An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church

by Henry Charles Lea

Under these circumstances, sacerdotal marriage came to be looked upon as a powerful lever to disarm or overthrow the hostility of the church, and also as a test of loyalty or disloyalty. Yet the steps by which this conclusion was reached were very gradual. In the early stages of the Revolution, while it was still fondly deemed that the existing institutions of France could be purified and preserved, the National Assembly was assailed with petitions asking that the privilege of marriage should be extended to the clergy.[1566] These met with no response, even after the suppression of the monastic orders. As late as September, 1790, when the Abbé Professor Cournand, of the Collège de France, made a motion in favor of sacerdotal marriage in the assembly of the district of St. Etienne du Mont in Paris, the question, after considerable debate, was laid aside as beyond the competence of that body. It was not until September 3d, 1791, that Mirabeau introduced into the Assembly a decree providing that no profession or vocation should debar a citizen from marriage or be considered as incompatible with marriage, and forbidding the public officials and notaries from refusing to ratify any marriage contract on such pretext. Though no allusion was made in this to ecclesiastics, its object was evident, and was so admitted in the eloquent speech with which he urged its adoption—a speech which contained a very telling résumé of the arguments in favor of priestly marriage, but which, in its glowing anticipations of the benefits to be expected from the measure, affords a somewhat lamentable contrast to the meagreness of the realization.[1567] The principle, when once established, was considered of sufficient importance to deserve recognition in the Constitution of September, 1791, a section in the preamble of which declares that the law does not recognize religious vows or any engagements contrary to the rights of nature or to the constitution,[1568] and this was followed, as Mirabeau had proposed, by a decree of September 20, 1791, which, in enumerating the obstacles to marriage, does not allude to monastic vows or holy orders.

Professor Cournand was probably the first man of position and character to take advantage of the privilege thus permitted, and his example was followed by many ecclesiastics who had won an honorable place in the church, in literature, and in science. Among them may be mentioned the Abbé Gaudin of the Oratoire, the author of a work already alluded to on the evils of celibacy, who in 1792 represented La Vendée in the Legislative Assembly, and who in 1805 did not hesitate to publish a little volume entitled “Avis à mon fils, âgé de sept ans”—although, in the preface to his work in 1781, he had described himself as long past the age of the passions. Even bishops yielded to the temptation. Loménie, coadjutor of his uncle the Archbishop of Sens, Torné Bishop of Bourges, Massieu of Beauvais, and Lindet of Evreux were publicly married. Many nuptials of this kind were celebrated with an air of defiance. Pastors announced their approaching weddings to their flocks in florid rhetoric, as though assured of finding sympathy for the assertion of the triumph of nature over the tyranny of man. Others presented themselves with their brides at the bar of the National Convention, as though to demonstrate that they were good citizens, who had thrown off all reverence for the obsolete traditions of the past.

A nation maddened and torn by the extremes of hope, of rage, and of terror, which met the triumphal march of three hundred and fifty thousand hostile bayonets with the heads of its king and queen, which blazoned forth to Europe its irrevocable breach with the past by instituting festivals in honor of a new Supreme Being and parading a courtesan through the streets of Paris as the Goddess of Reason, was not likely to employ much tenderness in coercing its internal enemies; and chief among these it finally numbered the ministers of religion. To them it soon applied the marriage test. To marry was to acknowledge the supremacy of the civil authority, and to sunder allegiance to foreign domination; celibacy was at the least a tacit adherence to the enemy, and a mute protest against the new régime. Matrimony, therefore, rose into importance as at once a test and a pledge, and every effort was made to encourage it. Among the records of the revolutionary tribunal is the trial of Mahue, Curé of S. Sulpice, Aug. 13, 1793, accused of having written a pamphlet against priestly marriage, and he was only acquitted on the ground that his crime had been committed prior to the adoption of the law of July 19, 1793.[1569] A decree of November 19, 1793, relieved from exile or imprisonment all priests who could show that their banns had been published, and when, soon afterwards, at the height of the popular frenzy, the Convention sent its deputies throughout France with instructions to crush out every vestige of the dreaded reaction, those emissaries made celibacy the object of their especial attacks. Thus, in the Department of the Meuse, deputy De la Croix announced that all priests who were not married should be placed under surveillance; while in Savoy the harsh measures taken against the clergy were modified in favor of those who married by permitting them to remain under surveillance. One zealous deputy ordered a pastor to be imprisoned until he could find a wife, and another released a canon from jail on his pledging himself to marry. Many of those thus forced into matrimony were decrepit with years, and chose brides whose age secured them from all suspicions of yielding to the temptations of the flesh. Such was the venerable Martin of Marseilles, who, after seeing his bishop and two priests, his intimate friends, led to the scaffold, took, at the age of 76, a wife nearly 60 years old. As an unfortunate ecclesiastic, who had thus succeeded in weathering the storm, fairly expressed it, in defending himself against the reproaches of a returned emigré bishop, he took a wife to serve as a lightning rod. These unwilling bridegrooms not infrequently deposited with a notary or a trusty friend a protest against the violence to which they had yielded, and a declaration that their relations with their wives should be merely those of brother and sister.

Yet in this curious persecution the officials only obeyed the voice of the excited people. The press, the stage, all the organs of public opinion, were unanimous in warring with celibacy, ridiculing it as a fanatical remnant of superstition, and denouncing it as a crime against the state. The popular societies were especially vehement in promulgating these ideas. The Congrès fraternel of Ausch, in September, 1793, ordered the local clubs to enlighten the benighted minds of the populace on the subject, and to exclude from membership all priests who should not marry within six months. A petition to the National Assembly from the republicans of Auxerre demanded that all ecclesiastics who persisted in remaining single should be banished; while a more truculent address from Condom urged imperiously that celibacy should be declared a capital crime, and that the death-penalty should be enforced with relentless severity. In times so terrible, when suspicion was conviction and conviction death, and when such were the views of those who swayed public affairs, it is not to be wondered at if many pious churchmen, unambitious of the crown of martyrdom, thought matrimony preferable to the guillotine or the noyade.

Indeed, the only source of surprise is that so few were found to betray their convictions. In the vast body of the Gallican church it is estimated that only about 2000 marriages of men in orders took place, after the reign of terror had rendered it a measure of safety. In addition to this, about 500 nuns were also married; and though this proportion is larger, it is still singularly small when we consider that these poor creatures, utterly unfitted by habit or education to take care of themselves, were suddenly ejected from their peaceful retreats, and cast upon a world which was raging in convulsions so terrible.[1570]

This is doubtless attributable to the steadfast resistance which the better part of the clergy made to the innovation, in spite of the danger of withstanding the popular frenzy, and in disregard of the laws which denounced such opposition. Even the assermentés, who had pledged themselves to the Revolution by taking the oath of allegiance, were mostly unfavorable to the abrogation of celibacy, and the position thus maintained by the clergy gave tone to such of the people as retained enough of devout feeling still to frequent the churches and partake of the mysteries of religion. The existence of an active and determined opposition is revealed by an act of August 16th, 1792, guaranteeing the salaries of all married priests, thus showing that, in some places at least, their stipends had been withheld. Many pastors, indeed, were driven from their parishes by their congregations, in consequence of marriage, to put an end to which a decree of September 17th, 1793, ordered the communes to continue payment of salaries in all such cases of ejection.

There were not wanting courageous ecclesiastics who opposed the innovation by every means in their power. Although Gobel, Bishop of Paris, a creature of the Revolution, favored the marriages of his clergy, a portion of his curates openly and vigorously denounced them, and Gratien, Archbishop of Rouen, addressed to him a severe reproach for his criminal weakness. The same Gratien excommunicated one of his priests for marrying, and published, July 24th, 1792, an instruction directed especially against such unions. For this he was thrown into prison, where he was long confined. Fauchet, of Bayeux, for the same offence, was reported to the Convention, but was fortunate enough to elude the consequences. Philibert, of Sedan, issued, January 20th, 1793, a pastoral in which he more cautiously argued against the practice, and, after a long persecution, he was lucky to escape with a decree of costs against him. Pastorals to the same effect were also promulgated by Clément of Versailles, Héraudin of Châteauroux, Sanadon of Oléron, Suzor of Tours, and others.

The Convention was not disposed to tolerate proceedings such as these. To put a stop to them, it adopted, July 19th, 1793, a law punishing with deprivation and exile all bishops who interfered in any way with the marriage of their clergy. For a while this appears to have put a stop to open opposition, but when the reign of terror was past, and the Catholics saw a prospect of reorganizing the distracted church, one of their earliest efforts was directed to the restoration of celibacy. On the 15th of March, 1795, some assermentés bishops, members of the Convention, issued from Paris an encyclical letter to the faithful, in which they denounced sacerdotal marriage in the strongest terms. Those who entered into such unions were declared unworthy of confidence; the fearful constraint under which they had sought refuge in matrimony was pronounced to be no justification, and even renunciation of their wives was not admitted as entitling them to absolution for the one unpardonable sin.[1571] In a second letter, issued December 15th of the same year, this denunciation was repeated in even stronger terms.

In these manifestoes the bishops did not speak by authority. They could not threaten or command, for they were acting beyond or in opposition to the law. With the progress of reaction they became bolder. In 1797 the church ventured to hold a national council, in which it forbade the nuptial benediction to those who were in orders or were bound by monastic vows, thus reducing their marriages to the mere civil contract, and depriving them of all the sanction of religion. The local synods which, encouraged by the fall of the Directory, were held in 1800, adopted these principles as a matter of course, and took measures to enforce them. That of Bourges even prohibited the churching of women who were wives of ecclesiastics.

This condemnation of the married clergy carried despair and desolation into the households of those who had offended, and upon whom the door of reconciliation was so sternly closed. Grégoire of Blois, a leading actor in all these scenes, records the innumerable appeals received from the unfortunates, who, torn by remorse and thus repudiated by the church, begged in vain for the mercy which was incompatible with the respect due to the ancient and inviolable canons.