[13] Labbe-Mansi, Concilia, vol. xix. col. 796 and xx. col. 724. Dr Lea is probably right in suggesting that it was a confused recollection of these decrees which prompted one of Cranmer’s judges to assure him that “his children were bondmen to the see of Canterbury.” Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, bk iii. c. 28 (ed. 1812, vol. i. p. 601).
[14] Bonaventura, Libell. Apologet. quaest. i.; cf. his parallel treatise Quare Fratres Minores praedicent. The first visitation of his friend Odo Rigaldi, archbishop of Rouen, shows that about 15% of the parish clergy in that diocese were notoriously incontinent (Regestrum Visitationum, ed. Bonnin, Rouen, 1852, pp. 17 ff.). Vacandard (loc. cit. p. 2087) appeals rather misleadingly to this record as proving the progress made during the half-century before Odo’s time. It is probable that there were many more offenders than these 15% known to the archbishop.
[15] Alvarus Pelagius, De Planctu Ecclesiae, ed. 1517, f. 131a, col. 2; cf. f. 102b, col. 2; Hermann von der Hardt, Constantiensis Concilii, &c. vol. i. pars. viii. col. 428.
[16] This more or less regular sale of licences by bishops and archdeacons flourished from the days of Gregory VII. to the 16th century; see index to Lea, s.v. “Licences.” Dr Lea has, however, omitted the most striking authority of all. Gascoigne, the most distinguished Oxford chancellor of his day, writing about 1450 of John de la Bere, then bishop of St David’s, says that he had refused to separate the clergy of his diocese from their concubines, giving publicly as his reason, “for then I your bishop should lose the 400 marks which I receive yearly in my diocese for the priests’ lemans” (Gascoigne, Lib. Ver. ed. Rogers, p. 36). Even Sir Thomas More, in his polemic against the Reformers, admitted that this concubinage was too often tolerated in Wales (English Works, ed. 1557, p. 231, cf. 619).
[17] One of Dr Lea’s few serious mistakes is his acceptance of the spurious pamphlet in favour of priestly marriage which was attributed in the 11th century to St Ulrich of Augsburg (i. 171).
[18] Janssen, Gesch. d. deutschen Volkes, 13th ed., vol. viii. pp. 423, 4, 9; 434; Lea ii. 195, 204. ff.
[19] Lea (ii. 339. ff.) gives a long series of quotations to this effect from church synods and orthodox disciplinary writers of modern times.
[20] Havelock Ellis, A Study of British Genius (London, 1904, p. 80), “Even if we compare the church with the other professions with which it is most usually classed, we find that the eminent children of the clergy considerably outnumber those of lawyers, doctors and army officers put together.” Mr Ellis points put, however, that “the clerical profession ... also produces more idiots than any other class.”
CELL (from Lat. cella, probably from an Indo-European kal—seen in Lat. celare, to hide; another suggestion connects the word with Lat. cera, wax, taking the original meaning to refer to the honeycomb), in its earliest application a small detached room in a building, particularly a small monastic house (see [Abbey]), generally in the country, belonging to large conventual buildings, and intended for change of air for the monks, as well as places to reside in to look after the lands, vassals, &c. Thus Tynemouth was a cell to St Albans; Ashwell, Herts, to Westminster Abbey. The term was also used of the small sleeping apartments of the monks, or a small apartment used by the anchorite or hermit. This use still survives in the application to the small separate chambers in a prison (q.v.) in which prisoners are confined. The word is applied to various small compartments which build up a compound structure such as a honeycomb, to the minute compartments in a tissue, &c. More particularly the word is used, in electrical science, of the single constituent compartments of a voltaic battery (q.v.), and in biology of the living units of protoplasm of which plants and animals are composed (see [Cytology]).