[89] Tertullian, De monogamia, 3 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 932).
[90] This opinion was held by Gregory of Nyssa and, in a later time, by John of Damascus. It was opposed by Thomas Aquinas, who maintained that the human race was from the beginning propagated by means of sexual intercourse, but that such intercourse was originally free from all carnal desire (von Eicken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, p. 437 sq.; see also Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ii. 186).
[91] St. Ambrose, Epistola LXIII. 40 (Migne, op. cit. xvi. 1200).
[92] Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, i. 1, 29; iv. 11; &c. (Migne, op. cit. ii. 247, 280 sqq., 382). Idem, De monogamia, 1, 15 (Migne, ii. 931, 950). Cf. Irenaeus, Contra Hæreses, i. 28. 1 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Græca, vii. 690 sq.); Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, iii. 3 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Græca, viii. 1113 sqq.).
[93] Concilium Gangrense, can. 1 (Labbe-Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio, ii. 1106).
[94] Concilium Mediolanense, A.D. 390 (Labbe-Mansi, op. cit. iii. 689 sq.).
[95] St. Justin, Apologia I. pro Christianis, 29 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Græca, vi. 373). Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, ii. 23 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Græca, viii. 1089). Gibbon, op. cit. ii. 186.
[96] Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis, 33 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Græca, vi. 966).
These opinions led by degrees to the obligatory celibacy of the secular and regular clergy. The conviction that a second marriage of a priest, or the marriage of a priest with a widow, is unlawful, seems to have existed from the earliest period of the Church;[97] and as early as the beginning of the fourth century a synod held in Elvira in Spain insisted on the absolute continence of the higher ecclesiastics.[98] The celibacy of the clergy in general was prescribed by Gregory VII., who “looked with abhorrence on the contamination of the holy sacerdotal character, even in its lowest degree, by any sexual connection.” But in many countries this prescription was so strenuously resisted, that it could not be carried through till late in the thirteenth century.[99]
[97] Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church, p. 37. Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 328 sq.