The extreme disorders which such teaching produced in domestic life, and also the extravagances which grew up among some heretics, naturally alarmed the more judicious leaders of the Church, and it was ordained that married persons should not enter into an ascetic life, except by mutual consent. The ascetic ideal, however, remained unchanged. To abstain from marriage, or in marriage to abstain from a perfect union, was regarded as a proof of sanctity, and marriage was viewed in its coarsest and most degraded form. The notion of its impurity took many forms, and exercised for some centuries an extremely wide influence over the Church. Thus, it was the custom during the middle ages to abstain from the marriage bed during the night after the ceremony, in honour of the sacrament. It was expressly enjoined that no married persons should participate in any of the great Church festivals if the night before they had lain together, and St. Gregory the Great tells of a young wife who was possessed by a dæmon, because she had taken part in a procession of St. Sebastian, without fulfilling this condition.3 The extent to which the feeling on the subject was carried is shown by the famous vision of Alberic in the twelfth century, in which a special place of torture, consisting of a lake of mingled lead, pitch, and resin is represented as existing in hell for the punishment of married people who had lain together on Church festivals or fast days.*

Two other consequences of this way of regarding marriage were a very strong disapproval of second marriages, and a very strong desire to secure celibacy in the clergy. The first of these notions had existed, though in a very different form and connected with very different motives, among the early Romans, who were accustomed, we are told, to honour with

The regulations on this point are given at length in Bingham. Muratori, Antich. Ital. diss.xx.

2

St. Greg. Dial. i. 10. Delepierre, L'Enfer décrit par ceux qui l'ont vu, pp. 44-56.

the crown of modesty those who were content with one marriage, and to regard many marriages as a sign of illegitimate intemperance. This opinion appears to have chiefly grown out of a very delicate and touching feeling which had taken deep root in the Roman mind, that the affection a wife owes her husband is so profound and so pure that it must not cease even with his death; that it should guide and consecrate all her subsequent life, and that it never can be transferred to another object. Virgil, in very beautiful lines, puts this sentiment into the mouth of Dido; 2 and several examples are recorded of Roman wives, sometimes in the prime of youth and beauty, upon the death of their husbands, devoting the remainder of their lives to retirement and to the memory of the dead.3 Tacitus held up the Germans as in this respect a model to his countrymen, and the epithet 'univiræ ' inscribed on many Roman tombs shows how this devotion was practised and valued.5 The family of Camillus was especially honoured for the absence of second marriages among its members. 6 'To love a wife when living,' said one of the latest Roman poets, 'is a pleasure; to love her when dead is an act of religion.'7 In the case of men, the propriety of abstaining from second marriages was probably not felt so strongly as in the case of women, and what feeling on the subject existed was chiefly due to another motive—affection for the children, whose interests, it was thought, might be injured by a stepmother.8

1

The sentiment which thus recoiled from second marriages passed with a vastly increased strength into ascetic Christianity, but it was based upon altogether different grounds. We find, in the first place, that an affectionate remembrance of the husband had altogether vanished from the motives of the abstinence. In the next place, we may remark that the ecclesiastical writers, in perfect conformity with the extreme coarseness of their views about the sexes, almost invariably assumed that the motive to second or third marriages must be simply the force of the animal passions. The Montanists and the Novatians absolutely condemned second marriages. The orthodox pronounced them lawful, on account of the weakness of human nature, but they viewed them with the most emphatic disapproval,2 partly because they considered them manifest signs of incontinence, and partly because they regarded them as inconsistent with their doctrine that marriage is an emblem of the union of Christ with the Church. The language of the Fathers on this subject appears to a modern mind most extraordinary, and, but for their distinct and reiterated assertion that they considered these marriages permissible,3 would appear to amount to a peremptory condemnation. Thus to give but a few samples-digamy, or second marriage, is described by Athenagoras as a decent adultery.' 14 'Fornication,' according to Clement of Alexandria, is a lapse from one marriage into many.' 'The first Adam,' said St. Jerome, 'had one wife; the second Adam

6

15

had no wife. They who approve of digamy hold forth a third Adam, who was twice married, whom they follow.' 'Consider,' he again says, 'that she who has been twice married, though she be an old, and decrepit, and poor woman, is not deemed worthy to receive the charity of the Church. But if the bread of charity is taken from her, how much more that bread which descends from heaven! '2 'Digamists,' according to Origen, 'are saved in the name of Christ, but are by no means crowned by him.'3

'By this text,' said St. Gregory Nazianzen, speaking of St. Paul's comparison of marriage to the union of Christ with the Church, 'second marriages seem to me to be reproved. If there are two Christs there may be two husbands or two wives. If there is but one Christ, one Head of the Church, there is but one flesh-a second is repelled. But if he forbids a second, what is to be said of third marriages? The first is law, the second is pardon and indulgence, the third is iniquity; but he who exceeds this number is manifestly bestial.'4 The collective judgment of the ecclesiastical authorities on this subject is shown by the rigid exclusion of digamists from the priesthood, and from all claim to the charity of the Church, and by the decrees of more than one Council, which imposed a period of penance upon all who married a second time, before they were admitted to communion.5 One of the canons of the Council of Illiberis, in the beginning of the fourth century, while in general condemning baptism by laymen, permitted it in case of extreme necessity; but provided that even then it was indispensable that the officiating layman should not have been twice married."

1 Contra Jovin. i.

2 Ibid. See, too, Ep. cxxiii.
3 Hom. xvii. in Lac.
• Orat. xxxi.

"Perrone, De Matr. iii. § 1, art. 1; Natalis Alexander, Hist. Eccles. II. dissert. 18. The penances are

said not to imply that the second marriage was a sin, but that the moral condition that made it necessary was a bad one.

6 Conc. Illib. can. xxxviii. Bingham thinks the feeling of the Council to have been, that if bap

Among the Greeks fourth marriages were at one time deemed absolutely unlawful, and much controversy was excited by the Emperor Leo the Wise, who, having had three wives, had taken a mistress, but afterwards, in defiance of the religious feelings of his people, determined to raise her to the position of a wife.1

The

The subject of the celibacy of the clergy, in which the ecclesiastical feelings about marriage were also shown, is an extremely large one, and I shall not attempt to deal with it, except in a most cursory manner.2 There are two facts connected with it which every candid student must admit. first is, that in the earliest period of the Church, the privilege of marriage was accorded to the clergy. The second is, that a notion of the impurity of marriage existed, and that it was felt that the clergy, as pre-eminently the holy class, should have less licence than laymen. The first form this feeling took appears in the strong conviction that a second marriage of a priest, or the marriage of a priest with a widow, was unlawful and criminal.3 This belief seems to

tism was not administered by a priest, it should at all events be administered by one who might have been a priest.

1 Perrone, De Matrimonio, tome iii. p. 102.

2 This subject has recently been treated with very great learning and with admirable impartiality by an American author, Mr. Henry C. Lea, in his History of Sacerdotal Celibacy (Philadelphia, 1867), which is certainly one of the most valuable works that America has produced. Since the great history of Dean Milman, I know no work in English which has thrown more light on the moral condition of the middle ages, and none which is more fitted to dispel the gross illusions concerning that period which

High Church writers, and writers of the positive school, have conspired to sustain.

3 See Lea, p. 36. The command of St. Paul, that a bishop or deacon should be the husband of one wife (1 Tim. iii. 2-12) was believed by all ancient and by many modern commentators to be prohibitory of second marriages; and this view is somewhat confirmed by the widows who were to be honoured and supported by the Church, being only those who had been but once married (1 Tim. v. 9). See Pressensé, Hist. des trois premiers Siècles (1TM série), tome ii. p. 233. Among the Jews it was ordained that the high priest should not marry a widow. (Levit. xxi. 13–14.)