CELIBACY, from Lat. calebs, unmarried. Notwithstanding the divine commendation of marriage given in the Jewish Scriptures (Gen. i. 28), the opinion had become prevalent, even before the time of Christ, that C. was favorable to an intimate union with God. This notion took its origin in the wide-spread philosophy of a good and an evil princi ple. The body, consisting of matter, the seat of evil, was looked upon as the prison of the pure soul, which was thought to be defiled by bodily enjoyments. Among the Jew ish sect of the Essenes, accordingly, a life of C. was held to be the chief road to sanctity. These ascetic views naturally led, in the first place, to the disapproval of second mar riages. While, therefore, in the first Christian churches, every one was left at liberty to marry or not as he thought ht, the objection to those who married a second time had become so generally spread, that the apostle Paul saw occasion to counsel such Christian converts as were in widowhood to remain so.
By the 2d c., however, the unmarried life generally had begun to be extolled, and to be held necessary- for a life of sanctity, although several, at least, of the apostles them selves had been married. Two passages of Scripture (1 Cor. vii. and Rev. xiv. 4) were specially cited as proving that C. was the genuine condition of a Christian; and with thee platonizing fathers of the 2d and 3d centuries, the unmarried of both sexes were held as standing higher than the married. Accordingly, although there was no express law against the marriage of the many, especially of the bishops, remained unmarried; a second marriage was, in their case, already strictly prohibited.
As the bishops of Rome rose in consideration, and gradually developed a firmer church government, they called upon all who belonged to the clerical order to live for the church alone, and not marry. This requirement met with constant resistance; still, it became more and more the custom, in the 4th c., for the higher clergy to refrain from marriage, and from them it went over to the lower orders and to the monks. Provincial synods now began expressly to interdict the clergy from marrying. The council of Tours (566) suspended for a year all secular priests and deacons who were found with their wives; and the emperor Justinian by an edict declared all children born to a clergyman, after ordination, to be illegitimate, and incapable of inheritance. There were still, how
ever, many married priests who resisted the law, and found encouragement in the oppo sition which the Greek church made to that of Rome in this matter of celibacy. The council held at Constantinople in 692, declared, in opposition to the church of Rome, that priests and deacons might live with their wives as the laity do, according to the ancient custom and ordinance of the apostles. The orthodox Greek church has continued to adhere to this decision. Priests and deacons in that church may marry before ordina tion, and live in marriage after it; but they are not allowed to marry a second time. However, only a priest living in C. can be chosen as bishop or patriarch.
The Church of Rome continued its endeavors to enforce the law of C.; though, for several centuries they were attended with only partial success. There still continued to be numbers of priests with wives, although the councils were always issuing new orders against them. Popes Leo IX. (1048-54) and Nicolas II. (1058-61) interdicted all priests that had wives or concubines from the exercise of any spiritual function, on pain of excommunication. Alexander II. (1061—'73) decreed excommunication against all who should attend a mass celebrated by a priest having a wife or concubine. This decision was renewed by Gregory VII. in a council held at Rome in 1074, and a decretal was issued that every layman who should receive the communion from the hands of a mar ried priest should be excommunicated, and that every priest who married or lived in coneubitiage, should be deposed. The decree met with the most violent opposition in all countries; but Gregory succeeded in carrying it out with the greatest rigor; and though individual instances of married priests were still to be found in the 12th and 13th centuries, the C. of the Roman Catholic clergy was established, and has since continued both in theory and practice.