Chapter XI: Part 11

Notwithstanding these zealous efforts of the primate, and the countenance of Henry Beauclerc, in whose presence the council had been held, Eadmer is forced sorrowfully to admit that its canons received but scant respect. Many of the priests adopted a kind of passive resistance, and, locking up their churches, suspended the performance of all sacred rites.[672] Even in Anselm’s own diocese, ecclesiastics were found who obstinately refused either to part with their wives or to pretermit their functions, and who, when duly excommunicated, laughed at the sentence, and continued to pollute the church with their unhallowed ministry.[673] Soon after this Anselm fell into disfavor with the king and was exiled. His absence promised immunity, and the clergy were not slow to avail themselves of it. In 1104 one of his friends, in writing to him, bewails the utter demoralization of the kingdom, of which the worst manifestation was that priests still continued to marry; and two years later another letter informs him that those who had apparently reformed their evil ways were all returning to their previous life of iniquity. Finally, Henry I. resolved to turn to account this clerical backsliding, as a financial expedient to recruit his exhausted treasury. All who were suspected of disobedience to the canons of the council of London were seized and tried, and the property of those who could be proved guilty was confiscated. By this time Anselm had been reconciled to the king, and he promptly interfered to check so gross a violation of ecclesiastical immunity. His remonstrances were met by Henry with well-feigned surprise, and finally the matter was compromised by discharging those who had not been fined, while those who had been forced to pay were promised three years’ undisturbed possession of their positions.[674]

That it was impossible to effect suddenly so great a change in the habits and lives of the Anglican clergy was, indeed, admitted by Paschal II. himself, when, in 1107, he wrote to Anselm concerning the questions connected with the children of priests. While reminding him of the rules of the church, he adds that as, in England, the larger and better portion of the clergy fall within the scope of the prohibition, he grants to the primate power of dispensation, by which, in view of the sad necessity of the times, he can admit to the sacred offices those born during their parents’ priesthood, who are fitted for it by their education and purity of life. A second epistle on the same subject attests the perplexity of the pope, recalling to Anselm’s recollection his former injunctions, and recommending that, as there was no personal guilt involved, those of the proscribed class who were in orders should, if worthy of their positions, be allowed to retain them, without the privilege of advancement.[675] The question, indeed, was hotly debated. There is extant a letter written about this time by Thibaut of Étampes, a dignitary of Oxford, to a certain Rosceline, who with more zeal than discretion had promulgated the doctrine that the sons of priests were canonically ineligible to ordination. Thibaut characterizes this as not only an innovation, but a blasphemy, and seems utterly unconscious that there was any authority for such a rule.[676]

* * * * *

It may be remarked that thus far the proceedings of the reformers were directed solely against the marriage of ecclesiastics. It may possibly be that this arose from general conjugal virtue, and that, satisfied with the privilege, no other disorders prevailed among the clergy; but it is more probable that the heresy of marriage was so heinous in the eyes of the sacerdotalists, that it rendered all other sins venial, and that such other sins might be tacitly passed over in the endeavor to put an end to the greater enormity. Be this as it may, the stubborn wilfulness of the offenders only provoked increasing rigor on the part of the authorities. We have seen that the council of 1102 produced little result, and that when the secular power interfered to enforce its canons, the church, jealous of its privileges, protested, so that many priests retained their wives, and marriage was still openly practised. King Henry, therefore, at length, in 1108, summoned another council to assemble in London, where he urged the bishops to prosecute the good work, and pledged his power to their support.[677] Fortified by this and by the consent of the barons, they promulgated a series of ten canons, whose stringent nature and liberal denunciation of penalties prove that the prelates felt themselves strengthened by the royal co-operation and thus able to compel obedience. The Nicene canon was declared the unalterable law of the church; those ecclesiastics who had disregarded the decrees of the previous council were debarred from performing their functions if longer contumacious; any priest requiring to see his wife was only to do so in the open air and in the presence of two legitimate witnesses; accusations of guilt were to be met by regular canonical purgation, a priest requiring six compurgators, a deacon four, and a subdeacon two, each of his own order. Disobedience to these canons was declared punishable with deprivation of function and benefice, expulsion from the church, and infamy. Only eight days of grace were allowed; further persistence in wrong-doing being visited with instant excommunication, and confiscation to the bishops of the private property of the transgressors and of their women, together with the persons of the latter. A very significant clause, moreover, shows that grasping officials had discovered the speculative value of previous injunctions, and that the degrading custom of selling indulgence was already in common use, for the council required of all archdeacons and deans, under penalty of forfeiture, an oath that they would not receive money for conniving at infractions of the rule, nor permit priests who kept women to celebrate mass or to employ vicars to officiate for them.[678]

From the account of the historian, we may assume these to be rather acts of parliament than canons of a council, and that the assembly was convened for the special purpose of devising measures for subduing the recalcitrant clergy. The temporal power was thus pledged to enforce the regulations, and as so enterprising and resolute a monarch as Henry had undertaken the reform, there can be little doubt that he prosecuted it with vigor. Anselm died in 1109, and the clergy rejoiced in the hope that their persecution would cease with the removal of their persecutor, but the king proceeded to enforce the regulations of the council of London with more vigor than ever, and soon obtained at least an outward show of obedience. Eadmer darkly intimates that this resulted in a great increase of shocking crimes committed with those relatives whose residence was allowed, and he is at some pains to argue that Anselm and his attempted reforms were not responsible for an effect so little contemplated in their well-meant endeavors. Finally, the ardor of the king cooled off; ecclesiastical officials were found readily accessible to bribes for permitting female intercourse, and those who had grown tired of the wives from whom they had been separated found no difficulty in forming more desirable unions with new ones. Eadmer sorrowfully adds that by this time there were few indeed who continued to preserve the purity with which Anselm had labored so strenuously to adorn his clergy.[679]

The evil influences of this laxity in the Anglican church were not altogether confined to Britain. At that period the Swedish bishoprics were frequently filled by Englishmen, and it is quite possible that from them was derived the laxity which, as we have seen, at a later period, caused the Swedes to be regarded as heretics adhering to the Greek schism. An incident occurring about this time shows the wisdom of the church in her endeavors to sunder the earthly ties of her ministers. An English priest named Edward was promoted to the Swedish episcopate of Scaren. Unluckily, he had left a wife behind him in England, and, after a short residence in his new dignity had enabled him to collect together the treasures of his see, he absconded with them to his spouse, leaving his diocese widowed and penniless.[680]

At length the condition of the church in England attracted the 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]

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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]

Perhaps the man to whom the church owed most for his energy and activity in promoting the cause of reform was the celebrated Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln. The leading part which he took in the political troubles of the stormy reign of Henry III. has thrown his ecclesiastical character somewhat into the shade, and he is better known as the friend of Leicester than as the untiring churchman. Notwithstanding his consistent opposition to Henry III. and to the encroachments of the papacy, he was the inflexible enemy of clerical irregularities, and he enforced the decretals throughout his diocese with as firm a hand as that which he raised in defence of the rights of the nation and the privileges of the Anglican church. Thus, in 1251, he made a rigorous inquisition in his bishopric, forcing all his beneficed clergy to the observance of the strictest chastity, removing from their houses all suspected women, and punishing transgressors with deprivation. It is not easy to approve of his brutal expedient for testing the virtue of the inmates of his nunneries,[716] the adoption of which could only be justified and suggested by the conviction that general licentiousness was everywhere prevalent; and though such treatment of the spouses of Christ was to the last degree degrading, yet it was doubtless more efficacious than the ordeal of the Eucharist, which was frequently resorted to in special cases. Not only, however, did he thus endeavor to reform the morals of his flock, but he made the closest scrutiny into the character of applicants for ordination. In this he was largely aided by his ascetic friend and admirer, Adam de Marisco, and the correspondence between them shows not only the importance which they reasonably attached to the subject, but the sleepless vigilance required to counteract the prevalent immorality of the clergy, and the incredible laxity with which the patrons of livings bestowed the benefices in their gift.[717]

The rule was now fairly established and generally acknowledged; concubinage, though still prevalent—nay, in fact almost universal—was not defended as a right, but was practised with what concealment was possible, and was the object of unremitting assault from councils and prelates. To enter into the details of the innumerable canons and constitutions directed against the ineradicable vice during the succeeding half century would be unprofitable. Their endless iteration is only interesting as proving their inefficacy. A popular satirist of the reign of Edward II. declares that bribery of the ecclesiastical officials insured the domestic comfort of the clergy and their female companions;[718] while in time the canon law seems to have lost all its terrors. One of the earliest acts of the reign of Henry VII. was a law empowering the ecclesiastical officials to imprison “priests, clerks, and religious men” convicted of incontinence, and guaranteeing them against prosecution by the offenders.[719] That the aid of the secular legislator should thus have been invoked for protection under such circumstances showed the audacity resulting from long immunity, and is the abject confession that the ceaseless labor of four centuries had utterly failed.

* * * * *

In one part of England, however, the reform seems to have penetrated even more slowly. We have seen above, on the testimony of Giraldus Cambrensis, that in the early part of the thirteenth century the marriage of priests and the hereditary transmission of benefices were almost universal in Wales. As in the wild fastnesses of the Principality the ecclesiastical regulations seemed powerless, recourse was had to the secular law, which was employed to inflict various disabilities on offenders and their offspring, and the repetition of these shows how obstinately the custom was adhered to by the clergy until a comparatively late period. Thus, in the Gwentian and Dimetian Codes there is a provision that the son of a married priest, born after the ordination of his father, shall not share in the paternal estate;[720] and this provision is retained and repeated in a collection of laws which contains the date of 2 Henry IV., showing it to be posterior to the year 1400.[721] The same collection enumerates married priests among “thirteen things corrupting the world, and which will ever remain in it; and it can never be delivered of them.”[722] In the same spirit, the Book of Cynog, which is of uncertain date, declares “nor is a married priest, as he has relinquished his law, to be credited in law,” and it therefore directs that the testimony of such witnesses shall not be receivable in court;[723] while another collection of laws, occurring in a MS. of the fifteenth century, repeats the provision—“their testimony is not to be credited in any place, and they are excluded from the law, unless they ask a pardon from the pope or a bishop, through a public penance.”[724] In fact, we may, perhaps, almost hazard the conclusion that, notwithstanding the efforts of both ecclesiastical and secular legislators, sacerdotal marriage scarcely became obsolete in Wales before it was once more recognized as legitimate under the Reformation.

XVIII.

IRELAND AND SCOTLAND.

In a previous section it has already been shown that the rule of celibacy was observed by the Celtic churches of the British Islands during a period in which their Christianity was a model for the rest of Europe. Their religion, however, could not preserve its purity and simplicity amid the overwhelming barbarism of those dreary ages. From an ancient commentary on the “Cain Patraic,” or Patrick’s Law, of uncertain date, but probably belonging to the ninth or tenth century, it would seem as though there were at that time two classes of bishops, one bound by monastic vows, the other permitted to marry; and, what is somewhat singular, the law appears to favor the latter, for the “cumad espuc,” or virgin bishop, is condemned to perpetual degradation or to the life of a hermit for offences which the “bishop of one wife” can redeem by prompt penance.[725]

The Feini, prior to the advent of St. Patrick, were far in advance of the contemporary barbarian tribes, and their conversion to Christianity introduced a new and powerful element of progress. It was not lasting, however, and they lapsed into a condition but little removed from that of savages. The marriage-tie was virtually unknown or habitually disregarded among the laity.[726] What was the condition of the clergy may be inferred from the fact that the episcopates were regarded as the private property of certain families in which they descended by hereditary succession. Thus, in the primatial see of Armagh, fifteen archbishops were of one house, the last eight of whom were married. At length Celsus, who died about the year 1130, bequeathed the dignity to his friend St. Malachi. The kindred rose in arms at this infringement of their rights, and two of their members successively occupied the position, which Malachi was not able to obtain until the anger of God had miraculously destroyed the whole family.[727]

During all this period the Irish church had been completely independent of the central authority at Rome, but the extension of influence resulting from the labors of Hildebrand and his successors soon began to make itself felt. In the quarrels concerning the succession of Archbishop Celsus, there figures a certain Bishop Gilbert, who is described as being the first papal legate seen in Ireland.[728] When Malachi abandoned Armagh and revived the extinct episcopate of Down, he resolved on a pilgrimage to Rome to obtain the _pallium_, a powerful instrument of papal authority, until then unknown on the island; and perhaps the opposition manifested to his wishes by his friends as well as by the authorities may be attributable to a repugnance towards the gradual encroachments of Romanizing influence.[729]

Malachi returned from Rome armed with legatine powers, and proceeded vigorously with the reforms which he had long before commenced. He held numerous councils, extirpating abuses everywhere, renovating the ancient rules of discipline and introducing new ones, bending all his energies to abrogating the national institutions and replacing them with those of Rome.[730] The earnest asceticism of his nature, exaggerated by the training of his youth, led him to give a strongly monastic character to the church of which he was thus the second founder. On his journey homeward from Rome, he had tarried a second time at Clairvaux to see his friend St. Bernard, and had left there four of his attendants to be exercised in the severe Cistercian discipline that they might serve as missionaries and as models for his compatriots, who had heard, indeed, of monkhood, but had never seen it.[731] His efforts, in this respect, were to a considerable extent successful, at least in a portion of the island, though his death in 1149, at the comparatively early age of 54, cut short his labors before they could yield their full fruit.[732]

The incongruous character thus imparted to the Irish church is described by Giraldus Cambrensis some forty years later. The prelates were selected from the monasteries, and the church was completely monastic. Chastity was the only rule of discipline thoroughly preserved, and Giraldus confesses his wonder that it could be maintained, in contradiction to all former experience, when gluttony and drunkenness were carried to excess. The monastic principle of selfishness was all-pervading, and the pastors took no care of their flocks. Among the people, marriage was still unknown, incest was of common occurrence, even the rudiments of Christian faith were left untaught, and the church was regarded without reverence.[733] His account of the absence of regular stipends and tithes is confirmed by the fact that an Irish bishop attending the council of Lateran in 1179, in complaining of the condition of his native church, stated that his only revenues were derived from three milch cows, which his flock were bound to replace as they became dry.[734] This poverty, however apostolic in itself, can only, in an age of magnificent sacerdotalism, be regarded as an indication of a church whose degradation could command neither the respect nor the support of its children. That the reforms of Malachi, one-sided as they were, extended only over a portion of the island, is evident from the inquiry which, a few years later, the Archbishop of Cashel addressed to Clement III. as to whether the children of bishops could receive orders and hold benefices; and the exceptional character of the Irish establishment was recognized by the pope when he decided that they could, provided they were born in wedlock, and were otherwise worthy of position.[735] This requisite of legitimacy was apparently not imposed in ignorance, for at the council of Cashel in 1171 we find an effort made to enforce Christian marriage among the people, who are still described as indulging in unrestricted polygamy and disregarding the nearest ties of consanguinity.[736]

When about this period the English commenced the conquest which was to lead to five centuries of cruel anarchy, they of course carried with them their civil and ecclesiastical institutions. The original conquerors—the Butlers, the Clares, and the Fitzgeralds—speedily became incorporated with the native race, and were as Irish as the O’Briens and the McCauras. Although the royal authority was limited practically to the confines of the Pale, and embraced little beyond the Ostman ports, yet it is easy to understand that the clerical license habitual to the English spread beyond the political boundaries, and the monastic spirit of the Hibernians was grievously wounded by the unchastity which was disseminated like a contagion from the dissolute priests who followed in the wake of Strong-bow and Prince John.[737] Not twenty years after the first invasion, a council, summoned in 1186 by John in Dublin, was troubled by a quarrel between the Saxon priests of Wexford, who mutually accused each other of publicly marrying and keeping wives. This being duly proved, they were promptly degraded, to the intense satisfaction of the Irish clergy, triumphant in their own comparative purity of morals.[738] When, therefore, in 1205, Innocent III. specially ordered his legate, Cardinal Julian, to put an end to the hereditary transmission of benefices common in Ireland, the abuse to which he referred was probably confined to the English Pale.[739] The church establishments, in fact, were distinct, and consequently when an Irish synod was held in Dublin, in 1217, its canons cannot be considered as having authority beyond the narrow territory through which the king’s writ would likewise run. Those canons show us that the morality of the Saxon priesthood had not improved by the example made of the priests of Wexford. The denunciations of concubinage indicate the prevalence of that vice, and the severities threatened against the unfortunate women contrast strangely with the lenity shown to their more guilty partners.[740] A century later, if we may believe the declaration of the synod of Ossory in 1320, the evil continued to flourish, open, avowed, and universal, resisting alike the authority of the church and the efforts to repress it by severity.[741] Whether the offenders dismissed their consorts after the thirty days’ grace allowed by the synod may well be doubted. With the spread of English domination, the purity of the native church disappeared, and so great became the general disregard of the canons that shortly before the Reformation it was not an unusual thing for Irish priests to be openly married, nor do those who did so seem to have thereby forfeited the esteem of their neighbors.[742]

* * * * *

In Scotland, the Christianity introduced by St. Columba had fallen into the hands of the Culdees. These were originally monks of a more than ordinary strictness of discipline, to whom the earliest recorded allusion occurs in Ireland towards the close of the eighth century—the name, Céle-dé (Keledeus, or Servus Dei) meaning simply Servant of God. In the course of time the Culdees had so relaxed their rule that they reappear in the eleventh century as an order nominally of monks, yet fulfilling the functions of the secular clergy, and enjoying free permission to marry, only abstaining from their wives when employed in the actual ministry of the altar. With marriage had come the hereditary transmission of the endowments of the church to their children, so that the ancient abbeys and churches were well-nigh stripped of all their possessions, and the distinction between clergy and laity was rather in term than in fact. It may please the poet to construct a world of his own, peopled by imaginary beings of angelic purity—

Peace to their shades! The pure Culdees
Were Albyn’s earliest priests of God,
Ere yet an island of her seas
By foot of Saxon monk was trod,
Long ere her churchmen by bigotry
Were barred from wedlock’s holy tie.
’Twas then that Aodh, famed afar,
In Iona preached the word with power,
And Reullura, beauty’s star,
Was the partner of his bower—

but in sober truth the Culdees were pure as long as they kept the tradition of their founder, and it was not until they sank to a level with their savage compatriots that they transgressed the rule and became worldly and corrupt.[743] In 1125 the Cardinal-legate, John of Crema, whose unlucky adventure in London has been already alluded to, visited Scotland in the execution of his reformatory mission. There he found on the throne David I., a prince whose life was devoted to rescuing his subjects from their primæval barbarism. We know few details of the history of those times, but it is fair to conjecture that the exhortations of the legate had a share in arousing David to a realization of the deficiencies and the corruptions of the Scottish church, and in guiding him to the course which he adopted in its reformation. After some fruitless efforts to restore the order of Culdees to its original condition, he resolved on the sweeping measure of removing all who should prove incorrigible. They were accordingly turned out bodily from their establishments, such property as could be traced was restored, and donations on an extended scale were made both to the old foundations and to the new ones which the royal reformer established—donations which gained for him, from an ungodly descendant, the appellation of “Ane soir sanct for the crown.” These foundations were then filled with regular clergy, brought from France and England—chiefly canons of the order of St. Augustin—and the unfortunate Culdees were turned adrift unless they would promise to observe the strictness of monastic rule. It is probable that in a few places they did so, for references to Culdees still occur occasionally even in the next century, but these measures were effective and practically they and their customs disappeared together.[744]

In a church thus constructed from the regular clergy, the heresy of marriage could find no foothold, especially as it had been so sternly punished in the expulsion of the Culdees. Still was the desired purity not yet attained. In 1181, during the long quarrel between William the Lion and the papacy on the subject of the archbishopric of St. Andrews, an interdict was pronounced on all ecclesiastics who should refuse to recognize the papal candidate John, whereupon the King persecuted those who obeyed the mandate, and the chronicler, in expatiating upon his cruelty, is careful to mention that he did not spare their children, even to babes in their mothers’ arms, who were remorselessly driven into exile.[745] The state of things indicated by this remained without improvement. In 1225, Honorius III. ordered the Scottish ecclesiastics to assemble in council for the correction of the many enormities which were committed with impunity; and the council held in obedience to the papal command denounced the shameless licentiousness of the clergy as a disgrace to the church.[746] Inquests to detect the offenders, suspension and deprivation to punish them, were ordered with all the verbal energy of which we have already witnessed so many examples, and were attended with the same plentiful lack of success. With what disposition the clergy regarded these efforts for their improvement we may guess from the reception which they gave to the constitutions of Cardinal Ottoboni. Reference has already been made to the council held by that legate in London in 1268. The church of Scotland had been ordered to join in this council, and had sent two bishops and two abbots as its representative delegates. These took home with them the constitutions of Ottoboni, which the clergy of Scotland utterly refused to obey.[747]

XIX.

SPAIN.

We have already seen (p. 121) that among the Wisigoths of Spain the rule of celibacy had never been successfully enforced, and that during the later period of the Gothic dynasty the demoralization of the clergy was daily increasing. The Saracenic invasion, and the subsequent struggles of the Christians, who founded petty kingdoms among the wild mountainous regions of the North and East of the Peninsula, were not favorable to the growth of regular discipline and settled observances. The centralized sacerdotalism of Rome, which took so remarkable an extension in the ninth and tenth centuries, and which penetrated every portion of the Carlovingian empire, was powerless to intrude into the strongholds of the Jalikiah, whence the descendants of Pelayo and his companions gradually extended their frontiers from Oviedo to Toledo. Communication with the apostolic city was rare. The nominal subjection of Barcelona and Navarre to the Carlovingians, indeed, brought the eastern provinces of Spain under the domination of the Archbishops of Narbonne, and kept them, to a certain extent, under the influences which were moulding the rest of Europe; but the kingdoms of Leon and Castile grew up in complete ecclesiastical independence. Even at the close of the eleventh century a Spanish ecclesiastic describes his contemporary brethren as rude and illiterate, owning no obedience to the mother church of Rome, and governed by the discipline of Toledo.[748] Wild and insubordinate as was a large portion of the European clergy, the ecclesiastics of Spain were even wilder and more insubordinate. Another writer of the period, himself a canon of Compostella, and subsequently Bishop of Mondonego, speaking of his brother canons previous to the reforms of Diego Gelmirez, denounces them as reckless and violent men, ready for any crime, prompt in quarrel, and even occasionally indulging in mutual slaughter.[749] How little, indeed, there was to distinguish the clerk from the layman is evident from a regulation promulgated by the council of Compostella in 1113. It provides that all priests, gentlemen, and peasants shall devote themselves to wolf-hunting on every Sunday, except Easter and Pentecost, under a penalty of a fine of five sols for the priest and gentleman, and one sol, or a sheep, for the peasant—visitation of the sick being the only excuse exempting the priest from the performance of this duty. Every church, moreover, was bound to furnish for the hunt seven iron-tipped reeds.[750] A similar condition of society is indicated at the other end of Spain, where, in 1027, the Synod of Elna, in Roussillon, had forbidden, under pain of excommunication, any one to attack a monk or a clerk who was without arms.[751]

In such lack of social organization it is easy to imagine that the rule of celibacy received little attention. According to Mariana, the clergy of the period were, for the most part, publicly married;[752] and when, in 1056, the council of Compostella specifically forbade to bishops and monks all intercourse with women, except with mothers, aunts, and sisters wearing the monastic habit,[753] the inference is fair that even so elementary a prohibition was an innovation, and that the secular clergy, below the episcopate, were not regarded as subject to any restriction.