[98] Concilium Eliberitanum, A.D. 305, ch. 33 (Labbe-Mansi, op. cit. ii. 11):—“Placuit in totum prohiberi episcopis, presbyteris, et diaconibus, vel omnibus clericis positis in ministerio, abstinere se a conjugibus suis, et non generare filios: quicumque vero fecerit, ab honore clericatus exterminetur.”
[99] Gieseler, Text-Book of Ecclesiastical History, ii. 275. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, ii. 150.
The practice of religious celibacy may be traced to several sources. In many cases the priestess is obviously regarded as married to the god whom she is serving, and is therefore forbidden to marry anybody else. In ancient Peru the Sun was the husband of the virgins dedicated to him.[100] They were obliged to be of the same blood as their consort, that is to say, daughters of the Incas. “For though they imagined that the Sun had children, they considered that they ought not to be bastards, with mixed divine and human blood. So the virgins were of necessity legitimate and of the blood royal, which was the same as being of the family of the Sun.”[101] And the crime of violating the virgins dedicated to the Sun was the same and punished in the same severe manner as the crime of violating the women of the Inca.[102] Concerning the priestesses of the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, Major Ellis remarks that the reason for their celibacy appears to be that “a priestess belongs to the god she serves, and therefore cannot become the property of a man, as would be the case if she married one.”[103] So also the Ew̔e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast regard the women dedicated to a god as his wives.[104] In the great temple of Jupiter Belus, we are told, a single woman used to sleep, whom the god had chosen for himself out of all the women of the land; and it was believed that he came down in person to sleep with her. “This,” Herodotus says, “is like the story told by the Egyptians of what takes place in their city of Thebes, where a woman always passes the night in the temple of the Theban Jupiter. In each case the woman is said to be debarred all intercourse with men.”[105] In the Egyptian texts there are frequent references to “the divine consort,” neter ḥemt, a position which was generally occupied by the ruling queen, and the king was believed to be the offspring of such a union.[106] As Plutarch states, the Egyptians thought it quite possible for a woman to be impregnated by the approach of some divine spirit, though they denied that a man could have corporeal intercourse with a goddess.[107] Nor was the idea of a nuptial relation between a woman and the deity foreign to the early Christians. St. Cyprian speaks of women who had no husband and lord but Christ, with whom they lived in a spiritual matrimony—who had “dedicated themselves to Christ, and, retiring from carnal lust, vowed themselves to God in flesh and spirit.”[108] In the following words he condemns the cohabitation of such virgins with unmarried ecclesiastics, under the pretence of a purely spiritual connection:—“If a husband come and see his wife lying with another man, is he not indignant and maddened, and does he not in the violence of his jealousy perhaps even seize the sword? What? How indignant and angered then must Christ our Lord and Judge be, when He sees a virgin, dedicated to Himself, and consecrated to His holiness, lying with a man! and what punishments does He threaten against such impure connections…. She who has been guilty of this crime is an adulteress, not against a husband, but Christ.”[109] According to the gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the Virgin Mary had in a similar manner dedicated herself as a virgin to God.[110] The idea that the deity is jealous of the chastity of his or her servants may also perhaps be at the bottom of the Greek custom according to which the hierophant and the other priests of Demeter were restrained from conjugal intercourse and washed their bodies with hemlock-juice in order to kill their passions,[111] as also of the rule which required the priests of certain goddesses to be eunuchs.[112]
[100] Garcilasso de la Vega, op. cit. i. 297.
[101] Ibid. i. 292.
[102] Ibid. i. 300.
[103] Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 121.
[104] Idem, Ew̔e-speaking Peoples, pp. 140, 142.
[105] Herodotus, i. 181 sq.
[106] Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 268. Cf. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 295 sq.