a very different form, and connected with very different motives, among the early Romans, who were accustomed, we are told, to honour with the crown of modesty those who were content with one marriage, and to regard many marriages as a sign of illegitimate intemperance. This opinion appears to have chiefly grown out of a very delicate and touching feeling which had taken deep root in the Roman mind, that the affection a wife owes her husband is so profound and so pure, that it must not cease even with his death; that it should guide and consecrate all her subsequent life, and that it never can be transferred to another object. Virgil, in very beautiful lines, puts this sentiment into the mouth of Dido; 2 and several examples are recorded of Roman wives, sometimes in the prime of youth and beauty, upon the death of their husbands, devoting the remainder of their lives to retirement, and to the memory of the dead. Tacitus held up the Germans as in this respect a model to his countrymen,* and the epithet 'univiræ' inscribed on many Roman tombs shows how this devotion was practised and valued.5 The family of Camillus was especially honoured for the absence of second marriages among its members. To love a wife when living,' said one of the latest of Roman poets, 'is a pleasure; to love her when dead is an act of religion.' In the case of men, the propriety of abstaining from second marriages was probably not felt as strongly as in the case of women, and what feeling on the subject existed was chiefly due to another motive-affection for 1 Val. Max. ii. 1. § 3.

6

Abstulit; ille habeat secum, servetque sepulchro.'-Æn. iv. 28.

3 E.g., the wives of Lucan, Drusus, and Pompey.

Tacit. German, xix.

Friedländer, tome i. p. 411.

Hieron. Ep. liv.

'Uxorem vivam amare voluptas;

Defunctam religio.'-Statius, Sylv. v. in proœmio.

the children, whose interests it was thought might be injured by a stepmother.1

The sentiment which thus recoiled from second marriages passed with a vastly increased strength into ascetic Christianity, but it was based upon altogether different grounds. The first change, we may observe, is that an affectionate remembrance of the husband has altogether vanished from the motives of the abstinence. In the next place, we may remark that these writers, in perfect conformity with the extreme coarseness of their views about the sexes, almost invariably assumed that the motive to second or third marriages must be simply the force of the animal passions. The Montanists and the Novatians absolutely condemned second marriages. The orthodox pronounced them lawful, on account of the weakness of human nature, but they viewed them with the most emphatic disapproval,3 partly because they considered them manifest signs of incontinence, and partly because they regarded them as incompatible with the doctrine of marriage being an emblem of the union of Christ with the Church. The language of the Fathers on this subject appears to a modern mind most extraordinary, and, but for their distinct and reiterated assertion that they considered these marriages permissible, would appear to

2

1 By one of the laws of Charondas it was ordained that those who cared so little for the happiness of their children as to place a stepmother over them, should be excluded from the councils of the State. (Diod. Sic. xii. 12.)

* Tertullian expounded the Montanist view in his treatise, De Monogamia. 3 A full collection of the statements of the Fathers on this subject is given by Perrone, De Matrimonio, lib. iii. Sæc. I.; and by Natalis Alexander, Hist. Eccles. Sæc. II. dissert. 18.

4 Thus, to give but a single instance, St. Jerome, who was one of their strongest opponents, says: "Quid igitur? damnamus secunda matrimonia? Minime, sed prima laudamus. Abjicimus de ecclesia digamos? absit; sed monogamos ad continentiam provocamus. In arca Noe non solum munda sed et immunda fuerunt animalia.'-Ep. cxxiii.

amount to a peremptory condemnation. Thus-to give but a few samples-digamy, or second marriage, is described by Athanagoras as a decent adultery;' 'fornication,' according to Clement of Alexandria, is a lapse from one marriage into many.'" 'The first Adam,' said St. Jerome, had one wife; the second Adam had no wife. They who approve of digamy hold forth a third Adam, who was twice married, whom they follow.'3 'Consider,' he again says, that she who has been twice married, though she be an old, and decrepit, and poor woman, is not deemed worthy to receive the charity of the Church. But if the bread of charity is taken from her, how much more that bread which descends from heaven!' 4 Digamists, according to Origen, are saved in the name of Christ, but are by no means crowned by him.' 'By this text,' said St. Gregory Nazianzen, speaking of St. Paul's comparison of marriage to the union of Christ with the Church, second marriages seem to me to be reproved. If there are two Christs there may be two husbands or two wives. If there is but one Christ, one Head of the Church, there is but one flesh-a second is repelled. But if he forbids a second, what is to be said of third marriages? The first is law, the second is pardon and indulgence, the third is iniquity; but he who exceeds this number is manifestly bestial." The collective judg ment of the ecclesiastical authorities on this subject is shown by the rigid exclusion of digamists from the priesthood, and from all claim to the charity of the Church, and by the decrees of more than one Council, which ordained that a period of penance should be imposed upon all who married a second time, before they were admitted to

1 In Legat.

3 Contra Jovin. i.

5 Hom. xvii. in Luc.

2 Strom. lib. iii.

4 Ibid. See, too, Ep. cxxiii.

• Orat. xxxi.

communion. One of the canons of the Council of Illiberis, in the beginning of the fourth century, while in general condemning baptism by laymen, permitted it in case of extreme necessity; but provided that even then it was indispensable that the officiating layman should not have been twice married. Among the Greeks fourth marriages were at one time deemed absolutely unlawful, and much controversy was excited by the emperor Leo the Wise, who, having had three wives, had taken a mistress, but afterwards, in defiance of the religious feelings of his people, determined to raise her to the position of a wife.3

The subject of the celibacy of the clergy, in which the ecclesiastical feelings about marriage were also shown, is an extremely large one, and I shall not attempt to deal with it, except in a most cursory manner. There are two facts connected with it, which every candid student must admit. The first is, that in the earliest period of the Church, the privilege of marriage was freely accorded to the clergy. The second is, that a notion of the impurity of marriage existed, and it was felt that the clergy, as pre-eminently the holy class, should have less license than laymen. The first form this feeling took

1 See on this decree, Perrone, De Matr. iii. § 1, art. 1; Natalis Alexander, Hist. Eccles. § ii. dissert. 18. The penances are said not to imply that the second marriage was a sin, but that the moral condition that made it necessary was a bad one.

2 Conc. Illib. can. xxxviii. Bingham thinks the feeling of the Council to have been, that if baptism was not administered by a priest, it should at all events be administered by one who might have been a priest.

3 Perrone, De Matrimonio, tome iii. p. 102.

4 This subject has recently been treated with very great learning and with admirable impartiality by an American author, Mr. Henry C. Lea, in his History of Sacerdotal Celibacy (Philadelphia, 1867), which is certainly one of the most valuable works that America has produced. Since the great history of Dean Milman, I know no work in English which has thrown more light on the moral condition of the middle ages, and none which is

appears to have been the strong conviction that a second marriage of a priest, or the marriage of a priest with a widow, was unlawful and criminal. This belief seems to have existed from the earliest period of the Church, and was retained with great tenacity and unanimity through many centuries. In the next place, we find, from an extremely early date, an opinion prevailing first of all, that it was an act of virtue, and then that it was an act of duty, for priests after ordination to abstain from cohabiting with their wives. The Council of Nice refrained, at the advice of Paphnutius, who was himself a scrupulous celibate, from imposing this last rule as a matter of necessity;2 but in the course of the fourth century it was a recognised principle that clerical marriages were criminal. They were celebrated, however, habitually, and usually with the greatest openness. The various attitudes assumed by the ecclesiastical authorities in dealing with this subject form an extremely curious page of the history of morals, and supply the most crushing evidence of the evils which have been produced by the system of celibacy. I can at present, however, only refer to the vast mass of evidence which has been collected on the subject, derived from the

more fitted to dispel the gross illusions concerning that period which Positive writers, and writers of a certain ecclesiastical school, have conspired to sustain.

1 See Lea, p. 36. The command of St. Paul, that a bishop or deacon should be the husband of one wife (1 Tim. iii. 2-12) was believed by all ancient and by many modern commentators to be prohibitory of second marriages; and this view is somewhat confirmed by the widows who were to be honoured and supported by the Church, being only those who had but once married (1 Tim. v. 9). See Pressensé, Hist. des trois premiers Siècles (1re série), tome ii. p. 233. Among the Jews it was ordained that the high priest should not marry a widow. (Levit. xxi. 13-14.)

2 Socrates, H. E. i. 11. The Council of Illiberis (can. xxxiii.) had ordained this, but both the precepts and the practice of divines varied greatly. A brilliant summary of the chief facts is given in Milman's History of Early Christianity, vol. iii. pp. 277-282.