the eleventh century by the Roman church to bring all Christendom under
its domination, the rising states of Spain were not likely to remain
undisturbed in their independent isolation; nor was it to be expected
that so complete a defiance of the canons would be passed unobserved by
the pontiffs who were convulsing the rest of Europe in their efforts
to reform the church. Accordingly, in 1068, we find the Cardinal Hugo
of Silva Candida, as legate of Alexander II., assembling a council
at Girona, and procuring the adoption of a regulation reducing to
the condition of laymanship all who, in holy orders, either entered
into matrimony or kept concubines; while those who should dismiss
their wives were promised immunity for the past and security for the
future.[754] In 1077, Gregory VII. sent a certain Bishop Amandus as
his legate, with an epistle addressed to the Spaniards, in which he
told them that Spain had anciently belonged to St. Peter and the Roman
church; that the carelessness of his predecessors, and the Saracenic
conquest, had caused the papal rights to be forgotten, but that the
time had come for them to be revendicated, and that he consequently
claimed implicit obedience.[755] Accordingly, in 1078, we find the
legate presiding over another council at Girona, which confirmed the
canons of the previous one, and added several others to prevent the
ordination of sons of priests, and the hereditary transmission of
benefices.[756] Such slender reforms as may have resulted from these
efforts were probably confined to Catalonia and Aragon; but not long
afterwards influences were brought to bear upon the rest of Spain,
which had a powerful effect in extending the authority of Rome over the
Peninsula. Constance of Burgundy, Queen of Alfonso VI. of Castile and
Leon, prevailed upon her husband to ask of Gregory a legate to reform
the church, and to condemn the Gothic or Mozarabic ritual, which was
jealously preserved by the people as a symbol of their independent
nationality. The prayer, of course, was granted. Richard, Abbot of
Marseilles, was sent, and in 1080 he held a council at Burgos, where
he commanded the ordained clergy to put away their wives. The novelty
and hardship of this order created great excitement. The pope, who
was rightly regarded as its author, became the object of no little
abuse and insult, and was held up to popular derision in innumerable
lampoons.[757]
All of these efforts were nugatory. The Spaniards, engaged in an
interminable and often doubtful struggle with the Infidel, might well
claim consideration from the Holy Father, while the independent spirit
which they manifested in their resistance to the introduction of the
Roman ritual was a warning that it would be prudent not to proceed too
abruptly in the process of bringing them within the fold of St. Peter.
Whatever be the motives, indeed, which induced such strenuous apostles
of celibacy as Gregory, Urban, Paschal, and Calixtus to abstain from
urging upon them the reform which was so earnestly enforced elsewhere,
certain it is that little effort was made to deprive the Spanish clergy
of their wives. In all the epistles of the popes up to 1130 I can find
but one allusion to the subject, though communication between Spain
and Italy became daily more frequent, and the papal authority was
constantly exercised with greater decisiveness in the internal affairs
of the Spanish church.
When, in 1101, Diego Gelmirez succeeded in obtaining the see of
Compostella, Paschal II. addressed him an epistle, reproaching him
with the utter contempt of discipline in his diocese, and commanding
a reform. He chiefly complained of the incongruous common residence
of monks and nuns, which he severely condemned and peremptorily
prohibited, but he made some concession to the necessities of the time
in permitting the ordination of the sons of those priests who had,
“according to the ordinary custom of the country,” married prior to
the promulgation of what the pope significantly termed the Roman law;
and he carefully abstained from ordering a separation between them and
their wives, or even an enforcement of the canons for the future.[758]
Diego, who possessed no common measure of vigor and ambition, and who
needed the particular favor of the popes for the success of his plans
in elevating and aggrandizing his see, accordingly proceeded to reform
his clergy. There is extant a minute and circumstantial contemporary
history of his episcopate, written by his admiring disciples, who dwell
with much instance on his labors and success in reducing to discipline
the refractory canons of his cathedral seat; but in the numerous
allusions to these reforms there is no mention of the enforcement of
celibacy, while the fact that he would not allow them to minister at
the altar without canonical vestments is made the subject of repeated
gratulation and praise.[759] The absolute silence of the authors
with respect to the clergy at large shows that the reticence of Pope
Paschal was not misunderstood, and that there was no effort made to
bring the secular priesthood under subjection to the Roman discipline.
In the twenty-five canons of the council of Compostella in 1113 it
therefore need not surprise us that there is no reference whatever to
the subject, beyond an allusion to the children of ecclesiastics, whose
nurses were declared entitled to clerical privileges, thus giving them
a recognized and highly prized position.[760]
That Diego’s reforms, indeed, did not extend to the abrogation of
clerical marriage is evident from several incidental circumstances.
Thus, in 1114, the lords of the monastery of Botoa made it over to
the church of Santiago of Compostella, reserving to themselves their
life interest, with a reversion to any of their descendants who should
be ecclesiastics, and who might be willing to profess celibacy,
showing that the matter was optional with the secular clergy.[761]
That even the canons were bound by no absolute rules on the subject
is manifested by a very curious transaction which may be worth
recounting as illustrative in several aspects of the spirit of the
age. In 1127, Diego, at the head of his Gallician troops, accompanied
Alfonso VIII. on an expedition into Portugal. On their return, the army
halted at Compostella, where the archbishop received and entertained
his sovereign. They were bound by the closest ties, for Diego had
baptized, knighted, and crowned him, and had, moreover, constantly
stood his friend throughout his stormy youth, in the endless civil
wars which marked the disastrous reign of his mother, Queen Urraca.
Yet, prompted by evil counsellors who were jealous of Diego, the king
suddenly demanded of him an enormous sum of money, to pay off the army,
under threat of seizing and pillaging the city. After considerable
resistance, Diego was forced to submit, and to pay a thousand marks of
silver. He then sought a private interview, in which he solemnly and
affectionately warned Alfonso of the ruin of his soul which would ensue
if he did not undergo penance for thus impiously spoiling the Apostle
Santiago. Alfonso listened humbly, and professed entire willingness
to repent, but for the difficulty that he had always been taught that
penitence was fruitless without restitution, and restitution he was
unable and unwilling to make. Diego then suggested that he should meet
the chapter and discuss the case, to which he graciously assented. In
the assembly which followed, Diego proposed that the king should follow
the example of his father, Raymond of Gallicia, in commending himself
to the peculiar patronage of Santiago, and in bequeathing his body to
be buried in their church, promising, moreover, that if he should do
so they would pray specially for him, which, from the promise of his
youth, bade fair to be no easy task. Alfonso was delighted to escape
so easily: he eagerly accepted the proposition, and added that he
would like to become a canon of their church, in order to enjoy the
fullest possible share in the Masses of such holy men. To this the
chapter assented at once; he was forthwith duly installed as a canon
of the church which he had just despoiled, and his conscience was set
at rest, while the church felt that it had acquired a moral supremacy
over the spoiler.[762] In thus formally becoming a canon, there could
have been no assumption of celibacy, expressed or implied. Alfonso
was but twenty-one years of age, and in the following year he married
Berengaria, daughter of the Count of Barcelona.[763]
In fact, in the absence of urgency on the part of Rome, the question
of sacerdotal celibacy seems to have been virtually ignored in Spain.
How little importance was attached to the preëminent sanctity of
asceticism becomes evident when we are told that in the whole of
Gallicia there was no convent of nuns until Diego, in 1129, founded
the house of S. Maria of Conjo.[764] Equal indifference is manifested
in the legislative assemblies of the church. The council of Leon and
Compostella, in 1114, only prohibited the residence of such women as
were forbidden by the canons,[765] which, in the existing discipline
of the Spanish church, may safely be presumed to offer no impediment
to the marriage relation; and a synod held at Palencia in 1129 is
even more significant in its reticence, for it merely provides
that notorious concubines of the clergy shall be ejected, without
apparently venturing to threaten any punishment on the reverend
offenders.[766]
Towards the close of his restless life, however, Archbishop Diego
found time, amid his military, political, and ecclesiastical schemes
of aggrandizement, to undertake the much needed reform of a single
monastery. The Abbot of S. Pelayo de Antealtaria was a paragon of
brutish sensuality, who wasted the revenues of his house in riotous
living and took no shame in a numerous progeny. The archbishop
remonstrated with him long and earnestly, both in public and private:
seven times in the general chapter of the diocese he admonished and
threatened the offender without result. At length, in 1130, after
forbearance so remarkable, Diego held a chapter in the abbey for his
trial, when he was proved by competent witnesses to have kept no less
than seventy concubines. He was accordingly deposed, but was so far
from being canonically punished that a benefice in the abbey lands was
assigned for his support. A new abbot was then appointed, who swore to
observe the Benedictine rule as far as he should find himself able to
do so.[767] It is a significant commentary on the state of discipline
and opinion to find so weak an effort to remove and punish the grossest
licentiousness characterized by the biographer of Diego with the
warmest expressions of wondering admiration as a work which doubtless
gave ineffable satisfaction to the Divine Omnipotence, and which was
without example in previous history.
It is very evident that the pontiffs who so energetically enforced the
rule of celibacy throughout the rest of Europe were content to offer
little opposition to the obstinacy of the Celtiberian priesthood.
We can safely conclude, indeed, that matters were allowed to remain
virtually undisturbed, and that the clergy were permitted to retain
their wives. A council held in Gallicia in the early part of the
thirteenth century, for the purpose of reforming ecclesiastical
discipline, preserves absolute silence on the subject of marriage and
concubinage;[768] and, about the middle of the same century, we find
Alfonso the Wise of Castile obliged to formally interdict matrimony to
those in holy orders. In the elaborate code drawn up by that monarch
and known as “Las Siete Partidas,” there is a law punishing sacerdotal
marriage with deprivation of function and benefice; while the wives, if
vassals of the church, are to be reduced to servitude, and if serfs,
are to be sold and the proceeds appropriated for the benefit of the
church of the offender. The wording of the law would seem to indicate
that it was an enactment intended to repress existing disorders, and
not merely a well-known provision inserted in the code for the purpose
of completing a compilation of statutes;[769] while the existence in
secular legislation of such invasions of the province of ecclesiastical
law is a convincing proof of the continued independence of Rome
asserted by the Spanish church and state. The prelates were further
authorized to command the assistance of the secular power in enforcing
these barbarous penalties to their full measure of severity, and this
secular legislation seems to have accomplished what the ecclesiastical
authorities had so utterly failed to effect. After this we hear little
of regular marriage, which was replaced by promiscuous concubinage or
by permanent irregular unions.
In Valencia a council in 1255 prohibited the residence with priests of
all women, except mothers and sisters and such others as were beyond
suspicion, but no penalty was prescribed for infractions of the rule;
and the character of the clergy with whom the council had to deal is
sufficiently shown by its complaint that the priests of the country
parishes frequented the city too much and indulged there in disgraceful
excesses, for which reason it forbids them from visiting the city more
often than twice a month, and requires them to return home the same
day.[770] Arnaldo de Peralta, Bishop of Valencia, not long after,
deplores the utter contempt with which all previous efforts to suppress
clerical concubinage had been received, and the prevalence of the
custom by which ecclesiastics endowed their bastards with the spoils of
the church. Yet the only punishment he finds himself able to threaten
is a fine of thirty maravedis on public concubinarians and of five
on parish priests who connive at such offences or neglect to report
them to the bishop. Ecclesiastics, indeed, are directed to put away
their children, but no penalty is indicated for disobedience.[771]
The council of Gerona in 1257 was more energetic, for it decreed the
deprivation of all concubinary priests who persisted in their sin,
but this apparently was not effectual, for in 1274 the threat was
repeated, with the addition that the women should be excommunicated and
should receive after death the burial of asses;[772] and very similar
was the legislation of the council of Peñafiel in 1302.[773] However
well meant these efforts were, they proved as useless as all previous
ones, for in 1322 the council of Valladolid, under the presidency of
the papal legate William Bishop of Sabina, animadverts strongly on the
indecency of ecclesiastics, from the highest prelates down, officiating
at the nuptials of their children, both legitimate and illegitimate.
For those who publicly kept concubines it provides a graduated scale
of confiscation, ending in the deprivation of the persistently
contumacious who gave no prospect of amendment, the exceedingly
elaborate regulations prescribed showing at once the difficulty of the
subject and the importance attached to it. The acts of this council,
moreover, are interesting as presenting the first authentic evidence
of a custom which subsequently prevailed to some extent elsewhere,
by which parishioners were wont to compel their priest to take a
female consort for the purpose of protecting the virtue of their
families from his assaults. The iniquity of this precaution seems to
have especially scandalized the legate, and he treats the audacious
laymen concerned in such transactions with much less ceremony than
the concubinary clergy.[774] The elaborate regulations promulgated by
this council produced little effect. The council of Salamanca in 1335
renews the previous repressive legislation, adding a threat of _ipso
facto_ excommunication for those who give Christian burial to priestly
concubines, including all who are present on such occasions, who are
not to be absolved until they shall have paid a fine of fifty maravedis
to the cathedral church.[775] At length, in 1388, a national council
held at Palencia under Cardinal Pedro de Luna, papal legate, made a
determined effort to eradicate the ineradicable vice. It renewed the
regulations of the council of Valladolid, which it stated were not
obeyed, and added to them a clause by which all benefices were held
under a sort of tenure of chastity, and subject to forfeiture. Besides
this, all ecclesiastics who, within two months of death, had kept
concubines, were declared incapable of testating, and their property
was adjudged, one-third to the fabric of their churches, one-third
to the Ordinary of the diocese, and one-third to the fund for the
redemption of captives under the care of the Orders of Trinidad and
Mercede, who were empowered to seize their share. Moreover, all bishops
were commanded to appoint official Visitors, who were to report at
annual synods, to be held thereafter, all cases of infraction of the
rules.[776] The desolation which the enforcement of such regulations
would have wrought may be inferred from the description which a
contemporary, Alvarez Pelayo, Bishop of Silva in Portugal, gives us of
his fellow ecclesiastics. He states that many of the clergy in holy
orders throughout the Peninsula publicly associated themselves with
women, frequently of noble blood, binding themselves against separation
by notarial acts and solemn oaths, endowing their consorts with the
goods of the church, and celebrating with the kindred these illegal
espousals as joyously as though they were legitimate nuptials. Yet even
this flagrant defiance of the canons was better than the wickedness
common between confessors and their penitents, or than the promiscuous
and unrestrained licentiousness of those who were not fettered by the
forms of marriage, whose children, as Pelayo asserts, almost rivalled
in number those of the laity.[777] These excesses were not suppressed
by the council of Palencia. In 1429 the council of Tortosa, under the
presidency of the Cardinal de Foix, papal legate, renewed the lament
that the canons of Valladolid remained unobserved, and in repeating
them it added a penalty of incarceration for pertinacious offenders,
indicating, moreover, one of the worst abuses to which the subject
gave rise, in forbidding all officials to take bribes from those who
transgressed the rules.[778] This effort was as fruitless as all
previous ones had been, and we shall see hereafter that the same state
of affairs continued until the sixteenth century was well advanced.
XX.
GENERAL LEGISLATION.
In a former section we have seen the efforts made by Calixtus II. to
enforce the received discipline of the church, and we have noted the
scanty measure of success which attended his labors. He apparently
himself recognized that they were futile, and that some action of
more decided character than had as yet been attempted was necessary
to accomplish the result so long and so energetically sought, and
so illusory to its ardent pursuers. On his return to Italy, and his
triumph over his unfortunate rival, the anti-pope Martin Burdino, he
summoned, in 1123, the first general council of the West, to confirm
the Concordat of Worms, which had just closed half a century of strife
between the papacy and the empire. Nearly a thousand prelates obeyed
his call, and that august assembly promulgated a canon which not only
forbade matrimony to those bound by vows and holy orders, but commanded
that if such marriages were contracted they should be broken, and the
parties to them subjected to due penance.[779]
This was a bold innovation. With the exception of a decretal of Urban
II. in 1090, to which little attention seems to have been paid, we have
seen that, previous to Calixtus, while the sacrament of marriage was
held incompatible with the ministry of the altar and with the enjoyment
of church property, it yet was respected and its binding force was
admitted, even to the point of rendering those who assumed it unfitted
for their sacred functions. At most, and as a concession to a lax and
irreligious generation, the option was allowed of abandoning either
the wife or the church. At Rheims, Calixtus had deprived them of this
choice, and had ordered their separation from their wives. He now went
a step further, and by the Lateran canon he declared the sacrament
of marriage to be less potent than the religious vow: the engagement
with the church swallowed up and destroyed all other ties. This gave
the final seal to the separation between the clergy and the laity, by
declaring the priestly character to be indelible. When once admitted
to orders, he became a being set apart from his fellows, consecrated
to the service of God; and the impassable gulf between him and the
laity bound him forever to the exclusive interests of the church.
It is easy to perceive how important an element this irrevocable
nature of sacerdotalism became in establishing and consolidating the
ecclesiastical power.
The immensity of the change thus wrought in the practice, if not in
the doctrine, of the church can best be understood by comparing the
formal command thus issued to the Christian world with the unqualified
condemnation pronounced in earlier times against those who attempted to
dissolve marriage under religious pretexts.[780] And in all ages the
church has regarded the chastity of the monastic orders as even more
imperative than that of the secular clergy.
Revolutions never go backwards. Perhaps the Lateran fathers who adopted
the canon scarcely realized its logical conclusions. If they did,
they at all events shrank from expressing them openly and fully, and
left the faithful to draw their own deductions as to the causes and
consequences of such an order. Time, however, familiarized the minds of
ardent churchmen with the idea, and it was seen that if the practice
thus enjoined was correct, doctrine must be made to suit and to justify
it. To this end an additional stimulus was afforded by the failure of
the canon to accomplish the results anticipated from it, for the custom
of sacerdotal marriage was as yet by no means eradicated. The council
of Liége, held by Innocent II. in 1131, referred to in a preceding
section, and those of Clermont and Rheims, over which he likewise
presided, in 1130 and 1131, show how little had been accomplished,
and how generally the clergy of Europe disregarded the restrictions
nominally imposed upon them, and the punishments which they so
easily escaped.[781] In the canons of these councils not only is it
observable that the question of marriage and celibacy is treated as
though it were a matter now for the first time brought to the attention
of the clergy, but also that the innovation attempted by the council of
Lateran, only seven or eight years previous, is prudently suppressed
and passed over without even an allusion.
* * * * *
Innocent, restored to Rome and to power, was bolder than when wandering
through Europe, soliciting the aid of the faithful. Surrounded by a
thousand bishops at the second great council of Lateran, in 1139, he
no longer dreaded to offend the susceptibilities of the clergy, and he
proceeded to justify the canon of 1123 by creating a doctrine to suit
the practice there enjoined. After repeating the canons of Clermont
and Rheims, he unhesitatingly pronounced that a union contracted in
opposition to the rule of the church was not a marriage.[782] He draws
no argument from the conflict of sacraments assumed to be incompatible;
a simple vow dissolves the sacrament of marriage, and renders it null
and void—or rather destroys its efficacy and anticipates its existence.
The abounding wickedness of a perverse generation caused this decree
of the loftiest Christian tribunal to fall still-born and abortive as
its forerunners had done.[783] The church, however, was irrevocably
committed to the new doctrine and to all its consequences. When
Eugenius III. was driven out of Rome by Arnold of Brescia, he presided,
in 1148, over a council held at Rheims, where eleven hundred bishops
and abbots from Northern and Western Europe assembled to do honor
to the persecuted representative of St. Peter, and to condemn the
teachings of Gilbert de la Porrée. From this great assembly he
procured the confirmation of the new dogma by their adoption of the
Lateran canon; while the repetition of that of Clermont and Rheims (of
1130 and 1131) shows that the evil which it was intended to repress
still existed in full force.[784] The vague assertion of Eugenius
that he was but following in the footsteps of the holy fathers, and a
special reference to Innocent II. as his authority, render it probable
that the members of the council demurred in committing themselves to
the new principle, and that it was only by showing that the matter was
already decided under the irrefragable authority of a general council
that the consent of the Transalpine churches was obtained.
St. Bernard himself, the impersonation of ascetic sacerdotalism,
hesitated to subscribe to the new dogma, and when the monks of
Chartres asked him to reconcile it with the teachings of Augustin
and Gregory the Great he candidly confessed that his dialectical
skill was unequal to the task.[785] So when an abbot applied to him
for advice in the case of one of his monks, who had left the convent
and married, St. Bernard stigmatized the act as highly improper, but
hesitated to pronounce it unlawful. He recommended that an attempt be
made to convince the parties that they were perilling their salvation,
and if this failed he thought that perhaps they might be separated
by episcopal authority.[786] In fact, four years after the council
of Rheims, St. Bernard reproached Eugenius with having caused the
adoption of canons which no one pretended to obey. If he thought that
they were enforced, he grievously erred; if he did not think so, he
had sinned either by decreeing what was not to be observed or in
neglecting to punish their non-observance—and no one was punished for
his disobedience.[787]