[592] Cf. ii. 22.
[593] See i. 10; ii. 23.
[594] i. 13.
[595] ii. 4.
[596] iii. 1, 10.
[597] It is quite true that in the earliest Christian times the marriage of priests was recognized, and continued to be at least connived at until, say, the time of Hildebrand. Yet the best thoughtfulness and piety from the Patristic period onward had disapproved of priestly marriages, which consequently tended to sink to the level of concubinage, until they were absolutely condemned by the Church.
[598] Anecdotes, etc., d’Étienne de Bourbon, ed. by Lecoy de la Marche, p. 249 (Soc. de l’Histoire de France, t. 185, Paris, 1877). This story refers to the years 1166-1171.
[599] Many bishops and abbots held definite secular rank; the Archbishop of Rheims was a duke, and so was the Bishop of Langres and Laon; while the bishops of Beauvais and Noyon were counts. In Germany, the archiepiscopal dukes of Cologne and Mainz were among the chief princes of the land.
[600] There were, however, some (naturally shocking) instances of inheritance, as where the Bishop of Nantes in 1049 admitted that he had been invested with the bishopric during the lifetime of his father, the preceding bishop. See Luchaire, in vol. ii. (2), pp. 107-117 of Lavisse’s Hist. de France, for this and other examples of episcopal feudalism.
[601] Sermo in Cantica, 33, par. 15 (Migne 183, col. 958-959). With this passage from St. Bernard, one may compare the far more detailed picture of the luxury and dissolute ways of the secular clergy in France given in the Apologia of Guido of Bazoches (latter part of the twelfth century). W. Wattenbach. “Die Apologie des Guido von Bazoches,” Sitzungsberichte Preussichen Akad., 1893, (1), pp. 395-420.