[3] 1 Cor. vii. 25 sq., ix. 5; 1 Tim. iii. 2, 11, 12; Titus i. 6; E. Vacandard in Dict. de Théol. Cath., s.v. “Célibat.”
[4] This was a natural argument for the defenders of clerical celibacy even in far later times. St Bonaventura (d. 1274) puts this very strongly: “For if archbishops and bishops now had children, they would rob and plunder all the goods of the Church so that little or nothing would be left for the poor. For since they now heap up wealth and enrich nephews removed from them by almost incalculable degrees of affinity, what would they do if they had legitimate children?... Therefore the Holy Ghost in His providence hath removed this stumbling-block,” &c. &c. (In Sent. lib. iv. dist. xxxvii art. i. quaest. 3).
[5] Hefele, Beitrage zur Kirchengesch. u.s.w. i. 139.
[6] See the quotations in Lea i. 156. These prohibitions were renewed in the 13th and 14th centuries (ibid. i. 410).
[7] Ratherius, Itinerarium, c. 5 (Migne, P.L. cxxxvi. col. 585). Gulielmus Apulus writes of southern Italy in 1059: “In these parts priests, deacons and the whole clergy were publicly married” (De Normann. lib. ii.).
[8] Dom Pommeraye, S. Rotomag. Eccl. Concilia, pp. 56, 65; cf. similar instances on p. 315 of Dr A. Dresdner’s Kultur-und Sittengeschichte d. italienischen Geistlichkeit im 10. und 11. Jhdt. (Breslau, 1890).
[9] Opusc. xvii. praef. The saint’s evidence is carefully weighed by Dresdner (l.c.), especially on pp. 309 ff. and 321 ff.
[10] Even Pope Innocent III. was compelled to decide that priests who had kept two or more concubines, successively or simultaneously, did not thereby incur the disabilities which attended digamists; or, in other words, that a layman who had contracted two lawful marriages and then proceeded to ordination on the death of his second wife, could be absolved only by the pope; whereas the concubinary priest, “as a man branded with simple fornication,” might receive a valid dispensation from his own bishop (Letter to archbishop of Lund in 1212. Regest. lib. xvi. ep. 118; Migne, P.L. ccxvi. col. 914). As the great canonist Gratian remarked on a similar decretal of Pope Pelagius, “Here is a case where lechery has more rights at law than has chastity” (Decret. p. i. dist. xxxiv. c. vii. note a).
[11] The actual originator of this policy was Nicholas II., probably at Hildebrand’s suggestion; but the decree remained practically a dead letter until Gregory’s accession.
[12] Peter Lombard, Sentent. lib. iv. dist. 13; Aquinas, Summa Theol. pars iii. Q. lxxxiii. art. 7, 9.