As a body the clergy in England were placed very high in the social scale: the valuable services which they rendered to their fellow-creatures,—their dignity as ministers and stewards of the mysteries of the faith,—lastly the ascetical course of life which many of them adopted, struck the imagination and secured the admiration of their rude contemporaries. At first too, they were honourably distinguished by the possession of arts and learning, which could be found in no other class; and although the most celebrated of their commentaries upon the Biblical books or the works of the Fathers, do not now excite in us any very great feelings of respect, they must have had a very different effect upon our simple progenitors. Whatever state of ignorance the body generally may have fallen into in the ninth and tenth centuries, the seventh and eighth had produced men famous in every part of Europe for the soundness and extent of their learning. To them England owed the more accurate calculations which enabled the divisions of times and seasons to be duly settled; the decency, nay even splendour, of the religious services were maintained by their skilful arrangement; painting, sculpture and architecture were made familiar through their efforts, and the best examples of these civilising arts were furnished by their churches and monasteries: it is probable that their lands in general supplied the best specimens of cultivation, and that the leisure of the cloister was often bestowed in acquiring the art of healing, so valuable in a rude state of society, liable to many ills which our more fortunate period could, with ordinary care, escape[[924]]. Their manuscripts yet attract our attention by the exquisite beauty of the execution; they were often skilled in music, and other pursuits which at once delight and humanise us. To them alone could resort be had for even the little instruction which the noble and wealthy coveted: they were the only schoolmasters[[925]]; and those who yet preserve the affectionate regard which grows up between a generous boy and him to whom he owed his earliest intellectual training, can judge with what force such motives acted in a state of society so different from our own. Moreover the intervention of the clergy in many most important affairs of life was almost incessant. Marriage—that most solemn of all the obligations which the man and the citizen can contract—was celebrated under their superintendence: without the instruments which they prepared no secure transfer of property could be made; and as arbitrators or advisers, they were resorted to for the settlement of disputed right, and the avoidance of dangerous litigation. Lastly, although during the Anglosaxon period we nowhere find them putting forward that shocking claim to consideration which afterwards became so common—the being makers of their Creator in the sacrament of the Eucharist,—we cannot doubt that their calling was supposed to confer a peculiar holiness upon them; or that the hád, the orders, they received, were taken to remove them from the class of common Christians into a higher and more sacred sphere.
Great privileges were accordingly given to them in a social point of view. They enjoyed a high wergyld, an increased mundbyrd, and a distinguished secular rank. The weofodþegn or servant of the altar who duly performed his important functions, was reckoned on the same footing as the secular thane, woroldþegn, who earned nobility and wealth in the service of an earthly master. The oaths of a priest or deacon were of more force than those of a free man; and it was rendered easier for them to rebut accusations by the aid of their clerical compurgators, than for the simple ceorl or even þegn, and his gegyldan.
It was nevertheless a wise provision that their privileges should not extend so far as to remove them entirely from participation in the general interests of their countrymen, or make them aliens from the obligations which the Anglosaxon state imposed upon all its members. Personal privileges they enjoyed, like other distinguished members of the body politic, as long as their conduct individually was such as to merit them; but they were not cut off entirely from the common burthens or the common advantages: and this will not unsatisfactorily explain the immunity which England long enjoyed, from struggles by which other European states—and in later periods even our own—were convulsed to their foundations. In their cathedrals and conventual churches, or scattered through the parishes over all the surface of the land, but sharing in the interests of all classes, they acted as a body of mediators between the strong and the weak, repressing the violent, consoling and upholding the sufferer, and offering even to the despairing serf the hope of a future rest from misery and subjection.
On the first establishment of conventual bodies we have seen that a complete immunity had been granted from the secular services to which all other lands were liable[[926]]; but that the inconvenience of this course soon led to its abandonment. It is difficult to say whether this immunity was at any time extended to the hide, “mansus aecclesiasticus,” or “dos aecclesiae” of the parish-church: it is on the contrary probable that it never was so extended; for no hint of the sort occurs in our own annals or charters; and it is well known that the church lands among the neighbouring Franks were subject, like those of the laity, to the burthens of the state[[927]]. From every hide which passed into clerical hands, the king could to the very last demand the inevitable dues, military service, repairs of roads and fortifications; and though it is not likely that the parish priest was called upon to serve in person, it is also not likely that he was excused the payment of his quota toward the arming and support of a substitute in the field[[928]].
Nor did the legislation of the Teutonic nations contemplate the withdrawal of the clergy from the authority of the secular tribunals. The sin of the clergyman might indeed be punished in the proper manner by his ecclesiastical superior: penance and censure might be inflicted by the bishop upon his delinquent brother; but the crime of the citizen was reserved for the cognizance of the state[[929]].
This had been the custom of the Franks, even while they permitted the clergy, who belonged to the class of Roman provincials, to be judged by the Roman law[[930]]: it was for centuries the practice in England, and would probably so have remained had the error of the Conqueror in separating the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdictions not prepared the way for the troublous times of the Henries and Edwards. In the case of manslaughter, Ælfred commands that the priest shall be secularised before he is delivered for punishment to the ordinary tribunals[[931]]: Æðelred[[932]] and Cnut[[933]] decree that he is to be secularised, to become an outlaw and abjure the realm, and do such penance as the Pope shall prescribe; and they extend this penalty to other grievous offences besides homicide. Eádweard the elder enacts that if a man in orders steal, fight, perjure himself or be unchaste, he shall be subject to the same penalties as the laity under the same circumstances would be, and to his canonical penance besides[[934]]. But the plainest evidence that the clergy, even including the most dignified of their body, were held to answer before the ordinary courts, is supplied by the many provisions in the laws as to the mode of conducting their trials[[935]]. It could not indeed be otherwise in a country where every offence was to be tried by the people themselves.
But the most effectual mode of separating the clergy from the other members of the church yet remains to be considered. He that is permitted to contract marriage, to enjoy the inestimable blessings of a home, to connect himself with a family, and give the state dear pledges of his allegiance, can never cease to be a citizen of that polity in which his lot is cast. He can be no alien, no machine to be put in motion by foreign force. Accordingly, although the celibacy of the clergy is a mere point of discipline (and could therefore be dispensed with at once were it desired[[936]]), it has always been pertinaciously insisted upon by those whose interest it was to destroy the national feeling of the clergy in every country, and render them subservient to one centralising power. It is fitting that we enquire how far this was attempted in England, and how far the attempt succeeded.
The perilous position of the early Christians, and especially of the clergy, rendered it at least matter of prudence that they should not contract the obligation of family bonds which must prove a serious hindrance to the performance of their duties. It is therefore easily conceivable that marriage should in the first centuries have been discouraged among the members of this particular class. There was also a tendency among the eastern Christians to engraft upon the doctrines of the faith, those peculiar metaphysical notions which seem always to have characterized the oriental modes of thought. The antagonism of spirit and matter, the degraded—nay even diabolical[[937]]—nature of the latter, and the duty of emancipating the spiritual portion of our being from its trammels, were quite as prominent doctrines of some Christian communities, as of the Brahman or Buddhist. The holiness of the priest would, it was thought, be contaminated by his union with a wife; and thus from a combination of circumstances which in themselves had no necessary connexion, an opinion came to prevail that a state of celibacy was the proper one for the ministers of the sacraments. It was at first recommended, and then commanded, that those who wished to devote themselves to the especial service of the church, should not contract the bond of marriage. Even the married citizen who accepted orders was admonished to separate himself from the society of his wife: and both were taught that a life of continence for the future would be an acceptable offering in the sight of God. It seems unnecessary to dilate upon the fallacy of these views, or to point out the gross and degrading materialism on which they are ultimately based. The historian, while he laments, must to the best of his power record the aberrations of human intelligence, under his inevitable conditions of place and time.
It is uncertain at what period this restriction was first attempted to be enforced in the Western Church, but there are early councils which notice the existence of a strong feeling on the subject[[938]]. In the year 376 a Gallic synod excommunicated those who should refuse the ministrations of a priest on the ground of his marriage[[939]]. But this can only prove that at the time there were married priests, whether living in continence or not, and that certain persons were scandalized at them. I cannot admit, as some authors have done, that the Council intended to make such marriages legal; on the contrary, it seems to me that the intention of the canon is merely to assert the validity of the sacraments, however unworthy might be the person by whom they were administered[[940]]. But restrictions which wound the natural feelings of men are vain: popes and councils may decree, but they cannot enforce obedience, and it seems to me that on this particular subject they never entirely succeeded in carrying out their views. All they did was to convert a holy and a blessed connexion into one of much lower character, and to throw the doors wide open to immorality and scandal. The efforts of Boniface in Germany were particularly directed to this point[[941]], and his biographer tells us on more than one occasion of his success in destroying the influence of married priests. But it may be questioned whether the same result attended the efforts of the Roman missionaries in England. It seems to me, on the contrary, that we have an almost unbroken chain of evidence to show that, in spite of the exhortations of the bishops, and the legislation of the witan, those at least of the clergy who were not bound to cœnobitical order, did contract marriage, and openly rear the families which were its issue. From Eddius we learn that Wilfrið bishop of York, one of the staunchest supporters of Romish views, had a son[[942]]; he does not indeed say that this son was born in wedlock, nor does any author directly mention Wilfrið’s marriage: but we may adopt this view of the matter, as the less scandalous of two alternatives, and as rendered probable by the absence of all accusations which might have been brought against the bishop on this score by any one of his numerous enemies. In a charter of emancipation we find among the witnesses, Ælfsige the priest and his son[[943]]: by another document a lady grants a church hereditarily to Wulfmǽr the priest and his offspring, as long as he shall have any in orders[[944]], where a succession of married clergymen is obviously contemplated. Again we read of Godwine at Worðig bishop Ælfsige’s son[[945]], and of the son of Oswald a presbyter[[946]]. Under Eádweard the Confessor we are told of Robert the deacon and his son-in-law Richard Fitzscrob[[947]], and of Gódríc a son of the king’s chaplain Gódman[[948]].
It may no doubt be argued that in some of these instances the children may have been the issue of marriages contracted before the father entered into orders; but it is obvious that this was not the case with all of them, nor is there any proof that any were so. On the other hand we have evidence of married priests which it would be difficult to reject. Florence speaks of the newly born son of a certain presbytera, or priest’s wife[[949]]: I have already cited a passage from Simeon of Durham which distinctly mentions a married presbyter[[950]], about the year 1045: and the History of Ely records the wife and family of an archipresbyter in that town[[951]]. Lastly we are told over and over again that one principal cause for the removal of the canons or prebendaries from the cathedrals and collegiate churches by Æðelwold and Oswald was the contravention of their rule by marriage.