Notwithstanding this all-pervading laxity, the canons of the church remained unaltered, and their full force was theoretically admitted. Hopeless efforts, moreover, were occasionally made to re-establish them, as in the council of Anse in 990, which reminded the clergy that intercourse with wives after ordination was punishable with forfeiture of benefice and deprivation of priestly functions;[363] and in that of Poitiers about the year 1000, which prohibited concubines under pain of degradation.[364] In a similar spirit, a Penitential of the period recapitulates the severe punishments of a former age, involving degradation and fearfully long terms of penance.[365] All this, however, was practically a dead letter. The person who best represents the active intelligence of the age was Gerbert of Aurillac, the most enlightened man of his time, who, after occupying the archiepiscopal seats of Rheims and Ravenna, finally became pope under the name of Silvester II. The lightness with which he treats the subject of celibacy is therefore fairly a measure of the views entertained by the ruling spirits of the church, beyond the narrow bounds of cloistered asceticism. Gerbert, describing in a sermon the requisites of the episcopal and sacerdotal offices, barely refers to the “unius uxoris vir,” which he seems to regard in an allegorical rather than in a literal sense; he scarcely alludes to chastity, while he dilates with much energy on simony, which he truly characterizes as the almost universal vice of his contemporaries.[366] So when, in 997, he convened the council of Ravenna to regulate the discipline of his church, he paid no attention whatever to incontinence, while strenuously endeavoring to root out simony.[367] At an earlier period, while Abbot of Bobbio, in an epistle to his patron, the Emperor Otho II., refuting various calumnies of his enemies, he alludes to a report of his having a wife and children in terms which show how little importance he attached to the accusation.[368]
Such, at the opening of the eleventh century, was the condition of the church as regards ascetic celibacy. Though the ancient canons were still theoretically in force, they were practically obsolete everywhere. Legitimate marriage or promiscuous profligacy was almost universal, in some places unconcealed, in others covered with a thin veil of hypocrisy, according as the temper of the ruling prelate might be indulgent or severe. So far, therefore, Latin Christianity had gained but little in its struggle of six centuries with human nature. Whether the next eight hundred years will show a more favorable result remains for us to develop.
Before proceeding, however, to discuss the events of the succeeding century, it will be well to cast a rapid glance at a portion of Christendom, the isolation of which has thus far precluded it from receiving attention.
[XI.]
SAXON ENGLAND.
Whatever of virtue or purity may have distinguished the church of Britain under Roman domination was speedily extinguished in the confusion of the Saxon occupation. Gildas, who flourished in the first half of the sixth century, describes the clergy of his time as utterly corrupt.[369] He apparently would have been satisfied if the bishops had followed the Apostolic precept and contented themselves with being husbands of one wife; and he complains that instead of bringing up their children in chastity, the latter were corrupted by the evil example of their parents.[370] Under Saxon rule, Christianity was probably well-nigh trampled out, except in the remoter mountain districts, to be subsequently restored in its sacerdotal form under the direct auspices of Rome.
Meanwhile, the British Isles were the theatre of another and independent religious movement. While the Saxons were subverting Christianity in Britain, St. Patrick was successfully engaged in laying the foundations of the Irish church.[371] We have seen (p. 76) that celibacy was not one of the rules enforced in the infant Irish church; but this was of comparatively little moment, for that church was almost exclusively monastic in its character, and preserved the strictest views as to the observance of the vows by those who had once taken them.[372] That the principles thus established were long preserved is evident from a curious collection of Hibernian canons, made in the eighth century, of which selections have been published by d’Achery and Martène. Some of these are credited by the compilers to Gildas, and thus show the discipline of the early British as well as of the Irish church.[373] Their tendency is towards the purest asceticism. A penance of forty days was even enjoined on the ecclesiastic who, without thought of evil, indulged in the pleasure of converse with a woman.[374] So in Ireland, a council held in 672 decrees that a priest guilty of unchastity, although removable according to the strict rule of discipline, may be allowed, if truly contrite, to retain his position on undergoing ten years of penitence[375]—an alternative, one might think, rather of severity than of mercy. One canon attributed to Gildas shows that in the British monastic system unchastity was considered the most heinous of offences, and also that it was sufficiently common;[376] while another alludes to the same vice among prelates as justifying immediate excommunication.[377]
The missionary career by which the Irish church repaid the debt that it owed to Christianity is well known, and the form of faith which it spread was almost exclusively monastic. Luanus, one of the monks of Benchor, is said to have founded no less than a hundred monasteries;[378] and when Columba established the Christian religion in Scotland, he carried with him this tendency to asceticism and inculcated it among his Pictish neophytes. His Rule enjoins the most absolute purity of mind as well as body;[379] and that his teachings were long obeyed is evident when we find that, a hundred and fifty years later, his disciples are praised for the chastity and zeal of their self-denying lives by the Venerable Bede, who was fully alive to the importance of the rule, and who would have wasted no such admiration on them had they lived in open disregard of it.[380] Equally convincing is the fact that Scotland and the Islands were claimed to be under the supremacy of the see of York, and that during the long controversy requisite to break down their schismatic notions respecting the date of Easter and the shape of the tonsure, not a word was said that can lead to the supposition that they held any unorthodox views on the far more important subject of sacerdotal purity.[381]
When, a hundred and fifty years after the Anglo-Saxon invasion, Gregory the Great undertook the conversion of the islanders, the missionaries whom he despatched under Augustin of course carried with them the views and ideas which then held undisputed sway in Rome. Apparently, however, asceticism found little favor at first with the new converts, rendering it difficult for Augustin to obtain sufficient co-laborers among his disciples, for he applied to Gregory to learn whether he might allow those who could not restrain their passions to marry and yet remain in the ministry. To this Gregory replied evasively, stating, what Augustin already knew, that the lower grades might marry, but making no reference whatever to the higher orders.[382] He apparently did not wish to assume the responsibility of relaxing the rule, while willing perhaps to connive at its suspension in order to encourage the infant Anglican church. If so, the indulgence was but temporary.