[171] Leonis. Novell. Constit. II.
[172] Quinisext. can. 3.
[173] Ibid. c. 6.
[174] Ibid. can. 12, 48.—“Hoc autem dicimus non ad ea abolenda et evertenda quæ Apostolice antea constituta sunt, sed ... ne status ecclesiasticus ullo probro efficiatur.”
[175] Quinisext. c. 13, 30.
[176] Quinisext. c. 33.—The Armenian church in the middle ages, was excessively severe as to the chastity of its ministers. A postulant for orders was obliged to confess, and if he had been guilty of a single lapse, he was rejected. So a priest in orders if yielding to the weakness of the flesh out of wedlock was expelled, though they were not obliged to part with their wives, and the Greek rule permitting marriage in the lower orders was maintained.—Concil. Armenor. ann. 1362 Art. 50, 53, 93 (Martene Ampl. Collect. VII. 366-7, 403).
[177] Leonis Novell. Constit. III.—It is not improbable that this custom resulted from the iconoclastic schism of Leo the Isaurian and Constantine Copronymus, which occupied nearly the whole of the eighth century. These emperors found their most unyielding enemies in the monks. In the savage persecutions which disgraced the struggle, Constantine endeavored to extirpate monachism altogether. The accounts which his adversaries have transmitted of the violence and cruelties which he perpetrated are doubtless exaggerated, but there is likelihood that his efforts to discountenance celibacy, as the foundation of the obnoxious institution, are correctly reported. “Publice defamavit et dehonestavit habitum monachorum in hippodromo, præcipiens unumquemque monachum manutenere mulierem, et taliter transire per hippodromum, sumptis injuriis ab omni populo cumulatis” (Baronii Annal. ann. 766, No. 1). He ejected the monks from the monasteries, which he turned into barracks; some of the monks were tortured, others fled to the mountains and deserts, where they suffered every extremity, while others again succumbed to threats and temptations, and were publicly married—“alii corporeis voluptatibus addicti, suas etiam uxores circumducere non erubescebant” (Ibid. No. 28, 29).
[178] Synod. Montis Libani ann. 1736 P. II. c. v. No. 16, 17, Tab. I. No. 11; P. III. c. i. No. 11; P. IV. c. ii. No. 16.—Synod. Ain-Traz ann. 1835 c. xii. (Concil. Collect. Lacens. II. 134, 138, 262, 263, 366, 367, 585).
[179] London “Academy,” Nov. 13th, 1869, p. 51.—See also “The Russian Clergy,” by Father Gagarin, London, 1872 (London Athenæum, No. 2334. p. 72-3).
[180] For these details from the collection of Asseman I am indebted to the Abate Zaccaria’s Nuova Giustificazione del Celibato Sacro, pp. 129-30.