British churches of Wales, which had followed Saxon example in
abandoning celibacy. The Brut y Tywysogion relates that about the year
861 the priests were forbidden to marry without dispensation from the
pope; but they did not submit, and the disturbances thus provoked
rendered necessary the abandonment of the effort, so that sacerdotal
marriage continued unchecked.[422] We shall see hereafter that in the
Principality the custom remained in full vigor until the thirteenth
century was well advanced.
How thoroughly the work of Dunstan and Edgar was undone in England
is sufficiently indicated by the efforts made not long after, with
the consent of Ethelred, to introduce some feeble restraints upon
the prevailing immorality. About the year 1006 we find the chief
monastery of England, Christ Church at Canterbury, in full possession
of the secular clergy, whose irregularities were so flagrant that
even Ethelred was forced to expel them, and to fill their places with
monks.[423] What was the condition of discipline among the secular
priests may be guessed from the reformatory efforts of St. Ælfric, who
was Archbishop of Canterbury from 995 to 1006. In his series of canons
the first eight are devoted to inculcating the necessity of continence;
after quoting the Nicene canon, he feels it to be so much at variance
with the habits and customs of the age, that he actually deprecates the
surprise of his clergy at hearing a rule so novel and so oppugnant to
the received practice, “as though there was no danger in priests living
as married men;” he anticipates the arguments which they will bring
against him, and refutes them with more gravity than success.[424]
There is also extant, under the name of St. Ælfric, a pastoral epistle,
which is regarded as supposititious by some critics; but its passages
on this subject are too similar in spirit to the canons of Ælfric
to be reasonably rejected. They show how hopeless was the effort to
maintain the purity desired by the ecclesiastical authorities, and
that entreaties and exhortations were uttered merely from a sense of
duty, and with hardly an expectation of commanding attention. “This,
to you, priests, will seem grievous, because ye have your misdeeds in
custom, so that it seems to yourselves that ye have no sin in so living
in female intercourse as laymen; and say that Peter the Apostle had a
wife and children.... Beloved, we cannot now forcibly compel you to
chastity, but we admonish you, nevertheless, that ye observe chastity,
so as Christ’s ministers ought, in good reputation, to the pleasure of
God.”[425]
That these well-meant homilies effected little in reforming the hearts
of so obdurate a generation becomes manifest by the proceedings of
the council of Enham, held by King Ethelred in 1009. The priests are
there entreated, by the obedience which they owe to God, to observe
the chastity which they know to be due. Yet so great was the laxity
prevailing that some are stated to have two or more wives, and many to
be in the habit of changing their spouses at pleasure, in violation of
all Christian law. The council was apparently, however, powerless to
repress these scandals by an adequate punishment, and contented itself
with promising to those who lived chastely the privileges and legal
status of nobles, while the vicious were vaguely threatened with the
loss of the grace of God and man.[426]
The injunctions of the council as regards the regular clergy, though
not particularly specific in their nature, show that even the monks
had not responded to the benefits conferred upon them by Edgar the
Pacific, nor fulfilled the expectations of the pious Dunstan. An
expression employed, indeed, leads the learned Spelman to suggest that
there possibly were two orders of monks, the one married and the other
unmarried; but this is probably without foundation.[427]
* * * * *
Such was the condition of the church when the increasing assaults of
the Northman finally culminated in overthrowing the house of Cerdic,
and placing the hated Dane upon the throne of England. Cnut’s long and
prosperous reign, and his earnest veneration for the church, as shown
by his pilgrimage to Rome, may perhaps have succeeded in removing some
of the grosser immoralities of the clergy, but that marriage was still
openly and unrestrainedly practised by those in orders is evident. The
ecclesiastical laws of Cnut exhort priests to chastity in precisely the
same words, and with the same promises as the canons of the council of
Enham, but do not allude to the habit of keeping a plurality of wives;
while, in the same chapter, a warning to the whole people against
unlawful concubinage would seem to indicate that clergy and laity were
bound by rules identical in strictness.[428]
That the rule of celibacy was recognized as only binding on the
regulars, or monks, and that the secular priesthood were at full
liberty to marry is evident from the system of purgation enjoined
on them by the same code. The priest who was also a monk (sacerdos
regulariter vivens—sacerd þe regollice libbe), could clear himself from
an accusation in a simple suit by merely saying mass, and taking the
communion, while the secular priest (plebeius sacerdos—mæssepreorst
þe regol-lif næbbe) is only equal to the deacon-monk (diaconus
regularis—diacon þe regollice libbe), requiring two of his peers as
compurgators.[429] The significance of the distinction thus drawn is
rendered clear by the version of the passage in a curious Latin text of
the code published by Kolderup-Rosenvinge. The chapter is divided into
two, the first one with the rubric “De Sacerdotibus,” and commencing
“Si contigerit presbyterum regulariter et caste viventem,” &c., while
the second is headed “De vulgare sacerdote _non casto_,” the meaning
of which is defined in the expression “Si vulgaris presbyter qui non
regulariter vivit.”[430] It is thus evident that purity was expected
from those only who had entered into the obligations of monastic life,
and also that the reforms of Dunstan had caused the ministers of the
altar to be frequently selected from among the monks.
To this period are also, in all probability, to be attributed
the “Institutes of Polity, civil and ecclesiastical,” to which
reference has been made in the preceding section as blaming priests
for decorating their wives with the ornaments belonging to their
churches. Unable to denounce efficient penalties for the prevention
of such evil practices, the author is obliged to content himself with
invoking future punishment from heaven, in vague and meaningless
threats—“A priest’s wife is nothing but a snare of the devil, and he
who is ensnared thereby on to his end, he will be seized fast by the
devil.”[431]
From all this it is evident that the memory of the ancient canons
was not forgotten, and that their observance was still urged by some
ardent churchmen, but that the customs of the period had rendered them
virtually obsolete, and that no sufficient means existed of enforcing
obedience. If open scandals and shameless bigamy and concubinage could
be restrained, the ecclesiastical authorities were evidently content.
Celibacy could not be enjoined as a law, but was rendered attractive
by surrounding it with privileges and immunities denied to him who
yielded to the temptations of the flesh, and who thus in some degree
assimilated his sacred character to that of the laity.
* * * * *
The Saxon church thus was practically regardless of the rule of
celibacy when Edward the Confessor ascended the throne. The ascetic
piety of that prince and his Norman education alike led him to abhor
the sensual indulgences in which he found his subjects plunged, and
he attached himself almost exclusively to the horde of Norman monks
who flocked to his court from across the Channel. Their influence
was all-powerful, and though reasons of the highest state necessity
forced him to ally himself in marriage with Edith, daughter of the
puissant Duke Godwin, whom Edward hated with all the energy of his
feeble nature, it was not difficult for his artful ghostly counsellors
to persuade him that a vow of virginity, taken and kept amid the
seductions of a throne, would insure his glory in this world and his
salvation in the next. A minstrel historian describes at length the
engagement of perpetual chastity entered into between Edward and Edith
at their marriage, and though he mentions the popular derision to
which this exposed the royal monk at the hands of a gross and brutal
generation, he is firmly persuaded that the crown of martyrdom was
worthily won and worn—
Par veinere charnel desir,
Bein deit estre clamez martir.
Ne sai cunter en nul estoire
Rei ki feist si grant victoire,
Sa char, diable e mund venqui,
Ki sont troi fort enimi.[432]
How little the royal pair expected this example to be followed and
how relaxed were all the rules of monastic discipline is shown by an
anecdote of the period. The austere Gervinus, Abbot of St. Riquier in
Ponthieu was always welcomed by them when he visited England, and on
one occasion Queen Edith offered to kiss him. The Abbot’s rigidity
overcame his courtliness and he refused the royal salutation, to the
great indignation of the Queen, who ordered certain gifts which she
had set apart for him to be withdrawn. Edward, however, approved of
the action of the monk, and after Edith had been made to understand
his motives she not only joined in applauding him but demanded that a
similar rule should be made imperative on all the monks of England.[433]
It cannot be doubted that Edward made efforts to effect a reform among
his sensual and self-indulgent subjects, but his want of success is
developed in the description of the Saxon clergy at the time of the
Conquest. The Norman chroniclers speak of them as abandoned to sloth,
ignorance, and the lusts of the flesh; even monastic institutions were
matters rather of tradition than of actual existence, and the monks
themselves were hardly distinguishable by their mode of life from the
laity.[434] There doubtless may be some contemptuous exaggeration in
this, and yet one author of the period, who is wholly Saxon in his
feelings, does not hesitate to attribute the ruin of the Saxon monarchy
and the devastation of the kingdom to the just wrath of God, provoked
by the vices of the clergy.[435]
* * * * *
The rule of the Normans removed England from her isolation. Brought
into the commonwealth of Christendom and under the active supremacy
of the Holy See, her history henceforth becomes more closely
connected with the general ecclesiastical movement which received its
irresistible impulsion about this period. That movement it is now our
business to examine.
XII.
PETER DAMIANI.
In a previous section I have shown the laxity prevailing throughout
Continental Europe at the commencement of the eleventh century. It
is not to be supposed, however, that even where this was tacitly
permitted, it was openly and unreservedly authorized. The perversity
of a sinful generation might render impossible the enforcement of
the ancient canons; they might even be forgotten by the worldly and
unthinking; but they were still the law of the church, and their
authority was still admitted by some ardent devotees who longed to
restore the purity of earlier ages. Burckhardt, who was Bishop of Worms
from the year 1000 to 1025, in his voluminous collection of canons,
gives a fair selection from the councils and decretals prohibiting all
female intercourse to the clergy.[436] Benedict VIII. and the Emperor
St. Henry II.—whose admiration of virginity was evinced by the personal
sacrifice to which reference has just been made—in 1022 endeavored in
the most solemn manner to reform the universal laxity. At the synod of
Pavia a series of canons was adopted pronouncing sentence of deposition
upon all priests, deacons, and subdeacons having wives or concubines,
and upon all bishops keeping women near them, while special stress
was laid upon the continued servitude of the children of all such
ecclesiastics as were serfs of the church.[437] These canons, signed
by the pope and attendant bishops, were laid before the emperor, who
indorsed them with his sanction, declared them to be municipal as
well as ecclesiastical law, promised that their observance should
be enforced by the civil magistrates, and thanked Benedict and his
prelates for their vigilance in seeking a remedy for the incontinence
of the clergy, the evils whereof swept like a storm over the face of
Christendom.[438]
In France, the long reign of Robert the Pious seems to have been marked
with almost entire indifference to the subject, but the accession of
his son Henry I. was attended with a strenuous effort to effect a
reform. The council of Bourges, held in November, 1031, but four months
after the death of Robert, may perhaps have been assembled at the
request of the dying monarch, desirous of redeeming his own sins with
the vicarious penance of his subjects. It addressed itself vigorously
to eradicating the evil by a comprehensive series of measures,
admirably adapted to the end in view. Priests, deacons, and subdeacons
were forbidden to have wives or concubines, and all such consorts
were ordered to be dismissed at once and forever. Those who refused
obedience were to be degraded to the rank of lectors or chanters, and
in future no ecclesiastic was to be permitted to take either wife or
concubine. A vow of chastity was commanded as a necessary prerequisite
to assuming the subdiaconate, and no bishop was to ordain a candidate
without exacting from him a promise to take neither wife nor concubine.
Children of the clergy in orders, born during the ministry of their
parents, were pronounced incapable of entering the church, in
justification of which was cited the provision of the municipal law
which incapacitated illegitimates from receiving inheritance or bearing
witness in court; but those who were born after their fathers had been
reduced to the condition of laymen were not to be considered as the
children of ecclesiastics.[439]
Nothing could be more reasonable than all this, considered from the
high-church stand-point, and nothing better adapted to effect the
object in view. All that was wanting was the enforcement of the
legislation—and laws, when opposed to the spirit of the age, are not
apt to be enforced. How much was really gained by the united efforts
of the pope, the emperor, and the Gallican hierarchy can readily be
gathered from a few out of innumerable incidents afforded by the
history of the period.
The able and energetic, though unscrupulous, Benedict VIII. was no
more, and the great House of Tusculum, which ruled the Eternal City,
had filled the chair of St. Peter with a worthless scion of their
stock, as though to declare their contempt for the lofty pretensions
of the Apostolic Episcopate. A fit descendant of the infamous Marozia
and Alberic, Benedict IX., a child of ten years old at the time of his
elevation in 1032, grew up in unrestrained license, and shocked even
the dull sensibilities of a gross and barbarous age by the scandals of
his daily life.[440] The popular appreciation of his character is shown
by the legend of his appearing after death to a holy man, in the figure
of a bear, with the ears and tail of an ass, and declaring that, as he
had lived in bestiality, so he was destined to wear the form of a beast
and to suffer fiery torments until the Day of Judgment, after which he
was to be plunged, body and soul, into the fathomless pit of hell.[441]
When the Vicegerent of God, the head of the Christian church, was
thus utterly depraved, the prospect of reforming the corruption of
the clergy was not promising, and the good work was not likely to be
prosecuted with vigor.
Nor were the members of the hierarchy unworthy of their superior. We
hear of Rainbaldo, Bishop of Fiesole, who, not contented with numerous
concubines, had publicly married a wife, and whose children were
established as a wide-spread and powerful family—and, what is perhaps
more remarkable, this dissolute prelate was gifted with the power of
working miracles.[442] The bishops, indeed, at this period, were still
rather warrior nobles than Christian ministers. Bisantio, the good
Bishop of Bari, is praised quite as much for his terrible prowess in
battle as for his pious benevolence and munificence; and on his death,
in 1035, his flock chose a military official as his successor.[443]
Descending in the scale, we may instance the priest Marino, who, though
he lived openly with his wife, was a noted miracle-worker. Among
quaint wonders wrought by him it is recorded that water rendered holy
by his blessing, when sprinkled over the cornfields, had the power of
driving away all caterpillars and other noxious insects. His child,
Eleuchadio, was a most venerable man, who subsequently, as abbot of the
monastery of the Virgin at Fiano, won the esteem and respect of even
the stern Damiani himself.[444] In fact, the pious Desiderius, Abbot
of Monte Casino, better known as pope under the name of Victor III.,
declares that throughout Italy, under the pontificate of Benedict, all
orders, from bishops down, without shame or concealment, were publicly
married and lived with their wives as laymen, leaving their children
fully provided for in their wills; and what rendered the disgrace more
poignant was the fact that the scandal was greatest in Rome itself,
whence the light of religion and discipline had formerly illuminated
the Christian world.[445] Another contemporary writer asserts that this
laxity prevailed throughout the whole of Latin Christendom, sacerdotal
marriage being everywhere so common that it was no longer punished as
unlawful, and scarcely even reprehended.[446]
In becoming thus universal and tacitly permitted it was not
incompatible with the most fervent piety; and though it may be
an evidence of hierarchical disorganization, it can no longer be
considered as indicating of itself a lowered standard of morals in the
ministers of the church. This is forcibly illustrated in the case of
St. Procopius, selected by Duke Ulric of Bohemia as the first abbot
of the monastery of Zagow. He was regularly bred to the church under
the care of Bishop Quirillus, and was noted for the rectitude of his
deportment in the priesthood; yet we learn that he was married during
this period, when we are told that, on being disgusted with the hollow
vanities of the world, he abandoned wife and friends for the solitude
of a hermit’s cave. Here an accidental meeting with Duke Ulric, while
hunting, led to the foundation of Zagow and to the installation of
Procopius as its head.[447]
Silently the church seemed to acquiesce in the violation of her canons,
until, at length, she appeared content if her ministers would satisfy
themselves with reputable marriage and avoid the grosser scandals. When
Ulric, Abbot of Tegernsee, about 1041, deplored the evil influence of
a priest who had two wives living, he seems to have felt that lawful
marriage might be tolerated, but that polygamy was of evil example in
a Christian pastor.[448] So when Albert the Magnificent, Archbishop of
Hamburg, was accustomed to exhort his clergy to continence and to shun
the pestiferous society of women, his worldly wisdom prompted him to
add that, if they were unequal to the effort, they should at least keep
unsullied the bonds of marriage and should live “si non caste, tamen
caute.”[449]
If irregularities such as these existed, they are not justly imputable
to the church itself. It can scarcely be a matter of wonder if the
clergy, in assimilating themselves to the laity as regards the
liberty of wedlock, should also have adopted the license which in
that lawless age rendered the marriage-tie a slender protection for
the weakness of woman. Though it was indissoluble according to the
teachings of religion, yet the church, which at that time was the
only protector of the feeble against the strong, had not acquired the
commanding authority which subsequently enabled it to enforce its
decrees everywhere and on all occasions. If, under a vigorous pope, the
sentence of excommunication had been able to frighten a superstitious
monarch like Robert the Pious, yet the pontiffs of the House of
Tusculum were not men to trouble themselves, or to be successful had
they made the attempt, to rectify the wrongs perpetrated in every
obscure baronial castle or petty hamlet in Europe. The isolation and
independence of the feudal system made every freeman, so to speak, the
arbiter of his own actions. The wife whose charms ceased to gratify
the senses of her husband, or whose temper threatened to disturb his
equanimity, stood little chance of retaining her position, if an
opportunity offered of replacing her to advantage, unless she was
fortunate in having kindred able to resent the wrong which the church
and the law were powerless to prevent or to punish.[450] If, then, the
clergy occasionally indulged in similar practices, the evil is not
attributable to the license of marriage which they had usurped. That
license had, at all events, borne some fruits of good, for, during
its existence, we hear somewhat less of the system of concubinage so
prevalent before and after this period, and there is no authentic
indication of the nameless horrors so suggestively intimated by the
restrictions on the residence of relatives enjoined in the frequent
canons promulgated at the close of the ninth century.
* * * * *
It is not to be supposed, however, that the race of ascetics was
extinct. Amid the license which prevailed in every class, there were
still some men who, disgusted with the turbulent and dissolute world,
despairing of salvation among the temptations and trials of active life
or the sloth and luxury of the monastic establishments, sought the path
to heaven in solitude and maceration. Such men could not but look with
detestation on the worldly priests who divided their thoughts between
their sacred calling and the cares of an increasing household, and who
profaned the unutterable mysteries of the altar with hearts and hands
not kept pure from the lusts of the flesh.
Prominent among these holy anchorites was S. Giovanni Gualberto, who
fled from the snares of the world to the forests of Camaldoli, where
his austerities, his holiness, and his miracles soon attracted crowds
of disciples, who formed a numerous community of humble imitators
of his virtues. Restoring in its strictness the neglected Rule of
Benedict, his example and his teaching wrought conviction, and the
order of monks which he founded and carried with him to the peaceful
shades of Vallombrosa became renowned for its sanctity and purity. Thus
withdrawn by the will of heaven from the selfish egotism of a hermit’s
existence, he labored earnestly to reform the laxity of priestly
life in general, and his success was most encouraging. Moved by his
admonitions, self-indulgent clerks abandoned wives and mistresses,
devoted themselves to the performance of their sacred functions,
or sought in monastic seclusion to make atonement for their past
excesses.[451]