At a synod held at Winchester under St. Dunstan, the monks averred, that
so highly criminal was it for a priest to marry, that even a wooden
cross had audibly declared against the horrid practice. Others place the
first attempt of this kind, to the account of Aelfrick, archbishop of
Canterbury, about the beginning of the eleventh century; however this
may be, we have among the canons a decree of the archbishops of
Canterbury, and York, ordaining, That all ministers of God, especially
priests, should observe chastity, and not take wives: and in the year
1076, there was a council assembled at Winchester, under Lanfranc, which
decreed, that no canon should have a wife; that such priests as lived in
castles and villages should not be obliged to put their wives away, but
that such as had none should not be allowed to marry; and that bishops
should not ordain priests or deacons, unless they previously declared
that they were not married. In the year 1102, archbishop Anselm held a
council at Westminster, where it was decreed, that no archdeacon,
priest, deacon, or canon, should either marry a wife, or retain her if
he had one. Anselm, to give this decree greater weight, desired of the
king, that the principal men of the kingdom might be present at the
council, and that the decree might be enforced by the joint consent both
of the clergy and laity; the king consented, and to these canons the
whole realm gave a general sanction. The clergy of the province of York,
however, remonstrated against them, and refused to put away their wives;
the unmarried refused also to oblige themselves to continue in that
state; nor were the clergy of Canterbury much more tractable.
In the celibacy of the clergy, we may discover also the origin of
nunneries; the intrigues they could procure, while at confession, were
only short, occasional, and with women whom they could not entirely
appropriate to themselves; to remedy which, they probably fabricated the
scheme of having religious houses, where young women should be shut up
from the world, and where no man but a priest, on pain of death, should
enter. That in these dark retreats, secluded from censure, and from the
knowledge of the world, they might riot in licentiousness. They were
sensible, that women, surrounded with the gay and the amiable, might
frequently spurn at the offers of a cloistered priest, but that while
confined entirely to their own sex, they would take pleasure in a visit
from one of the other, however slovenly and unpolished. In the world at
large, should the crimes of the women be detected, the priests have no
interest in mitigating their punishment; but here the whole community of
them are interested in the secret of every intrigue, and should Lucinda
unluckily proclaim it, she can seldom do it without the walls of the
convent, and if she does, the priests lay the crime on some luckless
laic, that the holy culprit may come off with impunity.