there were about 150 monasteries in Italy, and others in France, Bohemia and the Netherlands. The French houses, twenty-one in number, formed a separate congregation, the head-house being in Paris. The French Revolution and those of the 19th century destroyed their houses, and the Celestine order seems no longer to exist.
Peter of Morrone was in close contact with the Franciscan Spirituals of the extreme type (see Franciscans), and he endeavoured to form an amalgamation between them and his hermits, under the title “Poor Hermits of Celestine.” On his abdication the amalgamation was dissolved, and the Franciscan element fled to the East and was finally suppressed by Boniface VIII. and compelled to re-enter the Franciscan order. The habit of the Celestines was black.
See Helyot, Histoire des ordres religieux (1792), vi. c. 23; Max Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen (1896), i. § 22, p. 134; the art. “Cölestiner” in Wetzer und Welte, Kirchenlexicon (ed. 2), and Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie (ed. 3). (E. C. B.)
CELIBACY (Lat. caelibatus, from caelebs, unmarried), the state of being unmarried, a term now commonly used in the sense of complete abstinence from marriage; it originally included the state of widowhood also, and any one was strictly a caelebs who had no existing spouse. Physicians and physiologists have frequently discussed celibacy from their professional point of view; but it will be sufficient to note here the results of statistical inquiries. It has been established by the calculations of actuaries that married persons—women in a considerable, but men in a much greater degree—have at all periods of life a greater probability of living than the single. From the point of view of public utility, the state has sometimes attempted to discourage celibacy. The best-known enactment of this kind is that of the emperor Augustus, best known as Lex Julia et Papia Poppaea. This disabled caelibes from receiving an inheritance unless the testator were related to them within the sixth degree; it limited the amount which a wife could take by a husband’s will, or the husband by the wife’s, unless they had children; and preference was given to candidates for office in proportion to the number of their children.[1] Ecclesiastical legislators, on the other hand, have frequently favoured the unmarried state; and celibacy, partial or complete, has been more or less stringently enforced upon the ministers of different religions; many instances are quoted by H. C. Lea. The best known, of course, are the Roman Vestals; though here even the great honours and privileges accorded to these maidens were often insufficient to keep the ranks filled. In the East, however, this and other forms of asceticism have always flourished more freely; and the Buddhist monastic system is not only far older than that of Christendom, but also proportionately more extensive.[2] In early Judaism, chastity was indeed enjoined upon the priests at certain solemn seasons; but there was no attempt to enforce celibacy upon the sacerdotal caste. On the contrary, all priests were the sons of priests, and the case of Elizabeth shows that here, as throughout the Jewish people, barrenness was considered a disgrace. But Alexander’s conquests brought the Jews into contact with Hindu and Greek mysticism; and this probably explains the growth of the ascetic Essenes some two centuries before the Christian era. The adherents of this sect, unlike the Pharisees and Sadducees, were never denounced by Christ, who seems on the contrary to have had real sympathy with the voluntary celibacy of an exceptional few (Matt. xix. 12). St Paul’s utterances on this subject, though they go somewhat further, amount only to the assertion that a struggling missionary body will find more freedom in its work in the absence of wives and children. At the same time, St Paul claimed emphatically for himself and the other apostles the right of leading about a wife; and he names among the qualifications for a bishop, an elder and a deacon, that he should be “the husband of one wife.” Indeed it was freely admitted by the most learned men of the middle ages and Renaissance that celibacy had been no rule of the apostolic church; and, though writers of ability have attempted to maintain the contrary even in modern times, their contentions are unhesitatingly rejected by the latest Roman Catholic authority.[3]
The gradual growth of clerical celibacy, first as a custom and then as a rule of discipline, can be traced clearly enough even through the scanty records of the first few centuries. The most ascetic Christians began to question the legality of second marriages on the part of either sex, as even paganism had often reprobated second marriages of women. Though these extremists were presently branded as heretics for their eccentric ultra-ascetic tenets (Montanists, Cathari), yet as early as Tertullian’s time (c. A.D. 220) the right of second marriages was theoretically denied to the priesthood. This was logically followed by a revival of the old Levitical rule which required that priests should marry none but virgins (Lev. xxi. 7, 13). Both these rules, however, proved difficult of enforcement and seem to have rested only on a vague basis of public opinion; twice-married men (digami) were admitted to the priesthood by Pope Calixtus I. (219–222), and even as late as the beginning of the 5th century we find husbands of widows consecrated to the episcopate. The so-called Apostolical Constitutions and Canons, the latter of which were compiled in the 4th century, give us the first clear and fairly general rules on the subject. Here we find “bishops and priests allowed to retain the wives whom they may have had before ordination, but not to marry in orders; the lower grades, deacons, subdeacons, &c., allowed to marry after entering the church; but all were to be husbands of but one wife, who must be neither a widow, a divorced woman nor a concubine” (Lea i. 28). Many causes, however, were already at work to carry public feeling beyond this stage. Quite apart from the few enthusiasts who would have given a literal interpretation to the text in Matt, xix. 12, vows of virginity became more and more frequent as the virtue itself was lauded by ecclesiastical writers in language of increasing fervour. These vows were at first purely voluntary and temporary; but public opinion naturally grew less and less tolerant of those who, having once formed and published so solemn a resolution, broke it afterwards. Again not only was the church doctrine itself more or less consciously influenced by the Manichaean tenet of the diabolical origin of all matter, including the human body, but churchmen were also naturally tempted to compete in asceticism with the many heretics who held this tenet, and whose abstinence brought them so much popular consideration. Moreover, in proportion as the clergy, no longer mere ringleaders of a despised and persecuted sect, became beneficiaries and administrators of rich endowments—and this at a time when the external safeguards against embezzlement were comparatively weak—a strong feeling grew up among the laity that church revenues should not go to support the priest’s family.[4] Lastly, such partial attempts as we have already described to enforce upon the clergy a special rule of continence, by their very failure, suggested more heroic measures. Therefore, side by side with the evidence for difficult enforcement of the old rules, we find an equally constant series of new and more stringent enactments.
The first church council which definitely forbade marriage to the higher clergy was the local Spanish synod of Elvira (A.D. 305). A similar interpretation has sometimes been claimed for the third canon of that general council of Nicaea to which we
- ↑ W. Smith, Dict. of Greek and Roman Antiquities (3rd ed.), vol. ii. p. 44.
- ↑ “In the 14th century, the city of Ilchi, in Chinese Tartary, possessed 14 monasteries, averaging 3000 devotees in each; while in Tibet, at the present time, there are in the vicinity of Lhassa 12 great monasteries, containing a population of 18,500 lamas. In Ladak the proportion of lamas to the laity is as 1 to 13, in Spiti 1 to 7, and in Burmah 1 to 30” (Lea i. 103).
- ↑ 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.”
- ↑ 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).
