rule had been neglected by ordering that for the future no married man
should be ordained deacon without making promise of separation from
his wife, for contravention of which he was to suffer degradation;
while those who had previously been admitted to orders were only
subjected to the canon of the council of Turin, incurring merely loss
of promotion.[137] This evidently indicates that the regulation was
a novelty, for it admits the injustice of subjecting to the rigor
of the canon those who had taken orders without being aware of the
obligations incurred; and it is a fair conclusion to suppose that this
was a compromise by which the existing clergy gave their assent to the
rule for the benefit of their successors, provided that they themselves
escaped its full severity. In fact, it seemed to be impossible to
make the church of Gaul accept the rule of discipline. About 459, we
find Leo I., in answer to some interrogatories of Rusticus, Bishop
of Narbonne, laboriously explaining that deacons and subdeacons, as
well as bishops and priests, must treat their wives as sisters.[138]
Rusticus had evidently asked the question, and Leo expresses no
surprise at his ignorance.
The Irish Church, founded about the middle of the fifth century,
although it was to a great extent based on monachism, apparently did
not at first order the separation of the sexes. A century later an
effort seems to have been made in this direction; but the canons of a
synod held in the early part of the eighth century show that priests at
that time were not prevented from having wives.[139]
Even where the authority of the decretals of Siricius and Innocent was
received with respectful silence, it was not always easy to enforce
their provisions. An epistle of Innocent to the bishops of Calabria
shows that, within territory depending strictly upon Rome itself, a
passive resistance was maintained, requiring constant supervision and
interference to render the rule imperative. Some priests, whose growing
families rendered their disregard of discipline as unquestionable as it
was defiant, remained unpunished. Either the bishops refused to execute
the laws, or their sympathies were known to be with the offenders, for
the pious layman whose sensibilities were wounded by the scandal felt
himself obliged to appeal to the Pope. Innocent accordingly ordered the
accused to be tried and to be expelled, while he expressed no little
surprise at the negligence of the prelates who were so remiss.[140] It
is more difficult to understand the edict of 420, issued by Honorius,
to which allusion has already been made (p. 55). This law expressly
declares that the desire for purity does not require the separation of
wives whose marriage took place before the ordination of their husbands.
These disconnected attempts at resistance were unsuccessful.
Sacerdotalism triumphed, and the rule which forbade marriage to those
in orders, and separated husband and wife, when the former was promoted
to the ministry of the altar, became irrevocably incorporated in the
canon law. Throughout the struggle the Papacy had a most efficient ally
in the people. The holiness and the necessity of absolute purity was
so favorite a theme with the leading minds of the church, and formed
so prominent a portion of their daily homilies and exhortations, that
the popular mind could not but be deeply impressed with its importance,
and therefore naturally exacted of the pastor the sacrifice which
cost so little to the flock. An instance or two occurring about this
period will show how vigilant was the watch kept upon the virtue of
ecclesiastics, and how summary was the process by which indignation
was visited upon even the most exalted, when suspected of a lapse from
the rigid virtue required of them. Thirty years after the ordination
of St. Brice, who succeeded St. Martin in the diocese of Tours, rumor
credited him with the paternity of a child unseasonably born of a nun.
In their wrath the citizens by common consent determined to stone him.
The saint calmly ordered the infant, then in its thirtieth day, to be
brought to him, and adjured it in the name of Christ to declare if
it were his, to which the little one firmly replied “Thou art not my
father!” The people, attributing the miracle to magic, persisted in
their resolution, when St. Brice wrapped a quantity of burning coals
in his robe, and pressing the mass to his bosom carried it to the tomb
of St. Martin, where he deposited his burden, and displayed his robe
uninjured. Even this was insufficient to satisfy the outraged feelings
of the populace, and St. Brice deemed himself fortunate in making his
escape uninjured, when a successor was elected to the bishopric.[141]
Somewhat similar was the case of St. Simplicius, Bishop of Autun.
Even as a layman, his holy zeal had led him to treat as a sister his
beautiful wife, who was inspired with equal piety. On his elevation
to the episcopate, still confident of their mutual self-control,
she refused to be separated from him. The people, scandalized at
the impropriety, and entertaining a settled incredulity as to the
superhuman virtue requisite to such restraint, mobbed the bishop’s
dwelling, and expressed their sentiments in a manner more energetic
than respectful. The saintly virgin called for a portable furnace full
of fire, emptied its contents into her robe, and held it uninjured
for an hour, when she transferred the ordeal to her husband, saying
that the trial was as nothing to the flames through which they had
already passed unscathed. The result with him was the same, and the
people retired, ashamed of their unworthy suspicions.[142] Gregory of
Tours, who relates these legends, was sufficiently near in point of
time for them to have an historical value, even when divested of their
miraculous ornaments. They bring before us the popular tendencies and
modes of thought, and show us how powerful an instrument the passions
of the people became, when skilfully aroused and directed by those in
authority.
* * * * *
The Western church was thus at length irrevocably committed to the
strict maintenance of ecclesiastical celibacy, and the labors of the
three great Latin Fathers, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustin, were crowned
with success. It is perhaps worth while to cast a glance at such
evidences as remain to us of the state of morals about this period
and during the fifth century, and to judge whether the new rule of
discipline had resulted in purifying the church of the corruptions
which had so excited the indignation of the anchorite of Bethlehem,
and had nerved him in his fierce contests with those who opposed the
enforced asceticism of the ministers of Christ.
How the morals of the church fared during the struggle is well
exhibited in the writings of St. Jerome himself, as quoted above,
describing the unlawful unions of the agapetæ with ecclesiastics
and the horrors induced by the desire to escape the consequences of
incautious frailty. Conclusions not less convincing may be drawn from
his assertion that holy orders were sometimes assumed on account of the
superior opportunities which clericature gave of improper intercourse
with women;[143] and from his description of the ecclesiastics, who
passed their lives in female companionship, surrounded by young female
slaves, and leading an existence which differed from matrimony only in
the absence of the marriage ceremony.[144]
But a short time after the recognition of the rule appeared the law of
Honorius, promulgated in 420, to which reference has already been made.
It is possible that the permission of residence there granted to the
wives of priests may have been intended to act as a partial cure to
evils caused by the enforcement of celibacy; and this is rendered the
more probable, since other portions of the edict show that intercourse
with improper females had increased to such a degree that the censures
of the church could no longer restrain it, and that an appeal to
secular interference was necessary, by which such practices should be
made a crime to be punished by the civil tribunals.[145] That even this
failed lamentably in purifying the church may be gathered from the
proceedings of the provincial councils of the period.
Thus, in 453, the council of Anjou repeats the prohibition of improper
female intimacy, giving as a reason the ruin constantly wrought by it.
For those who thereafter persisted in their guilt, however, the only
penalty threatened was incapacity for promotion on the part of the
lower grades, and suspension of functions for the higher[146]—whence
we may conclude that practically an option was afforded to those
who preferred sin to ambition. The second council of Arles, in 443,
likewise gives an insight into the subterfuges adopted to evade the
rule and to escape detection.[147] About this period a newly-appointed
bishop, Talasius of Angers, applied to Lupus of Troyes and Euphronius
of Autun for advice concerning various knotty points, among which were
the rules respecting the celibacy of the different grades. In their
reply the prelates advised their brother that it would be well if
the increase of priests’ families could be prevented, but that such
a consummation was almost impossible if married men were admitted to
orders, and that if he wanted to escape ceaseless wrangling and the
scandal of seeing children born to his priests, he had better ordain
those only who were single.[148] The subject was one of endless effort.
In fact, of the numerous councils whose canons have reached us, held in
Gaul and Spain during the centuries which intervened until the invasion
of the Saracens and the decrepitude of the Merovingian dynasty caused
their discontinuance, there is scarcely one which did not feel the
necessity of legislating on this delicate matter. It would be tedious
and unprofitable to detail specifically the innumerable exhortations,
threats, and ingenious devices resorted to in the desperate hope of
enforcing obedience to the rules and of purifying the morals of the
clergy. Suffice it to say that the constantly varying punishments
enacted, the minute supervision ordered over every action of the
priesthood, the constant attendance of witnesses whose inseparable
companionship should testify to the virtue of each ecclesiastic, and
the perpetual iteration of the rule in every conceivable shape, prove
at once the hopelessness of the attempt, and the incurable nature of
the disorders of which the church was at once the cause and the victim.
In short, this perpetual legislation frequently betrays the fact that
it was not only practically impossible to maintain separation between
the clergy and their wives, but that at times marriage was not uncommon
even within the prohibited orders.[149]
Perhaps this may not move our surprise when we glance at the condition
of morality existing throughout the Empire in the second quarter of
the fifth century, as sketched by a zealous churchman of the period.
Salvianus, Bishop of Marseilles, was a native of Trèves. Three times he
witnessed the sack of that unfortunate city by the successive barbarian
hordes which swept over Western Europe, and he lifts up his voice,
like Jeremiah, to bewail the sins of his people, and the unutterable
misfortunes which were the punishment but not the cure of those
sins. Nothing can be conceived more utterly licentious and depraved
than the whole framework of society as described by him, with such
details as preclude us from believing that holy indignation or pious
sensibility led him to exaggerate the outlines or to darken the shades
of the picture. The criminal and frivolous pleasures of a decrepit
civilization left no thought for the absorbing duties of the day or the
fearful trials of the morrow. Unbridled lust and unblushing indecency
admitted no sanctity in the marriage-tie. The rich and powerful
established harems, in the recesses of which their wives lingered,
forgotten, neglected, and despised. The banquet, the theatre, and the
circus exhausted what little strength and energy were left by domestic
excesses. The poor aped the vices of the rich, and hideous depravity
reigned supreme and invited the vengeance of Heaven. Such rare souls
as could remain pure amid the prevailing contamination would naturally
take refuge in the contrast of severe asceticism, and resolutely seek
absolute seclusion from a world whose every touch was pollution. The
secular clergy, however, drawn from the ranks of a society so utterly
corrupt, and enjoying the wealth and station which rendered their
position an object for the ambition of the worldly, could not avoid
sharing to a great extent the guilt of their flocks, whose sins were
more easily imitated than eradicated. Nor does Salvianus confine his
denunciations to Gaul and Spain. Africa and Italy are represented as
even worse, the prevalence of unnatural crimes lending a deeper disgust
to the rivalry in iniquity. Rome was the sewer of the nations, the
centre of abomination of the world, where vice openly assumed its most
repulsive form, and wickedness reigned unchecked and supreme.
It is true that the descriptions of Salvianus are intended to include
the whole body of the people, and that his special references to the
church are but few. Those occasional references, however, are not of a
nature to exempt it from sharing in the full force of his indignation.
When he pronounces the Africans to be utterly licentious, he excepts
those who have been regenerated in religion—but these he declares to
be so few in number that it is difficult to believe them Africans.
What hope, he asks, can there be for the people when even in the church
itself the most diligent search can scarce discover one chaste amid so
many thousands: and when imperial Carthage was tottering to its fall
under the assaults of the besieging Vandals, he describes its clergy
as wantoning in the circus and the theatre—those without falling under
the sword of the barbarian, those within abandoning themselves to
sensuality.[150] This, be it remembered, is that African church which
had just been so carefully nurtured in the purest asceticism for thirty
years, under the unremitting care of Augustin, who died while his
episcopal city of Hippo was encircled with the leaguer of the Vandals.
Nor were these disorders attributable to the irruption of the
Barbarians, for Salvianus sorrowfully contrasts their purity of morals
with the reckless dissoluteness of the Romans. The respect for female
virtue, inherent in the Teutonic tribes, has no warmer admirer than he,
and he recounts with wonder how the temptations of luxury and vice,
spread before them in the wealthy cities which they sacked, excited
only their disgust, and how, so far from yielding to the allurements
that surrounded them, they sternly set to work to reform the depravity
of their new subjects, and enacted laws to repress at least the open
manifestations which shocked their untutored virtue.
When corruption so ineradicable pervaded every class, we can scarce
wonder that in the story of the trial of Sixtus III., in 440, for the
seduction of a nun, when his accusers were unable to substantiate the
charge, he is said to have addressed the synod assembled in judgment
by repeating to them the story of the woman taken in adultery, and
the decision of Christ. Whether it were intended to be regarded as a
confession, or as a sarcasm on the prelates around him, whom he thus
challenged to cast the first stone, the tale whether true or false is
symptomatic of the time.[151]
As regards the East, if the accusations brought against Ibas,
Metropolitan of Edessa, at the Synod of Berytus in 448,[152] are
worthy of credit, the Oriental church was not behind the West in the
effrontery of sin.
VI.
THE EASTERN CHURCH.
During the period which we have been considering, there had gradually
arisen a divergence between the Christians of the East and of the
West. The Arianism of Constantius opposed to the orthodoxy of Constans
lent increased development to the separation which the division of the
Empire had commenced. The rapid growth of the New Rome founded on the
shores of the Bosporus gave to the East a political metropolis which
rendered it independent of the power of Rome, and the patriarchate
there erected absorbed to itself the supremacy of the old Apostolic
Sees, which had previously divided the ecclesiastical strength of the
East. In the West, the Bishop of Rome was unquestionably the highest
dignitary, and when the separation relieved him of the rivalry of
prelates equal in rank, he was enabled to acquire an authority over
the churches of the Occident undreamed of in previous ages. As yet,
however, there was little pretension of extending that power over
the East, and though the ceaseless quarrels which raged in Antioch,
Constantinople, and Alexandria enabled him frequently to intervene
as arbiter, still he had not yet assumed the tone of a judge without
appeal or of an autocratic lawgiver.
Though five hundred years were still to pass before the Greek schism
formally separated Constantinople from the communion of Rome, yet
already, by the close of the fourth century, the characteristics which
ultimately led to that schism were beginning to develop themselves with
some distinctness. The sacerdotal spirit of the West showed itself
in the formalism which loaded religion with rules of observance and
discipline enforced with Roman severity. The inquiring and metaphysical
tendencies of the East discovered unnumbered doubtful points of
belief, which were argued with exhaustive subtlety and supported by
relentless persecution. However important it might be for any polemic
to obtain for his favorite dogma the assent of the Roman bishop,
whose decisions on such points thus constantly acquired increased
authority, yet when the Pope undertook to issue laws and promulgate
rules of discipline, whatever force they had was restricted to the
limits of the Latin tongue. Accordingly, we find that the decretals
of Siricius and Innocent I. produced no effect throughout the East.
Asceticism continued to flourish there as in its birthplace, but it was
voluntary, and there is no trace of any official attempt to render it
universally imperative. The canon of Nicæa of course was law, and the
purity of the church required its strict observance, to avoid scandals
and immorality;[153] but beyond this and the ancient rules excluding
digami and prohibiting marriage in orders no general laws were insisted
on, and each province or patriarchate was allowed to govern itself in
this respect. How little the Eastern prelates thought of introducing
compulsory celibacy is shown by the fact that at the second general
council, held at Constantinople in 381, only four or five years before
the decretals of Siricius, there is no trace of any legislation on
the subject; and this acquires increased significance when we observe
that although this council has always been reckoned Œcumenic, and has
enjoyed full authority throughout the church universal, yet out of
one hundred and fifty bishops who signed the acts, but one—a Spanish
prelate—was from the West.
This avoidance of action was not merely an omission of surplusage.
Had the disposition existed to erect the custom of celibacy into a
law, there was ample cause for legislation on the subject. Epiphanius,
who died in the year 403 at a very advanced age, probably compiled
his “Panarium” not long after this period; he belonged to the extreme
school of ascetics, and lost no opportunity of asserting the most rigid
rule with regard to virginity and continence, which he considered to
be the base and corner-stone of the church. While assuming celibacy
to be the rule for all concerned in the functions of the priesthood,
he admits that in many places it was not observed, on account of the
degradation of morals or of the impossibility of obtaining enough
ministers irreprehensible in character to satisfy the needs of the
faithful.[154]
That Epiphanius endeavored to erect into a universal canon rules only
adopted in certain churches is rendered probable by an allusion of St.
Jerome, who, in his controversy with Vigilantius, urged in support
of celibacy the custom of the churches of the East (or Antioch), of
Alexandria, and of Rome.[155] He thus omits the great exarchates of
Ephesus, Pontus, and Thrace, as not lending strength to his argument.
Of these the first is perhaps explicable by the latitudinarianism
of its metropolitan, Anthony, Bishop of Ephesus. At the council of
Constantinople, held in 400, this prelate was accused of many crimes,
among which were simony, the conversion to the use of his family of
ecclesiastical property and even of the sacred vessels, and further,
that after having vowed separation from his wife, he had had children
by her.[156] Even Egypt, the nursery of monachism, affords a somewhat
suspicious example in the person of Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais. This
philosophic disciple of Hypatia, when pressed to accept the bishopric,
declined it on various grounds, among which was his unwillingness
to be separated from his wife, or to live with her secretly like an
adulterer, the separation being particularly objectionable to him, as
interfering with his desire for numerous offspring.[157] Synesius,
however, was apparently able to reconcile the incompatibilities, for
after accepting the episcopal office, we find, when the Libyans invaded
the Pentapolis and he stood boldly forth to protect his flock, that two
days before an expected encounter, he confided to his brother’s care
his children, to whom he asked the transfer of that tender fraternal
affection which he himself had always enjoyed.[158]
It is easy to imagine what efforts were doubtless made to extend the
rule and to render it as imperative throughout the East as it was
becoming in the West, when we read the extravagant laudations of
virginity uttered about this time by St. John Chrysostom, who lent
the sanction of his great name and authority to the assertion that
it is as superior to marriage as heaven is to earth, or as angels
are to men.[159] Strenuous as these efforts may have been, however,
they have left no permanent record, and their effect was short-lived.
Within thirty years of the time when Jerome quoted the example of
the eastern churches as an argument against Vigilantius, Socrates
chronicles as a novelty the introduction into Thessalia of compulsory
separation between married priests and their wives, which he says was
commanded by Heliodorus, Bishop of Trica, apparently to compensate for
the amatory character of the “Æthiopica,” written in his youth. The
same rule, Socrates informs us, was observed in Greece, Macedonia,
and Thessalonica, but throughout the rest of the East he asserts that
such separation was purely voluntary, and even that many bishops had
no scruple in maintaining ordinary intercourse with their wives[160]—a
statement easy to be believed in view of the complaints of St. Isidor
of Pelusium, about the same time, that the rules of the church
enjoining chastity received little respect among the priesthood.[161]
The influence of Jerome, Chrysostom, and other eminent churchmen, the
example of the West, and the efforts of the Origenians in favor of
philosophic asceticism, doubtless had a powerful effect during the
first years of the fifth century in extending the custom, but they
failed in the endeavor to render it universal and obligatory, and the
testimony of Socrates shows how soon even those provinces which adopted
it in Jerome’s time returned to the previous practice of leaving the
matter to the election of the individual. The East thus preserved the
traditions of earlier times, as recorded in the Apostolic Constitutions
and Canons, prohibiting marriage in orders and the ordination of
digami, but imposing no compulsory separation on those who had been
married previous to ordination.