[789] Gerhohi Tract. adv. Simoniac. c. 2.—About the year 1140, we find St. Bernard (Epist. 203) writing to the bishop and clergy of Trèves, urging them to labor for the reformation of a married subdeacon of their church, in terms which show that no severe application of the canons was to be expected.
[790] Gerhohi Exposit. in Psalm LXIV. cap. xlix.
[791] Gerhohi Exposit. in Psalm LXIV. c. xxxv. An allusion in this passage to Eugenius III. and the council of Rheims shows that it was written between 1148 and 1153. It seems that the nuns rebelled against the canon (Concil. Remens. ann. 1148 can. iv.) confining them to their convents under threat of deprivation of Christian sepulture.
[792] Ibid. cap. xlvi.
[793] Hugon. Rothomag. contra Hæret. Lib. III. cap. v.—Hugh gives us in a new form the old calculation as to the comparative merits of virginity, continence, and marriage—“Non centesimo honore cum virginibus gloriatur, non sexagesima continentiæ palma lætatur, sed tricesimo conjugii labore fatigatur.”
[794] Fortescue de Laud. Leg. Angl. cap. xxi.—Fortescue speaks of the case as having occurred within his own knowledge.
[795] Et constituit ut nullus in sacris ordinibus habeat uxorem vel concubinam.—Chron. S. Ægid. in Brunswig.
[796] Concil. Turon. ann. 1163 can. 4 (MS. St. Michael. ap. Harduin. Tom. VI. P. ii. p. 1600).
[797] Qui autem a subdiaconatu vel supra ad matrimonia convolaverint, mulieres etiam invitas et renitentes relinquant.—Concil. Abrincens. ann. 1172 c. 1. I give this on the authority of the Abate Zaccaria (Nuova Giustificazione del Celibato Sacro p. 120); there is no such canon among those attributed to the council by Hardouin (T. VI. P. II. p. 1634), and by Bessin (Concil. Rotomagensia, p. 86), whose accounts of the proceedings are extracted from Roger of Hoveden and tally with that given in the Gesta Henrici II. attributed to Benedict of Peterboro (I. 33. M. R. Series). As a number of canons proposed by the papal legates, Cardinals Theodwin and Albert, were rejected by the Norman bishops, it is possible that the local reports and those current at Rome may have differed.
[798] Post Concil. Lateran. P. XVIII. c. 12.