to son.17 Throughout the
eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for example, the church of
Whalley in Lancashire was passed from generation to generation within
the same family, and a similar situation prevailed in Hexham.18 Kemp’s
study of the Herefordshire parish of Eye exposes a relationship between
the local lordship and the hereditary benefice which seemed to persist
well beyond the arrival of the continental reform movement in England;

14
  Frazee, ‘Origins’, 159; Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, p. 167; E. Martene, Thesaurus Novus
Anecdotorum (Paris, 1717); Ratherius, De Contemptu Canonum [PL 136.491]; De Nuptio
Illicitu [PL 136.567–74]. Clerical marriage was not the only issue that Ratherius addressed at
such length; one reviewer of Peter Reid’s modern edition of the Complete Works of Rather of
Verona comments that Rather was ‘not the only man to lose two bishoprics in the middle ages,
but he was surely the most long-winded to do so’ (T.F.X. Noble, Speculum (1994): 553).
15
  Frazee, ‘Origins’, 60; Schimmelpfennig, ‘Ex Fornicatione Nati’, 8–9; L. Wertheimer,
‘Children of Disorder: Clerical Parentage, Illegitimacy, and Reform in the Middle Ages’,
Journal of the History of Sexuality, 15:3 (2006): 382–407; S.F. Wemple, Women in Frankish
Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500 to 900 (Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 142–3. Orderic
Vitalis reported that Hugh, archbishop of Rouen, left his see to his son, Robert, himself a
married man with three sons [Historia Ecclesiasticae, A. Le Prevost (ed.) (5 vols, Paris, 1838–
55), V.43]. There were more than a handful of married popes in the first millennium (some
estimates range as high as 40), and of these at least two were the sons of previous occupants
of the papal throne (Innocent I was the son of Anastasius I; Silverius the son of Hormisdas).
W. Phipps, Clerical Celibacy. The Heritage (London and New York, 2004), p. 127.
16
  B. Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes of England (2 vols, London, 1840), vol. II.329.
17
  B. Kemp, ‘Hereditary benefices in the medieval English church: a Herefordshire
example’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 43 (May 1970): 1–15 at p. 1.
18
  Kemp, ‘Hereditary Benefices’, 2; W.A. Hulton (ed.), The Coucher Book of Whalley
Abbey (2 vols, Manchester: Chetham Society, 1847–9), vol. I, pp. 186–8, 277–8; J. Raine,
The Priory of Hexham (2 vols, Surtees Society, 1864–5), vol. 1, pp. l–lxvii.
92 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

the benefice remained in the same family for more than a century, and
was occupied by at least two married men who passed the living to their
sons.19 Repeated attempts were made to ensure the continence of married
men who had been ordained to the ministry, but the efforts of the church
in this regard were often met with indifference, with the result that the
cohabitation of clergy with their wives was increasingly frowned upon.
Beyond those legally married priests who continued to live with their
wives, the church was also obliged to tackle the scandal caused by clergy
maintaining concubines. Clerical concubinage was treated as a legal
impediment to promotion, although at least one sixth-century pope felt
compelled to relax such regulation in areas where insufficient candidates
presented themselves for ordination.20 St Boniface bemoaned the shame
brought on the church by priests and deacons who kept multiple women
yet still secured Episcopal office, and his correspondence with Pope
Zachary revealed that the church continued to accept married ordinands
and struggled to enforce continence upon ordained priests.21 Clerical
continence might have been presented as the tradition of the Apostolic
era, and a requirement of the medieval church, but it was certainly not
universally practised.
Against this backdrop, outspoken critics of the prevailing custom of
clerical conduct made their voices heard, and positioned priestly continence
at the forefront of their calls for reform in the church. As martyr saints
gave way to confessors, spiritual and moral virtues such as chastity were
increasingly prized, and imbued with a wider significance in the cosmic
battle between flesh and spirit. Such ideas are associated most clearly
with the revival of monasticism in the tenth century, and particularly the
reinvigoration of Cluniac Benedictinism, and, unsurprisingly therefore,
one of the most strident calls for reform came from Cluny’s second abbot,
Odo. Although written from a monastic perspective, Odo’s major work, the
Collationes, included a more general exhortation that was clearly intended
to be heard beyond the walls of Cluny, and was perhaps informed by Odo’s
own secular background. His writings on clerical celibacy likewise reflected
the monastic emphasis on the merits of chastity, but also the very practical
considerations confronting the world outside the cloister. Two strands of
thought coalesced in Odo’s writing: the Augustinian equation of sex and

19
  Kemp, ‘Hereditary Benefices’, 4–11.
20
  J. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago and
London, 1987), pp. 150–51; PL 72.727 (Letter of Pope Pelagius I, ascribed to Pelagius II).
21
  Boniface, Ep. 50 in Epistolae Selecta: Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus,
M. Tangl (ed.) (Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae Historia, 1916), pp. 82–5; Zachary,
Epistola 51 in ibid., pp. 87–8.
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 93

sin, and the Cluniac devotion to the eucharist.22 The sanctity of the altar, he
argued, required a purity of mind from those who received the eucharist,
and a physical purity, including sexual purity, from those priests who served.
There was no question that the efficacy of the sacrament was impugned by
the actions of an unchaste priest, but the sin of the priest, albeit one that
might be hidden from the eyes of his congregation, would be known by
God.23 The ritual purity demanded of the priest was coupled explicitly to
the holiness of the sacrament rather than implicitly to Levitical law, and
those priests whose incontinence polluted the altar were warned that they
would incur the wrath of God. Effective control of the sexual conduct of the
clergy would come as much through the threat of divine anger as through
the sanctions of the church.
The interplay between monastic chastity and clerical continence was
to be felt beyond the walls of Cluny. The increasingly common practice of
ordaining priests from within monastic communities tied the permanent
vowed chastity of the monks more closely to the celebration of the
sacraments, and exposed the contrast between married secular priests and
chaste monastic clergy. As the influence of the monastic reform spread,
so these contrasts and tensions became more acute, particularly where
secular clerks found their position threatened by the ordained religious.
The tenth-century English church provides a clear illustration of the
potential for conflict. A synod held in Winchester in 964 determined that
those ecclesiastical endowments that were in the possession of secular
clerks should be transferred to monastics, precipitating the expulsion of
secular, often married, clergy, begun in Winchester and later in Worcester.
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle for 964 noted ‘in this year King Edgar drove
the priests in the city [Winchester] from the Old Minster and the New
Minster, and from Chertsey and from Milton [Abbas] and replaced
them with monks’.24 Monks from the community in Abingdon arrived
at Winchester and entered the church at the end of Mass on 21 February

22
  For the suggestion that Odo had been influenced by the views of Radbertus on the
transformation of the Eucharistic elements, see P.G. Jestice, ‘Why Celibacy? Odo of Cluny and
the Development of a New Sexual Morality’, in Frassetto (ed.), Purity and Piety, p. 104.
23
  Odo, Collationes [PL 133], II.11.558; 28.572. There was an ongoing debate
surrounding the sacraments of priests in a state of sin; with its origins in the Donatist
controversy, the most famous articulation of the view of the church came from Innocent
III: ‘Thus the wickedness of the priest does not nullify the effect of the sacrament, just as
the sickness of a doctor does not destroy the power of his medicine. Although the “doing
of the thing (opus operans)” may be unclean, nevertheless, the “thing which is done (opus
operatum)” is always clean.’
24
  D. Whitelock, D.C. Douglas, S. Tucker (eds), The Anglo Saxon Chronicle (London,
1961).
94 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

964.25 In the same year, Oswald reorganised the estates of his See, and in
the preamble to the Oswaldslaw charter, the king, Edgar, offered clerks
a stark choice between their prebends and their wives. The rhetoric was
strident: the charter referred to the replacement of the ‘degraded and
lascivious’ married clerks of Worcester by a monastic community, although
whether the secular clergy were expelled or gradually replaced by religious
is unclear.26 Whatever the process, the steering issue was celibacy; it was
not possible for the reformers to establish a monastic community which
was made up in part of married priests, hence the requirement that those
clerks who were married must choose between their office and their wife.
The essence of monastic life, Deansley argues, lay in the renunciation of
personal possession, even that which had come by hereditary right. There
was, therefore, a clash of principle as reformed monasticism encountered
a cathedral life in which it had become customary for a portion of the
minster to be allocated to its fratres, many of whom then passed this to their
children. Clerical prebends attracted not only accusations of abuse, but
also more fundamental criticism from monastic reformers who questioned
their canonical position.27 However, it was not only prebendaries, but
married priests more generally, who found themselves on the receiving
end of such criticism. Aelfric’s homily written for Archbishop William
of York took as its theme the denunciation of clerical marriage, drawing
upon biblical testimony and the example of the early church.28 In the
laws of Ethelred there was a financial as well as spiritual inducement to
forswear marriage: ‘he who will turn from marriage and observe celibacy
shall obtain the favour of God and in addition as worldly honour shall
enjoy the wergild and privileges of a thegn during his life and after his
death’, but such encouragement to celibacy provides eloquent testimony

25
  Only three of the Winchester clerks chose to leave their wives and remain in
the community: for a fuller discussion, see John, E., ‘St Oswald and the Tenth Century
Reformation’, in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 9.2 (October 1958): 159–72.
26
  Eric John suggests that the clerks may have been married in accordance with the
custom of the day rather than guilty of any breach of the continence law: Orbis Britanniae
and other Studies (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1966), p. 164. For differing views
on the speed with which the clerks were removed from the cathedral, see A. Robinson,
St Oswald and the Church of Worcester (London, 1919); M. Deansley, The Pre-conquest
Church in England (London, 1963); D. Knowles, Monastic Order in England: a history of
its development from the times of St Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council, 940–1216
(Cambridge, 1949), p. 42.
27
  Deansley, Pre-Conquest Church, pp. 312–13.
28
  B. Thorpe (ed. and tr.), The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church. The First Part,
Containing The Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric. In the Original Anglo-Saxon,
with an English Version (2 vols, London, 1844, 1846).
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 95

to the continued presence of married clergy in parish churches.29 Indeed,

on the eve of the Gregorian reform, marriage remained the norm for a
substantial proportion of parish clergy, and many married clergy of the
Latin church were, to all intents and purposes, living with little heed to
the law of continence that had been established in the fourth-century
church.30 Practical concerns surrounding the property of the church and
the undesirability of hereditary benefices were to acquire an added impetus
from a deeper understanding of the sacred nature of priestly function in
the celebration of the eucharist, particularly in the thought of monastic
proponents of asceticism and reform. The impact of the monastic reform
movement also continued to be felt well into the eleventh century, as the
monastic schools populated senior church offices with their products,
and northern European monks occupied the papal throne in the middle
decades of the century. Increasingly derogatory language was attached to
married clergy and their wives by those who argued for a ministry that
was pure and undefiled by sexual contact, but it was not until the eleventh
century that the unfolding conflict between the sacraments of marriage
and ministry was resolved in the creation of a celibate priesthood.
Although this period in the life of the church bears the name of
Hildebrand, Gregory VII, the reform, and particularly the attack on clerical
marriage, had its origins in the early years of the eleventh century. There
was a clear awareness of the efforts of an earlier age to ensure that the
higher clergy led a celibate life, but also a recognition of the potential for
contradiction and interpretation of the law. Burchard of Worms’ twenty-
volume collection of canon law, for example, included a substantial
section that detailed previous attempts to regulate the conduct of the
clergy, including instructions that priests must cease all carnal relations,
that clergy above the rank of subdeacon were not to marry, and that
those who did not abide by these prohibitions were to be deprived of their
offices. This was not only an age in which new legislation was directed
against married clergy and their families, but one in which the full force of
the decisions taken by earlier councils was to be felt.31 The pontificate of
Benedict VIII (1012–24) witnessed the increasingly harsh treatment of the
children of married clergy, after the Synod of Pavia (1022) adopted a series
of canons that ordered the deposition of all priests, deacons, subdeacons
who continued to live with their wives or concubines, and all bishops
who kept women near them. The children of the clergy were to be treated
as serfs of the church. The imperial confirmation of the decisions at the
Council denounced the unchastity of the clergy as the ‘root of all evil’. In

29
  5 Ethelred 9.1 cf. 6 Ethelred 5.2.
30
  Barstow, Married Priests, pp. 44–5.
31
  Burchard, Decretum (Brocardus) [PL 140] 1.5, 2.114, 148, 3.108–116.
96 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

an appeal to precedent, the opening address by the pope made reference

to the Council of Nicaea, but the canons at Pavia went well beyond this in
excluding all women from the houses of the clergy.32 In Hamburg, bishop
Libentius abruptly dispatched the wives of canons, although the impact
of such draconian measures appeared to be simply to move the location
of liaison between husband and wife outside the walls of the city.33 The
Council of Bourges (November 1031) enacted similar measures against
clerical families. Priests, deacons and subdeacons were to refrain from
taking wives and concubines, and those already married were to separate
from their wives, or face the threat of degradation. The council instructed
that no bishop was to ordain a candidate who did not promise to remain
without a wife or concubine, children born to clergy after their ordination
were to be barred from entering the ministry, and no man was to accept
the daughter or wife of a priest as his wife.34
Although determined efforts were made to enforce the legislation on
clerical continence, the direction of the assault on the married clergy was
still shaped by essentially practical concerns expressed in the decisions
reached at Pavia and Bourges. The focus upon the position of the children
of priests, and particularly the determination to prevent the formation of
clerical dynasties and the alienation of the land of the church, did not
manifest the rhetoric of purity and sacerdotalism that was to characterise
later attempts to regulate clerical conduct.35 The middle decades of the
eleventh century saw further attempts to impose a more stringent discipline
on the clergy, often coupling the condemnation of clerical marriage with
the denunciation of those churchmen guilty of simony. At the synod of
Rheims (1049), for example, the pope demanded that those clergy who
had purchased their office declare the offence, and warned in powerful
terms of the dangers of both apostasy and incest embodied in simony and
incontinence. Canons 8 and 11 have been read as evidence of a growing
distaste for married clergy, and such negativity was expressly articulated

32
  Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum et regum inde ab a. DCCCCXI usque
ad a. MCXCVII (911–1197), L. Weiland (ed.) (Hanover, 1893), no. 34 pp. 70–88; U-R.
Blumenthal, ‘Pope Gregory VII and the Prohibition of Nicolaitism’, in Frassetto (ed.), Purity
and Piety, p. 240.
33
 Synod of Pavia canons 1–4; Mansi, Sacrum Conciliorum, 19.353; Adam von Bremen,
Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum in Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum
Scholarum Separatim Editi, B. Schmeidler (ed.) (Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae Historica,
1917), 2.61; Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, p. 218.
34
  Mansi, Sacrum Conciliorum, 19.503–6 (canons 6, 8, 19, 20); Frazee ‘Origins’, 161;
Barstow, Married Priests, p. 47.
35
 In this vein, Blumenthal suggests that the Pavia canons should not, for this reason, be
regarded as a landmark in the history of clerical celibacy: ‘Pope Gregory VII’, 241.
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 97

at the Synod of Mainz and at the Easter synod of the same year.36 In his
narrative of the discussions at Mainz, Adam of Bremen noted that ‘many
things were decreed for the good of the church and above all simoniacal
heresy and the evil of clerical marriage were forever condemned’. Both
groups of offending clergy were declared anathema, in a statement that
was indicative of the growing papal preoccupation with the problem. At a
synod held in Rome at Easter 1049, Pope Leo IX repeated the prohibition
against clerics in major orders engaging in sexual relations with their wives,
but also took the more radical step of instructing the laity to abstain from
the sacraments of priests and clerks who were guilty of fornication.37 There
was no assertion that the conduct of the priest impugned the efficacy of the
sacrament, but such a call to lay action had the potential to be destructive.
Two years later, at the Roman synod of 1051, the wives and the mistresses
of the clergy were made ancillae of the Lateran, effectively reduced to
the status of serfs. In the same year, writing to the cathedral canons at
Lucca, the pope contrasted a life lived with community of property with
the luxury and wastefulness of a married clergy.38 The direction of reform
was made abundantly clear.
The appointment of the reform-minded Pope Nicholas II initiated a
further assault upon the married priesthood. A council of 113 bishops
called to Rome in 1059 adopted a hostile stance, particularly with regard
to those clergy who continued to maintain a wife or concubine, and to
those guilty of simony, who were to be removed from office. However,
its most radical decision was the repetition of the instructions of Leo IX
that the laity should refuse the sacraments of married priests. Concubinary
priests who officiated at Mass were to be subject to the penalty of
excommunication, a ruling now for the first time established in the law of
the universal church. Canon 3 demanded that the laity absent themselves
from any Mass offered by a priest known to keep a concubine or to live
improperly with a woman [subintrodoctam mulierem]. The encyclical
letter sent out by Nicholas to disseminate the decrees of the council was a
clear declaration of the constraints to be placed upon married priests:

36
  Frazee ‘Origins’, 162, quoting Anselm, History of the Dedication of the Church of
St Remigius (PL 142.1417]; Barstow, Married Priests, p. 53.
37
 Adam von Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis, pp. 346–7; Peter Damian, Contra
Intemperantes [PL 145.409]; Barstow argues that the instructions to the laity appear to have
remained dormant for a decade: Married Priests, p. 53.
38
  Ep. 55 [PL 143.671–2]; Bernold of Constance, Chronicon s.a.1049, in Annales
et chronica aevi Salici. Scriptores V, Georg Waitz (ed.) (Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae
Historia, 1844), p. 426.
98 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

let no one hear the mass of priest whom he knows with certainty to have
a concubine or an unlawful woman. For this reason the holy synod has
decreed the following under threat of excommunication, saying: whoever
among priests, deacons, subdeacons, publicly married a concubine after the
constitution regarding the chastity of the clergy which had been issued by the
most holy pope Leo, our predecessor of blessed memory, or did not dismiss one
he had married earlier, shall not sing mass, nor read the Gospels or the Epistles,
as we declare and enjoin on behalf of the omnipotent God and on the authority
of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, nor shall he remain in the choir room
for the divine offices with those who were obedient to the aforementioned
constitution; neither shall he obtain a benefice from the church until we have
made a judicial decision regarding him, God willing.39

The council did not authorise the immediate deposition of all married
priests; perhaps the potential disruption that would be caused by
such large-scale clerical dispossession presented a weighty practical
consideration.40 Neither was the third canon vigorously enforced, and a
determined effort was made to clarify that the validity of the sacrament
offered by the guilty priest remained unaffected, in order to avoid the long-
condemned Donatist stance on the relationship between the morality and
office of the priest. Indeed, Pope Urban II was to argue that the purpose
of such a prohibition was to provide an encouragement to better conduct
among the clergy rather than to impugn the validity of the Mass offered
by married priests. However, the apparent interchangeability of clerical
wives and concubines in the terminology of the statement has been seen
as the first formal papal denial of the validity of the marriages of priests,
which had previously enjoyed a legal status in the eyes of the canonists.41

39
  P. Jaffe, Regesta pontificum Romanorum ab condita ecclesia ad annum post
Christum natum MCXCVIII (2 vols, Leipzig, 1885–8) 4405/6. Blumenthal notes that the
reference to the previous prohibition of clerical marriage by Leo IX is hard to pin down; no
such legislation exists in the surviving records of Leo’s councils, although there is a hint in
Peter Damian’s account of the reforms of Stephen IX that the pope recapitulated some of the
determinations of Leo: ‘Gregory VII’, p. 243.
40
 See Blumenthal, ‘Pope Gregory VII’, p. 243 and Barstow, Married Priests, pp. 57ff.
41
 Roman Synod of 1059 c.3 in Constitutiones et acta publica imperatorum (MGH)
vol. 1:547; Fliche, La Reforme Gregorienne, pp. 28–9; Cowdrey notes that the phrase
‘subintroductae mulierem’ had been used in the early church to refer to women who had
lived with men in spiritual marriage, but that the terms of reference in 1059 were most likely
to the council of Nicaea which had ordered that clerks were to live only with a mother, sister,
aunt or other person who was above suspicion. Nicholas II’s letter Vigilantia Universalis
Regiminis was later reissued by Alexander II, probably after his Roman synod of 1063.
See R. Schieffer, Die Entstehung des papstlichen Investiturverbots fur den Deutschen Konig
(Stuttgart: MGH, 1981), pp. 208–25 especially cc.3–4; and discussed in H.E.J. Cowdrey,
‘Pope Gregory VII and the Chastity of the Clergy’, in Frassetto (ed.) Purity and Piety, pp.
270ff; for the attempt to counter accusations of Donatism, see for example Peter Damian
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 99

The extent to which the decisions taken at the Roman synod marked a
departure from the traditions of the church has been disputed; clearly some
of the deliberations of the bishops were informed by established practice,
and earlier legislation. However, as Barstow indicates, there was clearly
a strong contemporary reaction to the 1059 synod, which was perhaps
indicative of a sense of change of speed if not direction. The decrees of the
synod were controversial enough to prompt what Barstow describes as the
first known literary defence of clerical marriage for 600 years, in which
bishop Ulric of Imola set out the basis of opposition to the demands of the
pope, and hostile reaction to attempts to enforce the reforms was evident
on the Italian streets.42
Attempts to both define and act upon the legal status of married clergy
in the church gathered pace with the accession of Gregory VII to the papal
throne.43 Prior to his election as pope by popular acclaim of the people
of Rome, Gregory had been a motivating force in the reforming councils
of the mid-eleventh century, and as pope was unsurprisingly quick to act
against what he regarded as failings on the part of the clergy. Appointed
archdeacon of the Roman church in 1058, Gregory played a critical role in
the administration of the church and papal office, and he was to exercise
a profound influence over the appointment and pontificate of Alexander
II in the 1060s.44 A series of Lenten Synods, attended by senior monastic

Opuscula 6 c.12 (PL 145.105–6). On the validity of the marriages of priests, see Brundage,
Law, Sex, and Christian Society, p. 218. Brundage argues that the views of Nicholas II stood
in stark contrast to the traditional attitudes of the church on the sacraments of married
priests established at the Council of Gangra.
42
  ‘Pseudo Udalrici Epistola de Continentia Clericorum’, in MGH LdL, vol. I, pp.
254–60; Fliche, Reforme Gregorienne vol. 3, pp. 1–12; H.E.J. Cowdrey, ‘The Papacy, the
Patarenes and the Church of Milan’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th
series, 18 (1968): 25–48; E. Coleman, ‘Representative Assemblies in Communal Italy’, in P.S.
Barnwell and M. Mostert (eds), Political Assemblies in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout,
2003), pp. 193–210; A. Siegel, ‘Italian Society and the Origins of Eleventh-Century Western
Heresy’, in M. Frassetto (ed.), Heresy and the Persecuting Society in the Middle Ages: Essays
on the Work of R.I. Moore (Leiden, 2006), pp. 43–72.
43
  Das Register Gregors VII (Gregorii VII Registrum), in Epistolae Selecta V, E. Caspar
(ed.) (2 vols, Berlin: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1920, 1923). Although significant to
the position of married clergy in the church, Gregory’s concerns over clerical marriage were
confined to a small portion of his pontificate between c.1073 and 1076, when his dispute
with the emperor Henry IV proved time consuming and ultimately costly.
44
  For recent studies of Gregory VII, see H.E.J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085
(Oxford, 1988); H.E.J. Cowdrey (ed.), The Register of Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085: An
English Translation (Oxford, 2002); I.S. Robinson (ed.), The Papal Reform of the Eleventh
Century: Lives of Pope Leo IX and Pope Gregory VII (Manchester, 2004); I.S. Robinson, The
Papacy, 1073–1198: Continuity and Innovation (Cambridge University Press, 1990); Eamon
Duffy, Saints & Sinners: A History of the Popes (New Haven, Conn., 1997); C. Morris, The
Papal Monarchy: The Western Church from 1050 to 1250 (Oxford, 1991); U-R. Blumenthal,
100 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

as well as episcopal representatives, was charged with the more forceful

implementation of ecclesiastical reform. The first such synod, in its eleventh
canon, instructed that no married priest was to officiate at the eucharist,
citing the Council of Nicaea as evidence that this was reform rather than
innovation.45 The two-pronged focus of the attack, on married clergy
and simoniacal clergy, continued when, in the following year, legislation
was enacted to depose all clergy who were guilty of simony.46 Writing to
Archbishop Siegfried of Mainz after the synod of February 1075, Gregory
denounced those clergy who had acquired their office through simony,
and the married priests, declaring ‘those guilty of the crime of fornication
should not celebrate masses or serve at the altar in lesser orders’. The pope
called upon the laity to support efforts to enforce the decrees, instructing
that ‘the faithful should in no way receive the ministrations [of married
priests], so that whosoever is not corrected for the love of God and the
dignity of their office might come to his senses by the shame of the world
and the reproach of the faithful’.47 Action against married clergy was
couched in terms of the enactment of the wishes of ‘the holy fathers’ and
Gregory’s predecessors in Rome, with no suggestion that the demands of
the pope were in any way innovative. The ongoing reluctance to distinguish
between clerical marriage and clerical fornication is apparent in both this
letter and the epistle addressed to Werner of Magdeburg in the same year,

The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century
(Philadelphia, 1988); K. Cushing, Papacy and Law in the Gregorian Revolution, Oxford
Historical Monographs (New York, 1998).
45
  The only account of the 1074 synod comes from a German chronicler, Marianus
Scotus, Chronicon c.1096 (1074) in Annales et chronica aevi Salici. Scriptores V, G. Pertz
(ed.) (Hanover, 1844), p. 560; Mansi, Sacrum Conciliorum, 20.413–5; Brundage Law, Sex,
and Christian Society, p. 219.
46
 Again, records of the synod are scarce, and the content of its deliberations is best
viewed in the papal letters that followed. For a fuller discussion, see Cowdrey, ‘Gregory VII’,
pp. 275ff.
47
  sed nec illi qui in crimine fornicationis iacent missas celebrare aut secundum inferiors
ordines ministrare altare debeant. Statuimus etiam ut si ipsi contempores fuerint nostrarum
immo sanctorum partum constitutionum, populus nullo modo eorum official recipiat, ut qui
pro amore Dei et officii dignitate non corriguntur uerecundia saeculi et obiurgatione populi
resipiscant’; Cowdrey, Epistolae Vagantes, Letter 6; the German bishops were to criticise the
pope’s attempts to use the laity to enforce laws against the married clergy, and Gregory did
seem to move away from this controversial stance in later years: J. Gilchrist, ‘The reception
of pope Gregory VII into the Canon Law 1071–1141’, Zeitschrift der Savigny Stiftung fur
Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung, 56 (1973): 35ff; Blumenthal, ‘Pope Gregory VII’,
pp. 251ff; Lambert of Hersfeld, Annales, in Annales et chronica aevi Salici. Scriptores V, G.
Pertz (ed.) (Hanover: MGH, 1844), p. 218; the attempts to discipline him are contained in
the papal register of Gregory VII, Das Register Gregors VII, pp. 161–2 and 248–50.
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 101

which repeated the hope that the clergy would be corrected by ‘verecundia
saeculi et obiurgatione populi resipiscant’.48
However, the assertive tone of Gregory’s decrees and the canons of
the reforming synods did not ensure a positive response to local efforts to
implement the laws against simony and nicolaitism. Resistance took various
forms. Bishop Hubert of Therouanne went as far as to instruct his cathedral
clergy to refuse baptism and burial to those who opposed clerical marriage,
rather than obey the orders of the pope.49 Gregory entered into an increasingly
intemperate epistolary exchange with Bishop Otto of Constance, whose own
attempts to promulgate the papal decrees had met with resounding failure, to
the point where the bishop had simply continued to allow his diocesan clergy
to take wives. Gregory regarded the bishop’s attitude as one of ‘unparalleled
insolence’, and criticised Otto for his failure to respect the wishes of the
pope, the traditions of the fathers, and the commendations of Scripture. The
faithful of Constance were, on the grounds of their bishop’s rebellion ‘against
God and the Apostolic See’, absolved from all duties of obedience and fealty.
If laymen who were guilty of fornication were to be excluded from the altar,
the pope protested, ‘how can a man be a dispenser or a minister of the holy
sacraments when he can on no account even be a partaker of them?’50 In a
letter addressed to the German laity and clergy in late 1075, Gregory professed
to be aware of the actions of certain bishops who ‘condone, or fail to take
due notice of, the keeping of women by priests, deacons and subdeacons’ and
instructed that the laity were to withdraw obedience from these bishops on
the basis that scripture threatened equal punishment of those of committed
evil and those who tolerated their so doing.51 The pope turned to the secular
arm for assurance that action would be taken against the married clergy of
the Empire, writing to Rudolph of Swabia and Welf of Bavaria permitting
them to use necessary force to remove offending clergy from the altar.52 As
Cowdrey notes, Gregory’s excommunication and deposition of the emperor
brought an abrupt end to his attempts to enforce celibacy upon the imperial

48
  Cowdrey, Epistolae Vagantes, letter 7. Further attempts were made to enforce the
decrees in instructions to the Archbishop of Cologne, Anno (Das Registers Gregors VII, pp.
223–4), and the pope’s letter to Bishop Burchard of Halberstadt (ibid., pp. 221–2). Cowdrey
notes that there is some uncertainty over the date of this letter and others sent to the German
bishops, and whether they were written in the aftermath of the 1074 or 1075 synods. See,
Fliche, La Reforme Gregorienne, vol. II, p. 136; Lambert of Hersfeld Ann c.1074, pp. 256–8,
Berthold, Ann a.1075, p. 277.
49
  Cowdrey, Epistolae Vagantes, letter 41.
50
  Cowdrey, Epistolae Vagantes, letters 8, 9 and 10, citing the laws of Leo I and Gregory
the Great, as well as I Cor. 5:11; see also De Damnatio Scismaticorum, in MGH LdL, vol. 2,
p. 45.
51
  Cowdrey, Epistolae Vagantes, letter 11.
52
  Das Registers Gregors VII, pp. 182–5.
102 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

clergy by impressing its necessity upon his correspondents. Clerical continence

and celibacy, however, remained on the ecclesiastical agenda. The Council of
Constance (1077) repeated the condemnations of simony and nicolaitism,
and urged that the laity refuse the ministrations of incontinent priests.
Bishop Altmann of Passau, papal vicar and sympathetic to the reforming
ambitions of Gregory, laboured strenuously, and against a good deal of local
opposition, to impose chastity upon the clergy of his diocese.53
The rather abrupt end to Gregory’s interventions in the moral conduct
of the German clergy coincided with the invigoration of his admonitions to
French bishops and laymen on the subject of clerical marriage. In a letter
addressed to Countess Adela of Flanders and her son Robert in November
1076, Gregory responded to questions about the position of clerks suspected
of fornication by insisting that such individuals should not be permitted
to celebrate Mass, and repeated his assertion that it was an obligation
incumbent upon the secular arm to ensure that the law was diligently
enforced.54 The following year, the pope urged the bishop of Paris to ensure
that incontinent priests were excluded from the ministry of the altar, and
to admonish the laity to absent themselves from the ministrations of such
clergy. Again, the assumption was not that the validity of the sacrament
was undermined by the actions or character of the priest, but rather that
the castigations of the laity might coerce the clergy into better conduct.
The married clergy were less than receptive to the reform, however, and
it appeared that a proponent of clerical celibacy had been burned alive
by the clergy of Cambrai who were unwilling to heed his exhortations.55
In 1079, the pope addressed letters to the faithful of Germany and Italy,
and once more reminded them to refuse the offices of ‘priests, deacons
and subdeacons who are guilt of the crime of fornication ... for a blessing
is made a curse and their prayer a sin, as the Lord testifies’.56 The vigour
of these attempts to enforce chastity upon the clergy was a hallmark of
Gregory’s pontificate, but the content of the reforms enacted in the 1070s
was still clearly rooted in the actions of his predecessors. Earlier popes
had struggled to regulate clerical conduct, and the level of opposition and
debate over the issue after 1075 suggests that the issue was not resolved,
but rather increasingly polemicised, by Gregory’s campaign. This is not

53
  Cowdrey, ‘Gregory VII’, pp. 278–9; Berthold, Annales 1077, pp. 293–4; Vita
Altmanni Episcopi Pataviensis, in Historiae aevi Salici.Scriptores XII, W. Wattenback (ed.)
(Hanover, 1856), pp. 226–43 details the bishop’s flight from his cathedral on St Stephen’s
day 1075 after he preached in defence of the papal reforms; see also Anon Vita S. Altmanni
[PL 148.878] quoted in Barstow, Married Priests, p. 69.
54
  Das Registers Gregors VII, pp. 309–11.
55
  Das Registers Gregors VII, pp. 328–9; Schimpelpfenning ‘Ex Fornicatione’, 11.
56
  Cowdrey, Epistolae Vagantes, pp. 84–5.
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 103

to downplay the influence of Gregory both in his own lifetime and in the
debates over clerical celibacy and marriage in decades and centuries beyond.
The articulation of the principles that underpinned clerical celibacy became
increasingly confident in the Gregorian decrees, and the writings of those
around the pope, and when subsequent generations turned to the medieval
past in the search for the origins of the celibacy discipline, it was in the
Hildebrandine reforms that they claimed to find them.57 It was also in the
controversy spawned by the Gregorian reforms that later writers were to
find examples of opposition to clerical celibacy, evidence of the continued
existence of a married ministry and, most particularly, medieval writers
and chroniclers whose works lent support to the assertion that the history
of the Catholic church could be used to condemn its practices and faith.58
Papal attempts to impose celibacy upon the clergy of the Western
church continued after the pontificate of Gregory VII. The first canon of the
council of Clermont in 1095 repeated the demand that any priest, deacon,
or subdeacon who was married must refrain from the celebration of Mass.
Recalcitrant clerics were to be deposed, and the sons of priests were to
be barred from ordination, although were permitted to enter monastic
orders. The decrees of the council were widely heard; those who assembled
to hear the pope, Urban II, preach the First Crusade would also have heard
this condemnation of married clergy.59 Pope Calixtus II made further
attempts to enforce the prohibitions on clerical marriage at the Council
of Rheims in 1119, at which it was determined that all married clergy
were to be expelled from their benefices, and threatened with the penalty
of excommunication if they did not separate from their wives.60 However,
even these very public demands that married clergy be excluded from the
altar stopped short of asserting that their marriages were in any sense
invalid. It was only with the decrees of the Lateran Council of 1123 that
ordination to the higher ranks of the clergy was argued to present a diriment
impediment to marriage. The council denied higher clergy permission to
marry, removed legal status and protection from married priests, and
prohibited clerical concubinage. The threat of excommunication was

57
 See pp. 177–8 below for Reformation representations of the period; see also the
assertion of Innocent II in 1139 that the decrees of the second Lateran Council were anchored
in the ‘footsteps of our predecessors Gregory VII, Urban and Paschal’: Cowdrey, ‘Gregory
VII’, p. 291.
58
  H.L. Parish, Monks, Miracles and Magic Reformation Representations of the
Medieval Church (London, 2005).
59
  Mansi, Sacrum Conciliorum, 20.817; Robert Somerville, The Councils of Urban II
(Amsterdam, 1972), p. 144 (c.1–12); the council also repeated the decrees of the Synod of
Melfi (canon 12) which deposed married clergy and the bishops who tolerated them: Mansi,
Sacrum Concilium, 20.724. Barstow, Married Priests, p. 82.
60
  Mansi, Sacrum Conciliorum, 21.236 (canon 5).
104 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

lifted, but those clergy who had ‘contracted marriage’ were to be separated
from their wives and ‘led back to penitence’.61 The decrees were enforced
at local councils and synods, although with some variation, and repeated
in the Lateran Council of 1139.62 The marriage ties of the clergy were to be
broken, those who did not leave their wives were to be removed from their
cures, and the laity were ordered to refuse the sacraments of married or
concubinary priests.63 The decrees of 1123 did not suggest that holy orders
invalidated previously contracted marriages, but this is clearly the sense
of the subsequent legislation of 1139, and possibly even of the decrees of
the earlier local council held at Pisa in 1135.64 Married clergy were now
confronted by the stigma of concubinage, and their children tainted with
illegitimacy. After the labours of successive popes in the eleventh century,
the real turning point in the history of clerical marriage had come in this
period between 1123 and 1139. Despite the assertion by Innocent II that
the Lateran Council was ‘following in the footsteps of our predecessors
Gregory VII, Urban [II], and Paschal [II]’, by its close the church had
‘transformed clerical marriage from a legally tolerated institution into a
canonical crime’.65
Despite the confident tone of the reforming popes and councils, and
the disciplinary sanctions imposed upon married priests, opposition to
the decrees on clerical marriage continued to be voiced throughout the
eleventh century and beyond. The enforcement of the papal reforms in the
dioceses and provinces met with both passive resistance and open dissent.
At the council of Paris in 1074, abbot Walter of St-Martin de Pontoise
attempted to argue, against the majority view of the assembly, that a duty
of obedience to the pope must override their assertion that the limitations
on clerical conduct proposed were unreasonable. The hostile reception
to this exhortation led to the removal of the abbot to the king’s palace
for his own safety. The abbot was not alone; Archbishop John of Rouen

61
  Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, p. 220; 1st Lateran Council 1123
canon 7, 21; Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, J. Alberigo, J. Dossetti, P. Joannou,
C. Leonardi (eds) (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1962), pp. 167, 170, 191, 194 [although the decrees
do not appear in all MSS]; Barstow, Married Priests, p. 100.
62
  Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, p. 221; see, for example, Westminster
1125 canon 13; Clermont 1130 canon 4; Rheims 1131 canon 4; Mansi, Sacrum Conciliorum,
21.438, 458.
63
  2 Lateran 1139 canons 6–7; Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, p, 174.
64
  M. Boelens, Die Klerikerehe in der Gesetzgebung der Kirche unter besonderer
Berücksichtigung der Strafe (Paderborn, 1968), p. 167; Mansi, Sacrum Concilium, 21.527–8;
R. Somerville, ‘The Council of Pisa 1135: A Re-examination of the Evidence of the Canons’,
Speculum, 45 (1970): 98–114.
65
  Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, p. 220; Conciliorum Oecumenicorum
Decreta, p. 198.
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 105

was stoned by his clergy when he ordered them to leave their concubines,
and several northern Italian bishops simply refused to publish the papal
decrees because, they claimed, they feared for their lives.66 Lambert of
Hersfeld’s picture of clerical life in eleventh-century German certainly
diverged from the image of the chaste priest promoted by Gregory VII.
The ‘whole company’ (tota factio) of the clergy stood in angry opposition
to the attempted reforms, he wrote, and to the determination of the pope
to compel priests to live in the manner of angels. Gregory was, in the eyes
of the married clergy, a heretic, demanding of his priests a manner of life
that stood in opposition to the biblical concession that those who were
unable to contain should be permitted to marry. Confronted by the choice
between their wives and their service, Lambert asserted, clergy were more
committed to their marriages, and advised the pope that if he wished his
churches to be served by angelic priests, he should call angels from heaven
to fill vacant cures.67
French resistance to the imposition of clerical celibacy was equally vocal.
Hugh of Die’s attempts to use his legatine authority to enforce the decrees
of the pope spawned a vigorous debate in Northern France.68 A group of
Cambrai clergy addressed a letter to the church of the province, articulating
the need to defend the liberties of priests, including the freedom to marry.
Those clerks who had not made a promise or vow of continence, it was
argued, should be free to marry, in accordance with the scriptural principle
that the bishop should be the ‘husband of one wife’ and the eventual decision
taken against obligatory celibacy at the Council of Nicaea. As a result of
the deliberations at the Roman synod of 1074, they argued, the sacraments
and clergy were no longer esteemed by the laity, the sons of priest were
treated harshly, and tradition and custom were undermined. In response,
the clergy of Noyon wrote in favour of permitting the sons of priests to be
ordained, although avoided any articulation of direct arguments in favour
of clerical marriage. Citing the Council of Ancyra and its concession that
deacons should be permitted to marry, the clergy argued that the offspring
of married clergy were legitimate, and that even the sons of priests born
of concubines were still acceptable candidates for ordination on the basis
that the sins of the father are not borne by the son.69 The Noyon group, it

66
  Cowdrey, ‘Gregory VII’, p. 287; Frazee, ‘Origins’, 165; Synod of Paris 1074 in Mansi,
Sacrum Conciliorum, 20.437–38, 441–2; N. Grévy-Pons, Célibat et nature: Une controverse
médiévale. A propos d’un traité du début du XVe siècle (Paris, 1975), p. 14; Brundage, Law,
Sex, and Christian Society, p. 221.
67
 Lambert of Hersfeld, Annals, p. 218.
68
  Camaracensium et Noviomensium Clericorum Epistolae, in MGH LdL, vol. 3, pp.
573–8.
69
  The letter is printed in Libelli de Lite, vol. 3, pp. 576–7; Ezekiel 18:20.
106 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

has been noted, were perhaps more open to debate on the issue of reform,
but the correspondence is certainly testimony to a simmering controversy
surrounding the demands of the pope, and the use of not just biblical but
also conciliar precedent to buttress arguments against Gregory’s stance.70
The situation of the Anglo-Norman church was equally problematic. In
1076, Gregory VII provided King William with a summary of the scandalous
life and career of one of his bishops, Juhel of Dol. The pope had already
consecrated a new bishop to the See, and requested the assistance of the
king in removing Juhel from his post. The former bishop, he alleged, was
guilty of ‘trampling on the decrees of the holy canons’ and had obtained
and occupied the See through the ‘heresy of simony’. The bishop had also
breached the law of celibacy, and had not been afraid to ‘enter openly
into marriage and to take a harlot rather than a wife, by whom he also
begot children’.71 Four years later, William confronted his bishops with
the complaint that they had failed to enforce the decrees on celibacy, and
criticised those who continued to collect a ‘cullagium’ from married priests
who wished to remain with their wives. As Gregory had done, William
appealed to the laity for support in the attempt to impose discipline on the
clergy; clergy accused of concubinage were to be put on trial in a mixed
court.72 But the king had done little to assist the pope in the removal of Juhel,
and confronted with the powerful clerical dynasties of the Anglo-Norman
church might well have concluded that good relations with the ducal family
presented greater advantages than a disciplined but disgruntled episcopate.
William was not alone in recognising the enormity of the task. Lanfranc,
Archbishop of Canterbury, feared that the enactment of the laws against
the married clergy would leave the churches bereft of clergy, and those who
dared to preach against clerical marriage in Normandy found themselves
confronted by irate clergy wives determined to defend their position.73
In England, the campaign against the married clergy gathered pace in
the first decades of the twelfth century. At the Council of London in 1102,
Anselm insisted that married clergy relinquish their wives, and instructed
that those who refused were to be deprived of all privileges, and prohibited
from saying Mass. Chastity was demanded of all who presented themselves
for ordination, and the sons of priests were not to be permitted to inherit
their father’s church.74 Despite the earlier reforms of Lanfranc, there were

70
  MGH LdL, vol. 3, pp. 573–8. For further discussion, see Cowdrey, ‘Gregory VII’,
p. 289 and Barstow, Married Priests, pp. 124ff.
71
  Cowdrey, Epistolae Vagantes, pp. 44–5.
72
  PL 20:556; Brooke, ‘Clerical Marriage’, 57; Barstow, Married Priests, p. 89.
73
  PL 172:1397.
74
  D. Wilkins (ed.), Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, a synodo Verolamiensi,
A.D. 446 ad Londinensem, A.D. 1717 (2 vols, London, 1737), vol. I. 382; Mansi, Sacrum
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 107

those, including the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon, who argued that

Anselm’s legislation marked a departure from the traditions of the church,
and the archbishop certainly encountered resistance. A further council
was held in 1108, at which Anselm made a concerted effort to regulate
the contact between married clergy and their wives. Those priests who
had chosen to continue in service in the church were permitted contact
with their wives only in public places and before two witnesses, and those
who had attempted to remain married and continue in holy orders were
permitted a grace period of only eight days to reform their conduct. Clerics
who did not amend their ways faced excommunication, the confiscation
of their property, and the seizure of their wives as chattels of the church.75
Sensing some material advantage, Henry I capitalised upon Anselm’s
absence to assert his right to the lands of any married priest who refused
to separate from his wife. Anselm objected, but the king was not the only
beneficiary of his exile; many of the married clergy who had been forced
apart from their wives were reunited with them as the reform process
stalled.76 The decision of pope Celestine II to declare invalid all marriages
contracted by clerks in higher orders was repeated in the English Councils
of 1125, 1127 and 1129, and despite the scandalous story constructed
around the papal legate, this rigorous legislative effort had some effect.77
However, the labours of Anselm had not undermined the roots of the
married priesthood. In his study of the impact of papal and local reforms
upon the higher clergy, C.N.L. Brooke notes that of the 69 papal decretals
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that referred to the celibacy of
the clergy, some 44 related to England. As late as the second half of the
twelfth century, when married bishops were an increasingly rare feature
of the church, Pope Alexander III still felt compelled to denounce both
the married clergy and the practice of hereditary benefices in the English
church. In Wales, the bishoprics of St David’s and Llandaff had strong
dynastic ties, and in Durham at the beginning of the twelfth century the
bishop, dean and treasurer were married men. It was only in 1231/4 that
one of the most celebrated clerical dynasties in England came to an end
with the death of Richard Junior, canon of St Paul’s, after nearly a century
of influence.78 A century later, married clergy were the exception rather

Conciliorum, 20.1151 canons 5 and 6.

75
  Wilkins, Concilia, I.387–8, 410–11.
76
  Barstow, Married Priests, p. 93.
77
  Wilkins, Concilia, vol. I.408. 410, 411.
78
  Brooke, ‘Clerical Marriage’, 10; Liber Landavensis: The text of the Book of Llan
Dav, J.G. Evans (ed.) (Oxford 1893), pp. 275ff; J. Raine, The Priory of Hexham: its
chroniclers, endowments, and annals (Surtees Society, 1864), pp. l–lxvii.
108 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

than the rule; a successful outcome for the reformers, but a change that
had been the best part of two centuries in the making.79
The attempts to reform the conduct of the clergy in this period have been
described as a ‘devastating social revolution’ creating ‘broken homes and
personal tragedies’ worthy of Hollywood.80 At a practical level, reaction
and opposition came in the form of passive resistance and outright refusal
to conform, but the creation of a celibate priesthood was also a topic of
vigorous and lengthy literary controversy. Papal and conciliar decisions
were described, debated and disputed in letters, chronicles and open
treatises, but also had their origins in contemporary writing on chastity,
marriage, and the nature of the priesthood. The decrees and canons
discussed above were to become the foundations for later debates over
the origins of clerical celibacy, but the written debate that surrounded
them was to provide subsequent generations with argument both for and
against the reforms. The exchanges of the eleventh and twelfth centuries
introduced a new vocabulary to the debate, and injected the issue with a
new form of invective. The debate provides testimony to the existence of
supporters and opponents of the reform programme, and an instructive
illustration of the extent to which the question of clerical continence
and celibacy was redefined in this period. Perhaps the most significant
development in terms of the perception and definition of married clergy
was the reference to clerical marriage as a form of heresy, ‘nicolaitism’.
Named after Nicholas the deacon of Antioch, who was, erroneously,
identified as the founder of the heretical group mentioned in Revelation
2, nicolaitism became synonymous with fornication, and the label was
applied to the married clergy for the first time in the eleventh century. Its
general use is attributable primarily to the views of two men, Humbert,
Cardinal Silva, and Peter Damian, in whose works the term was first and
repeatedly used in this manner. Humbert had first used the vocabulary
of heresy in his denunciation of the views of the monk Nicetas in 1053.
The cardinal criticised the Eastern church for allowing marriage to higher
clergy, and argued for a long-standing tradition of perpetual continence for
those called to higher orders in the Latin church, on the basis that it was
unseemly for a priest to allow his hands to touch first his wife and then
the body of Christ.81 In his examination of the compendium of heresies

79
  Brooke, ‘Clerical Marriage’, 5–7.
80
  Brooke, ‘Clerical Marriage’, 1; for a discussion of the date and the seeming
disappearance of the wives of the clergy, see J. McNamara, ‘The herrenfrage: The Restructuring
of the Gender System, 1050–1150’, in C. Lees (ed.), Medieval Masculinities Regarding Men
in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis, 1994), pp. 3–29.
81
 See, for example, Humbert, Adversus Nicetam [PL 143.996–1000]; Humbert,
Responsio sive contradiction adversus Nicetae Pectorati libellum [PL 143:983–1000], c.25–6
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 109

compiled by Epiphanius of Constantia, Humbert made the erroneous

association with the deacon Nicholas that was to characterise writing, both
official and unofficial, against married priests. His views on the nature of
the ministry were to shape the third canon of the synod of 1059, with
its insistence upon the necessity for priestly purity, and the conformity of
the decrees on clerical celibacy with the traditions of the church. Most
controversially, Humbert went as far as to suggest that the validity of the
sacraments of an unchaste priest was impeded by his character, a charge
rejected by most other reformers.82
Certainly Peter Damian, whose depiction of married clergy was
determinedly derogatory, was careful to distance the defenders of clerical
celibacy from the Donatist heresy. However, both clerical marriage,
and the toleration of concubinage, were, in Damian’s eyes, sinful. The
consequences of the sin would be paid by the married priest, but the stain
of sin fell upon the whole community. If, for example, a bishop were to
lay hands on his flock that had been tainted by contact with a concubine,
he defiled not only his own spirit but that of all whom he touched.83
Consolation was to be found, however, in the fact that God continued to
show his mercy and miracles through the hands of the unchaste.84 Like
Humbert, Damian adopted the term ‘nicolaitan’ to describe the violaters
of ecclesiastical chastity. In a letter to Hildebrand in 1059, he wrote such
clerks ‘are called Nicolaites when they have intercourse with women ...
obviously they become fornicators when they couple together in this foul
commerce; they are rightly called Nicolaites when they defend their death-
bringing plague as though by authority. A vice is turned into a heresy
when it is confirmed by the defence of misguided teaching’. However,
Peter Damian’s most significant contribution to the debate was less the
association of the defence of clerical marriage with heresy, and more
the presentation of clerical celibacy as a necessary requirement for a
priesthood whose purity must be beyond reproach.85 Christ was born of

and 34; Cowdrey, ‘Gregory VII’, p. 270. For documents relating to the controversy between
East and West in the 1050s, see Nicetas, Libellus Contra Latinos c.15–16 and the bull of
excommunication in C. Will, Acta et Scripta quae de controversiis ecclesiae Grecae at Latinae
saeculo composite extant (Paris, 1861), pp. 133–5; 153–4, and Leo IX’s use of Humbert’s
reply in his own letter to Nicetas [PL 143:781–2].
82
  Elliott, ‘Priest’s Wife’, p. 143; J. de Chasteigner, ‘Le célibat sacerdotale dans les écrits de
Saint Pierre Damien, Doctor Communis, 24 (1971): 169–83 and 261–77, especially 175–7.
83
 Ep. 61 in Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani in Epistolae: Die Briefe der deutschen
Kaiserzeit, K. Reindel (ed.) (4 vols, Munich: MGH, 1983–9), vol. 2, pp. 214–16.
84
 Ep. 40 in Briefe, vol. 1, pp. 411–12.
85
  J. Gaudemet, ‘Le célibat ecclésiastique. Le droit et la practique du XIe au XIIIe
siècles’, Zeitschrift der Savigny Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistiches Abteilung, 68
(1982): 1–31.
110 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

a virgin, he argued, and therefore must not be made present on the altar
by hands that were sullied by contact with a woman.86 Married priests,
Damian suggested, should be ashamed to approach the altar with unclean
hands, because at that moment ‘the sky is opened, the highest and lowest
things rush together in one, and what sordid individual does not dread to
hurl himself audaciously [into holy things]? Angelic powers assist with
trembling, the divine power descends between the hands of those offering
[the Mass], the gift of the holy spirit flows, and that pontiff, whom the
angels adore, does not recede from the sacrifice of his body and blood [the
host] and yet he [the married priest] whom the fire of hellish lust enflames,
does not tremble to be present’.87
Damian’s Contra Intemperantes Clericos presented the married clergy
as a burden on the church. He dismissed the suggestion that St Paul’s
dictum ‘let each man have his own wife’ permitted the marriage of priests,
complaining that if this text were to be universally applied it would be to
the detriment of those who vowed a life of consecrated chastity. The daily
liturgical functions of a priest required perpetual chastity, and Damian
concluded that it would be better for those priests who could not live
in continence to abandon their altars rather than cause offence by their
actions.88 Clerical wives laid themselves open to accusations of incest with
their ‘spiritual father’ (also their husband) the priest.89 The wives of the
clergy, he argued, had no place in the work of the priest, clerical marriage
was not an acceptable solution to the problems of running a household,
and the women involved should not enjoy a legitimate position in society.90
Clergy wives were ‘screech owls, paramours and followers of Diana’, ‘the
sword of souls and ... occasion of death ...’, guilty of tearing apart their
husbands from their ministry and turning them from Christ. Their actions
not only brought their own souls into damnation, but also threatened the
salvation of the faithful, because these women were unafraid to touch hands
that had been anointed with oil, and opened the door by which the devil
might possess the elect. 91 Such rhetoric appears mild in comparison with
the vituperative language used in the Liber Gomorrhianus, which detailed
the apparently all-encompassing sexual vices of the clergy.92 Damian’s

86
  PL 145.385 (De Coelibatu Sacerdotum), written for Nicholas II.
87
 Ep. 162, ‘To the Archpriest Peter’, in Briefe, vol. 4, p. 156; Elliott, ‘Priest’s Wife’,
p. 144.
88
  PL 145.393, 886–7.
89
 Ep. 31 in Briefe, vol. I, p. 299.
90
 Ep. 114 in Briefe, vol. 3, p. 299; Ep. 162 in Briefe, vol. 4, p. 154.
91
  Ep. 112 in Briefe, vol. 3, pp. 278–9; Barstow, Married Priests, pp. 60–61; Peter Damian,
Contra Intemperantes Clericos, c.4, c.7 [PL 145:393–4, 410]; Ep. 5.13 [PL 144.359–72].
92
 Ep. 61 and 65 in Briefe, vol. 2, pp. 228–47; Liber Gomorrhianus [PL 145.159–90].
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 111

views were to resonate not only with the reforming popes, but also with
more radically minded laymen. In Milan, the conflict over clerical marriage
came to a head through the attitudes of the Patarene faction, whose first
leader, Ariald of Carimate, had spoken openly against the immorality of
the clergy in the 1050s, and acquired a new ally in the city in the form of
a notary, Landulf. In their preaching, they denounced the married clergy
and their wives, and in May 1057 entered the cathedral with a popular
mob to expel the unworthy priests. Ariald demanded that married priests
sign, on pain of death, a phytacium de castitate servanda. The sacraments
of impure clergy were deemed to be without spiritual benefit, and the laity
were instructed to refuse to attend their churches. Despite the efforts of
the archbishop to have him condemned, Ariald appeared to find favour
in Rome, and his return to Milan with papal support prompted further
conflict with the married clergy. The atmosphere remained heated, and
riots erupted when Damian and Anselm arrived in the city.93
The reform of clerical sexual conduct was in Damian’s eyes, by
necessity, a priority for the reform of the church, and at the most basic
level, a question of the purity demanded of those who celebrated Mass.
The language deployed by Damian and Humbert was to be repeated in
a handful of papal letters and decrees, most obviously in Gregory VII’s
denunciation of clerical marriage as fornication. Reference to the married
clergy as ‘nicolaitans’, and to clerical marriage as fornication, also crept
into the writing of Gregory VII. His letter to the archbishop of Salzburg
in November 1073 was the only expressly stated illustration of this
association between clerical marriage and heresy in his pontificate, but the
pope’s wider vocabulary would appear to bear the influence of Damian
and Humbert. In 1075 he urged the archbishop of Cologne to remove the
married clergy from their cures, ‘so that the service of an unspotted and
pure family might be offered to the bride of Christ who knows no spot or
wrinkle’, and clerical marriage was referred to as fornication in a letter
to the bishop of Paris.94 It has been argued, however, that the impetus

93
 Arnulf of Milan, Liber Gestorum Recentium, in Scriptores Germanicarum in usum
scholarum separatim 67, C. Zey (ed.) (4 vols, Hanover, 1994), especially 3.9 p. 177 and 3.10
pp. 1787–9; Bonizo of Sutri, Liber ad Amicam VI, in LdL, vol. I, p. 594; Cowdrey, ‘The
Papacy, the Patarenes and the Church of Milan’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical
Society, 5th series, 18 (1968): 25–48; C. Thouzellier, Heresie et heretiques: Vaudois, Cathares,
Patarines, Albigeois (Rome, 1969).
94
  Damian, Ep. 5.13, Opuscula, XVII and XVIII [PL 144.358ff; 145.379–424]; Ep.
5. 4. 14–15 [PL 144.344ff); letter 112 to AB Cunibert of Turin (Briefe, vol. 3, p. 286]; Das
register Gregors VII, vol. I.30 p. 50; Damian, De Caelibatu Sacerdotum [PL 145.385–6];
Contra Intemperantes Clericos [PL 145.414]; Cowdrey, Epistolae Vagantes, no. 16, p. 44,
discussed in Barstow, Married Priests, p. 69. See also Nicholas II’s reference to the bishops of
Gaul as nicolaitan heretics [Mansi, Sacrum Conciliorum, vol. 19.873]; Gaudemet, ‘Le célibat
112 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

behind Gregory’s actions against the married clergy did not come from
concerns surrounding the purity of those who celebrated the sacraments
alone. Gregory’s rhetoric was laden with references to obedience and
obligation, and the eradication of clerical incontinence, like the eradication
of simony, was part of a more general attack on a base manner of life that
undermined the reputation of the church. Disobedience to papal demands
was a sin in itself, as the German bishops were repeatedly reminded, and
as the laity were informed when they were instructed to take the reform of
the clergy into their own hands. Celibacy was required of the priesthood
by both church and its nature, and its enforcement was a duty of all
who made up the body of Christ.95 Despite Damian’s ardent attempts
to associate clerical marriage with heresy, the requirement to continence
remained a matter of church discipline rather than doctrine. As such, it
became an issue not only for controversialists, but also canonists, seeking
to establish the ancient antecedents for the demands of the eleventh-
century popes. Thus, Gratian’s Decretum presented a range of materials
that related to the enforcement of clerical celibacy, including the decrees
of the Second Lateran Council, Gregory VII’s condemnation of bishops
who failed to enforce the rule, and the demands that the laity should
boycott the services of married priests. Men who had been married, or
indeed taken a concubine, prior to ordination, were still permitted to enter
the priesthood, but only if the woman concerned had died or accepted a
separation.96 Gratian’s method was to collect texts, canones, and expound
their meaning and sense via summaries and dicta. Often the canones
were contradictory, and Gratian accepted at face value the authenticity,
or at least relevance, of some dubious sources, including for example the
narrative of the intervention of Paphnutius at Nicaea.97 As Roman Cholij
has demonstrated, it was Gratian who provided the controversial 13th
canon of the Council in Trullo with an apparent apostolic origin.98 At the
Council of Ancyra, in Gratian’s interpretation, there was no obligation
to continence imposed upon priests, and the early Latin tradition had, he
suggested, permitted the use of marriage after ordination.99 Celibacy was,
however, an appropriate state of life for the priest, and one that created

ecclésiastique’, pp. 1–31; Fliche, La Reforme Gregorienne, vol. I, p. 206–13; de Chasteigner,

‘Le Celibat sacerdotal, 169–83; P. Palazzini, ‘S. Pier Damiani e la polemica anticelibataria’,
Divinitas, 14 (1970): 127–33; J. Leclerq, ‘S. Pierre Damian et les femmes’, Studia Monastica,
15 (1973): 43–55.
95
  Cowdrey, ‘Gregory VII’, pp. 282ff.
96
  Gratian, Decretum, D.33 d.p.c.6 and 33.c–6–7; more generally D.26–34, 84.
97
  D.31 c.12.
98
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, pp. 63ff.
99
  D.31 ante c.1.
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 113

the necessary time and space for prayer.100 Following Gratian, Rufinus
asserted the acceptance of clerical marriage in the primitive church. In
such an analysis, the impediment to marriage after ordination came not
from the discipline of continence, but from the constructed notion of the
‘votum’ or ‘votum adnexum’, an obligation to chastity imposed by the
discipline of the church at ordination. No vow of chastity was explicitly
articulated by the ordinand, but, as Aquinas summarised, ‘by the very fact
of his receiving the order according to the rite of the western church, it is
understood that he has taken it’.101
It was not the place of the decretists to debate the value of clerical
celibacy, but rather to ensure that the law of the church was defined and
enforced, although even in this respect there were some areas of obscurity.
It was argued by some, including Aquinas, that there was an implicit vow
at ordination, and that therefore observance of the continence discipline
was required from admission to higher orders. For other commentators,
the requirement to celibacy was simply a discipline of the church rather
than an intrinsic feature of holy orders, especially given the practice of the
Eastern church. There was a general consensus that men who had been
married twice should be excluded from ordination, and that the sons of
priests, as illegitimates, were not legally entitled to inherit the property of
their parents. The position of concubinary priests was less clearly defined,
and in some texts was believed to relate to the existence, or not, of ‘marital
affection’ between the individuals concerned.102 For some commentators,
the celibacy issue was an issue of obedience. Echoing the views of Gregory
VII, for example, Thomas of Chobham outlined the nature of opposition
to the imposition of celibacy but concluded that even if continence were
not intrinsic to holy orders, the fact that it was demanded by the discipline
of the church carried with it a duty of obedience.103 The association of
Pope Lucius III with the case of a bigamous archbishop of Palermo offered
an illustration of the problems that might be involved in imposing the ideal

100
  D.31 c.1.
101
  Aquinas, Summa Theol. Suppl. 53.3.
102
 I am here indebted to the excellent summary given in Brundage, Law, Sex, and
Christian Society, pp. 316ff, citing Rolandus, and Huguccio. See also Stephen of Tournay,
Summa Stephani Tarnacensis, V. Schulte (ed.) (Giessen, 1891). Caus xxviii q.1 (p. 233);
H. Kalb, Studien zur Summa Stephans von Tournai. Ein Beitrag zur kanonistischen
Wissenschaftsgeschichte des späten 12. Jahrhunderts (Innsbruck, 1983); for the later
canonists, the best recent study is Liotta, la Continenza.
103
  Thomas of Chobham, Summa 7.2.16.1, quoted in Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian
Society, pp. 401–2; for Chobham and other opponents of the celibacy law, see J.W. Baldwin,
‘A campaign to reduce clerical celibacy at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’,
in Etudes d’histoire du droit canonique dediees a Gabriel Le Bras (2 vols, Paris, 1965), vol.
2, pp. 1041–53.
114 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

of law upon the reality of clerical practice. In this instance, the issue was
that of the dispensing power of the pope, and particularly Lucius’ apparent
dispensation that sanctioned appointment in a case of irregularity. The
story is most likely apocryphal, but the Palermo ‘case’ was popular with the
canonists, and serves as a demonstration of the difficulties in establishing
with precision a narrative of the tradition and law of the church on
marriage and ordination.104 The ‘precarious harmony between principle
and practice’105 in the work of the decretists was indicative of enduring
disquiet and outright disobedience to the celibacy rule. The ongoing efforts
of the local and universal church to implement the reforms, and to remove
the scandal of clerical concubinage, reinforce this image, and the vibrant
debate over the legality and practicality of clerical celibacy suggests that
this was not an issue for the canonists alone.
References in the reforming councils of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries to the decrees of past councils and the actions of previous
popes had attempted to locate the foundations of clerical celibacy in the
practices of the early church, and to construct a history of the discipline
that presented the action against ‘nicolaitan’ clergy as an attempt to
enforce a long-standing law of the church. The apostolic and patristic
period became a battleground for controversialists on both sides of the
debate, and one of the most enduring legends in the literature on the
history of clerical celibacy was born as a result. One of the most outspoken
denunciations of the Gregorian reform came in the form of the Rescript or
Epistle Concerning the Celibacy of the Clergy, an influential treatise that
was eventually condemned by Gregory VII in the Lenten Synod of 1079.106
Circulating widely between 1074 and 1079, and frequently attributed to
Bishop Ulric of Augsburg, it purported to present arguments in favour of
clerical marriage addressed to Pope Nicholas.107 The fictional nature of
the attribution is here exposed; Ulric was indeed bishop of Augsburg, but
in the tenth century, and there was no pope Nicholas whose pontificate
overlapped with his episcopal career. It is more likely that the author was
bishop Ulric of Imola. Both Barstow and Fliche concur in this identification,
although the name of Ulric of Augsburg continued to be associated with
the letter well into the early modern period.108 The author of the Rescript

104
 S. Kuttner, ‘Pope Lucius III and the Bigamous Archbishop of Palermo’, in J.A. Watt,
J.B. Morrall, F.X. Martin (eds), Medieval Studies Presented to Aubrey Gwynn SJ (Dublin,
1961) pp. 409–45.
105
  Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, p. 404.
106
  Bernold, Chronicon a.1079, p. 436.
107
  Pseudo-Udalrici Epistola de Continentia Clericorum, in MGH LdL, vol. I:244–60.
108
  Barstow, Married Priests, p. 57, notes that the failure to mention the prohibition
placed on married priests saying Mass might undermine this attribution; Fliche, Reforme
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 115

argued that while it was the duty of the pope to commend continence, he
could not demand it of the clergy, since both scripture and tradition allowed
the priest freedom to marry. The exhortation to chastity in Matthew’s
Gospel was intended only for a minority, and the lack of clear command
elsewhere in the New Testament meant that there was no solid support
for the prohibition of marriage to the clergy. Indeed, Paphnutius at the
Council of Nicaea had reminded the church of the necessity of retaining
this freedom to marry, and warned that to impose continence upon the
clergy was to open the door to scandal and even greater sin.109 The priests
of the Old Testament had been married, he argued, and the authority of
Scripture, including the Pauline recommendation that the bishop be the
husband of one wife, was more powerful than the words of the Fathers
in praise of virgnity.110 Two sections of the Rescript argued from more
contested evidence. Ulric suggested that the Apostolic Canons insisted
that married priests and bishops must not separate from their wives, and
also argued that Gregory the Great, far from being a supporter of clerical
celibacy, had been persuaded of the necessity of clerical marriage by the
discovery of the heads of some 6000 infants, presumably the children of
priests, in the papal waters.111
The Rescript was clearly read and used widely, and Ulric appears
to have been responsible for the introduction of the Paphnutius legend
into the debates of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In the mid-1060s,
the story of Paphnutius’ intervention at Nicaea and many of the other
arguments contained in the Rescript were repeated in the anonymous
Tractatus Pro Clericorum Connubio, although here supported by a more
detailed discussion of the Council of Nicaea and its ruling on ‘mulieres
subintroductae’, and a wider base in the conciliar sources, particularly
those from the East.112 A second version of the Tractatus was circulating in
the mid-1070s, perhaps inspired by Gregory VII’s Lenten Synods. Again, it
was argued that the eleventh-century popes had been in error in attempting
to impose obligatory celibacy, on the basis that chastity was a gift from
God and not something that could be legislated or demanded by man. To
do so was to lay the church open to the dangers of sin, as men who were
unable to live in chastity were forced into illicit sexual encounters. The
demand for celibacy was a demand for obedience to the discipline of the

Gregorienne, vol. 3, pp. 1–12; for the reformation uses of the letter see pp. 171–2 below.
109
  Pseudo-Udalrici, p. 256; for the origins of the Paphnutius legend, see chapter 2,
pp. 67–70.
110
  Pseudo-Udalrici, pp. 255–6. For a discussion of the disputed biblical texts, see
chapter 1 above.
111
  Pseudo-Udalrici, p. 257; Cholij, Clerical Celibacy; Cochini, Apostolic Origins.
112
  Fliche, Reforme Gregorienne, vol. 3, pp. 13–14; MGH LdL, vol. 3, pp. 591–5.
116 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

church, and it was argued that, in the absence of any scriptural mandate,
the reformers could fall back only upon their own authority. The fact that
clerical marriage was viewed in a positive light in the Greek church was,
it was suggested, evidence enough that there was no prohibition of such
unions in scripture.113
The defence of clerical marriage from history and scripture in Ulric’s
Rescript and its later continuations brought a vigorous response from
Bernold of St Blasien, himself the son of a priest, and later canon of
Constance.114 Bernold was a staunch advocate of reform, and particularly
the imposition of more rigorous clerical discipline, perhaps informed by
his years in the reformed monastic community at St Blasien. His tract,
De Prohibenda Sacerdotum Incontinentia (c.1075) took the form of a
correspondence on the subject of clerical marriage with a priest named
Alboin.115 It has been described as the ‘first historical retrospective on
the origins of priestly celibacy’, and in a series of six letters exemplified
the principles of the debate over the biblical and apostolic foundations
of the reforms of the eleventh century.116 Soon after, in his Apologeticus,
Bernold wrote in defence of the Gregorian decrees against simoniacs and
incontinent clergy, and set out to demonstrate in some detail their biblical
foundation.117 Of particular importance throughout was the interpretation
of the third canon of the council of Nicaea, which had ruled on the position
of ‘mulieres subintrodoctae’. Bernold argued that the legend of Paphnutius
was incompatible with the third canon, and therefore unreliable. Alboin,
in reply, sought to establish the historicity of the Paphnutius narrative
by citing not only the Latin account of his intervention, presented by
Cassiodorus, but also the description of the events offered by the Greek
historian Sozomen. It was clear, he argued, that the church had permitted
married men to enter the ministry in the past, and that the action taken
against married clergy in the 1070s was not only an innovation, but one
that ran contrary to the established laws of the church. Bernold’s response
was to argue that it was impossible that Cassiodorus, a Father of the
church, had presented false information, and therefore the only conclusion
could be that Sozomen’s account, particularly in its apparent endorsement
of clerical marriage, was flawed. Perhaps informed by this stance, the 1079

113
  Barstow, Married Priests, p. 119; E. Dummler ‘Eine Streitschrift fur Priesterehe’,
Sitzungberichte der koniglich-preussichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 21 (1902): 418–41.
114
  Libelli Bernoldi Presbyteri Monachi, in MGH LdL, 2.1–168; Cochini, Apostolic
Origins; Cowdrey, ‘Gregory VII’, pp. 289–90.
115
  MGH LdL, 1:7–26.
116
  Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 18; Barstow, Married Priests, pp. 124–31.
117
  Apologeticus super decreta contra simoniacos et incontinentes altaris ministros, in
MGH LdL, vol. 3.59–88.
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 117

Roman Synod did indeed condemn Sozomen’s work, although Bernold

had by this stage attempted to bring the debate over the Paphnutius legend
to a close by suggesting that regardless of historical precedent, the clergy
had a simple duty of obedience to the demands of the pope.
The association of clerical celibacy with the obligation to obedience to
papal authority of course tied the celibacy debate to the broader conflict
over papal power in the second half of the eleventh century. As Anne
Barstow has argued, the response to the attack on clerical marriage and
the legitimacy of the children of such unions was forceful, particularly
where the issue was subsumed into a wider conflict between papal and
imperial sympathisers. The monks of Lorsch, for example, intervened in
defence of clerical marriage as part of a series of tracts disseminated in
1111 to commemorate the return of Henry V to Germany. They accused
the papal party of demanding that which was not universally possible,
and encouraging the laity to use violence against the married clergy.118
As tensions between papacy and empire heightened, so the debate over
clerical celibacy became more polarised and acrimonious. Wenric of Trier,
commissioned to compile a list of the grievous errors of Gregory VII in the
aftermath of the Synod of Brixen and the election of the anti-pope Clement
III, alleged that the pope’s actions had undermined the peace of the church.
Gregory’s condemnation of the emperor had threatened the stability of
the church in Germany, and his ill-conceived attempt to enforce clerical
celibacy was to the detriment of the authority of the prince. Innocent
clergy and their families had been made scapegoats, Wenric claimed,
and the implication, if not outright declaration, that the sacraments of
the married clergy were invalid had brought division and distrust into the
life of the church.119 The demand that the laity refuse the sacraments of
married priests was, as we have seen, not intended to call into question
their validity, but this was a fine line to tread, and one that was perilously
close to being crossed in the accounts of miracles disseminated by the papal
party in the 1070s. Unchaste priests who celebrated Mass, for example,
were reportedly stunned as the chalice was overturned by a sudden wind in
the church, or as the consecrated bread vanished from their hands. Divine
vengeance, Gregory’s hagiographer suggested, struck down the wives of
the clergy. In contrast, when Gregory had celebrated Mass in Nonantola,

118
  Barstow, Married Priests, pp. 132ff; see also the complaints of Sigebert of Gembloux
in his Apologia that laity were seen to baptise their own children rather than employ the
services of a married priest, and reportedly trampled underfoot the bread consecrated by
married clergy.
119
  Wenrici scolastici Treverensis Epistola sub Theoderici episcope Virdunensis Nomine
Composita in LdL, vol. 1, pp. 280–89; see also the accusations made against the pope at the
Synod of Worms.
118 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

‘a bright light from heaven lit up the consecrated liquid like fire and he was
glorified like the ancient Fathers by this sign of divine acceptance’. 120 The
miracles of the saintly pope stood in stark contrast to the dubious efficacy
of the prayers of married priests.
A more historically grounded defence of the rights of married clergy
was presented by the ‘Norman Anonymous’.121 The works attributed
to him include a study of theocratic kingship, but also three that relate
to clerical marriage, comprising a defence of such marriages, and two
presentations of an examination of the rights of the sons of priests which
included an unusual and rather opaque venture into the theology of
predestination.122 Although the content of the treatise on clerical marriage
would not be out of place in the 1070s, the focus on the legitimacy of
clerical children suggests, Barstow argues, that any serious assertion of
the legality of clerical marriage had evaporated. The primary argument in
the defence of clerical marriage was that the element of compulsion in the
discipline of the church was not supported by scripture. The Anonymous
argued that obligatory celibacy was the law of man and not of God, and
that in these circumstances it was still better for those priests who could
not live celibate to marry, ‘melius est enim nubere quam uri’ as counselled
in Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians. To prohibit marriage was an error,
and ran contrary to the tenor of the decrees of the early church councils.
In this respect the Anonymous was simply repeating the arguments of
earlier writers, although without the focus on the ruling at Nicaea that had
characterised much of the debate of the 1060s and 1070s. The influence
of his writings is hard to assess; Brooke makes a compelling case for
regarding the Anonymous as rather insignificant, given his quasi-heretical
views on several issues that were unlikely to have gone unnoticed had
he occupied an important office in the church. The charismatic nature of
his writings, expressed in the first person, would support the hypothesis
that his interests in clerical marriage were more than academic. He was,
perhaps, a married priest, or the son of a priest himself. His apparent

120
  Paul of Benried, Life of Gregory VII c.117, c.116, c.7, in I. Robinson (ed.), The
Papal Reform of the Eleventh Century.
121
  The writings of the Norman Anonymous are in MGH LdL, vol. 3, pp. 645ff. However
it is worth noting, as Barstow does, that the Anonymous’ assertion that anyone, layman or
priest, might administer the sacraments, was a particularly radical statement. See Barstow,
Married Priests, pp. 165ff, for a fuller discussion of the theology of the Anonymous.
122
  The works of the Anonymous have been well studied, although some doubt still exists
over their date and provenance. See Barstow, Married Priests, pp. 157ff, Brooke, ‘Clerical
Marriage’, 14ff; K. Pellens (ed.), Die Texte des Normannischen Anonymus, (Wiesbaden,
1966); N. Cantor, Church, Kingship and Lay Investiture in England (Princeton, 1958),
pp. 174–97; G.H. Williams, The Norman Anonymous of 1100 AD (Cambridge Mass.,
1951), pp. 88–127.
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 119

familiarity with English affairs suggests some experience on the other side
of the Channel. However, as Brooke notes, despite the obvious continued
existence of married clergy in England well beyond the eleventh-century
reforms, there is little evidence of a burgeoning polemical debate on the
topic, and there is nothing to imply that the Anonymous was writing as
part of a controversy within the English church.
The most detailed commentary on the attempts to impose celibacy
upon the English clergy comes from the Historia Anglorum of Henry of
Huntingdon, compiled in the second decade of the twelfth century.123 Henry
had succeeded his father in the archdeaconry of Huntingdon, and perhaps
for this reason was less than sympathetic to the increasingly determined
efforts to undermine clerical marriage. For Henry, clerical celibacy was a
novelty, and a disputed one, although his assertion that it was not until
the twelfth century that clerical marriage was forbidden in England was
either naive, or a reflection of the continued divergence between ideal and
reality on this matter. In her study of the Historia Anglorum and the issue
of clerical celibacy, Nancy Partner argues that the attempts to reform the
English church in the tenth century were ‘almost entirely inefficacious’, with
the result that Henry’s implied ignorance of the law on clerical marriage
may not have been entirely a fabrication. His deliberate references to the
wives of clergy as ‘uxor’ rather than ‘meretrice’ might stem from this
ignorance, or more likely a determination to represent clerical marriages
as legal, given his own ancestry, and the fact that he had fathered at least
one son.124 Describing the events at the council of London in 1102, Henry
described how the demand for a celibate priesthood ‘seemed quite proper
to some, but dangerous to others’, who feared that it would force the
clergy who could not contain into fornication. The implementation of the
decrees of the Council was patchy at best, and Anselm was compelled
to seek a dispensation from Paschal II to allow the sons of priests to be
ordained ‘on account of the conditions of the time’.125 Clerical celibacy
was discussed again at the council of London in 1125, which was attended
by the papal legate John of Crema. Henry of Huntingdon’s account of the
council, and particularly the actions of the legate, were to become a staple
of later works that argued for a tradition of clerical marriage in the English
church, and attempted to associate clerical celibacy with debauchery and
sin.126 In the account contained in the Historia Anglorum, the legate was
severe in his treatment of the married clergy, dismissive of their wives, and

123
  Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, T. Arnold (ed.) (London, 1879).
124
 N. Partner, ‘Henry of Huntingdon: Clerical Celibacy and the Writing of History’,
Church History, 42 (1973): 467–75, especially 468–9, 474.
125
  Wilkins, Concilia, vol. 1, p. 387.
126
 See chapter 5 below.
120 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

apparently motivated by the argument that it was sacrilege for a priest to

make present the body of Christ with hands that had touched a woman.
The polemical value of the council came from Henry’s revelation that
John of Crema had been apprehended after Vespers in the company of a
prostitute.127 This particular part of the history of celibacy in England was
not mentioned in the chronicles, although there was clearly some suspicion
surrounding the conduct of the legate.128 If Henry did not invent the story,
he at least capitalised upon it in order to tarnish the reputation of the
council that enforced celibacy upon the English clergy.
John of Crema was a celebrated example, but the image of the priest
who rushed from the altar to the bed of his concubine or wife continued
to enjoy a literary popularity well beyond the early twelfth century. The
Apocalypse of Goliae, attributed to Walter Map, included a reference to the
payment of the ‘cullagium’ by priests who wished to maintain women.129
In the early fourteenth century poem ‘Handlyng Synne’, Robert of Brunne
described an ‘amorous priest’ who, once married, had steadfastly refused
to leave his wife. His four sons became priests, but one was persuaded
of the necessity of clerical celibacy when he witnessed the soul of his
mother being carried away by demons, and took to preaching around
the country against the evils of clerical wives.130 Similar pictures of the
eternal punishment of the concubines of clergy were painted in Ceasarius
of Heisterbach’s Dialogus magnus visionum ac miraculorum, again with
accounts of the women pursued by demons.131 Later in the century, the
cast of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales included a married parson and his
daughter, who had been married to the miller with a substantial dowry,
and was expected to benefit substantially from the goods of the church.132

127
  Historia Anglorum, pp. 245–6.
128
  Partner, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’, 474; Brooke, ‘Clerical Marriage’, 19 n. 62. The story
also features in Matthew Paris’ (Ann 1125). In the 16th century, Baronius attempted to disprove
the legend, which was still being used to criticise the implementation of clerical celibacy.
129
  Walter Map, Apocalypse of Goliae, in T. Wright (ed.), The Latin Poems Commonly
Attributed to Walter Mapes (London, 1841), ll.170ff.
130
 Robert of Brunne, Handlyng Synne, J. Furnivall (ed.), Early English Texts Society,
Old Series, 119 and 123 (1901 and 1903), II.7981ff; K. Greenspan, ‘Lessons for the Priest,
Lessons for the People: Robert Mannyng of Brunne’s Audiences for Handlyng Synne’, Essays
in Medieval Studies, 21 (2004): 109–21.
131
  Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, translated by H. von E.
Scott and C.C. Swinton Bland, with an introduction by G.G. Coulton (London, 1929), Dist
12.c.20.
132
  Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, in G. Benson, C. Cannon (eds) The Riverside
Chaucer (3rd edition, Oxford, 1988), 3942–86: ‘the person of the toun, for she was faire, in
purpose was to maken hire his haire, both of his catel and of his mesuage, and stranger he made
it of hire marriage. His purpose was for to bestow hire hie Into som worthy blood of ancestrie.
 Celibacy, Marriage, and the Gregorian Reform 121

Concubinary priests also featured in the Parson’s Tale, and in The Vision
of Piers Plowman.133 Exploration of the theme of clerical concubinage was
not confined to the written word. Medieval preachers included in their
sermons exempla which detailed the fate of clerical wives and concubines
pursued by hellish hounds at their death.134 Such caricatures would only
be resonant with their intended audience if either the reality or the fear of
clerical marriage and concubinage were sufficiently firmly established in the
clerical and lay mindset. By the mid-twelfth century, clerical marriages had
been denounced in the strongest terms, but it is clear that even these strident
declarations had not produced universal obedience. The extent to which
the medieval church was forced to accommodate clerical concubinage has
been the subject of much debate. Previously seen as a prime cause of lay
antipathy towards the church, incontinent clergy have since been relegated
to the sidelines of debate over the origins of the Reformation in England
and Europe.135 James Brundage concluded that the relationships between
priests and their concubines were relatively stable and permanent, a form
of quasi-mariage that was ‘frequently and openly practiced’ throughout
the medieval period. Certainly, the repeated references to ‘focaria’ and
‘fireside companions’ in the ecclesiastical legislation of the later medieval
period would suggest that these women had not been eradicated from the
life of the church, even if the optimistic use of the term ‘uxor’ by Henry of
Huntingdon was no longer used. 136 In the early thirteenth century, Pope
Innocent III complained to the bishop of Norwich that there were priests
in his diocese who still claimed an entitlement to their benefices despite
marriage, and Pope Gregory IX addressed a strongly worded letter to the
Archbishop of Drontheim demanding that he put an end to the public
marriages of priests. In the mid-thirteenth century, the priests of Cordoba
attempted to justify their position from ignorance of the law, claiming that
they were unaware of any prohibition on concubinary priests performing
sacramental functions.137 In 1536, the Welsh clergy petitioned Thomas

For holy chirches good mote ben despended On holy chirches blood that is descended Therefore
he wolde his holy-blood honoure, though that he holy chirche should devour’.
133
  Chaucer, Parson’s Tale, ll. 897–9, Vision, ll.145ff.
134
  J.Y. Gregg (ed.), Devils, Women and Jews. Reflections of the Other in Medieval
Sermon Stories (New York, 1997), W.14.
135
 See chapter four below.
136
  Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, pp. 4–5; Phipps, Celibacy, p. 142; see
for example Wilkins, Concilia, vol. I. 573, 590, 653, 672–3, 692, 705, vol. 2 36, 142, 169;
Gaudemet, ‘Le célibat ecclésiastique’, 4–5.
137
 Innocent III, Die Register Innocenz III. 6: 6. Pontifikatsjahr, 1203/1204, Texte und
Indices, O. Hageneder, J.C. Moore, and A. Sommerlechner (eds) with Christoph Egger and
H. Weigl, (Graz, 1964–); E. Berger, Les Registres d’Innocent IV (4 vols, Paris 1884–1920)
no. 1759; for the position of clergy wives and concubines in Spain, see M.A. Kelleher,‘Like
122 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

Cromwell requesting that they be allowed to maintain their ‘hearth

companions’ in accordance with tradition, and H.C. Lea concluded that
clerical marriage had scarcely become obsolete in Wales before it was
legalised once more in 1549.138
Even if the impact of the reforms of the eleventh and twelfth centuries
was neither universally nor uniformly felt, the decrees of the popes and
councils, and the debate that they spawned, exerted a profound influence
over the understanding of the nature of the priesthood, the origins of clerical
celibacy, and the history of clerical marriage in subsequent generations. If
the ‘sacralisation’ of the priesthood has been seen to have its origins in the
fourth century and tangible expression in the continence imposed upon the
married clergy, it was an image that was to gain even greater force with
the liturgical changes and disciplinary demands of the eleventh century.
As the devotional life of the church came to focus more and more upon
the eucharist, and particularly the presence of Christ in the consecrated
elements, so the assertion that only those priests who were without stain
should be permitted to approach the sacred acquired an added force. The
image of an unchaste priest who handled the body of Christ was potent
and disturbing. To assert the necessity of ‘cultic purity’ was to exalt both
the image and the office of the priest; sacramental function set the priest
apart from the laity, and his celibacy was both evidence and agent of that
separation.139 The language of liturgy and sacral function, and the lexicon
of polemical debate, established the boundaries of controversy over
clerical celibacy and marriage in the centuries that followed. Gregory VII
loomed large on the horizon of early modern writing on the nature of the
priesthood and the position of married priests, which imbued the period
of ‘Gregorian reform’ with a significance not only in the history of clerical
celibacy, but in the history and eschatology of the Christian church. The
vigorous debate over clerical marriage in the era of the Reformation was
to draw heavily upon the testimony provided by eleventh- and twelfth-
century popes, churchmen, and critics, as the association between clerical
celibacy, priestly authority, and eucharistic theology was examined,
unravelled, and presented anew.

man and wife’: Clerics Concubines in the Diocese of Barcelona’, Journal of Medieval History,
28 (2002): 349–60; J.D. Thibodeaux, ‘Man of the church or man of the village? Gender and
Parish Clergy in Medieval Normandy’, Gender and History, 18.2 (2006): 380–99.
138
 Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, vol. 1, p. 358; G. Williams, The Welsh Church from
Conquest to Reformation (Fayetteville, 1993), pp. 341–5; C. James, ‘Ban Wedy I Dynny:
Medieval Welsh Law and Early Protestant Propaganda’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies,
27 (1994): 61–81, discussed in Parish, Clerical Marriage, p. 113.
139
  Bernard Verkamp suggests that the ‘cultic purity’ argument was the primary motive
behind clerical celibacy until the mid-twentieth century: ‘Cultic Purity and the Law of
Celibacy’.
 CHAPTER 4

‘In marriage they will live more

piously and honestly’: Debating
Clerical Celibacy in the
Pre-Reformation Church
The pre-Reformation clergy, it has been suggested, ‘often felt that although
celibacy might require them not to marry, it did not oblige them to
renounce sex’. William Phipps’ observation might, particularly in light
of the apparent rehabilitation of the English clergy in the revisionist
historiography of the Reformation, appear tongue in cheek, but the pre-
Reformation clergy were not, in their totality, observing the spirit of the
Gregorian reforms some four centuries on. The precise role played by


  W. Phipps, Clerical Celibacy, The Heritage (London and New York, 2004), p. 142.

  For some of the more significant contributions to the debate, see W.W. MacDonald,
‘Anticlericalism, Protestantism and the English Reformation’, Journal of Church & State,
15 (1973): 21–32; H.J. Cohn, ‘Anticlericalism in the German Peasants’ War 1525’, Past
and Present, 83 (1979): 3–31; C. Haigh, ‘Anticlericalism and the English Reformation’,
History, 68 (1983): 391–407; A.G. Dickens, ‘The Shape of Anticlericalism and the English
Reformation’, in E. Kouri and T. Scott (eds) Politics and Society in Reformation Europe (1987);
A.G. Dickens, The English Reformation (2nd edn, London, 1989); R.N. Swanson, ‘Problems
of the Priesthood in Pre-Reformation England’, English Historical Review, 105 (1990): 845–
69; P. Dykema and H. Oberman (eds) Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern
Europe (Leiden and New York, 1993); G. Dipple, Antifraternalism and Anticlericalism in the
German Reformation: Johann Eberlin von Gunzburg and the Campaign Against the Friars
(Aldershot, 1996); D.M. Loades, ‘Anticlericalism in the Church of England before 1558:
an “eating canker”?’ in N. Aston and M. Cragoe (eds) Anticlericalism in Britain c.1500–
1914 (Stroud, 2000), pp. 1–17; E. Shagan, Popular Politics and the English Reformation
(Cambridge, 2003); P. Marshall, ‘Anticlericalism Revested? Expressions of Discontent in
Early Tudor England’, in C. Burgess and E. Duffy (eds), The Parish in Late Medieval England:
Proceedings of the 2002 Harlaxton Symposium (Donington, 2006). Some debate over the
‘masculinity’ or ‘third gender’ of the late medieval clergy has been prompted by recent
articles by R. Swanson, ‘Angels Incarnate: Clergy and Masculinity from Gregorian Reform
to Reformation’, in D. Hadley (ed.), Masculinity in Medieval Europe, (London, 1999),
pp. 160–77 and J. Thibodeaux, ‘Man of the Church, or Man of the Village? Gender and the
Parish Clergy in Medieval Normandy’, Gender and History, 18.2 (2006): 380–99. See also
P. Cullum, ‘Clergy, Masculinity and Transgression in Late Medieval England’, in Hadley (ed.),
Masculinity in Medieval Europe, pp. 178–96, and M.C. Miller, ‘Masculinity, Reform, and
124 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

clerical sexual conduct and the theoretically concomitant anticlericalism

as ‘causes of the Reformation’ continues to be debated in books and term-
papers, but it is clear that, whatever the precise conduct of the parish clergy
in late medieval Europe, the issue of clerical celibacy was still contested and
argued in writing and in action. The burgeoning weight of controversial
literature devoted to the subject in the sixteenth century was at least in
part a reflection of shifting theological sands, and of the wider doctrinal
and pastoral debates which impacted upon the image of the celibate priest
as well as its practical realisation. But the concerns of the reformers, both
Catholic and Protestant, had their antecedents in the centuries before
Luther and his contemporaries spilt their first ink. A closer study of the
pre-Reformation church can provide a valuable context and texture to
these Reformation debates, and evidence of the perceived position of the
celibate priesthood in the life of the late medieval church.
The medieval Catholic church had, since the eleventh-century reforms,
continued to uphold the value and necessity of clerical celibacy, and
significant efforts were made by popes, councils, and bishops to ensure
that the law of celibacy was obeyed, in order to maintain the unique status
that the ordained priest enjoyed, to preserve the reputation of the church
and her clergy, and to provide suitable ministers at the altar. However,
individual cases of clerical misconduct, and in some cases more general
failures to abide by the spirit and the letter of the law, are not difficult
to find. The Council of Toledo (1302) in its second canon instructed that
concubinary priests were to be deprived of the fruits of their benefices
and suspended from office, and the Winchester Synod of 1308 was also
motivated to act against clerical concubinage. Further attempts were made
to regulate the conduct of the clergy at councils in Ravenna (1314) Toledo
(1324), Florence (1346), Prague (1355) and Magdeburg (1370). Part of the
hagiographical reputation of Niccolo Bonafede, later papal administrator
and bishop of Chiusi, rested upon his attempts to reform the conduct of the
local clergy who openly maintained concubines and raised their children
in the public eye. Early in the sixteenth century, diocesan synods held in
Leon and Seville (1512) lamented the lack of discipline in the church, and
contained within their attempts to inculcate lay piety and improve clerical
conduct was a condemnation ofpriests who either allowed their sons to

Clerical Culture: Narratives of Episcopal Holiness in the Gregorian Era’, Church History,
72 (2003), pp. 25–52.

  A. Roskovány, Coelibatus, et Breviarium: duo gravissima clericorum officia, e
monumentis omnium seculorum demonstrate (5 vols, Pest, 1861), vol. 2.1.6.

  Conte Monaldo Leopardi, Vita di Niccolò Bonafede vescovo di Chiusi (Pesaro, 1832),
p. 18; H.C. Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy (2 vols, London, 1907), vol. 2, p. 15. It is
worth noting, however, that the despair felt by the saintly bishop when confronted by the
failings of his flock was not an uncommon hagiographical topos.
 ‘In marriage they will live more piously and honestly’ 125

assist at Mass, or officiated at the marriages of their own children. Such

children were most likely the fruit of unions which defied definition. The
impact of the Gregorian reforms, it has been argued, was to replace the
clerical wife with the clerical concubine, but such relationships were often
tolerated by the local church and the women involved were accorded a
recognised status. Glanmor Williams’ study of the Welsh church presents
clerical concubinage or ‘marriages’ as a practice generally accepted by the
faithful ‘without demur’, and at least three Welsh Tudor bishops were
themselves the sons of priests. Fifteenth century Irish friars encountered
widely accepted clerical concubinage in the Gaelic church, and argued
vociferously against the cultural and legal practices that lent it support.
The diocesan visitations undertaken by the thirteenth-century Archbishop
of Rouen, Odo Rigaldus, exposed a number of cases of clerical concubinage,
including some long-standing arrangements which were often regarded by
the lay community as quasi-marriages. The situation appeared particularly
acute in Normandy, where Jennifer Thibodeaux has shown that even after
prosecution, many local clergy ‘relapsed’ and returned to their women.
Indeed, any distinction between clerical marriage and clerical concubinage
had vanished, not only in reality but also in ecclesiastical law, as the church
emphasised the illicit nature of such unions and described such women not
as wives but as concubines, focaria, solute, or pedisseca. Whether such
distinctions were significant or incidental in the eyes of parishioners is less
clear. As Peter Marshall suggests, attempts to quantify the extent and the
manner in which the pre-reformation clergy fell short of the celibate ideal
can only be provisional, given the extent to which the visitation process
depended upon the lay reporting of clerical misdemeanours.10


  S. Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional. A Sacrament Profaned (Oxford, 1995), p. 10;
Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, vol. 2, p. 17; J.S. de Aguirre, Collectio Maxima Conciliorum Omnium
Hispaniae, et Novi Orbis (6 vols, Rome, 1753–5), vol. 5 pp. 371–2 (1512 Can. 26 and 27).

  O. Chadwick, The Early Reformation on the Continent, in Henry and Owen
Chadwick (eds), The Oxford History of the Christian Church (Oxford, 2001) p. 138;
C. Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975), p. 50.

  G. Williams, The Welsh Church from Conquest to Reformation (Lafayette, 1962)
p. 342; F. Heal, The Reformation in Britain and Ireland (Oxford, 2003), p. 77.

  Heal, Reformation, p. 77.

  Thibodeaux, ‘Man of the Church’, 388; see also J. Gaudemet, ‘Le Celibat Ecclesiastique.
Le Droit et la Practique du XIe au XIIe siecle’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fur
Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung, 68 (1982): 1–31 esp. 4–5; B. Schimmelpfennig, ‘Ex
Fornicatione Nati: Studies on the Position of Priests’ Sons from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth
Century’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 2 (1980): 3–50, especially 32ff.
10
  P. Marshall, The Catholic Priesthood and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994),
p. 144.
126 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

Certainly, the small number of proceedings against incontinent clergy

detailed in the visitation records of the English church would suggest that
the majority were not guilty of the kind of conduct that was to characterise
the presentation of the medieval clergy in the polemical literature of the
Reformation. However, the reality of the problem cannot be entirely
dismissed.11 Of all the accusations levelled against the pre-Reformation
clergy, it was sexual misconduct that most exercised the laity, and therefore
featured most prominently in complaints.12 The church continued to insist
that the sons of priests were debarred from ordination, but the Calendar
of Papal Letters Relating to Great Britain and Ireland shows that over
five hundred dispensations were granted between 1447 and 1492,
to remove the stigma of illegitimacy from clerical sons who wished to
enter holy orders. Of these, however, only eight related to English cases;
the problem in Scotland and Ireland was evidently more widespread.13
Although there were complaints in the English Parliament in 1372 about
similar practices on the part of church leaders, instances of institutional
toleration of clerical concubinage for pecuniary gain were primarily a
feature of the continental church. Of these, the most infamous was the
enhancement of episcopal revenues by Bishop Hugo of Constance, who
collected substantial fines from the priests of his diocese who maintained
concubines and fathered children.14 Erasmus was to argue that it would be
better to allow the clergy to marry than to be confronted by the scandal of
clerical concubinage, and to ‘openly acknowledge the partners now held
in infamy’, if only the bishops were not so attracted by the rewards of the
income from concubinage fees.15 Even without the ‘cullagium’ controversy,
the image of the concubinary priest was certainly familiar on both sides
of the Channel. The Dominican preacher John Bromyard denounced
the scandalous conduct of unchaste clergy, and John Gower presented a

11
 See, for example, C. Harper-Bill, ‘A Late medieval visitation: The diocese of Norwich
in 1499’, in Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, 34 (1977),
p. 45; R.A. Houlbrooke, Church Courts and the People During the English Reformation
(Oxford, 1979), pp. 178–9; M. Bowker, Secular Clergy in the Diocese of Lincoln, 1485–1520
(Cambridge, 1968).
12
  Heal, Reformation, p. 76.
13
  P. Heath, The English Parish Clergy on the Eve of the Reformation (London, 1969),
p. 107.
14
  H.G. Richardson, ‘The Parish Clergy of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’,
TRHS, 3rd series, 6 (1912): 89–128, especially 122; O. Vasella, Reform und Reformation in
der Schweiz (Munster, 1965) 28–32; Phipps, Clerical Celibacy, p. 144.
15
 Erasmus, A Right Fruitfull Epistle... . In Laud and Praise of Matrimony (tr. Richard
Taverner) (London, 1532/6), sig. C2; R. Bainton, Erasmus of Rotterdam (New York, 1969),
pp. 49–50; E.J. Deveruex, Renaissance English Translations of Erasmus: A Bibliography to
1700 (Toronto, 1983), p. 8.
 ‘In marriage they will live more piously and honestly’ 127

caricature of the lecherous priest who circled his parish as a wolf circled
the sheepfold, looking for women who might be seduced.16 Complaints
about clerical fornication and adultery were a staple of German lyric verse
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.17 Such was the danger inherent
in clerical liaisons with women, that Bernard of Pavia counselled a policy
of distance and separation between priests and their female parishioners
except where pastoral duty required otherwise, in order that that the
reputation of the clergy be preserved.18
The imposition of clerical celibacy, and the disciplining of those
parish priests who failed to abide by the law of the church, continued to
preoccupy councils and reformers in the fifteenth century. In 1429, it was
protested in the 23rd canon of the Council of Paris that ‘‘on account of the
crime of concubinage, with which the multitudes of the clergy and monks
are inflicted, the Church of God and the whole clergy are held in derision,
abomination and dishonour among all nations; and that abominable crime
has so prevailed in the House of God that Christians do not now consider
mere fornication a mortal sin’. The behaviour of concubinary priests
reflected poorly upon the clerical estate, and upon the church, but, it
appeared, also presented a poor example to the faithful who might model
their conduct upon that of their pastors. The 42nd and 43rd sessions
of the Council of Constance (1414–35) engaged with the more general
issue of ecclesiastical reform, and there was a purposeful denunciation of
concubinage at the Council of Basle in 1435, which held over the guilty
clergy the threat of deprivation and loss of title. Bishops who failed to

16
  J.A. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago and
London, 1987), p. 536, quoting J. Gower, Vox Clamantis, in The Complete Works of John
Gower: Vol. 4, The Latin Works, G.C. Macauley (ed.) (Oxford, 1902), lines 1624–5; see
also lines 1515–24, 1597–1600, 1681–86; Bromyard, Summa Praedicantium s.v. Luxuria;
G. Owst, Literature and Pulpit. a neglected chapter in the history of English letters & of
the English people (Oxford, 1961), p. 260. See also Richardson, ‘Parish Clergy’, Appendix,
quoting Gower’s Vox Clamantis ‘o si curates nati succedere possent Ecclesie titulo ferreque
iura partum, Tunc sibi Romipetas, mortis quibus est aliene Spes, nihil aut modicum posse
valere puto’, and Poem on the evil times of Edward II ‘and this ersedeknes that ben set to
visite holie churche, Everich fondeth hu he may shrewedlichest worchse; he wole take mede
of that on and that other, and late the parsoun have a wyf, and the prest another, at wille;
coveytise shall stoppen here mouth and maken hem al stille’.
17
  See, for example, the works of Oswald von Wolkenstein (1377–1445) and Michel
Beheim (mid fifteenth century) discussed in Albrecht Classen, ‘Anticlericalism in Late Medieval
German Verse’, in P. Dykema and H. Oberman (eds), Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early
Modern Europe (Brill: Leiden, London, and New York, 1993), pp. 91–114, especially pp. 97–
107; for a study of the sexual misdemeanours and representations of the late medieval German
clergy, see also H. Puff, ‘Localising Sodomy: The “Priest and Sodomite” in pre-Reformation
Germany and Switzerland’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 8 (1997): 165–95.
18
  Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, p. 401.
128 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

act against clerical incontinence in their dioceses were deemed to share in

the guilt of the offending priest, and the ‘cullagium’ paid by concubinary
priests with the intention of avoiding prosecution was condemned. The
decrees of the council were enacted in local synods and councils across
Europe, leaving the clergy in no doubt as to the stance of the church and
the course of action countenanced by the council.19 However, the efficacy
and impact of such disciplinary action is almost impossible to assess. The
fact that the Basle decree was reiterated in the first of the reforming decrees
of the 1549 Scottish Council testifies both to its authoritative nature, but
also perhaps to the limited progress that had been made in the intervening
century.20 The York Convocation of 1518 cited a statute of Greenfield
which instructed that women who lived as wives or focaria of priests were
to be punished with excommunication, and that persistent offenders were
to be handed over to the secular arm and denied burial in consecrated
ground. As Peter Heath notes, even such an insistent re-statement of intent,
some two centuries after the promulgation of the original statute, carried
no guarantee of impact.21
Piecing together these pieces of evidence does not, in reality, present
a clear picture of the scale of clerical incontinence on the eve of the
Reformation. For every misdemeanour recorded by the courts, it is possible
that there were either several others unreported, or as many clergy living
a life grounded in the celibate ideal. Evidence of concern surrounding the
moral conduct of the clergy provides a clearer window into the mindset of
the commentator than it does into the private life of the priest. However,
as Peter Marshall has argued, the fact that widespread concern about
clerical conduct was without a solid empirical base did not diminish the
intensity of the view that was held, either by the believer or by the critic.22
If the labours of the Gregorian reformers had failed to eradicate entirely
‘suspect women’ from the houses of the clergy, their rhetoric had certainly
established celibacy as a defining characteristic of the priesthood, which
distinguished the priest from his congregation, and testified to his particular
status as intercessor and minister at the altar. The moral integrity of the
priest was a matter of both practical and soteriological importance, but as

19
  Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, p. 537; Council of Basle session 20
(January 1435) in Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, J. Alberigo, J. Dossetti, P. Joannou,
C. Leonardi (eds) (Freiburg im Breisgau: 1962), pp. 461–3; M. Boelens, ‘Die Klerikerehe
in der kirchlichen Gesetzgebung zwischen den Konizilien von Basel und Trient’, Archiv fur
katholisches Kirchenrecht, 138 (1969): 62ff.
20
  T. Winning, ‘Church Councils in Sixteenth-Century Scotland’, in D. McRoberts
(ed.), Essays on the Scottish Reformation (Glasgow, 1962), p. 338.
21
  Heath, Parish Clergy, p. 107.
22
  Marshall, Catholic Priesthood, p. 145.
 ‘In marriage they will live more piously and honestly’ 129

the ideal of the celibate priest was expounded in print and from the pulpit,
the assertion of such extraordinary qualities had the potential to throw into
relief the more ordinary nature of the clergy as a whole. The dependence of
the faithful, in this world and the next, upon the intercessory and sacrificial
actions of the priest, gave clerical celibacy a greater practical significance
in parish life. The eucharistic sacrifice was offered not only to the people,
but for the people, and anything that brought into doubt the efficacy of the
propitiatory rite was liable to give rise to apprehension and antagonism.23
Any attempt to separate the person from the office of the priest would
require a degree of semantic precision that was not always communicated
effectively, or within the grasp of the faithful. Even if anticlericalism on
the eve of the Reformation was directed against individuals rather than the
priestly caste, criticism of one priest might well become a challenge to the
priesthood and its function. As Swanson suggests, ‘the road to Donatism
lay temptingly open, and was followed’.24
Despite the ongoing insistence by the church that there was no link
between the moral character of the priest and the perfection of the
sacrament, there was a correlation between the two which was clear in
the minds of many laymen, and which was articulated in testamentary
provisions for masses which specified that the celebrant should be an
‘honest’ priest. A precise definition of the characteristics, both personal and
pastoral, required of a chantry priest, for example, was laid down in 1400
by John de Plumptre. Those engaged in service were not to frequent taverns
and games, in order that they might present a better example to the faithful,
and those who were unfit were to be removed from post.25 Fuelled by the
increasing devotional emphasis upon the moment of consecration, such
concerns were difficult to dispel, and were at least in part encouraged by the
denunciation in sermons and in writing of immoral priests who continued
to handle the sacred elements. John Colet, in his statutes for the cathedral
of St Paul’s, insisted that it was ‘fitting that those who approach so near to
the altar of God, and are present at such great mysteries, should be wholly
chaste and undefiled’.26 The author of the Doctrinal of Sapience warned
that the ‘preste that lyueth in deadly synne, specialy in sinne of lecherie’

23
  H.L. Parish, Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation (Aldershot, 2000),
p. 160; Swanson, ‘Problems of the Priesthood’, 849, talks of the ‘idealisation of the priesthood
in personal terms’ in, for example the foundation charters of chantries.
24
 Swanson, ‘Problems of the Priesthood’, 859.
25
  Marshall, Catholic Priesthood, pp. 51–3, 161–2; Swanson ‘Problems of the
Priesthood’, 849.
26
  J.H. Lupton, Life of John Colet (2nd edition, London, 1909), p. 135.
130 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

administered the sacraments under shadow of damnation.27 The failure of

the clergy to fulfil the promise of celibacy made at ordination was presented
not as a danger to the faithful, but as an affront to God and as a periculous
act for the priest and the salvation of his soul. To approach the body and
blood of Christ with hands or mind rendered unclean by contact with
women was to commit sacrilege and adultery. The sacraments, particularly
the eucharist, it was argued, were so ‘precyouse’ that they should not be
‘defyled’ by those who lived in ‘bestly concupiscence’.28 The early sixteenth-
century author of Dives and Pauper presented a dialogue on this subject,
in which Pauper asserted that incontinent priests should be prevented from
exercising their priestly function. Dives responded that just as a priest of
good character could not improve upon the holiness of the sacraments, so
a priest of poor moral standing would not diminish their efficacy.29 Such
a riposte was clearly in accordance with the doctrinal assumptions of the
medieval church, although those instances, however rare, on which the
faithful were encouraged to absent themselves from any Mass celebrated by
unchaste clerics could only serve to deepen the suspicion that incontinence
posed at least some impediment to sacramental efficacy.30
The value attached to clerical celibacy by the Catholic faithful had
parallels in the defence of the continence discipline in sermons and
treatises in the centuries before the Reformation. However, many of
these advocates of clerical celibacy were contributing to a wider debate
which had continued beyond the tone of presumed finality in the
Gregorian pronouncements. The lively dialogue of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries reflected changing political, cultural, and ecclesiastical
circumstances, but the conceptual building blocks of the literature from
both sides were hewn from earlier writing, and engaged with perennial
questions about the origins and legitimacy of the celibacy discipline. As
the relationship between Philip the Fair of France and Pope Boniface VIII
brought a tempestuous tone to the controversy over concepts of papal
authority and temporal sovereignty, both clerical celibacy and the conduct
of priests and popes became part of the vocabulary of debate.31 Strident

27
  Doctrinal of Sapience, J. Gallagher (ed.), Middle English Texts 26 (Heidelberg,
1993) p. 173.
28
  Dionysius the Carthusian, The Lyfe of Prestes (1533), sigs, C4v, C8r–v, D1r;
H. Parker, Dives and Pauper (1536), p. 226r.
29
  Parker, Dives and Pauper, p. 224v.
30
  J. Thomson, Early Tudor Church and Society 1485–1529 (London, 1993), p. 169.
31
  C.T. Wood, Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII: State vs Papacy (Huntingdon,
NY, 1976); B. Tierney, Crisis of Church and State (New Jersey, 1964); M.C. Gaposchkin,
‘Boniface VIII, Philip the Fair, and the sanctity of Louis IX, Journal of Medieval History,
29.1 (2003): 1–26.
 ‘In marriage they will live more piously and honestly’ 131

criticisms of clerical celibacy came from the pens of the ‘publicists’ including
Pierre Dubois, who took the side of Philip IV in his quarrel with the pope.
Dubois was a layman, probably from Normandy, and an advocate for the
King’s position at the Council of Paris in 1302. He argued that the king
of France enjoyed full sovereignty in all matters, and dismissed the claims
of the pope to any temporal jurisdiction. Papal authority was limited to
the cure of souls, the discipline of the clergy, and the maintenance of peace
in Christendom. The root of contemporary problems, he argued, lay in
the avarice of the church, including the pope, but also the parish clergy.
A full reform of the church was necessary, not only to stem the tide of
greed, but also to impose higher moral standards upon the clergy, most of
whom failed to live in accordance with the discipline of celibacy. Dubois
believed that at least part of the blame for clerical conduct was to be laid
at the door of the popes. Clerical marriage had been the practice of the
apostolic church, and was, he argued, still permitted in the Greek church,
and the law of the Latin West was not only novel, but encouraged clerical
incontinence.32 A defence of papal authority against the publicists, which
included a justification of clerical celibacy based upon its apostolic origins,
came in the form Augustinus of Ancona’s De Potestate Ecclesiastica. The
author rehearsed familiar evidence of the biblical mandate for chastity,
its basis in the practice of the primitive church, and the legitimacy of the
discipline as established in the medieval church.33 Such arguments did not
always find favour even among the orthodox however. The Dominican
writer Galvanus della Flamma presented an analysis of the evidence for and
against the apostolic origins of clerical celibacy in his Manipulo Florum
Seu Chronico Mediolanensi (1336) and concluded that the early apostles
and priests of the church were married men.
The period of the Avignon papacy generated its own particular set of
criticisms of clerical and papal morality, many of which betrayed a rather
sceptical attitude towards the merits and necessity of clerical celibacy.
At the fore was the issue of incontinence and avarice. Pope Clement VI
was strident in his criticism of his clerical colleagues, demanding of them
‘What can you preach to the people?... If on poverty, you are so covetous
that all the benefices of the world are not enough for you. If on chastity
– but we will be silent on this, for God knows what each man does and

32
  For Dubois’ tract, see R. Scholz, Die Publizistik zur Zeit Philipps des Schonen und
Bonifaz VIII (Stuttgart, 1903), p. 385 ff.
33
  Augustus de Ancona, Summa de potestate ecclesiastica (Venice: Scoti, 1487) Q.92 art.
3; For further information on the author, see M. Wilks, The Problem of Sovereignty in the Later
Middle Ages. The Papal Monarchy with Augustinus Triumphus and the Publicists (Cambridge,
1963); some of his works are summarised in Scholz, Die Publizistik, pp. 172–89.
132 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

how many of you satisfy your lusts’.34 Dante was equally expressive in his
condemnations of clerical morality and the example set by the church and
its leaders. Pope Boniface VIII was condemned in the Divine Comedy to
spend eternity in suffering, and the riches of the clergy and the practice
of simony condemned, but Dante also had a powerful case to make
for the value of love, both for divine and humankind, in directing the
universe towards God.35 The Italian writer Petrarch referred to Avignon
as the ‘Babylon of the West’, complaining ‘instead of holy solitude we
find a criminal host and crowds of the most infamous satellites; instead of
soberness, licentious banquets; instead of pious pilgrimages, preternatural
and foul sloth; instead of the bare feet of the apostles, the snowy coursers
of brigands fly past us’.36 Such colourful rhetoric, highlighting the
contrasts between clerical ideal and the apparent reality of priestly life,
was to become a staple of polemical writing against the obligatory nature
of clerical celibacy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Alongside the
debate over the origins and evolution of the celibacy discipline stood the
argument that the conduct of the priests of the church was, in its own
right, a compelling reason for reconsideration and reform.
Criticisms of clerical incontinence, coupled with a defence of the validity
and desirability of clerical marriage, were a common feature of Wycliffite
sermons and writings in late medieval England, and of the complaints
that were made against the Catholic church by Lollards during the heresy
trials. John Wycliffe’s stance was clearly expressed in his Trialogus, which
not only praised the institution of marriage, but also denounced those who
would prohibit marriage against the law of the Gospel. The 23rd chapter
described the twofold character of marriage, as the marriage of God and
church, and the marriage of man and wife ‘after God’s law’. Such unions
were ordained in paradise, Wycliffe wrote, and approved by Christ while
on earth, and by his apostles. To forbid marriage, he argued, was to preach
the ‘doctrine of devils’, which St Paul had identified as a heresy that would
mark the coming of Antichrist. The obligation to celibacy placed upon the
Catholic clergy was thus presented as grounded in error and fraught with
danger, as the conduct of the contemporary priesthood revealed. Marriage
had been instituted for all as a remedy of fornication, and this remedy was

34
  P. Bernstein, The Power of Gold. The History of an Obsession (New York, 2000),
p. 100.
35
  Dante, The Divine Comedy, G.L. Bickersteff (ed.) (Oxford, 1972), Infern, 19.49–63;
Inf. 19.82, Inf. 19.70–2; P. Acquaviva and J. Petric (eds), Dante and the Church: Literary and
Historical Essays (Dublin,. 2007); J.T. Slattery, Dante’s attitude toward the church and the
clergy of his times (Philadelphia, 1921).
36
  Petrarch, ‘Letter to a Friend’, in J.H. Robinson, Readings in European History
(Boston, 1904), p. 502.
 ‘In marriage they will live more piously and honestly’ 133

available to all, including priests. ‘Since fornication is so perilous, and men

and women are so frail’, Wycliffe wrote, ‘God ordained priests in the old
law to have wives, and never forbid it in the new, neither by Christ nor by
his apostles, but rather approved it.’ Marriage had been permitted to the
Levitical priests, and, Wycliffe argued, there was no scriptural prohibition
of marriage to those who would serve in the Christian church. Alas,
however, there were priests who ‘now by the hypocrisy of the fiend and
of false men.… bind themselves to priesthood and chastity, and forsake
wives’, even although they were unable to live in chastity. There was no
suggestion in Scripture that virginity was held in low repute; indeed St
Paul had counselled a life of chastity for those who were able to abstain,
‘thus priests who keep clean chastity, in body and soul, do best’. But
chastity was not within the capacity of all. For Wycliffe, the consequence
of imposing the burden of continence upon all who entered the priesthood
was that many of the clergy, straining under these ‘new bonds’, could not
fulfil their obligation, and thus ‘slander themselves foully before God and
his saints’.37 Marriage, and clerical marriage in particular, was for Wycliffe
desirable although in no sense obligatory. As Anne Hudson has argued,
Wycliffe rejected the requirement to sacerdotal celibacy, but did not
commit himself positively to the principle of a married clergy, despite the
assumptions of his critics. Thomas Walden, for example, conceded that
there was plenty in Wycliffe’s writings to suggest that he took a positive
view of clerical celibacy, but still managed to locate a passage in Wycliffe’s
De officio Pastorali which was more overtly hostile to the discipline of the
church.38
Wycliffe’s followers were more strident in their condemnations of the
Catholic clergy. The third of the petitions for the reform of the church
presented to parliament in 1394 denounced the scandal that was caused
in the church by the prohibition of clerical marriage, and argued that it
was essential that the obligation to sacerdotal celibacy be lifted. The law
of celibacy, it was argued, as reason and experience demonstrated, ‘brings
sodomy into all the holy church’.39 In 1389, William Ramsbury echoed
Wycliffe’s sentiments, arguing that clerical marriage was preferable to a

37
 In Tracts and Treatises of John de Wycliffe, D.D. with Selections and Translations
from his Manuscripts, and Latin Works, Robert Vaughan (ed.) (London: Blackburn and
Pardon, 1845), volume 3, c.23.
38
 A. Hudson, The Premature Reformation. Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History
(Oxford, 1988), p. 357; De officio Pastorali 2.11 ‘nam coniugium secundum Christum
eis licitum odiunt et venenum et secular dominium eis a Christo prohibitum avide
amplexanture’.
39
  Fasciculi Zizaniorum, W.W. Shirley (ed.) (London: Rolls Series, 1858), pp. 360–69;
H.S. Cronin, ‘The Twelve Conclusion of the Lollards’, English Historical Review, 22 (1907):
292–304; A.R. Myers, English Historical Documents 1327–1485 (London, 1995), p. 502.
134 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

clergy that was nominally celibate, but in practice guilty of incontinence,

and opposition to the prohibition of clerical marriage was also evident
in the Norwich heresy trials of the early fifteenth century.40 Several other
Wycliffite sermons survive, in which criticisms of clerical celibacy and the
incontinence of the clergy were articulated, and arguments set forth in
favour of clerical marriage.41 More controversial still was the assertion
that the sacraments celebrated by unworthy priests were invalid, and in
1382 Wycliffe stood accused of advancing the erroneous opinion that
a bishop or priest, living in mortal sin, did not consecrate, baptise, or
ordain.42 In 1426, the Franciscan Thomas Richmond was compelled to
recant the view that ‘sacerdos in peccato mortali lapsus, non est sacerdos’.43
Such assertions were less apparent in the academic debates surrounding
Wycliffe’s first protests but, as Malcolm Lambert has argued, were more
readily articulated in later decades as Lollard preachers took a more
simplistic view.44
Complaints about the apparent relationship between obligatory clerical
celibacy and the conduct of incontinent priests were not unique to the
English context. The Reformatio Sigismundi (c.1438) combined an acute
apocalyptic sense with a vehemently hostile appraisal of the contemporary
church and society. The author of the tract depicted an Empire in turmoil
and chaos, bereft of divine grace and in urgent need of reform in root
and branch. Criticisms of social structures and temporal authority were
accompanied by a swingeing denunciation of the ills of the church, the
avarice of the popes, and the failings of the clergy.45 It was indeed a ‘good
thing for a man to keep himself pure’ the anonymous author argued, but
with the caveat ‘observe the wickedness now going on in the church.

40
  H. Hargreaves, ‘Sir John Oldcastle and Wycliffite Views on Clerical Marriage’,
Medium Aevum, 42 (1973): 141–5; N.P. Tanner, Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich
1428–1431, Camden Society 4th series, 20 (1977) p. 73.
41
 See, for example, Hou Sathanas & his prestos and his feyned religious casten by
pre cursed heresies to distroie all good lyuynge and meytenen alle manere of synne, in W.W.
Shirley, A Catalogue of the Original Works of John Wyclif (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1855),
p. 44.
42
  M. Aston, Lollards and Reformers. Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion
(London, 1984), p. 67; I.C. Levy, ‘Was John Wyclif’s Theology of the Eucharist Donatistic?’,
Scottish Journal of Theology, 53 (2000): 137–53.
43
  D. Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (London, 1737), vol. 3, p. 488.
44
  M. Lambert, Medieval Heresy. Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to
the Reformation (Oxford, 2002), p. 280.
45
  ‘Reformatio Sigismundi’, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Staatsschriften des
späteren Mittelalters 6: Reformation Kaiser Siegmunds (Stuttgart 1964); English modern
translation in G. Strauss, Manifestations of Discontent in Germany on the Eve of the
Reformation (Bloomington, 1971); P.H. Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford
UP, 1999), p. 285.
 ‘In marriage they will live more piously and honestly’ 135

Many priests have lost their livings because of women. Or they are secret
sodomites. All the hatred existing between priests and laymen is due to
this. In sum: secular priests ought to be allowed to marry. In marriage
they will live more piously and honestly, and the friction between them
and the laity will disappear’.46 Permitting marriage to the clergy was a
remedy both for those priests who could not live in continence, and for
those who did so beneath a show of hypocrisy. Capitalising on the recently
invented printing press, it was possible for such tracts to circulate widely
in the second half of the fifteenth century, and the Reformatio itself ran to
seven editions before Luther’s protest in 1517. The purpose of the reform
demanded was not simply to put matters to right, but to bring church
and empire back into divinely appointed order.47 In this context, clerical
celibacy and its apparent fruits were not simply a matter of ecclesiastical
law and preference, but a symptom of a disordered church which stood in
need of radical reform.
Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that this period also saw
the publication of a number of significant contributions to the literature
on clerical celibacy and marriage. Increasingly vocal demands for change,
and the eventual resolution of the papal schism which raised the possibility
of reform from within, prompted a lively debate over the precise nature
that such reform should take, and clerical celibacy and concubinage were
considered at both the Council of Constance and the Council of Basle. The
occasion of a major church council in itself served to encourage reflection
and debate. Prior to the Council of Vienne (1311), the canonist William
Durandus addressed the problem of clerical incontinence in his Tractatus
de modo generalis concilii celebrandi.48 The principle of reform ‘in capite
et in membris’ is often attributed to Durandus, and his discussion of the
problem of clerical celibacy reflected this construct. Durandus argued
that although popes and councils through the centuries had attempted
to impose the discipline of continence upon the clergy, and take action
against the scandal of clerical concubinage, such efforts had been, in their
entirety, unsuccessful. The ineffectual nature of the penalties imposed
upon offending clerics was exposed in the morality of the contemporary
clergy, and in the continued presence of women in the houses of priests. It
was, he argued, the married priesthood of the Eastern church rather than
the celibate priesthood of the West which best embodied the practice of the

46
 Strauss, Manifestations of Discontent, pp. 14–15.
47
  G. Strauss ‘Ideas of Reformatio and Renovatio from the late middle ages to the
Reformation’, in J.D. Tracy and H. Oberman (eds), Handbook of European History (Leiden,
1994), pp. 1–28, esp. p. 21.
48
  W. Durandus, Tractatus de modo generalis concilii celebrandi (Paris, 1671) II Tit.46,
pp. 157–9.
136 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

apostolic church, and with this in mind, Durandus suggested that the Latin
church adopt the practice of the Greeks.
The decrees of the Council of Constance (1414–18) reflected the
determination of the church to eradicate clerical concubinage, but the
summoning of the council also provoked further discussion of the broader
question of clerical celibacy. In part, the issue was raised as a result of
the consideration by the council of the heresies of Jan Hus. Among his
criticisms of the church, Hus included the assertion that clerical marriage
had been permitted for the first thousand years of church history, and that
the subsequent efforts of popes and councils to impose continence upon
its priests were the root of all evil in the church. The canonist Zabarella
adopted a similar line to that taken by Durandus a century earlier, arguing
that if the actions of popes and councils against clerical concubinage were
incapable of eradicating the problem, then it would be a lesser evil for
the church to permit priests to marry.49 The failure of the council to act
upon such demands prompted the French canon lawyer and ambassador
for the duke of Anjou, Guillaume Saignet, to set out the case for clerical
marriage in more detail in his Lamentationem ob coelibatum sacerdotum,
seu dialogum Nicenaenae Constitutionis et Naturae ea de re Conquerentis
(1417/8). Saignet proposed the abrogation of the law of continence on
the basis that it was both absurd, and widely violated. He professed to be
concerned for the state of the church, and by the deeds that were committed
in the sanctuary of God, ‘ecclesie naufragia, templorum ruine, juriumque et
libertatum Ecclesie violaciones, devociones, religionis et caritatis defectus,
jurgia, rixe et oprobia active et passive tuis temporibus ... propter incestus,
adulteria, fastus et alia nephanda michi facta opprobria, causata et eventa’.
Nature was worthy of praise, he argued, as the creation of God, but also
as the will of Christ, who commended it as a representation of His union
with the church. In its law of celibacy, he claimed, the Catholic church
created a schism within the sacraments, setting marriage and holy orders
in opposition. Saignet pointed to the example of the married priesthood of
the apostolic church, and to the tradition of clerical marriage in the East,
in order to dismiss sacerdotal celibacy as an innovation, and one that by
the fifteenth century simply served as a mandate to hypocrisy.50
The tract elicited a response from Jean Gerson, whose advocacy of
reform in the church did not extend as far as a relaxation of the celibacy

49
  F. Zabarella, Capita Agendorum in Concilio Const. De Reformatione, Magnum
Oecumenicum Constantiense Concilium, H. van der Hardt (ed.) (Frankfurt, 1700), col.
525.
50
  The most accessible version of Saignet’s text is in N. Grévy-Pons, Célibat et nature,
une controverse médiévale: A propos d’un traité de début de XVe siècle (Paris, 1975), pp.
135–61.
 ‘In marriage they will live more piously and honestly’ 137

discipline. Gerson did not deny the problem of clerical incontinence, but
argued vehemently for the desirability, indeed necessity, of clerical celibacy.
There were clearly priests who failed to live in chastity and maintained
concubines, he argued, but such a scandal might be tolerated if it prevented
worse problems. The extreme logic of this conclusion was that it would
be better to have incontinent priests than no priests at all. Gerson’s four
act Dialogue (1423) presented a debate between Natura, or Reason, and
Sophia, or Theology. Natura set out the proposition that the prohibition of
marriage to the clergy had its foundation in the law of man and not divine
law, and suggested that the requirement to celibacy was not a necessary
part of ministry. In reply, Sophia argued that unlike the priests of the Old
Law, who became priests through hereditary succession, the Christian
priesthood was elected. It was better that those called to the priesthood
were unmarried, in order that their life might be focused entirely upon
the service of God, without the distractions of family and children, and
the temptation to provide for them. The abuses committed by individual
priests did not constitute a compelling argument against clerical celibacy.
Sophia conceded that the failure to observe continence had indeed resulted
in evil and scandal in the church, but argued that the path to reform lay
in the discipline of clerical celibacy and not in the legalisation of clerical
marriage. There were, it was argued, different forms of chastity, either
within marriage or in the ‘heroic’ perpetual chastity demanded of priests.
The discipline of celibacy had its roots in the Gospel mandate for those who
‘made themselves chaste for the sake of the kingdom’, and was as natural
a state as marriage.51 The debate between Gerson and Saignet was a clash
over the issue of clerical celibacy, but was also much more wide ranging, as
a reflection of two different strands in late medieval thought. ‘Ils sont eux-
memes les successours de deux courants de pensee’, Nicole Grevy-Pons
suggests, ‘l’un que l’on peut qualifier de mystique ou de religieux, l’autre
de naturaliste’.52
The summoning of the Council of Basle prompted further calls for the
reconsideration of the celibacy law. At the council, the Bishop of Lubeck
argued in favour of the abolition of clerical celibacy, citing the judgement
of the Polish humanist Jan de Luzisko, who claimed that since, in reality,
clerical continence had long since been abandoned, it was time for the
church to step back from the ideal.53 Debate over clerical celibacy and
marriage continued throughout the middle decades of the fifteenth century.

51
  Gerson, Dialogus de Celibatu Ecclesiasticorum 1423, printed in Grévy-Pons, Célibat
et nature, pp. 162–95.
52
  Grévy-Pons, Célibat et nature, p. 4.
53
  Brundage, Law Sex and Christian Society, p. 538, quoting Capitula Agendorum
in Concilio Generali Constanciensi 13, in H. Finke (ed.), Acta Concilii Constanciensis
138 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

Nicholas Tudeschi (Panormitanus, 1386–1445), who had been a participant

at the Council of Basle, presented a detailed defence of clerical marriage,
Lecturam Super Can. Cum. Olim 6 de clericis coniugatis.54 Commending
voluntary celibacy for those who were able to contain, Tudeschi argued
that obligatory continence had been the occasion of much scandal and evil
in the church. Clerical celibacy was not, he suggested, a law of God, but as
others had argued, a law of the church, and a law that it was well within
the power of the church to abrogate for the wider benefit of the clergy and
the faithful. Tudeschi asserted that there was no inextricable link between
priesthood and celibacy, and that it would be better for the Latin church
to accommodate itself to the practice of the Greek church, where marriage
was permitted.55 The argument that the discipline of clerical continence
was a law of the church rather than a custom of divine origin was debated
in Aeneas Sylvius’ Dialogis Contra Bohemos. The author’s subsequent
elevation to the papal see as Pius II ensured that this work enjoyed a
popular readership among evangelical polemicists seeking evidence of
any uncertainty over the origins of clerical celibacy, and the assertion in
the Dialogue that the clergy of the early church had been married men
was grist to the mill. Platina, in his biography of Pius II, referred to his
contention that although there had been an honest motive in the past for the
church to insist upon the celibacy of its priests, there were, in the fifteenth
century, compelling reasons for priests to be allowed to marry. Clerical
marriage would, for example, release from suffering and damnation those
clergy who were unable to live in chastity.56 Early in the sixteenth century,

(4 vols, Munster: Regensburg, 1896–1928), vol. IV. 569–70; Grévy-Pons, Celibat et Nature,
pp. 52–3.
54
  Abbatis Panormitani Commentaria in Tertium Decretalium Librum (7 vols, Venice,
1588), vol. 3, Tit. III c.6 (Tomus VI p. 25); J. Lynch, ‘Critique of the Law of Celibacy in the
Catholic Church from the Period of the Reform Councils’, in W. Bassett and Peter Huizing
(eds), Celibacy in the Church (New York, 1972), pp. 57–75, p. 58.
55
 Such arguments against clerical celibacy were perhaps not entirely unrelated to
attempts to undermine traditional Augustinian views of human nature and sexuality; both
the French theologian Martin le Maistre (1432–1481) and the Scottish author John Maior
(1470–1550) were to argue that sexual intercourse within marriage did not carry with it
the burden of sin and shame. Le Maistre in his Moral Questions considered the marital
act in Aristotelian rather than Augustinian terms, and viewed ‘conjugal chastity’ as that
which occupied the middle ground of virtue. Marriage was, he argued, the divinely appointed
remedy for fornication, and therefore marital intercourse was licit. Le Maistre, Questiones
morales magistri Martini Magistri perspicacissimi theologie professoris, de fortitudine feliciter
incipiunt (2 Parts, Paris, 1510), Pt. 2, seventh conclusion; John Maior, Quartus Sententiarum
(Paris, 1509), 4.31. For further discussion, see M. Porter, Sex, Marriage and the Church.
Patterns of Change (Victoria, Aus., 1996), p. 39; G.S. Kochutara, The Concept of Sexual
Pleasure in the Catholic Moral Tradition (Rome, 2007), pp. 232–5.
56
  Vitæ Pontificum Platinæ historici liber de vita Christi ac omnium pontificum qui
hactenus ducenti fuere et XX (Venice, 1479) II.257–75.
 ‘In marriage they will live more piously and honestly’ 139

the Ingolstadt professor Conrad Celtis rejected the argument that the
discipline of celibacy had its origins in the apostolic church, and argued
that obligatory continence was an innovation of Gregory VII, and one
which had done untold damage to the church.57 Johannes Antonius’ hostile
commentary on the history of clerical celibacy, printed in the first decades of
the sixteenth century, reiterated the arguments against the apostolic origins
of the discipline. The law of celibacy, he argued, was of human origin and
not divine, and marriage had been instituted by God as a remedy for those
who were not able to live in perpetual continence. The conduct of the
clergy, he suggested, exposed the flaws in the assumption that chastity was
indeed possible for all, and Antonius argued in favour of the acceptance
of clerical marriage in order to return the discipline of the church to its
primitive origins.58 A subsequent sardonic condemnation of obligatory
celibacy, Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum ad Venerabilem virum Magistrum
Orthuinum Gratium Daventiensem (Venice, 1516), was condemned by the
pope, but Antonius was not deterred, and penned an equally intemperate
examination of clerical concubinage, De Fide Concubinarum in Sacerdotes,
published in Worms in 1517, the year of Luther’s protest.
Such demands for the relaxation of the law on clerical celibacy did not
go uncriticised, and there were still writers willing to defend the obligation
to continence on the eve of the Reformation. The works of Dionysius the
Carthusian, printed in the early sixteenth century, set out the value of
clerical celibacy for both pastor and people, and established the existence
of a necessary link between priesthood and celibacy.59 Richard Whitford’s
Pype or Tonne of the Lyfe of Perfection praised chastity as a noble virtue
‘for it doth make a man familiar w[i]t[h] god as Angell’.60 Similar esteem
for chastity and its necessity for those who ministered at the altar was
expressed in De Castitate et Munditia Sacerdotum et Ceterorum Alteris
Ministrorum. Published in the late fifteenth century but often attributed
to the thirteenth century Franciscan St Bonaventure, De Castitate was
a handbook for the moral conduct of priests. Its counsels, including the
observance of the obligation to celibacy, were rooted in Scripture, both
Old and New Testament, in the prescriptions of canon law, and in the
writings of the Fathers, including Augustine. The third section of the
treatise demonstrated that the law of continence was anchored not only in

57
  C. Celtis, Quatuor libri amorum secundum quatuor latera Germanie (Nuremberg,
1502).
58
 Antonius, Aurea at Singularis Lectura Super IV Decretalium in Ca. De Clere.
Coniugatis (Pavia, 1497).
59
 See, for example, The Life of Priests (London, 1533).
60
 Richard Whitford, Pype or Tonne of the Lyfe of Perfection (London, 1532), fols 7r,
22r, 206r.
140 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

ecclesiastical law, but also in secular law, including the Codex of Justinian.
The altar of God, it was claimed, was polluted by the actions of unchaste
priests who broke the law of the church, and whose eyes turned to their
concubines rather than to the worship of God. The example of the Old
Testament pointed to a requirement to purity on the part of those who
served at the altar, a requirement that was reinforced by Christ in his
commendation of chastity to the first disciples. The assertion of the spiritual
advantages of temporary abstinence for the laity placed an even greater
obligation upon the clergy, and St Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians
was used to justify a distinction between those who walked in the flesh
and those who lived in the spirit.61 The argument from scripture, tradition,
and ecclesiastical authority continued. At the turn of the sixteenth century,
Gaufredus Bossardus presented an endorsement of the discipline of clerical
celibacy in the context of the dispensing power of the pope, drawing upon
the actions of recent popes and councils, and was underpinned by an
examination of obligatory continence in the church, including the fourth
century letters of Siricius and Innocent.62
Arguments in favour of clerical marriage, and particularly the argument
that present need, set alongside the practice of the apostolic church and
the Greek church, undermined the discipline of obligatory continence for
priests, were stridently articulated in the century before the Reformation.
Whether this amounts to a coherent campaign against clerical celibacy
is another matter; while the works discussed here were impressive in
their scope, and often written by men of some standing in the church,
their impact upon the discipline of the church was virtually non-existent,
and the Latin medium would have limited their audience. This was not
the first occasion upon which there had been a polemical exchange on
the subject. Anne Barstow has examined in detail the writings of those
who contested clerical celibacy in the era of the Gregorian reforms, and
there is some evidence of a reinvigoration of the debate in the thirteenth
century. 63 However, even the briefest examination of the fifteenth-century
literature makes it clear that the controversies of the Reformation did
not awaken a dormant subject, but rather emerged from a context of
burgeoning historical and ecclesiological interest in the celibacy discipline.

61
  De Castitate et Munditia Sacerdotum et Ceterorum Alteris Ministrorum (Paris,
c.1492), unpaginated.
62
  G. Bossardus, De Continentia Sacerdotum sub hac Quaestione: utrum papae possit
com sacerdote dispensare, ut nubat? (Paris, 1505).
63
  J.W. Baldwin, The Language of Sex. Five Voices from Northern France Around 1200
(Chicago and London, 1994), pp. 61–3; Baldwin, ‘A Campaign to Reduce Clerical Celibacy
at the Turn of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, Etudes d’Histoire du Droit Canoniques
dediees a Gabriel le Bas (2 vols, Paris, 1965), vol. 2, 1041–53.
 ‘In marriage they will live more piously and honestly’ 141

The literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, at least in some

respects, served to delineate the battle ground of Reformation debate.
The example of the apostolic church had much to offer protagonists on
both sides, and was to be fiercely contested. The representation of clerical
celibacy as a divine or man-made law was disputed with even greater
vigour in the middle decades of the sixteenth century and beyond. Clerical
concubinage, which had incurred the wrath of late medieval popes and
councils, and had been used to argue in favour of clerical marriage, was to
be exploited by evangelical writers seeking to discredit not only the failure
of discipline in the church, but also the theology which underpinned it. The
condemnation of Wycliffe and Hus, which included the rejection of their
views on clerical marriage, established the possibility, articulated more
strongly in the centuries that followed, that clerical celibacy might become
both a highly personal and highly visible badge of doctrinal allegiance
in a confessional age. Perhaps even more significantly, the argument in
favour of clerical marriage came to be made alongside the physical reality
of married priests, if not a married priesthood. In the sixteenth century,
for the first time in four hundred years, the debate over clerical celibacy
was conducted in a climate in which many priests encountered ‘pigtails on
the pillow’.64

64
  The phrase is Martin Luther’s: Luther, Table Talk, in LW, vol. 54, p. 191 (June 1532).
This page has been left blank intentionally
 CHAPTER 5

‘The whole world and the devil

will laugh’: Clerical Celibacy and
Married Priests in the
Age of Reformation
‘Suddenly, and while I was occupied with far different thoughts’, Martin
Luther confessed to his friend Wenzeslaus Linck, ‘the Lord has plunged
me into marriage.’ As late as the previous Autumn, he had suggested that
he had no intention of marrying, but writing to Spalatin in summer 1525
Luther rejoiced that he had ‘made the angels laugh and the devils weep’.
His marriage, he felt sure, would please his father, give witness to his
faith, and spite the devil and the pope. Luther was not the first of the
evangelical reformers to take such a step, but his marriage was one of
the most iconoclastic, and hotly debated, events of the early Reformation.
Canon law, explicitly hostile to clerical marriage, was even more rigorous
in its condemnation of marriage involving professed religious as not only
adulterous, but incestuous. Luther’s marriage to Katharine von Bora on
13 June 1525 scandalised Catholic commentators, and shocked even his
closest friends. Philip Melanchthon, in a less guarded moment, denounced
the union as ‘reckless’; Luther’s opponents seized upon his marriage as
evidence of evangelical antinomianism, the subjugation of theology
to the demands of the flesh, and the association of Protestantism with
licentiousness and liberty taken to the extreme. Early Reformation debates
over clerical celibacy and marriage crystallised in the private wedding of
a monk and a nun, a wedding which exposed the wide-ranging nature of
the controversy, and the broader implications of clerical marriage for the
deepening doctrinal divisions of the age.


  WABr 3.394; WABr 3.533, 541.

  Dist. Xxvii C.ix [CIC I.100].

  Melanchthon’s comments were made in a Greek letter to his friend Camerarius, and
preserved in the text of the letter published by W. Meyer in the reports of the München Academy
of Sciences, 4 November, 1876, pp. 601–4. A modified, and less critical, text is in Corp. Ref.,
vol. 1, p. 753. For Catholic commentary on Luther’s marriage, see pp. 146–9 below.
144 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

The historiography of Reformation attitudes to marriage and ministry,

and the related issue of clerical marriage, is substantial. Recent research
has focused upon the impact of doctrinal change, sacramental theology,
and the reform of marriage law, and raised significant questions about
the extent to which Lutheran views marked a substantial break with late
medieval law and tradition. Evangelical attitudes to clerical marriage may
be seen to have a precedent in earlier criticisms of the discipline of celibacy,
but in their broader ramifications the polemical writings of the reformers
reached far beyond those of their predecessors. The evangelical defence
of clerical marriage was part of a broader effort to redefine the nature of
priesthood and the clerical estate, to undermine the sacramental theology
which underpinned the sacerdotal caste and demanded celibacy of those
who served at the altar, to prioritise the word of God over the laws of man,
faith over works, and to reclaim the history and heritage of the primitive
church from the pages of monastic chronicles. The denunciation of
compulsory clerical celibacy was not simply a criticism of the morality of
the contemporary clergy, but a condemnation of the doctrine, traditions,
and structures of the medieval church. Just as the presence of images in
churches inculcated a trust in the merits of the saints, so the presence of a
celibate priesthood implied a sacrificial function for the priest, and evinced
a continuation of Catholic faith and practice. Luther’s marriage, and the
marriages of those around him, did not simply ‘spite the devil’, but was


  J.F. Harrington, Reordering Marriage and Society in Reformation Germany
(Cambridge, 1995); C. Peters, ‘Gender Sacrament and Ritual. The Making and Meaning
of Marriage in Late Medieval and Early Modern England’, Past and Present, 169.1 (2000):
63–96; J. Witte Jr, From Sacrament to Contract: Marriage, Religion and Law in the Western
Tradition (Louisville, 1997); A. Stein, ‘Martin Luthers Bedeutung dur die Anfange des
Evangelischen Eherechts’, Osterreichisches Archiv fur Kirchenrecht, 34.1 and 2 (1983–4):
29–95; S. Johnson, ‘Luther’s Reformation and (un)holy Matrimony’, Journal of Family
History, 17.3 (1992): 271–88; L. Roper ‘Luther, Sex, Marriage and Motherhood’, History
Today, 33 (1983): 33–8.

  For recent literature on clerical marriage, see T.A. Fudge, ‘Incest and Lust in Luther’s
Marriage: Theology and Morality in Reformation Polemics’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 34.2
(2003): 319–45; J.K. Yost, ‘The Reformation Defence of Clerical Marriage in the Reigns
of Henry VIII and Edward VI’, Church History, 50 (1981): 152–65; E. Carlson, ‘Clerical
Marriage and the English Reformation’, Journal of British Studies, 31 (1992): 1–31; Carlson,
Marriage and the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994); M. Porter, Sex, Marriage and the
Church. Patterns of Change (Victoria, Aus, 1996); H.L. Parish, Clerical Marriage and the
English Reformation (Aldershot, 2000); Marjorie Elisabeth Plummer, ‘Clerical Marriage and
Territorial Reformation in Ernestine Saxony and the Diocese of Merseburg in 1522–1524’,
Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 98 (2007): 45–70; Plummer, ‘“Partner in his Calamities”:
Pastors Wives, Married Nuns and the Experience of Clerical Marriage in the Early German
Reformation’, Gender and History, 20.2 (2008): 207–27.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 145

an act of iconoclastic destruction that broke apart false saintliness in the

hearts of the faithful.
This act of open iconoclasm had begun in the town of Grimma, near
Nimbschen, in 1519. News of Luther’s preaching in the town had reached
the ears of the prior of Grimma, and through him a handful of nuns in
the convent at Marienthron. Several petitioned their families to secure
their liberty, but when no assistance was forthcoming, arrangements were
made for their release, with the encouragement of Luther himself. Twelve
of the nuns were taken to Torgau, of whom nine, including Katharine
von Bora, then journeyed on to Wittenberg. Luther penned a defence of
their actions, in which he compared the freedom of the nuns to the release
of Israel from bondage, and argued that cloistered virginity prevented
women from fulfilling their God-given purpose of bearing children.
Despite his initial reluctance to marry (Luther exclaimed ‘good God, our
Wittenbergers will give wives even to the monks ... but they will not thrust
a wife on me’), Luther entered into a private marriage, followed by a
public ceremony in June 1525. The fact that his wife was one of the former
nuns of Marienthron was, in the eyes of his Catholic opponents, evidence
that the evangelical reformers simply intended to empty the convents in
order to satisfy their own lusts.10 The wedding of the monk and the nun
was both the consequence of evangelical licence, and an encouragement
to others to follow suit. As soon as Luther’s wedding bells rang, it was
argued ‘the lecherous monks and nuns put up plenty of ladders against the
monastery walls and ran off together in masses’.11 The birth of Luther’s
first child, a healthy son Hans, no doubt elicited a sigh of relief from his


  H. Oberman, Luther. Man Between God and the Devil (tr. E. Walliser-Schwarzbart)
(New Haven and London, 1989), p. 282; Parish, Clerical Marriage, pp. 151ff; the importance
of clerical marriage to other Reformation debates is also recognised in Roper’s comment
that ‘when the first clerical marriage took place in defiance of church law, the Reformation
embarked upon a course which involved far more than mere tinkering with the moral
regulation of the priesthood’, L. Roper, Oedipus and the Devil. Witchcraft, Sexuality and
Religion in Early Modern Europe (London and New York, 1994), p. 79.

  P. Smith, Luther’s Correspondence and Other Contemporary Letters (2 vols,
Philadelphia, 1918), vol. 2, pp. 81, 180; J.C. Smith, ‘Katharina von Bora Through Five
Centuries: A Historiogaphy’, SCJ, 30.3 (1999): 745–74; Fudge, ‘Incest and Lust’, pp. 331–2;
Oberman, Luther, pp. 272ff; M. Brecht, Martin Luther (tr. P. Schaff) (Minneapolis, 1985–
1993), pp. 195–203.

 Luther, Ursach und Antwort, das jungfrauen kloster gottlich verlassen mogen (1523);
WABr 3.353; WA 11 378–400.

 LW 48:290.
10
 See, for example, the condemnation of Luther’s marriage in Johannes Langburg’s
treatise of 1528, quoted in S. Ozment, When Fathers Ruled, Family Life in Reformation
Europe (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1983), p. 24.
11
  Oberman, Luther, p. 282.
146 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

friends that was grounded in more than compassion. The belief that a
two-headed monster, if not the Antichrist, would be born of the union
of a monk and nun had created an air of uneasy expectation, not of all
which was dissipated by Erasmus’ comments that if the legend were true,
the world was already populated with such creatures. Luther informed his
friends in June 1526 that his son was strong, healthy, and without defect.
Despite the suffering that was to follow, with the death of two girls in
childhood, Luther celebrated his family life.12
Hostile comment was swift to come. The duke of Saxony observed that
Luther’s marriage to Katharine, and his sins of the flesh, would exclude
him from the ultimate wedding feast with Christ, and the marriage was
derided by the Catholic controversialists Johann Hasenberg and Joachim
von der Hayden, who argued that Luther’s actions had turned Wittenberg
into a contemporary Sodom and Gomorrah, and accused the reformer
of apostasy, adultery, and an inability to control his lusts.13 Luther and
his new wife appeared in hostile caricature in Simon Lemnius’ dramatic
representation of lustful monks and nuns, Monachopornomachia, and in
pictorial form in mass-produced flugschriften.14 Satirical wedding verses,
epithalamia, were penned by Johannes Cochlaeus soon after news of
the wedding was made public. Cochlaeus’ later Commentarii de Actis
et Scriptis Martini Lutheri Saconis (1549) also seized upon the marriage
as evidence of Luther’s lack of self control, and was equally hostile in
his representation of Katherine and her conduct. Jerome Dungersheim’s
polemic against Lutheranism included the assertion that Luther and his
followers were guilty of antinomianism in their rejection of the key tenets
of Christian faith that stood in the way of their ‘pretended’ marriages.15 The
English king Henry VIII castigated Luther for his incestuous relationship
with a nun, and the marriage was mocked on stage in a play presented by
the king in 1527. Henry derided Luther for his unchaste life, and drew a

12
 Erasmus, ‘Letter to Sylvius’, in Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami,
P.S. Allen, H.W. Garrod (eds) (12 vols, Oxford, 1906–58), vol. 6, 283–4; Fudge, ‘Incest and
Lust’, p. 336; Smith, ‘Luther’s Reformation’, p. 749; Oberman, Luther, p. 278.
13
  WABr 4. 517–31; Smith, Letters, vol. 2, pp. 452–3; J. Emser, Epithalamia Martini
Lutheri Wittenbergensis et Johannes Hessi Vratislavtensis ed Id Genus Nuptiarum (1525);
Brecht, Luther, p. 199.
14
 See, for example, a satirical image of Protestant pigs entering a church, with Luther
and Katherine as the ‘biggest pigs of all’, in W.A. Coupe, German Political Satires from the
Reformation to the Second World War (3 vols, White Plains, NY, 1993), vol. I, p. 109.
15
  J. Dungersheim, Schriften Gegen Luther Theorismata Duodecim Contra Lutherum,
Articuli Sive Libelli Triginta, Theobald Freudenberger (ed.) (Munster, 1987) Article 17;
Theobald Freudenberger, Hieronymus Dungersheim von Ochsenfurt an Main, 1465–1540,
Theologieprofessor in Leipzig: Leben und Schriften (Munster, 1988); G. Krodel, ‘Luther: An
Antinomian?’, Luther Jahrbuch, 63 (1996): 69–101.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 147

stark contrast between the pure lives of the Fathers of the church and the
pride and lechery of the reformer.16 Catholic antipathy to Luther and his
marriage in the 1520s was exemplified in the scatological denunciations
penned by Thomas More, who took evident delight in the polemical
capital afforded by his opponent’s personal life. Luther, in his marriage,
had shown ‘how fondly such an hyghe pure spyrituall processe acordeth
with such a baas fowle fleshly lyuyng’.17 Luther and Katherine, he alleged,
lived in shameless and open incest ‘under the name of wedlock’, and
caricatures of friars coupling with nuns featured prominently in More’s
work, with more than sixty references in the Confutation of Tyndale’s
Answer alone.18 The fundamentals of evangelical theology, including
solafideianism and Christian liberty, were reduced to simple justifications
for Luther’s debauched conduct. Luther and his colleagues, More alleged,
construed Scripture falsely in order that it might be exploited to support
their actions, and extolled Gospel freedom in order to undermine morality.19
True prophets were good and holy men, he claimed, and ‘no frere out of
a nonnes bedde’ would be sent to preach the word of God.20 Such views
endured well beyond the storm created by Luther’s marriage. Writing
after the first generation of clerical marriages in England, Thomas Martin
asserted that ‘heresy and lechery be commonly joined together and they two
be the only causes of priests pretended matrimony’.21 His contemporary,
Miles Huggarde, made the same association between the conduct of
the evangelicals and their false doctrines. Lutheranism, he claimed, was
a plague sent by God, and the false prophets of the Reformation were

16
 Smith, Letters, vol. 2, p. 195; Henry VIII, A copy of the Letters Wherin ... King
Henry VIII ... made answer unto ... Martyn Luther (London, 1528), sig. B8; Henry VIII,
Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, in Corp. Cath. vol. 43, p. 396.
17
  T. More, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, ed. T.M.C. Lawler, G. Marc’hadour, R.C.
Marius (eds), in The Yale Edition of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, 6 (New
Haven, Conn: Yale UP, 1981), pt. 2, p. 376.
18
  More, Dialogue, p. 375; More, The Confutation of Tyndale’ Answer, L.A. Schuster,
R.C. Marius, J.P. Lusardi, R.J. Schoek (eds), The Yale Edition of The Complete Works of
St Thomas More, 8 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 1973), pp. 41–2, 48, 181; R.F. Hardin,
‘Caricature in More’s Confutation’, Moreana, 24 (1987): 41–52.
19
 R. McCutcheon, ‘The Responsio ad Lutherum: Thomas More’s Inchoate Dialogue
with Heresy’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 22 (1991): 77–90; Thomas More, Responsio ad
Lutherum, J.M. Headley (ed.), in The Yale Edition of The Complete Works of St Thomas
More 5 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale UP, 1969), pp. 59–60; More, Confutation, pt. 2 p. 690.
Luther had, for a ‘defence of hys owne shamefull synne, by the false glosynge of scripture
affermeth that freres to wedde nunnys were well and virtuously done’.
20
  More, Confutation, pt. 1, pp. 337–8.
21
  T. Martin, A Treatise Declarying and Plainly Provyng that the Pretensed Marriage of
Prieste ... is no marriage (London, 1554), sig. A1r; cf. M. Huggarde, The Displaying of the
Protestantes and Sondry their Practises (London, 1556), sig. B6v.
148 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

guilty of ‘prechyng maters accordynge to theyre wayward appertytes’.22

Evangelical theology and morality were intertwined, and the base conduct
of the reformers, in the eyes of their critics, exposed the flawed nature of
their faith.
Luther’s marriage remained a popular topic for Catholic controversialists
throughout the sixteenth century and beyond. In a derisive assessment
of Luther’s character and theology, the French polemicist Florimund de
Raemond complained bitterly that although celibacy was a superior state
to wedlock, Luther accorded celibates no place in the church. By his own
marriage, he argued, Luther showed himself to be a man of little discipline,
and offered a poor example to his followers by preaching and living by a
principle of liberty which promoted licence. The marriage of monks and
nuns was a scandal in the church, and the physical pleasures of marriage
promoted by Luther were no match for the purity of chastity and celibacy.23
The Jesuit writer Louis Maimbourg was equally vigorous in his criticism of
Luther’s marriage and morality in his Histoire du Lutheranisme (1680), and
in the early twentieth century Heinrich Denifle used the argument of ‘Luther’s
lust’ to criticise not only his marriage, but the theology of the Reformation
as a whole.24 This stream of hostile commentaries did elicit some response
from Luther and his supporters. Jeanette Smith suggests that certainly by the
seventeenth century a more concerted effort was being made to rehabilitate
Katherine von Bora in the face of a century of criticism; where the early
evangelical histories of the Reformation had made little reference to her
presence, both Thomas Hayne’s biography of Luther and Johann Mayer’s
study of Katherine attempted to present both the marriage, and Katherine,
in a more favourable light.25 Luther had, himself, leapt to the defence of his
marriage in a tone that mirrored that of his opponents. His 1528 Ein Neue
Fabel Aesops included a contemptuous response to Hasenberg’s letter, and
New News from Leipzig commended a typically disrespectful function for
Catholic popular pamphlets which criticised his marriage.26 Jerome Schurf’s

22
  Huggarde, Displaying, Q3v; Luther conceded that there might indeed be some priests
or monks who left their orders in order to marry ‘glad to have found in evangelical freedom
a basis and pretext for their rascality ... Can we help that?’. Luther, Receiving Both Kinds in
the Sacrament, LW 36, p. 260.
23
  F. De Raemond, L’Histoire de la Naissance, Progrez et Decadence de l’heresie (Rouen,
1647), pp. 301ff, quoted in B.S. Tinsley, History and Polemics in the French Reformation:
Florimund de Raemond: Defender of the Church (London, 1992), p. 97.
24
  H. Denifle, Luther und Luthertum: in der ersten Entwickelung, quellenmäßig
dargestellt (2 vols, Mainz, 1905–1906); L. Maimbourg, Histoire du Lutheranisme (2 vols,
Paris, 1681), vol. I.I, p. 115; Fudge, ‘Incest and Lust’, 336.
25
  Thomas Hayne, The Life and Death of Martin Luther (London, 1643); Johann
Mayer, De Catharina Lutheri Conjugye, Dissertatio (Leipzig, 1698).
26
  WA 26.534–45.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 149

observation that ‘if this monk married, the whole world and the devil will
laugh’ proved to be quasi-prophetic; Luther and his marriage provided
substantial fuel for polemical debate, but it was not always clear which
side the joke was on. Luther might have laughed ‘I have legitimate children,
which no papal theologian has’, but as Muriel Porter has suggested, the
repeated denunciations of Luther’s marriage in order to undermine the
Reformation as whole exposed the costs in such unions. Luther and his
followers presented their marriages as evidence of their commitment to their
faith, but their opponents saw clerical marriage as proof that the reformers
had rejected the gospel in favour of moral licence.27
Catholic controversialists who used clerical marriage, and particularly
the marriage of key evangelical leaders, to discredit the Reformation were
exploiting, by inversion, the same argument that critics of the medieval
church had used to argue that clerical concubinage betrayed the false
foundations of Catholic theology. Eberlin von Gunzberg, a Franciscan
convert to the Reformation, penned in 1521 a comedic picture of a group
of Catholic priests debating the question of clerical celibacy. Compulsory
celibacy, they concluded, was a burden, and one which required a
remedy, either in masturbation, or in concubinage, which the church
might tolerate if a suitable fee were paid. One of the priests expressed his
concern that the unchaste lives of the clergy undermined their position
and discredited their preaching. How, after all, were his congregation to
listen with straight faces to his denunciations of immoral conduct, when
his own children were seated among them in the church?28 Luther was to
suggest that the conduct of the supposedly celibate Catholic clergy was,
in part at least, responsible for the popular acceptance of the message
of the Reformation.29 Such satirical comment on the Catholic priesthood
was far from unique to the German context. In England, George Joye
suggested to Stephen Gardiner that among the Catholic clergy, debauchery
and licentiousness were regarded as true holiness, and John Bale used his
Actes of the Englysh Votaries to detail those deeds that he regarded as
the consequences of their feigned chastity. ‘He that doth synne … is of
the deuill’, Bale declaimed, asserting in eye-watering detail the symbiotic
relationship between priestly immorality and doctrinal error.30 The

27
  WABr. 4.210; Porter, Sex, Marriage and the Church, p. 54.
28
  Syben Frumm Aber Trostloss Pfaffen Klagen Ihre Not (Basle, Th. Wolff, 1521);
discussed in Ozment, Fathers, pp. 7ff.
29
 LW 26.458–9.
30
  G. Joye, The Defence of the Mariage of Priestes Agenst Steuen Gardiner (Antwerp,
1541), sig. C8v–D2r; J. Bale, A Mysterye of Iniquyte Contayned within the Heretycally
Genealogye of Ponce Pantolabus (Antwerp, 1545), p. 10v; Parish, Clerical Marriage, pp.
121ff.
150 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

vigorous insistence on the part of many evangelical polemicists that the

parish clergy on the eve of the Reformation were, en masse, failing in
their obligation to celibacy, facilitated their resounding condemnation
of the medieval church and fuelled their demands for reform, but such
rhetoric had the potential to prove counter-productive. As Marjorie
Plummer’s study of early clerical marriage in Germany has shown, many
of the first clergy wives were indeed the former concubines of priests.31
Such marriages, coupled with polemical criticism of what appeared to be
widespread clerical concubinage, clearly reinforced the equation of clergy
wives and concubines in the popular imagination. Thomas More replied
to those who would argue that clerical marriage was a remedy for clerical
immorality by protesting ‘how can there by the marriage of priests ... be
fewer whores and bawds, when by the very marriage itself being as it were
incestuous and abominable, all were stark harlots that married them, and
all stark bawds that should help to bring them together?’32 Richard Smith,
no doubt smarting after being removed from his post and replaced by the
Italian evangelical Peter Martyr, repeatedly referred to Martyr’s wife as
his ‘harlot’.33 Miles Huggarde, writing during the deprivations of married
clergy in England in the reign of Mary, asserted that the wives of priests
were either their former concubines or ‘as common as the cartway’.34 Even
without the assumption, grounded in canon law, that clerical marriages
were not marriages at all, the wives of the clergy themselves were argued
to belie the evangelical assumption that such unions would stem the tide
of clerical immorality.
These critical caricatures of clerical marriage were encouraged by some
high profile and problematic unions. Perhaps the most infamous was the
marriage of Johannes Apel. Appointed canon of Wurzburg cathedral by

31
  Plummer, ‘Calamities’, 211. Plummer calculated that some 66 per cent of clerical
marriages in 1521–2 were the formalisation of a relationship between priest and concubine,
one third in 1523–7, and half in 1528–30. See also M.A. Kelleher, ‘Like Man and Wife: Clerics
Concubines in the Diocese of Barcelona’, Journal of Medieval History, 28 (2002): 349–60; A.
Fluchter, Der Zolibat Zwischen Devianz und Norm. Kirchenpolitil und Gemeidealltag in der
Herzogtumern Julich und Berg im 16 und 17 Jahrhundert (Cologne, 2006).
32
  More, Supplication of Souls, F. Manley, G. Marc’hadour, R. Marius, C.H. Miller
(eds), in The Yale Edition of The Complete Works of St Thomas More, 7 (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale UP, 1990), pp. 156–7.
33
  P. Martyr, The Commonplaces of the Most Famous and Renowned Diuine Doctor
Peter Martyr, tr. A. Marten (London, 1583), sig. Qq1v. Catherine died in Oxford, and in the
reign of Mary was accused of heresy; a lack of evidence meant that her bones, once exhumed,
were cast into a dunghill rather than burned. The Protestant martyrologist Foxe describes her
as ‘an honest, grave and sober matron’. J. Foxe, The Actes and Monuments of these latter
and perillous days (London, 1563), fol. 1558, and details the reburial of her remains with the
relics of St Frideswide in the reign of Elizabeth.
34
  Huggarde, Displaying of the Protestants, pp. 73v–74r.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 151

the bishop, Conrad, Apel confessed, soon after taking up his post, to have
fallen in love with a nun, and entered into a clandestine affair. She left
the cloister, and the two married in 1523. However, when word of the
union reached the bishop, he declared the marriage null, instructed Apel to
send his wife back to the convent, and enjoined penance on the pair. Apel
challenged the decision, and sought to align his cause with evangelical
calls for clerical marriage. To this end, a preface by Martin Luther was
appended to Apel’s defence of his marriage, Defensio Johannis Apelli ad
Episcopum Herbipolensem pro suo Coniugio, published in Wittenberg in
1523. However, Apel was arrested, imprisoned by the bishop, accused of
heresy, and excommunicated, despite protestations that the case fell outside
Episcopal jurisdiction.35 Apel secured for himself a position at the newly
established university in Wittenberg, but the reaction to his attempted
marriage revealed both the precarious status of such unions, and the
contested nature of authority in such cases. Similar controversy attended
the marriage in 1524 of the Strasbourg preacher and historian Caspar
Hedio to the sister of Augustin Drenss. Drenss disputed the validity of the
marriage, arguing that it had been contracted without his knowledge or
consent. He questioned the legality of clerical marriage, and demanded
that his sister be encouraged to marry instead an honest man who would
be a better match for the family. Hedio responded with the assertion that
it was public knowledge that clerical celibacy was not the law of God,
but the invention of Gregory VII, that obligatory celibacy was recognised
as the origin of clerical incontinence, and that God had not prohibited
marriage to either layman or priest. Drenss persisted in the argument that
clerical marriage ran counter to the law of the church and the law of the
empire; clerical marriage had arrived in the city only a few months before
Hedio’s match, and there was clearly some dispute over the legality of such
unions.36 For such a high profile case to come before the courts would do
little to dispel the doubts of lay observers that their priests had entered into
valid marriages.
A year later, similar questions of law and authority were raised after the
marriages of a group of clergy in the diocese of Merseburg. The marriage
of Johann Stumpf of Schonbach and Franz Klotsch of Grossbuch occupied
the bishop of Merseburg and the dukes of Saxony for over two years,
and exposed the complex interchanges between confessional arguments,

35
  For a fuller discussion of the case, see Witte, From Sacrament to Contract, pp. 44–6;
Fudge, ‘Incest and Lust’, 328ff.
36
  For a fuller discussion of the Hedio case, see T. Brady ‘“You hate us priests”:
Anticlericalism. Communalism, and the Control of Women at Strasbourg in the Age of the
Reformation’, in P. Dykema and H. Oberman (eds), Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and
Early Modern Europe (Leiden, 1993), pp. 194ff.
152 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

political expediency, and personal preference. The bishop of Mainz had,

similarly, failed to bring a speedy resolution to the cases of three former
Wittenberg students who had married in 1521, Bartholomaeus Bernhardi,
Jacob Seidler and Balthasar Zeiger.37 By 1524, Plummer argues, this first
generation of married clergy were beginning to adopt a cohesive platform
that was part of a wider programme of defiance. The Merseburg priests
presented the bishop with a defence of clerical marriage, Handlung des
Bischoffs von Mersburg mit den zwayen Pfarhern von Schonbach unnd
Buch, geschehen am Dingstag nach Bartholomei Anno M.D.Xxiii, which
was published in Erfurt, Zwickau, and in Nuremberg in 1523, and
pushed interest in their case beyond their own diocese. The papal legate,
Campeggio, identified clerical marriage with heresy, perhaps echoing the
views of the Gregorian reformers, and authorised the punishment of those
who lived ‘impurely’.38 However, the German priests presented clerical
marriage as the only solution to clerical immorality, argued that their
position was supported by Scripture, and claimed that although they had
prayed for chastity, they had been compelled by their conscience to marry
because they did not have the ability to do otherwise. Plummer highlights
the extent to which these arguments resonated readily with other parish
clergy, including those who were unmarried, and provided a staple defence
for priests who entered into such unions. As a result, the bishop found that
the married priests were united in their disobedience, and articulate in the
defence of their actions. When support from the secular arm, in the form
of Frederick the Wise, was not forthcoming, the law of celibacy was all the
more difficult to enforce.
Debate over clerical celibacy and marriage was undoubtedly fuelled by
the marriage of several evangelical leaders in the 1520s. The theologian
Philip Melanchthon married in 1520, although his marriage was not in
violation of holy orders. Justus Jonas married in 1522, and the following
years saw the marriage of Johannes Bugenhagen, Andreas Karlstadt, Martin
Bucer, Wenceslas Linck, Thomas Muntzer, Wolfgang Capito, Matthias
Zell, Ulrich Zwingli, Ludwig Cellarius, and Johannes Oecolampadius,
among others. The early years of the decade had also witnessed a flurry
of activity on the printing presses in defence of clerical marriage and
denouncing mandatory celibacy and monastic vows. The first priests in

37
  The protracted nature of the proceedings against individual priests who married
in the first years of the reformation has been amply demonstrated by Marjorie Plummer:
Plummer, ‘Clerical Marriage’, pp. 45–70.
38
  Ordnung und reformation zu abstellung der Missbreuch, un auffrichtung aines
erberen wesens und wandels in der gaistlichait (1524), sig. B2r, C1r–2r quoted in Plummer,
‘Clerical Marriage’, p. 52. Bishops were to impose strict discipline – imprisonment if
necessary.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 153

Wittenberg married in May 1521, following the publication of Luther’s

Address to the Christian Nobility which contained a strong denunciation
of obligatory clerical celibacy as an attack on Christian liberty. ‘We see
also how the priesthood is fallen’, Luther protested, ‘and how many a
poor priest is encumbered with a woman and children and burdened in
his conscience, and no one does anything to help him, though he might
very well be helped.’ The justification for action, he proposed, was to be
found in St Paul’s Letter to Timothy, ‘the minister should not be forced to
live without a lawful wife, but should be allowed to have one, as St. Paul
writes, saying that “a bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one
wife ... having his children in subjection with all gravity”’. The precedent
of the early church was that marriage was permissible to all, although
some of the Fathers had chosen to remain unmarried in order that they
might better devote themselves to study. Such voluntary celibacy caused no
problems, Luther claimed, until ‘the Roman see has interfered of its own
perversity, and has made a general law by which priests are forbidden to
marry. This must have been at the instigation of the devil, as was foretold
by St Paul, saying that “there shall come teachers giving heed to seducing
spirits, . . . forbidding to marry”’. By prohibiting marriage to the clergy,
he argued, the Catholic church had aligned itself with the falsehoods of
the devil, and opened up a division in Christendom that had culminated
in the separation of the Greek and Latin churches. Luther’s solution
was the restoration of Christian liberty, and particularly the freedom to
marry. Candidates who presented themselves for ordination should make
no commitment to celibacy, but instead protest to the bishop against
this ‘devilish tyranny’, while those who were already ordained but felt
unable to continue in celibacy should be permitted to take a wife, because
‘the salvation of your soul is of more importance than their tyrannous,
arbitrary, wicked laws, which are not necessary for salvation, nor ordained
by God’. For the church to permit priests to maintain housekeepers, but
not to marry, Luther warned, was akin to ‘putting straw and fire together
and forbidding them to smoke or burn’.39
The actions of the married priests in Wittenberg encouraged further
debate, and the first full-length defence of clerical marriage, Carlstadt’s
Axiomata Super Coelibatu, Monachatu et Viduitate, was printed in 1521.
In the same year Melanchthon’s De Votis Monasticis et an Coniugum sit
Concedendum Puellae Qui in Monasterio Aliquamdiu Vixerat set out
the case against monastic vows, and defended the validity of marriage
for those who were unable to keep their ill-advised promises of chastity.

39
 Luther, To the Christian Nobility, LW 44, pp. 176ff. Luther was, he claimed,
surprised by the actions of the first married clergy who had taken such a radical step despite
the harsh penalties that they faced in so doing: LW 48, pp. 231, 235.
154 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

Luther also entered the fray, although in part to suggest that the arguments
of the Wittenbergers were not compelling.40 Completed in November 1521
and dedicated to his father, On Monastic Vows (1522) was Luther’s first
substantial treatment of the subject, and anchored the issue firmly within
his developing theology of faith and works. The principle of justification
by faith was used as a battering ram against the doors of the medieval
monasteries. Monastic vows, Luther argued, were mere human works that
could do nothing to contribute to salvation, and to suggest otherwise was
to attempt to undermine the divine prerogative and diminish the grace of
God. The treatise was a detailed attack on vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience, but it was forced chastity which was most forcefully criticised.41
Monastic chastity had no scriptural foundation, Luther argued, indeed,
‘there is no doubt that the monastic vow is in itself a dangerous thing,
because it is without the authority and example of scripture’. Such vows
ran contrary to Christian freedom; Christ had counselled that the decision
to live in marriage or in celibacy was to be voluntary (Matt. 19), yet the
church demanded chastity of its monastics. The voluntary continence
of the early church had been turned into law by the medieval popes. St
Anthony had chosen a life of chastity ‘after the pattern of the Gospel’, but,
Luther protested, ‘pursuing human wishes, his successors made this way of
life into a vow, a matter of compulsion and obligation’. The contemporary
image of monasticism in itself was further and compelling evidence that
such vows were ill-advised and impossible to maintain.42
A similar denunciation of obligatory continence and forced vows was
articulated in Carlstadt’s treatise on the subject, Regarding Vows. The
Latin version of the text included a defamatory attack upon contemporary
monasticism, which was less ferocious in the German translation. The basic
argument, however, came not from practice, but from Scripture. The law of
God expressed in the Bible, Carlstadt argued, was in all cases authoritative
above the laws of men. Vows were to be made to God, and God alone, and
vows made to the saints, particularly those made by monks and nuns, were

40
  Brecht, Luther, p. 21.
41
  D. Bagchi, Luther’s Earliest Opponents. Catholic Controversialists 1518–1521
(Minneapolis, 1991), p. 150.
42
  LW 44, 251–400; LW 48, 328ff; M. Mullett, Martin Luther (London, 2004), p.
136. Brecht suggests that Luther’s critique of vows was not intended as a polemical work,
but as a discussion for those already subject to vows, based on the Bible (Brecht, Luther, p.
22). However, the impact of the argument was rather more wide ranging, and at least one
modern commentator has gone as far as to suggest that the theological basis for the critique
of vows was understood in the reception process: U. Rublack, ‘Zur Reception von Luthers De
Votis Monasticis Iudicium’, in R. Postel and F. Kopitzch (eds), Reformation und Revolution.
Beiträge zum politischen Wandel und den sozialen Kräften am Beginn der Neuzeit: Festschift
für Rainer Wohlfeil zum 60. Geburtstag (Stuttgart, 1989), pp. 224–37.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 155

of no value. It was impossible to vow chastity, since chastity was a gift of

God and not within the capacity of man to promise of his own volition.
For those who were unable to live in chastity, even if they had made such
ill-advised vows, he suggested, it would be better to marry in accordance
with the scriptural mandate than to continue in the life of fornication
that consumed many religious. To marry, even in breach of a vow, was
better than to lead an impure life and reject marriage on the basis of a
misdirected promise.43 This argument that a vow of chastity amounted to
an unbearable burden placed upon those who were ill-equipped to keep to
it was a common argument among evangelical writers, and one that was
rooted, at least in the literature, in the conduct of the pre-Reformation
clergy. Robert Barnes suggested that the papal demand that priests promise
celibacy at ordination was tantamount to theft, a commitment extracted
in the same way as a robber might demand money from a traveller before
permitting them to cross a bridge.44 George Joye argued that any vow must
be a free promise of that which it was within the capacity of the individual
to achieve, and for the pope to demand chastity of the clergy was to violate
both of these principles.45
However, the theological justification for the breaking of vows came
not from the assertion that priests and religious were not capable of living
in chastity, but from the assertion that monastic vows were erroneous in
their conception. The magisterial reformers were no doubt reluctant to
countenance the abandonment of all vows on the basis that they were hard
to keep, not least because such an assertion could readily be radicalised
to undermine wider legal and social structures. The primary focus was
therefore the question of whether vows, and monastic vows in particular,
might merit salvation for those who made them. For Luther the answer
was a resounding rejection of such assumptions. Vows, as human works,
could not improve upon the free gift of faith. Just as the priests of Baal,
Luther claimed, had asserted for themselves a special relationship with God
on the basis of their piety, so monks erroneously believed that their vows
drew them closer to God.46 Similar arguments were adopted by William
Tyndale in his controversy with Thomas More. Chastity, he claimed, was

43
 E.J. Furcha, The Essential Carlstadt. Fifteen Tracts by Andreas Bodenstein (Carlstadt)
from Karlstadt (Scottdale Penn, Waterloo Ontario, 1995), pp. 54, 67.
44
 R. Barnes, That By Gods Law it is Lawfull for Priestes that hath not the gift of
chastite to marry wiues, in The Whole Workes of W.Tyndall, Iohn Frith and Doct. Barnes,
three worthy martyrs and principall teachers of this churche of Englande, J. Foxe (ed.)
(London, 1573), p. 319.
45
  G. Joye, The Letters which Joh Ashwell ... sente secretlye to the byschope of Lincolne
(Antwerp, 1531), sig. C1r; Joye, Defence, sig. C7v–8r.
46
 LW 7, p. 344.
156 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

no virtue but a thing indifferent, and to make a vow of perpetual chastity

did not please God, since it had nothing to do with salvation.47 To believe
that a vow of any form was meritorious was not simply to commit an error
of judgement, but to erect an idol in the heart, in which hope of salvation
was wrongly placed.48 To do so was to commit a worse form of idolatry
than to place trust in the image of a saint, because to trust in a vow was to
create an ‘image that thou hast fained of God’.49 The distinction between
the monastic vow of chastity and the priestly promise to celibacy was often
blurred in the more general evangelical assault upon monasticism and the
celibate priesthood. John Bale, for example, declaimed that the priesthood
was ‘an office in ydolatrye... and the vow yt they cal of their chastyte a
seruyce of prodigious buggerye’; secular and regular clergy were tarred
with the same brush.50 Although the foundations of priestly celibacy and
monastic chastity were not identical, discussions of clerical marriage and
the vows of religious orders drew upon the same polemical lexicon.
Ulrich Zwingli entered the fray with a defence of clerical celibacy
expressed in the Supplicatio Quorundam Apud Helvetios.51 Zwingli’s
arguments were set against the backdrop of his own marriage to Anna
Reinhard in early 1522, celebrated in a public wedding in 1524.52 In
summer 1522 he addressed an appeal to the secular authorities to permit
clerical marriage and to afford legal protection to the wives and children
of those priests who had already married.53 The attack on clerical celibacy
was, for Zwingli, like Luther, part of the more general assertion of the
principle of Christian freedom. Obligatory continence was a burden upon
the consciences of those priests who were unable to keep to the discipline,
and drove them into more shameful acts that could have been prevented
by the toleration of clerical marriage. The law of the church, Zwingli
argued, had no foundation in Scripture, and should be overturned. No
response was forthcoming from the Diet, although it appears that several
other clergy followed Zwingli’s lead, particularly in the aftermath of the

47
  W. Tyndale, Answer to Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue, in Foxe (ed.), Whole Works,
pp. 313–16.
48
  Luther, The Interpretation of the Two horrible figures: The papal Ass in Rome and the
Monk Calf found in Freiburg in Meissen 1523, in WA vol. 11, pp. 369–85; LW 2, p. 214.
49
  Exposition of John, in Foxe (ed.), Whole Workes, p. 424.
50
  J. Bale, The Apology of John Bale Agaynste a Ranke Papyst (London, 1550), pp.
4v, 12r, 133r.
51
  U. Zwingli, Supplicatio quorumdam apud Helvetios Evangelistarum, in M. Schuler
& J. Schulthess (eds) Zwingli Opera (8 vols, Zurich, 1828–42) vol. 3, p. 18.
52
  O. Farner, ‘Anna Reinhart, die Gatten Ulrich Zwingli’, Zwingliana, 8 (1916): 230–45.
53
  Eine Freundliche Bitte und Ermahung an die Eidgenossen, quoted in Ulrich Gabler,
Huldrych Zwingli. His Life and Work (tr. R.Gritsch) (Edinburgh, 1986), p. 15.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 157

Zurich debates of 1523. The Zurich council had petitioned the bishop to
take action against unworthy priests as early as 1507, and further appeals
were made to the bishop of Constance to act against clerical concubinage
in 1512. In the absence of a concrete response to these earlier complaints,
the council was perhaps more sympathetic to calls for the toleration
of clerical marriage in the first years of the Reformation. Across the
confederation, the fate of married priests lay largely in the hands of the
secular authorities; in Zurich there was a degree of protection provided,
but in Baden, a pastor with evangelical sympathies who married was
handed over to the disciplinary processes of the Episcopal court.54 Debate
continued, however, and in 1522 Sebastien Meyer published a refutation
of the defence of clerical celibacy mounted by Bishop Hugo of Constance,
the Commentar zu Einem Hirtenbrief des Bischofs v. Constanz. Zwingli’s
view of the religious life had found an appreciative audience in the monastic
houses of Berne, and in spring 1525 the council ordered the religious to
remain in their cloisters, and forbade them to marry. Several Dominican
nuns at Oetenbach asked to be released from their vows after hearing Leo
Jud preach, and Wilhelm Reublin, in Witikon, near Zurich, became the
first priest to enter into a public marriage.55
By 1523, several clergy in Strasbourg had married, including Matthias
Zell. Episcopal retribution was swift, and the married clergy were
excommunicated in March 1524. The group published a defence of clerical
marriage, the Apellatio, in April, and Zell’s wife, Katherine, addressed a
letter to the bishop setting out the biblical justifications for clerical marriage
in sufficiently strident terms that the city council instructed her husband
to ensure that it was not printed.56 Zell took up the fight against clerical
celibacy himself in 1523, denouncing obligatory continence as a discipline
that ran contrary to nature in his Eine Collation von der Pfaffenehe. His
wife, if at all chastened by her earlier experience, was certainly not silenced,
and in the following year composed a defence of clerical marriage and
of evangelism, using the marriage of priests to examine the relationship
between faith and works, and scripture and tradition. She complained
bitterly against clerical immorality and the financial gain afforded by
episcopal taxes on concubinage, suggesting that the church was motivated
to the defence of clerical celibacy primarily on financial grounds. Citing
passages from Genesis, Levicitus, and the Pauline letters, she argued that

54
  Gabler, Zwingli, p. 64.
55
  B. Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (Manchester, 2002), p. 61.
56
  W.S. Stafford, Domesticating the Clergy. the inception of the Reformation in
Strasbourg, 1522–1524 (Missoula, Mont., 1976), pp. 153ff; T. Kaufmann ‘Pfarrfrau und
Publizistin – Das Reformation Amt der Katharine Zell’, ARG, 88 (1997): 169–218.
158 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

clerical marriage was sanctioned in scripture, and the only appropriate

remedy for the church.57
This focus on clerical marriage as a divinely sanctioned solution to the
undesirable consequences of clerical celibacy remained a commonplace of
evangelical writing. Justus Jonas, in his humorous response to Johannes
Faber’s Opus adversus nova quaedam et a Christiana religione prorsus
aliena dogmata Martini Lutheri (Rome, 1523), both debated the origins
of the discipline and denounced its contemporary manifestation.58 Francis
Lambert’s critique of clerical celibacy, De Matrimonio male inhibito Clericis
(1523), was grounded in a knowledge of the scriptures and the traditions of
the church, but was likewise accompanied by a strident denunciation of what
the author regarded as the fruits of a false discipline that did nothing other
than drive the clergy into fornication. Lambert, a French Franciscan, had
renounced his vows in the same year, and taken a wife in Wittenberg. News
of such marriages was in itself propaganda for the cause, and individual
clerical unions were, for this first generation, worthy of note. George Spalatin
recorded the weddings of leading evangelicals in his Annales Reformationis,
but even less significant matches were commemorated in print. The first
clerical marriage in Augsburg, for example, Jacob Griessbuettel’s wedding,
was the subject of a 1523 pamphlet, Christoph Gerung’s Der Actus und
Des Geschicht (Augsburg, 1523).
Despite the vigorous debate, and the very obvious presence of
married clergy in the parishes, the legal position of married clergy in the
German principalities remained uncertain, and it was evident that some
consideration of the situation was necessary. In January 1530, the Emperor
Charles V issued letters from Bologna to convene a Diet in Augsburg in
April of the same year, and the summoning of the Diet prompted the
composition of a clear statement of evangelical doctrine, formulated in
Torgau by Luther, Melanchthon, Bugenhagen and Jonas at the instigation
of Elector John of Saxony. The so-called Torgau Articles were re-drafted
as the Confession of Augsburg, which was presented before the emperor
on 25 June.59 The 28 articles of the Confession comprised 21 statements
of Christian doctrine, and seven statements of the abuses that required
correction in the contemporary church. Article 23 addressed the marriage
of priests, Article 27 monastic vows, and both offered a succinct summary

57
  Apologia of Katharina Schutz for Master Matthew Zell (Sept 1524), printed in
E.A. McKee, Katharina Schutz Zell (2 vols, Leiden, Boston, Cologne, 1999) vol. 2, pp. 21–47;
see particularly pp. 35–40.
58
  Defensio Adversus Johannem Fabrum … pro conjugio sacerdotali defensio
(Wittenberg, 1523).
59
  For a recent examination of the Augsburg Confession, see L. Grane, The Augsburg
Confession (tr. J.H. Ramussen) (Augsburg, 1987).
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 159

of evangelical objections to obligatory clerical celibacy. Article 23 opened

with the assertion that the unchastity of priests was a cause of common
complaint, a complaint that had been recognised by no less than Pope
Pius himself, who had observed that while there had been good reasons
to prohibit clerical marriage, there were now far weightier reasons why
marriage should once again be permitted.60 Those priests who had married
had done so for the avoidance of scandal, and in accordance with Scripture,
which offered marriage as a remedy for fornication (I. Cor. 7), and patristic
writing, including those of Cyprian. However, the argument in favour of
clerical marriage was based upon more than simply the conduct of the
contemporary clergy. It was claimed that the priests of the early church
had been married men, and that until the eleventh century there had been
married priests in the German church. Such was the extent of opposition
to the imposition of clerical celibacy that the publication of the Gregorian
reforms had provoked violence. If marriage continued to be forbidden to
the clergy, it was likely that the church would find itself with too few
pastors to serve the faithful. God had created man and woman for the
purpose of procreation, it was argued, and without a ‘singular gift’ from
God, it was not within the power of man to alter this work of creation. The
law of man could not, even in a vow of chastity, annul the commandment
of God. An apocalyptic note of caution was added; the world was ageing,
and the nature of man becoming weaker, making it all the more important
that the empire be protected from further vices. God had commanded that
marriage be honoured, and the prohibition of marriage had been warned
against by Paul, as the ‘doctrine of devils’.
Article 27 presented a criticism of the practice of monasticism which
would have been familiar to the readers of Luther’s works. The monastic
communities of the early church were, the text asserted, free associations,
and it was only as community discipline had fragmented that vows had
been introduced, and even greater constraints placed upon their members.
Many individuals had entered monasteries in their youth, before they
had reached a sufficient age to know their mind and their abilities. Vows
that should have been freely made, if made at all, were instead compelled
and, in the case of chastity, demanded without knowing whether such
a life lay within the power of the individual. Monastic vows had been
held up as meritorious and a work of salvation that would justify the
individual before God, as the Catholic church taught, ‘that services of
man’s making satisfy for sins and merit grace’. To make such assertions
was, the evangelicals contested, to detract from the glory of God and from
the righteousness of faith. Monastic life was extolled as a life of Christian
perfection, but from this the faithful erroneously understood that their

60
  ‘Pius II’ in Platina, Vitae Pontificum (Venice, 1479).
160 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

own married life was without merit. God was to be served by obedience
to the divine commandments, and not by the commandments devised by
man; monastic vows were not works of supererogation, but were rather
null and void. The apparent ‘illicit transition to marriage’ commended at
Augsburg produced a swift condemnation from Catholic theologians at
the Diet, who asserted the merits of celibacy and were scathing in their
rejection of the argument from infirmity.61
The practical and theological objections to obligatory clerical celibacy
that were laid down in the Augsburg Confession were clearly those that
preoccupied the individuals who took up the defence of clerical marriage
in the first decades of the Reformation. Clerical marriage was, it appeared,
the obvious remedy for clerical fornication, but the first generations of
evangelical polemicists who advocated a change in ecclesiastical discipline
also provided such demands with a theological justification. The debate
over clerical marriage was not simply a debate over the extent to which
the parish clergy were failing to fulfil their obligation to celibacy, but also
a debate about the authority of scripture and tradition, the heritage of the
primitive church, the role of faith and works in salvation, and the nature of
the priesthood. The pivotal position occupied by the celibate priest in the
theology and liturgy of the Catholic church ensured an equally prominent
place for the married Protestant pastor in the eyes of the faithful and on
the printed page of doctrinal controversy. Such exchanges were conducted
not only in the learned works printed in Latin, but in the often rather more
coarse language of vernacular polemic, and in the lives and example of
those clergy who chose to marry, legally or otherwise, in the aftermath of
the Reformation. The married ministry was a highly visible manifestation
of changing doctrinal principles that extended well beyond the manse.
The evangelical assertion of the supremacy and sufficiency of Scripture
was, unsurprisingly, reflected in the polemical defences of clerical marriage
in the sixteenth century. The primacy of the word of God over and above
the words of men provided a justification for the sweeping denunciation
of the canon law and traditions of the church, including clerical celibacy.
As Andrew Pettegree has argued, the principle of sola scriptura was far
more accessible than other key tenets of evangelical theology. ‘For most
laypeople justification was too difficult to fathom’, he writes, ‘... the
doctrine of Scripture alone, in contrast, was powerful not only because
of its radical rhetorical simplification, but because it was reinforced in
virtually every medium: through preaching, through the image of Luther
… through the pamphlets on the streets, and finally of course through

61
  Corp. Ref., Vol. 27, 136–45; the phrase is that of J. Schofield, Philip Melanchthon
and the English Reformation (Aldershot, 2006), p. 105.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 161

the publication of the Bible itself’.62 From the start, evangelical writers in
Germany and beyond asserted scripture as the ultimate foundation for
faith and practice, and promised to ‘digge again the wells of Abraham’
that had been blocked by the laws and accretions of the ‘Philistines’.63
A stark choice was presented between the word of God and the law of
the pope, in which the apparently simple principle of sola scriptura was
set up as the antagonist to the straw man of sola ecclesia that personified
Catholic practice. Whether such a dichotomy was sustainable in practice
in debateable, and there are good reasons to suppose that the ‘exegetical
optimism’ of the reformers was misplaced, particularly given hermeneutical
uncertainties and disputes over interpretative authority.64 However, the
straightforward appeal to the authority of scripture above ecclesiastical
tradition proved to be a popular line of argument for those writing in
defence of clerical marriage, and one which enabled evangelical writers
simply to dismiss centuries of tradition as non-scriptural ‘innovation’.
Debate focused upon a few key passages, which were cited or interpreted
in support of a married priesthood, and to cast doubt upon the origins of
the celibacy discipline. The Levitical requirement that priests abstain from
their wives during their time of service in the temple, for example, provided
one such focal point. The English bible translator and polemicist William
Tyndale argued that this requirement offered no support to arguments in
favour of the perpetual continence of the Catholic clergy, but rather served
to demonstrate that there was nothing in the Old Testament to suggest
that marriage was denied to the clergy. Yes, the Levitical priests abstained
from their wives, but this was a temporary abstinence, and not one that
provided a model for the Christian ministry. The primary message to take
from the text was that the priests of the old law had been married men.65

62
  A. Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge, 2005), p. 169.
63
  Tyndale, The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, in Foxe (ed.), Whole Works, pp.
61–2; for a fuller consideration of the debate over scripture and tradition in the sixteenth
century, see G.R. Evans, Problems of Authority in Reformation Debates (Cambridge, 1992);
G.H. Tavard, Holy Writ or Holy Church. The Crisis of the Protestant Reformation (London,
1959); J.M. Headley, ‘The Reformation as a Crisis in the Understanding of Tradition’, ARG,
78 (1987): 5–22; P. Marshall, ‘The Debate over Unwritten Verities in Early Reformation
England’, in B. Gordon (ed.), Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth Century Europe,
vol. I The Medieval Inheritance (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 60–77; Gordon, ‘The Changing Face of
Protestant History and Identity in the Sixteenth Century’, in his (ed.), Protestant History and
Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe, vol. I, pp. 1–22; Oberman, Dawn of the Reformation.
Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought (Edinburgh, 1992), pp. 289–96;
A. McGrath, Reformation Thought, An Introduction (Oxford, 1988), p. 97; Y.M. Congar,
Tradition and Traditions. An Historical and a Theological Essay (London, 1966).
64
  P. Marshall, ‘Unwritten Verities’, p. 67; McGrath, Reformation Thought, pp. 111–12.
65
  Tyndale, Answer, p. 317; R. Crowley, A Confutation of xiii articles wherunto
Nicholas Shaxton ... subscribed (London, 1548), sig. G7r–8r.
162 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

Peter Martyr argued that the priests of the Old Testament had been at
prayer morning and night, but were still permitted to take wives and beget
children. The daily service of the Christian priesthood was therefore no bar
to marriage.66 Attempts to regulate priestly marriage in the Old Testament
were limited to restrictions placed upon the groups of women from which a
wife might be chosen, and were not intended to prevent priests from taking
wives. Indeed, it was argued, marriage was presented in the Old Testament
as a godly state, in which man and wife enjoyed divine favour.67
The Pauline letters provided the most fertile hunting ground for
advocates of clerical marriage in the sixteenth century. The assertion that
it was ‘better to marry than to burn’ was used by the first generation of
German married priests to defend their actions, and featured prominently
in the pamphlet literature, both as a justification for clerical marriage, and
as a solution to the apparent ills of the Catholic church and clergy. To deny
the ‘remedy’ of marriage to the clergy was simply to compound their sins,
it was argued, by compelling those who could not live chastely to turn to
fornication rather than marriage. Rather than permit marriage as a solution
to this problem, Tyndale protested, the pope believed that it was better
that a priest take a concubine.68 Luther, writing on the seventh chapter of
Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians argued that the married state was equal
in the eyes of God to virginity. Marriage was, therefore, compatible with
the priesthood, and there was nothing in the New Testament that required
obligatory clerical celibacy. To insist upon such a discipline was to present
an occasion for sin, for the sake of a law which was human rather than
divine. Luther’s Commentary had been composed as a wedding gift for
a friend, but also as a bolster to Melanchthon’s brief 1522 commentary,
in which he had criticised St Jerome for using the letter of Paul as a
buttress for clerical celibacy and superstition. Luther’s more substantial
study adopted the same critical stance. The Letter to the Corinthians had
served as a defence of virginity and abstinence in Catholic hermeneutic,
but Luther’s exposition positioned the text as a locus classicus for the
attack on clerical celibacy. To live in celibacy might free an individual
from the labours of marriage, he argued, but there was nothing in Paul’s
letter to suggest that celibacy was in any way meritorious, or required

66
  Martyr, Commonplaces, vol. 3, p. 196.
67
  J. Bale, Yet a Course at the Romyshe Foxe (Antwerp, 1543), sig. K2v; T. Becon,
Book of matrimony, in The Worckes of Thomas Becon whiche he hath hitherto made and
published with diuerse other newe books added (2 vols, London, 1564), vol. 1, fol. HHh3r;
fol. IIiv; H. Bullinger The Golden Boke of Christen Matrimonye (tr. M. Coverdale) (London,
1543), fol. 23r–v.
68
  Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man, in William Tyndale: Doctrinal Treatises,
H. Walter (ed.) (Cambridge, 1848), p. 134.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 163

of the clergy. Celibacy was indeed possible for some, perhaps one in a
hundred thousand, but marriage was necessary for most men, who were
subject to the postlapsarian temptations of the flesh. This was as true for
the clergy as for the laity, and so, Luther argued, it would be better to
permit clerical marriage on the mandate provided by I. Cor. 7:9. ‘If you
had not persisted in forbidding priests to marry, there would not have
been so much trouble’, Luther alleged against his opponents. ‘For then
married men would have become priests, and many would first have tried
marriage, and there would have been far fewer whoremongers’.69
Marriage, Luther claimed, had been ordained by God as a holy state,
and was as acceptable for the priest as it was for all men. The apostles, he
argued, had been married men, yet the Catholic church drove away from
the priesthood not only those who might want to marry, but those who
already lived in this godly state. Peter Martyr used the same Pauline letter
to argue that ‘it is now a thing worthy to be noted, that married folks are
not despised of God’. Marriage was not, he argued, a hindrance to prayer,
but rather placed the minister in ‘the same state that the common people
be’.70 The exhortations to chastity in the Letter to the Corinthians were
not intended to apply to all, but only to those who believed that they could
maintain such a life. This was not a choice that was within the power of
man, but a gift from God bestowed upon only a few; for the rest, marriage
had been instituted as a remedy.71 The argument that marriage was provided
as a remedy not only for the laity but also for the clergy was used by Philip
Melanchthon in his Defence ... of the Mariage of Priestes (1541), written
for the benefit of Henry VIII. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Melanchthon
argued, ‘without dowte.. pertayneth not only unto the laye men but also
unto priestes. For it is a uniuersal commandement/everyman oughte to
haue his wife to auoyde whoredome’, with the exception of those who
received a gift of chastity from God.72 The implicit assumption was that
this was a gift bestowed only upon a few, and certainly not the supposedly
celibate priesthood in its entirety, for whom marriage was, therefore, a
valid option. Martin Bucer’s De Coelibatu Sacerdotum (1544) detailed
the damage that had caused in the church by its continued insistence upon
clerical celibacy, and Matthew Parker, later archbishop of Canterbury,
clearly had an interest in this section of the work, which he annotated and
marked for future use. Parker had also read and highlighted a passage in
the Apologia of Erasmus which praised clerical marriage as a remedy for

69
 LW 28.1–56; see also M. Porter, Sex, Marriage and the Church, pp. 47ff.
70
  Martyr, Commonplaces, vol. 3, p. 196.
71
  Martyr, Defensio de Petri Martyris Vermilii ... (Basle?, 1559), sigs, C8v, D8v; S5r.
72
  Melanchthon (tr. George Joye), A very godly defense full of lerning defending the
mariage of preistes (Antwerp, 1541), sig. A6v.
164 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

the ills of the church, using the argument that it was ‘better to marry than
to burn’.73
Marriage was not merely a remedy for fornication, however, and clerical
marriage was often defended on the basis that there was a fundamental good
in marriage that applied to both priests and people. Paul’s assertion in the
letter to the Hebrews that ‘marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled’
provided valuable ammunition for evangelical polemicists, but the defence
of marriage was more wide ranging.74 Martin Luther’s tract On the Estate
of Marriage (1522) presented marriage as a part of the divine creation, a
remedy for prostitution, but also as a cause of delight to God who took
pleasure in the actions of a man who raised children. The spiritual benefits
of marriage far outweighed celibacy with all its concomitant dangers,
despite what its detractors would preach.75 Andreas Carlstadt’s Letter
from Wittenberg Concerning Priests and Monks (1522) was not only a
defence of clerical marriage, but also an assertion that marriage was itself
pleasing to God. Philip Melanchthon’s discussion of clerical marriage
asserted the prelapsarian origins of marriage, referring to the creation
narrative in Genesis to argue that God ‘hathe ingrassed into ether kynde
a mutuall desyer to be ioyned togither’, and had instituted marriage in
order that man would love and honour women, produce children, and
raise them in the love of God.76 The new marriage services composed
for Wittenberg and Nuremberg in the 1520s criticised the way in which
marriage was mocked by its detractors, extolled its merits, and asserted its
divine institution.77 Matthew Parker, following Bucer’s lead, argued that
not only was compulsory clerical celibacy damaging to the church, but it
also denied clergy the practical benefits of marriage, particularly in their
fulfilment of the obligation to hospitality.78 Such assertions stood in stark
contrast to the rather scurrilous representations of wives and marriage in
the vernacular literature of the sixteenth century, in which the marriage
devil (Eheteufel) and housedevil (Hausteufel) were the cause of all discord

73
  CCCC SP 186; N.B. Bjorklund, ‘“A Godly Wife is an Helper”. Matthew Parker
and the Defence of Clerical Marriage’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 34.2 (2003): 347–65,
especially 351.
74
 See, for example, Becon, Matrimony, fols GGg5r, HHh5v–6r; H. Bullinger, Der
Christliche Ehestand (The Golden Book of Christian Matrimony), (tr. M. Coverdale)
(London, 1543).
75
 LW 45, pp. 11–49.
76
  Melanchthon, Defence, sigs A7r, A5r.
77
  Ozment, Fathers, p. 8; see also V. Reinburg, ‘Liturgy and Laity in Late Medieval and
Reformation France’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 23 (1992): 526–46, for a discussion of the
extent to which such ideas permeated lay understanding.
78
  M. Bucer, De Coelibatu Sacerdotum (Basle, 1548); Parker CCCC SP 363; Bjorklund,
‘Parker’, p. 353.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 165

between man and wife.79 Perhaps suspecting that such mythologies were
ingrained in the popular imagination, Luther took the opportunity to
exploit the Eheteufel myths in order to argue that marriage must indeed
be holy if the devil laboured so hard to destroy it.80
The suggestion that the destruction of marriage was the work of the
devil had its roots in Paul’s letter to Timothy, and the warning that there
would come, in the future, false prophets who would prohibit marriage.
The Pauline text made no specific reference to the marriage of priests, but
the assertion that the prohibition of clerical marriage was ‘the doctrine
of devils’ was frequently exploited in evangelical commentaries.81 Luther,
in his commentary on Antichrist, translated into English by John Frith,
made the connection between the ‘doctrine of devils’ phrase in the letter to
Timothy, the celibacy of the clergy, and the influence of Antichrist in the
Roman church.82 Melanchthon also identified the ‘frantik forbiddinges’
of the popes with the doctrine of devils in Paul’s epistle. The devilish
origins of the prohibition of clerical marriage, Melanchthon argued, were
betrayed in its fruits, the moral conduct of the clergy. For the pope to
forbid marriage was to align the Catholic church with the very heresies
that it had once condemned in Marcion and the Montanists, and to sow
the seeds of the tyranny of Antichrist.83 John Ponet, in a defence of clerical
marriage printed in the year that such unions were declared lawful in
England, identified the prohibition of marriage to priests as the doctrine of
the devil, and argued ‘the Apostles taught one thing, the byshop of Rome
brought in another’. The prohibition of marriage had been identified by
Paul as being of the devil, and its origins were laid bare in the conduct of
the supposedly celibate clergy.84 In a similar vein, Ponet’s contemporary
John Hooper asserted that compulsory clerical celibacy was indeed ‘the
true mark to know Antichrist by’.85 The association of clerical celibacy
with the doctrine of devils combined in evangelical literature to create an
image of the papal Antichrist, feigning holiness but corrupting the church

79
  W. Kawerau, ‘Die Reformation und die Ehe’, Reformationsgeschichte, 8 (Halle:
Verein fur Reformationsgeschichte), 1–104.
80
  Johnson, ‘Unholy Matrimony’, p. 280; see also R. Stambaugh (ed.), Teufelbucher
in Auswahl (4 vols, Berlin, 1970); Nicholas Schmid, Teufeln oder Lastern, damit die bosen,
unartigen Weiber Besessen Sind (n.p. (Leipzig), 1557).
81
 I Tim 4:1–2.
82
  J. Frith, Pistle to the Christen Reader. The Reuelacion of Antichrist (Antwerp, 1529),
p. 71v; see also Luther, Against the Spiritual Estate of the Pope, LW 39, p. 292.
83
  Melanchthon, Defence, sigs A8v, B1v, B2v.
84
  J. Ponet, A Defence for the Mariage of Priestes (London, 1549).
85
  J. Hooper, ‘A Brief and Clear Confession of the Christian Faith’, in C. Nevinson
(ed.), The Later Writings of Bishop Hooper (Cambridge, 1852), p. 56.
166 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

from within through doctrinal innovation and ecclesiastical laws which

ran contrary to scripture.86
Scripture contained not only prophetic warnings, but also practical
information about the life of the church in the immediate aftermath of the
life and resurrection of Christ. Unsurprisingly, given the contested nature
of the evidence adduced to support assertions of apostolic origins for the
discipline of clerical celibacy, the New Testament was plundered ruthlessly
by the defenders of clerical marriage for evidence that the first followers of
Christ had been married men. The example of the apostolic church could
be cited freely in debate without any detriment to the principle of sola
scriptura in the polemic of the Reformation, but to possess the example
of the primitive church, particularly that of the apostles and even the
church Fathers, allowed evangelical writers to argue that their practice
was ‘more ancient than thou’ in debate with their Catholic opponents.87
The testimony of the apostolic church was critical, not only because this
was the period in time that was in closest chronological proximity to the
life of Christ, but because the historical record contained in the Acts of
the Apostles and other New Testament texts was part of the canonical
scriptures. The English evangelical Thomas Becon was insistent that there
was a continuity of faith and practice between the church of the apostles
and the reformed churches of the sixteenth century that could not be
claimed by his Catholic opponents. Not only, he argued, were the apostles
married men, but their wives had travelled with them in their itinerant
ministry.88 Philip Melanchthon’s defence of clerical marriage drew upon
the testimony of scripture and the early historians of the early church,
including Eusebius, to argue that clerical marriage was the tradition of the
apostolic era.89 In his Commentary on Corinthians, Luther claimed that
the apostles were married, and that their example would prove that the
early church had permitted married men to become priests and bishops.
St Paul, who Luther thought had remained unmarried, had still instructed
in his letters to Timothy and Titus that ‘one should choose for a bishop
a man with only one wife and well-behaved, obedient children’.90 The
example of Paul was, in the era of the Reformation, as at other times in

86
 See Parish, Clerical Marriage, 123ff.
87
  D. Steinmetz, ‘The Council of Trent’, in D. Bagchi and D.C. Steinmetz (eds), The
Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 233–47, 237–8;
McGrath, Reformation Thought, p. 143.
88
  Becon, Matrimony, sigs GGg4v.
89
  Melanchthon, Defence, sig. B3v.
90
 LW 28: 22–3; on the marriage of the apostle, see also J. Calvin, Institutes of the
Christian Religion, J.T. McNeill (ed.), (2 vols, London, 1961) vol. 2, p. 1251.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 167

the history of clerical celibacy, hotly contested.91 Indeed, the importance

attached to the Pauline writings in evangelical polemic made his statement
‘I wish that all men were as I am’ increasingly problematic. Luther
was willing to concede that Paul was not married, but others were less
convinced, including Peter Martyr.92 A heated debate took place in the late
sixteenth century between the Catholic controversialist Thomas Harding
and the Elizabethan bishop John Jewel, both of whom came to different
conclusions on the basis of variant copies of the letter of Ignatius to the
Philadelphians.93 The controversy over Paul’s marriage, and over clerical
marriage more generally, revealed the ease with which the debate over
priestly celibacy could become part of broader controversies surrounding
interpretative authority and scriptural sufficiency as the implications of
specific texts and exempla became clear.
Attempts to root clerical marriage in the practice of the apostolic church
extended beyond the evidence of scripture and into a broader consideration
of the practice of the ‘primitive’ church. Catholic claims to historical
and doctrinal continuity across the Christian centuries were countered in
evangelical polemic by the assertion that the institutional church had departed
from the practice of the apostles, and entered into a period of decay and
corruption that extended into the sixteenth century. The history of the church
was accorded no normative value in the defence and articulation of doctrine,
but it was recognised as a crucial part of the fashioning of a historical identity
for the reformed churches, and of the identification of the apparent decline
of the medieval church into false religion and idolatry which made reform
so necessary.94 Thus, the Reformation debate over the origins of clerical
celibacy opened anew the records of the councils of the early church, the
writings of the Fathers, and the papal reforms of the eleventh century. There
was polemical capital to be made from the condemnation of Catholicism in
the words of the Fathers and councils that the medieval church claimed as its
own. Luther claimed in his preface to Steffan Klingebeil’s Von Priester Ehe
that scripture, the Fathers, and traditions of the church and the precedent

91
 See pp. 23–5 above.
92
  Martyr, Defensio S1r; W. Turner, The Rescuyng of the Romishe Fox other vvyse
called the Examination of the Hunter (Bonn, 1545), sig. M1v.
93
  Parish, Clerical Marriage, p. 64; J. Booty, John Jewel as Apologist of the Church
of England (London, 1963), pp. 106–8. The existence of different versions of the letter
is discussed in M. Parker (ed.), A Defence of Priestes Mariages (London, 1567), sig. S2r;
T. James, A Manvduction or Introdvction unto Divinitie (Oxford, 1625), p. 23.
94
  For a fuller discussion of these issues, see H. Parish, Monks, Miracles and Magic.
Reformation Representations of the Medieval Church (London and New York, 2005); Gordon,
Protestant History and Identity; E. Cameron, ‘Medieval Heretics as Protestant Martyrs’, in
D. Wood (ed.) Studies in Church History, 30 (Oxford, 1993): 185–207; L.P. Fairfield, John
Bale. Mythmaker for the English Reformation (West Lafayette, Indiana, 1976).
168 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

of the early popes all pointed to a married clergy in the first Christian
centuries, until the medieval church had disrupted that tradition by imposing
obligatory celibacy.95 The Catholic image of a historical and institutional
continuity that stretched back to the primitive church was subjected to the
iconoclastic hammers of evangelical polemicists, and traditional narratives
were reconstructed to demonstrate the novelty of specific doctrine and
practice. The key texts and figures that had made up the traditional history of
clerical celibacy provided the building blocks for the assertion of a radically
different narrative penned in defence of clerical marriage in the sixteenth
century. The Reformation debate over clerical celibacy, for example, was
presented as a re-enactment of the fourth-century controversy between
Jerome and Vigilantius and Jovinian. The English Catholic apologist Richard
Smith cast himself in the role of a new Jerome, battling against critics of
clerical celibacy who were driven by their own lack of self-control. Luther,
he claimed, was simply repeating the errors of Vigilantius.96 Cesar Baronius,
in his Annales, accused the ‘recent heretics’ of ‘digging up again the sewer of
Jovinian’s filth’, and argued that the heresies of the Reformation had already
been marked as such in the early church.97 Just as criticisms of virginity had
been responsible for the moral decay of the fourth century, Baronius alleged,
so the evangelical arguments against clerical celibacy spread the seeds of sin
in the sixteenth century. Martin Luther was well aware of the allusions to
the heresies of the early church that permeated the writings of his opponents,
including the attempts to associate those who argued in favour of clerical
marriage with Vigilantius and Jovinian.98 From the evangelical standpoint,
those who leapt to the defence of clerical celibacy in the sixteenth century
were as mistaken in their reading of Scripture as Jerome had been. Jerome, it
was argued, had failed to appreciate that chastity was a gift of God, and had
ignored St Paul’s instruction that the bishop was to be the husband of one
wife, and Catholic controversialists in the sixteenth century simply repeated
Jerome’s mistakes.99

95
 S. Klingebeil, Von Priester Ehe (Wittenberg, 1528).
96
 R. Smith, Defensio Sacri Episcoporu[m] & sacerdotum coelibatus contra impias &
indoctas Petri Martyris (Paris, 1550), sigs B1, C3v– 4r.
97
  C. Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici Ann.390 c.47 (Venice, S. Monti: 1740), vol. 6, p.
84; cf T. Martin, A Treatise Declarying and Plainly Provyng that the Pretensed marriage of
Priestes is no Mariage (London, 1554), sigs A1v–3v.
98
  Judgement on Monastic Vows (1522) LW 44, pp. 305–6; see also LW 54 pp. 9–11,
18–20; Calvin, Institutes, p. 1251.
99
  M. Bucer, The Gratulation of the Most Famous Martin Bucer (tr. T. Hoby), (London,
1549), sig. B8v–C1r; Turner, Huntynge and Fyndynge Out of the Romyshe Foxe which more
than seuen years hath bene hyd among the bisshopes of England (Basle 1543), sig. E5v;
Melanchthon, De Ecclesia et de Auctoritate Verbi Dei, in C.L. Hill (ed.), Melanchthon,
Selected Writings (Minneapolis, 1963), p. 161; see also Calvin, Institutes, pp. 1250, 1253.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 169

Like the writings of the Fathers, the decrees of popes and councils
were accorded no objective authority in the definition of doctrine, but the
determination of both sides to possess the heritage of the primitive church
ensured for them a prominent position in the debates of the Reformation.
Several Protestant histories of clerical celibacy took as their starting
point the letters of Pope Siricius to the church of Gaul.100 The letters had
significance, it was argued, not because they carried the authority of the
bishop of Rome, but because they served as evidence that the clergy of the
fourth century were married, and as an indication of widespread resistance
to the demands of the pope. Siricius’ efforts to regulate the sexual conduct
of the clergy were regarded as an unwarranted intrusion and innovation.101
Papal attempts to introduce clerical celibacy in the fourth century,
Melanchthon argued, amply demonstrated that ‘we ar not the autors of
any newe exa[m]ple in the chirche / but that we call agene the olde and
godly usage’.102 Celibacy, not marriage, was the innovation. Such ‘old
and godly usage’ was to be found not only in the canons of the councils,
but also in the occasional lone voice raised in objection to innovation.
The figure of Paphnutius, whose legendary intervention at the Council of
Nicaea had become a staple of eleventh-century criticisms of obligatory
clerical celibacy, was to loom large in the pages of Protestant polemic.103
Luther, both in the Wittenberg Disputations and in his Von den Konziliis
und Kirchen (1539), argued that it was possible in the life of the church that
even entire assemblies of bishops might err. Such a drift into heresy could
be stemmed, he suggested, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, inspiring
individuals to stand firm to the defence of the truth. Paphnutius, Luther
claimed, was one such advocate. His defence of marriage at the Council of
Nicaea had prevented the imposition of obligatory continence; ‘sometimes
one man is able to do more in a council than the whole council besides’,
Luther wrote, as even ‘the papists themselves do witness’.104 The Catholic
church of the sixteenth century, however, refused to let a ‘Paphnutius’

100
 See pp. 72–4 above.
101
 See, for example, Foxe, Acts and Monuments (1563), p. 4; Melanchthon, Defence,
sig. B3r; Calvin, Institutes, p. 1251.
102
  Melanchthon, Defence, sig. B4v.
103
  For the development of the legend, see pp. 65–7 above.
104
 Luther, Commentary on Galatians (LW 26 and 27) c.2; cf Luther, Church Postils,
1522, in J.N. Lenker (ed.), Sermons of Martin Luther: Church Postils (2 vols, Baker Book
House, 1989), vol. 1 p. 13: ‘Hence it is very foolish for the councils to wish to determine and
establish what a man must believe, when there is often not a single man present who ever
tasted the least of the divine Spirit. So it was in the Council of Nice, when they undertook to
enact laws for the spiritual orders that they should not marry, which was all false because it
has no foundation in the Word of God. Then a single man arose, by the name of Paphnutius,
and overthrew the whole affair’.
170 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

speak. The Fathers at Nicaea had been persuaded by the arguments of

the bishop, but at the Council of Constance the church had denounced as
heretics two Paphnutius figures, and condemned them to death. John Calvin
cited the words of Paphnutius to support the assertion that chastity was
comprised in lawful cohabitation with a wife, and that clerical marriage
should therefore be permitted.105 Likewise, Philip Melanchthon used the
figure of Paphnutius to argue that marriage was a form of chastity, and
one that imbued the priesthood with a greater honour than promises of
celibacy that the clergy failed to observe.106 The legend was also discussed
in the Wittenberg Articles of 1536, a statement of faith forged as a result
of the dialogue between the Lutherans and a delegation from England
in 1535. Negotiations floundered in the mire of Henry VIII’s marital
concerns, but a draft Confession had already been started, probably by
Melanchthon. ‘Purity before God’, it was asserted in the fourteenth article,
‘consists in not polluting one’s conscience but in obeying God. Therefore
celibacy is not purity, but marriage is purity since it is sanctified by the
word of God. Thus Paphnutius said that conjugal custom is continency.’107
Henry VIII was unconvinced, and in a letter to the Germans in August
1538 defended clerical celibacy as the logical application of the ‘eunuchs
for the sake of the kingdom’ principle in Matthew’s Gospel, and from a
wealth of patristic sources. In an aside directed towards Luther, the king
also suggested that the inability of a man to live in celibacy was not in itself
an argument in favour of a married priesthood, but rather an argument
against the ordination of unsuitable candidates to the ministry.108 However
Paphnutius was again to be marshalled to the defence of clerical marriage
by English evangelicals in the 1540s and beyond, who cited his assertion
of the sanctity of marriage as an example of the attitude of the primitive
church to clergy and celibacy.109

105
  Calvin, Institutes, p. 1252.
106
  Melanchthon, Defence, sigs C2r, D2r.
107
  G. Bray, Documents of the English Reformation 1526–1701 (Cambridge, 2004),
pp. 118ff; quotation at p. 151.
108
  G. Burnet, History of the Reformation of the Church of England (6 vols, London,
1825), vol. 4, pp. 384–91.
109
 See, for example, Becon, Matrimony, sigs IIir, LLl1r; Matthew Parker, Defence of
Priestes Mariages, sig. G8r–v. For the use and exposition of the Paphnutius story by Catholic
writers in the seventeenth century, see the comments of the Dominican Noel Alexandre in
his Dissertationum Ecclesiasticarum Trias. Prima de Divina Episcoporum supra presbyteros
eminentia Blondellum. Altera de sacrorum ministrorum coelibatu, sive de historia Paphnutii
cum Nicaeno canone concilianda. Tertia de vulgate Scripturae sacrae versione (Paris, 1678),
and the commentary of the Bollandist Jan Stiltinck, ‘An Veresimile sit S Paphnutium se
in Concilio Nicaeno Opposuisse legi de Continentia Sacerdotum et Diaconorum’, in Acta
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 171

The eleventh-century Rescript of Ulric that had served to popularise the

legend of Paphnutius was also exploited by evangelicals in England and on
the continent in the sixteenth century.110 The German humanist Johannes
Nauclerus printed a copy of the letter of Ulric that was to be used by Robert
Barnes, Matthias Flacius, and a number of English polemicists to criticise
the reforms of the eleventh century.111 An English translation of Ulric’s
denunciation of the Gregorian reforms was printed in 1547 as An Epistle
of Moche Learni[n]g sent … vnto Nicholas, Bysshope of Rome, and the
text of the letter was reproduced in the 1570 edition of John Foxe’s Actes
and Monuments. Foxe was clearly aware of the questions surrounding the
authenticity of the letter, and when confronted by accusations from the
Catholic apologist Nicholas Harpsfield that the letter was less than authentic
and its chronology contradictory, defended its inclusion in his history by
presenting the text as the work of Volusianus.112 Such an assertion was no
doubt facilitated by Matthew Parker’s publication of two letters purporting
to be the work of Volusianus in 1569, Epistolae Duae D.Volusiani Episcopi
Carthaginensis.113 However this attribution would appear to have been no
more accurate than the traditional association of the letter with Ulric, to
whom credit was given by Melanchthon, Aeneas Sylvius, and Matthias
Flacius.114 Flacius and John Bale were both clear in their identification of
Ulric as the author of the letter, although Foxe suggested that it was likely
that both were mistaken in this, given the clear concordance between the
complaint in the letter that married priests were prevented from saying
Mass, and the reforms implemented in the pontificate of Nicholas II.115
The authorship of Ulric was certainly assumed by Thomas Becon, who
presented two letters in his Booke of Matrimonye, the first identical to
that which was included in Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, and the other,
rather shorter, which paraphrased the text which was to be printed as the
second of Foxe’s letters. Becon’s Booke of Matrimony was included in his

Sanctorum Septembris (Venice, 1761) vol. 3, pp. 784–7, quoted in C. Cochini, The Apostolic
Origins of Priestly Celibacy (San Francisco, 1990), pp. 23ff.
110
 See pp. 114–15 above.
111
  MGH LdL, vol. 1, pp. 254–60; R. Barnes, Supplication unto the most Gracious
prince Henry VIII (London, 1534), sig. T3r; J. Ponet, An Apology Fully Aunswering by
Scriptures and Aunceaunt Doctors ... D.Steph Gardiner (Strasbourg, 1555).
112
  N. Harpsfield, Dialogi Sex (Antwerp, 1566), sig. K1r; Foxe, Actes and Monuments
(1570), p. 1320.
113
  Parker’s copy of the letter is in CCCC MS 101 fols 201ff.
114
  Parish, Clerical Marriage, p. 101; Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1570), p. 1321.
115
  J. Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium Maioris Brytanniae Quam Nunc Angliam & Scotiam
Vocant: Catalogus (Basle, 1557), p. 65; M. Flacius Illyricus, Catalogus Testium Veritatis,
Qui Ante Nostram Aetatem Reclamarunt Papae (Basle, 1566), pp. 92, 99ff; M. Judex and
J. Wigand, Ecclesiastica Historia (Basle, 1560–74), Cent. IX, cols 540–42.
172 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

Whole Worckes, printed by John Day, who also acted as Foxe’s printer for
the 1570 edition of the Acts and Monuments. However, the two English
translations are not identical, and it may be more likely that it was not
Foxe, but Day, or even John Bale, who introduced Becon to the source.116
Both the account of Paphnutius’ intervention at the Council of Nicaea, and
the complaints against obligatory clerical celibacy contained in the letter of
Ulric, provided vital evidence for those who wished to argue that marriage
had not been prohibited to the clergy until at least the second millennium
of Christian history. Where the Fathers of the church had wavered in the
fourth century, they had been deterred from enacting legislation against
clerical marriage by the words of a saintly bishop, and when the bishops
of Rome had asserted the requirement to priestly celibacy, they had been
criticised and corrected by another holy bishop, Ulric (or Volusianus).
The decrees of the councils of the early church were similarly subject
to employment in the service of evangelical polemic. Peter Martyr, in the
Defensio ... in Schola Tigurina, presented a comprehensive overview of
the councils of the early church and their rulings on clerical celibacy and
marriage. In defence of clerical marriage he turned to the Councils of
Ancyra (314), Neocaesarea, Nicaea, Gangra, Chalcedon and Carthage.117
The most controversial of these assertions of the legitimacy of clerical
marriage was based upon the tenth canon of the Council of Ancyra, which
Martyr argued provided evidence that deacons who were not able to live
in chastity were permitted to marry. Such a concession was indeed evident
in some of the histories of the council, but it had no enduring effect, and
if it was regarded as a legitimate concession, soon fell into disuse.118 The
Council of Gangres was exploited by the author of the English Confutation
of Unwritten Verities, with the intention of undermining the legitimacy of
the prohibition of clerical marriage, and indeed the validity of the argument
from conciliar tradition altogether. The council had held the penalty of
excommunication over the faithful who refused the sacraments of married
clergy, yet in the sixteenth century, the writer protested, priests faced
excommunication if they continued to live with their wives. The Gangres
canon was presented as evidence not only of the continued acceptance of
the married priesthood, at least in theory, well into the fourth century,
but also of failure of the church to abide by its own conciliar decisions.119
Apparent contradiction in the canonical tradition was also used by John
Foxe to argue against the assertion that the second Council of Carthage

116
  Parish, Clerical Marriage, p. 103.
117
  Martyr, Defensio, vol. 2, sig. G5vff.
118
  For a fuller discussion, see R. Cholij, Clerical Celibacy in East and West (Worcester,
1989), pp. 75–8 and chapter 2 above.
119
 E.P., A Confutatio[n] of Unwritte[n] Verities (Wesel, 1556), sig. G3vff.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 173

had legislated in favour of clerical celibacy. Foxe had in his sights the
prohibition of clerical marriage in the English Six Articles of 1539, and
the assertion that such a prohibition could claim its origins in the Carthage
canons. Just as some letters had been wrongly attributed to the Fathers,
Foxe claimed, so it was entirely possible that the canons of councils had
been fabricated by the bishops of Rome. The third canon of the Council
of Carthage was presented as one such example, which ran contrary to
the assertion at Gangres that the sacraments of the married clergy were
valid, in itself testimony to the toleration of clerical marriage in the
fourth century.120 The popularity of the Gangres canon among evangelical
polemicists is predictable, given the penalties that it imposed upon those
who impugned the sacraments of married clergy. However, the frequency
with which the Gangres canon was cited perhaps also reflected the ready
availability of a new vernacular history of the council; Luther provided
a preface to Kymeus’ German edition, Ein Alt Christlich Concilium fur
1200 jaren zu Gangra jnn Paphlagonia gehalten, wider die hoch genante
heiligkeit der München vnd Wiederteuffer . . . verdeutscht und ausgelegt,
of 1537, which was highly critical of Anabaptists, but which also brought
the decrees of the Council to a German audience.
It is worth noting that many of the decrees of the councils that were
cited as evidence that clerical marriage was permitted in the early church
were assemblies of the Eastern church. This is not surprising, given the
continued presence of a married ministry in the Greek churches, and the
potential value of the exploitation of this precedent to the proponents of
clerical marriage in the Latin West. A commentary on the Pauline Epistles
by the French humanist Jacques Lefevre d’Etaples included amongst its
criticisms of Catholic piety and practice a denunciation of the obligatory
celibacy demanded of priests. It was, he proposed, legitimate to argue that
celibacy was a superior state to marriage, but there was no justification
for extrapolating from this that celibacy was necessary for the priesthood.
History showed that priests and deacons had been married men until the
pontificate of Gregory VII in the West, and the Greek church, he argued,
had remained faithful to the apostolic tradition in retaining the custom of
marriage.121 The argument that the practice of the Greek church reflected
the traditions established in the early church, and that it was therefore the
Latins who had innovated on the matter of clerical celibacy, was clearly
fruitful for those writing in defence of clerical marriage in the sixteenth

120
  Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1583), p. 1163.
121
  J. Lefevre d’Etaples, Commentaires sur les épîtres de Saint Paul (Paris, 1512). Luther
had read this work, which was only condemned by the Sorbonne in 1521, when the issues
that it raised became all the more controversial after the publication of Luther’s writings on
faith and grace.
174 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

century.122 Indeed, the example of the Greek church had been used from the
early years of the Reformation to assert the infidelity of the Roman church
to the faith of the apostles. Luther, at the Leipzig Disputation of 1519,
defended his assertion that the normative authority claimed by the pope
in matters of doctrine was without foundation by asserting the example of
the Christians of the Greek church, who for the preceding millennium had
been outside the authority of the bishop of Rome.123 There were, he argued,
similarities in faith and practice between the Greek church and the nascent
evangelical congregations, not least in the utraquism that was practised in
the East, and which had been demanded by the Hussites.124 Links between
the Lutheran churches and the Greek church were to become more than a
rhetorical device as the linguistic barriers between the two churches were
eroded by figures such as Philip Melanchthon, Paul Dolscius, and Martin
Crusius. Personal contact came first, it appears, through an elderly priest
named Demetrios, who met Melanchthon in Wittenberg in the late 1550s,
and returned to Greece with a translation of the Augsburg Confession based
upon the 1540 variata, and a personal letter from Melanchthon addressed
to the patriarch.125 No reply was forthcoming from Constantinople, and
negotiations between the churches commenced in seriousness only in
more auspicious times, and when a more receptive Patriarch occupied the
See. In 1573, a new imperial ambassador, the evangelical von Sonnegk,
arrived in Constantinople in the company of his Lutheran chaplain and
bearing letters from Crusius and Jakob Andreae. This initial contact
opened up a theological dialogue between the Lutheran theologians of
Tübingen and the Greek church which lasted between 1574 and 1581,
and extended into a variety of doctrinal and pastoral concerns, including
the question of clerical celibacy and marriage, and monastic vows, which
had been criticised in the Augsburg Confession.126 Despite evident areas of
disagreement, not least over the sacraments and the eucharist, the saints,
and the theology of justification, there were clear issues upon which

122
 See, for example, Melanchthon, Defence, sig. A2r.
123
 LW 31, p. 322.
124
 LW 32, p. 58–9; for a more general discussion of the relationship between the
Lutherans and the Greek churches, see B.F. Korte, ‘Early Lutheran Relations with the Eastern
Orthodox’, Lutheran Quarterly, 9 (1957): 53–9.
125
 E. Benz, ‘Die grechische Übersetzung der Confession Augustana aus dem Jahre 1559’,
in his Wittenberg und Byzanz (Munich, 1971), pp. 94ff; Benz identifies Melanchthon himself as
the most credible author of the document, which went beyond the Confession in attempting
to establish the ecumenicity of Lutheranism.
126
  G. Mastrantonis, Augsburg and Constantinople: The Correspondence Between
Patriarch Jeremiah II and the Tubingen Theologians (Brookline, MA, 1982); Benz, Wittenberg
und Byzanz; E. Benz, Die Ostkirche im Lichte der Protestantischen Geschichtsschreibung
(Freiburg, 1952), pp. 17–20.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 175

there was common ground, most evidently in the rejection of compulsory

clerical celibacy. The intention, at least on the part of the Lutherans, was to
establish precisely this evidence of shared faith and praxis in order to rebut
accusations of novelty and innovation. On the subject of clerical marriage,
this was more readily accomplished, but on other fundamental matters of
faith, the Greek patriarch was insistent that it was in the tradition of the
East that there was the greatest fidelity to the practice and counsels of the
patristic church.
The foundations of the clerical marriage discipline in the Greek church
had been laid at the Council in Trullo in the late seventh century, and
in asserting the controversial right of married priests to continue in the
use of their marriages after ordination the Trullan Fathers had attempted
to anchor the practice sanction in the so-called Apostolic Canons of the
late fourth century.127 This same source was also utilised in the defence of
clerical marriage in the sixteenth century, and particularly in defence of
the assertion that the practice of the primitive church had been to admit
married men to the priesthood. The sixth canon, which threatened with
excommunication any cleric in higher orders who put away his wife under
the ‘pretext of piety’, was particularly useful in this respect, apparently
providing evidence of both a married higher clergy in the apostolic church,
and of a conscious decision to condemn those who asserted that for a
priest to leave his wife was conducive to religious duty.128 Catholic writers,
however, were equally willing to exploit the canons to demonstrate the
antiquity of the discipline of celibacy by drawing upon the parts of the
collection that prohibited the ordination of digamists, or of those who
kept concubines.129 The canons themselves had been virtually unknown
in the west until the sixteenth century, and their authenticity and validity
was not accepted by all those who made mention of them. John Calvin,
for example, while referring to the threats held over those clerics who
might attempt to put away their wives, cautioned that the canons were
often contradictory, and that the epithet ‘apostolic’ was no guarantee of
provenance.130 In the search for evidence of the apostolic origins of the
married priesthood, however, such caution was often thrown to the wind
of polemical expediency.

127
 See pp. 74–6 above.
128
  Becon, Matrimony, sig. NNn3r; Martyr, Defensio, sig. U6r.
129
 In this respect, Catholic polemicists such as Richard Smith were in agreement
with more recent research, including that of Cholij, who suggests that the refusal to ordain
digamists on the basis of a defect of chastity implies the origins of a continence discipline in
the early church. Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 15.
130
  J. Calvin, The Necessity of Reforming the Church (tr. J.K.S. Reid), Library of
Christian Classics, 22 (1954), p. 215.
176 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

To assert that clerical marriage was a part of the apostolic tradition

was to locate the origins of obligatory priestly celibacy within the later
history of the medieval church, as a papal innovation rather than a custom
that dated from the time of Christ. Antiquity was not the foundation of
doctrinal authority, but by reclaiming that antiquity from the narrative of
Catholic history it was possible to position evangelical demands for change
within a broader chronology and geography that blunted accusations
of novelty and schism. Evangelical polemicists fashioned a history of
Christianity in which the nascent reformed churches acquired roots in the
events of the past, and the apparent innovations of the sixteenth century
their origins in the ancient practices of the early church. However, the
history of the medieval church remained a significant part of this polemical
scheme, as a rich vein to be plundered for illustrations of doctrinal decay, a
proliferation of changes in practice, and the evident need for urgent moral
reform. The history of the true church was a history of continuity of faith,
rather than institution, it was argued, and by reconstructing the narratives
of the medieval past it was possible for evangelicals to assert that it was the
institutional Catholic church, and not their own, which had broken apart
this chain of belief. The history of clerical celibacy and marriage was a case
in point. In presenting evidence of a married priesthood in the first Christian
centuries, critics of the discipline of celibacy argued in straightforward
terms that it was a law of the church which lacked apostolic origins. By
constructing a narrative of the imposition of obligatory celibacy by popes
and councils in the post-apostolic era, it was possible to locate the precise
moment at which the Catholic church had broken with tradition and
drifted into error. Popes and prelates had a significant role to play in this
unfolding drama of the Reformation.
Attempts to break apart the traditional histories of the church
frequently relied upon the ability to manipulate that same evidence to
a different end, and the Protestant narrative of the history of clerical
celibacy in the medieval church was constructed upon a broadly familiar
base. The deliberations of the early councils and synods were scrutinised
in detail and exploited to new ends, and the decrees of the popes were
likewise subject to this same process. The authority of the bishop of Rome
in the present might be challenged, but the character and custom of the
popes of the past remained very much the foreground of the debate. It is
no surprise, therefore, that the pontificate of Gregory VII emerged as a
defining moment in evangelical narratives of ecclesiastical history, and in
the history of clerical marriage. Until this period, it was argued, the Latin
church had been served largely by a married clergy, in a millennium of
historical continuity that was to be unravelled by the actions of one man.
John Bale denounced the eleventh-century reforms as ‘profane novelties’
which turned honest married priests into ‘secret whoredome’ and set in
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 177

train a custom whereby the clergy cultivated a feigned holiness in order

to preserve their careers, but led a life which had little in common with
the ideal of the celibate priest.131 John Foxe, drawing upon Bale’s work,
argued that the Gregorian reforms, particularly in their insistence upon
clerical celibacy, ran counter not only to Scripture and the custom of the
early church, but also to the laws of nature, in the pope’s insistence that
the clergy should lead the life of angels.132 Opposition on the part of the
clergy in France and in Germany to the imposition of clerical celibacy was
presented as evidence that the papal reforms were perceived as innovation
on a grand scale. The violence at the Council of Erfurt was described by
several writers, including Robert Barnes, alongside the assertion of the
French clergy that they would prefer to leave their altars than their wives.133
The sources exploited in the construction of this narrative of Gregory’s
pontificate were varied, and included both ‘papal’ materials, and the rather
more critical letters and chronicles of those who opposed the imposition
of mandatory celibacy, and other components of the Hildebrandine
reforms. Matthias Flacius Illyricus, for example, reproduced the pope’s
denunciation of the married clergy in his letter to the clergy of Constance,
and John Foxe borrowed heavily from both this and from Bale’s Catalogus
in compiling his own account of the eleventh-century church.134 Bale, Foxe,
Flacius and others also drew substantially upon the newly available letters
of Cardinal Benno, whose contemporary condemnations of Gregory VII
included a detailed dissection of his pontificate and reforms, alongside
the assertion that the pope practised necromancy in order to secure his
own ends.135 The chronicle of Lambert of Hersfield, which had presented
a stridently critical picture of the moral conduct of the clergy and the
reforms of the pope, was also clearly accessible to Flacius and to Foxe,
and provided further valuable evidence of opposition to Gregory’s actions.
Collections of canon law charted the evolution of doctrine and practice in

131
  J. Bale, The First Two Parts of the Actes, or unchast examples, of the Englysh
Votaryes (London, 1551), Part 2, p. 32vff.
132
  Foxe, Actes and Monumentes (1570), p. 227r.
133
  Becon, Matrimony, sig. MMm2v; Ponet, Defence, sig. C3r–v; R. Barnes, Vitae
Romanorum Pontificum (Basle, 1555), pp. 196–216; Barnes, Supplication, sig. U1r–v; Foxe,
Actes and Monumentes (1570), p. 227; R. Gualther, Antichrist. That is to say a True Report
that Antichriste is come (tr. J. Old), (Emden, 1556), sig. L6r.
134
  Flacius, Catalogus, p. 239. For a fuller discussion of these themes, see Parish,
Monks, Miracles and Magic, p. 134, and the exceptionally useful detailed analysis of Tom
Freeman in ‘St Peter did not do thus’: http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/johnfoxe/apparatus/
freemanStPeterpart1.html
135
  O. Gratius, Fasciculus rerum expetendarum ac fugiendarum (Cologne, 1535) was
a collection of historical treatises on a variety of subjects, both ecclesiastical and profane,
which included a number of anti-papal documents.
178 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

the church, but for evangelical polemicists it was the medieval chronicles
such as Hersfield’s annals, and the bitter condemnations of writers such as
Benno, that allowed the denunciation of mandatory clerical celibacy as an
invention of the eleventh-century papacy. The reformation debate over the
history of clerical celibacy was not only informed, but also shaped, by the
controversies of an earlier age. The recourse to the record of the past did
not simply provide a basic chronology, but also a context and vocabulary
for the defence of clerical marriage in the sixteenth century.
A similar process was evident in the construction of a Protestant
history of clerical celibacy in England. The clergy of the English church, it
was contested, had been free to marry at least until the advent of Roman
influence in the pontificate of Gregory the Great, and even into the tenth
century, when the monastic reforms of Dunstan, Oswald and Anselm
marked the ascendancy of the ‘votaries’ over the married secular clerks.136
A new history of the tenth-century church appeared in the works of Bale,
Foxe, and the Magdeburg Centuriators, from which the reforming saints,
Dunstan in particular, emerged as the villains of the piece, guilty of subverting
secular authority, persecuting the married clergy, and feigning false
miracles in support of their newfangled notion of clerical celibacy.137 The
foundation for this narrative lay in the medieval chronicles, hagiographies,
and contemporary commentaries. Bale, and Foxe and Flacius after him,
drew their account of Dunstan and the reform of the church from his early
biographers, including Osbern and William of Malmesbury, and the later
chroniclers and historians Fabian, Capgrave, and Johannes Nauclerus. The
purpose was to demonstrate both the flawed foundations of clerical celibacy
in the English church, and the apparent novelty of the celibacy laws. If the
English clergy had not been married throughout the first millennium, it
was argued, there would have been no need to take action against them
in the tenth century. Thus it was, Bale argued, in the reforms of Dunstan
that ‘the face first of the Brytonysh and then of the Englysh church sore
changed’.138 The opposition of the clergy of Mainz and Constance to the
imposition of obligatory celibacy in the eleventh century had parallels in
the protests of the clergy of York and Norwich in the face of Anselm’s
action against the married clergy.139 Bale and Foxe gleaned from Matthew
Paris a comic vignette in the form of the actions of the papal legate John of
Crema in 1125, who had, by contemporary accounts, been apprehended
with a prostitute the very night that he had forbidden clergy the company

136
 See, for example, Bale, Votaries, Part I, pp. 54ff; Foxe, Actes and Monumentes
(1570), pp. 207ff.
137
  For a more detailed discussion, see Parish, Monks, Miracles and Magic, chapter 5.
138
  Bale, Votaries, Part 1, p. 62v.
139
  Bale, Votaries, Part 2, p. 60r–v; Foxe, Actes and Monumentes (1570), p. 247.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 179

of their wives.140 A new meaning for debates in the present was to be found
by locating them within an ecclesiastical history that contextualised them
within a polemically useful past; Reformation was restoration rather than
innovation, and the foundations of Catholic tradition, through a selective
approach to the sources, were portrayed as fanciful, if not farcical.
The evangelical assertion of the authority of scripture in determining
matters of faith and practice did not render obsolete the narrative of
ecclesiastical history. Rather than rejecting outright the precedent of the
medieval church, the attack on clerical celibacy in the sixteenth century
pressed the historical narrative into the service of the Reformation. This
same appropriation of the records and rhetoric of Catholicism was also
evident in the evangelical presentation of the relationship between clerical
celibacy and the sacrificial function of the priest at Mass. In Catholic
devotional and polemical literature, the obligation to celibacy on the part
of the priest was a function of his proximity to the sacred in the handling of
the consecrated eucharistic elements, and his agency in the transformative
miracle of the Mass. In the hands of evangelical polemicists, this link
between priestly function and conduct was asserted in equally confident
terms, but twisted to a different end. The basic assertion that the nature
of the sacrament demanded that its celebrant make a commitment to
celibacy was rejected; if Christ were not materially present in the bread
and wine, then the character of the priest could not be construed as
dishonouring God. More polemically powerful, however, was the notion
that the failure of the Catholic clergy to fulfil their obligation to celibacy
cast doubt upon not only that obligation, but also the theology of the
Mass that underpinned it. This was not a simple assertion of the widely
condemned principle that the sacraments of incontinent clergy were in
some way inefficacious, but a penetrating proposition that the theology
of transubstantiation was erroneous. Thus, it was not the rejection of
Catholic sacramental theology that argued in favour of the abolition of
obligatory celibacy, but rather the perceived failure of that obligation that
justified the redefinition of doctrine. The concubinary priest was not just
the embodiment of an argument in favour of clerical marriage on the basis
that it was ‘better to marry than to burn’, but also an argument for more
sweeping doctrinal change. John Bale examined the historical foundations
of the Catholic Mass, and asserted that a link between clerical incontinence
and the doctrine of transubstantiation was evident in the twelfth century.
Again, Catholic doctrine was argued to be condemned by its own history.
The theology of the Mass, Bale argued, had been tied not only to the
principle of clerical celibacy but also to the practice of clerical concubinage

140
 See p. 158 above; Bale, Catalogus, p. 175; Foxe, Actes and Monumentes (1570),
p. 256.
180 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

since the seventh century, and this association continued to be evident in

the centuries that followed. Peter Lombard, he argued, ‘gaue unto [the
church] transubstanciacyon’, but was himself the child of a nun in breach
of her vow of chastity.141 In one narrative, Strasbourg priests extolled the
Mass as ‘the chefe upholder of our liberte, wherby our whores a[n] harlots
euerychone were mayntayned in ryche felicite’.142 Such arguments were
particularly popular in the perorations of the anti-Mass tracts circulating
in English in the late 1540s, particularly in the works of Luke Shepherd
and William Turner.143 However, the general argument was common across
the spectrum of evangelical writing. Luther’s 1521 treatise The Misuse of
the Mass included a denunciation of the celibacy that was imposed upon
a clergy that was unwilling or unable to fulfil the obligation. ‘The devil
working through the pope is nowhere so raging and senseless as in the
matter of chastity and unchastity’, Luther complained, suggesting that the
prohibition of marriage in the service of the sacrament was little more than
an injunction to ‘Go ahead and fornicate’.144 It was surely better, Luther
argued, to allow priests to marry than to live with the consequences of a
compulsory celibacy to which many did not adhere. ‘So holy is the holiness
of this most holy sacrament’, he mocked, ‘that no man can become a priest
if he has married a virgin and his wife is still living... but if one has defiled
six thousand harlots, or violated countless matrons and virgins, or has
kept many Ganymedes, that would be no impediment to his becoming a
bishop or cardinal or pope.’145
Luther was not alone in such views. Desiderius Erasmus suggested that
there was no good reason to prohibit clerical marriage, ‘especially when
there is such a horde of priests among whom chastity is rare’. The church
would be better served by priests who lived in the chastity of marriage than
those who practised the false chastity of celibacy.146 John Calvin complained
bitterly that the Catholic defenders of clerical celibacy argued from the Old
Testament example of the Levitical priests that abstinence was required
before approaching the sacred, and that it would be ‘unseemly’ for Christian
priests to administer the sacraments if they were married. But the function

141
  Bale, Romyshe Foxe, sig. C8r; Mysterye, sigs 4r–v, 33v, 39v.
142
  William Roy, Rede me and be nott wrothe, (np, 1528), sig. A7r.
143
 See Parish, ‘Beastly is their Living and their Doctrine. Celibacy and Theological
Corruption in Reformation Polemic’, in Gordon (ed.), Protestant History and Identity, vol.
1, pp. 138–52.
144
 LW 36, p. 206.
145
 Luther, Babylonian Captivity, LW 36, p. 114.
146
 A. Hyma, ‘Erasmus and the Sacrament of Marriage’, in Archiv fur
Reformationsgeschiche, 48 (1957): 145–64; R. Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom (New
York, 1969), pp. 49–50; P.S. Allen et al. (eds), Erasmi Epistolae, vol. 9, pp. 1197–1214.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 181

of the Levitical priests was not the same as that of the Christian minister,
he argued, ‘therefore the apostle boldly proclaims without exception, that
marriage is honourable among all men’.147 Yet despite this, marriage came
to be seen as inferior to virginity, and the ‘too superstitious admiration of
celibacy became prevalent’.148 God might provide an individual with the gift
of chastity for specific reasons, but there was no suggestion that celibacy
was superior to marriage in any way.149 Marriage, ordained by God, it was
argued, defiled neither the priest nor the sacraments that he celebrated. Even
when clerical marriage was tolerated in England, John Jewel protested, there
was those who believed that the sacraments were defiled if the priest were
‘a good and honest man that hath a wife’.150 Yet the ‘honest’ character of a
priest, whether defined by promised celibacy or faithful marriage, remained
very much in the eye of the beholder. The pre-Reformation faithful who
sought out the services of priests whose character was beyond reproach
had their counterparts in those who complained against the married clergy
of the sixteenth century, and impugned the validity of their sacraments.
Visitation articles for the English church in the reign of Edward VI reflect
the concern of evangelical bishops on this score, and Thomas More was
not the only Englishman to deploy vituperative terms such as ‘harlot’ in his
description of the wives of priests.151
In his study of Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York, A.G.
Dickens asserted that clerical marriage and clerical celibacy were not
matters that were best discussed ‘along doctrinal lines’. Many of the pre-
Reformation clergy, he suggests, would have married had the opportunity
been presented to them; the Reformation made clerical marriage possible,
but it did not create Protestants of those clergy who married.152 The
coincidence of clerical marriage and clerical Protestantism continues to be
contested. Marjorie Plummer makes a largely convincing case for clerical

147
  Calvin, Institutes, p. 1251.
148
  Calvin, Institutes, p. 1252.
149
  Calvin, Sermon on I. Timothy in Corp. Ref., vol. 53, pp. 254–5.
150
  J. Jewel, ‘Defence of the Apology of the Church of England’, in J. Ayre (ed.), The
Works of John Jewel (4 vols, Cambridge, 1849), vol. 4, p. 413.
151
  W.H. Frere, Visitation Articles and Injunctions for the period of the Reformation
(3 vols, London, 1910), vol. 2, pp. 189, 274, 292–3; M. Prior, ‘“Reviled and Crucified
Marriages”. The Position of Tudor Bishops’ Wives’, in M. Prior (ed.), Women in English
Society 1500–1800 (London, 1985), pp. 118–48; P. Marshall, The Catholic Priesthood and
the English Reformation (Oxford, 1994), pp. 51–3; A. Barstow, ‘The First Generation of
Anglican Clergy Wives: “Heroines or Whores?”’, Historical Magazine of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, 52 (1983): 3–16; Dickens, ‘Robert Parkyn’s Narrative of the Reformation’,
in Dickens (ed.), Reformation Studies (London, 1982), pp. 293–312.
152
  A.G. Dickens, Lollards and Protestants in the Diocese of York 1509–1558 (London,
1959), pp. 189ff.
182 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

marriage as a ‘litmus test’ for clerical Protestantism in her study of the first
generation of married clergy in Lutheran Germany.153 Those clergy who
married, and took to the defence of their marriages in the early 1520s, did
so with a solid grounding in the rhetoric of reform, and with an ability
to turn to arguments from conscience, scripture and tradition in defence
of their actions. In the English context, there is some evidence that the
conduct of the married clergy supports Robert Parkyn’s observation that
those priests who married were the same priests who refused to elevate
the elements at the consecration. A priest in the diocese of Chichester,
George Fairbank, refused to put away his wife in the face of the Marian
restoration of Catholicism, and coupled his defence of clerical marriage
with a rejection of the theology of transubstantiation and the teaching
of the Catholic church on original sin.154 However, any attempt to map
evangelical sympathies onto the topography of clerical marriage is fraught
with danger; the personal beliefs of those clergy who chose to marry are
nigh impossible to fathom, and for every priest who married in accordance
with evangelical principles, it is possible to adduce evidence of another for
whom convenience, or even popular persuasion, was a more compelling
motive.155 While it is possible to argue that many evangelical clergy in
England chose to marry, it is rather harder to demonstrate that married
clergy as a group were sympathetic to the Reformation.156
Yet it is hard to divorce entirely the debate over clerical celibacy
and marriage from its theological context. If not actively embracing
the Reformation, those clergy who married were surely expressing a
willingness to jettison the laws and traditions of Catholicism.157 And to
those who sat in the pews of parish churches, the marriage of priests was a
highly visible sign of change. On some issues, it was possible to temporise,
or construct a middle ground, but a priest was either married, or he was
not. It would push the argument too far to suggest that the married clergy
were, by dint of their marriage alone, responsible for the dissemination of
the reformation in the parishes, but the presence of a wife in the vicarage

153
  Plummer, ‘Partner in his Calamities’, p. 209; compare with Parish, Clerical Marriage,
pp. 198–217; A.G. Dickens, ‘The Marian reaction in the Diocese of York’, in Reformation
Studies (London, 1982) pp. 93–158, p. 109.
154
  Parykn, Narrative, pp. 297, 308; S.Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford,
1989), pp. 399–400; D. Peet, ‘Mid Sixteenth Century Parish Clergy, with particular
consideration of the Diocese of York and Norwich’, (University of Cambridge unpublished
Ph.D., 1980), pp. 272–3; Parish, Clerical Marriage, p. 209.
155
  See M. Bowker, The Secular Clergy in the Diocese of Lincoln 1495–1520
(Cambridge, 1968); C. Haigh, Reformation and Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge,
1975); Dickens, ‘The Marian Reaction in the Diocese of York’, pp. 105–6.
156
  Parish, Clerical Marriage, p. 217.
157
  Marshall, Catholic Priesthood, p. 167.
 Clerical Celibacy and Married Priests 183

and married priest in the pulpit may well have contributed in part to
the reception process, even if they did not guarantee how positive that
reception would be. Clerical marriage was iconoclastic in the multiple
meanings of the word. For a priest, or more properly, a religious, to marry
in defiance of a vow of chastity was, in the eyes of evangelicals, to destroy
an idol that had been erected in the heart. In their rejection of clerical
celibacy, and defence of the godliness of clerical marriage, evangelical
polemicists were committing an act of doctrinal and historical iconoclasm,
breaking apart the traditions of the church and asserting the supremacy of
their interpretation of the law of God over and above the disciplines and
doctrines of the church. At the pastoral level, clerical marriage shattered
the image of the priest set apart from his congregation by sacred function
and sole life. Luther’s marriage was perhaps the most hotly debated, but
the questions that it raised were significant well beyond the Black Cloister,
and the intensity of the debate over clerical marriage in the mid-sixteenth
century England both reflected and informed the legal position and the
presence of married priests in the parishes. Learned Latin and popular
polemical writings positioned marriage and celibacy at the heart of religious
controversy, and extended the scope of the debate beyond the acts of the
individual priest. The reality of clerical marriage in the sixteenth century,
for the first time in half a millennium, reopened debates over history and
tradition, scripture and canon law, and the fragmentation of East and
West. The controversy over clerical celibacy in the sixteenth century leaned
heavily upon the lexicon of earlier dialectic, but also opened new avenues
of discourse. Clerical marriage in print, if not yet in practice, was a mark
of confessional identity, and one that raised questions not only about the
discipline of obligatory celibacy, but also issues of discipline, dogma, and
direction in the institutional church.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 CHAPTER 6

‘Contrary to the state of their

order and the laudable customs
of the church’: Clerical Celibacy
in the Catholic Church after the
Reformation
To look upon the first generation of evangelicals, Thomas More suggested,
and see ‘the very father of theyr holy sect ... fallen to flesshe and caryn
and lyue in lechery with a nunne under the name of wedlock... and all
the chyfe heddys of them, late monkys & freres and now apostatas &
lyuynge with harlotes vnder the name of wyues’, might lead the observer
to the conclusion that the Reformation was ‘a sorte of freres folowynge
an abotte of misrule in a Christemas game’. The marriage of priests and
nuns was tangible evidence of a religious change that was apparent to all,
and a visible sign of the rejection of the laws and traditions of the Catholic
church. Whether or not clerical marriage and clerical Protestantism went
hand in hand in practice, the two were strongly linked in Catholic polemic,
and this association, once made, provided a mechanism by which creed
and conduct might together be disparaged, and accusations of immorality
on the part of the pre-Reformation clergy turned against the nascent
reformed churches. By the time that the Council of Trent made its formal
pronouncement on the discipline of clerical celibacy, a generation of
married priests had left their mark upon the landscape of sixteenth-century
religious culture. Forty years of clerical marriage had begun to erode the
apparent novelty of the practice, and presented the Catholic church with a
problem that was practical and pastoral, as well as disciplinary. However,
clerical marriage was no less controversial in the middle decades of the
century than it had been at the start; the printed debate was still very
much alive, and the position of the married clergy, at least in some parts of


  T. More, Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, L.A. Schuster, R.C. Marius, J.P. Lusardi,
R.J. Schoek (eds), The Yale Edition of The Complete Works of St Thomas More, 8 (New
Haven, Conn., 1973), pp. 41–2.

  This issue is discussed in more detail in chapter 5, pp. 146–50 above.
186 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

Europe, still precarious and contested. The promulgation of the Tridentine

decrees certainly marked a forceful initiative on the part of the church
to act against breaches of ecclesiastical discipline and defend the law of
obligatory clerical continence, but objections to clerical marriage were
repeatedly articulated even before the council convened, and the debate
was to continue in the decades that followed.
As David Bagchi has observed, Catholic controversialists who took
up their pen against Luther were confronted by a conceptual problem.
There was, in the time-honoured tradition of doctrinal debate, deemed
to be little purpose in disputing with a heretic. Since heresy was inspired
by the devil, Luther and his followers might be assumed to be deaf to any
reasoned argument. The papal condemnation of Luther in the Bull Exurge
Domine, and the judgements on his work published by the universities of
Louvain and the Sorbonne, summarised the errors in his writings, but
provided no explanation. For some Catholic commentators there was a
clear imperative to expand upon such brief propositions, in order that
the determinations of the church might appear comprehensible and well
founded, but for others, to do so was to imply that it was not enough
that the works of Luther were simply condemned, such condemnations
required justification. Thus, few Catholic writers could be certain of the
support of the curia for their labours in defence of the church, and at
least one was wounded by the accusation that to debate with Luther
was to fan the flames of heresy. Luther’s marriage, and the more general
issue of clerical marriage, did, however find a place in the writings of
opponents of the Reformation in the 1520s and 1530s. One solution
was to dismiss Luther as the successor of heretics already condemned
by the medieval church, and to associate his theology with the views of
individuals whose reputation had been effectively undermined in the
past. The several condemnations of the errors contained in Luther’s
works by the Sorbonne in the 1520s, including the Determinations of
its syndic, Beda, repeated the suggestion that his views were those of the
fourth century heretic, Vigilantius, against whom Jerome had written
with some force. Alternatively, as Cochlaeus and Eck were to discover,
there were both sound polemical and theological points to be made in
the excoriation of Luther’s actions, and the association of heresy and
immorality certainly provided Thomas More with countless comic and


  D. Bagchi, Luther’s Earliest Opponents: Catholic Controversialists, 1518–1525
(Minneapolis, 1991); Bagchi, ‘Luther’s Catholic Opponents’, in A. Pettegree (ed.), The
Reformation World (Abingdon, 2000), Chapter 6, pp. 99ff.

  The identification of Luther with various manifestations of heresy in the medieval
church was a more general feature of Beda’s work, which accused Luther of treading in the
footsteps of the Manichaeans, Waldensians and Cathars.
 Clerical Celibacy after the Reformation 187

scatological caricatures with which to paint the Reformation. Other

denunciations of clerical marriage were constructed from the scurrilous;
Johannes Emser’s Epithalamia presented a crude caricature of Luther’s
own marriage, and the same broad approach was evident in his Venatione
Luteriana Aegocerotis assertio (1525).
Other responses were rather more erudite in their presentation. The
Dominican novice Ambrosius Catharinus composed two Latin works
against Luther in 1520, the Apologia Pro Veritate Catholicae and the
Excusatio Disputationis. The two works betrayed a familiarity with
Luther’s writings, and with Prieras’ earlier Catholic attack on Luther and
his theology. The Apologia, dedicated to the emperor Charles V, ran to five
books, of which the final presented an overview and rejection of Luther’s
entire theology, including the argument that it was permissible for priests to
marry and monks to break their vows. Catharinus, in the first book, detailed
the eleven ‘deceptions’ of Luther, and denounced the reformer’s efforts to
use the morality of the Catholic clergy and the conduct of the popes as a
justification for doctrinal reform in the church. Luther’s errors and deceits,
he argued, identified him as the Antichrist. Luther’s reply returned the
favour. Clerical celibacy, he argued, was one face of the Antichrist, along
with images, fasting, and the Mass. The following year, Emser’s Wider
das Unchristliche Buch Martin Luthers an dem Deutschen Adel Vorlegung
presented a point by point dissection of Luther’s writings, incorporating
a defence of the scriptural and historical origins of clerical celibacy,
and the actions that the church had taken against clerical concubinage,
against Luther’s assertion of the legality and necessity of clerical marriage.
Henry VIII’s Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, published in the same year,
similarly took Luther to task for his rejection of clerical celibacy. The king’s
antipathy toward the married priesthood was justified again in his letter to
the Germans in 1538. The celibacy of the clergy, he argued, was founded
in Scripture in the Gospel of Matthew (19:12, ‘eunuchs for the kingdom of
heaven’) and in the promise that man would not be tempted beyond that
which he could bear (I. Cor. 10:13). The Pauline assertion that it was the


 Ambrosius Catharinus Politus, Apologia pro Veritate Catholicae et Apostolicae
Fidei ac Doctrinae, J. Schweizer (ed.) (Münster, 1956); Ambrosius Catharinus Politus,
Excusatio Disputationis contra Martinum (Florence, 1521); For further detail on
Catharinus, see J. Schweizer, Ambrosius Catharinus Politus (1484–1553), ein Theologe des
Reformationszeitalters (Münster, 1910); F. Lauchert, Die italienischen literarischen Gegner
Luthers (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1912); and for the most informative English writing on his
debate with Luther, P. Preston, ‘Catharinus vs Luther 1521’, History, 88 (2003): 364–78.

  Catharinus, Apologia, 26ff.

  M. Luther, ‘Ad librum eximii Magistri Nostri Magistri Ambrosii Catharini, defensoris
Silvestri Prieriatis acerrimi, responsio’, in D. Martin Luthers Werke Kritische Gesamtausgabe,
vii (Weimar, 1897), pp. 722ff, especially 735
188 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

‘doctrine of devils’ to prohibit marriage did not apply in this case, Henry
argued, because the call to celibacy was heard only by those who were
able to abide by the law. Rather than use clerical marriage as a ‘remedy’
for clerical immorality, he suggested, it would surely be better simply to
exclude from the priesthood whose who could not abide by the law of
continence.
Just as the evangelical defence of clerical marriage had drawn upon the
history of the church, and the writings of Fathers, Catholic polemicists
marshalled both history and patristic tradition to the defence of the
celibate priesthood. Johannes Faber, vicar of Constance, turned to the
example of the apostolic church, including the contested Apostolic
Canon, to argue that the origins of clerical celibacy lay in the practice
of the church in the first Christian centuries. The writings of the fathers
and the decrees of the early councils testified to the importance attached
to celibacy in the primitive church, and the demands and contentions of
Luther, Faber argued, identified him as the successor not of the apostles
but of Mohammed. John Fisher presented a defence of clerical celibacy
from both scripture and tradition, asserting the authoritative position
of extra-scriptural traditions in the determination of faith and practice.
The apparent repudiation of these traditions of the church by Luther and
his followers was denounced by Fisher in his sermon against Luther in
May 1521, and again in his Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio, printed in
1523.10 The publication in Antwerp of St John Chrysostom’s De Virginitate
perhaps reflected this ongoing debate over the place of virginity, celibacy
and marriage in the history of the early church. Johannes Eck’s detailed
refutation of the views of Luther and Melanchthon, the Enchiridion
Controversarium Seu Locorum Communium (Ingolstadt, 1525), also
included a defence of clerical celibacy, again grounded in scripture and
in the traditions of the church, and Jacobus Latomus’ condemnation of
evangelical theology identified the defence of clerical celibacy as a critical
part of the preservation of traditional theology and practice.11 Catholic
opposition to Luther’s marriage in particular and clerical marriage more
generally continued to be articulated throughout the 1520s and 1530s. The
conciliar nuncio Peter van der Vorst included clerical celibacy among his
list of contested issues in Germany, although it was presented as a matter


  G. Burnet, History of the Reformation of the Church of England, N. Pocock (ed.),
(7 vols, Oxford, 1865), vol. 4, pp. 384–91.

  J. Fisher, Adversus Nova Quaedam et a Christiana Religione Prorsus aliena dogmata
mart. Lutheri (Rome, 1522).
10
  The English Works of John Fisher, J.E.B. Mayor (ed.), (EETS extra ser. 27 1876), pp.
311–17; R. Rex, The Theology of John Fisher (Cambridge, 1991).
11
  J. Latomus, De Confessione Secreta (Antwerp, 1525).
 Clerical Celibacy after the Reformation 189

of less immediate and widespread concern than the papal supremacy,

the cult of the saints, and purgatory.12 The evangelical assertion of the
necessity and legitimacy of clerical marriage as a remedy for fornication
provoked a vigorous response from conservatives at the Diet of Augsburg.
The proposition that marriage was a suitable ‘remedy for infirmity’
was dismissed, and alternative solutions proposed for those clergy who
struggled with celibacy, including fasting, vigils, and the avoidance of the
temptations that might be apparent in the company of women.13 In one
of the few full-length works devoted to clerical celibacy in this period,
Sadoleto set out the case in favour of the apostolic origins of the law in
his Sententia de Coelibatu Clericorum Post Consilium Anni 1538. The
priest, he asserted, was by necessity devoted to the service of God, and
such commitment required him to remain unmarried. Although some
of the apostles had been married at the time of their calling, he argued,
those who were unmarried had not taken wives, sacrificing themselves
to the preaching of the Gospel. Established by the apostles, the principle
of clerical celibacy was underpinned by the ascetic practices of the first
Christians, and, he argued, even supported by the law of the Greek church,
which prohibited marriage after ordination.
Sadoleto’s work was composed against the backdrop of a commitment
to investigate and report on the necessity of reform on the part of Pope
Paul III (1534–49). To this end, the pope had sought the opinions of the
cardinals, along with Pole, Caraffa and Contarini, and their verdict, the
Concilium de emendanda ecclesia (1537), both detailed the abuses in the
life of the church and proposed a programme of reform that commanded
the attention of both Catholic and Protestant.14 Several recommendations
related to the priesthood and to clerical discipline. Dispensations, its
authors complained, were all too readily offered to enable the sons of
priests to possess the benefices of their fathers, despite the re-enactment
of ‘ancient law’ by Pope Clement VIII. Priests were also, it was suggested,
too readily dispensed from holy orders in order that they might marry,
when such a dispensation should be reserved only for ‘the preservation
of a people or a nation’. It was all the more important that this particular
issue be addressed, ‘in these times when the Lutherans lay such great stress

12
  Bagchi ‘Catholic theologians of the period before Trent’, in Bagchi and D. Steinmetz
(eds), Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology (Cambridge, 2006), p. 223.
13
  Confutation Art. XXIII, in Corp. Ref., vol. 27, cols 136ff.
14
  J. le Plat, Monumenta ad historiam Concilii Tridentini (7 vols, Louvain, 1781–87),
vol. 2, pp. 596–7; J.C. Olin, The Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola (New
York, London, 1969), pp. 186–97; T.F. Mayer, Cardinal Pole in European context: a via
media in the reformation (Aldershot, 2000).
190 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

on this matter’.15 The remedy proposed was in no real sense an assertion

of the merits of clerical marriage, but the Concilium de emendenda
ecclesia surely served to establish clerical discipline, and especially
clerical continence, as an issue worthy of the attention of the church.
The suggestion that some consideration of the celibacy of the clergy was
all the more urgent in light of the criticisms of the Lutherans was not
without a grounding in reality. Clerical incontinence had been presented
in evangelical polemic as more than just a pastoral or moral problem,
but as an issue which impinged upon authority, doctrine, and history.
By the middle of the century it appeared to have become, if not a prime
motivation for conversion to the Reformation, at least a bargaining point
for some clergy who sought to withstand the force of ecclesiastical and
secular discipline. In 1542, the representative of Albrecht, Archbishop
of Brandenburg, protested that many of the diocesan priests lived with
concubines, but that attempts to enforce separation had been met with
the threat that any further action on the part of the bishop would prompt
the priests to align themselves with the Lutherans. ‘Many other men who
are aware of the current state of affairs in Germany … believe that chaste
marriage would be preferable to sullied celibacy’, it was suggested, and
‘the most able and knowledgeable men in the populace would rather have
wives without ecclesiastical benefices than benefices without wives’.16
Toleration of clerical marriage was regarded by some as an effective path
to conciliation with the reformers, and the emperor Ferdinand, the duke
of Cleves and Duke Albert of Bavaria were to make just such a proposition
to the pope at the Council of Trent.17 No promise of a relaxation of the
law was likely to be forthcoming, particularly before the celibacy of the
clergy was discussed at the council, but a small concession was made
to the papal nuncios in Germany that sanctioned the recognition of the
marriages of priests on the understanding that those individuals who were
appropriately dispensed would refrain from the exercise of their priestly
ministry, or any other sacred function.18

15
  K. Bartlett, M. McGlynn (eds), Humanism and the Northern Renaissance (Canadian
Scholars’ Press, 2000), 175ff.
16
  U. Ranke-Heinemann, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of God: Women, Sexuality, and the
Catholic Church (tr. P. Heinegg (New York, 1990, German edn 1988), p. 113; J. Brundage,
Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, 1987), p. 568; LePlat, Concil.
Trid. vol. 8, p. 624.
17
 Le Plat, Concil Trid., vol. 8, pp. 468, 484, 485; 202; 919–26.
18
  Pope Paul III to bishops Petrus of Fano, Aloysius of Verona, and Sebastianus of
Ferentino, quoted in J. Lynch, ‘Critique of the Law of Celibacy in the Catholic Church from
the Period of the Reform Councils’, in W. Bassett and P. Huizing (eds), Celibacy in the Church
(New York, 1972), pp. 57–75.
 Clerical Celibacy after the Reformation 191

The availability of a dispensation to individual priests who had entered

into marriage would not provide a practicable solution to the more general
question of the legalisation of clerical marriage, nor would it answer
the criticisms of the reformers who argued that the law of celibacy was
fundamentally flawed. When Pope Paul III convened the Council of Trent
in 1545, it was at least in part a response to the significance of the issues
that had been hotly contested in the three decades since Luther’s first
protest.19 Complaints about clerical continence, non-residency, or simony
before general councils were nothing new, but the criticisms of Catholic
theology and practice contained in the works of evangelicals across
Europe posed a more fundamental challenge, particularly in the realms of
authority, scripture and tradition, the sacraments, and soteriology. In some
respects, as Michael Mullett has argued, the council had its precedents in
the conciliar reforms of the fifteenth century and indeed ‘may be seen as
the fulfillment of those late medieval councils’.20 However, by the time that
the council was summoned, Cardinal Caraffa, at least, was of the opinion
that the doctrinal debates were no longer a dispute within Catholicism, but
an exchange between the church and those who had positioned themselves
outside its walls.21 The issues to be discussed by the members of the
council were proposed by the cardinal legates, and drawn up by a chosen
commission, the congregatio theologorum minorum. Dogmatic and legal
questions were settled in separate preparatory sessions by the congregatio
proelatorum theologorum and congregatio proelatorum canonistarum.
The matter was then presented for general debate, and the final form of
the decrees determined. The decrees of the council were confirmed on 26
January 1564 in the papal Bull of Pius IV, Benedictus Deus, and carried
the subscriptions of 215 Fathers. The proceedings of the council amounted
to a discussion and rejection of almost every substantive point levelled
against the church by its critics.22

19
  The best modern study of the Council is still H. Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils von
Trient (6 vols, Freiburg, 1949–1975); some translated into English as History of the Council
of Trent (tr. E. Graf) (2 vols, London 1957–61); Le Plat, Concil. Trid.; J. von Dollinger,
Ungedruckte Berichte und Tagebücher zur Geschichte des Concilii von Trient (2 parts,
Nördlingen, 1876). On the issue of clerical celibacy at Trent see also, E. Ferasin, Matrimonio
e celibate a concilio di Trento (Rome, 1970); A. Franzen, Zolibat und Priesterehe in der
Auseinandersetzung der Reformationszeit und der katholischen Reform des 16. Jahrhunderts
(Munster, 1969); P. Delehaye, ‘Breves remarques historiques sur la legislation du celibat
ecclesiastique’, Studia Moralia, 3 (1965): 389–94; E. Schillebeeckx, Clerical Celibacy Under
Fire. A Critical Appraisal (London and Sydney, 1968), p. 52.
20
  M. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (New York, 1999), p. 3.
21
  D.C. Steinmetz, ‘The Council of Trent’, in Cambridge Companion to Reformation
Theology, p. 234.
22
 S. Ozment, The Age of Reform 1250–1550 (New Haven, CT, 1980), p. 407.
192 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

The council did not debate the issue of clerical celibacy and marriage
until 4 March 1563.23 In accordance with the processes determined in the
opening sessions, the subject had been referred to a group of seventeen
theologi minores who were charged with responding to two separate but
related propositions taken from the views of the Protestants.24 First, ‘that
marriage should not be relegated to second rank; it is superior to chastity,
and God gives married couples a greater grace than the unmarried’, and
second, ‘that western priests can marry, notwithstanding ecclesiastical
vows or law, and that to affirm the contrary is to condemn marriage. All
those who are not aware of having received the gift of chastity can enter
into marriage’.25 The discussion occupied thirteen sessions, the major
part of the time being spent upon the second proposition, in light of the
reality of clerical marriage in the reformed churches. In considering the
first question, how marriage was to be considered in relation to virginity,
there was little dissent from the anticipated line of argument that virginity
was deemed superior both in scripture, particularly the Pauline epistles,
and in patristic writings. Unsurprisingly, much of the debate turned
upon the question of the scriptural and apostolic origins of the law of
celibacy, again perhaps reflecting the criticisms levelled against clerical
celibacy by the evangelical reformers. None of those who spoke on the
issue were German representatives, however, although it was in the
German lands that the practical challenge to clerical celibacy was most
immediate and intense. The theologians concluded that the nature of the
priesthood required a total dedication to God, in the administration of
the sacraments, in preaching, and in a life of perpetual prayer. Marriage
was prohibited to the clergy on this basis, because it distracted man from
this life of total service. The obligation to celibacy was not, therefore,
anything that was demanded of the priest above and beyond that to which
he was already committed by entry into holy orders. Investigation of the
practice of the apostles yielded evidence that while some had been married

23
  Histoire des Conciles d’Apres les Documents Originaux, C.H. Hefele and J. Leclerq
(eds), (19 vols, Paris, 1907–52), vol. 10, p. 507.
24
  Cochini identifies the 17 as: five diocesan priests (Jean Peletier, Antonio Solisius,
Richard du Pre, Lazare Brochot, Ferdinand Tricus), three Franciscans (Miguel of Medina,
Jean Lubera, Francis Orantes), five Dominicans (Francis Ferror, Jean Gallo, Jean de Ludenna,
Basil of Pisis, Sanctus Cithius), two Augustinian hermits (Simon Florentinus, Anthony of
Modulpho), one Carmelite (Desire de St Martin), and one regular canon of St Augustine
(Claude de Saintes, who was later B. Evreux). Other delegates were invited to take the floor
on occasion, including Lucius Anguisciola and Didacus of Pavia: C. Cochini, The Apostolic
Origins of Priestly Celibacy (San Francisco, 1990), pp. 19–20.
25
  Concilium Tridentium Diariorum, Actorum, Epistolarum, Tractatuum Nova
Collectio, Societas Goerresiana (ed.), (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1901–), vol. 9 pt. 6, pp.
380–82 and 425–70, upon which Cochini bases his narrative.
 Clerical Celibacy after the Reformation 193

at the time of their calling, they had lived in continence after this point,
giving up everything, including their wives, to follow Christ. The fact that
married men had been accepted into holy orders in the early church was
not disputed, and the fact that ordination carried with it for these men an
obligation to perfect and perpetual continence was accepted. However, the
roots of this obligation were the subject of some controversy, spawning
an argument as to whether continence was demanded of priests de jure
divino, or by the laws of the church. More significantly, there was a clear
and firm distinction made between the ordination of married men, from
whom continence was demanded, and the marriage of men who had been
single at the time of their ordination, but had then attempted marriage
while in orders. In this context, reference was made to the practice of
the Greek church, but such comment was brief. Unmarried men, once
ordained, the Theologi minors asserted, were not, and never had been,
permitted to marry. On this basis, there was no grounding in scripture,
apostolic tradition, or the law of the church, for the marriage of priests
after ordination, and those who were married prior to ordination were
bound by a law of perpetual continence.
On July 20, the theologians placed before the Fathers of the Council
two canons, the first asserting the binding nature of clerical celibacy, and
the second asserting the superiority of virginity over marriage. Canon 7
read ‘if anyone says that Western clerics who have received sacred orders
or religious who have solemnly professed chastity can validly contract
matrimony, ecclesiastical law or vow nothwithstanding, and that to maintain
the opposite is only to condemn matrimony; and that all can contract
marriage who do not feel themselves to have the gift of chastity, although
they have vowed it: let him be anathema’, and Canon 9 ‘If anyone says that
matrimony must be placed before virginity or celibacy, and that it is not
better and more blessed to remain in virginity or celibacy, than to be joined
in matrimony, let him be anathema’. This latter statement was reinforced
in the Catechism, in the instruction that ‘it should be remembered that the
Apostle admonishes: They that have wives, let them be as though they had
them not, and that St. Jerome says: The love which a wise man cherishes
towards his wife is the result of judgment, not the impulse of passion; he
governs the impetuosity of desire, and is not hurried into indulgence. There
is nothing more shameful than that a husband should love his wife as an
adulteress’, although the Catechism did present marriage as a ‘remedy’ in
accordance with I. Cor. 7.26 The two decrees were approved, on the fifth
presentation, in the twentyfourth session of the council.27 The impact of

26
  T.A. Buckley, The Catechism of the Council of Trent (London, 1852), pp. 332–50.
27
  Concil. Trid., Vol. 9, p. 968. The earlier objections related in part to the representation
of the precedent of the Greek church, and to the addition of a comment on chastity given as
194 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

the Tridentine ruling on clerical celibacy was felt in two forms. At the
level of doctrinal definition and jurisdictional authority, the Fathers at
Trent had asserted the authenticity and apostolicity of clerical celibacy,
and had debated and rebutted the arguments that had been made against
it in recent years, but also across the centuries. After some debate, the
theologians and Fathers stopped short of the assertion that the law of
celibacy was simply a law of the church, which could therefore be altered
at will. In this respect, the outcome of the deliberations over celibacy did
indeed carry an air of finality. H.C. Lea summarised his narrative of the
council in the statement that it was here, for the first time, that ‘the simple
rule of discipline was elevated to the dignity of a point of belief’.28 Clerical
celibacy, it has been argued, became ‘the standard-bearer of the Catholic
Counter-Reformation, the proof that Catholicism was not going to yield
an inch to Protestants’.29 There were, of course, many other issues upon
which the verdict of the council upon the assertions of the Protestants was
‘anathema sit’, but the determination of the council on obligatory clerical
celibacy was a decision that would be highly visible outside the conciliar
chambers. Just as clerical marriage was a tangible sign of doctrinal
challenge, so the continued insistence upon clerical celibacy was evidence
of the determination of the Catholic church to possess the precedent of
the apostles, reclaim the narrative of history, and assert an interpretative
authority over Scripture. Clerical celibacy came to mean, after Trent, not
only perpetual continence, but also a rigid insistence upon the prohibition
of marriage to priests after ordination.
The conviction with which clerical celibacy was asserted did not
stifle demands for a more accommodating approach, particularly within
the Empire. August Baumgartner had already warned in 1562 that the
enforcement of clerical celibacy would drive the Catholic clergy into the
hands of the Protestants.30 The Emperor Ferdinand continued to argue
for the two concessions that he deemed essential if Protestants within the
empire were to be brought back to the Catholic fold, communion in both
kinds, and an acceptance of clerical marriage. After the close of the council,
Ferdinand and Albert, Duke of Bavaria, appealed once more to the pope for
concession on these grounds, and secured permission to grant the chalice to
the laity. On clerical celibacy, however, the pope was immoveable, leading
Ferdinand to the sarcastic retort that there was little benefit in allowing
communion in both kinds if there were no unmarried clergy available to

a gift from God, and the assurance that man would not be tempted beyond what he could
bear. See Lynch, ‘Critique of the Law of Celibacy’, 61.
28
  H.C. Lea, History of Sacerdotal Celibacy (2 vols, London, 1907), vol. 2, p. 205.
29
  P. de Rosa, Vicars of Christ (New York, 1988), p. 421.
30
  Concil. Trid., vol. 5, p. 340.
 Clerical Celibacy after the Reformation 195

serve in the parishes. It was a necessity, he argued, for the church to tolerate
those clergy who had already married, if the faithful were to have priests
at all. Ferdinand’s son, Maximilian, also took up the fight, and appeared
to have persuaded Pius IV that such a concession was indeed appropriate
in order to safeguard the future of the church in Germany. However, there
were fears that to allow clerical marriage in one part of the church would
be to set a poor example to the others. Philip II of Spain protested that if
the pope were to make a concession in the German case, it would being
about the destruction of Christendom. With the election of Pius V in
1566, all such talk of toleration ceased.31 The model of the post-Tridentine
priest, educated, committed, and celibate, therefore needed all the more
urgently to be realised and sustained in the generations to come, primarily
through the seminary training system upon which the provision of suitable
candidates to the priesthood depended. Indeed Stickler asserts that it was in
the eighteenth canon of the twentythird session, which obliged all dioceses
to establish seminaries for the training of priests, that the greatest impact
of the deliberations over clerical celibacy was to be felt.32
The commitment of the council to the foundation of seminaries held
out the promise of an improvement in the quality of the next generation of
Catholic clergy, but efforts were also made to eradicate the most contentious
clerical conduct among priests already in parishes. To this end, the problem
of clerical concubinage was discussed at Trent, and the resulting canon
was explicit in its condemnation of the ‘shameful and unworthy’ clerics
who ‘dedicated themselves to the service of God and live in the filth of
impurity and unclean cohabitation’. Priests were instructed to put away
their women, ‘wherefore that the ministers of the church may be brought
back to that continency and purity of life which is proper to them, and that
for this reason the people may learn to reverence them the more, the more

31
  G. Constant, Concession a l’Allemagne de la communion sous les deux especes
(2 vols, Paris, 1923); Lynch, ‘Critique of the Law of Celibacy’, 62; Dollinger, Geschichte des
Concilii, vol. I, pp. 588–93.
32
  J.A. O’Donohoe, Tridentine Seminary Legislation: Its sources and its formation
(Louvain, 1957); A.M. Cardinal Stickler, The Case for Clerical Celibacy. Its Historical
Development & Theological Foundations (tr. Fr Brian Ferme) (San Francisco, 1995),
p. 53; K.M. Comerford, ‘Italian Tridentine diocesan seminaries: A historiographical study’,
Sixteenth Century Journal, 29 (1998): 999–1022; idem., Reforming priests and parishes,
Tuscan dioceses in the first century of seminary education (Leiden, Boston, 2006); idem,
Ordaining the Catholic Reformation: priests and Seminary Pedagogy in Fiesole (1575–1675)
(Florence, 2001); A. Barnes, ‘The Social Transformation of the French Parish Clergy 1500–
1800’, in B. Diefendorf and C. Hesse (eds), Culture and Identity in Early Modern Europe
1500–1800 (Ann Arbor, 1993); M. Forster, The Counter-Reformation in the Villages: Religion
and Reform in the Bishopric of Speyer, 1560–1720 (Ithaca, NY, 1992); J.M. Headley and
J.A. Tomaro (eds), San Carlo Borromeo: Catholic Reform and Ecclesiastical Politics in the
Second Half of the Sixteenth Century (Washington DC, 1988).
196 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

honourable they see them in their conduct, the holy council forbids all clerics
whatsoever to presume to keep concubines or other women concerning
whom suspicion can be had in their house or elsewhere, or to presume to
have any association with them; otherwise they shall be punished with the
penalties imposed by the sacred canons or the statutes of the churches’.33
The twentyfifth session of the council also reasserted many of the penalties
that had traditionally been imposed upon priests who failed to fulfil their
obligation to celibacy, and reiterated the long-standing exclusion of the
sons of priests from their father’s benefices. Clergy who were found to
have maintained a concubine were to be admonished by their superiors,
and those who refused to amend their ways faced a loss of income, the
forfeit of first fruits and tenths, and eventually deprivation from all offices
and functions. Efforts to suppress clerical concubinage continued after
the council. In 1566, Pope Pius V instructed the bishops of the church to
enforce with rigour the Tridentine decrees against clerical concubinage,
and conduct visitations of their dioceses, with the intention of depriving
recalcitrant clergy and expelling their concubines.34 The celibacy canons
were repeated at series of local synods and councils in the second half of
the sixteenth century, including Milan (1565), Ravenna (1568), Florence
(1573), Naples (1576), and Avignon (1594).
Understandably, however, the council could not produce an immediate
transformation in clerical conduct. As the repeated efforts of local councils
and bishops to eliminate clerical concubinage make clear, the reassertion
of the law of celibacy at Trent could not create instantly a parish clergy
who were as committed to the principle. Political interference impeded
the implementation of the Tridentine decrees in parts of Europe, but
elsewhere the reformers were simply confronted by the age-old problem
of ‘mulieres subintrodoctae’ and their position in the life of the church.
The papal nuncio repeated the complaint of the duke of Cleves that there
were barely five priests in his territory who did not live in concubinage in
1561, and the bishop of Munster resigned in 1566 rather than act against
concubinary priests in his diocese, and in other parts of the empire clergy
had entered into clandestine marriages, or even open unions.35 Seventeenth
century secular courts in Burgundy asserted jurisdiction over incontinent
clergy who were not properly disciplined by the church, and in some cases

33
 Session 25 c.14; H.J. Schroeder, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent
(Rockford, Ill: 1978), pp. 246–8.
34
  Pius V, Cum Primum s.12, in Bullarium Romanum (10 vols, Luxembourg 1727–30),
vol. 4, chap. 2, pp. 284–6.
35
  Franzen, Zolibat, pp. 66, 166–7; S. Lacqua, ‘Concubinage and the Church in Early
Modern Munster’, in R. Harris and L. Roper (eds), The Art of Survival. Gender and History
in Europe 1450–2000 (Past and Present Supplements, vol. 1, 2006), pp. 72–100.
 Clerical Celibacy after the Reformation 197

imposed the death sentence upon both priest and concubine.36 In 1631,
there was a complaint at the Synod of Osnabruck that priests in the diocese
kept women that they dignified with the title of wife, and twenty years
later the bishop of Munster complained that the concubinary priests of his
diocese still presented a threat to the authority of the church. The bishop
of Autun protested in 1652 that clerical concubinage was sufficiently
common in his diocese that priests openly maintained women, fathered
children, and provided them with dowries, and that this was accepted by
the faithful as the norm.37 Simone Lacqua’s study of church and clergy in
early modern Munster suggests that the imposition of clerical celibacy and
the abolition of clerical concubinage was an uphill struggle. Some pastors
were prepared to maintain their women in the face of repeated censure and
the threat of ever more serious penalties, and local archdeacons preferred
to fine the guilty clergy rather than bring down the full weight of the
canons upon them. A handful of priests even argued that they were not
bound by the discipline of celibacy at all, while others found powerful
patrons who were prepared to defend their actions and protect their
marriages. Even the cathedral chapter could not be remodelled upon the
Tridentine ideals.38 Overall, however, the picture was not entirely bleak.
A series of reforming bishops in the diocese of Wurzburg had managed to
reduce clerical concubinage by 95% in the century after Trent, but across
much of the empire, the fear of the bishops that the conduct of their parish
clergy worked to the detriment of religion was no doubt very real. Clerical
concubinage and illicit marriages continued to be a source of contention
and concern in the church. The Council of Trent, by its rejection of
clerical marriage, and articulated intention to reform clerical conduct, had
established clerical celibacy as a visible symbol of the distinctiveness of
the Catholic priesthood and its function, and therefore the eradication
of clerical concubinage as a tangible sign of the effectiveness of Catholic
reform. Writing in 1599, the bishop of Ruremond complained that clerical
concubinage had eroded the respect that the faithful had for the church,
had led the laity to view the clergy with contempt, and had encouraged the
spread of heresy that had eventually led to revolt and war.39 Both Cuyck
and the orator at Osnabruck in 1631 who had suggested that the conduct
of the clergy placed the authority of the church under threat were no doubt

36
  M.E. Wiesner-Hanks, Christianity and Sexuality in the Early Modern World.
Regulating Desire, Reforming Practice (London, 2000), p. 118.
37
  J.F. Schannat and J. Harzheim (eds), Concilia Germaniae (11 vols, Cologne, 1759–
90), vol. 9, pp. 431, 787; Barnes, ‘French Parish Clergy’, 142.
38
  Lacqua, ‘Concubinage’.
39
  Heinrich van Cuyck, Speculum concubinariorum sacerdotum, monachorum ac
clericorum (Coloniae, 1599).
198 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

exploiting a rhetorical tool in order to make the point more compelling,

but the basic argument made perfect sense. The Fathers at Trent had
asserted the authenticity of the law of celibacy and rejected all calls for the
toleration of clerical marriage. If the church failed on this most visible and
contentious of assertions, the door was pushed wide open for its critics.
On two occasions in the early modern period, and once in the early
nineteenth century, the Catholic church did provide general faculties for
priests who had married, and thereby defected from the clerical estate,
to obtain a virtually unconditional reduction to the lay state. Thomas
Aquinas had identified ‘apostasia a sacro ordine’ among various other
forms of apostasy, but the situation of ‘lapsed’ priests in canon law
had its origins in the early church.40 Penalties of excommunication and
deprivation were imposed in the fourth century upon priests who left the
church in order to return to secular life, to marry, or to enter military
service. By the seventh century, it was expected that such priests would
be apprehended and returned to clerical life. Those clergy who married
‘in sacris’, were deemed to be guilty of apostasy, and faced an automatic
penalty of excommunication, and deprivation from all benefices. There
was no relaxation of the law at Trent, nor indeed in the centuries between
the Tridentine canons and the publication of the Code. Indeed, as Abo
notes, ecclesiastical discipline became all the more severe as a result of
Pius IX’s Apostolicae Sedis of October 1869, which imposed the same ipso
facto penalty faced by clergy who had attempted to enter into marriage
upon their ‘pseudo-wives’.41 The return of apostate clerics to their livings
was not only possible, it was required of them as a duty, after a suitable
period of penance and evidence of a continent life.42 This discipline was
relaxed on three occasions; in 1801 to address the problem of married
French priests after the Revolution, and twice in response to the toleration
of clerical marriage in territories that embraced the Reformation. The first
such instance followed the petition of the Charles V to the pope regarding
the secular clergy in the empire who had attempted marriage. In August
1548 the papal bull Ad diligentem patrem familias pertinent provided the
papal nuncio in Germany with the faculty to validate the marriages of these
priests, although those who took advantage were to be prohibited from

40
  Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II–II q.12 art. 1 (tr., Fathers of the English Dominican
Province) (second edition, London, 1923). The most helpful discussion is in J.A. Abo, ‘The
Problem of Lapsed Priests’, The Jurist, 23 (1963): 153–79; see also Franzen, Zolibat, pp.
64–88.
41
 Abo, ‘Lapsed Priests’, 156.
42
  Decretals of Gregory IX, CIC c.4 X.III.3; Abo, ‘Lapsed Priests’, 156.
 Clerical Celibacy after the Reformation 199

the exercise of sacred function as a result.43 A parallel process, described

in a letter from Bishop Lipomano to Cardinal Farnese in December of the
same year was put in train for the readmission of lapsed priests to sacred
function upon separation from their ‘wives’.44
The second faculty was granted to Cardinal Pole in 1554, to address
the situation of clergy in England who had entered into marriages after
the legalisation of clerical marriage by Edward VI’s parliament in 1549.45
Again, the clergy were excluded from the celebration of Mass, and from
entry into ecclesiastical benefices. They were absolved from the penalty
of excomunication, and dispensed in order that they might enter into a
valid marriage, but, the faculty made clear, only on this occasion. No
subsequent marriage was permitted, and disciplinary action against this
first generation of English married priests was a priority for Mary and
Pole. Several senior clergy were removed from their posts, including
bishops Bird, Bush, Coverdale, Barlow, Ferrer, Scroy, Holgate and Ponet,
the majority of whom were married men. The first Parliament of the reign
repealed the Edwardian religious legislation, including the 1549 act which
permitted clerical marriage, and the 1552 act which had declared the
children of such unions legitimate. A disciplinary process was established
against married clergy in the first Act of Repeal, and outlined in the royal
injunctions issued in March 1553/4. Bishops and ecclesiastical judges, on
the instructions of Bishop Bonner of London, were to ‘act with all celerity
and speed’ to deprive of their benefices any clergy ‘who contrary to the
state of their orders and the laudable custom of the church, have married
and used women as their wives’.46 Those married priests whose wives had
died were to be treated more leniently, as were those who promised, in the
presence of the bishop, to abstain. Pole’s Legatine Constitutions of 1555
repeated the demand that the married clergy be disciplined in accordance

43
  ‘Bulla Super Connubio Clericorum Germaniae’, in W. Friedensburg (ed.), Nuntiatur
des Bischofs Pietro Bertano von Fano, 1548–1549 (Berlin, 1910), pp. 461–3.
44
  Friedensburg, Nuntiatur, pp. 197–8.
45
  Julius III’s constitution Dudum cum charissima in Christo Filia Nostra Maria, March
8, 1554; D. Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (4 vols, London, 1737), vol.
4, pp. 91–3.
46
 E. Cardwell, Documentary Annals of the Reformed Church in England (2 vols,
Oxford, 1839), vol. I. 109–13; I Mary c.2; for a fuller discussion of these events, see
H.L. Parish, Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 187ff;
E.J. Carlson, ‘Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation’, Journal of British Studies, 31
(1992): 1–31; M. Prior, ‘Reviled and Crucified Marriages. The Position of Tudor Bishops’
Wives’, in Prior (ed.), Women in English Society 1500–1800 (London, 1985) pp. 118–48;
R. Spielman, ‘The Beginning of clerical marriage in the English Reformation’, Anglican and
Episcopal History, 56 (1987): 251–63.
200 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

with the ‘ancient canons’.47 The simplicity of the statement concealed

the complexity of the process. Proceedings against the individual clergy
could take several weeks to complete, and if a priest sought to continue
in ecclesiastical service, a promise of separation was required, along with
a public penance. Even if, as Baskerville has argued, the majority of the
clergy sought and secured reappointment to a new benefice, the degree
of disruption and dislocation caused by the disciplinary action against
married clergy was substantial. In Sandwich in Kent it was reported that
the deprivation of the married clergy had left the church with no priests to
celebrate the sacraments, and although few areas were as badly affected,
the sight of priests performing penance, confessing to living under the
‘pretence’ of matrimony, in violation of the laws of the church, would have
done little to raise the esteem in which the priesthood was held. Catholic
polemicists denounced the married clergy and their wives with the same
enthusiasm and vocabulary with which their evangelical counterparts had
described concubinary priests. Thomas Martin’s Treatise declarying and
plainly proving that the pretensed marriage of priestes ... is no marriage,
dedicated to the queen in 1554, warned that the position of the entire
priesthood was threatened by the actions of the ‘unworthy’ who had
entered into such ‘pretensed’ marriages. The views of the ‘old fathers and
founders of oure religion’ were contrasted with the licentiousness of the
‘new proceders’, and Martin derided those married clergy who presumed
to celebrate Mass in defiance of the laws of the church and the sanctity
of the sacrament. The marriage of priests, he argued, was no marriage at
all, and the actions of those clergy who had presumed to take wives no
better than concubinage and fornication.48 Martin’s stance was no doubt
legitimate within the terms of canon law. Unless validated, the marriage
of priests was indeed ‘no marriage’, and this denunciation of the women
involved as harlots and concubines translated readily into the popular
imagination. Others certainly shared his view; Robert Parkyn noted with
some pleasure that the married clergy found no joy in the accession of
Mary, and that their wives were pointed at in the street.49 The battle
between ‘old’ and ‘new’ religion was played out in the parishes, in the
personal life of those priests who had married in violation of the law of the
church, but in accordance with the law of the land.
The practical obstacles to the imposition of obligatory clerical celibacy
in England, and indeed to the implementation of the Tridentine decrees

47
  Cardwell, Documentary Annals, I.153.
48
  T. Martin, Treatise declarying and plainly proving that the pretensed marriage of
priestes ... is no marriage (London, 1554), sigs A2r–v.
49
  A.G. Dickens, ‘Robert Parkyn’s Narrative of the Reformation’, in Dickens,
Reformation Studies (London, 1982), p. 308.
 Clerical Celibacy after the Reformation 201

were substantial, not least because clerical celibacy was an issue that
was both public and personal, practical and polemical, and tied to both
past and present. Such problems would not, and could not, melt away
overnight. Likewise, the debate over clerical celibacy and marriage was not
brought to an end by the simple anathema pronounced by the Fathers at
Trent. Indeed the formal reiteration of the position of the Catholic church
at the council prompted a further flurry of writing in the 1560s, from
both sides of the debate, which addressed the issue of clerical celibacy and
monastic vows in the present, reopened the controversy over the historical
roots of the discipline, or took up the question in the context of a broader
defence (or derogation) of Catholic theology and practice. In 1564, the
Polish churchman and diplomat Martin Cromerus published a full length
discussion of clerical celibacy and marriage, Orichovius, sive de Coniugio
et Coelibatu Sacerdotum Commentarius (Cologne, 1564), and in the same
year Johannes Cochlaeus’ polemic against Luther, which had mocked the
marriage of the reformer, was printed as Septiceps Luthereus Ubique Sibi
Suisque Scriptis Contrarius (Paris, 1564). Cardinal Clement Monilianus
presented a broad defence of Catholic theology and practice, clerical
celibacy included, in his Catholicarum Institutionem ad Christianam
Theologiam Compendium (Rome, 1565), which argued from the evidence
of the Fathers and councils that the law of celibacy had its origins in the
apostolic church. In the same year, the Italian lawyer de Susani presented
a detailed case for desirability of clerical celibacy, Tractatus Caeloibatu
Sacerdotum non Abrogando (Venice, 1565).
From a more critical standpoint came the Lutheran Martin Chemnitz’s
history of the Council of Trent, the Examen Concilii Tridentini (1565–73).
Volume 3 presented an assessment of the debates over purgatory, the cult
of the saints, and the celibacy of the clergy, set against the backdrop of the
history of the church, and the scriptural foundation and apostolic origins of
each key assertion of orthodoxy at the council.50 The significance attached
to the history of the church in mid-century Lutheranism was exemplified
in the Magdeburg Centuries, which asserted a late origin and chequered
history for obligatory clerical celibacy. Such attempts to reconstruct and
re-present the history of medieval Catholicism did not go unchallenged,
and several of the Catholic writers who picked up their pens to reply to
Flacius and the Magdeburg group included a historical defence of clerical
celibacy within their more general assertion that the evangelical enterprise
was flawed and inaccurate. Conrad Brunus’ Admonitio Catholica
Adversus Novam Historiam Eccles. Quam Matthaeus Illyricus (Dillingae

50
  A.C. Piepkorn, ‘Martin Chemnitz’ Views on Trent: The Genesis and the Genius of
the Examen Concilii Tridentini’, Concordia Theological Monthly, 37 (January 1966): 5–37;
R. Mumm, Die Polemik des Martin Chemnitz gegen das Konzil von Trent (Leipzig, 1905).
202 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

1565) was a detailed refutation of the historical narrative contained in

the Centuries, and both this work, and Eysengrein’s Catalogus Testium
Veritatis Locupletissimus (1565) also painted a more favourable picture
of the origins and history of clerical celibacy as part of their challenge to
Protestant history writing. Cardinal Bellarmine devoted several chapters
of his Disputationes to the question of clerical celibacy, including a
detailed refutation of Luther’s views, and a deconstruction of the narrative
presented in the Magdeburg Centuries, alongside an examination of the
debate over the question of whether the obligation to celibacy was a law
of divine or human origin.51
In 1556, the Jesuit Turrianus took to the defence of monastic vows,
including the vow of chastity, in a Latin work which was greatly informed
by his reading of the history of the church, including the Greek church. He
had been present at the Council of Trent at the request of the pope, and
had worked with both Hosius and Baronius on the revisions to the Vulgate.
Baronius had entered into the debate over the history of clerical celibacy
in his Annales, including the vexed question of the role of Paphnutius at
Nicaea, and Hosius was also to take up the defence of the apostolic origins
of clerical celibacy. Turrianus’ interest in the practice of the early church was
evinced in his consideration of the authenticity of the Apostolic Canons,
and in his translations of Greek patristic texts, which informed his defence
of chastity and clerical celibacy.52 There was nothing overtly contentious
about Turrianus’ interest in the Greek Fathers, but the precedent of the
Greek church in the debate over clerical marriage continued to demand
the attention of the popes of the sixteenth century. No serious attempt
was made at Trent to assert that the ordination of married men in the East
presented a case for the adoption of a similar practice in the West, but
the married priesthood of the Greek church was frequently deployed in
evangelical defences of clerical marriage, ensuring that the example of the
East remained at the forefront of debate. There were also some practical
considerations in the second half of the sixteenth century, particularly in
the context of the discussions between Rome and the Ukrainian churches,
and in the more general issue of the position of married clergy, particularly
from Albania, seeking union with the Catholic church after emigrating to
escape oppression at the hands of the Turks. The assertion of the validity
of Greek practice was dependent upon the assumption that the Trullan
canon 13 was of ecumenical standing; this had been part of the defence

51
 R. Bellarmine, Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae fidei adversus hujus
temporis Haereticos (3 vols, Ingolstadt, 1586–93); Bellarmine, Opera Omnia (12 vols, Paris
1870) vol. 2, Quinta Controversia Generalis. De Membris Ecclesiae lib 1. De Clericis. Cap
XVIII, Cap XIX, Cap XXII, Cap XXIV.
52
  F. Turrianus, De Votis Monasticis Liber (Rome, 1566).
 Clerical Celibacy after the Reformation 203

used by Nicetas in the controversy with Rome in the eleventh century.53 Its
ecumenicity was not, however, accepted in the Latin church, although this
did not translate into an assertion that the married clergy of the East, and
their continued use of marriage after ordination, constituted a bar to the
union of the two churches.54
A general consideration of the married clergy of the Oriental churches
was presented in the Perbrevis Instructio Super Aliquibus Ritibus Graecorum
of August 1563, and Pope Gregory XIII convened the ‘Congregatio de
Rebus Graecorum’ in 1573 in order to consider the particular position of
the Albanian clergy. The conclusion of the Congregation was that married
priests were to abstain from their wives prior to the celebration of Mass,
although the period of abstinence recommended was set at somewhere
between three days and one week. As Cholij notes, there was nothing in
the canonical discipline of the Eastern churches that would support this
demand.55 The union of the Ukrainian church with the Roman church
in the pontificate of Clement VIII (1592–1605) was accomplished with
assurances from the pope that the married clergy of the former would not
be condemned as a result, although it was made clear that this did not
amount to papal approval of clerical marriage, and that the imposition
of the Latin law of celibacy remained a priority.56 The example of the
Greek church, and indeed the papal toleration of the use of marriages
in other churches, remained lively topics of debate, and featured in the
correspondence between the bishop of Meaux, Bossuet, and Leibniz at
the end of the seventeenth century. The focus of the exchange was the
possibility of reunion between the Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches,
and one of the potential obstacles identified by Leibniz was the position
of the married Lutheran clergy, who would, he suggested, be alarmed
by any threat to their position. Bossuet responded that the pope had
never sought to undermine the practice of the Greek church, and noted
that the Maronites had been received into communion with the church
of Rome without rejection of local custom.57 Married clergy did not
present an obstacle to union. In the mid-eighteenth century, Benedict XIV
(1740–1758) asserted that the primary motivation in the actions of his
predecessors in relation to the tradition of the Greek church with regard

53
  PL 143 982a.
54
 See R. Cholij, Clerical Celibacy in East and West (Leominster, 1988), p. 181; Council
of Florence 1439.
55
  Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 168.
56
 See Cholij, Clerical Celibacy, p. 183, who suggests that toleration was proposed out
of prudence rather than any sense of recognition.
57
  See F. Gaquière, Le Dialogue Irenique Bossuet-Leibniz: La Reunion des Eglises en
echec (1691–1702), (Paris, 1966).
204 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

to clerical marriage was to avoid any deepening of divisions between East

and West. The use of marriage was identified as a particular custom of the
Eastern church, and not one that the pope sought to overturn, but neither
was it fully recognised in the West.
Debate over clerical celibacy and marriage continued well into the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the publication of substantial
volumes that charted the history of the discipline, and contested the
principles that underpinned it. The most significant contribution in the
seventeenth century came from the Lutheran George Calixtus, in his De
Conjugio Clericorum Liber. First printed in 1631, Calixtus’ work was a
survey of clerical celibacy and marriage through the laws of the church
and the decrees of the popes, which included a detailed examination of
the eleventh-century reforms of Hildebrand, and a refutation of Catholic
defences of clerical celibacy. Its prime targets were the works of Baronius
and Bellarmine, both of whom had asserted the apostolic origins of
clerical celibacy. Such views, he argued, were untenable, since scripture,
tradition and ecclesiastical history all pointed to the married priesthood
as the practice of the apostolic church, and a state that was in accordance
with the will of God as voiced in scripture. Calixtus ventured in some
detail into the works of the church Fathers, both Latin and Greek, and
attempted to argue from the flawed foundations of clerical celibacy that
it was evident that the pope had erred in matters of faith and doctrine.58
The publication of such substantial compendia of materials relating to
the history of clerical celibacy no doubt equipped its opponents with
the ammunition that they needed to keep the issue alive. John Lynch has
noted the frequency with which the Sorbonne censured propositions taken
from works of theology and history that argued against clerical celibacy,
including the personal assertion that a professed religious may marry if he
believed he had received a dispensation from God, and the more general
claim that until the pontificate of Leo IX, priests and bishops in the Latin
church had been married men.59
In the early eighteenth century, the Oratorian Louis Thomassin
examined both the practice of the Greek church and the custom of the
Latins, in a detailed history of the origins of clerical celibacy. He argued
stridently for the apostolic foundation of the discipline of the church,

58
  G. Calixtus, De Conjugio Clericorum Liber. (Helmstadt, 1631; 2nd edn, Frankfurt,
1651).
59
  Lynch, ‘Critique of the Law of Celibacy’, 63; see also A. de Roskovany, Coelibatus
et Breviarium: duo gravissima clericorum official, e monumentis omnium seculorum
demonstrate. Accessit completa literature. 11 vols, (Pest-Neustra 1861–88), and Supplementa
ad collections monumentorum et literature III. De Coelibatu et Breviario (Neutra, 1888),
especially volume 6.
 Clerical Celibacy after the Reformation 205

and asserted the birth of Christ to a virgin mother as evidence of the

superiority of virginity over marriage. The first followers of Christ had
been either virgins, he argued, or men who committed to continence at
their calling, and this had been the custom of the church ever since.60 The
breadth and depth of the eighteenth-century polemical debate is evident
in the substantial work of Francesco Antonio Zaccaria in the 1770s.
Zaccaria, an Italian Jesuit, took to the defence of the apostolic origins of
clerical celibacy in his Storia Polemica printed in 1774, and a decade later
in the Nuova Giustificazione del celibate. Both were written in response to
contemporary criticisms, and in the latter, Zaccaria identified some of the
critics who had not been silenced by his first volume by name, including the
now married Oratorian, Gaudin.61 A whole section of the Storia Polemica
was devoted to the practice of the Greek church, and a further section
to the defence of the tradition of the West. The general observation of
clerical celibacy had been demanded in the Apostolic church, he claimed,
and it was clerical marriage which was, in fact, the innovation. Occasional
dispensations granted had encouraged the Latin clergy in the erroneous
belief that marriage was permitted, and gave the false impression that a
married clergy had been the practice of the early church. Instead, Zaccaria
argued, the tradition of clerical celibacy and continence was far older,
and the practice of the Catholic church in the eighteenth century more
authentically faithful to the traditions of the early church than that of the
Protestant married ministry. In the case of those apostles who had been
married, he argued, there was no evidence that they had continued in the
use of their marriage, and indeed plenty to suggest that they had left their
wives to follow their calling. Celibacy was a higher state than marriage,
as the praise of virginity throughout the New Testament evinced. It also
carried practical advantages for the priest and the church, freeing men
from the cares of marriage and the necessity to care for wife and family. A
celibate priest was in a better position to commit his life to prayer, and the
advantages of this were evident to the Catholic faithful, who respected and
valued the unmarried priesthood.62

60
  L. Thomassin, ‘Du Celibat des Beneficiers dans l’Eglise Orientale pendant les cinq
premiers siecles’, and ‘Du Celibat des Beneficiers dans l’Eglise Latine pendant le cinq premiers
siecles’, in Ancienne et Nouvelle Discipline de l’Eglise touchant les Benefices et les Beneficiers
(3 vols, Paris 1678–1679, revised 1725), vol. 2, c.52.
61
  Gaudin had written in defence of clerical marriage in his Les Inconveniens du Celibat
des Pretres, prouves par des recherché historiques (Geneva, 1781). For further discussion of
the late eighteenth-century French context, see the following chapter pp. 209–12.
62
  F.A. Zaccaria, Storia Polemica del celibato sacro da contraporsi ad alcune detestabili
opera uscite a questi tempi (Rome, 1774); Nuova giustificazione del celibate scaro dagli
inconvenienti oppostogli anche ultimamente in alcuni infamissimi libri dissertazioni Quattro
(Fuligno, 1785); the discussion of the issue of dispensations is in Storia Polemica, p. 65.
206 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

The final section of the Storia Polemica was a refutation of the

views of Pierre Desforges and other eighteenth-century protagonists in
the debate who had argued in favour of clerical marriage. For the first
time since the early sixteenth century, substantive criticisms of clerical
celibacy had come from the pens of Catholic authors, particularly among
the French writers of the Enlightment. Voltaire, Bayle and Diderot were
entirely unsympathetic to the principle of clerical celibacy, and a highly
critical entry on the subject was written for the Encylopedia.63 Among
the multitude of works on the topic printed in the 1700s, Desforges’ was
one of the most substantial, although the presentation of the case rested
more upon the weight of material rather than the clarity of thought. The
argument in On the Advantages of Marriage ranged from the creation
narrative contained in Genesis to natural law and human rights, with an
excursus into the priesthood of all believers and a more general attack
on the authority of the institutional church. The marriage of priests, he
argued, would mirror the marriage of Christ and his church. There was
no sacramental impediment to marriage in orders; if, Desforges argued,
it was possible to marry after baptism and confirmation, there was no
justification for the assertion that marriage was not permitted to those who
had received the sacrament of orders.64 The book was highly controversial,
and was quickly suppressed and its author imprisoned. However, German
and Italian translations secured a wider audience, particularly the Italian
edition which appeared timed to coincide with the unpopular pontificate
of Pope Clement XIII. The sudden involuntary exodus of Jesuits from their
houses gave the question of clerical celibacy an immediate practical as
well as philosophical application and opened up a wider debate over the
binding nature of vows of chastity within Catholicism, as well as between
Catholic and Protestant.
Desforges’ work acquired thus a prominent place in Zaccaria’s
defence of celibacy, which was commissioned by Pope Clement XIV
in response to the controversy that the publication of Desforges’ work
had opened. A French response, less encyclopedic than that of Zaccaria,
and dependent upon the presentation of passages in favour of celibacy
culled from patristic writings, came from the pen of the Abbé de Villiers,
in the Apologie du Celibat Chretien. Neither work silenced critics of the

63
  For example, P. Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique (8 vols, Rotterdam,
1692) considered homosexuality to be the result of clerical celibacy. For a more general
discussion, see P. Picard, Zolibatsdiskussion im katholischen Deutschland der Aufkalrungzeit
(Dusseldorf, 1975); B. Plongeron, Théologie et politique au siècle des Lumières (1770–1820)
(Genève, 1973), pp. 192–8.
64
  Roskovany, Coelibatus et Breviarium, vol. 4 nos 1065–1796, lists the volumes
published.
 Clerical Celibacy after the Reformation 207

‘apostolic origins’ thesis, however, and a further assertion of the practice

of clerical marriage in the early church was published in 1781, Jacques
Gaudin’s Les Inconvenients du Celibats des Prêtres. Gaudin argued that
the apostles and the priests of the early church had been free to marry, and
that it was perfectly clear from both Old and New Testaments that there
was no scriptural prohibition of clerical marriage. Marriage itself was a
worthy institution, and the raising of children encouraged a more noble
demeanour than the false continence of priests. Celibacy was futile, and
mere decadence, and a self-centred way of life that undermined the economy
and society of the nation, concentrated land and income in the hands
of the church and contributed to the underpopulation of contemporary
France. ‘Une observation qui m’a toujours frappé en lisant ’, he wrote,
‘l’histoire, c’est que le célibat s’accrédite chez toutes les nations à mesure
que les mœurs s’y détériorent’.65 A refutation, and a defence of clerical
celibacy, was composed by Gabriel-Nicolas Maultrot, and printed as La
discipline de l’Église sur le mariage des prêtres late in 1790. Alongside the
assertion of the legitimacy of clerical marriage from scripture and tradition
came rather more lurid descriptions of the failure of obligatory celibacy,
focusing upon solicitation in the confessional and other such abuses.66
Some were polemical, others, such as Venus dans le Cloitre ou la religieuse
en chemise, more vivid, but no doubt serving to keep the issue alive in the
public imagination.67
The conduct of the Catholic clergy remained, in 1764 as in 1564, a
highly public illustration of the effectiveness of the efforts of the church and
papacy to put its house in order. Clerical marriage had been established as
a popular and polemical battle-line in the early years of the Reformation,
in accusations of widespread clerical incontinence that turned priestly
conduct into a call for reform and an indictment of traditional theology,
and in the public marriages of the first generation of evangelicals that
flouted the laws of the church and provided visible testimony to doctrinal
change. Contributions to the debate, both Catholic and Protestant, rapidly
ranged well beyond accusations of sexual misconduct, deeper into biblical
precedent and exegesis, an argument from apostolic tradition, and the
reconstruction of the history of celibacy as part of the history of the

65
  Gaudin, Les Inconveniens, p. 9; the work was also published also with the new
title (but identical pagination) Recherches philosophiques et historiques sur le célibat; a
similar argument based on population was articulated in L’Abbé de Saint-Pierre, Ouvrages
de Politique (Paris, 1658–1749).
66
 S. Haliczer, Sexuality in the Confessional (New York: Oxford, 1996).
67
  Composed by the Abbé du Prat, Venus was translated into English and published in
London in 1724 by Edmund Curll. See also Gaudin, Les Inconveniens, pp. 316–20 and 355–
8. Further fictional representations of clerical celibacy in the honour and the breech include
Matthew Lewis, The Monk (1796) and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Agnes of Sorrento (1862).
208 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

church. Clerical marriage was not simply a matter between man and wife,
it was also an issue of authority, broadly interpreted. A priest who married
stood in flagrant breach of the discipline of the church, but to argue that
scriptural support for a married priesthood undermined centuries of
ecclesiastical law and tradition was to make a broader statement about
the nature of authority in doctrine and praxis. At the Council of Trent,
Gaudin argued, Pius IV had refused to concede to demands for clerical
marriage, because to do so would undermine the authority of the church,
and particularly the pope, ‘les détacheroit en même tems de la dépendance
où ils étoient du Saint-Siège et que, leur permettre de se marier, se seroit
autant que détruire la hiérarchie et réduire le pape à n’être qu’évêque de
Rome’.68 The link between the position of the pope and the marriage of
priests was perhaps overstated for polemical gain, but the assumption
was testimony to the deep roots that the debate over clerical celibacy had
planted in wider debate and controversy.

68
  Gaudin, Les Inconveniens, p. 373.
 CONCLUSION

‘One of the chief ornaments of the

Catholic clergy’?: Celibacy in the
Modern Church
Early modern polemicists had attached a theological, moral, historical, and
confessional meaning to the question of clerical celibacy, and as the debates
continued into the eighteenth century, these familiar battle-fields continued
to be contested. The Council of Trent had established a ruling on clerical
celibacy that was to provide the foundation for the stance of the modern
church, and which constructed an image of Catholic priesthood that was
visibly different to that of the reformed churches. However, the church
still needed to respond to practical challenges to the celibate priesthood
posed by factors that were not always entirely within its control. One such
challenge arose in the aftermath of the French Revolution, which marked
a watershed not only for the church in France, but also for Catholicism
in Europe. The Revolution shattered the link between faith and state, in a
country in which Catholic reform had made more progress than any other.
With regard to clerical celibacy, the critical moment came in 1789–90.
In October 1789, the Assembly voted to suspend the taking of monastic
vows, and in February of the following year formally abolished such vows,
and required monks and nuns who refused to leave the cloister, or to
accept relocation to one of a small number of surviving houses. The Civil
Constitution of the Clergy, approved in August 1790, enacted the principle
that no occupation could be used to debar an individual from marriage,
and that no public notary could refuse to ratify a marriage on the grounds


  N. Atkin and F. Tallett, Priests, Prelates and People. A History of European Catholicism
Since 1750 (London and New York, 2003), chapter 2. For more detail on the French church
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see J. McManners, Church and Society
in Eighteenth Century France (2 vols, OUP, 1998); G. Cholvy and Y-M. Hilaire, Histoire
Religieuse de la France Contemporaine (Toulouse, 1985–8); J. Le Goff and R. Remond,
Histoire de la France Religieuse (Paris, 1988–92); J. McManners, The French Revolution
and the Church (London, 1969); N. Aston, Religion and Revolution in France 1780–1804
(Basingstoke, 2000) and Christianity in Revolutionary Europe, c1760–1830 (Cambridge,
2002); R. Gibson, A social history of French Catholicism (London, 1989); T. Tackett, ‘The
Social History of the Diocesan Clergy in Eighteenth Century France’, in R.M. Golden (ed.),
Church, State and Society under the Bourbon Kings of France (Lawrence, KS, 1982).
210 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

of profession. Mirabeau had made no specific mention of the marriage

of priests, but his speech to the Assembly amounted to a summary of the
traditional arguments advanced in favour of clerical marriage, and the
intention was clear. The consequence for the Catholic priesthood was that
clerical celibacy was now inferred as an implicit protest against the new
regime, and marriage as a symbol of political loyalty to the Revolution. In
the aftermath of the Civil Constitution, many priests in orders entered into
open marriages, while others chose civil marriage, perhaps for political
reasons; any priest who had presented banns of marriage was immune from
imprisonment under the terms of a decree of 1793. Abbé Gaudin of the
Oratory took advantage of the apparent relaxation of the law of celibacy,
as did several other high-profile clerics, including the bishops of Bourges
and Beauvais. There remained, however, a strong commitment to clerical
celibacy both on the part of some priests, and on the part of the faithful,
who were less than tolerant of those clergy who had entered into marriage
after 1791. The Archbishop of Rouen composed a stinging condemnation
of clerical marriage in July 1792, and the fact that the stipends of married
priests were formally secured in August of the same year suggests that
there were some parts of the country in which those priests who had taken
wives either encountered local opposition, or had been driven from their
cures. Indeed, the majority of the constitutional bishops remained opposed
to the marriage of priests, although Thomas Lindet did choose to marry,
and Gobel appointed at least one married priest to a Paris church. In July
1793 the Convention adopted a law which held the threat of deprivation
and exile over any bishop who sought to prevent the marriage of priests in
his diocese, and Jean-Baptiste-Guillaume Graziani of Rouen was excluded
from the Episcopal palace on the basis of his denunciation of clerical
marriage. The process of ‘dechristianisation’ included, for many clergy,
a perceived requirement to enter into marriage as a visible sign of their
renunciation of priestly office and dignity. As Atkin and Tallett suggest,
such an attitude on the part of the Convention and its representatives was
a ‘back-handed compliment to the success of the Counter-Reformation
church’; to position marriage as the ultimate proof of the rejection of
clerical status was to give tacit recognition to the assumption that celibacy
was indeed a defining characteristic of the priesthood.
After the Terror, the restoration of clerical celibacy emerged as one of
the priorities for ecclesiastical reform. In March 1795 an encyclical letter
was issued from Paris by a group of assermentés bishops that denounced
clerical marriage in the strongest terms. It was not acceptable, the bishops


  Atkin and Tallett, Priests, Prelates and People, p. 57.

  H. Grégoire, Histoire du mariage des prêtres en France: particulièrement depuis 1789
(Brussels, 1826), p. 109.
 CONCLUSION 211

argued, for married clergy to claim that they had entered into such unions
on the basis of political circumstance, and these priests were deemed to be
unworthy of office, and guilty of a sin from which there was no absolution.
The national council of 1797 reduced clerical marriages to the status of
civil unions, but the final blow was to come in the 1801 Concordat which
restored Latin discipline in the French church. The Concordat failed to
confront the issue of clerical marriage directly, but its implications were
clear in the actions of over 3200 priests who petitioned either for the
regularisation of their marriages, or for reinstatement in the church. Well
over half of these, around 2000, chose marriage over the ministry. A
collective faculty for dispensation, issued to the legate Cardinal Caprara,
was the third such example of papal intervention to resolve the particular
problem of priests who had entered into marriages authorised by civil
law. Primarily as a result of the interventions of Cardinal Consalvi, who
argued that matters of individual conscience were not subject to diplomatic
agreement, the Concordat had made no provision for the position of the
married clergy. However, the papal bull that equipped Caprara with
faculties to deal with married French priests indicated that the pope’s
actions were a response to ‘the request made by the government in their
favour’, and were modelled upon the precedent provided by Julius III.
Not all accepted that this was a valid precedent. The bishop of Dijon,
for example, argued that Caprara’s actions were contrary to the canons
of Trent, but the legate simply moved with celerity to address the local
situation when necessary. While prepared to offer dispensation to married
lower clergy, and reduction to the lay estate, Pius VII refused to extend this
principle to former religious, or to bishops who requested the validation of
their marriages. The bishop of Autun, Talleyrand, was perhaps the most
infamous among the latter group of petitioners. Already unpopular with the
church by virtue of his participation in the secularisation of ecclesiastical
property, he had also consecrated the Constitutional bishops, and had
attempted to secure the position of married clerics during the negotiations
that led to the signing of the Concordat in 1801. Talleyrand was denied


  J. Lynch, ‘Critique of the Law of Celibacy in the Catholic Church from the Period of
the Reform Councils’, in W. Bassett and Peter Huizing (eds), Celibacy in the Church (New
York, 1972), p. 66, quoting S. Delacroix, La réorganisation de l’Église de France apres la
Révolution, 1801–1809 (Paris, 1962), chapter 20, ‘La reconciliation des Prêtres et religieux
maries’, pp. 443–56.

  J. Abo, ‘The Problem of Lapsed Priests’, The Jurist, 23 (1963): 153–79, especially
159. For the two early modern examples see chapter 6 above.

  Bullarii Romani Continuatio (19 vols, Rome, 1835), vol. 7, part 1, pp. 187, 188; see
also G. Cardinal Caprara, Concordat et Recueil des Bulles et Brefs de NSP le Pape Pie VII
(Paris, 1802), pp. 14–53, quoted in Abo, ‘Lapsed Priests’, 159.

  G. Constant, L’Eglise de France sous le Consulat et l’Empire (Paris, 1928), p. 211.
212 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

permission to marry, in a decision communicated by Cardinal Consalvi

in June 1802. The argument against permission was historical; there was,
it was claimed, no evidence in eighteen centuries of history that a bishop
had been offered a dispensation to marry, but there were plenty of other
cases in which such requests had been denied. Condemnation of clerical
marriage in civil law came in 1807, with an assertion by the emperor that
there was to be no toleration of marriage for those individuals who had
exercised priestly function after 1802. The general faculty facilitated the
restoration of union between France and Rome, but it did little to improve
standards of the clergy, or the esteem in which they were held by their
congregations. As had been the case in England in 1554, the laity in France
were, in the early nineteenth century, confronted by a clerical estate in
turmoil. Those priests who had married and petitioned for readmission
were hardly a model of steadfastness and sacerdotal continence, but one
fifth of French parish churches were still without a priest a decade after
the Concordat. The instability of previous years had done little to improve
recruitment levels, and the church could not count upon the services of
the ageing pre-revolutionary clergy indefinitely. Caprara’s handling of the
married clergy might have been sympathetic, but the broader issues raised
by the position of married priests in the French church in 1802 would be
harder to resolve.
The Concordat, and the faculties issued by the pope, offered a solution
to the specific problem of those priests who had married in revolutionary
France. The Church did not, however, address the more general calls for
toleration of clerical marriage which extended beyond the French church.
The relaxation of the obligation to celibacy was debated in Austria
under Joseph II, although such discussions came to an abrupt end at the
instruction of the emperor in 1783. Clerical marriage, Caprara observed,
was a step beyond the limits of radicalism that Joseph was prepared to
entertain from Eybel and others. There was further debate over celibacy
in the German-speaking lands in the early nineteenth century. In 1828
the lay professors of Freiburg petitioned in favour of clerical marriage,
supported by seminarians and many ordained clergy, and an association
in the diocese of Rottenburg was formed to facilitate the abrogation of
the celibacy law. Over a hundred clergy in Baden appended their names
to a petition in favour of clerical marriage in 1828, and similar demands


  F. Mathieu, Le Concordat de 1801 (Paris, 1904), p. 348; H.C. Lea, History of
Sacerdotal Celibacy (2 vols, London, 1907), vol. 2, pp. 317–18, quoting Bernard de Lacombe.
‘Le Mariage de Talleyrand’, Le Correspondant, Paris, 25 Aout et 10 Septembre 1905.

  Lynch ‘Critique of the Law of Celibacy’, 67; S.K. Padover, The Revolutionary Emperor:
Joseph II of Austria (2nd edition, London, 1967), pp. 164–5; P.G.M. Dickson, ‘Joseph II’s
Reshaping of the Austrian Church’, Historical Journal, 36 (1993): 89–114, n. 97.
 CONCLUSION 213

were articulated by Catholic clergy in Silesia in 1831.10 In Baden, the

liberal Karl von Rotteck argued that clerical celibacy was a matter that
was both civic and religious, not confined to the church but impinging
upon the welfare of the state. An explicit attempt to ‘secularise’ the
question of clerical celibacy was made in the appeal to the precedent
of the Reformation. If, it was argued, the German princes had risen in
support of their married priests in the sixteenth century, it was reasonable
to expect the prince to do the same in the nineteenth century. Other
petitioners argued that the apparent failure of the clergy to abide by the
law of celibacy was reason enough for its abrogation. To demand celibacy
of the clergy, it was suggested, was to limit their freedom beyond that
which was possible or permissible, in the service of a law which dated not
to the time of the apostles, but to the era of Gregory VII.11 History and
precedent were again contested, and the rejection of the apostolic origins
of the law of celibacy provided the underlying theme of the massive work
of two brothers, Johann and Augustine Theiner. The publication of Die
Einfuhrung der erzwungenen Ehelosigkeit bei den christlichen Geistlichen
und ihre Folgen. Ein Beitrag zur Kirchengeschichte (Altenburg, 1828) led
to the condemnation of Johann, then an ordained priest and professor of
canon law at Breslau, although Augustine was later to enter the Oratory
and rise to the position of Prefect of the Vatican Archives. Running to more
than 1500 pages, the three-volume work was essentially a compilation of
examples and illustrations of the decline of religion since the time of the
apostles. Mandatory clerical celibacy was presented as one such example
of the corruption of the faith at the hands of the institutional church, a
corruption that had created numerous problems for the church, its pastors,
and people, throughout its history.12
Such polemical and political criticisms did not go unanswered.
Joseph Mohler vigorously debated the issue through the mouthpiece of
the Theologische Quarterlschrift in the 1820s, arguing against clerical
marriage from both a theological and practical standpoint. There were,
he believed, far too many priests, where there should and could only be a
few. This was particularly true where celibacy, a rare gift, was concerned.
However, Mohler argued, there was no merit in the proposal that the

10
  Lynch ‘Critique of the Law of Celibacy’, 67–8; Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, vol. 2, p. 325.
11
  For a fuller discussion of the literature and context, see D. Herzog, Intimacy and
Exclusion: Religious Politics in Pre-Revolutionary Baden (Princeton, 1997), chapter 1.
12
  O. Chadwick, Catholicism and History: The Opening of the Vatican Archives
(Cambridge, 1978), pp. 32–71 provides a summary of the career of Augustine; see also
C. Cochini, The Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy (San Francisco, 1990), pp. 29–30;
E. Peters, ‘History, Historians, and Clerical Celibacy’, in M. Frassetto (ed.) Medieval Purity
and Piety. Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform (New York and
London, 1998), pp. 3–21.
214 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

solution to clerical incontinence came through the legalisation of clerical

marriage. The precedent of the Greek church might permit the ordination
of married men to the priesthood, but it did not support the claim that
marriage was legitimate after ordination, a claim which ran contrary to
the tradition, dating back to the apostles, that a total commitment was
required of those who entered into the priesthood.13 To attack clerical
celibacy, Mohler argued, was to attack the very essence of the church and
its authority, by calling into doubt the infallibility of the church in matters
of doctrine and practice. The defence of clerical marriage, he suggested,
in a tone that would not have been out of place in the works of Thomas
More two centuries earlier, was the preoccupation of ‘fleshly minded’
individuals.14 A direct response to the work of the Theiner brothers
came from Theodore Klitsche in 1830, in his Geschichte des Colibats der
katholischen Geistlichen von der Zeiten der Apostel bis zum Tode Gregors
XIII. Klitsche’s historical scope was as broad as that of his opponents,
but his defence of clerical celibacy on the basis of apostolic precedent and
ecclesiastical tradition relied heavily upon the earlier work of Zaccaria.15
Forceful papal condemnation of the German calls for the legalisation
of clerical marriage came in August 1832, in Gregory XVI’s Bull Mirari
Vos.16 Clerical celibacy, the pope complained, was under threat from a
conspiracy, a ‘foedessima conjuratio’, which included both laymen and
priests, and was motivated by the wishes of the ‘lascivious’, who sought to
enlist the support of the secular powers for their actions. The bishops were
instructed to ‘strive with all your might to justify and to defend the law of
clerical celibacy as prescribed by the sacred canons’. A similar sentiment
was evident a decade later in the Bull Qui Pluribus of Pius IX, in which
the pope complained that ‘the sacred celibacy of clerics has also been the
victim of conspiracy. Indeed, some churchmen have wretchedly forgotten
their own rank and let themselves be converted by the charms and snares
of pleasure’.17 The defence of clerical marriage was presented as an error

13
  Lynch, ‘Critique of the Law of Celibacy’, 67; H. Savon, Johann Adam Mohler. The
Father of Modern Theology (tr. C. McGrath) (Glen Rock, 1966).
14
  Mohler’s works were edited after his death by Dellinger, Gesammelte Schriften und
Aufsatze (2 vols, Ratisbon, 1839–40). On celibacy, see his ‘Beleuchtung der Denkschrift fur
die Aufhebung des den katholischen Geistlichen vorgeschriebenen Celibates’, Katholik, 8
(1828): 1–32, 257–97.
15
  For a response, see Friedrich Wilhelm Carové, Über das Cölibatsgesetz des
römisch-katholischen Klerus (Frankfurt, 1833), and his earlier Vollständige Sammlung der
Cölibatgesetze (Frankfurt, 1823).
16
  Mirari Vos, 15 August 1832, in Acta Gregorii XVI; Consistorial Allocution, 16
December 1920 (AAS, 12, 1920), p. 587.
17
  Qui Pluribus, 9 November 1846. [http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/
p9quiplu.htm]; Pius also condemned such views in his Syllabus of Errors, quoted in Lynch,
 CONCLUSION 215

motivated by moral degeneracy, and a conspiracy to undermine the canons of

the church which had remained in place since Trent. There was to be no room
for further debate.
Given the continuing vocal opposition to mandatory celibacy, however, it
was no surprise that there was substantial discussion of the issue at the first
Vatican Council. The council, the first since Trent, enacted no further decrees
on clerical celibacy, but consideration of the discipline took place in connection
with discussions of concubinage, the relationship with the Lutheran churches,
and the position of the Oriental churches. There were requests from bishops that
the mandatory celibacy articulated at Trent be imposed more effectively, and a
short constitution, De Vita et Honesta Clericorum, was presented to the council,
and debated in General Congregation.18 The only specific reference to clerical
celibacy came in the statement on the treatment of those who violated
the discipline; for example, any cleric who maintained a concubine or
cohabited with a suspect woman was to face the penalties that had been
laid down at Trent. An Armenian representative painted a positive picture
of clerical celibacy, and suggested that married priests were a drain on the
resources of the church, too preoccupied with family concerns, and with an
alarming tendency to devote their time, and the possessions of the church,
to their children. At least one participant suggested that the council should
make a powerful statement in favour of clerical celibacy in light of the
recently published criticisms of the practice, but there was no formal vote.19
The position of the Roman church in relation to the law of celibacy and
marriage in the Oriental churches was debated in the fourth Congress of
the commission Super Missionibus et Ecclesiis Ritus Orientalis, in January
1868. The Latin patriarch of Jerusalem asserted that the majority of the
bishops of the Eastern churches favoured clerical celibacy, and Augustine
Theiner, acting as one of the Consultors, commended the foundation
of cathedral chapters composed of celibates as a mechanism by which
celibacy might be introduced in the East.20 However the 37th Congress
of May 1870 concluded that the Oriental churches were too ‘immature’
to accept the universal imposition of clerical celibacy, and instead simply
commended those bishops who sought to introduce obligatory celibacy,
without making a more general mandate. The discussion of clerical celibacy

‘Critique of the Law of Celibacy’, 69. The pope was also swift to reject the criticisms of
clerical celibacy contained in the more wide-ranging treatise Defensa de la Autoridad de los
Gobiernos (Lima, 1848).
18
  J. Mansi, Sacrum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissa Collectio (53 vols in 60, Paris/
Leipzig, 1901–27), vol. 50, pp. 517–700; esp. 683d–4d.
19
  Lynch, ‘Critique of the Law of Celibacy’, 71.
20
  Mansi, Sacrum Conciliorum, vol. 50, p. 1003.
216 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

in the East did not reach the general sessions of the council, which ended
abruptly with the spread of hostilities in the Franco-Prussian war.
The dogmatic definition of papal infallibility at the council created
dissent, primarily among those German, Swiss and Austrian priests and
congregations in which lie the roots of the ‘Old Catholics’. 21 Whilst papal
infallibility was the prime cause of separation, the Old Catholic churches
also departed from the Roman Catholic position on the language of liturgy
and on the issue of the celibacy of priests. The obligation to celibacy began
to be relaxed in Old Catholic churches in the years that followed separation
from Rome, although it was only in 1922 that the Dutch church lifted
the requirement from its priests. Old Catholics in Switzerland abolished
compulsory clerical celibacy in 1875, German priests were permitted to
marry (with the approval of the bishop or, if necessary, the synod) in 1877,
and in 1880 the first Austrian Synod lifted the prohibition on clerical
marriage.22 Among the participants at the Munich assembly of 1871 was
Ignaz von Döllinger, who had been excommunicated after addressing a
letter to the Archbishop of Munich in which he described papal infallibility
as contrary to apostolic tradition, the decrees of the general councils, and
the precedent of history.23 However, the abrogation of the law of celibacy
by the Old Catholics did not find favour with Döllinger, who regarded
celibacy as the duty of any priest committed to the service of his people. In
a letter to an Anglican friend, Döllinger wrote

You in England cannot understand how completely engrained it is into

our people that a priest is a man who sacrifices himself for the sake of his
parishioners. He has no children of his own, in order that all the children in the
parish may be his children. His people know that his small wants are supplied,
and that he can devote all his time and thought to them. They know that it is
quite otherwise with the married pastors of the Protestants. The pastor’s income
may be enough for himself, but it is not enough for his wife and children also.
In order to maintain them he must take other work, literary or scholastic, only
a portion of his time can be given to his people; and they know that when
the interests of his family and those of his flock collide, his family must come
first and his flock second. In short, he has a profession or trade, a Gewerbe,

21
  B. Hasler, Wie der Papst Unfehlbar Wurde: Macht und Ohnmacht eines Dogmas
(Munich, 1979); J. O’Connor (ed. and tr.) The Gift of Infallibility: The Official Relatio on
Infallibility of Bishop Vincent Gasser at Vatican Council I (San Francisco, 2008); C.B. Moss,
The Old Catholic Movement (London, 1964).
22
 Lynch notes the rather more complex stance of the German Old Catholics: marriage
was not permitted within the first six years after ordination, or within three years of entry
into the diocese for priests ordained elsewhere.
23
  G. Denzler and E.L. Grasmück (eds), Geschichtlichkeit und Glaube. Zum 100.
Todestag Johann Joseph Ignaz von Döllingers (1799–1890) (Munich, 1990).
 CONCLUSION 217

rather than a vocation; he has to earn a livelihood. In almost all Catholic

congregations, a priest who married would be ruined; all his influence would
be gone. The people are not at all ready for so fundamental a change, and the
circumstances of the clergy do not admit of it. It is a fatal resolution.24

Döllinger’s argument against papal infallibility was couched in terms of

continuity of law and tradition, but the argument against clerical marriage
was rather more practical, in the suggestion that it distracted the priest
from the care of his congregation, and turned his mind to other things.25
However, it was the history of the church, and particularly the possession
of the heritage of the apostolic church, that was to dominate written
exchanges on the subject of clerical celibacy in the aftermath of the Vatican
Council.
The application of historical theology to the origins of obligatory
clerical celibacy generated a heated debate between the Orientalist and
son of a Protestant churchman, Gustav Bickell, and the early-church
historian Franz Funk in the decade that followed the Vatican Council.
Bickell, ordained as a Catholic priest and educated in Syriac and Hebrew,
brought the weight of his scholarship to bear on the question of the
apostolic origins of clerical celibacy. The first printed salvo appeared in
Zeitschrift fur Katholische Theologie (1878) with the title ‘Der Colibat
eine apostolische Anordnung’. Bickell argued that the origins of clerical
celibacy and continence in the West lay in the apostolic era, and not, as
its opponents would suggest, in the fourth century letters of Siricius, and
asserted that the same was true in the East, although there the tradition
had been greatly neglected. Bickell’s essay prompted a swift response from
Funk, ‘Der Colibat keine apostolische Anordnung’ published in Tübinger
Theologische Quartalschrift (1880). Funk had been promoted to the chair
of history and theology at Tübingen as the successor to Hefele, and was a
recognised authority on the patristic period. His primary contention was
that there was no evidence that celibacy had been demanded of priests in
the apostolic era. While there was some support for the hypothesis that
clerical continence was practised, he argued, it was a voluntary action
and not a discipline of the church. The Latin church had innovated by
turning this voluntary commitment into an obligation, Funk argued,
and it was the Greek church that had remained faithful to the apostolic
tradition. Bickell rearticulated his original thesis, in ‘Der Colibat dennoch
eine Apostolische Anordnung’ published in Zeitschrift fur Katholische

24
 A. Plummer in The Expositor, December, 1890, p. 470.
25
  See also his comment that ‘When a priest can no longer point to personal sacrifice
which he makes for the good of his people, then it is all over with him and the cause which he
represents. He sinks to the level of men who make a trade of their work’: Er rangiert dann mit
den Gewerbetreibenden, in M. Michael (ed.), Ignaz von Döllinger (Munich, 1894), p. 249.
218 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

Theologie (1879), and Funk retaliated with a swift reassertion of his

own views, ‘Der Colibat noch lange keine Apostolische Anordnung’ in
Theologische Quartalschift (1880), and a further, more moderate rejection
of Bickell’s ‘apostolic origins’ argument in 1897, ‘Colibat und Priesterehe
im christlichen Altertum’, in Kirchengeschichliche Abhandlungen und
Untersuchungen. Funk’s particular contribution was to establish the idea
that it was at the Synod of Elvira that the discipline of clerical celibacy
was first asserted in the Latin church, an assertion which enabled him to
turn the documentary evidence that Bickell had cited in defence of clerical
celibacy against him. The controversy hinged upon the interpretation of
contested episodes and documents from the history of the early church.
Funk, for example, continued to use the example of the intervention of
Paphnutius at the Council of Nicaea to argue that clerical celibacy was a
later innovation, although Bickell, as many before him, had questioned
strongly the accuracy of the legend.26
It was Funk’s thesis that was, in the medium term at least, to prove
the most enduring, primarily because it secured the backing of two
distinguished scholars of the early twentieth century, Vacandard and
Leclerq.27 Writing in 1905, Vacandard acknowledged his debt to Funk,
drawing heavily upon his work to support the assertion that celibacy was
voluntary rather than compulsory in the early church, and the contention
that obligatory celibacy was a later development in the West.28 Henri
Leclerq, who translated into French Hefele’s study of the early church
councils, Conciliengeschichte (1855–74), also entered into the debate
over the apostolic origins of celibacy. Following Funk, he argued that
clerical celibacy had been voluntary in the early church, although the
esteem in which virginity and celibacy were held was to become more
apparent by the fourth century. However, the law of sacerdotal celibacy
in the contemporary Catholic church, he contended, could not be traced
back to this period. There was nothing in scripture, or in the writings of
the Fathers, that proved conclusively that the apostles were unmarried

26
 See Cochini, Apostolic Origins, p. 35; Peters, ‘History, Historians and Clerical
Celibacy’, p. 11; A.M. Cardinal Stickler, The Case for Clerical Celibacy. Its Historical
Development & Theological Foundations (tr. Fr Brian Ferme) (San Francisco, 1995), pp. 16–
17; A.L. Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy. The Eleventh Century Debates
(Lewiston NY, 1982), pp. 199–200.
27
  E. Vacandard, ‘Les origines du Celibat Ecclesiastique’, Etudes de Critique d’histoire
religieuse 1st ser. (Paris 1905; 5th edition, Paris 1913), pp. 71–120; ‘Celibat’, in Dictionnaire
de theologie catholique (Paris, 1905), vol. 2, 2068–88; H. Leclerq, ‘La legislation concilaire
relative au celibate ecclesiastique’, in the extended French edition of Josef v Hefele,
Conciliengeschichte (Paris, 1908), vol. 2 part 2, appendix 6, pp. 1321–48; ‘Celibat’, in
Dictionnaire d’Archeologie chretienne et de liturgie (Paris, 1908) 2.2802–32.
28
  Vacandard, ‘Les origines du celibate ecclesiastique’.
 CONCLUSION 219

(or, indeed married). St Paul had urged monogamy rather than celibacy
upon candidates for the ministry, but the influence of ascetic groups,
Leclerq suggested, including the heterodox Manichaeans, had encouraged
Christians to regard celibacy as a superior state. Leclerq followed Funk
in identifying the Synod of Elvira as a watershed in the history of clerical
celibacy, and argued for the continued toleration of married priests in
the fourth century church on the basis of the defence of such unions by
Paphnutius.29 The debate over clerical celibacy turned, in the twentieth
century as it had in the sixteenth and the eleventh, upon the examination
and re-examination of contested incidents in the history of the church in
the search for an accurate narrative of the past that might be pressed into
service in the debates of the present.
The opportunity for debate in the present was forcefully curtailed by
the early twentieth-century papacy. Perhaps the most definite assertion that
the matter was closed came from Pope Benedict XV in 1920, in response
to the arguments against clerical celibacy voiced primarily by the Union of
the Catholic Czechoslovak Clergy (Jednota). The Union had been founded
in 1890 to support demands for the celebration of Mass in the vernacular,
and for the relaxation of the law of celibacy, and precipitated the formal
establishment of an independent Czechoslovak Hussite Church in 1920.
The obligation to celibacy had been recently repeated in the Canon Law
Code of 1917, which reasserted forcefully that ‘clerics in major orders may
not marry and they are bound by the obligation of chastity to the extent
that sinning against it constitutes a sacrilege’.30 Pope Benedict had overseen
the completion of this project, which had its origins in the pontificate of
Pius X, and was deeply committed to the principles of universality that
it contained.31 He responded in strident terms to the Czech protests both
in a letter of January 1920, and in his Consistorial Allocution of 16
December 1920. ‘Being one of the chief ornaments of the Catholic clergy
and a source of the highest virtues’, he wrote, ‘the law of celibacy must
be retained inviolate in its purity; and the holy see will never abolish or
mitigate it.’32 The church, he proclaimed, considered celibacy to be of such
importance that dissidents should not entertain any expectation that the
law would be abrogated. The vitality of the Latin church, the pope argued,
had its roots in the celibacy of its priests, and the protests of those who

29
  Leclerq, ‘La Legislation conciliaire relative au celibate ecclesiastique’, pp. 1321–48.
30
  The 1917 Code is available in English translation with commentary: E.N.
Peters, 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law: in English translation, with extensive
scholarly apparatus (San Francisco, 2001), Canon 132.
31
 Recent biographies of Benedict XV include H.E.G. Rope, Benedict XV The Pope of
Peace (London, 1941) and J.F. Pollard, The Unknown Pope. Benedict XV (London, 1999).
32
 Letter, 3 Jan 1920 (AAS 12 (1920), p. 32).
220 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

argued from ‘democracy’ in the defining of ecclesiastical discipline were

both fruitless and erroneous.33 The celibacy of the clergy was a critical part
of the confessional identity of the church, a guarantee of its character, and
an enduring standard that would be preserved by its pontiffs.
Benedict’s successors were equally insistent in their defence of the
discipline. Pius XI (1922–39), in his encyclical On the Catholic Priesthood
presented a positive endorsement of clerical celibacy for reasons that were
pastoral, historical, and scriptural. ‘Since God is spirit, it is only fitting that
he who consecrates to God’s service ought to be in some ways free himself
from his body …’, the pope wrote, ‘ought he not to be obliged to live as far
as possible like a pure spirit?’ The priest, who ought to be entirely ‘about
the Lord’s business’, should be entirely detached from earthly affairs, so
that his life was lived in heaven.34 Clerical celibacy was a part, even the
pinnacle, of this perpetual act of priestly renunciation and detachment. It
was also a requirement of the sacerdotal function of the priest. The origins
of clerical celibacy and the nature of the priesthood, the pope wrote, lay
in the precedent of the Levitical priests, in the Gospel of Luke, and in the
Pauline letters. The priests of the Old Testament, he asserted, had abstained
from their wives prior to their service in the temple, and their example
placed a similar obligation to continence upon the priests of the new law,
the Christian priests who dispensed the mysteries of God.35 Celibacy was
esteemed in both West and East, where the ordination of married men was
permitted, but those in higher office were obliged to live unmarried. Indeed
the Fathers of the East were as fulsome in their praise of celibacy as those
in the Latin West, the pope argued, citing Chrysostom, and the testimony
of Epiphanius on the practice of the fourth-century church. Although the
origins of the law of celibacy lay in the decrees of the Council of Elvira, this
was not the origin of the expectation that priestly office carried with it a
commitment to continence. Rather, the Fathers at Elvira, Pius wrote, made
‘obligatory what might in any case almost be termed a moral exigency that
springs from the Gospel and the Apostolic preaching’.
This ringing endorsement of clerical celibacy had echoes in the
Exhortation Menti Nostrae (1950) and more particularly in the Encyclical
De Virginitatis (1954) written by Pius XI’s successor, Pius XII (1939–58).
‘By this law of celibacy the priest not only does not abdicate his paternity,
but increases it immensely’, the pope asserted, ‘for he begets not for an
earthly and transitory life but for the heavenly and eternal one.’36 The

33
  Benedict XV, Allocutio, 16 Dec 1920 (AAS 12 (1920), pp. 85–80).
34
  Pius XI, Encyclical Ad Catholicii Sacerdotii (20 December 1935). The pontificate of
Pius XI is still best approached through P. Hughes, Pope Pius XI (London, 1937).
35
  ‘Sic nos existimet homo ut ministros Christi et dispensatores mysteriorum Dei’.
36
  Menti Nostrae (AAS 42 (1950), p. 663).
 CONCLUSION 221

Encyclical opened with the statement ‘Holy virginity and that perfect
chastity which is consecrated to the service of God is without doubt
among the most precious treasures which the Founder of the Church has
left in heritage to the society which He established’, and argued from the
example of the apostolic church and the writings of the church Fathers
that consecrated virginity had been prized throughout the long history of
the church. The Encyclical presented patristic testimony on the value of
virginity and celibacy from a wide range of sources, both Latin and Greek,
including Jerome, Cyprian, Augustine, Ambrose, Ignatius and Athanasius,
alongside the views of Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Peter Damian. From the
latter, Pius took the assertion that ‘if Our Redeemer so loved the flower
of unimpaired modesty that not only was He born from a virginal womb,
but was also cared for by a virgin nurse even when He was still an infant
crying in the cradle, by whom, I ask, does He wish His body to be handled
now that He reigns, limitless, in heaven?’ The exploitation of Damian’s
powerful rhetoric on the subject no doubt underpins William Phipps’
assertion that the pope believed that a priest ‘sullied the sacrament’ if he
touched the elements with the same hands with which he had touched a
woman, although there is nothing in the encyclical to suggest such a drift
into Donatism.37 Instead, the obligation to celibacy was presented as a
precedent of the Old Testament priesthood, grounded in the Levitical laws,
and exemplified in the long tradition of vowed chastity and sacerdotal
celibacy in the Catholic church, and also in the voluntary chastity of the
faithful who abstained from marriage and sexual pleasure in order to serve
God more fully. To abstain from marriage, as Matthew the evangelist
indicated, ‘for the sake of the kingdom’, was, for priest and people, to enjoy
a spiritual freedom and liberty that was not possible for those encumbered
with the cares of the world. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians was cited on
numerous occasions to support the assertion that virginity was favoured
over marriage in the early church.
However, for the priest, the pope argued, there was an added obligation.
The temporary continence of the Levitical priesthood was exceeded in
the perpetual continence of the Catholic clergy, which was demanded by
their Eucharistic function. ‘Consider again that sacred ministers do not
renounce marriage solely on account of their apostolic ministry, but also
by reason of their service at the altar’, Pius wrote. ‘For, if even the priests
of the Old Testament had to abstain from the use of marriage during the
period of their service in the Temple, for fear of being declared impure by
the Law just as other men, is it not much more fitting that the ministers
of Jesus Christ, who offer every day the Eucharistic Sacrifice, possess
perfect chastity?’ Christian ministry was perpetual, and the obligation

37
 AAS 46 (1954), pp. 165ff ; Damian, De coelibatu sacerdotum, c.3 [PL 145: 384].
222 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

to celibacy likewise. Both Scripture and the teaching of the church had
extolled virginity over marriage, as an angelic virtue and as proof of the
mastery of the body by the Spirit, and this had been ‘defined as a dogma of
divine faith’ at the Council of Trent. This, the pope conceded, was not the
practice of the Greek church, but there was no evidence that celibacy was
not equally prized in the East, as Pius XI had argued. There was nothing to
suggest that the discipline might be modified in response to contemporary
pressures, or that it was anything but firmly grounded in scripture and the
traditions of the church.
Expectation that such a modification of the law of celibacy might be
imminent was sharpened in the pontificate of John XXIII, and particularly
after the summoning of the Second Vatican Council.38 The pope was
reported to be of the view that obligatory clerical celibacy was written not
in stone, but in Latin, and could therefore be amended or even abolished.39
However, the death of John XXIII in 1965 prevented the full discussion
of clerical celibacy at the council; his successor Paul VI indicated that he
regarded it as ‘inopportune’ to debate the topic, and the council reinforced
the established law of celibacy.40 The decree On the Ministry and Life
of Priests (Presbyterorum Ordinis) was adopted by the council and
promulgated on 7 December 1965. Citing Matt. 19:12, it announced that
‘perfect and perpetual continence on behalf of the kingdom of heaven’ was
demanded of priests. Such an obligation, as Aquinas had argued, did not
spring from the nature of the priesthood, but ‘accords with the priesthood
on many scores’. This assertion laid to rest the question of the ‘implicit
vow’ of celibacy made by priests at ordination, an assumption that had
been part of the defence of clerical celibacy in the twelfth century, and
had continued to be exploited by more recent apologists.41 Continence
had been commended by Christ, and endorsed by the church throughout

38
  On the Council, see A. Hastings (ed.), Modern Catholicism. Vatican II and After
(London, 1991); Hastings (ed.), A Concise Guide to the Documents of the Second Vatican
Council (2 vols, London, 1968–69); R. Latourelle, Vatican II. Assessments and Perspectives
(3 vols, New York, 1988); G. Alberigo (ed.), The Reception of Vatican II (Washington,
1987), and Alberigo and J.A. Komanchak (eds), History of Vatican II (Leuven, 1995–);
A. Flannery (ed.), Vatican Council II. The Conciliar and Post-Conciliar Documents (New
York, 1975) and Vatican Council II. More post-conciliar documents (New York, 1983).
39
  W. Phipps, Clerical Celibacy. The Heritage (London and New York, 2004), p. 172,
quoting National Catholic Reporter, 12 May 1995, p. 21; John XXIII certainly removed some
of the bureaucracy that was necessary for those priests who wished to leave the priesthood
in order to marry.
40
  P. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI (New York, Paulist Press, 1993), p. 441.
41
 See, for example, T.L. Bouscaren, Canon Law: A Text and Commentary (Milwaukee,
1946), and the works of the Jesuit A. Vermeersch, including, for example, his Epitome iuris
canonici: cum commentariis ad scholas et ad usum privatum (3 vols, Mechliniæ, 1937–46).
 CONCLUSION 223

history, first ‘recommended to priests’ who were engaged in the mission of

the church, and then imposed upon all who were called to sacred orders.
For those who asked of God such a gift, it would be granted. Due heed was
paid in the decree to the custom of the Greek church. The assertion that
celibacy was not part of the nature of the priesthood was predicated in
part upon the presence of married priests in the East, and the council stated
that it had no intention of imposing Latin custom upon the Greek church.
Those priests who had been ordained after marriage were simply exhorted
to ‘spend their lives fully and generously for the flock committed to them’.
There was no specific mention of an expectation of purity founded upon
the example of the Levitical priesthood, but the moral obligations of priests
were not unrelated to their office. ‘Priests act especially in the person of
Christ as ministers of holy things, particularly in the Sacrifice of the Mass,
the sacrifice of Christ who gave himself for the sanctification of men’,
the decree announced. ‘Hence, they are asked to take example from that
with which they deal, and inasmuch as they celebrate the mystery of the
Lord’s death they should keep their bodies free of wantonness and lusts.’
However, the discussion of clerical celibacy took place within the more
general context of the character expected of priests, and the assumption
that ‘as leaders of the community they cultivate an asceticism becoming to
a shepherd of souls’. An unmarried priest was better able to devote himself
to the service of his flock, and to ‘adhere to [Christ] more easily with an
undivided heart’. The celibate priesthood was a living sign of the kingdom
of God that was yet to come, in which ‘the children of the resurrection
neither marry nor take wives’.42
Two years later, Pope Paul VI returned once again to the issue of
clerical celibacy in his encyclical Sacerdotalis Caelibatus of June 1967.43
The celibacy of the clergy, he argued, had been a constant throughout
history, and continued to be so even in the modern world. ‘Priestly
celibacy has been guarded by the Church for centuries as a brilliant jewel’,
he wrote, ‘and retains its value undiminished even in our time when the
outlook of men and the state of the world have undergone such profound
changes.’ The pope had provided assurances to the delegates at Vatican II
that he would give ‘new lustre and strength’ to the discipline, and in the
face of concern from priests and from the faithful, the encyclical would
fulfil this promise.44 Paul VI detailed the objections that had been raised
against clerical celibacy, including the assertion that it lacked a biblical

42
  W.M. Abbot and J. Gallagher (eds), The Documents of Vatican II (London, 1966),
pp. 565–6; Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, 16, 13.
43
 AAS 59 (1967), pp. 657–97.
44
 See letter of 10 Oct. 1965, to Cardinal Tisserant, read in the general session of the
next day.
224 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

or apostolic precedent, that the Fathers of the church had recommended

abstinence rather than celibacy, and that there was a shortage of vocations
in the modern church, which could be resolved if priests were permitted to
marry. Others had argued that celibacy was psychologically detrimental,
and that those priests who made a commitment to celibacy in their youth
were insufficiently mature to understand the problems that they might
encounter in abiding by this promise. To these objections, the pope
presented a full and wide-ranging response, over 13,000 words in length.
As the Second Vatican Council had asserted, virginity was not demanded
of the priesthood by its nature. It was, however, particularly suited to
the ministry, and as such had been considered on many occasions in the
past.45 The celibacy of priests was modelled upon the celibacy of Christ,
‘The minister of Christ and dispenser of the mysteries of God, therefore,
looks up to Him directly as his model and supreme ideal’, and it was in
this sharing in the life of Christ that the priest was best able to share in
His dignity and mission.46 The first followers of Christ had been called
to leave their families and their homes, and a commitment to celibacy
was part of the response to the divine call to sacrifice for the kingdom of
heaven.47 Such a commitment was, as the church recognised, ‘a symbol of
and stimulus to, chastity’ and a life dedicated to the service of others.48
The unmarried priesthood possessed, the pope stated, an ecclesiological
significance, manifesting the love of Christ for the church, and exemplified
the perfection of the kingdom of God after the second coming of Christ,
and the promise that ‘in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given
in marriage, but are like angels in heaven’.49
Paul VI’s encyclical presented a history of clerical celibacy in the
life of the church, from the voluntary practice of continence in the first
Christian centuries, through the formalisation of the law in the fourth
century, to the reinforcement of its principles at Trent and in the Code of
Canon Law.50 The pope recognised the independent discipline of the Greek
church established at the Council in Trullo (692), but also the positive

45
  Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, c.17, 18.
46
 Ibid., c.19, 31.
47
 Ibid., c.22.
48
 Ibid., c.24, referring to Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, no. 42: AAS 57
(1965), p. 48; see also c.32.
49
  Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, c.26, 34; Matt. 22:30; see also Second Vatican Council,
Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of the Religious Life, no. 12 (AAS 58 (1966), p. 107.)
50
  C.35ff with reference to, among others, Tertullian, De exhort. castitatis, 13 [PL
2.930]; St. Epiphanius, Adv. Haer. II, 48.9 and 59.4: [PG 41. 869, 1025]; St. Ambrose, De
officiis ministr., 1.50 [PL 16.97ff]; St. Augustine, De moribus Eccl. cath., 1.32 [PL 32.1339];
St. Jerome, Adversus Vigilantium, 2 [PL 23.340–41]; Council of Elvira, can. 33, Code, can.
132, §1.
 CONCLUSION 225

commendations of virginity in the writings of the Greek Fathers, which

testified to a common ground between the two churches.51 Despite the
practice in the East, however, the pope asserted that ‘the Church of the
West cannot weaken her faithful observance of her own tradition. Nor
can she be regarded as having followed for centuries a path which instead
of favouring the spiritual richness of individual souls and of the People of
God, has in some way compromised it, or of having stifled, with arbitrary
juridical prescriptions, the free expansion of the most profound realities
of nature and of grace’. The married clergy of the East did not constitute
a valid argument against the tradition of the West. Rather than debate the
issue further, or make a case for the relaxation of the discipline of celibacy,
he argued, it would be more fruitful to ‘promote serious studies in defence
of the spiritual meaning and moral value of virginity and celibacy’. To this
end, the faithful were enjoined to pray for new vocations to the priesthood,
so that the mission of the church might increase, in the same way as the
prayers of the first Christians had replenished the church with ministers
after the apostles. It was in celibacy that human values found their highest
expression, in a life filled with the richness of God.52 The particular failings
of individual priests did not invalidate or undermine the law of celibacy
for the church as a whole. While it was apparent that some priests had
abandoned their obligation to celibacy, the fault lay not with the discipline
itself, but with the assessment of the suitability of the candidate for
priestly office. The church offered dispensations to those who were clearly
unsuited, but for others, the pope suggested, it would be more appropriate
for the individual to reflect upon the seriousness of their obligations, and
the scandal that was caused by their actions, seeking support from their
bishop, and from the whole church, to whom the ‘treasure’ of celibacy
belonged.53 Sacerdotal celibacy, it seemed, was a central part of the life
of both priest and people, in the past and in the present. It was a defining
mark of the Catholic priesthood, a reflection of the priesthood of Christ,
and, even if not part of the nature of the priesthood, at least a critical
aspect of the pastoral function of the priest.
The pope’s suggestion that it would be more productive to engage in
‘serious study’ of the meaning and the value of virginity and celibacy certainly
bore fruit in the vast literature on clerical celibacy that was published in the
aftermath of the Encyclical. Not all contributions were as positive as Paul
might have wished, but the extent of the debate was impressive. The 1969
edition of the Bibliographie Internationale sur le Sacerdoce et le Ministre
listed nearly 7000 items in the four years between the end of the Vatican

51
  Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, c.38–40.
52
  Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, c.57–9.
53
  Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, c.83, 93–6.
226 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

Council and the publication of Sacerdotalis Caelibatus.54 This diversity of

opinion was not limited to the printed word, and although the Synod of
Bishops insisted in 1971 that the ‘law of priestly celibacy ... is to be kept
in its entirety’, such unanimity of voice was in some respects specious.55
North American priests had petitioned vigorously for the toleration of
marriage after ordination, and the Dutch Pastoral Council of the previous
year had recommended that celibacy should not be demanded as a
condition of admission to the priesthood, and that married priests should
be permitted to continue to exercise their ministry.56 Pope Paul responded
with a vigorous assertion of the importance of celibacy to the priesthood,
although conceded that in areas in which there was a significant shortage
of priests there might be reasons to consider the ordination of mature
married men.57 A commission of theologians presented a paper on the
nature of priestly ministry later in the same year, which again raised the
possibility of the ordination of married men, although not of the continued
ministry of priests who had attempted marriage after ordination.58 The
view of the pope was clear, however, and before the 1971 Synod convened
copies of Joseph Coppens’ collection of essays on the history of clerical
celibacy, Sacerdoce et Celibat, were sent to all the delegates. The book
included articles written by individuals already active in the debate, and
rehearsed historical and theological arguments.59 When the Synod came to
consider the question of clerical celibacy, there was little dissent from the
established position of the church. Only one voice was raised in defence of
a principle of ‘optional’ clerical celibacy, and the synod did not consider
the possibility of tolerating the marriage of men already admitted to the
priesthood. There was rather more debate over the potential benefits of
ordaining mature married men to combat a shortage of vocations, but
again this proposal was rejected amid the expression of concern that the
law of celibacy would be undermined in its entirety by such piecemeal
erosion. Nearly half the delegates were prepared to accept such ordinations
if the pope deemed it necessary, but the majority still opposed the proposal
when the matter was put to a vote on the penultimate day of the synod.
Papal confirmation of that decision came in the closing speech delivered by
Paul VI, and in his rescript, which asserted in a familiar tone that ‘in the

54
  Bibliographie Internationale sur le Sacerdoce et le Ministre (Montreal, 1971).
55
 AAS 63 (1972), pp. 897ff.
56
  J.A. Coriden, ‘Celibacy, Canon Law and Synod 1971’, in W. Bassett and Peter Huizing
(eds), Celibacy in the Church (New York, 1972), pp. 109–24, especially pp. 111–12.
57
  AAS 62 (1970), pp. 98ff, quoted in Coriden, ‘Celibacy, Canon Law and Synod’, p. 111.
58
 See also De Sacerdotalis Ministeriali (Vatican, 1971).
59
  J. Coppens (ed.), Sacerdoce et Celibat (Gembloux–Louvain, 1971).
 CONCLUSION 227

Latin church there shall be continued to be observed in its entirety with

God’s help, the present discipline of clerical celibacy’.60
The demand that the discipline of celibacy be observed in its entirety
has not been without its critics and challenges. The obligation to celibacy
has, for example, been cited as a primary cause of a decline in the number
of candidates presenting themselves for ordination, and a key factor in the
decision of ordained priests to leave the ministry.61 The centrality of the
Mass in Catholic religious life, reinforced at the Second Vatican Council,
makes a shortage of priests all the more acute. Despite the apparent success
of the Council of Trent in establishing celibacy as a defining feature of the
priesthood, and the reassertion of this principle in the twentieth century,
the results of various public opinion polls have suggested that many of
the faithful would be supportive of a decision to make celibacy optional.62
The unmarried priesthood, however, still has a symbolic value for the
laity; as James Dittes has suggested, the celibate priest is fundamental
to the ‘spiritual ecology’ of many of the faithful. The meanings attached
to clerical celibacy might be inconsistent and occasionally contradictory,
Dittes argues, but ‘if priestly celibacy did not exist, laymen would have
to provide themselves with the equivalent’ in an attempt to distance or
dehumanise the clergy.63 The symbolic value of celibacy, however, does
not always override the practical needs of parishioners who lack access to
the sacraments. North American Catholic priests who have entered into
marriages make themselves available, with the support of organisations
such as CITI (Celibacy Is The Issue), for the celebration of the sacraments
where the services of a priest are not guaranteed. CITI summarises its
position as an ‘organization that locates, recruits, certifies and promotes
married Roman Catholic priests to fill the spiritual needs of the faithful’,
and suggests that it would be acceptable for human intervention to overturn
the obligation to celibacy, in itself a ‘mere ecclesiastical law’.64 The theme
of clerical marriage as a solution to ‘pastoral emergency’ has been explored
in more detail by Adrian Hastings, in an examination of the situation of

60
  AAS 63 (1971) 897, quoted in J. Coriden, ‘Celibacy, Canon Law and Synod’, pp.
113–14.
61
 See for example R. Schoenherr and L. Young, Full Pews and Empty Altars (Madison,
1993); E. Abbott, History of Celibacy (Boston, 2001); Phipps, Clerical Celibacy, pp. 190ff;
J. Fichtner SJ, America’s Forgotten Priests (New York, 1968); D.R. Hige, The Future of
Catholic Leadership. Responses to the Priest Shortage (Kansas City, 1987); Schoenherr ‘Holy
Power? Holy Authority? And Holy Celibacy?’, in Bassett and Huizing (eds), Celibacy in the
Church, pp. 126–7; Schoenherr and A.M. Greeley, American Priests (Chicago, 1972).
62
 Several such polls are discussed in Phipps, Celibacy, pp. 196ff;
63
  J.E. Dittes, ‘The Symbolic Value of Celibacy for the Catholic Faithful’, in Bassett and
Huizing (eds), Celibacy in the Church, pp. 84–94.
64
  http://www.rentapriest.com accessed 10 March 2009.
228 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

the African church, and particularly by Karl Rahner, for whom practical
considerations must override theoretical objections in such circumstances.
Writing in 1974, Rahner argued that if there were not enough priests
who were prepared to be bound by celibacy, ‘it is obvious and requires
no further theological discussion that the obligation of celibacy must not
be imposed’.65 Aside from the broad issue of vocations to the priesthood,
the law of celibacy has also been held responsible for the conduct of those
priests implicated in sexual abuse scandals in the Boston diocese, and
elsewhere in North America and beyond. Early in 2002, the Boston Globe
printed a series of stories exposing the extent to which guilty priests had
been concealed by the church, and the articles precipitated a crisis in the
local church which rapidly reached as far as Rome, threatening lawsuits
totalling more than $100 million, and culminating in the resignation of the
cardinal, Bernard Law. The primary issue for the Globe was the presence
of what it described as ‘predator priests’ in Boston parishes, known to,
and tolerated by, the hierarchy. However, for those who commented
upon the scandal in letters and on the dedicated website, events in Boston
were also a catalyst for calls for a wider consideration of the merits of
obligatory clerical celibacy in light of events in the diocese and the church
as a whole.66
The fires of debate were fanned further by the admission of married
clergy into the Catholic priesthood in the 1990s after the decision taken
by the Anglican Communion to ordain women. The acceptance of married
priests from other traditions was not new; critics of the law of celibacy
pointed to the long-standing toleration of Ukrainian practice, and as
early as 1967 Pope Paul VI had raised the possibility that ‘married sacred
ministers’ of other denominations might be admitted to ‘full priestly
functions’ while continuing to cohabit with their families, although
future marriages would not be permitted.67 The celibacy imposed upon
candidates for the diaconate was lifted at the Second Vatican Council,
opening up this office to married men.68 However, the welcome afforded
to married Anglican clergy after 1994 generated a good deal of antipathy,
particularly from Catholic priests who had been unable to marry and

65
  K. Rahner, The Shape of the Church to Come (New York, 1974); A. Hastings,
A History of African Christianity, 1950–1975 (Cambridge, 1979) and The Church in Africa,
1450–1950 (Oxford, 1994).
66
  The dedicated website, with message boards and comments, is still accessible at
http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/extras/celibacy.htm
67
  Phipps, Celibacy, p. 252, quoting the 1967 encyclical; see also Y-M. Congar,
L’Episcopat et l’Eglise Universelle (Paris, 1962) p. 263, for a discussion of the exercise of
priestly functions by a Danish convert to Catholicism, accepted by John XXIII.
68
  Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, c.29.
 CONCLUSION 229

continue in their ministry in the Catholic church. In July 1995, the Advent
organisation, representing married Catholic priests in England, strongly
criticised the actions of Cardinal Basil Hume in commending the ministry
of married former Anglican clergy to the Catholic faithful in his pastoral
letter which had been read out in churches on the previous Sunday. Advent
leaders complained that their members felt betrayed by the Cardinal, and
resentful of the ‘vindictive legal process’ that had left them as ‘second-
class citizens’. The Catholic church, it was argued, faced a problem of its
own making, which had its roots in the ‘man-made law of compulsory
celibacy’. Less than honourable conduct by supposedly celibate priests,
and attempts to conceal such conduct, witnessed to the weakness of
the law, and should, Advent claimed, encourage a more compassionate
attitude towards Catholic priests who had married.69 The debate remained
active over a decade later. In an interview with the British newspaper the
Daily Telegraph, the Rt Rev. Malcolm McMahon, Bishop of Nottingham,
suggested that the positive reception given to converts from Anglicanism
had reopened the question of the position of Catholic priests who expressed
a desire to marry. Marriage, the bishop argued, ‘should not bar them from
their vocation but they must be married before they are ordained. The
justice issue also applies to communities which could be deprived of the
Eucharist because there aren’t enough priests’. Married Anglican clergy
had contributed much to parish ministry, he suggested, although if the
Catholic church were to permit married men to be ordained on a wider
scale, there would be clear financial and practical issues to address.70
The necessity of clerical celibacy continues to be debated from both a
practical and theological point of view, and within the more general context
of discussions over the nature of the Catholic priesthood.71 The ordination
of married men, dwindling vocations, and an apparent lack of support
for mandatory clerical celibacy among the younger generation of Catholic
priests has led one commentator to conclude that ‘a married clergy in the
Latin Rite is inevitable’, at least from a sociological standpoint.72 However,
a time of crisis in the church is not, for all, in itself a justification for the
relaxation of the law of celibacy. Indeed as A.M. Cardinal Stickler observed
in his recent study of the historical foundations of clerical celibacy, the
Council of Trent laid down the foundations of the modern law in just such

69
 See, for example, the discussion in the Independent, 7 July 2005.
70
  The Daily Telegraph, 8 November 2008.
71
  J. Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Zur Gemeinschaft Gerufen, die Kirche heute verstehen
(Freiburg, 1991) 98–123; F.J. Laumann, Call and Response. Ordaining Married Men as
Catholic Priests (Berryville VA, 2002); S.L. Jaki, Theology of Priestly Celibacy (Front Royal,
VA: Christendom, 1997); T. McGovern, Priestly Celibacy Today (Chicago, 1998).
72
  Schoenherr, ‘Holy Power?’, p. 140.
230 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

a time of unrest and difficulty for the church.73 Shifting the focus from the
practical problems of clerical celibacy to the figure of the priest as alter
Christus, Stickler argues, restores the debate to its proper place. Since the
Second Vatican Council, the Church has emphasised the position of the
priest who acts as the representative of the divine, in eius persona, and
shares in that ‘ontological bond’ which joins the priesthood to Christ.74
Such a bond could not be subject to the exigencies of the age. Pope John
Paul II was to write in his Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis
(March 1992) of the determination with which the Catholic church had
maintained the law of celibacy, ‘despite all the difficulties and objections
raised down the centuries’. Church and clergy were reminded that ‘celibacy
is a priceless gift of God for the Church and has a prophetic value for the
world today’. It was vital, the pope argued, that celibacy be presented in
its ‘biblical, theological and spiritual richness’, as a sign of the kingdom of
God beyond the material world, of the love of God for the world, and the
love of the priest for his people. The law of celibacy articulated the will of
the church, but the pope commended to the clergy not only celibacy as a
discipline, but also its ‘theological motivation’; the priest was to love the
church, the bride of Christ, as Christ had done, and priestly celibacy was
the gift of self in and with Christ to the church. Celibacy was a witness to
the ‘eschatological kingdom’, but also an incentive to pastoral charity, and
a step in the footsteps of the apostles, who had left all to follow Christ.
Perfect continence for the love of the kingdom had been, from the time of
Christ, prized and praised by the church, and in this context, a commitment
to celibacy was a necessary part of the priesthood.75
Academic and polemical controversy over celibacy has continued
alongside (but also informed by) the practical challenges posed by Catholic
priests leaving the church to marry, and the apparently dwindling vocations
of young men to serve the church. A lively debate was conducted in the
pages of New Blackfriars, prompted by a defence of clerical marriage
penned by Adrian Hastings, printed in the journal in 1978. Hastings,
whose early clerical career had been spent in Uganda, was an active
participant in the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission,
and later a university teacher. In 1978, convinced that there was no
legitimate obstacle to the marriage of priests, Hastings married Anne
Spence, without the permission of the church and, it appeared, without
incurring any formal ecclesiastical penalty. A full-length rationalisation of
his decision was published as In Filial Disobedience, although the basic
principles of his argument were laid down in the shorter New Blackfriars

73
  Stickler, Celibacy, p. 85.
74
  AAS 62 (1970), p. 44; AAS 71 (1979), p. 406, quoted in Stickler, Celibacy, p. 88.
75
  Pope John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis, 25 March 1992.
 CONCLUSION 231

essay, and in A Final Word, published in the same journal in response

to his critics. Hastings argued for the necessity of clerical marriage on
the basis of pastoral need, falling back upon his missionary experience
to provide evidence of congregations who lacked the services of a priest
because no candidates were available who would commit to celibacy. In
contrast, priests in western Europe who had left the ministry to marry
stood as ‘prêtres en foyer’, willing to continue to serve the church, but
prevented from so doing.76 However, Hastings was convinced that clerical
celibacy could not be defended or criticised on purely pragmatic or pastoral
terms. The obligation to celibacy had a ‘semi-doctrinal’ character, and was
rooted in the understanding (or misunderstanding) of holiness. Despite the
barrage of criticism, and the practical problems that the Catholic church
faced, Hastings noted that ‘on no point has the position of Rome been
more consistent’. Married priests had been laicised, but on no occasion
had Rome permitted Catholic priests who attempted marriage to continue
in their marriage and ministry. Such a prohibition, he contested, lacked a
solid foundation. Paul had recommended that the bishop should be the
husband of one wife, and although Hastings argued it would be erroneous
to extrapolate universal practice from a single scriptural text, this principle
had been, the evidence revealed, the practice of the apostolic church.
The restoration of the married priesthood would be the restoration of
evangelical practice. The legislation of the fourth century that began to
regulate the sexual conduct of the clergy had evolved, he believed, from a
sense that there was something incompatible between sex and holiness or
proximity to the sacred, a sense that had its origins not in Scripture but in
ascetic heresies.77 Hastings was clear that this was not a recommendation
that clerical marriage be compulsory, or that only married men should
be accepted into the priesthood, but rather a restoration of the both/and
(rather than either/or) principle that that had guided the early church.
The debate has continued in the current pontificate of Benedict XVI.
The views of the pope had already been made clear, prior to his elevation,
in Salt of the Earth, in which the then Cardinal Ratzinger suggested that

76
  ‘Prêtres en foyer’ has become the established name of the French Catholic priests who
are members of the pan-European La Fédération Européenne de Prêtres Catholiques Mariés,
which gathers together the married priests of Europe, along with their spouses in arguing
for the supremacy of the person over the law, and protests against apparent discrimination
against married priests on the basis of the ecclesiastical discipline of clerical celibacy. See, for
example, http://www.marriedpriests.eu/
77
  Hastings, ‘On celibacy’, New Blackfriars, 59 (issue 694, March 1978): 104–11;
‘Celibacy. A Final Word’, New Blackfriars, 59 (issue 700, September 1978): 402–8; In Filial
Disobedience (Great Wakering, 1978); see also Marcel Boivin’s reply to Hastings in ‘On
Priestly Marriage: A Response To Father Hastings On Celibacy’, New Blackfriars, 60 (Issue
707, April 1979): 182–4.
232 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

although the Church had, and would continually, consider the issue
throughout its history, there was much more to be lost than to be gained
from a relaxation of the rule of celibacy. Priests were bound to celibacy
by the commendation by Christ of those who became ‘eunuchs for the
sake of the kingdom’, by the precedent of the apostolic church, by the
example of the Levites whose inheritance was God alone, and by the
Christological and apostolic meaning of the discipline. Clerical celibacy,
Ratzinger argued, was not a dogma, but ‘an accustomed way of life that
evolved very early in the Church on good biblical grounds’. It was all
the more important in a time of crisis that the commitment to celibacy
was reaffirmed; a poverty of faith created problems for both marriage and
for celibacy, not celibacy alone, and clerical marriage was not the answer
to the difficulties faced by the church. To argue for clerical marriage
from the example of the Greek church, or the Reformed churches, was
to miss the point. Celibacy was coupled to the Catholic priesthood, but
outside the church there was a different understanding of priesthood
itself, Ratzinger argued, and therefore a different rule on celibacy and
marriage. Married priests, particularly those converts from Anglicanism,
were the exception to the rule. 78 A concrete challenge to these principles
came in early November 2006, when a group of Catholic clergy under
the banner The Married Priests Now! Prelature addressed an open letter
to the pope, commending marriage as a means by which the dedication
of the priest to Christ might be enhanced, and calling for the ordination of
married men in the church. At the forefront was the African Archbishop
Emmanuel Milingo, who argued that the decline in ordinations required
more dramatic action than Rome would countenance, and presented
an argument in favour of a married priesthood based upon apostolic
precedent, and the need for the healing of wounds within the church.79 The
archbishop was excommunicated after his unsanctioned ordination of four
North American married men as bishops. The issue of clerical celibacy,
once again thrown into the spotlight, was discussed by Pope Benedict
XVI in November 2006, and reaffirmed in confident terms in a statement
issued on 16 November. This reassertion of the law of celibacy echoed
the earlier statement made at the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist in
November 2005, which affirmed the importance of the ‘inestimable gift of
ecclesiastical celibacy in the practice of the Latin Church’, and urged that

78
  Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium: An Interview With Peter
Seewald (San Francisco, 1997), pp. 194–200.
79
  Pope Paul VI consecrated Milingo as the Bishop of the archdioceses of Lusaka in
1969; Milingo married in 2001, separated from his wife, and then returned to cohabitation.
Details of Married Priests Now! are to be found on the bishop’s website, http://www.
archbishopmilingo.org.
 CONCLUSION 233

the ‘reasons for the relationship between celibacy and priestly ordination
be illustrated adequately to the faithful, in full respect for the traditions of
the Eastern churches’. Confronted by concerns surrounding the decline in
ordinations to the priesthood, the Fathers concluded that the cause of this
decline lay not in obligatory celibacy, but rather in the more general trend
towards the secularisation of society.80 A married priesthood was not to be
regarded as a panacea for the ills of the church.
The resolve of the bishops in 2005 has parallels in the forceful
assertion of Benedict XVI that it is simply not sufficient to understand
priestly celibacy in purely functional terms; clerical celibacy is not merely
a practical issue with practical solutions. Addressing the Bishops of Brazil
in May 2007, the pope expressed his sadness that even within the church
there were those who would question the value of the priestly commitment
to celibacy. Apostolic celibacy, he suggested, was a ‘total entrustment to
God’, and a ‘total openness to the service of souls’. Where ideological,
secular, or factional concerns overrode this belief, ‘the structure of total
consecration to God begins to lose its deepest meaning’.81 Clerical celibacy,
then, is firmly tied to the meaning and function of priesthood, and not
something that could, or should, be eroded by contingent temporal
concerns. The pope’s comments exemplify the complexity of the celibacy
debate in past and present. The roots and the meaning of clerical celibacy
in the Catholic tradition stretch far beyond the conduct and concerns of the
modern clergy, and into the history, traditions, and mysteries of the church
and priesthood, and the breadth of the issue has been reflected in the scope
of the debate over clerical celibacy and marriage in the modern church
and in centuries past. The answer to the basic question of whether married
men should be ordained to the ministry, and whether priests in orders
should be permitted to marry, encompasses more extensive debates over
the interpretation of biblical texts, the understanding of patristic precedent
and its place in the determination of doctrine and practice, the relationship
between scripture and tradition, the theology of the sacraments, and the
role of the priest in the life of the church. The controversy over the origins
and the value of priestly celibacy has been conducted against a backdrop
provided by these broader questions, but has also provided a powerful and
immediate focus for the examination of such issues.

80
 Synod of Bishops, November 2005, Proposition 11.
81
  Benedict XVI, Meeting and Celebration of Vespers with the Bishops of Brazil, 11
May 2007: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2007/may/documents/
hf_ben-xvi_spe_20070511_bishops-brazil_en.html; see also Benedict XVI, Sacramentum
Caritatis: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation 22nd February 2007: http://www.vatican.
va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20070222_
sacramentum-caritatis_en.html
234 Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100–1700

The life of the priest, lived within the parish community, is a highly
visible manifestation of the pastoral and pedagogical priorities of the
church. The commitment to celibacy, most simply understood, leaves
the priest unencumbered by the cares of marriage and household, but it
also embodies a distinctive view of sex, the sacraments, and service. The
eradication of the married priesthood in the eleventh century was tangible
testimony to the priorities of the papacy in the reform of the church. Clergy
who took wives in the sixteenth century presented a perceptible sign of
changes in doctrine and discipline. The reassertion of the commitment
to clerical celibacy at the Council of Trent positioned the eradication of
concubinage as a barometer of the success of Catholic reform, and the
unmarried priesthood as a defining characteristic of post-Reformation
Catholicism. Modern critics of the law of celibacy have failed to dent this
resolve; indeed the modern Church and papacy has repeatedly reasserted
the link between celibacy and priesthood, as a link modelled on apostolic
tradition and maintained throughout the history of the church. For this
reason, clerical celibacy remains an issue which is simultaneously personal
and polemical, individual and institutional, human and historical. At the
close of the fourth century, Pope Siricius commended to the church the
principle that there be one faith, one tradition, and one discipline; the
debate over clerical celibacy in subsequent centuries has embodied these
issues of faith, tradition, and discipline, but the unity for which the pope
hoped has remained, on the subject of clerical celibacy, elusive.
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 Index
Adrian I, pope 75 Athanasius 221
Agapetus, pope 52 Augsburg Confession 158, 160, 174
Alexander II, pope 98–9 Augustine, Saint 34–5, 38–41, 213, 221
Alexander III, pope 107 Authority 10, 12–13, 41, 70–71, 75,
Alexandria 27–8, 60, 62 82–4, 90–91, 98, 109, 116–17,
Ambrose 27, 33, 40–41, 221 122, 151, 154, 169, 174, 176,
Ambrosiaster 33–4 190–91, 197, 206, 208, 214, 217
Ambrosius, Catharinus Politus 187 papal 13, 117, 130–31
Ancyra, Council of 45–6, 63–4, 66, 69,
74, 76–7, 105, 112, 172 Bacon, Francis 22
Anglican-Roman Catholic International Bale, John 149, 156, 162, 171, 177–80
Commission 230 Barnes, Robert 155, 171, 177, 195
Anglo-Norman church 106 Baronius, Cesare 70, 84, 120, 168, 202,
Anonymous, Norman 118 204
Anselm 97, 106–7, 111, 119, 178 Basle, Council of 127, 135, 137–8
Antichrist 4, 12, 132, 146, 165, 177, 187 Becon, Thomas 164, 166, 170, 172, 175,
Anticlericalism 123, 129, 151 177
Antinomianism 146 Bede 75
Antwerp 81, 149, 155, 162–3, 165, 171, Bellarmine, Robert, Cardinal 70, 202, 204
188 Benedict VIII, pope 95
Apel, Johannes 151 Benedict XIV, pope 203
Apostles 8–9, 11, 13, 15, 24, 27–9, 31, Benedict XV, pope 219–20
36, 48, 53, 55, 61, 78, 81, 83, Benedict XVI, pope 229, 232–3
132–3, 163, 165–7, 174, 181, Benefices, hereditary 91–2, 95, 107
188–9, 192, 194, 205, 207, Benno, cardinal 178
213–14, 218, 225, 230 Bernold of Constance 69–70, 72–3, 97,
Apostolic Canons 77–80, 82–3, 115, 175, 114, 116–17
202 Bernold of St Blasien 116
Apostolic church 18, 49, 55, 81, 84, Bickell, Gustav 4, 26, 31, 55, 60, 81,
86–7, 131, 136, 139–41, 166–7, 217–18
175, 188, 201, 204–5, 217, 221, Bishops 1, 7–8, 25–6, 31–3, 38, 41–3,
231–2 45–50, 52–4, 59, 62–4, 67–8, 72,
Apostolic origins of clerical celibacy, 76–7, 79, 81–4, 87, 90, 95–7, 99,
debate 3–4, 11, 26, 16, 18, 28–9, 101, 103, 105–7, 109, 111–12,
31–4, 40, 42–50, 52–3, 55–6, 61– 114–15, 121, 124, 126–7, 134,
4, 66, 71–2, 75, 78–82, 115–16, 151–3, 157, 166, 168–70, 180,
131, 139, 166, 175–6, 189, 192, 196–7, 199, 203–4, 210–12,
201, 204–5, 207, 213, 217–88 214–16, 225–6, 231–3
Apostolic tradition 9, 13, 74, 79, 173, constitutional 210–11
176, 193, 207, 216–17, 234 married 32, 61–2, 77, 107
Aquinas, Thomas 113, 198, 221–2 Boniface VIII, pope 130–31
Arles, Council of 44–6 Bora, Katherine von 146–8, 157
278 index

Bremen, Arnold of 96–7 CITI 227

Bromyard, John 126 Clement VI, pope 131
Bucer, Martin 152, 164, 168 Clement VIII, pope 189, 203, 206
Byzantine church 64, 85 Clement of Alexandria 27–8, 60
Clergy wives 110, 119, 121, 150
Caesarius of Heisterbach 120 Cochlaeus, Johannes 146
Calixtus, Pope 204 Code of Canon Law 3, 6, 219, 224
Calvin, Jean 22, 166, 168–70, 175, 181 Colet, John 129
Cambrai, clergy of 102, 105 Coppens, Joseph 226
Campeggio, cardinal 152 Concubinage, priests 6, 92, 97, 104, 113,
Canon law 3, 6–7, 10–11, 42, 71, 95, 121, 124, 126–8, 136, 139, 141,
100, 139, 143, 150, 160, 177, 183, 149–50, 157, 179, 196–7, 200
198, 200, 213, 219, 222, 224 Concubines 4, 38, 66, 76, 82, 87, 95–8,
Canonists 67, 74, 84, 98, 112–14 105, 109, 112, 120–21, 125, 140,
Cantors 73–4, 77, 89, 118 150, 162, 175, 190, 196–7, 200,
Caprara, Cardinal 211 215
Carafa, Cardinal 191 Constance, council of 135–6, 170, 177–8,
Carlstadt, Andreas 134, 152, 155 Constantinople 73, 174
Carové, Friedrich Wilhelm 214 Continence 3, 5, 13, 16–17, 19, 21, 24,
Carthage 31 26, 28–32, 37–9, 41–2, 44, 47–51,
Carthage, Council of 38, 47–8, 53, 78, 53, 55–6, 59, 61–3, 65, 68–9, 73–4,
80, 84, 172–3 76, 79–81, 85–7, 90, 92, 105, 110,
Casinensis, Paul 75 112–13, 115, 122, 133, 135–7, 139,
Catharinus, Ambrosius 187 193, 205, 217, 220, 222, 224
Celtis, Conrad 139 Continence, of clergy 2–5, 25, 30–31, 37,
Chalcedon, Council of 64, 73–4, 172 39, 41, 45, 48, 50, 52–3, 55–6,
Chastity 9, 22, 32, 35–6, 38, 47–8, 61–2, 61–2, 64, 69, 74, 85, 87, 92–3, 96,
64–5, 68, 85, 92, 98, 102, 106, 102, 108, 137, 186, 190–91, 217
108, 113, 115, 131, 133, 137–40, complete 18–19, 90
148, 152–6, 159, 163, 168, 170, Corinthians, letter to 23–4, 27, 118, 140,
172, 175, 180, 192–3, 206, 219, 162–3, 166, 221
224 Crema, John of 119–20, 178
conjugal 33, 138 Cunibert of Turin 111
Chaucer, Geoffrey 120–21
Chemnitz, Martin 201 Damasus, pope 48, 50
Chobham, Thomas of 113 Damian, Peter 7, 84, 97–8, 108–10, 221
Christ 2, 6, 13, 19, 22–3, 26, 29–30, 36, Dante 132
39, 108–10, 112, 120, 122, 132–3, Deacons 25–6, 29, 42–3, 45–6, 48–50,
136, 140, 146, 154, 166, 176, 179, 52–3, 60, 63–4, 66, 68, 76–8,
193–4, 206, 222–4, 230, 232 82–3, 92, 95–6, 98, 101–3, 105,
first followers of 21, 27–8, 48, 166, 108, 172–3
205, 224 Dead Sea Scrolls 18–19
priesthood of 88, 225 Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests
Christian liberty 147, 153 223
Christian priesthood 9, 13, 16, 22, 24, Desforges, Pierre 206
61–2, 85, 137, 162, 180, 220 Devil 34, 110, 121, 143, 145, 149, 153,
Church history, use of 12, 87, 90, 136 165, 180, 186, 188, 191, 195
 Index 279

Döllinger, I. 216–17 Gaudin, Jacques 205, 207–8

Dolscius, Paul 174 Gelasius, pope 82
Donatism 6, 45, 93, 98, 109, 129, 221 Gerson, Jean 12, 137
Drenss, Augustin 151 Gospels 19–21, 22–3, 28–9, 98, 132, 137,
Dungersheim, Jerome 146 149, 187, 189, 220
Dunstan, Saint 178 Gratian 28, 72, 75, 112–3
Durandus, William 135–6 Greek church 11, 59, 71, 73, 82–4, 116,
131, 138, 140, 173–5, 189, 193,
Eastern churches, clerical marriage in 202–5, 214, 217, 222–3, 232
3–4, 11, 46, 59–63, 69, 71, 73–5, Gregorian Reform 11, 48, 73, 87–9, 91,
77, 79–86, 115, 136, 174–5, 183, 93, 95, 97, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107,
202–4, 215–17, 220, 222–3, 225, 109, 111, 113–5, 117, 119, 121,
233 134, 140, 159, 171, 177
Eck, Johannes 186 Gregory of Nyssa 52
Elvira, synod of 10, 41–2, 56, 66, 69, 76, Gregory VII, pope 10, 69, 72, 87, 89,
87, 218–20 99–103, 105–6, 109, 111–18, 122,
Emser, Johannes 187 139, 151, 173, 176–7, 213
England, church in 89, 91, 107, 119, 123, Gregory IX, pope 121
126, 167, 170, 178, 181, 188 Gregory XIII, pope 203
Epiphanius 29, 220 Gregory XVI, pope 214
Epiphanius of Constantia 61, 109 Gregory the Great, pope 115
Epiphanius of Salamis 50 Gualther, Rudolph 177
Erasmus, Desiderius 126, 146, 180
Erfurt, Council of 177 Harpsfield, Nicholas 171
Essenes 18–19 Hasenberg, Johann 146
Ethelred 94–5 Heaven 1, 13, 21, 36, 61–2, 105, 118,
Eunuchs 2, 20–21, 60, 170, 187, 190, 232 187, 220–22, 224
Eusebius 21, 45, 52, 61, 70 Hedio, Caspar 151
Eustochium 26, 36 Henry I 107
Henry V 117
Faber, Johannes 188 Henry VIII 144, 147, 163, 170, 187
Faculties, general 198–9, 211–12 Himerius, bishop of Tarragona 48–9
Fairbank, George 182 Hippo, Council of 53
Fisher, John 188 Huggarde, Miles 147–8, 150
Flacius, Matthias Illyricus 171, 201 Hugo, bishop of Constance 126, 157
Fliche, Augustin 10 Humbert, Cardinal 71, 75, 83, 108–9, 111
Florentinus, Simon 192 Hume, cardinal Basil 229
Fornication 24, 102, 108, 111, 119, 127, Huntingdon, Henry of 107
132–3, 138, 155, 158–9, 162, 164, Hus, Jan 136, 141
189, 200 Hussites 174
Foxe, John 155–6, 169, 171–3, 177–9
Frith, John 165 Ignatius 20, 32, 60, 221
letter of 26, 32, 167
Gaul, church in 37–8, 77, 169 Incontinence 66, 93, 96, 130–31, 134
Gangres, council of 32, 71, 73, 172 of clergy 73, 112, 116, 121, 126, 128,
Gardiner, Stephen bishop of Winchester 132, 135, 137, 179, 190, 196, 207,
171 214
280 index

Innocent III, pope 121 after ordination 46, 56, 63–5, 81, 199
Institutes of the Christian Religion, The valid 151, 199
166, 168–70, 181 Martyr, Peter 150, 167, 172
Mary 33, 150, 199–200
Jerome 28–9, 34–40, 52, 55, 60, 62–3, Melanchthon, Philip 158, 162–6, 168–71,
168, 186 174, 188
Jewel, John 167, 181 Melfi, synod of 103
John the Baptist 19 Milan 38, 111
John, disciple of Jesus 29 Milingo, Archbishop Emmanuel 232
John XII, pope 75 Mohler, Joseph 213–14
John XXIII, pope 222, 228 Monasticism 67–8, 77, 85, 93, 154
John Paul II, pope 13, 20, 230 Monastic vows 152–6, 158–60, 168, 174,
Joseph II, emperor 212 187, 201–2, 209
Jovinian 28–9, 33, 35–7, 40, 51, 168 Monks, marriage of 49, 143, 148–9,
Juhel, bishop of Dol 106 154–5
More, Thomas 147, 150, 155, 181,
Klingebeil, Steffan 167 185–6, 214
Munster, bishop of 196–7
Lambert, Francis 158 Muntzer, Thomas 152
Lanfranc 106 Murphy-O’Connor, Cardinal Cormac 23
Lateran Council 1123 103–4, 112
Latomus, Jacobus 188 Neocaesarea, council of 64–6, 76–7, 172
Lea, H.C. 7–9, 13, 35, 45, 64–5, 67, 84, Nicaea, first council of 48, 65, 68–71,
89, 91, 122, 124–5, 194, 212–13 96, 98, 100, 105, 112, 115, 116,
Leipzig Disputation 174 169–70, 172, 202, 218
Leo I, pope 101 second Council of 67, 75
Leo IX, pope 97–8, 109, 204 Nicetas 71, 83, 85, 203
Levitical priesthood 5, 18, 48, 133, 161, Nicholas I, pope 73
180–81, 220–21, 223 Nicholas II, pope 98–9, 110–11, 171
Lindet, Thomas 210 Nicolaitism 83, 96, 101–2, 108
Lollards 132–4, 181 Novatian 70
Lombard, Peter 16, 180 Nuns 49, 145–8, 154, 185, 209
London, council of 106, 119
Lorsch, monks of 117 Odo of Cluny 92–3
Louis IX 130 Odo Rigaldus 125
Lucius III, pope, 113–14 Old Catholics 216
Luther, Martin 27, 69, 124, 141, 143–9, Old Testament 11, 16, 41, 49, 52, 115,
151, 153–6, 158, 160, 162–3, 140, 161–2, 180, 220–21
165–70, 173–4, 180, 186–8, 191, Origen 21, 60–61
201–2 Osnabruch, synod of 197
marriage, 143–9, 183, 186, 188 Ossius, bishop of Cordoba 44
Otto, bishop of Constance 101
Maior, John 138
Manichaean 34, 39 186 Palermo 113–14
Map, Walter 120 Paphnutius 47, 65, 67–71, 80, 115–16,
Martin, Thomas 27, 147 169–72, 202, 219
Marriage, second 25–6, 31–2, 76, 82 Paris, Council of 127, 131
 Index 281

Parker, Matthew 163–4, 170–71 Siegfried of Mainz, archbishop 100

Parkyn, Robert 181–2, 200 Simony 96, 100–102, 112, 132, 191
Patarenes 99, 111 Siricius, pope 34, 49–53, 55, 82, 169
Paul 23–7, 30, 50, 98, 159, 162, 165–7, Socrates 63, 68, 70–71
231 Sola scriptura 41, 160–61, 166
Paul III, pope 189–91 Sons of priests 86, 103, 105–6, 113,
Paul VI, pope 20, 22, 223, 227–88, 232 118–19, 125–6, 189, 196
Pavia, synod of 47, 96 Sozomen 68, 70–71, 116
Peter 28–30 Stiltinck, Jan, 170
Philip 29, 130 Subdeacons 50, 53, 64, 66, 77–8, 95–6,
Philip II 195 98, 101–3
Philip IV 131
Philo 18–19 Talleyrand, bishop of Autun 211–12
Pius II, pope 138, 159 Tertullian 28, 31–2, 34
Pius IV, pope 191, 195, 208 Thaner, Friedrich 72
Pius V, pope 195–6 Theiner, Augustin 41, 213–5
Pius XI, pope 220 Timothy, Letter to 25, 50, 60, 62, 153,
Pius XII, pope 23, 222 165–6, 181
Pole, Cardinal Reginald 189, 199 Toledo, council of 124
Polycarp 20, 30, 32 Trent, Council of 2, 10, 12, 40, 166,
Ponet, John 165, 171, 177, 199 185–6, 189–91, 193–8, 200–202,
Prayer 24, 37, 50, 52–3, 61, 78–9, 86, 208–9, 211, 215, 222, 224, 227,
102, 113, 118, 163, 205, 225 230, 234
Prêtres en foyer 207, 210–11 Trullo, council in 26, 46, 63, 67, 71,
Priests, lapsed 198–9, 211 74–80, 82–6, 112, 175, 202, 225
Pseudo-Udalrici 99, 114–15 Tübingen 30, 84, 174, 217
Tudeschi, Nicholas 138
Raemond, Florimund de 148 Turrianus, Francisco 81, 202
Rahner, Karl 228 Tyndale, William 156, 161–2
Ratherius of Verona 90
Reinhard, Anna 156 Ukraine, churches 202–3
Roman Synod 51, 97–9, 105, 117 Ulric of Augsburg 114–15, 171–2
Roskovány, Augustin, bishop of Neutra Urban II, pope 98
8–9, 124
Roy, William 180 Vatican Council I 216–17, 226
Rusticus of Narbonne 53 Vatican Council II 5, 20, 222, 224,
227–8, 230
Sacraments 6, 12, 34, 37, 42, 51, 53, Vatican II 222–3
72–3, 86, 89, 93, 95, 97–8, 102, Vigilantius 29, 35, 37–8, 40, 62, 168, 186
104–5, 109, 111–12, 117–18, Virginity 17, 20, 29, 32–3, 35–7, 39–41,
129–30, 134, 136, 173–4, 179–81, 54–5, 60, 62, 133, 162, 168, 181,
191–2, 200, 227, 233–4 188, 192–3, 205, 218, 221, 224–5
of incontinent clergy 73, 179 Vitricius of Rouen 51–2
Saignet, Guillaume 12, 136–7 Volusianus 171–2
Schurf, Jerome 148 Vows 89, 105, 154–9, 187, 206, 209
Seminaries 195
Shepherd, Luke 180 Walden, Thomas 133
282 index

Waldensians 186 Zaccaria, Francesco Antonio 40, 205–6,

Wales, church in 122, 125 214
Wittenberg 145, 151, 153, 164 Zachary, pope 92
Wycliffe, John 132–4, 141 Zell, Katharina Schutz 158
Zurich 46, 156–7
Zabarella, Francesco 136 Zwingli 156–7