THE CELIBACY OF THE CLERGY.
The enforcement of celibacy upon the clergy was an important feature in
the plan of the Hildebrandine reformers of the eleventh century. The idea
which inspired the enthusiasm of the foremost Churchmen of the time was,
no doubt, a grand one. It was to bring the national churches into
practical co-operation by a world-wide ecclesiastical organization, and to
place the spiritual authority of the whole Church in the hand of one man,
in order to control the world-power of kings and princes, and check the
manifold abuses which at that time especially threatened to corrupt and
secularize the Church. The clergy were intended in the Hildebrandine
scheme to be the Pope’s local agents in the administration of this
ecclesiastical monarchy; and in order to detach them from secular and
local ties it was proposed to make the secular clergy a kind of Religious
Order--an anticipation, in some respects, of the organization of the
subsequent Orders of Friars.
We must do the authors of the scheme the justice to remember that they
honestly believed that the celibate state--not the mere accident of being
unmarried, but the chosen and vowed state--was a higher condition of life;
and it was easy to apply St. Paul’s advice to those who could accept it,
to the special condition of the clergy:--“The unmarried (priest) careth
for the things of the Lord, that (he) may be holy both in body and spirit,
but the married (priest) careth for the things of the world.” It was easy
to draw a contrast between the parish priest with a wife and family, bound
by a thousand ties to the ordinary interests and anxieties of the world,
and the celibate priest, who wants nothing beyond the priest’s chamber and
his humble fare, and who gives his whole mind and soul to his daily
devotions and his spiritual ministrations among his flock; his rusty
cassock a uniform as honourable as the soldier’s war-stained coat, his
ascetic life ensuring the reverence which even the worldly-minded pay to
those who despise worldly things.
To the fulfilment of this idea the great body of the secular clergy in
Germany, Italy, and France, as well as England, offered for centuries a
stubborn resistance. They stood on the irrefragable ground that the
priests and Levites of the Old Dispensation were married men; that our
Lord and His apostles gave no such commandment to the Church; that, as a
matter of history, some of the apostles were married men; and that for ten
centuries bishops and priests of the Church all over the world had
married. It was obvious to reply to the supposed advantages of a
priesthood disentangled from worldly anxieties, that, on the contrary, it
was desirable for the pastors in immediate habitual intercourse with the
people to be men who had property and families, because then they could
deal with men on the ground of common interests and sympathies; and that
to impose compulsory celibacy on the secular clergy was a measure full of
the gravest dangers.
The majority of the clergy probably were influenced by the broad common
sense which pronounced the ultramontane idea to be unscriptural,
transcendental, novel, and, therefore, questionable; and, lastly, a burden
which no one had the right to impose upon the unwilling. Some of them
tauntingly desired the pope to see if he could get the spirits from above
to leave their stations and come and rule the Churches under his Holiness,
since men were not good enough for him.
The attempt to introduce celibacy among the secular clergy had been begun
in the latter part of the Saxon period. We have seen that kings made laws
and bishops made canons against the married clergy. We cannot have better
evidence than that of Ælfric’s famous pastoral address, that the Saxon
clergy generally had ignored these laws and canons, and that it had not
been found practicable to enforce them. Ælfric declares that--
The Four General Councils forbade all marriages to ministers of the
altar, and especially to mass-priests [which is a misstatement], and
that the canons command that no bishop nor priest shall have in his
house any woman except his mother or other person who is above
suspicion. “This, to you priests,” he says, “will seem grievous,
because ye have your misdeeds in custom” [you are accustomed to
married priests], “so that it seems to yourselves that ye have no sin
in living in female intercourse as laymen do, and say that Peter the
Apostle had a wife and children. So he and others had before their
conversion, but then forsook their wives and all earthly things”
[which is, to say the least, a doubtful assumption]. “Beloved,” he
goes on, “we cannot now forcibly compel you to chastity, but we
admonish you nevertheless that ye observe chastity as Christ’s
ministers ought in good reputation to the pleasure of God.”
Gregory VII., in the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1074, took a step in
advance of previous legislation on the subject. He peremptorily forbade
marriage to the clergy, pronounced sentence of excommunication against
those who refused to put away their wives, and forbade the laity to be
present at mass when they officiated.
In adopting this legislation in England, Lanfranc considerably modified
it. In the Synod of Winchester, in 1076, it was decreed that no canon
should be married; the married parochial clergy were not required to put
away their wives, but those who were not married were forbidden to take
any; and bishops were required not to ordain deacons or priests unless
they declare that they have not wives. But this legislation seems to have
been largely ignored, and the disobedience winked at.
In 1102, a national synod, held at Westminster, under Anselm of
Canterbury and Gerard of York, sought to draw the line more strictly. It
enacted that no canon, and no one above the order of sub-deacon, might
marry; required those who were married to put away their wives; forbade a
married priest to say mass, and the people to hear him. It added another
edict, to which we shall have to refer hereafter--that sons of priests
were not to succeed to their fathers’ benefices.
It was soon found that it was not possible to enforce these decrees, and
the Pope was appealed to on the question. He was so convinced of the
difficulty, that he dispensed with the canons, and in a letter (1107) to
Anselm gave reasons for so doing, which contain valuable evidence of the
condition of things. He founded the dispensation on the particular
circumstances of the English Church, where, he observes, the greater and
more valuable part of the clergy were the sons of priests, and therefore
he gives Anselm a commission to promote such persons in the Church. He
likewise empowers him to dispense with the canons in other cases where the
untractableness of the English and the interest of religion should make it
necessary. Anselm’s canons were repeated by William of Canterbury and
Thurstan of York in 1126 and 1127, but were met with a stubborn
resistance.[252]
After a short time bishops and great dignitaries ceased to be married men,
and sought to enforce the canons on celibacy which they helped to make.
Cathedral dignitaries also generally paid outward respect to the canons,
but some of them had unacknowledged wives.[253]
In 1128, at a national synod held in London, the synod resigned the
dealing with the recalcitrant clergy into the king’s hands. The king
(Henry I.) disappointed the archbishops by abstaining from any attempt to
enforce celibacy on the clergy, but he ingeniously took advantage of the
opportunity to raise a revenue out of them by permitting the clergy to
retain their wives on payment of a fee for the licence to do so. The king
was said to have raised a great sum of money by this device, which implies
that a great number of the clergy were married and retained their wives.
King John, on the publication of the Interdict, seized the wives of the
clergy, and only released them on payment of heavy ransom.
Synod after synod continued to legislate against them.[254]
In 1222, a synod held at Oxford, under Archbishop Stephen Langton,
enacted that if beneficed men or men in sacred orders should presume
to retain their partners publicly in their dwelling-houses
(_hospitiis_), or should elsewhere have public access to them to the
public scandal, they should be coerced by the withdrawal of their
benefice; and that the clergy might not leave such partners (_i.e._
wives) anything in their wills. It also attacked the poor wives,
enacting that if they did not leave their partners they should be
excluded from the church and the sacraments; if that did not suffice,
they should be stricken with the sword of excommunication; and,
lastly, the secular arm should be invoked against them.[255]
Archbishop Richard of Wethershead, in 1229 or 1230 repeated the decree
that men of the order of sub-deacon and upwards who had married should
put away their wives, though they were unwilling and refused to
consent,[256] and if they persisted in having publicly a female
partner, should, after a first, second, and third warning, be deprived
of every benefice and office.
St. Edmund the Canonized Archbishop, in 1234 or 1235, enacted that if
any clerics who had been suspended for incontinency should presume to
continue to exercise their office they should be deprived of their
benefices, and for their double fault _perpetuo damnentur_. He tries
to make the rectors inform against the clerics in their parishes,
threatening that if a case comes to his knowledge by common report
before the rector has given in his accusation against his brother, the
rector shall be taken to have known of it, and shall be punished as a
partaker in the sin. Lastly, he decrees that prelates (archdeacons,
officials, and rural deans) who presume to support such persons in
their iniquity, especially for the offer of money or of any other
temporal advantage, shall be subject to the same penalty.
In 1237, Cardinal Otho came from Rome at the request of the king
(Henry III.), unknown to the nobles, and summoned a national council
at St. Paul’s. It was understood that he was going to make strong
decrees against the abuses of the clergy, and especially against the
pluralists and the illegitimates, and feeling ran so high among the
clergy that the legate obtained from the king an attendance of some
nobles, and a guard of some armed knights and about two hundred
soldiers, who were placed in ambush for his protection. The decree
against the pluralists was so vehemently opposed that the cardinal
postponed this question till the Pope could be appealed to.
The canon against the married clergy declared that unless clerks,
especially those in holy orders, who publicly keep concubines in their
houses, or in those of others’, dismiss them therefrom within a month,
they shall be suspended from every office and benefice, and if they
persist, shall be deprived. And “we strictly order that archbishops
and bishops shall make diligent inquiries throughout all their
deaneries, and that what we have decreed shall be observed.”
The canon on sons of priests forbade the prelates from presuming
henceforth under any pretext, or by any fraud, to appoint or admit any
to benefices which their fathers held by any kind of title, either to
the whole or to part, and that they who already hold such benefices
shall be deprived.
In 1265, Cardinal Othobon presided over a national council at London,
which was of great authority, and was regarded subsequently as a rule
of discipline for the English Church, in which the preceding
legislation was again repeated.
The Council of Reading, under Archbishop Peckham, in 1279, refers to
the canon of Othobon _contra concubinarios_, and orders that
archdeacons shall read it at their visitations and see that it is read
by the rural deans at their chapters (the laity being excluded), and
in case of neglect they shall fast on bread and water on the six week
days (unless infirmity hinder them) until they have read or caused it
to be read at the next chapter.
Were the laity excluded to screen the infirmities of their pastors, or
because the expression of lay dissent would have encouraged the clergy in
their contumacy? May we conjecture that, in spite of the urgent commands
of the archbishop, the reading of the canon was often omitted, and that
the archdeacons and rural deans excused themselves from the consequent
penance under favour of the saving clause?[257]
The legislation is itself a witness to the existence of the practices
which it tries to suppress. We need no further proof that in the
thirteenth century many of the clergy were married men, that in some cases
they lived openly with their wives in their dwelling-houses, or, in other
cases, they visited them openly in separate houses provided for them; that
they refused to give them up in spite of repeated synodical decrees; that
clerics who were not themselves married countenanced their married
brethren; that even the dignified officials whose business it was to take
proceedings against them, hung back from doing so.
After the middle of the fourteenth century this subject disappears from
the acts of the synods; not because the clergy had come universally to
obey the former canons, but because the question had found a solution,
which we proceed to describe. Celibacy was confessedly not a Divine
ordinance, but an ecclesiastical regulation, and so long as the two evils
were avoided (1) of the parochial benefices being overburdened by the
demands of an avowed family; and (2) of the hereditary descent of
benefices by the absence of lawful heirs; the ecclesiastical authorities
might be satisfied with the obedience of a large proportion of the clergy,
and willing to connive at the solution of the question to which the rest
resorted.
The solution was as follows: The secular cleric was not bound by any
Divine ordinance to celibacy, and did not, like the monks, take any vow of
celibacy on admission to Orders. It was only an ecclesiastical regulation;
and he took leave to evade the canon. If he married, the marriage was not
void in itself, it was only voidable if brought before the Ecclesiastical
Court during the lifetime of the parties; but he had taken his precautions
in view of that contingency; the marriage was irregularly performed in
some particular, or performed in such circumstances that it was incapable
of legal proof. It was something like the morganatic marriages of German
princes, illegal, derogatory, not conferring on wife and children the
status and rights of legal wife and children, but still not in fact, or in
the estimation of society, immoral and disreputable.
It is notorious that in the fifteenth century there were many
ecclesiastics, from the popes downwards, who had wives, but not living in
their houses, and not presented to the world as wives,[258] and they had
children who were presented to the world as nephews and nieces. Warham,
the last Archbishop of Canterbury before the Reformation, is said (by
Erasmus[259]) to have had a wife who was not secluded from the knowledge
and society of his friends; Cranmer certainly married his second wife, the
niece of Osiander, before he was archbishop, and did not sever his ties
with her after he became archbishop. And it is clear that these relations
were not regarded as immoral and disgraceful; in fact, the common sense of
mankind gives easy absolution for the breach of inequitable laws.[260]
But there is no doubt that the ambiguity of such relations, at the best,
laid open those who entered into them to just censure, and must have
lowered their own moral tone and that of those thus connected with them.
Neither is it to be denied that enforced celibacy, and the loose notions
encouraged by such connections as those here described, led to a certain
amount of profligacy which admits of no excuse or palliation.
So the ultramontane policy at length won a victory--of a sort. It
succeeded in preventing the clergy from having wives by conniving at their
concubines; it left no legitimate sons of rectors to claim the heritage of
their fathers’ benefices, and gave dispensations to their illegitimate
sons; it established a celibate priesthood, with all the scandals and
suspicions associated with it; it withdrew its clergy from the ordinary
affairs of life, and at the same time from the leadership of the current
practical life of the people. In a biting phrase of the time of Matthew
Paris, “The pope deprived the clergy of sons, and the devil sent them
nephews.”
We have given a--perhaps disproportionately--long chapter to a not very
agreeable subject; but it seemed desirable to take the pains necessary to
put the matter in its proper light, and not to allow the Englishmen of the
great period, from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, to lie under the
suspicion of being so ungodly that the clergy generally lived in open
immorality, and the laity thought little the worse of them for it.
* * * * *
An entry in a MS. Book of Ecclesiastical Causes reveals the possible
complications which might arise out of these marriages. Marriages of the
clergy were not null and void, they were only voidable by proceedings
which must be taken in the lifetime of the parties. So that it was always
possible that the children of such a marriage might after their father’s
death claim as heirs to his estate, and might have the means of proving
their parents’ marriage; in which case they would inherit to the exclusion
of those who had thought themselves the heirs. For example, Sir John de
Sudley, knight, and Elizabeth, wife of Sir Baldwyn de Frevyle, knight,
relatives and heirs of Peter, the uncle of the said Sir John, a
sub-deacon, alleged that marriage had been contracted by the said
sub-deacon, to their exclusion from the heirship, and prayed that the
marriage might be pronounced null, lest the children of the said
sub-deacon should claim his heirship. Sir Peter de Montford seems to be
the name of the sub-deacon aforesaid, and Margaret Furnivale that of his
wife.[261]
* * * * *
Chaucer, in “The Miller’s Tale,” seems incidentally to show what was the
popular view of the children of a cleric. The Miller, a Yeoman, a man of
comparative wealth and consideration in his village, had married a
parson’s daughter:--
A wife he hadde commen of noble kin,
The parson of the town her father was.
Her “noble kin” points perhaps to the fact that the parson of the town was
of the family of the lord of the manor. She had received the education of
a lady--
She was yfostered in a nonnerie.
As to her personal character--
She was proud and pert as is a pie.
Next the poet puts upon his stage the daughter of this worthy pair--
A daughter hadden they betwixt them two;
and it is what he says about this young lady which proves most clearly
that neither mother nor daughter suffered in the estimation of society
from the condition of their birth:
The parson of the town, for she was faire,
In purpose was to maken her his heire
Both of his catel and of his messuage,
And strange he made it of her marriage;
His purpose was for to bestow her hie
Into some worthie blood of ancestrie.
Geoffrey of Childewick, a knight, married Clarissa, the daughter of a
country priest, but she was the sister of the famous John Mansell, the
minister of Henry III.
A man was called priest’s son, not as a nickname, but as a surname
recognized in formal legal documents, as in the “Pleas of the Crown,” c.
1220, Hugo Clark appeals _Paganus filius Sacerdotis_ and others of having
beaten him and broken his teeth, etc.[262]
The subject is rather fully illustrated in the MS. _Omne Bonum_ (Royal 6
E. VI.) of the fourteenth century in the British Museum. At f. 295, under
the title _Clericorum et mulierum cohabitatio_, is a quaint picture of a
bishop parting a group of clergy from a group of women. At f. 296 _verso_,
under the title _De clericis conjugatio_, is represented a group of clergy
on the left, a group of women on the right, and a cradle containing a baby
between the two groups; the text is on the penalties against clerical
marriages, but it calls the women _uxores_--wives. Again, in the second
volume of the work (Royal 6 E. VII.), at f. 138, under the title _Filii
Presbyterum_, the picture shows three priests on the left, and women on
the right, with three children kneeling between them; the text is on the
disabilities of sons of priests.
* * * * *
Another branch of the same subject is the determination of the rulers of
the Church that the sons of clerics should not be allowed to succeed to
their fathers’ benefices. The hereditary succession of the semi-secular
Saxon monasteries afforded a venerable precedent for doing so. The
tendency of the feudal system was to make all offices hereditary, and the
practice was growing up of making church benefices hereditary, and
treating them like lay fiefs; _e.g._ dividing them between two or more
sons, as if they were an ordinary estate; demanding a fine from a new
rector as the lord of the manor did from a new tenant; making the
condition that the presentee should give up this or that ancient
possession of the benefice, or should pay an annual pension to the patron.
The end of this would have been that the benefices of the church would
have become hereditary, impaired, and secularized.
How far the mischief had already gone is illustrated by two or three
examples which we are able to quote.[263] In York, immediately after the
Conquest, there was something very like a succession to the
archbishopric. The provostship of Hexham descended from father to son, all
of them being priests. The Deans of Whalley and Kettelwell, ecclesiastics
of great jurisdiction and influence, were married, and their offices
descended from father to son for generations. In the episcopal registers
we find from time to time sons succeeding their fathers well on in the
thirteenth century, notwithstanding the canons and synods which prohibited
it.
The great act of defence against this danger which threatened was the
canon which forbade the son of a parson to succeed to his father’s
benefice. The canon was re-enacted from time to time, but not without
occasional instances of strenuous resistance. Thus, in 1235, Alexander,
Bishop of Coventry, complained to Pope Gregory IX., that certain rectors,
sons of priests, presumed to occupy their fathers’ benefices by force of
arms; and in some cases where fit incumbents had been placed, the priest’s
sons had threatened them with injury to members and life, so that they
feared to dwell there; and he asks the pope’s protection.[264] The pope
tells him to deprive them of all their benefices.[265]
Some of the results of the state of things above described appear very
frequently in the bishops’ registers. Illegitimacy, we have seen, was one
of the defects which stood in the way of a man’s ordination, and the son
of a priest was regarded by the canons as illegitimate; but the bishop
could, if he pleased, give a dispensation which removed the barrier, and
there are many records of such dispensations.[266] Sometimes the
dispensation only admits the grantee to take minor orders, sometimes “to
take all the sacred orders, and to hold ecclesiastical benefices even with
cure of souls.” In the Register of Bishop Quivil, of Exeter, 1282, is a
record of a _Dispensatio super defectu natalium_ granted to J. de
Axemuthe, the defect being that he was _de presbytero genitus et soluta_.
So, in the Exeter Register of Bishop Stapledon, J. de Hurbestone, clerk,
in 1308, had a dispensation, being _de presbytero genitus et soluta_.
_Soluta_ means single woman, but in the eye of the canon law and of the
bishop, the wife of a priest would be _soluta_, so that these may be cases
not of immorality, but of married priests. In the Register of Montacute,
Bishop of Ely, is a record of a dispensation (1338) to the son of Ada
Bray, of Canterbury, _qui patre de presbytero genitus_, to be promoted to
all minor orders.[267] In a great number of cases the nature of the
illegitimacy is _soluto genitus et soluta_--born of a single man and
single woman; it is very possible that a number of sons of the clergy may
be included in this formal legal description also.
Sometimes a man, refused perhaps by his own bishop, went to Rome for a
dispensation, and obtained it.[268] Sometimes the Papal Court gave a
priest’s son license to be promoted to any dignity _short of a
bishopric_.[269]
If a man, being thus disqualified, neglected to obtain a proper
dispensation, he might find the neglect a serious difficulty in
after-life, or if he failed to have at hand the proof of his dispensation;
thus, in 1234, it was objected to Thomas de Melsonby, prior of Durham,
that he was the son of a rector of Melsonby, and born while his father was
in holy orders.[270] Similarly on Feb. 20, 1308-9, Stapledon, bishop of
Exeter, in the chapter-house of Launceston Priory, admonished the prior on
pain of deprivation to exhibit, within two years, to himself or his
successors, his “_Privilegium_” by virtue of which he retained the
dignity, being illegitimate. He appeared within the term and satisfied the
bishop, and was discharged.[271]
It appears that those who were thrust out on this ground were treated with
some consideration. In 1126, Wm. de Ruley was deprived of the Church of
Ruley, on the ground that he was the son of the last minister; but the
archbishop assigned to him the tithes of a chapelry in the parish for his
support during his life.[272] The mandate for the removal of Peter of
Wivertorp from the Church of Wivertorp, for the same reason, concludes
with the note, _salva pensione_, from which we infer that all incumbents
removed for this cause were entitled to, or at least were usually granted,
a pension. But Peter of Wivertorp did not rest content with his
deprivation. He made friends at the Court of Rome, representing that his
father was married when in minor orders, and that he himself had held the
benefice for ten years; and obtained a letter from Pope Honorius
interceding for him, that he should be allowed to retain Wivertorp till
the archbishop gave him some other competent living.[273]
The curt, formal entries in these musty records sometimes seem to give us
a glimpse into men’s hearts and lives: John Curteys, Vicar of Hobeche, in
his will, made in 1418, leaves all his lands in Holbeach and Quappelode,
to William Curteys for life, on condition that he shall become a priest as
soon as possible after obtaining his legitimation, to celebrate for the
souls of his parents; the remainder for pious uses.[274] We venture to
conjecture that John Curteys, the vicar, in view of his approaching end,
was uneasy in his conscience about the uncanonical marriage of which
William was the offspring; therefore he thus appeals to his son to obtain
as rapidly as may be a dispensation, and ordination to the priesthood;
and then to use continually during his future life his priestly office in
praying for the souls of his erring parents.
The author of “Piers Plowman’s Vision” includes these dispensations to
priests’ sons, and sons of serfs, among the abuses of his time, in lines
which are worth quoting--
For should no clerk be crowned,[275] But if he come were
Of franklins and freemen, And of folk wedded.
Bondmen[276] and bastards, And beggars’ children,[276]
These belong to labour, And lord’s children should serve
Both God and good men As their degree askith.
Some to sing masses, Others to sit and write,
Reade and receive, What Reason ought to spend.
And since bondmen’s bairns Have been made bishops,
And bastard bairns Have been archdeacons,
And cobblers and their sons For silver have been knights,
And monks and monials, That mendicants should feed,[277]
Have made their kin knights, And knights’ fees purchased,
Popes and Patrons Poor gentle blood refuse,
And take Simond’s son, Sanctuary to keep.
Life holiness and love Have been long hence,
And will, till it be weared out Or otherwise ychanged.