[144] 1 Corinthians, vii. 5.
[145] Tertullian, De exhortatione castitatis, 10 (Migne, op. cit. ii. 926).
[146] See supra, [ii. 295 sq.]
[147] Simon, quoted by Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iv. 363. See infra, [Additional Notes].
If ceremonial cleanliness is required even of the ordinary worshipper it is all the more indispensable in the case of a priest;[148] and of all kinds of uncleanness none is to be more carefully avoided than sexual pollution. Sometimes admission into the priesthood is to be preceded by a period of continence.[149] In the Marquesas Islands no one could become a priest without having lived chastely for several years previously.[150] Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast men and women, in order to become members of the priesthood, have to pass through a long novitiate, generally from two to three years, during which they live in retirement and are instructed by the priests in the secrets of the craft; and “the people believe that, during this period of retirement and study, the novices must keep their bodies pure, and refrain from all commerce with the other sex.”[151] The Huichols of Mexico, again, are of opinion that a man who wishes to become a shaman must be faithful to his wife for five years, and that, if he violates this rule, he is sure to be taken ill and will lose the power of healing.[152] In ancient Mexico the priests, all the time that they were employed in the service of the temple, abstained from all other women but their wives, and “even affected so much modesty and reserve, that when they met a woman they fixed their eyes on the ground that they might not see her. Any incontinence amongst the priests was severely punished. The priest who, at Teohuacan, was convicted of having violated his chastity, was delivered up by the priests to the people, who at night killed him by the bastinado.”[153] Among the Kotas of the Neilgherry Hills the priests—who, unlike the “dairymen” of their Toda neighbours are not celibates—are at the great festival in honour of Kāmatarāya forbidden to live or hold intercourse with their wives for fear of pollution, and are then even obliged to cook their meals themselves.[154] It seems that, according to the Anatolian religion, married hieroi had to separate from their wives during the period they were serving at the temple.[155] The Hebrew priest should avoid all unchastity; he was not allowed to marry a harlot, or a profane, or a divorced wife,[156] and the high-priest was also forbidden to marry a widow.[157] Nay, even in a priest’s daughter unchastity was punished with excessive severity, because she had profaned her father; she was to be burned.[158]
[148] Cf. supra, [ii. 352 sq.]
[149] Cf. Landtman, op. cit. p. 118 sqq.
[150] Waitz-Gerland, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, vi. 387.
[151] Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 120.
[152] Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, ii. 236.