Authority: Hauréau, J. Singularités Historiques et Litéraires. Paris, 1881.
The Patarines of Milan.
I.
In the eleventh century, nearly all the clergy in the north of Italy were married.[7] It was the same in Sicily, and it had been the same in Rome,[8] but there the authority and presence of the Popes had sufficed to convert open marriage into secret concubinage.
But concubinage did not in those times mean exactly what it means now. A concubina was an uxor in an inferior degree; the woman was married in both cases with the ring and religious rite, but the children of the concubine could not inherit legally the possessions of their father. When priests were without wives, concubines were tolerated wives without the legal status of wives, lest on the death of the priest his children should claim and alienate to their own use property belonging to the Church. In noble and royal families it was sometimes the same, lest estates should be dismembered. On the death of a wife, her place was occupied by a concubine, and the sons of the latter could not dispute inheritance with the sons of the former. Nor did the Church look sternly on the concubine. In the first Toledian Council a canon was passed with regard to communicating those who had one wife or one concubine;—such were not to be excluded from the Lord's Table,[9] so long only as each man had but one wife or concubine, and the union was perpetual.
But, though concubinage was universal among the clergy in Italy, at Milan the priests openly, boldly claimed for their wives a position as honourable as could be accorded them; and they asserted without fear of contradiction that their privilege had received the sanction of the great Ambrose himself. Married bishops had been common, and saintly married prelates not unknown. St. Severus of Ravenna had a wife and daughter, and though the late biographer asserts that he lived with his wife as with a sister after he became a bishop, this statement is probably made to get over an awkward fact.[10] When he was about to die, he went to the tomb where his wife and daughter lay, and had the stone removed. Then he addressed them thus—"My dear ones, with whom I lived so long in love, make room for me, for this is my grave, and in death we shall not be divided." Thereupon he descended into the grave, laid himself between his wife and daughter, and died. St. Heribert, Archbishop of Milan, had been a married man with a wife esteemed for her virtues.[11]
By all accounts, friendly and hostile, the Lombard priests were married openly, legally, with religious rite, exchange of ring, and notarial deed. There was no shame felt, no supposition entertained that such was an offence.[12]
How was this inveterate custom to be broken through? How the open, honest marriage to be perverted into clandestine union? For to abolish it wholly was beyond the power of the Popes and Councils. It was in vain to appeal to the bishops, they sympathised with their clergy. It was in vain to invoke the secular arm; the emperors, the podestas, supported the parish-priests in their contumacious adherence to immemorial privilege.