attention of the pontiffs who had bestowed so much fruitless energy
on the morals of the Continental priesthood; and Honorius II. sent
Cardinal John of Crema to England, for the purpose of restoring its
discipline. In September, 1126, the legate held a council in London,
where he caused the adoption of a canon menacing with degradation
all those in orders who did not abstain from the society of their
wives, or of other women liable to suspicion;[681] and the expressions
employed show that previous legislation had been altogether nugatory.
That the cardinal’s endeavors excited the opposition of at least a
powerful portion of the clergy is fairly deducible from the unlucky
adventure which put a sudden termination to his mission. After fiercely
denouncing the concubines of priests and expatiating on the burning
shame that the body of Christ should be made by one who had but just
left the side of a harlot, he was that very night surprised in the
company of a courtesan, though he had on the same day celebrated mass;
and the suggestion that he had been entrapped by his enemies, while it
did not palliate his guilt, may be assumed to indicate the power and
determination of those who opposed his reforms.[682]
The energy of the reformers and the stubborn obstinacy of the clergy
are alike manifested by the council of Westminster, held the following
year, which found it necessary to repeat the prohibition and to guard
it with stringent provisions, based upon those of 1108.[683] This,
however, proved as ineffectual as its predecessors, and another effort
was made the next year under auspices which promised a happier result.
King Henry seemed suddenly to recover the holy zeal which had lain
dormant for a score of years, and in the summer of 1129 he convened
a great assembly of all the bishops, archdeacons, abbots, priors,
and canons of England, who found that they were summoned to meet for
the purpose of putting an end to the immorality of the clergy. After
long discussion, it was decreed that all who should not put away
their wives by St. Andrew’s day (November 30th) should be deprived of
their functions, their churches, and their houses; and the assembly
separated, intrusting to the zealous sovereign the execution of the
decree. Perhaps Henry remembered how St. Anselm had interfered in 1106
to protect the guilty clergy from the royal extortioners; perhaps
the experience of his long reign had shown him the fruitlessness
of endeavoring to impose an impossible virtue on carnal-minded
men. His exchequer, as usual, was in danger of collapse. The whole
transaction may have been a deeply-laid scheme to extort money, or the
sudden promptings of temptation may have been too powerful for his
self-denial—who now can tell? We only know that he at once put into
action an extended system of “cullagium,” and having, by the blind
simplicity of his prelates, the temporalities of nearly all the minor
clergy in his power, he proceeded to traffic in exemptions shamelessly
and on the largest scale. As a financial device, the plan was a good
one; he realized a vast sum of money, and his afflicted priests were at
least able to show their superiors a royal license to marry or to keep
their concubines in peace.[684]
* * * * *
The repetition of almost identical enactments, year after year, with
corresponding infinitesimal results, grows wearisome and monotonous.
If, therefore, I refer to the synod of Westminster, held in 1138, by
the papal legate Alberic, Bishop of Ostia, which deprived of function
and benefice all married and concubinary ecclesiastics,[685] it is only
to observe that no notice was taken of the doctrine of the invalidity
of sacerdotal marriage, which at that period Innocent II. was engaged
in promulgating. So, if I allude to an epistle of Lucius II. in 1144,
reprehending the general English custom by which sons succeeded to the
churches of their fathers, it is merely to chronicle the commencement
of the direct efforts of the popes, fruitlessly continued during the
remainder of the century, to abolish that wide-spread and seemingly
ineradicable abuse.[686]
What was the condition of the church resulting from these prolonged
and persistent efforts may be guessed from one or two examples. When,
in 1139, Nigel, Bishop of Ely, revolted against King Stephen, he
intrusted the defence of his castle of Devizes to his concubine, Maud
of Ramsbury. She bravely fulfilled her charge and repulsed the assaults
of the king, until he bethought him of a way to compel a surrender.
Obtaining possession of Roger, son of Maud and Nigel, the unhappy youth
was brought before the walls, and preparations were made to hang him in
his mother’s sight. At this her courage gave way, and she capitulated
at once.[687] Though the monkish chronicler stigmatizes Maud as “pellex
episcopi,” she may probably have been his wife—in either case the
publicity of the connection is a sufficient commentary on the morals
and manners of the age which took no exception to the elevation of
Richard Fitz-Neal, another son of the same reverend prelate, to the
bishopric of London and to the post of treasurer to King Henry II.
If this be attributed to the unbridled turbulence of Stephen’s reign,
we may turn to the comparatively calmer times of Henry II., when
Alexander III., amid his ceaseless efforts to restore the church
discipline of England, in 1171, ordered the Bishops of Exeter and
Worcester and the Abbot of Feversham to examine and report as to
the evil reputation of Clarembald, abbot-elect of St. Augustine’s
of Canterbury. In the execution of this duty they found that that
venerable patriarch had seventeen bastards in one village; purity
he ridiculed as an impossibility, while even licentiousness had no
attraction for his exhausted senses unless spiced with the zest
of publicity.[688] That a man whose profligacy was so openly and
shamelessly defiant could be elected to the highest place in the
oldest and most honored religious community in England is a fact which
lends color to the assertion of a writer of the time of King John,
that clergy and laity were indistinguishably bad,[689] and perhaps
justifies the anecdote told of Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, who assumed
that the clergy were much worse than the laity.[690] How little these
scandals shocked the public is shown by the fact that it required papal
interference to cause the reformation of the nunnery of Avesbury.
The abbess had borne three children and the nuns, as the chronicler
informs us, were worse than their superior, but when Alexander forced
an investigation no canonical punishment was inflicted on the guilty.
Such of the nuns as promised to live chastely in future were allowed
to remain, and the rest were simply dismissed, while the abbess was
pensioned liberally with ten marks a year to preserve her from disgrace
and want. The vacancies thus created were filled with nuns from
Fontevraud, who proved to be as bad as those whom they replaced.[691]
The same insensibility is manifested in a legal transaction of the
period, when Witgar, the priest of Mendlesham, desired to secure the
reversion of his benefice to his son Nicholas, and applied to the
patron of his church, Martin, Abbot of Battle Abbey, who agreed to
conform to his wishes on condition that the annual payment exacted
from the church in question should be increased from ten shillings to
forty. Witgar agreed, and on an appointed day, accompanied by his son,
he met the abbot and his attendants at Colchester, where oaths were
publicly interchanged and a formal agreement was entered into.[692]
* * * * *
The efforts of Alexander and his successors were seconded by frequent
national and local synods, to whose special injunctions it is scarcely
worth while to refer in full. One noticeable point about them, however,
is that the term “wife” disappears, and is replaced by “concubina” or
“focaria”—the latter meaning a person who was a permanent occupant
of the priest’s hearth, but was not recognized by the authorities as
a lawful wife. Deans and archdeacons were enjoined to hunt up these
illegal companions, but from the frequency of the injunctions, we may
safely conclude that the search was not often successful, and that
the officials found the duty assigned to them too difficult or too
unprofitable for execution. That it was not impossible, however, when
earnestly undertaken, is shown by the readiness with which King John
unearthed the unfortunate creatures when it suited his policy to do
so. During the long dispute over the election of Giraldus Cambrensis
to the see of St. David’s, the king, who was resolved that no Welshman
should hold that preferment, instructed his officers, in 1202, to seize
the women of all the cathedral chapter who persisted in supporting
Giraldus.[693] The measure was doubtless an efficacious one, and he
repeated it when, in 1208, he persecuted the clergy in his blind
impotence of wrath at the interdict set upon his kingdom by Innocent
III. Discerning in these quasi-conjugal relations the tenderest spot in
which to strike those who had rebelled against his authority by obeying
the interdict, and at the same time as the surest and readiest means of
extorting money, among his other schemes of spoliation he caused all
these women to be seized, and then forced the unfortunate churchmen to
buy their partners back at exorbitant prices.[694]
The ease, indeed, with which the eyes of the officials were blinded
to that which was patent to the public was the subject of constantly
recurring legislation, the reiteration and increasing violence of
which bears irrefragable testimony at once to its necessity and its
impotence. Not only in grave synods and pastorals was the abuse
reprehended and deplored, but it offered too favorable a subject for
popular animadversion to escape the shafts of satire. In the preceding
century, Thomas à Becket, in a vehement attack upon simony, includes
this among the many manifestations of that multiform sin—
Symon auffert, Symon donat;
Hunc expellit, hunc coronat;
Hunc circumdat gravi peste,
Illum nuptiali veste.[695]
There were few more popular poems in the Middle Ages than the
“Apocalypsis Goliæ,” the more than doubtful authorship of which, at the
close of the twelfth or beginning of the thirteenth century, is claimed
for Walter Mapes in England and Gautier de Châtillon in France; and the
enduring reputation of which is attested by an English version as late
as the sixteenth century. The author, whoever he be, inveighing against
the evil courses of the archdeacons, assumes that the extortion of the
“cullagium” was almost universal.
Seductam nuntii fraude præambuli
Capit focariam, ut per cubiculi
Fortunam habeat fortunam loculi,
Et per vehiculum omen vehiculi.
Decano præcipit quod si presbiteri
Per genitivos scit dativos fieri,
Accusans faciat vocatum conteri,
Ablatis fratribus a porta inferi.[696]
Towards the middle of the thirteenth century, Peter de Vinea also has
his fling at the same corruption, and though the part he took in the
fierce quarrels between his master Frederic II. and the papacy renders
him perhaps a prejudiced witness, still his ample experience of the
disorders of the church makes him an experienced one.
Non utuntur clerici nostri vestimentis:
Sed tenent focarias, quod clamor est gentis—
—Dehinc reum convocant, et, turba rejecta,
Dicunt: Ista crimina tibi sunt objecta;
Pone libras quindecim in nostra collecta,
Et tua flagitia non erunt detecta.
Reus dat denarios, Fratres scriptum radunt;
Sic infames plurimi per nummos evadunt:
Qui totam pecuniam quam petunt non tradunt,
Simul in infamiam et in pœnam cadunt.[697]
The example which King John had set, however instructive, was not
appreciated by the ecclesiastical authorities, and the “focariæ” were
allowed to remain virtually undisturbed, at least to such an extent as
to render them almost universal. Although by rigid churchmen they were
regarded as mere concubines, there can be little doubt that the tie
between them and the priests was of a binding nature, which appears to
have wanted none of the rites essential to its entire respectability.
Giraldus Cambrensis, who died at an advanced age about the year 1220,
speaks of these companions being publicly maintained by nearly all
the parish priests in England and Wales. They arranged to have their
benefices transmitted to their sons, while their daughters were
married to the sons of other priests, thus establishing an hereditary
sacerdotal caste in which marriage appears to have been a matter of
course.[698] In 1202 the Bishop of Exeter complained to Innocent III.
of the numerous sons of parish priests and vicars who seized their
churches and claimed to hold them of right, actually appealing to Rome
when he sought to interfere with them. Innocent of course ordered
their removal and subjection to discipline without appeal: but the
evil continued, and in 1205 we find him writing on the subject to the
Bishop of Winchester whom he required to eject the sons of priests
who in many cases held their father’s benefices.[699] The propriety
of the connection, and the hereditary ecclesiastical functions of the
offspring are quaintly alluded to in a poem of the period, wherein a
logician takes a priest to task for entertaining such a partner—
L.—Et præ tot innumeris quæ frequentas malis,
Est tibi presbytera plus exitialis.
P.—Malo cum presbytera pulchra fornicari,
Servituros domino filios lucrari,
Quam vagas satellites per antra sectari:
Est inhonestissimum sic dehonestari.[700]
Even the holy virgins, spouses of Christ, seem to have claimed and
enjoyed the largest liberty. To this period is attributed a homily
addressed to nuns, which earnestly dissuades them from leaving
their blessed state and subjecting themselves to the cares and
toils inseparable from matrimony. The writer appeals to no rules
of ecclesiastical law that could be enforced to prevent them from
following their choice, but labors drearily to prove that they would
not better their condition, either in this world or the next, by
forsaking their heavenly bridegroom for an earthly one.—“And of godes
brude. and his freo dohter. for ba to gederes ha is; bicumeth theow
under mon and his threl to don al and drehen that him liketh.”[701]
* * * * *
Innocent III. had not overlooked such a state of discipline, especially
after the transactions between himself and John had rendered him the
suzerain of England, and doubly responsible for the morals of the
Anglican Church. Thus as early as 1203 we find him expressing to the
Bishop of Norwich his surprise that priests in his diocese contend
that they can retain their benefices after having solemnly contracted
marriage in the face of the church. All such are peremptorily ordered
to be removed without appeal, either by the bishop himself, or by
his superior in cases in which he had personally conferred the
preferment.[702] His zealous efforts to effect an impossible reform are
chronicled by a rhymer of the period, who enters fully into the dismay
of the good pastors at the prospect of the innovation, and who argues
their cause with all the sturdy common-sense of the Anglo-Saxon mind.
Prisciani regula penitus cassatur,
Sacerdos per hic et hæc olim declinabatur;
Sed per hic solummodo nunc articulatur,
Cum per nostrum præsulem hæc amoveatur.
* * * * *
Quid agant presbyteri propriis carentes?
Alienas violant clanculo molentes,
Nullis pro conjugiis fœminis parcentes,
Pœnam vel infamiam nihil metuentes.
* * * * *
Non est Innocentius, immo nocens vere,
Qui quod Deus docuit studet abolere;
Jussit enim Dominus fœminas habere,
Sed hoc noster pontifex jussit prohibere.
Gignere nos præcipit vetus testamentum;
Ubi novum prohibet nusquam est inventum.
A modernis latum est istud documentum,
Ad quod nullum ratio præbet argumentum.[703]
Nor were the Anglican bishops remiss in seconding the efforts of the
pope to break down the opposition which thus openly defied their
power and ventured even to justify the heresy of sacerdotal marriage.
Councils were held which passed canons more stringent than ever;
bishops issued constitutions and pastorals denouncing the custom;
inquests were organized to traverse the dioceses and investigate
the household of every priest. The women especially were attacked.
Christian sepulture was denied them; property left to them and their
children by their partners in guilt was confiscated to the bishops;
churching after childbirth was interdicted to them; and, if still
contumacious after a due series of warnings, they were to be handed
over to the secular arm for condign punishment.[704] How much all this
bustling legislation effected is best shown by the declaration of the
legate, Cardinal Otto, in 1237, at the great council of London. He
deplores the fact that married men received orders and held benefices
while still retaining their wives, and did not hesitate to acknowledge
their children as legitimate by public deeds and witnesses. After
descanting upon the evils of this neglect of discipline, he orders that
all married clerks shall be deprived of preferment and benefice, that
their property shall not descend to wife or children, but to their
churches, and that their sons shall be incapable of holy orders unless
specially dispensed for eminent merit; then turning upon concubinary
priests, he inveighs strongly against their licentiousness, and decrees
that all guilty of the sin shall within thirty days dismiss their women
forever, under pain of suspension from function and benefice until full
satisfaction, persistent contumacy being visited with deprivation. The
archbishops and bishops are commanded to make thorough inquisition
throughout all the deaneries, to bring offenders to light, and also to
put an end to the iniquitous practice of ordaining the offspring of
such connections as successors in their father’s benefices.[705]
This legislation produced much excitement, and the legate even had
fears for his life. Some prelates, indeed, maintained that it only
was binding on the church of England during the residence of Otto,
but they were overruled, and it remained at least nominally in force
and was frequently referred to subsequently as the recognized law in
such matters. Its effect was considerable, and some of the bishops
endeavored to carry out its provisions with energy, as may be presumed
from a constitution of William of Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester,
issued in 1240, ordering his officials to investigate diligently
whether any of the clergy of the diocese had concubines or were
married.[706]
To this period and to the disturbance caused by these proceedings are
doubtless to be attributed several satirical pieces of verse describing
the excitement occurring among the unfortunate clerks thus attacked in
their tenderest spot. The opening lines of one of these poems indicate
the novelty and unexpectedness of the new regulations:—
Rumor novus Angliæ partes pergiravit,
Clericos, presbyteros omnes excitavit,
* * * * *
Nascitur presbyteris hinc fera procella:
Quisquis timet graviter pro sua puella.
The author then describes a great council, attended by more than ten
thousand ecclesiastics, assembled to deliberate on the course to be
pursued in so delicate a conjuncture. An old priest commences—
Pro nostris uxoribus sumus congregati;
Videatis provide quod sitis parati,
Ad mandatum domini papæ vel legati,
Respondere graviter ne sitis dampnati.[707]
Another poem of similar character describes a chapter held by all
orders and grades to consider the same question. The various speakers
declare their inability to obey the new rule, except two, whose age
renders them indifferent. A learned doctor exclaims—
Omnis debet clericus habere concubinam;
Hoc dixit qui coronam gerit auro trinam:
Hanc igitur retinere decet disciplinam.
The general belief in the legality of the connection is shown by the
remark of another—
Surgens unus presbyter turba de totali ...
“Unam” dixit “teneo amore legali,
Quam nolo dimittere pro lege tali.”
Another expects to escape by paying his “cullagium”—
Duodecimus clamat magno cum clamore:
“Non me pontifex terret minis et pavore:
Sed ego nummos præbeam pro Dei amore,
Ut in pace maneam cara cum uxore.”
Another urges the indiscriminate immorality attending upon the attempt
to enforce an impossible asceticism—
Addidit ulterius: “Sitis memor horum,
Si vetare præsul vult specialem torum,
Cernet totum brevi plenum esse chorum
Ordine sacrorum adulterorum.”
And at length the discussion closes with the speech of a Dominican, who
ends his remarks by predicting—
Habebimus clerici duas concubinas:
Monachi, canonici totidem vel trinas:
Decani, prælati, quatuor vel quinas:
Sic tandem leges implebimus divinas.[708]
Notwithstanding these flights of the imagination, no organized
resistance was offered to the reform. The clergy sullenly acquiesced,
and submitted to a pressure which was becoming irresistible. The
triumph of the sacerdotal party, however, was gradual, and no exact
limit can be assigned to the recognition of the principle of celibacy.
In 1250 the idea of married priests was still sufficiently prevalent to
lead the populace of London to include matrimony among the accusations
brought against Boniface, Archbishop of Canterbury, when his tyranny
had aroused general resistance;[709] and in 1255 Walter Kirkham, Bishop
of Durham, still felt it necessary to prohibit the marriage of his
clergy under pain of suspension and deprivation.[710] It is perhaps
noteworthy, however, that, not long after this, Horne, in his Myrror
of Justice, when treating of exceptions to the benefit of clergy,
specifies second marriages, but not single marriages, as depriving
clerks of the privilege of ecclesiastical trial.[711]
By this time, however, priestly marriage may be considered to have
become nearly obsolete in England. When, in 1268, the Cardinal-legate
Ottoboni held a great national council in London, and renewed the
constitutions of his predecessor Otto, he made no allusion to marriage,
and only denounced the practice of concubinage, which he endeavored to
eradicate by commanding all archdeacons to make a thorough inquisition
annually into the morals of the clergy under their jurisdiction.[712]
These constitutions of Otto and Ottoboni long remained the law of the
English church, and we find them constantly referred to in the canons
of councils and pastorals of bishops, ceaselessly laboring to effect
the impossible enforcement of discipline; even as late as 1399 the
Archbishop of Canterbury ordered his suffragans to have them read
and explained in the vernacular in all their episcopal synods.[713]
How hard was the task may be readily conceived when we see, in 1279,
the primate Peckham, Archbishop of Canterbury, applying to Rome for
assistance in prosecuting a certain bishop against whom he had long
been vainly endeavoring to bring the law to bear. A concubine had
confessed to having borne five children to the offender;[714] he had
himself admitted his guilt in a private interview with Peckham, for
which he had afterwards claimed the seal of the confessional; yet the
archbishop complains that his efforts will be unsuccessful unless he is
fortified with letters from the pope himself. His strict injunctions
of secrecy on his correspondent, and his evident dread lest the
criminal’s agents in Rome should get wind of the application, show how
difficult was the enterprise, and how rarely prelates could be expected
to undertake duties so arduous and so unpromising.[715]