So well understood was it that young men and young women needed each other, sexually, that both in the Latin and in the Greek there was a distinctive name given to these "holy virgins." The "soul marriage" of the ancient church was as much like the affinity doings of the present day, as Solomon's carryings on were like those of the Sultan of Turkey.
To the testimony of Cyprian may be added that of Chrysostom, who bewailed the utter licentiousness of the "virgins."
Since Bishop Udalric in the year 606 wrote of the skulls of the six thousand infants found in draining off some fish ponds at the command of Gregory the Great, the slaughter of the babes has gone steadily on. "When Pope Gregory ascertained that the infants thus killed were born from the concealed fornications of and adulteries of the priests, he recalled his decree, extolling the apostolic command. It is better to marry than to burn." (Elliott II., p. 409.)
Yet, when we are told the same story by Father Chiniquy, Dr. Justin Fulton, ex-priest William Hogan, ex-priest Fresenborg, ex-priest Manuel Ferrando, ex-nun Margaret Shepherd, ex-nun Maria Monk, ex-priest Blanco White, ex-priest Seguin, and by such submissive Catholics as Erasmus, Rabelais, Campanella and scores of other unimpeachable witnesses, we are more inclined to listen to the impudent denials of the lecherous priests than to the evidence of those who escape AND TELL!
The denial made by the unmarried priests is at variance with their looks, is at variance with admitted facts, is at variance with what we ourselves know of the overwhelming strength of our carnal desires: yet the impudent denial is so brazen, so persistent, and so threatening, that we either accept it, or enter the plea of nolle contendere.
The accusation against the pretended virgins involves so many apparently good men and chaste women, that we shrink from remembering the difference between publicity and privacy; we forget that the treacherous inclination is not felt in the church and in the crowd, but that it creeps to the secret couch, under cover of night, when there is silence, freedom from interruption and security from detection.
We forget how this passion takes advantage of night, of undress, and of secret contact of the physical man and woman, to heat their normal blood, no matter how sanctified they may really be in their daily visible life.
"Saint" Bernard of the 10th century exhausts his wrath upon the hideous vices of the monks and nuns "behind the partition." "What abominable lust!" cries this stern old anchorite. He exclaims—
"Would that those who cannot rule their sexuality would fear to give their conduct the name of celibacy. It is better to marry than to burn.... Take away from the church honorable marriage and the undefiled bed, and do you not fill it with concubines, incestuous persons, onanists, male concubines, and with every kind of unclean person?"
(Bernard's Sermons V. 29, cited in Elliott, II., 410.)