+697. Clerical celibacy.+ If according to Christian standards virginity was the sole right rule and marriage was only a concession, it might justly be argued that the clergy ought to live up to the real standard, not the conventional concession. This was the best argument for sacerdotal celibacy. It was well understood, and not disputed, that celibacy was a rule of the church, and not an ordinance of Christ or the Gospel. It was an ascetic practice which was enjoined and enforced on the clergy. They never obeyed it. The rule produced sin and vice, and introduced moral discord and turpitude into the lives of thousands of the best men of the Middle Ages. In the baser days of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the current practice was a recognized violation of professed duty and virtue, under money penalties or penances. Yet the notion of celibacy for the clergy had been so established by discipline in the usage of priests and the mores of Christendom that a married priest was a disgusting and intolerable idea. At the same time usage had familiarized everybody with the concubinage of priests and prelates, and all Christendom knew that popes had their bastards living with them in the Vatican, where they were married and dowered by their fathers as openly as might be done by princes in their palaces. The falsehood and hypocrisy caused deep moral corruption, aside from any judgment as to what constituted the error or its remedy. Pope Pius II was convinced that there were better reasons for revoking the celibacy of the clergy than there ever had been for imposing it,[2209] but he was not a man to put his convictions into effect. The effect on character of violation of an ascetic rule, acknowledged and professed, was the same as that of the violation of one of the Ten Commandments.

+698. How Christian asceticism ended.+ By the beginning of the sixteenth century the ascetic views and tastes were all gone, overwhelmed by the ideas and tastes of a period of commerce, wealth, productive power, materialism, and enjoyment. In the new age the pagan joy in living was revived. Objects of desire were wealth, luxury, beauty, pleasure,--all of which the ascetics scorned and cursed. The reaction was favorable to a development of sensuality and materialism; also of art. Modern times have been made what they are by industry on rational lines of effort, with faith in the direct relation of effort to result. The aleatory element still remains, and it is still irrational, but the attitude of men towards it is changed. All the ground for asceticism is taken away.

We work for what we want with courage, hope, and faith, and we enjoy the product as a right. If the luck goes against us, we try again. We are very much disinclined to any increase of pain or of fruitless labor.

There is a great change in the mores of the entire modern society about the aleatory element. That change accounts for a great deal of the modern change of feeling about religion.

[2150] Spix and Martius, _Brasil_, 1318.

[2151] Hearn, _Japan_, 165.

[2152] _Marius the Epicurean_, 357.

[2153] Galton, _Hered. Genius_, 239.

[2154] Lea, _Inquisition_, II, 330.

[2155] _Psyche_, II, 101.

[2156] Rohde, _Psyche_, II, 121-130.

[2157] _Ibid._, 104.

[2158] Ueberweg, _Hist. Philos._, I, 45.

[2159] Lecky, _Eur. Morals_, II, 314.

[2160] Stengel, _Griech. Kultusalterthumer_, 35.

[2161] Euripides, _Hippolytus_, 1300; _Trojan Women_, 38, 975.

[2162] Mahaffy, _The Grecian World under Roman Sway_, 180.

[2163] Lecky, _Eur. Morals_, II, 315.

[2164] Lucian, _De Syria Dea_, sec. 28.

[2165] _Jewish Encyc._, V, 226.

[2166] Levit. xv. 16, 18; Deut. xxiii. 11; Josephus, _Cont. Ap._, II, 24.

[2167] Judges xiii. 4-14; Amos ii. 11.

[2168] Lucius, _Essenismus_, 102.

[2169] Josephus, _Antiq._, XIII, 5, 9.

[2170] Cook, _Fathers of Jesus_, II, 30, 38.

[2171] Hastings, Dict. Bib., _Devel. of Doct. in Apoc. Period_; Supp. Vol. 292, a.

[2172] Lucius, _Essenismus_, 54, 59, 68.

[2173] _Ibid._, 52.

[2174] _Jewish Encyc._, V, s. v. "Essenes."

[2175] Cook, _Fathers of Jesus_, II, 48; Lucius, _Essenismus_, 131; Graetz, _Gesch. der Juden_, III, 92 ff.

[2176] Harnack, _Pseudoclement. Briefe de Virg._, 3.

[2177] Hatch, _Griechenthum und Christenthum_, 121.

[2178] Lea, _Sacer. Celib._, 29.

[2179] Hatch, _Griechenthum und Christenthum_, 108.

[2180] _Ibid._, 109.

[2181] Harnack, _Pseudo-Clement. Briefe de Virg._, 19, 21, 22.

[2182] Hatch, 122.

[2183] Hatch, 123.

[2184] Harnack, _Dogmengesch._, I, 747.

[2185] _Ibid._, 59.

[2186] _Ibid._, 60.

[2187] Such perversions have been very frequent. See Todd, _Life of St. Patrick_, 91, for a case; also, Lea, _Inquisition_, III, 109. Sometimes the test was to show that the temptation was powerless. Lea, _Inquis._, II, 357; _Sacerd. Celib._, 167.

[2188] Wellhausen, _Skizzen und Vorarbeiten_, III, 210.

[2189] _Hist. of Religions_, section of the _Amer. Orient. Soc._, VII, 22.

[2190] Achelis, _Virgines Subintroductae_. The author thinks that the relationship was one of Platonic comradeship.

[2191] See Peter Lombard, _Sentent._, IV, 31.

[2192] _Early Eng. Text Soc._, 1866.

[2193] Cf. Lea, _Inquis._, II, 214, about Peter Martyr.

[2194] _Nouveaux Mem. de l'Acad. des Sciences, lettres et beaux arts de Belgique_, XXIII, 30.

[2195] The ideas of Francis had been promulgated by the Timotheists in the fifth century. They were then declared heretical (Lea, _Sacerd. Celib._, 377).

[2196] Carmichael, _In Tuscany_, 224.