Translated from Philip Schaff's History of The Christian Church

第九章禁欲倾向

§ 104. 禁欲的德行与敬虔

Ad. 默勒 (Ad. Möhler，罗马天主教徒)：《修道制度初创及初步发展时期的历史》(Geschichte des Mönchthums in der Zeit seiner ersten Entstehung u. ersten Ausbildung,)，1836年（载《杂文集》〔Vermischte Schriften〕，德林格〔Döllinger〕编，雷根斯堡〔Regensb.〕，1839年，第II卷，第165页及后）。

Is. 泰勒 (Is. Taylor，独立派)：《古代基督教》(Ancient Christianity,)，第4版，伦敦，1844年，第I卷，第133–299页（反对蒲西派及天主教）。

H. 鲁夫纳 (H. Ruffner，长老会)：《沙漠教父；或异教民族中修道生活的起源与实践、其传入教会的经过，以及教父所述有关早期修士与隐士的若干奇异故事》(The Fathers of the Desert; or an Account of the Origin and Practice of Monkery among heathen nations; its passage into the church; and some wonderful Stories of the Fathers concerning the primitive Monks and Hermits.)。纽约，1850年，2卷。

奥托·策克勒 (Otto Zöckler，路德宗)：《禁欲主义批判史》(Kritische Geschichte der Askese.)。法兰克福 (Frkf.) 与埃尔朗根 (Erlangen)，1863年（434页）。

P. E. 卢修斯 (P. E. Lucius)：《治疗派及其在禁欲主义史上的地位》(Die Therapeuten und ihre Stellung in der Geschichte der Askese.)。斯特拉斯堡 (Strasburg)，1879年。

H. 魏因加滕 (H. Weingarten)：《论君士坦丁以后时代修道制度的起源》(Ueber den Ursprung des Mönchthums im nach-Konstantinischen Zeittalter.)。哥达 (Gotha)，1877年。另参其在赫尔措格 (Herzog)《百科全书》(Encykl.) 新版第X卷（1882年）第758页及后的文章（节本见沙弗版《赫尔措格百科全书》，第II卷，第1551页及后，纽约，1883年）。

Ad. 哈纳克 (Ad. Harnack)：《修道制度：其理想及其历史》(Das Mönchthum, seine Ideale und seine Geschichte.)。吉森 (Giessen)，1882年。

关于修道制度的一般文献极其浩繁，但属于下一时期的范围。参见第III卷，第147页及下页，以及策克勒前引书（l.c.）第10–16页的书目。

在这里，我们进入了一个领域：早期教会在其中显得离福音派新教的自由精神和现代伦理最为遥远，而与希腊正教和罗马天主教的律法主义及修道伦理最为接近。人们认为，基督徒生活主要在于某些外在操练，而不在于内在的心志；在于众多行为，而不在于信心的生活。按照教父和教会会议中占支配地位的观念，德行的伟大理想，与其说是改造世界，使上帝所创造的自然事物和关系成圣，不如说是逃离世界，隐居修道，自愿放弃财产和婚姻。保罗关于信心和唯独靠恩典称义的教义不断退居次位；或者更确切地说，它在教会普遍的思想和生活中，还从未真正登上应有的宝座。按性质衡量道德的观点，日益让位于按数量计算的方式，计算外在有功德、甚至超出本分的善工，以及祷告、禁食、施舍、自愿贫穷和独身的次数。这必然带来一种犹太化的自义，以及对禁欲生活的过高估价；这种倾向受到一股不可抗拒的力量推动，发展为尼西亚时期的隐修生活和修道制度。这种禁欲主义的一切萌芽，都已出现在第三世纪后半叶，甚至更早。

一般而言，禁欲主义 (asceticism) 是一种严格的外在自律，心灵借此力求完全支配肉体，并达到更高的德行等级。¹它不仅包括真正的节制或约束肉体欲望——这是所有基督徒的本分——还包括完全禁绝本来正当的享受，禁绝酒、肉食、财产和婚姻，并实行各种苦修和刻苦己身的操练。大公教会的禁欲主义将弃绝与补赎，或舍己与自我惩罚的因素结合起来，其光明与阴暗两面由此充分显露：一方面，它展现了英勇弃绝自我与世界的奇妙榜样；另一方面，它却往往完全误解并歪曲了基督教道德。这种弃绝，多少包含着诺斯替派对自然之神的恩赐和定规的蔑视；而这种补赎或自我惩罚，则逐渐在实践上否认了基督全然充足的功德。禁欲和修道的倾向，首先基于对肉体的罪性和世界的败坏所抱的一种强烈、却病态的感受；其次基于独处并专心从事神圣事物的愿望；最后则基于追求非凡圣洁与功德的雄心。它意欲在地上预先过天上天使的生活。²它以种种偏离常态、自行设立的德行与敬虔，取代创造主所规定的正常形式；并且不罕见地怀着属灵骄傲，轻看上帝所立的标准。它同时是道德力量和道德软弱的标志。它以某种程度的文化发展为前提，在这一阶段，人已从自然力量的支配下解放出来，并意识到自己的道德使命；但它以为，只有与世界完全隔绝，才能确保自己不受试探，而不是立身于世界之中，胜过世界，使之成为上帝的国。

禁欲主义绝不限于基督教会，但它在教会中发展出了最高尚、最崇高的形式。早在基督以前，我们便看到类似的现象：在犹太人中，有拿细耳人 (Nazarites)、艾赛尼派 (Essenes)，以及与之相近的治疗派 (Therapeutae)；³在异教徒中，这种现象更为显著，见于古代波斯和印度的宗教，尤其见于佛教徒。他们甚至拥有一套充分发展的修道生活制度，以致一些罗马天主教传教士认为，那是魔鬼对天主教制度的模仿讽刺。在埃及，塞拉皮斯 (Serapis) 的祭司过着修道生活。⁴法老之地的气候本身，紧相毗邻的沙漠荒寂与尼罗河岸丰饶之间的鲜明对照，以及当地人民坟墓般的忧郁气质，都有某种因素，促使人远离纷繁的喧嚣和生活中积极的职责。最早的基督教隐士与修士是埃及人，这是确定无疑的。就连希腊哲学，在毕达哥拉斯派 (Pythagoreans)、柏拉图派 (Platonists) 和斯多葛派 (Stoics) 看来，也不只是理论知识，还是实践智慧，并且常常与最严格的节欲相结合，以致“哲学家”和“禁欲者”成了可以互换的称呼。第二世纪的几位护教家，曾借着这种实践哲学，尤其是柏拉图哲学，被引向基督教；因此，他们仍保留朴素的衣着与生活方式。德尔图良向哲学家的外衣致贺，因为它如今已成为一种更好哲学的服装。在表现自我克制方面，第欧根尼 (Diogenes) 的追随者犬儒派 (Cynics) 走到了极端；但这些人，至少在其后期堕落的日子里，却在肮脏的身体、不修剪的指甲和不梳理的头发这一外表之下，隐藏着粗鄙讥诮的精神，以及对基督教的深切仇恨。

古代教会中有一类特殊的男女基督徒，称为“禁欲者”或“节欲者”。⁵他们虽然仍生活在群体之中，却退出社交，自愿放弃婚姻与财产，全心致力于禁食、祷告和宗教默想，并力求借此达到基督徒的完全。有时，他们为彼此增进德行而组成自己的团体，⁶成为一个 ecclesiola in ecelesia，即教会中的小教会，甚至接纳儿童，训练他们过节欲生活。他们与认信者同享其他基督徒的最高敬重，在公共礼拜中有专设的座位，被视为教会最美的装饰。在逼迫时期，他们热切寻求殉道之死，视之为完全的冠冕。

当每个会众尚是世界败坏的沙漠中一片孤独的绿洲，与周围的异教世界截然对立时，这些禁欲者没有理由脱离会众，逃往沙漠。直到君士坦丁 (Constantine) 在位期间及其以后，禁欲主义才发展为隐修生活和修道制度；这部分是政教联合、世界因而进入教会，以及殉道止息的结果。禁欲主义由此力求把教会带入旷野，以保全她童贞般的纯洁。第一位基督教隐士底比斯的保罗 (Paul of Thebes)，据追溯生活于第三世纪中叶，但其事迹隐没在传说的迷雾之中；修士们真正的始祖圣安东尼 (St. Anthony)，则属于君士坦丁时代。⁷在居普良 (Cyprian) 的时代，⁸还没有绝对具有约束力的誓愿。这种禁欲生活之所以起源甚早、流传甚广，是由于基督教对道德的深切认真，以及当时仍彻底异教化的世界中，罪恶遍及一切社会关系。这是基督教中消极、弃绝世界的因素过度发展的结果，先于其改造世界、使世界成圣的积极努力。

然而，禁欲原则的影响并不限于严格意义上的禁欲者和修士。它多少支配着古代及中世纪教会的整个道德与敬虔生活；不过另一方面，教会内部也从未缺少出于自由福音精神的抗议，反对道德上的狭隘，以及对律法外在行为的过分重视。禁欲者不过是古代大公教会敬虔精神最贯彻始终的代表，护教家也正因此向异教徒称赞他们。他们构成了属灵的贵族，是教会的精英，尤其成为教牧人员的榜样。

§ 105. 异端与大公教会的禁欲主义

但现在我们必须区分古代基督教中两种不同的禁欲主义：一种是异端的，另一种是正统的，或大公教会的。前者以异教哲学为基础，后者则是基督教思想的发展。

异端的禁欲主义，其萌芽在《新约》本身中就已遭到抵制，⁹我们在诺斯替派 (Gnostic) 和摩尼教 (Manichaean) 各派中都可见到。它源出东方和柏拉图的思想，以二元论的世界观、罪与物质的混淆，以及对上帝和创造的歪曲观念为基础。它把上帝与世界置于不可调和的敌对关系之中，将创造归于一个低等的存在，认为人的身体在本质上是邪恶的，是魔鬼或德谬哥 (demiurge) 的产物，并把摆脱身体或逐渐消灭身体视为人道德上的首要任务，无论是借着过度禁欲，还是借着肆意放纵。许多诺斯替派人士认为，堕落本身就在于性欲的第一次满足，这使人受制于许勒 (Hyle，即物质)。

正统或大公教会的禁欲主义，则起于对某些经文拘泥字面而又过度引申的解释。它承认整个自然界都是上帝的作为和他所爱的对象，并肯定人的身体有其神圣的起源和归宿；事实上，没有身体，就不可能有复活，因而也不能进入永恒的荣耀。¹⁰因此，它所追求的不是摧残身体，而是完全控制身体，使之成圣。它以灵与肉体之间的伦理冲突，取代精神与物质之间的形而上学二元对立。但在实践上，它超越了圣经简明而健全的界限，错误地把身体的欲望和情感，或感官本性本身，当作肉体，即同时存在于灵魂和身体之中的自私原则；于是，它虽然极其憎恶异端，却实际上也与诺斯替派和摩尼教一样，憎恨身体，视之为灵的监牢。这尤其表现在贬低婚姻和家庭生活——上帝所设立、培育教会与国家的园圃——以及过度自我折磨上；这些在使徒的敬虔生活中，丝毫找不到对应的例证。异教诺斯替派把脱离世界和身体¹¹作为自我救赎手段的原则，在理论上遭到铲除之后，却从实践的后门潜入教会，直接违背了基督教关于身体的崇高归宿，以及借基督获得完全救赎的教义。

亚历山大的教父们以较低与较高两种道德的区分，为这种禁欲主义提供了理论基础；这一区分相当于柏拉图派 (Platonic) 或毕达哥拉斯派 (Pythagorean) 所作的区分，即顺乎自然的生活与超乎自然的生活，或实践的生活与默观的生活。早在二世纪中叶左右，黑尔马 (Hermas) 就已提出过这一思想。¹²德尔图良 (Tertullian) 则从相反的方向，作出了与此相应的大罪与小罪的区分。¹³这里成了严重实践谬误的根源，既助长了道德上的松弛，也助长了禁欲上的过度。禁欲者以及后来的修士，形成了或自命为一种道德上的贵族、属灵的上层阶级，凌驾于普通基督徒之上；正如教牧人员形成一个独立的阶层，具有不可侵犯的尊严，居于那些满足于较低德行等级的平信徒之上。亚历山大的革利免 (Clement of Alexandria) 在其他方面以崇高的伦理见解著称，却要求智者或具有真知的人 (gnostic)，不仅在知识上高于普通基督徒，也须具有更高、不动情感的德行，并以斯多葛派 (Stoical) 的超然态度凌驾于身体的一切处境之上；他还倾向于同柏拉图一样，把身体看作灵魂的坟墓和枷锁。¹⁴他对保罗因信称义的教义理解何其浅薄，从《杂学》(Stromata) 中的一段话便可推知。他在那里解释基督的话“你的信救了你”，认为这不是单指信，而是专指那些遵行律法的犹太人；仿佛信是附加于善行之上的某种东西，而不是圣洁生活的根源和原则。¹⁵俄利根 (Origen) 更进了一步，十分明确地提出了大公教会关于两种道德与敬虔的教义：较低的一种适用于所有基督徒，较高的一种则属于圣徒或少数蒙选者。¹⁶他把超义务的善行列入较高的道德之中，¹⁷即福音并未明确命令、却作为成全的劝勉而加以推荐的行为；¹⁸人们以为这些行为能建立特殊的功德，确保更高程度的福乐。凡只做人人都必须做之事的，就是无用的仆人；¹⁹但那多做的人，例如遵行保罗在《哥林多前书》7:25中关于独身所仅仅劝勉的事，或像保罗那样，放弃因属灵服事而接受物质报酬的正当权利，就被称为又良善又忠心的仆人。²⁰

这些善行包括殉道、自愿贫穷和自愿独身。这三种行为，或至少后两种行为，与积极的基督徒德行相结合，便构成了较高成全的观念，有别于履行通常的义务或普通的道德。后来，在贫穷和独身之外又加上了绝对服从；这三者遂成为福音劝谕 (consilia evangelica) 和修道誓愿的主要内容。

这些特定的德行为何受到如此强烈的提倡，其理由是不难理解的。财产与人的自私紧密相连，把人束缚在地上；性交则使感官的情欲发挥到最强烈的地步，连自然本身也以羞耻的帷幕将其遮掩；——因此，这两者便被视为达到成全的最顽固障碍，而在那种成全之中，唯有上帝是我们的产业，唯有基督是我们的爱与喜乐。

在这些事上，古代异端走到了极端。伊便尼派 (Ebionites) 以贫穷为得救的条件。诺斯替派 (Gnostics) 则分趋于绝对克己和肆意放纵这两个极端。马吉安派 (Marcionites)、卡波克拉底派 (Carpocratians)、普罗狄库派 (Prodicians)、伪巴西里德派 (false Basilidians) 和摩尼教徒 (Manichaeans)，出于对物质世界的憎恨，反对个人财产；而埃皮法尼斯 (Epiphanes) 在约125年所著的《论公义》(on Justice) 一书中，把德行界定为平等共享的共同生活，并提倡财产公有和共妻。这些异端中较为严肃的一派，完全禁止婚姻和生育，视之为魔鬼的作为，如撒土尼努 (Saturninus)、马吉安 (Marcion) 和禁欲派 (Encratites)；另一些诺斯替派别则以极其无耻的淫乱杂交取而代之，如卡波克拉底 (Carpocrates)、埃皮法尼斯和尼哥拉派 (Nicolaitans)。

古代教会则相反，坚持财产和婚姻乃是上帝所设立的，只向少数蒙选者推荐自愿放弃这些本来合法的享受，以此作为达到基督徒成全的手段。教会宣称婚姻是圣洁的，童贞则更为圣洁。然而，毫无疑问，就连教父们也把童贞的更高圣洁抬举到如此地步，以致在实践上抵消了，或至少严重削弱了他们关于婚姻圣洁的主张。尽管圣经中从亚伯拉罕到彼得，有许多已婚的属上帝之人的榜样，罗马教会却无法设想独身之外还有真正的圣洁，因此毫无例外地要求其教牧人员独身。

§ 106. 自愿贫穷

自愿贫穷之所以受到推荐，是基于对主劝告那位富有的年轻官长之言的字面解释；这人从小就遵守了一切诫命。主说：“你若愿意作完全人，可去变卖你所有的，分给穷人，就必有财宝在天上；你还要来跟从我。”²¹此外，还有基督及其使徒贫穷生活的实际榜样，以及耶路撒冷最初基督教会凡物公用的先例。因此，许多基督徒，不仅是禁欲者，也包括像居普良 (Cyprian) 这样的教牧人员，都在归信时舍弃自己全部的财产，用来周济穷人。后来的修道团体力图以财产公有，体现人类原初的平等和完全的弟兄情谊。

然而另一方面，我们也遇到较为温和的见解。例如，亚历山大的革利免在一篇专论正确使用财富的著作中指出，²²救主所禁止的，与其说是拥有地上的财产，不如说是对财产的爱恋和贪求；即使放弃财产本身，也仍可能保留这种爱恋和贪求。他说，地上的财物是行善的材料和工具，而财产分配不均，乃是上帝为操练基督徒的爱心和善行所作的安排。真正的财富是德行，它在一切外在境况中都能够、也应当持守自身；虚假的财富则不过是外在的财产，来而复去。

§ 107. 自愿独身

古代大公教会对独身的过度推崇，依附于四处经文，即《马太福音》19:12；22:30；《哥林多前书》7:7及下文；《启示录》14:4；但它远远超出了这些经文的本意，并在不知不觉中接受了外来思想方式的影响。主在《马太福音》22:30（《路加福音》20:35及下节）中的话，是最常被引用的；但这些话明确地把不婚的生活限于天使，并未将其树立为人类的榜样。有些教父较为正确地从象征意义理解《启示录》14:4，认为它是指不受偶像崇拜的玷污。基督的榜样虽然常被援引，在这里却不能提供一项准则；因为上帝的儿子、世界的救主，远远超乎夏娃的一切女儿，不可能在她们中间找到与自己相配的伴侣，而且无论如何，也无法设想他具有这样的关系。整个蒙救赎的教会，就是他纯洁的新妇。使徒中至少有一些人是已婚的，其中就有年纪最长、地位最显著的彼得。保罗在《哥林多前书》第7章所作的劝告十分审慎，因此即使在这里，教父们的见解也只能得到部分支持；若再与教牧书信相互衡量，尤其如此，因为教牧书信把婚姻视为教牧人员合宜的生活状态。尽管如此，正统和异端的作者仍常把保罗当作独身的辩护者。²³犹太教极其尊重家庭生活，惟有趋向异教的艾赛尼派 (Essenes) 例外，他们禁戒婚姻；犹太教甚至允许祭司和大祭司结婚，而他们事实上也必须藉肉身的生育来延续自己的等次；它视不育为羞耻或咒诅。

异教则相反，恰恰由于它贬抑妇女，并对婚姻抱持低下、属肉欲的观念，往往把独身纳入其道德理想之中，并将它与崇拜联系起来。异教童贞最高贵的形式，见于罗马的六位维斯塔贞女 (Vestal virgins)。她们在六至十岁的女童时期被选中，服事这位纯洁的女神，负责使其祭坛上的圣火长明；但服事三十年以后，便获准返回世俗生活并结婚。违背贞洁誓愿的刑罚，是被活埋在罪恶之地 (campus sceleratus)。

因此，禁欲主义对婚姻的贬抑，至少部分是由异教的影响造成的。但与此相联的，还有基督徒为反对希腊—罗马世界骇人听闻的淫乱，而对天使般纯洁所怀的热忱。基督教经过了很长的时间，才把妇女和家庭生活提升到在上帝国中与其相称的纯洁和尊严。从这一角度看，我们便更容易理解教父们关于女性的许多言论，以及他们对与妇女交往所发的警告；在今日欧美文明的状况下，这些话在我们听来完全是粗俗而不合基督教精神的。大马士革的约翰 (John of Damascus) 在他的《平行语录》(Parallels) 中，收集了教父们诸如此类的言论：“女人是一种祸害。”“富有的女人是双重的祸害。”“美貌的女人是粉饰的坟墓。”“男人的恶胜过女人的善。”能写下这些话的人，必定忘记了所罗门箴言中那些与此相反的优美经文；是的，他们必定忘记了自己的母亲。

另一方面，也可以说，对童贞的偏重，有助于提高妇女的社会地位，使她从异教之下的奴隶处境中解放出来；在那里，她甚至在婴儿或儿童时期，就可以被父母或监护人当作商品处置。不应忘记，早期教会中有许多童女，作为女执事，将全部精力奉献于照顾病人和穷人；还有一些作为殉道者，表现出前所未有的忍耐之德与道德上的英勇。居普良以其修辞华美的语言，称这样的童女为“教会的花朵，恩典的杰作，自然的装饰，反映我们救主圣洁的上帝形像，耶稣基督羊群中最卓越的成员；她们在地上就开始了我们将来在天上所要过的生活”。

对独身的过度尊崇，以及随之而来的对婚姻的贬抑，始于二世纪中叶左右，并在尼西亚时期 (Nicene age) 达到顶峰。

伊格那修 (Ignatius) 在致坡旅甲 (Polycarp) 的书信中，措辞尚且十分温和：“若有人能够保持肉身的贞洁，归荣耀给肉身之主”［或按另一异读，“归荣耀给主的肉身”］，“就当如此持守，不可夸口；²⁴他若夸口，就丧失了；若此事越过主教而传扬出去，²⁵他就败坏了。”从这话到强制教牧人员独身，跨出了多大的一步！然而，这一劝诫使我们有理由认为，早在二世纪初，许多人便已夸耀独身，以之为功德，并容让它滋长属灵的骄傲。伊格那修是第一个称自愿守贞的童女为基督的新妇和基督的珍宝的人。

殉道者游斯丁 (Justin Martyr) 走得更远。他指出，有许多男女基督徒活到高龄，仍保守自己不受玷污；他盼望独身生活尽可能广泛地盛行。他援引基督的榜样，并提出一个奇特的看法，认为主由童女而生，只是为了限制情欲，并表明上帝不借男子的性行为也能使人出生。他的门徒他提安 (Tatian) 在这一点上甚至走到了诺斯替派 (Gnostics) 的极端，在一部现已失传、论基督徒完全的著作中，谴责夫妻同房是败坏的交合，有损祷告。同时期的雅典那哥拉 (Athenagoras) 在他的《护教辞》(Apology) 中写道：“在我们中间，可以找到许多终身未婚的男女，他们满怀盼望，认为这样便能与上帝更加紧密地联合。”

亚历山大的革利免 (Clement of Alexandria) 在这一点上的看法，是所有教父中最为通情达理的。他认为守独身是上帝恩典的一种特殊恩赐，却不因此认定它优于婚姻生活。相反，他极其坚决地维护婚姻在道德上的尊严与圣洁，反对当时异端的过激言论，并提出一项普遍原则：基督教不在于外在的规条、享受与克己，而在于内心的公义与平安。他论到诺斯替派时说，他们以节欲的美名，亵渎受造之物和圣洁的创造主，拒绝婚姻与生育，理由是人不应把别人带到世上受苦，也不应为死亡提供新的食粮。他公正地指责他们自相矛盾：他们藐视上帝的定例，却又享用同一双手所造的食物，呼吸他的空气，住在他的世界里。他不接受以基督的榜样为据，因为基督不需要帮助，而且教会就是他的新妇。他也援引使徒的事例，反驳攻击婚姻的人。彼得和腓利都生了儿女；腓利把女儿嫁了出去；甚至保罗也毫不犹豫地提到一位女性伴侣（更确切地说，他只是提到自己同彼得一样，有权带着这样一位伴侣往来）。当我们在这位温厚作者的著作中读到以下的话时，仿佛被带进了一种截然不同的新教氛围：完全的基督徒以使徒为榜样，他不选择孤独的生活，而是结婚、生育儿女、照管家庭，借此证明自己确是一个真正的人；然而，在照料妻儿、仆役和产业所带来的一切试探中，他仍不偏离对上帝的爱，并以基督徒家主的身份，展现出统管万有之上帝护理的缩影。

然而，这样的观点与那个时代的精神何等不合，我们从革利免自己对感官欲望所持的斯多葛派 (Stoic) 和柏拉图化 (Platonizing) 的观念中便可看出，而在他的伟大门徒奥利金 (Origen) 身上则更为明显。奥利金年轻时自愿阉割自己，认为生殖行为只能是玷污人的。埃及利安托波利斯 (Leontopolis) 的希拉卡斯 (Hieracas)，又名希拉克斯 (Hierax)，生活于戴克里先 (Diocletian) 逼迫时期，可能也属于亚历山大学派 (Alexandrian school)；据说他把禁欲主义推到了异端的极端，宣称在福音的体制下，童贞是得救的条件。伊皮法纽 (Epiphanius) 描述他是一位在圣经和医学方面学识非凡的人，能够背诵圣经，用希腊文和埃及文撰写注释；但他否认物质身体的复活，也否认儿童能够得救，因为没有争战便没有赏赐，没有知识便没有争战（提摩太前书2:11）。他禁戒酒和肉食，在自己周围聚集了一群禁欲者，称为希拉卡斯派 (Hieracitae)。²⁶美多迪乌斯 (Methodius) 反对奥利金的唯灵论，却不反对他的禁欲主义；他以教会是上帝纯洁、无瑕、永远年轻、永远美丽的新妇这一观念为基础，热情地撰文为童贞辩护。然而，颇为奇特的是，在他的《十童女之宴》(Feast of the Ten Virgins) 中，童女们论及两性关系时细致入微，按我们现代人的趣味看来，极其不雅，令人反感。

至于拉丁教父，德尔图良 (Tertullian) 赞成或反对婚姻、尤其反对再婚的观点，我们已经谈过。²⁷他的门徒居普良 (Cyprian) 在禁欲原则上与他并无不同，只是措辞较为温和；他在《论童女的仪容》(De Habitu Virginum) 中，根据马太福音19:12、哥林多前书7章和启示录14:4，称许独身生活。

独身生活最常见于虔诚的童女中，她们只以自己许配给上帝或基督，²⁸并在这种属天联合的属灵喜乐中，找到足以补偿地上婚姻之乐的满足。然而，被如此强行压制的情欲，以其他形式显露出来的事例并不少见：例如，靠教会供养而懒散安逸，以致德尔图良认为有必要加以责备；或是虚荣、喜爱妆饰，为居普良所斥责；最糟糕的，则是禁欲主义中一种孤注一掷的冒险，很可能屡屡以失败告终，至少也使想象充满不洁的念头。这些属天的新妇²⁹有许多与男性禁欲者，尤其是未婚教牧人员同住，借口是纯粹属灵的团契，却交往亲密，使自己的节制经受最危险的考验，肆意招惹那我们本应祈求免遭的试探。这种违反自然、毫不知耻的做法，可能是诺斯替派引入的；至少爱任纽 (Irenaeus) 曾指控他们如此行。在教会中，这种做法的最早踪迹出现得相当早，见于产生于罗马教会的《赫尔马牧人书》(Pastor Hermae)，不过其中采用了颇为无害的寓言形式。³⁰其次，伪克莱门书信《致童女》(Ad Virgines) 也提到了这种做法。三世纪时，它在东西方广泛流行。安提阿 (Antioch) 那位贪恋世俗的主教保罗 (Paulus)，以自己的榜样助长了它。迦太基 (Carthage) 的居普良挺身而出，严厉而完全有理地反对这种败坏的行径，³¹尽管这些“姊妹”郑重声称自己无辜，并要求通过接生妇检查来证明。埃尔维拉 (Elvira)、安居拉 (Ancyra)、尼西亚 (Nicaea) 等地的几次会议，都觉得有必要禁止这种伪禁欲主义的丑行。然而，随着独身法规日益严厉，教牧人员与“mulieres subintroductae”（私自引入同住的妇女）的交往不减反增，并且历来都或多或少地使罗马教会的司祭阶层蒙羞。

§ 108. 教牧人员的独身制

G. 卡利克斯图斯 (G. Calixtus，路德宗)：《论教牧人员的婚姻》(De conjug. clericorum)。Helmst.，1631年；H. Ph. Kr. 亨克 (H. Ph. Kr. Henke) 修订版，1784年，2部。

Lud. 托马森 (Lud. Thomassin，罗马天主教，卒于1696年)：《教会古今纪律》(Vetus et Nova Ecclesiae Disciplina)。Lucae，1728年，3卷，对开本；Mayence，1787年，亦有法文版。第I部，第II卷，第60–67章。

Fr. 扎卡里亚 (Fr. Zaccaria，罗马天主教)：《教士独身制论争史》(Storia polemica del celibato sacro)。Rom.，1774年；又著《教士独身制新辩》(Nuova giustificazione del celibato sacro)。Fuligno，1785年。

F. W. 卡罗韦 (F. W. Carové，新教)：《独身法规全集》(Vollstöndige Sammlung der Cölibatsgesetze)。Francf.，1823年。

J. Ant. 与 Aug. 泰纳 (J. Ant. & Aug. Theiner，罗马天主教)：《教牧人员强制独身制的引入及其后果》(Die Einführung der erzwungenen Ehelosigkeit bei den Geistlichen u. ihre Folgen)。Altenb.，1828年，2卷；第二版，Augsburg，1845年。主张废除强制独身制。

Th. Fr. 克利切 (Th. Fr. Klitsche，罗马天主教)：《独身制史》(Geschichte des Cölibats)（自使徒时代至贵格利七世）。Augsb.，1830年。

A. 默勒 (A. Möhler)：《评（巴登）废除独身制备忘录》(Beleuchtung der (badischen) Denkschrift zur Aufhebunq des Cölibats)。载其《文集》(Gesammelte Schriften)。Regensb.，1839年，第I卷，第177页及后。

C. J. 赫费勒 (C. J. Hefele，罗马天主教)：《教会史论集》(Beitröge zur Kirchengesch.)。第I卷，第122–139页。

A. 德·罗斯科瓦尼 (A. de Roskovany，罗马天主教)：《据历世纪文献论证独身制与日课经……》(Cöstibatus et Breviarium ... a monumentis omnium saeculorum demonstrata)。Pest，1861年，4卷。汇集史料与官方决议。舒尔特 (Schulte) 称之为“ein gönzlich unkritischer Abdruck von Quellen”（完全不加批判的史料翻印）。

亨利·C. 利 (Henry C. Lea，新教)：《基督教会教士独身制史略》(An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church)。费城，1867年；增订第二版，波士顿，1884年（682页）。这是唯一一部公正而完整、叙述至1880年的历史著作。

普罗布斯特 (PROBST，罗马天主教)：《教会纪律》(Kirchliche Disciplin)，1870年。

J. Fried. 冯·舒尔特 (J. Fried. von. Schulte，波恩法学教授，旧天主教派领袖之一)：《强制独身制及其废除》(Der Cölibatszwang und, lessen Aufhebung)。波恩，1876年（96页）。反对独身制。

上述著作除利的书以外，都或多或少带有论争性质。另可比较罗马天主教方面的资料：马蒂尼 (Martigny) 的“独身制”(Celibacy) 条目；克劳斯 (Kraus)《基督教古物实用百科全书》(Real-Encykl. der christl. Alterthümer，1881年) 第I卷，第304–307页，由丰克 (Funk) 撰写的条目；以及韦策尔与韦尔特 (Wetzer & Welte)《教会百科全书》(Kirchenlexicon) 新版中的有关条目。新教方面则参看宾厄姆 (Bingham)，第IV卷，第V章；赫尔佐格 (Herzog)²，第III卷，第299–303页；以及史密斯与奇瑟姆 (Smith & Cheetham)，第I卷，第323–327页。

教牧人员既被认为体现基督教的道德理想，并且在充分的意义上是上帝的产业，就被要求在受按立之后，实行格外严格的性节制。在那个时代的禁欲精神看来，基督自己既由童女而生，他的教会又具有童贞的性质，似乎便应推崇守童贞的祭司职分，认为这样最接近他的榜样，也最有助于促进教会的属灵利益。

祭司独身制在异教中已有先例。佛教严令遵守独身，违者逐出。埃及祭司获准结婚一次，却不得再婚，而民众则实行不受限制的多妻制。德尔斐的阿波罗 (Delphic Apollo)、亚该亚的朱诺 (Achaian Juno)、斯基泰的狄安娜 (Scythian Diana)，以及罗马的维斯塔 (Vesta)，其女祭司都是童女。

在尼西亚会议以前的时期，教士独身制尚未成为法律规定，而像平信徒的守贞之愿一样，听凭自愿。保罗的教牧书信，即使没有明文吩咐所有福音的执事（主教和执事）结婚，至少也准许他们结婚，并且假定婚姻是通常的情形。³²彼得和几位使徒，以及主的弟兄，都有妻室，³³而执事兼传福音者腓利有四个女儿，³⁴这些都是不容置疑的事实。同样不言而喻的是，婚姻若不减损使徒的权柄和尊严，也就不可能与任何基督仆人的尊严和纯洁相抵触。婚姻关系包含义务与权利；有些作者受教义偏见影响，把使徒们的婚姻，以及约瑟与马利亚的婚姻，说成徒具形式，实在是对真理的奇特歪曲。如果保罗有意像四世纪的教父和会议那样，禁止教牧人员在受按立以后过夫妻生活，他的措辞必会大不相同。他明确把禁止嫁娶（包括婚姻所带来的一切）列为那支配异教宗教的鬼魔或邪灵的道理，并列为末世背道的征兆之一。³⁵圣经把婚姻表述为上帝最初设立的制度，起于人尚在无罪状态之时，并在新旧两约中赋予它最高的尊严。凡是对婚姻状态和婚姻之床的尊荣与纯洁有所诋毁，就是诋毁列祖、摩西、先知和使徒，甚至诋毁创造主的智慧与良善。³⁶

在禁欲主义对童贞纯洁的热忱这一不可抗拒的影响下，教会很早就偏离了这些圣经观点。过分抬高童贞，必然意味着相应地贬低婚姻。

使徒后时期的文献十分稀少，只让我们偶尔窥见教牧人员的家庭生活，但已足以证明，教牧人员的婚姻始终延续不绝，尤其是在东方众教会中；同时，这些文献也表明，独身教牧人员受到更高的评价，而这逐渐限制或贬低了教牧人员的婚姻。

坡旅甲 (Polycarp) 为腓立比的长老瓦伦斯 (Valens) 因贪财而跌倒，以及“他的妻子”，表示悲痛。³⁷爱任纽 (Irenaeus) 提到小亚细亚一位已婚的执事，他款待了一名诺斯替派异端者，所得的恶报却是妻子被此人诱奸。³⁸这些都是颇为不幸的例子。亚历山大的革利免 (Clement of Alexandria) 是尼西亚会议以前最开明的教父之一；他所描绘的真正基督教灵知者的理想，是结婚生子的人，这样的人达到更高的德行，因为他胜过的试探比独身者更多。³⁹德尔图良 (Tertullian) 虽然更推崇独身，自己却是已婚的祭司；他劝妻子在自己死后不要再婚，以达到他们在婚姻生活中不可能达到的禁欲纯洁。⁴⁰他也曾优美地描绘基督徒家庭的圣洁之美。非洲的一位祭司诺瓦图斯 (Novatus)——又一个不幸的例子——曾因杀死自己尚未出生的孩子而被控告。⁴¹已婚主教的例子也不乏其人。苏格拉底 (Socrates) 记述，在他的时代，连主教也不受任何独身法规的约束，而且许多主教在任内生儿育女。⁴²亚他那修 (Athanasius) 说：⁴³“许多主教没有结婚；另一方面，却有修士成为父亲。再者，我们看见有儿女的主教，也看见不考虑留下后裔的修士。”拿先斯的贵格利 (Gregory of Nazianzum，卒于390年) 的父亲是一位已婚主教；他的母亲农娜 (Nonna) 是一位虔诚足为楷模的妇人，曾恳切祈求得一个儿子，在预示未来的异象中看见了这个儿子，并在他出生以前就把他奉献给上帝，供祂使用；他后来成为当代首屈一指的神学家。尼撒的贵格利 (Gregory of Nyssa，约卒于394年) 同样是一位已婚主教，虽然他更推崇独身。叙内修斯 (Synesius) 是亚历山大的女哲学家希帕霞 (Hypasia) 的门徒；当人们力劝他接受托勒密城 (Ptolemais) 的主教职位时（公元410年），他起初拒绝了，因为他不愿与妻子分离，并希望子孙众多；但他最终接受了这一职务，并未与妻子分离。这证明他的情形在当时已属例外。《使徒教规》(Apostolical Canons) 第六条规定：“主教、祭司或执事，不可假借虔诚之名休弃自己的妻子；若休弃她，就当停职；若执意不改，就当革职。”《使徒宪章》(Apostolical Constitutions) 从未规定教士必须独身，却认定主教、祭司和执事只结过一次婚是完全合法的。⁴⁴

地下墓窟的铭文同样见证，教士婚姻一直延续到五世纪。⁴⁵

与此同时，教士独身的倾向很早就已出现，并且持续而不可抗拒地发展，尤其是在西方。上述事实与规定所附带的种种限制，清楚表明了这一点。因为它们给人的印象是，在最初几个世纪中，幸福的教士婚姻和堪作楷模的牧师妻子并不多；只要教会的公众舆论违背圣经，把童贞抬高到婚姻之上，这样的婚姻和妻子也就不可能多。

走向教士独身制的第一步，是禁止教士再婚，其根据是保罗关于“只作一个妇人的丈夫”的指示乃是限制，而非命令。在三世纪初的西方教会中，许多教士曾经结过第二次、甚至第三次婚；人们为这种做法辩护，理由是保罗准许配偶一方去世后再婚，认为这是合法的，并未加以任何限制或谴责。这一事实可从孟他努派 (Montanistic) 的德尔图良的抗议中看出；他把大公教会容许再婚者主持教会、施洗和举行圣餐，列为对他们的一项严重指责。⁴⁶希波吕托 (Hippolytus) 对纪律同样持严苛的看法，他约在同一时期责备罗马主教卡利斯图斯 (Callistus)，因为后者准许结过第二次、甚至第三次婚的人担任祭司和主教，并容许教士在受按立后结婚。⁴⁷但严格的做法终于占了上风，并在东方教会中成为法规。《使徒宪章》明文禁止主教、祭司和执事再婚，也禁止教士娶妾、女奴、寡妇或被休的妇人，并把禁止再婚的规定甚至扩及歌咏员、诵经员和守门人。至于女执事，则必须是“纯洁的童女，或只结过一次婚、忠信而有好名声的寡妇”。⁴⁸《使徒教规》作出类似的规定，并宣告，凡再婚者，或娶寡妇、妓女、女演员、女奴为妻者，均无资格担任祭司。⁴⁹
第二步，是禁止受按立以后结婚和过夫妻生活。这意味着祭司职分与婚姻的义务和权利互不相容。在西班牙的埃尔维拉会议 (Council of Elvira，306年) 以前，拉丁教会并不区分按立前与按立后的婚姻。⁵⁰但这次严苛的会议禁止各级祭司过夫妻生活，违者处以绝罚。⁵¹阿尔勒会议 (Council of Arles，314年) 通过了一条类似的教规。⁵²安居拉会议 (Council of Ancyra，314年) 也作出同样规定，不过容许执事在任内结婚，条件是他们在领受圣职以前已提出这一保留。⁵³这一例外后来被《使徒教规》第二十七条取消；该条只准许诵经员和歌咏员（属于低级圣职）结婚。⁵⁴

在尼西亚大公会议 (Oecumenical Council of Nicaea，325年) 上，有人企图把西班牙的规定提升为具有大公会议法令之尊严与权威的规定；此举可能由科尔多瓦主教何西乌斯 (Hosius of Cordova) 领导，他正是联系埃尔维拉会议与尼西亚会议的人物。这就是说，要把禁止受按立后结婚，以及已婚祭司严格禁绝夫妻生活，定为全教会通行的法律。但这一企图因帕弗努提乌斯 (Paphnutius) 的大声抗议而受挫。他是埃及上底比斯地区 (Upper Thebaid) 一座城市的主教，是一位可敬的认信者，在戴克里先 (Diocletian) 的逼迫中失去了一只眼睛，而他自己从未亲近过女人。他告诫与会的教父，不可把过重的担子加在教士身上，并要记得，婚姻和夫妻生活都是可尊重而纯洁的。他担心过分严苛会弊多于利。未婚教士若能按照教会的古老传统保持独身，也就足够了；但使已婚祭司与他尚为平信徒时所娶的合法妻子分离，却是不对的。这位严格的禁欲者的劝谏，促使会议搁置这一议题，让每一位教士自由选择继续或终止婚姻关系。这是一声先知性的警告。⁵⁵

尼西亚会议没有通过任何支持独身制的法律；但其第三条教规严禁未婚教士与未婚女子同住这种危险而令人非议的做法，⁵⁶除非她是“母亲、姊妹、姑姨，或不受嫌疑的人”。⁵⁷这一禁令不可与禁止夫妻生活混为一谈，正如不可把这些属灵的姘妇与正式的妻子等同起来一样。不过，它确实证明，教士名义上的独身在当时必已相当普遍。

希腊教会大体保留了四世纪的立场，并逐渐采用这样的原则与做法：独身的规定只限于主教（通常从修道院中选出），而低级教士则以只结一次婚为常规；婚姻必须在按立以前缔结，且不得再婚。查士丁尼 (Justinian) 禁止已婚男子担任主教，而特鲁洛会议 (Trullan Synod，公元692年) 则使既有的做法成为法规。在俄国（可能自1274年起），低级教士必须结婚一次。这是在相反方向上的错误。婚姻和独身一样，都应当留给各人的良心自由决定。

拉丁教会迈出了第三步，也是最后一步，即绝对禁止教士结婚，甚至包括低级圣职人员。这属于下一时期；但我们在此先简略交代其结果。教皇西里修斯 (Siricius，公元385年) 首先禁止祭司结婚，其后有英诺森一世 (Innocent I，402年)、利奥一世 (Leo I，440年)、贵格利一世 (Gregory I，590年)，以及迦太基 (Carthage，390年和401年)、托莱多 (Toledo，400年)、奥尔良 (Orleans，538年)、奥朗日 (Orange，441年)、阿尔勒 (Arles，443年或452年)、阿格德 (Agde，506年)、赫罗纳 (Gerunda，517年) 的地方会议，先后作出同样规定。尼西亚及尼西亚后时期的伟大教师哲罗姆 (Jerome)、奥古斯丁 (Augustin) 和金口约翰 (Chrysostom)，极力颂扬童贞具有更高的圣洁，因而以自身的权威为这类立法增添了分量。拉丁文圣经标准译本的译者圣哲罗姆，率先发动了这场反对婚姻的禁欲圣战，并把“以童贞之斧砍倒婚姻之林”树立为圣徒的理想目标，供教士追求。他愿意赞美婚姻，却只是把它看作培育童贞者的苗圃。⁵⁸

这样，在祭司制度与教阶制度的利益共同影响之下，独身制逐渐在西方强制推行，有利于教阶体系，却有损于道德。⁵⁹

因为自愿的禁欲，或出于特殊恩赐的禁欲，固然值得尊重，也可能成为教会的极大福分，但强迫教士独身，或以独身为进入祭司职分的普遍条件，却违背了自然与圣经；尽管关于婚姻的种种圣礼观念与此相反，这种做法仍然贬低了上帝所设立的婚姻制度。这制度源自起初无罪的状态，并象征一切关系中最圣洁的关系，就是基督与祂教会的联合。然而，凡与自然及自然之上帝相冲突的，也必与道德的最高利益相冲突。因此，尽管天主教在使妇女和家庭生活摆脱异教的卑下处境方面作出了许多贡献，我们仍然发现，一般说来，在福音派新教国家中，妇女在智识与道德修养上的地位，远高于纯属罗马天主教的国家。教牧人员的婚姻大概通常是最幸福的；而且，与社会上任何其他阶层的婚姻相比，这些婚姻孕育了更多有益于社会、卓然有成的男女。⁶⁰

Original Text

CHAPTER IX. ASCETIC TENDENCIES.

§ 104. Ascetic Virtue and Piety.

Ad. Möhler (R.C.): Geschichte des Mönchthums in der Zeit seiner ersten Entstehung u. ersten Ausbildung, 1836 ("Vermischte Schriften," ed. Döllinger. Regensb. 1839, II. p. 165 sqq.).

Is. Taylor (Independent): Ancient Christianity, 4^th ed. London, 1844, I. 133–299 (anti-Puseyite and anti Catholic).

H. Ruffner (Presbyt.): The Fathers of the Desert; or an Account of the Origin and Practice of Monkery among heathen nations; its passage into the church; and some wonderful Stories of the Fathers concerning the primitive Monks and Hermits. N. York, 1850. 2 vols.

Otto Zöckler (Lutheran): Kritische Geschichte der Askese. Frkf. and Erlangen, 1863 (434 pages).

P. E. Lucius Die Therapeuten und ihre Stellung in der Geschichte der Askese. Strasburg, 1879.

H. Weingarten: Ueber den Ursprung des Mönchthums im nach-Konstantinischen Zeittalter. Gotha, 1877. And his article in Herzog’s "Encykl." new ed. vol. X. (1882) p. 758 sqq. (abridged in Schaff’s Herzog, vol. II. 1551 sqq. N. Y. 1883).

Ad. Harnack: Das Mönchthum, seine Ideale und seine Geschichte. Giessen, 1882.

The general literature on Monasticism is immense, but belongs to the next period. See vol. III. 147 sq., and the list of books in Zöckler, l.c. p. 10–16.

Here we enter a field where the early church appears most remote from the free spirit of evangelical Protestantism and modern ethics and stands nearest the legalistic and monastic ethics of Greek and Roman Catholicism. Christian life was viewed as consisting mainly in certain outward exercises, rather than an inward disposition, in a multiplicity of acts rather than a life of faith. The great ideal of virtue was, according to the prevailing notion of the fathers and councils, not so much to transform the world and sanctify the natural things and relations created by God, as to flee from the world into monastic seclusion, and voluntarily renounce property and marriage. The Pauline doctrine of faith and of justification by grace alone steadily retreated, or rather, it was never yet rightly enthroned in the general thought and life of the church. The qualitative view of morality yielded more and more to quantitative calculation by the number of outward meritorious and even supererogatory works, prayer, fasting, alms-giving, voluntary poverty, and celibacy. This necessarily brought with it a Judaizing self-righteousness and overestimate of the ascetic life, which developed, by an irresistible impulse, into the hermit-life and monasticism of the Nicene age. All the germs of this asceticism appear in the second half of the third century, and even earlier.

Asceticism in general is a rigid outward self-discipline, by which the spirit strives after full dominion over the flesh, and a superior grade of virtue.(1) It includes not only that true moderation or restraint of the animal appetites, which is a universal Christian duty, but total abstinence from enjoyments in themselves lawful, from wine, animal food, property, and marriage, together with all kinds of penances and mortifications of the body. In the union of the abstractive and penitential elements, or of self-denial and self-punishment, the catholic asceticism stands forth complete in light and shade; exhibiting, on the one hand, wonderful examples of heroic renunciation of self and the world, but very often, on the other, a total misapprehension and perversion of Christian morality; the renunciation involving, more or less a Gnostic contempt of the gifts and ordinances of the God of nature, and the penance or self-punishment running into practical denial of the all-sufficient merits of Christ. The ascetic and monastic tendency rests primarily upon a lively, though in morbid sense of the sinfulness, of the flesh and the corruption of the world; then upon the desire for solitude and exclusive occupation with divine things; and finally, upon the ambition to attain extraordinary holiness and merit. It would anticipate upon earth the life of angels in heaven.(2) It substitutes all abnormal, self-appointed virtue and piety for the normal forms prescribed by the Creator; and not rarely looks down upon the divinely-ordained standard with spiritual pride. It is a mark at once of moral strength and moral weakness. It presumes a certain degree of culture, in which man has emancipated himself from the powers of nature and risen to the consciousness of his moral calling; but thinks to secure itself against temptation only by entire separation from the world, instead of standing in the world to overcome it and transform it into the kingdom of God.

Asceticism is by no means limited to the Christian church, but it there developed its highest and noblest form. We observe kindred phenomena long before Christ; among the Jews, in the Nazarites, the Essenes, and the cognate Therapeutae,(3) and still more among the heathens, in the old Persian and Indian religions, especially among the Buddhists, who have even a fully developed system of monastic life, which struck some Roman missionaries as the devil’s caricature of the Catholic system. In Egypt the priests of Serapis led a monastic life.(4) There is something in the very climate of the land of the Pharaohs, in its striking contrast between the solitude of the desert and the fertility of the banks of the Nile, so closely bordering on each other, and in the sepulchral sadness of the people, which induces men to withdraw from the busy turmoil and the active duties of life. It is certain that the first Christian hermits and monks were Egyptians. Even the Grecian philosophy was conceived by the Pythagoreans, the Platonists, and the Stoics, not as theoretical knowledge merely, but also as practical wisdom, and frequently joined itself to the most rigid abstemiousness, so that "philosopher" and "ascetic" were interchangeable terms. Several apologists of the second century had by this practical philosophy particularly the Platonic, been led to Christianity; and they on this account retained their simple dress and mode of life. Tertullian congratulates the philosopher’s cloak on having now become the garb of a better philosophy. In the show of self-denial the Cynics, the followers of Diogenes, went to the extreme; but these, at least in their later degenerate days, concealed under the guise of bodily squalor, untrimmed nails, and uncombed hair, a vulgar cynical spirit, and a bitter hatred of Christianity.

In the ancient church there was a special class of Christians of both sexes who, under the name of "ascetics" or "abstinents,"(5) though still living in the midst of the community, retired from society, voluntarily renounced marriage and property, devoted themselves wholly to fasting, prayer, and religious contemplation, and strove thereby to attain Christian perfection. Sometimes they formed a society of their own, (6) for mutual improvement, an ecclesiola in ecelesia, in which even children could be received and trained to abstinence. They shared with the confessors the greatest regard from their fellow-Christians, had a separate seat in the public worship, and were considered the fairest ornaments of the church. In times of persecution they sought with enthusiasm a martyr’s death as the crown of perfection.

While as yet each congregation was a lonely oasis in the desert of the world’s corruption, and stood in downright opposition to the surrounding heathen world, these ascetics had no reason for separating from it and flying into the desert. It was under and after Constantine, and partly as the result of the union of church and state, the consequent transfer of the world into the church, and the cessation of martyrdom, that asceticism developed itself to anchoretism and monkery, and endeavored thus to save the virgin purity of the church by carrying it into the wilderness. The first Christian hermit, Paul of Thebes, is traced back to the middle of the third century, but is lost in the mist of fable; St. Anthony, the real father of monks, belongs to the age of Constantine.(7) At the time of Cyprian(8) there was as yet no absolutely binding vow. The early origin and wide spread of this ascetic life are due to the deep moral earnestness of Christianity, and the prevalence of sin in all the social relations of the then still thoroughly pagan world. It was the excessive development of the negative, world-rejecting element in Christianity, which preceded its positive effort to transform and sanctify the world.

The ascetic principle, however, was not confined, in its influence, to the proper ascetics and monks. It ruled more or less the entire morality and piety of the ancient and mediaeval church; though on the other hand, there were never wanting in her bosom protests of the free evangelical spirit against moral narrowness and excessive regard to the outward works of the law. The ascetics were but the most consistent representatives of the old catholic piety, and were commended as such by the apologists to the heathens. They formed the spiritual nobility, the flower of the church, and served especially as examples to the clergy.

§ 105. Heretical and Catholic Asceticism.

But we must now distinguish two different kinds of asceticism in Christian antiquity: a heretical and an orthodox or Catholic. The former rests on heathen philosophy, the latter is a development of Christian ideas.

The heretical asceticism, the beginnings of which are resisted in the New Testament itself,(9) meets us in the Gnostic and Manichaean sects. It is descended from Oriental and Platonic ideas, and is based on a dualistic view of the world, a confusion of sin with matter, and a perverted idea of God and the creation. It places God and the world at irreconcilable enmity, derives the creation from an inferior being, considers the human body substantially evil, a product of the devil or the demiurge, and makes it the great moral business of man to rid himself of the same, or gradually to annihilate it, whether by excessive abstinence or by unbridled indulgence. Many of the Gnostics placed the fall itself in the first gratification of the sexual desire, which subjected man to the dominion of the Hyle.

The orthodox or catholic asceticism starts from a literal and overstrained construction of certain passages of Scripture. It admits that all nature is the work of God and the object of his love, and asserts the divine origin and destiny of the human body, without which there could, in fact, be no resurrection, and hence no admittance to eternal glory.(10) It therefore aims not to mortify the body, but perfectly to control and sanctify it. For the metaphysical dualism between spirit and matter, it substitutes the ethical conflict between the spirit and the flesh. But in practice it exceeds the simple and sound limits of the Bible, falsely substitutes the bodily appetites and affections, or sensuous nature, as such, for the flesh, or the principle of selfishness, which resides in the soul as well as the body; and thus, with all its horror of heresy, really joins in the Gnostic and Manichaean hatred of the body as the prison of the spirit. This comes out especially in the depreciation of marriage and the family life, that divinely appointed nursery of church and state, and in excessive self-inflictions, to which the apostolic piety affords not the remotest parallel. The heathen Gnostic principle of separation from the world and from the body,(11) as a means of self-redemption, after being theoretically exterminated, stole into the church by a back door of practice, directly in face of the Christian doctrine of the high destiny of the body and perfect redemption through Christ.

The Alexandrian fathers furnished a theoretical basis for this asceticism in the distinction of a lower and higher morality, which corresponds to the Platonic or Pythagorean distinction between the life according to nature and the life above nature or the practical and contemplative life. It was previously suggested by Hermas about the middle of the second century.(12) Tertullian made a corresponding opposite distinction of mortal and venial sins.(13) Here was a source of serious practical errors, and an encouragement both to moral laxity and ascetic extravagance. The ascetics, and afterwards the monks, formed or claimed to be a moral nobility, a spiritual aristocracy, above the common Christian people; as the clergy stood in a separate caste of inviolable dignity above the laity, who were content with a lower grade of virtue. Clement of Alexandria, otherwise remarkable for his elevated ethical views, requires of the sage or gnostic, that he excel the plain Christian not only by higher knowledge, but also by higher, emotionless virtue, and stoical superiority to all bodily conditions; and he inclines to regard the body, with Plato, as the grave and fetter(14) of the soul. How little he understood the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith, may be inferred from a passage in the Stromata, where be explains the word of Christ: "Thy faith hath saved thee," as referring, not to faith simply, but to the Jews only, who lived according to the law; as if faith was something to be added to the good works, instead of being the source and principle of the holy life.(15) Origen goes still further, and propounds quite distinctly the catholic doctrine of two kinds of morality and piety, a lower for all Christians, and a higher for saints or the select few.(16) He includes in the higher morality works of supererogation,(17) i.e. works not enjoined indeed in the gospel, yet recommended as counsels of perfection,(18) which were supposed to establish a peculiar merit and secure a higher degree of blessedness. He who does only what is required of all is an unprofitable servant;(19) but he who does more, who performs, for example, what Paul, in 1 Cor. 7:25, merely recommends, concerning the single state, or like him, resigns his just claim to temporal remuneration for spiritual service, is called a good and faithful servant.(20)

Among these works were reckoned martyrdom, voluntary poverty, and voluntary celibacy. All three, or at least the last two of these acts, in connection with the positive Christian virtues, belong to the idea of the higher perfection, as distinguished from the fulfilment of regular duties, or ordinary morality. To poverty and celibacy was afterwards added absolute obedience; and these three things were the main subjects of the consilia evangelica and the monastic vow.

The ground on which these particular virtues were so strongly urged is easily understood. Property, which is so closely allied to the selfishness of man and binds him to the earth, and sexual intercourse, which brings out sensual passion in its greatest strength, and which nature herself covers with the veil of modesty;—these present themselves as the firmest obstacles to that perfection, in which God alone is our possession, and Christ alone our love and delight.

In these things the ancient heretics went to the extreme. The Ebionites made poverty the condition of salvation. The Gnostics were divided between the two excesses of absolute self-denial and unbridled self-indulgence. The Marcionites, Carpocratians, Prodicians, false Basilidians, and Manichaeans objected to individual property, from hatred to the material world; and Epiphanes, in a book "on Justice" about 125, defined virtue as a community with equality, and advocated the community of goods and women. The more earnest of these heretics entirely prohibited marriage and procreation as a diabolical work, as in the case of Saturninus, Marcion, and the Encratites; while other Gnostic sects substituted for it the most shameless promiscuous intercourse, as in Carpocrates, Epiphanes, and the Nicolaitans.

The ancient church, on the contrary, held to the divine institution of property and marriage, and was content to recommend the voluntary renunciation of these intrinsically lawful pleasures to the few elect, as means of attaining Christian perfection. She declared marriage holy, virginity more holy. But unquestionably even the church fathers so exalted the higher holiness of virginity, as practically to neutralize, or at least seriously to weaken, their assertion of the holiness of marriage. The Roman church, in spite of the many Bible examples of married men of God from Abraham to Peter, can conceive no real holiness without celibacy, and therefore requires celibacy of its clergy without exception.

§ 106. Voluntary Poverty.

The recommendation of voluntary poverty was based on a literal interpretation of the Lord’s advice to the rich young ruler, who had kept all the commandments from his youth up: "If thou wouldest be perfect, go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me."(21) To this were added the actual examples of the poverty of Christ and his apostles, and the community of goods in the first Christian church at Jerusalem. Many Christians, not of the ascetics only, but also of the clergy, like Cyprian, accordingly gave up all their property at their conversion, for the benefit of the poor. The later monastic societies sought to represent in their community of goods the original equality and the perfect brotherhood of men.

Yet on the other hand, we meet with more moderate views. Clement of Alexandria, for example, in a special treatise on the right use of wealth,(22) observes, that the Saviour forbade not so much the possession of earthly property, as the love of it and desire for it; and that it is possible to retain the latter, even though the possession itself be renounced. The earthly, says he, is a material and a means for doing good, and the unequal distribution of property is a divine provision for the exercise of Christian love and beneficence. The true riches are the virtue, which can and should maintain itself under all outward conditions; the false are the mere outward possession, which comes and goes.

§ 107. Voluntary Celibacy.

The old catholic exaggeration of celibacy attached itself to four passages of Scripture, viz. Matt. 19:12; 22:30; 1 Cor. 7:7 sqq.; and Rev. 14:4; but it went far beyond them, and unconsciously admitted influences from foreign modes of thought. The words of the Lord in Matt. 22:30 (Luke 20:35 sq.) were most frequently cited; but they expressly limit unmarried life to the angels, without setting it up as the model for men. Rev. 14:4 was taken by some of the fathers more correctly in the symbolical sense of freedom from the pollution of idolatry. The example of Christ, though often urged, cannot here furnish a rule; for the Son of God and Saviour of the world was too far above all the daughters of Eve to find an equal companion among them, and in any case cannot be conceived as holding such relations. The whole church of the redeemed is his pure bride. Of the apostles some at least were married, and among them Peter, the oldest and most prominent of all. The advice of Paul in 1 Cor. 7 is so cautiously given, that even here the view of the fathers found but partial support; especially if balanced with the Pastoral Epistles, where marriage is presented as the proper condition for the clergy. Nevertheless he was frequently made the apologist of celibacy by orthodox and heretical writers.(23) Judaism—with the exception of the paganizing Essenes, who abstained from marriage—highly honors the family life; it allows marriage even to the priests and the high-priests, who had in fact to maintain their order by physical reproduction; it considers unfruitfulness a disgrace or a curse.

Heathenism, on the contrary, just because of its own degradation of woman, and its low, sensual conception of marriage, frequently includes celibacy in its ideal of morality, and associates it with worship. The noblest form of heathen virginity appears in the six Vestal virgins of Rome, who, while girls of from six to ten years, were selected for the service of the pure goddess, and set to keep the holy fire burning on its altar; but, after serving thirty years, were allowed to return to secular life and marry. The penalty for breaking their vow of chastity was to be buried alive in the campus sceleratus.

The ascetic depreciation of marriage is thus due, at least in part, to the influence of heathenism. But with this was associated the Christian enthusiasm for angelic purity in opposition to the horrible licentiousness of the Graeco-Roman world. It was long before Christianity raised woman and the family life to the purity and dignity which became them in the kingdom of God. In this view, we may the more easily account for many expressions of the church fathers respecting the female sex, and warnings against intercourse with women, which to us, in the present state of European and American civilization, sound perfectly coarse and unchristian. John of Damascus has collected in his Parallels such patristic expressions as these: "A woman is an evil." "A rich woman is a double evil." "A beautiful woman is a whited sepulchre." "Better is a man’s wickedness than a woman’s goodness." The men who could write so, must have forgotten the beautiful passages to the contrary in the proverbs of Solomon; yea, they must have forgotten their own mothers.

On the other hand, it may be said, that the preference given to virginity had a tendency to elevate woman in the social sphere and to emancipate her from that slavish condition under heathenism, where she could be disposed of as an article of merchandise by parents or guardians, even in infancy or childhood. It should not be forgotten that many virgins of the early church devoted their whole energies as deaconesses to the care of the sick and the poor, or exhibited as martyrs a degree of passive virtue and moral heroism altogether unknown before. Such virgins Cyprian, in his rhetorical language, calls "the flowers of the church, the masterpieces of grace, the ornament of nature, the image of God reflecting the holiness of our Saviour, the most illustrious of the flock of Jesus Christ, who commenced on earth that life which we shall lead once in heaven."

The excessive regard for celibacy and the accompanying depreciation of marriage date from about the middle of the second century, and reach their height in the Nicene age.

Ignatius, in his epistle to Polycarp, expresses himself as yet very moderately: "If any one can remain in chastity of the flesh to the glory of the Lord of the flesh" [or, according to another reading, "of the flesh of the Lord], let him remain thus without boasting;(24) if he boast, he is lost, and if it be made known, beyond the bishop,(25) he is ruined." What a stride from this to the obligatory celibacy of the clergy! Yet the admonition leads us to suppose, that celibacy was thus early, in the beginning of the second century, in many cases, boasted of as meritorious, and allowed to nourish spiritual pride. Ignatius is the first to call voluntary virgins brides of Christ and jewels of Christ.

Justin Martyr goes further. He points to many Christians of both sexes who lived to a great age unpolluted; and he desires celibacy to prevail to the greatest possible extent. He refers to the example of Christ, and expresses the singular opinion, that the Lord was born of a virgin only to put a limit to sensual desire, and to show that God could produce without the sexual agency of man. His disciple Tatian ran even to the Gnostic extreme upon this point, and, in a lost work on Christian perfection, condemned conjugal cohabitation as a fellowship of corruption destructive of prayer. At the same period Athenagoras wrote, in his Apology: "Many may be found among us, of both sexes, who grow old unmarried, full of hope that they are in this way more closely united to God."

Clement of Alexandria is the most reasonable of all the fathers in his views on this point. He considers eunuchism a special gift of divine grace, but without yielding it on this account preference above the married state. On the contrary, he vindicates with great decision the moral dignity and sanctity of marriage against the heretical extravagances of his time, and lays down the general principle, that Christianity stands not in outward observances, enjoyments, and privations, but in righteousness and peace of heart. Of the Gnostics he says, that, under the fair name of abstinence, they act impiously towards the creation and the holy Creator, and repudiate marriage and procreation on the ground that a man should not introduce others into the world to their misery, and provide new nourishment for death. He justly charges them with inconsistency in despising the ordinances of God and yet enjoying the nourishment created by the same hand, breathing his air, and abiding in his world. He rejects the appeal to the example of Christ, because Christ needed no help, and because the church is his bride. The apostles also he cites against the impugners of marriage. Peter and Philip begot children; Philip gave his daughters in marriage; and even Paul hesitated not to speak of a female companion (rather only of his right to lead about such an one, as well as Peter). We seem translated into an entirely different, Protestant atmosphere, when in this genial writer we read: The perfect Christian, who has the apostles for his patterns, proves himself truly a man in this, that he chooses not a solitary life, but marries, begets children, cares for the household, yet under all the temptations which his care for wife and children, domestics and property, presents, swerves not from his love to God, and as a Christian householder exhibits a miniature of the all-ruling Providence.

But how little such views agreed with the spirit of that age, we see in Clement’s own stoical and Platonizing conception of the sensual appetites, and still more in his great disciple Origen, who voluntarily disabled himself in his youth, and could not think of the act of generation as anything but polluting. Hieracas, or Hierax, of Leontopolis in Egypt, who lived during the Diocletian persecution, and probably also belonged to the Alexandrian school, is said to have carried his asceticism to a heretical extreme, and to have declared virginity a condition of salvation under the gospel dispensation. Epiphanius describes him as a man of extraordinary biblical and medical learning, who knew the Bible by heart, wrote commentaries in the Greek and Egyptian languages, but denied the resurrection of the material body and the salvation of children, because there can be no reward without conflict, and no conflict without knowledge (1 Tim. 2:11). He abstained from wine and animal food, and gathered around him a society of ascetics, who were called Hieracitae.(26) Methodius was an opponent of the spiritualistic, but not of the ascetic Origen, and wrote an enthusiastic plea for virginity, founded on the idea of the church as the pure, unspotted, ever young, and ever beautiful bride of God. Yet, quite remarkably, in his "Feast of the Ten Virgins," the virgins express themselves respecting the sexual relations with a minuteness which, to our modern taste, is extremely indelicate and offensive.

As to the Latin fathers: The views of Tertullian for or and against marriage, particularly against second marriage, we have already noticed.(27) His disciple Cyprian differs from him in his ascetic principles only by greater moderation in expression, and, in his treatise De Habitu Virginum, commends the unmarried life on the ground of Matt. 19:12; 1 Cor. 7, and Rev. 14:4.

Celibacy was most common with pious virgins, who married themselves only to God or to Christ,(28) and in the spiritual delights of this heavenly union found abundant compensation for the pleasures of earthly matrimony. But cases were not rare where sensuality, thus violently suppressed, asserted itself under other forms; as, for example, in indolence and ease at the expense of the church, which Tertullian finds it necessary to censure; or in the vanity and love of dress, which Cyprian rebukes; and, worst of all, in a desperate venture of asceticism, which probably often enough resulted in failure, or at least filled the imagination with impure thoughts. Many of these heavenly brides(29) lived with male ascetics, and especially with unmarried clergyman, under pretext of a purely spiritual fellowship, in so intimate intercourse as to put their continence to the most perilous test, and wantonly challenge temptation, from which we should rather pray to be kept. This unnatural and shameless practice was probably introduced by the Gnostics; Irenaeus at least charges it upon them. The first trace of it in the church appears early enough, though under a rather innocent allegorical form, in the Pastor Hermae, which originated in the Roman church.(30) It is next mentioned in the Pseudo-Clementine Epistles Ad Virgines. In the third century it prevailed widely in the East and West. The worldly-minded bishop Paulus of Antioch favored it by his own example. Cyprian of Carthage came out earnestly,(31) and with all reason, against the vicious practice, in spite of the solemn protestation of innocence by these "sisters," and their appeal to investigations through midwives. Several councils at Elvira, Ancyra, Nicaea, &c., felt called upon to forbid this pseudo-ascetic scandal. Yet the intercourse of clergy with "mulieres subintroductae" rather increased than diminished with the increasing stringency of the celibate laws and has at all times more or less disgraced the Roman priesthood.

§ 108. Celibacy of the Clergy.

G. Calixtus (Luth.): De conjug. clericorum. Helmst. 1631; ed. emend. H. Ph. Kr. Henke, 1784, 2 Parts.

Lud. Thomassin (Rom. Cath., d. 1696): Vetus et Nova Ecclesiae Disciplina. Lucae, 1728, 3 vols. fol.; Mayence, 1787, also in French. P. I. L. II. c. 60–67.

Fr. Zaccaria (R.C.): Storia polemica del celibato sacro. Rom. 1774; and Nuova giustificazione del celibato sacro. Fuligno, 1785.

F. W. Carové, (Prot.): Vollstöndige Sammlung der Cölibatsgesetze. Francf. 1823.

J. Ant. & Aug. Theiner (R.C.): Die Einführung der erzwungenen Ehelosigkeit bei den Geistlichen u. ihre Folgen. Altenb. 1828; 2 vols.; second ed. Augsburg, 1845. In favor of the abolition of enforced celibacy.

Th. Fr. Klitsche (R.C.): Geschichte des Cölibats (from the time of the Apostles to Gregory VII.) Augsb. 1830.

A. Möhler: Beleuchtung der (badischen) Denkschrift zur Aufhebunq des Cölibats. In his "Gesammelte Schriften." Regensb. 1839, vol. I. 177 sqq.

C. J. Hefele (R.C.): Beitröge zur Kirchengesch. Vol. I. 122–139.

A. de Roskovany (R.C.): Cöstibatus et Breviarium ... a monumentis omnium saeculorum demonstrata. Pest, 1861. 4 vols. A collection of material and official decisions. Schulte calls it "ein gönzlich unkritischer Abdruck von Quellen."

Henry C. Lea (Prot.): An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church. Philadelphia, 1867 2d ed. enlarged, Boston, 1884 (682 pp.); the only impartial and complete history down to 1880.

PROBST (R.C.): Kirchliche Disciplin, 1870.

J. Fried. von. Schulte (Prof. of jurisprudence in Bonn, and one of the leaders among the Old Catholics): Der Cölibatszwang und, lessen Aufhebung. Bonn 1876 (96 pages). Against celibacy.

All the above works, except that of Lea, are more or less controversial. Comp. also, on the Roman Cath. side, art. Celibacy, Martigny, and in Kraus, "Real-Encykl. der christl. Alterthümer" (1881) I. 304–307 by Funk, and in the new ed. of Wetzer & Welte’s "Kirchenlexicon;" on the Prot. side, Bingham, Book IV. ch. V.; Herzog², III. 299–303; and Smith & Cheetham, I. 323–327.

As the clergy were supposed to embody the moral ideal of Christianity, and to be in the full sense of the term the heritage of God, they were required to practise especially rigid sexual temperance after receiving their ordination. The virginity of the church of Christ, who was himself born of a virgin, seemed, in the ascetic spirit of the age, to recommend a virgin priesthood as coming nearest his example, and best calculated to promote the spiritual interests of the church.

There were antecedents in heathenism to sacerdotal celibacy. Buddhism rigorously enjoined it under a penalty, of expulsion. The Egyptian priests were allowed one, but forbidden a second, marriage, while the people practiced unrestrained polygamy. The priestesses of the Delphic Apollo, the Achaian Juno, the Scythian Diana, and the Roman Vesta were virgins.

In the ante-Nicene period sacerdotal celibacy did not as yet become a matter of law, but was left optional, like the vow of chastity among the laity. In the Pastoral Epistles of Paul marriage, if not expressly enjoined, is at least allowed to all ministers of the gospel (bishops and deacons), and is presumed to exist as the rule.(32) It is an undoubted fact that Peter and several apostles, as well as the Lord’s brothers, were married,(33) and that Philip the deacon and evangelist had four daughters.(34) It is also self-evident that, if marriage did not detract from the authority and dignity of an apostle, it cannot be inconsistent with the dignity and purity of any minister of Christ. The marriage relation implies duties and privileges, and it is a strange perversion of truth if some writers under the influence of dogmatic prejudice have turned the apostolic marriages, and that between Joseph and Mary into empty forms. Paul would have expressed himself very differently if he had meant to deny to the clergy the conjugal intercourse after ordination, as was done by the fathers and councils in the fourth century. He expressly classes the prohibition of marriage (including its consequences) among the doctrines of demons or evil spirits that control the heathen religions, and among the signs of the apostacy of the latter days.(35) The Bible represents marriage as the first institution of God dating from the state of man’s innocency, and puts the highest dignity upon it in the Old and New Covenants. Any reflection on the honor and purity of the married state and the marriage bed reflects on the patriarchs, Moses, the prophets, and the apostles, yea, on the wisdom and goodness of the Creator.(36)

There was all early departure from these Scripture views in the church under the irresistible influence of the ascetic enthusiasm for virgin purity. The undue elevation of virginity necessarily implied a corresponding depreciation of marriage.

The scanty documents of the post-apostolic age give us only incidental glimpses into clerical households, yet sufficient to prove the unbroken continuance of clerical marriages, especially in the Eastern churches, and at the same time the superior estimate put upon an unmarried clergy, which gradually limited or lowered the former.

Polycarp expresses his grief for Valens, a presbyter in Philippi, "and his wife," on account of his covetousness.(37) Irenaeus mentions a married deacon in Asia Minor who was ill-rewarded for his hospitality to a Gnostic heretic, who seduced his wife.(38) Rather unfortunate examples. Clement of Alexandria, one of the most enlightened among the ante-Nicene father, describes the true ideal of a Christian Gnostic as one who marries and has children, and so attains to a higher excellence, because he conquers more temptations than that of the single state.(39) Tertullian, though preferring celibacy, was a married priest, and exhorted his wife to refrain after his death from a second marriage in order to attain to that ascetic purity which was impossible during their married life.(40) He also draws a beautiful picture of the holy beauty of a Christian family. An African priest, Novatus—another unfortunate example—was arraigned for murdering his unborn child.(41) There are also examples of married bishops. Socrates reports that not even bishops were bound in his age by any law of celibacy, and that many bishops during their episcopate begat children.(42) Athanasius says:(43) "Many bishops have not contracted matrimony; while, on the other hand, monks have become fathers. Again, we see bishops who have children, and monks who take no thought of having posterity." The father of Gregory of Nazianzum (d. 390) was a married bishop. and his mother, Nonna, a woman of exemplary piety, prayed earnestly for male issue, saw her future son in a prophetic vision, and dedicated him, before his birth, to the service of God, and he became the leading theologian of his age. Gregory of Nyssa (d. about 394) was likewise a married bishop, though he gave the preference to celibacy. Synesius, the philosophic disciple of Hypasia of Alexandria, when pressed to accept the bishopic, of Ptolemais (a.d. 410), declined at first, because he was unwilling to separate from his wife, and desired numerous offspring; but he finally accepted the office without a separation. This proves that his case was already exceptional. The sixth of the Apostolical Canons directs: "Let not a bishop, a priest, or a deacon cast off his own wife under pretence of piety; but if he does cast her off, let him be suspended. If he go on in it, let him be deprived." The Apostolical Constitutions nowhere prescribe clerical celibacy, but assume the single marriage of bishop, priest, and deacon as perfectly legitimate.(44)

The inscriptions on the catacombs bear likewise testimony to clerical marriages down to the fifth century.(45)

At the same time the tendency towards clerical celibacy set in very early, and made steady and irresistible progress, especially in the West. This is manifest in the qualifications of the facts and directions just mentioned. For they leave the impression that there were not many happy clerical marriages and model pastors’ wives in the early centuries; nor could there be so long as the public opinion of the church, contrary to the Bible, elevated virginity above marriage.

The first step in the direction of clerical celibacy was the prohibition of second marriage to the clergy, on the ground that Paul’s direction concerning "the husband of one wife" is a restriction rather than a command. In the Western church, in the early part of the third century, there were many clergymen who had been married a second or even a third time, and this practice was defended on the ground that Paul allowed remarriage, after the death of one party, as lawful without any restriction or censure. This fact appears from the protest of the Montanistic Tertullian, who makes it a serious objection to the Catholics, that they allow bigamists to preside, to baptize, and to celebrate the communion.(46) Hippolytus, who had equally rigoristic views on discipline, reproaches about the same time the Roman bishop Callistus with admitting to sacerdotal and episcopal office those who were married a second and even a third time, and permitting the clergy to marry after having been ordained.(47) But the rigorous practice prevailed, and was legalized in the Eastern church. The Apostolical Constitutions expressly forbid bishops, priests, and deacons to marry a second time. They also forbid clergymen to marry a concubine, or a slave, or a widow, or a divorced woman, and extend the prohibition of second marriage even to cantors, readers, and porters. As to the deaconess, she must be "a pure virgin, or a widow who has been but once married, faithful and well esteemed."(48) The Apostolical Canons give similar regulations, and declare that the husband of a second wife, of a widow, a courtesan, an actress, or a slave was ineligible to the priesthood.(49)
The second step was the prohibition of marriage and conjugal intercourse after ordination. This implies the incompatibility of the priesthood with the duties and privileges of marriage. Before the Council of Elvira in Spain (306) no distinction was made in the Latin church between marriages before and after ordination.(50) But that rigoristic council forbade nuptial intercourse to priests of all ranks upon pain of excommunication.(51) The Council of Arles (314) passed a similar canon.(52) And so did the Council of Ancyra (314), which, however, allows deacons to marry as deacons, in case they stipulated for it before taking orders.(53) This exception was subsequently removed by the 27^th Apostolic Canon, which allows only the lectors and cantors (belonging to the minor orders) to contract marriage.(54)

At the Oecumenical Council of Nicaea (325) an attempt was made, probably under the lead of Hosius, bishop of Cordova—the connecting link between Elvira and Nicaea—to elevate the Spanish rule to the dignity and authority of an oecumenical ordinance, that is, to make the prohibition of marriage after ordination and the strict abstinence of married priests from conjugal intercourse, the universal law of the Church; but the attempt was frustrated by the loud protest of Paphnutius, a venerable bishop and confessor of a city in the Upper Thebaid of Egypt, who had lost one eye in the Diocletian persecution, and who had himself never touched a woman. He warned the fathers of the council not to impose too heavy a burden on the clergy, and to remember that marriage and conjugal intercourse were venerable and pure. He feared more harm than good from excessive rigor. It was sufficient, if unmarried clergymen remain single according to the ancient tradition of the church; but it was wrong to separate the married priest from his legitimate wife, whom he married while yet a layman. This remonstrance of a strict ascetic induced the council to table the subject and to leave the continuance or discontinuance of the married relation to the free choice of every clergyman. It was a prophetic voice of warning.(55)

The Council of Nicaea passed no law in favor of celibacy; but it strictly prohibited in its third canon the dangerous and scandalous practice of unmarried clergymen to live with an unmarried woman,(56) unless she be "a mother or sister or aunt or a person above suspicion."(57) This prohibition must not be confounded with prohibition of nuptial intercourse any more than those spiritual concubines are to be identified with regular wives. It proves, however, that nominal clerical celibacy must have extensively prevailed at the time.

The Greek Church substantially retained the position of the fourth century, and gradually adopted the principle and practice of limiting the law of celibacy to bishops (who are usually taken from monasteries), and making a single marriage the rule for the lower clergy; the marriage to take place before ordination, and not to be repeated. Justinian excluded married men from the episcopate, and the Trullan Synod (a.d. 692) legalized the existing practice. In Russia (probably since 1274), the single marriage of the lower clergy was made obligatory. This is an error in the opposite direction. Marriage, as well as celibacy, should be left free to each man’s conscience.

The Latin Church took the third and last step, the absolute prohibition of clerical marriage, including even the lower orders. This belongs to the next period; but we will here briefly anticipate the result. Sacerdotal marriage was first prohibited by Pope Siricius (a.d. 385), then by Innocent I. (402), Leo I. (440), Gregory I. (590), and by provincial Synods of Carthage (390 and 401), Toledo (400), Orleans (538), Orange (441), Arles (443 or 452), Agde (506), Gerunda (517). The great teachers of the Nicene and post-Nicene age, Jerome, Augustin, and Chrysostom, by their extravagant laudations of the superior sanctity of virginity, gave this legislation the weight of their authority. St. Jerome, the author of the Latin standard version of the Bible, took the lead in this ascetic crusade against marriage, and held up to the clergy as the ideal aim of the saint, to "cut down the wood of marriage by the axe of virginity." He was willing to praise marriage, but only as the nursery of virgins.(58)

Thus celibacy was gradually enforced in the West under the combined influence of the sacerdotal and hierarchical interests to the advantage of the hierarchy, but to the injury of morality.(59)

For while voluntary abstinence, or such as springs from a special gift of grace, is honorable and may be a great blessing to the church, the forced celibacy of the clergy, or celibacy as a universal condition of entering the priesthood, does violence to nature and Scripture, and, all sacramental ideas of marriage to the contrary notwithstanding, degrades this divine ordinance, which descends from the primeval state of innocence, and symbolizes the holiest of all relations, the union of Christ with his church. But what is in conflict with nature and nature’s God is also in conflict with the highest interests of morality. Much, therefore, as Catholicism has done to raise woman and the family life from heathen degradation, we still find, in general, that in Evangelical Protestant countries, woman occupies a far higher grade of intellectual and moral culture than in exclusively Roman Catholic countries. Clerical marriages are probably the most happy as a rule, and have given birth to a larger number of useful and distinguished men and women than those of any other class of society.(60)

Original Footnotes

(1; original 699): #Askhsi", from ajskevw,to exercise, to strengthen; primarily applied to athletic and gymnastic exercise-, but used also, even by the heathens and by Philo, of moral self-discipline. Clement of Alex. represents the whole Christian life as an a[skhsi" (Strom. IV. 22) and calls the patriarch Jacob an ajskhthv"(Paedlag. I. 7). But at the same time the term ajskhtaivwas applied from the middle of the second century by Athenagoras, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, Epiphanius, Jerome, etc., to a special class of self-denying Christians. Clement of Alex., styles them ejklektw'n ejklektovteroi(Quis Dives salv. 36; Strom. VIII. 15). Thus " ascetics" assumed the same meaning as " religious" in the middle ages. Zöckler takes a comprehensive view of asceticism, and divides it into eight branches, 1) the asceticism of penal discipline and self-castigation; 2) of domestic life; 3) of diet (fasting, abstinence); 4) of sexual life (celibacy); 5) of devotion; 6) of contemplation; 7) of practical life; 8) of social life (solitude, poverty, obedience).

(2; original 700): Matt. 22:30. Hence the frequent designation of monastic life as a vita angelica.

(3; original 701): As described by Philo in his tract De vita contemplativa (peri; bivou qewrhtikou'). Eusebius (II. 17) mistook the Therapeutae for Christian ascetics, and later historians for Christian monks. It was supposed that Philo was converted by the Apostle Peter. This error was not dispelled till after the Reformation. Lucius in his recent monograph, sees in that tract an apology of Christian asceticism written at the close of the third century under the name of Philo. But Weingarten (in Herzog X. 761 sqq.) again argues for the Jewish, though post-Philonic origin of that book.

(4; original 702): The Serapis monks have been made known by the researches of Letronne, Boissier, and especially Brunet de Presle (Mémoire sur le Sérapeum de Memphis, 1852 and 1865). Weingarten derives Christian monasticism from this source, and traces the resemblance of the two. Pachomius was himself a monk of Serapis before his conversion. See Revillout, Le reclus du Serapeum (Paris 1880, quoted by Weingarten in Herzog X. 784).

(5; original 703): jAskhtaiv,continentes also parqevnoi, virgines.

(6; original 704): jAskhthvrion.

(7; original 705): Paul of Thebes withdrew in his sixteenth year, under the Decian persecution (250), to a cavern in the lower Thebais, and lived there for one hundred and thirteen years, fed by a raven, and known only to God until St. Anthony, about 350, revealed his existence to the world. But his biography is a pious romance of Jerome, the most zealous promoter of asceticism and monasticism in the West. "The Life of St. Anthony" (d. about 356) is usually ascribed to St. Athanasius, and has undoubtedly a strong historic foundation. Eusebius never mentions him, for the two passages in the Chronicon (ed. Schöne II. 192, 195) belong to the continuation of Jerome. But soon after the middle of the fourth century Anthony was regarded as the patriarch of monasticism, and his biography exerted great influence upon Gregory of Nazianzum, Jerome, and Augustin. See vol. III. 179 sqq. Weingarten denies the Athanasian authorship of the biography, but not the historic existence of Anthony (in Herzog, revised ed. vol. X. 774).

(8; original 706): Epist. LXII.

(9; original 707): Tim. 4:3; Col. 2:16 sqq. Comp. Rom. 14.

(10; original 708): The 51st Apostolic Canon, while favoring ascetism as a useful discipline, condemns those who "abhor" things in themselves innocent, as marriage, or flesh, or wine, and "blasphemously slander God’s work, forgetting that all things are very good, and that God made man, male and female." The Canon implies that there were such heretical ascetics in the church, and they are threatened with excommunication.

(11; original 709): Entwetlichung and Entleiblichung.

(12; original 710): Pastor Hermae. Simil. V. 3."If you do any good beyond or outside of what is commanded by God (ejkto;" th'" ejntolh'" tou' qeou'), you will gain for yourself more abundant glory(dovxan perissotevran), and will be more honored by God then you would otherwise be."

(13; original 711): Peccata irremissibilia and remissibilia, or mortalia and venialia.

(14; original 712): Tavfo", desmov"

(15; original 713): Strom. VI. 14: "When we hear, ’Thy faith hath saved thee’ (Mark 5:34), do not understand him to say absolutely that those who have believed in any way whatever shall be saved, unless also works follow. But it was to the Jews alone that he spoke this utterance, who kept the law and lived blamelessly, who wanted only faith in the Lord."

(16; original 714): In Ep. ad Rom. c. iii. ed. de la Rue iv. p. 507: "Donec quis hoc tantum facit, quod debet, i.e. quae praecepta sunt, inutilis servus. Si autem addas aliquid ad praeceptum, tunc non jam inutilis servus eris, sed dicetur ad te: Euge serve bone et fidelis. Quid autem sit quod addatur praeceptis et supra debitum fiat Paulus ap. dixit: De virginibus autem praeceptum Dominiai non habeo, consilium autem do, tamquam misericordiam as-secutus a Domino (1 Cor. 7:25). Hoc opus super praeceptum est. Et iterum praeceptum est, ut hi qui evangelium nunciant, de evangelio vivant. Paulus autem dicit, quia nullo horum usus sum: et ideo non inutilis erit servus, sed fidelis et prudens."

(17; original 715): Opera supererogatonia.

(18; original 716): Matt. 19:21; Luke 14:26; 1 Cor. 7;8 sq. 25. Hence consilia evangelica in distinction from.

(19; original 717): Luke 17:10.

(20; original 718): Matt. 25:21.

(21; original 719): Matt. 19:21.

(22; original 720): Tiv" oJ swzovmeno" plouvsio".

(23; original 721): Thus, for example, in the rather worthless apocryphal Acta Pauli et Theclae, which are first mentioned by, Tertullian (De Baptismo, c. 17, as the production of a certain Asiatic presbyter), and must therefore have existed in the second century. There Paul is made to say: Makavrioi oiJ e[gkratei'", o{ti aujtoi'" lalhvsei oJ qeov" makavrioi oiJ e[conte" gunai'ka" wJ" mh; e{conte", o{ti aujtoiv klhronomhvsousi to;n qeovn makavria ta; swvmata tw'n parqevnwn, o{ti aujta; eujaresthvsousin tw'/ Qew'/ kai; oujk ajpolevsousin to;n misqo;n th'" aJgneiva" aujtw'n . See Tischendorf: Acia Apostolorum Apocrypha. Lips. 1851, p. 42 sq.

(24; original 722): jEn ajkauchsiva/ menevtw.

(25; original 723): jEa;n gnwsqh'/ plh;n tou' ejpiskovpou, according to the larger Greek recension, c. 5, with which the Syriac (c. 2) and Armenian versions agree. But the shorter Greek recension reads plevon for plhvn which would give the sense: "If he think himself (on that account) above the (married) bishop; si majorem se episcopo censeat."

(26; original 724): Epiphan. Haer. 67; August. Haer. 47. Comp. Neander, Walch, and the articles of Harnack in Herzog (VI. 100), and Salmon in Smith & Wace (III. 24). Epiphanius, the heresy hunter, probably exaggerated the doctrines of Hieracas, although he treats his asceticism with respect. It is hardly credible that he should have excluded married Christians and all children from heaven unless he understood by it only the highest degree of blessedness, as Neander suggests.

(27; original 725): See § 99, p. 367.

(28; original 726): Nuptae Deo, Christo.

(29; original 727): jAdelfaiv, sorores (1 Cor. 9:5); afterwards cleverly called gunai'ke" suneivsaktoi, mulieres subintroductae, extraneae.

(30; original 728): Simil. IX. c. 11 (ed. Gebhardt & Harnack, p. 218). The Virgines, who doubtless symbolically represent the Christian graces (fides, abstinentia, potestas, patientia, simplicita, innocentia, castitas, hilaritas, veritas, intelligentia, concordia, and caritas, Comp. C. 15), there say to Hermas, when he praises an evening walkOuj duvnasai ajfj j hJmw'n ajnacwrh'sai Meq j hJmw'n koimhqhvsh/ wJ" ajdelfov" , kai; oujc j wJ" ajnhvr hJmevtero" ga;r adelfo;" ei: Kai; tou' loipou' mevllomen meta; sou' katoikei'n, livan ga;r se ajgapw'men. Then the first of these virgins, fides, comes to the blushing Hermas, and begins to kiss him. The others do the same; they lead him to the tower (symbol of the church), and sport with him. When night comes on, they retire together to rest, with singing and prayer; kai; e[meina, he continues, met j aujtw'n th;n nuvkta kai; ejkoimhvqhn para; to;n puvrgon. [Estrwsan de; aij parqevnoi tou;" linou;" citw'na" ejautw'n camaiv, kai; ejme; ajnevklinan eij" to; mevson aujtw'n, kai; oujde;n o{lw" ejpoivoun eij mh; proshuvconto: Kajgw; met Jaujtw'n ajdialeivptw" proshucovmhn . It cannot be conceived that the apostolic Hermas wrote such silly stuff. It sounds much more like a later Hermas towards the middle of the second century.

(31; original 729): Ep. I, Xll., also V. and VI.

(32; original 730): The passages 1 Tim. 3:2, 12; Tit. 1:5, where St. Paul directs that presbyter-bishops and deacons must be husbands of "one wife" (mia'" gunaiko;" a[ndri"),are differently interpreted. The Greek church takes the words both as commanding (dei') one marriage of the clergy (to the exclusion, however, of bishops who must be unmarried), and as prohibiting a second marriage. The Roman circle understands Paul as conceding one marriage to the weakness of the flesh, but as intimating the better way of total abstinence (Comp. 1 Cor. 7:7, 32, 33). Protestant commentators are likewise divided; some refer the two passages to simultaneous, others to successive polygamy. The former view was held even by some Greek writers, Theodore of Mopstueste and Theodoret; but the parallel expression eJno;" ajndro;" gunhv, 1 Tim. 5:9, seems to favor the latter view, since it is very unlikely that polyandry existed in apostolic churches. And yet Paul expressly allows without a censure second marriage after the death of the former husband or wife, Rom. 7:2, 3; 1 Cor. 7:39; 1 Tim. 5:14. For this reason some commentators Matthies, Hofmann, Huther in Meyer’s Com. understand the apostle as prohibiting concubinage or all illegitimate connubial intercourse.

(33; original 731): 1 Cor. 9:5: "Have we no right (eJxousivan)to lead about a wife that is a believer (ajdelfh;n gunai'ka ),even as the rest of the apostles (oiJ loipoi; ajp.) and the brothers of the Lord (oiJ ajdelfoi; t. Kurivou), and Cephas.?" The definite article seems to indicate that the majority, if not all, the apostles and brothers of the Lord were married. The only certain exception is John, and probably also Paul, though he may have been a widower. Tertullian in his blind zeal argued that gunai'ka is to be rendered mulierem, not uxorem (De Monog. c. 8), but his contemporary, Clement of Alex., does not question the true interpretation, speaks of Peter, Paul, and Philip, as married, and of Philip as giving his daughters in marriage. Tradition ascribes to Peter a daughter , St. Petronilla.

(34; original 732): Acts 21:8, 9.

(35; original 733): 1 Tim. 4:1-3.

(36; original 734): Comp. Heb. 13:4: "Let marriage be had in honor among all, and let the bed be undefiled" (Tivmio" oJ gavmo" ejn pa'si, kai; koivth ajmivanto").

(37; original 735): Ep. ad Phil. c. 11. Some think that incontinence or adultery is referred to; but the proper readings filarguriva, avaritia, not pleonexiva.

(38; original 736): Adv. Haer. I. 13, 5 (ed. Stieren I. 155

(39; original 737): Strom. VII. 12, 1). 741.

(40; original 738): Ad Uxor. 1. 7: 1, Ut quod in matrimonionon valuimus, in viduitate sectemur. This clearly implies the continuance of sexual intercourse. Tertullian lays down the principle: "Defuncto viro matrimonium defungitur."

(41; original 739): Cyprian, Epist. 52, cap. 2, Oxf. ed. and ed. Hartel (al. 48). He paints his schismatical opponent in the darkest colors, and charges him with kicking his wife in the state of pregnancy, and thus producing a miscarriage, but he does not censure, him for his marriage.

(42; original 740): Hist. Eccl. V. 22: "in the East all clergymen, and even the bishops themselves to abstain from their wives: but this they do of their own accord, there being no law in force to make it necessary; for there have been among them many bishops who have had children by their lawful wives during their episcopate."

(43; original 741): In a letter to the Egyptian in monk Dracontius, who had scruples about accepting a call to the episcopate.

(44; original 742): This is substantially also the position of Eusebius, Epiphanius, and Chrysostom, as far as we may infer from allusions, and their expositions of 1 Tim. 3:2, although all preferred celibacy as a higher state. See Funk, l.c. p. 305. The Synod of Gangra, after the middle of the fourth century, anathematized (Can. 4) those who maintained that it was wrong to attend the eucharistic services of priests living in marriage. See Hefele I. 782, who remarks against Baronius, that the canon means such priests as not only, had wives, but lived with them in conjugal intercourse (mit denselben ehelich leben). TheCodex Ecclesiae Rom ed. by Quesnel omits this canon.

(45; original 743): Lundy (Monumental Christianity, N. Y. 1876, p. 343 sqq.) quotes the following inscriptions of this kind from Gruter, Bosio, Arringhi, Burgon, and other sources:

"The place of the Presbyter Basil and his Felicitas.

They made it for themselves."

"Susanna, once the happy daughter of the Presbyter Gabinus,

Here lies in peace joined with her father."

"Gaudentius, the Presbyter, for himself and his wife Severa, a virtuous woman, who lived 42 years, 3 months, 10 days. Buried on the 4^th after the nones of April, Timasius and Promus; being consuls."

"Petronia, the wife of a Levite, type of modesty. In this place I lay my bones; spare your tears, dear husband and daughters, and believe that it is forbidden to weep for one who lives in God. Buried in peace, on the third before the nones of October."

The names of three children appear on the, same tablet, and are no doubt those referred to by Petronis; hers, with the consular dates of their burial. Her own interment was a.d. 472.

Gruter and Le Blant both publish a very long and elaborate inscription at Narbonne, a.d. 427, to the effect that Rusticus the Bishop, son of Bonosius a Bishop, nephew of Aratoris another Bishop, etc., in connection with the presbyter Ursus and the deacon Hermetus began to build the church; and that Montanus the sub-deacon finished the apse, etc.

(46; original 744): He asks the Catholics with indignation: "Quot enim et digami praesident apud vos, insultantes utique apostolo, certe non erubescentes, cum haec sub illis leguntur? .... Digamus tinguis? digamus offers?"De Monog. c. 12.

(47; original 745): Philosoph. IX. 12.

(48; original 746): Const. Ap. VI. 17.

(49; original 747): Can. 17, 18, 19, 27. The Jewish high-priests were likewise required to marry a virgin of their own people. Lev. 21:16.

(50; original 748): Admitted by Prof. Funk (R. Cath.), who quotes Innocent, Ep. ad Episc. Maced. c. 2; Leo I. Ep. XII.c. 5. He also admits that Paul’s direction excludes such a distinction. See Kraus, Real-Enc. I. 304 sq.

(51; original 749): Can. 33 Placuit in totum prohibere episcopis, presbyteris, et diaconibus, vel omnibus clericis positis in ministerio, abstinere se a conjugibus suis, et non generare filios; quicunque vero fecerit, ab honore clericatus exterminetur." Hefele says (I. 168): " This celebrated canon contains the first law of celibacy. "It is strange that the canon in its awkward latinity seems to prohibit the clergy to abstain from their wives, when in fact it means to prohibit the intercourse. On account of the words positis in ministerio, some would see here only a prohibition of sexual commerce at the time of the performance of clerical functions, as in the Jewish law; but this was self-understood, and would not come up to the disciplinary standard of that age. How little, however, even in Spain, that first law on celibacy was obeyed, may be inferred from the letter of Pope Siricius to Bishop Himerius of Tarragona, that there were, at the close of the fourth century, plurimi sacerdotes Christi et levitu living in wedlock.

(52; original 750): Can. 6 (29, see Hefele I. 217) Praeterea, quod dignum, pudicum et honestum est, suademus fratribus, ut sacerdotes et levitae cum uxoribus satis non cogant, quia ministerio quotidiano occupantur. Quicunque contra hanc constitutionem fecerit, a cleritatus honore deponatur."

(53; original 751): Can. 10 (Hefele, Conciliengesch. I. p. 230, 2^te Aufl). The canon is adopted in the Corpus juris can. c. 8. Dist. 28. The Synod of Neo-Caesarea, between 314-325, can. 1, forbids the priests to marry on pain of deposition. This does not conflict with the other canon, and likewise passed into the Canon Law, c. 9, Dist. 28. See Hefele, I. 244.

(54; original 752): "Of those who come into the clergy unmarried, we permit only the readers and singers if they are so minded, to marry afterward."

(55; original 753): This important incident of Paphnutius rests on the unanimous testimony of the well informed historians Socrates (Hist. Eccl. I. 11), Sozoinen (H. E. I. 23), and Gelasius Cyzic. (Hist. Conc. Nic. II. 32); see Mansi, Harduin, and Hefele (I. 431-435). It agrees moreover with the directions of the Apost. Const. and Canons, and with the present practice of the Eastern churches on this subject. The objections of Baronius, Bellarmine, Valesius. and other Romanists are unfounded and refuted by Natalis Alexander, and Hefele (l.c.). Funk (R.C.)says: "Die Einwendungen, die qeqen den Bericht, vorgebracht wurden, sind völlig nichtig" (utterly futile).

(56; original 754): Euphoniously called suneivsakto", subiatroducta (introduced as a companion), ajgaphthv, soror. See Hefele, T. 380. Comp. on this canon W. Bright, Notes on the Canons of the First Four General Councils. Oxford, 1882, pp. 8, 9. A Council of Antioch had deposed Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, for this nasty practice, and for heresy. Euseb. H. E. VII. 30.

(57; original 755): Notwithstanding this canonical prohibition the disreputable practice continued. Chrysostom wrote a discourse "against persons e[conta" parqevnou" suneisavktou""and another urging the dedicated virgins not to live with them. Jerome complains of the "pestis agapetarum"(Ep. XXII. 14).

(58; original 756): Ep. XXII. "Laudo nuptias, laudo conjugium, sed quia mihi virgines generant." Comp. Ep. CXXIII.

(59; original 757): And the Roman Church seems to care more for the power, than for the purity of the clergy. Gregory VII., who used all his unflinching energy to enforce celibacy, said openly: "Non liberari potest ecclesia a servitude laicorum, nisi liberentur clerici ab uxoribus." As clerical celibacy is a matter of discipline, not of doctrine, the Pope might at any time abolish it, and Aeneas Sylvius, before he ascended the chair of Peter as Pius II. (1458 to 1464), remarked that marriage had been denied to priests for good and sufficient reasons, but that still stronger ones now required its restoration. The United Greeks and Maronites are allowed to retain their wives. Joseph II. proposed to extend the permission. During the French Revolution, and before the conclusion of the Concordat (1801), many priests and nuns were married. But the hierarchical interest always defeated in the end such movements, and preferred to keep the clergy aloof from the laity in order to exercise a greater power over it. "The Latin church," says Lea in his History of Celibacy, "is the most wonderful structure in history, and ere its leaders can consent to such a reform they must confess that its career, so full of proud recollections, has been an error."

(60; original 758): Comp. this History, Vol. VI., § 79, p. 473 sqq.

脚注

Best guess 对照表

正文及中文脚注中带上标 * 的外文为 best guess，尚未逐项核实；原始字串保留如下。

原字串	Best guess	语言	出现位置	说明
#Askhsi"	Ἄσκησις	Greek	脚注 1	推测 #A 为大写带气息及重音的字母，末尾引号为终结西格玛。
ajskevw	ἀσκέω	Greek	脚注 1	按旧字体气息、重音编码还原，与操练之义相合。
a[skhsi"	ἄσκησις	Greek	脚注 1	按旧字体编码还原，指操练。
ajskhthv"	ἀσκητής	Greek	脚注 1	按编码还原为单数名词，保留原文词形。
ajskhtaiv	ἀσκηταί	Greek	脚注 1	按编码还原为复数名词，不包含后接英文 was。
ejklektw'n ejklektovteroi	ἐκλεκτῶν ἐκλεκτότεροι	Greek	脚注 1	气息与重音编码明确，保留原文比较级及格形式。
peri; bivou qewrhtikou'	περὶ βίου θεωρητικοῦ	Greek	脚注 3	按编码还原书名，保留 θεωρητικοῦ 的原有拼写。
jAskhtaiv	Ἀσκηταί	Greek	脚注 5	词首 j 表示平气息，保留大写。
parqevnoi	παρθένοι	Greek	脚注 5	按旧字体编码还原为童贞者的复数词形。
jAskhthvrion	Ἀσκητήριον	Greek	脚注 6	按编码还原，词首为大写带平气息的阿尔法。
ejkto;" th'" ejntolh'" tou' qeou'	ἐκτὸς τῆς ἐντολῆς τοῦ θεοῦ	Greek	脚注 12	按旧字体编码还原气息、重音及终结西格玛。
dovxan perissotevran	δόξαν περισσοτέραν	Greek	脚注 12	按编码还原，保留两个宾格词形。
Tavfo"	Τάφος	Greek	脚注 14	按编码还原，保留词首大写。
desmov"	δεσμός	Greek	脚注 14	重音及终结西格玛编码明确。
Tiv" oJ swzovmeno" plouvsio"	Τίς ὁ σωζόμενος πλούσιος	Greek	脚注 22	按编码还原作品标题，不另增问号。
Makavrioi oiJ e[gkratei'", o{ti aujtoi'" lalhvsei oJ qeov" makavrioi oiJ e[conte" gunai'ka" wJ" mh; e{conte", o{ti aujtoiv klhronomhvsousi to;n qeovn makavria ta; swvmata tw'n parqevnwn, o{ti aujta; eujaresthvsousin tw'/ Qew'/ kai; oujk ajpolevsousin to;n misqo;n th'" aJgneiva" aujtw'n	Μακάριοι οἱ ἐγκρατεῖς, ὅτι αὐτοῖς λαλήσει ὁ θεός μακάριοι οἱ ἔχοντες γυναῖκας ὡς μὴ ἕχοντες, ὅτι αὐτοί κληρονομήσουσι τὸν θεόν μακάρια τὰ σώματα τῶν παρθένων, ὅτι αὐτὰ εὐαρεστήσουσιν τῷ Θεῷ καὶ οὐκ ἀπολέσουσιν τὸν μισθὸν τῆς ἁγνείας αὐτῶν	Greek	脚注 23	依编码还原长引文；ἕχοντες 的粗气息虽可疑，暂依原串保留，不改语法。
jEn ajkauchsiva/ menevtw	Ἐν ἀκαυχησίᾳ μενέτω	Greek	脚注 24	按编码还原；斜线表示下标约塔，与不自夸的语境相合。
jEa;n gnwsqh'/ plh;n tou' ejpiskovpou	Ἐὰν γνωσθῇ πλὴν τοῦ ἐπισκόπου	Greek	脚注 25	依编码还原，保留上下文明示的 πλὴν 异读。
plhvn	πλήν	Greek	脚注 25	按编码还原独立列出的异读词。
plevon	πλέον	Greek	脚注 25	按编码还原，不以另一异读替换。
jAdelfaiv	Ἀδελφαί	Greek	脚注 29	按编码还原，保留词首大写及复数形式。
gunai'ke" suneivsaktoi	γυναῖκες συνείσακτοι	Greek	脚注 29	按旧字体编码还原两个复数词形。
Ouj duvnasai ajfj j hJmw'n ajnacwrh'sai Meq j hJmw'n koimhqhvsh/ wJ" ajdelfov" , kai; oujc j wJ" ajnhvr hJmevtero" ga;r adelfo;" ei\: Kai; tou' loipou' mevllomen meta; sou' katoikei'n, livan ga;r se ajgapw'men	Οὐ δύνασαι ἀφ’ ἡμῶν ἀναχωρῆσαι Μεθ’ ἡμῶν κοιμηθήσῃ ὡς ἀδελφός, καὶ οὐχ’ ὡς ἀνήρ ἡμέτερος γὰρ ἀδελφὸς εἶ: Καὶ τοῦ λοιποῦ μέλλομεν μετὰ σοῦ κατοικεῖν, λίαν γάρ σε ἀγαπῶμεν	Greek	脚注 30	推测多余 j 为省音符号转码杂讯；依词形补回 ἀδελφός 的气息，其余尽量保留。
kai; e[meina	καὶ ἔμεινα	Greek	脚注 30	按重音、气息编码还原。
met j aujtw'n th;n nuvkta kai; ejkoimhvqhn para; to;n puvrgon. [Estrwsan de; aij parqevnoi tou;" linou;" citw'na" ejautw'n camaiv, kai; ejme; ajnevklinan eij" to; mevson aujtw'n, kai; oujde;n o{lw" ejpoivoun eij mh; proshuvconto: Kajgw; met Jaujtw'n ajdialeivptw" proshucovmhn	μετ’ αὐτῶν τὴν νύκτα καὶ ἐκοιμήθην παρὰ τὸν πύργον. Ἔστρωσαν δὲ αἱ παρθένοι τοὺς λινοὺς χιτῶνας ἑαυτῶν χαμαί, καὶ ἐμὲ ἀνέκλιναν εἰς τὸ μέσον αὐτῶν, καὶ οὐδὲν ὅλως ἐποίουν εἰ μὴ προσηύχοντο: Κἀγὼ μετ’ αὐτῶν ἀδιαλείπτως προσηυχόμην	Greek	脚注 30	按编码还原长引文及省音；ejautw'n 推测为气息误码，恢复反身代词 ἑαυτῶν。
mia'" gunaiko;" a[ndri"	μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἄνδρις	Greek	脚注 32	依原串还原；ἄνδρις 词形可疑，但不擅自改成经文通常形式。
dei'	δεῖ	Greek	脚注 32	按编码还原长音重音。
eJno;" ajndro;" gunhv	ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή	Greek	脚注 32	按编码还原，保留原文主格 γυνή。
eJxousivan	ἑξουσίαν	Greek	脚注 33	原串 J 表示粗气息，故暂保留；通常词形为平气息 ἐξουσίαν，疑原串有误。
ajdelfh;n gunai'ka	ἀδελφὴν γυναῖκα	Greek	脚注 33	按编码还原经文引语的两个宾格词形。
oiJ loipoi; ajp.	οἱ λοιποὶ ἀπ.	Greek	脚注 33	按编码还原，保留使徒一词的原有缩写。
oiJ ajdelfoi; t. Kurivou	οἱ ἀδελφοὶ τ. Κυρίου	Greek	脚注 33	按编码还原，保留 τ. 缩写及 Κυρίου 的大写。
gunai'ka	γυναῖκα	Greek	脚注 33	按编码还原单数宾格。
Tivmio" oJ gavmo" ejn pa'si, kai; koivth ajmivanto"	Τίμιος ὁ γάμος ἐν πᾶσι, καὶ κοίτη ἀμίαντος	Greek	脚注 36	按原串还原，不按通行经文另补冠词或末尾 ν。
filarguriva	φιλαργυρία	Greek	脚注 37	按编码还原，符合旁列拉丁文 avaritia。
pleonexiva	πλεονεξία	Greek	脚注 37	按编码还原，保留对照词而不替换其读法。
qeqen	gegen	Unknown	脚注 55	德文 gegen den Bericht 搭配明确，推测 q 为 g 的识别错误；语言字段无 German 选项。
suneivsakto"	συνείσακτος	Greek	脚注 56	按编码还原，保留原文重音位置。
ajgaphthv	ἀγαπητή	Greek	脚注 56	按编码还原阴性单数词形。
e[conta" parqevnou" suneisavktou"	ἔχοντας παρθένους συνεισάκτους	Greek	脚注 57	按编码还原宾格短语，保留此处 συνεισάκτους 的原有重音。

Ἄσκησις^*，源自 ἀσκέω^*，意为操练、增强；起初用于竞技和体操训练，但连异教徒和斐洛 (Philo) 也用它来指道德上的自我约束。亚历山大的革利免把整个基督徒生活表述为一种 ἄσκησις^*（《杂学》Strom. IV. 22），并称族长雅各为 ἀσκητής^*（《导师》Paedlag. I. 7）。但与此同时，自二世纪中叶起，雅典那哥拉 (Athenagoras)、德尔图良、俄利根 (Origen)、优西比乌 (Eusebius)、亚他那修、伊皮法纽 (Epiphanius)、哲罗姆等人，都把 ἀσκηταί^* 一词用于一类特殊的舍己基督徒。亚历山大的革利免称他们为 ἐκλεκτῶν ἐκλεκτότεροι^*（《谁是得救的富人》Quis Dives salv. 36；《杂学》Strom. VIII. 15）。这样，“禁欲者”便具有了中世纪“修道者”一词的含义。策克勒 (Zöckler) 对禁欲主义作了全面的考察，并将其分为八类：1）惩戒与自责的禁欲；2）家庭生活的禁欲；3）饮食的禁欲（禁食、节制饮食）；4）性生活的禁欲（独身）；5）敬虔操练的禁欲；6）默观的禁欲；7）实践生活的禁欲；8）社会生活的禁欲（独处、贫穷、顺服）。↩︎
《马太福音》22:30。因此，修道生活常被称为 vita angelica（天使般的生活）。↩︎
正如斐洛 (Philo) 在其短论《论默观生活》(De vita contemplativa, περὶ βίου θεωρητικοῦ^*) 中所描述的。优西比乌 (Eusebius，II. 17) 误将治疗派 (Therapeutae) 当作基督徒禁欲者，后来的历史学家又将他们当作基督教修士。人们曾以为斐洛是经使徒彼得引导而归信的。这一错误直到宗教改革以后才被消除。卢修斯 (Lucius) 在其近出的专著中，认为这篇短论是三世纪末托名斐洛所写的一篇基督教禁欲主义辩护文。但魏因加滕 (Weingarten，见赫尔措格 Herzog X. 761及下页) 又论证说，此书虽出于斐洛之后，却仍源于犹太教。↩︎
塞拉皮斯 (Serapis) 的修士，因勒特罗纳 (Letronne)、布瓦西耶 (Boissier)，尤其是布吕内·德普雷勒 (Brunet de Presle) 的研究而为人所知（《孟斐斯塞拉皮斯神庙研究》Mémoire sur le Sérapeum de Memphis, 1852及1865年）。魏因加滕认为基督教修道制度出于这一源头，并追溯两者的相似之处。帕科米乌斯 (Pachomius) 本人在归信以前，就是塞拉皮斯的修士。参见勒维尤 (Revillout)，《塞拉皮斯神庙的隐修者》(Le reclus du Serapeum)，巴黎，1880年，魏因加滕引于赫尔措格 Herzog X. 784。↩︎
Ἀσκηταί^*，continentes（节欲者）；也称 παρθένοι^*，virgines（童贞者）。↩︎
Ἀσκητήριον^*.↩︎
底比斯的保罗 (Paul of Thebes) 在十六岁时，于德修 (Decius) 逼迫期间（250年），退隐到下底比斯地区 (lower Thebais) 的一处洞穴，在那里生活了一百一十三年，由一只乌鸦供养；除上帝以外，无人知道他，直到约350年，圣安东尼 (St. Anthony) 才将他的存在告知世人。但他的传记是哲罗姆所写的一篇虔诚传奇；哲罗姆乃西方禁欲主义与修道制度最热心的倡导者。《圣安东尼传》（安东尼约卒于356年）通常归于圣亚他那修 (St. Athanasius)，而且无疑具有坚实的历史基础。优西比乌从未提及他，因为《编年史》(Chronicon，Schöne版，II. 192、195) 中的两处记载属于哲罗姆的续编。但四世纪中叶以后不久，安东尼便被视为修道制度的始祖，他的传记对拿先斯的贵格利 (Gregory of Nazianzum)、哲罗姆和奥古斯丁产生了很大影响。参见第III卷，179及下页。魏因加滕否认这篇传记出自亚他那修，却不否认安东尼在历史上的存在（见赫尔措格 Herzog 修订版，第X卷，774页）。↩︎
《书信》(Epist.) LXII。↩︎
《提摩太前书》4:3；《歌罗西书》2:16及下文。比较《罗马书》14章。↩︎
《使徒法规》第51条赞成禁欲是一种有益的操练，却谴责那些“憎恶”本身无罪之事的人，如婚姻、肉食或酒；他们“以亵渎的言语诋毁上帝的工作，忘记了一切所造的都甚好，也忘记了上帝造人是造男造女”。这条法规暗示，教会中确有这样的异端禁欲者，并警告要将他们逐出教会。↩︎
Entwetlichung（脱离世界）与 Entleiblichung（脱离肉身）。↩︎
《黑马牧人书》(Pastor Hermae)，《比喻》(Simil.) V. 3：“你若在上帝所吩咐的以外或之外（ἐκτὸς τῆς ἐντολῆς τοῦ θεοῦ^*）行什么善事，就会为自己赢得更丰盛的荣耀（δόξαν περισσοτέραν^*），并且比原先更蒙上帝尊重。”↩︎
Peccata irremissibilia（不可赦免的罪）与 remissibilia（可赦免的罪），或 mortalia（死罪）与 venialia（轻罪）。↩︎
Τάφος^*, δεσμός^*↩︎
《杂学》(Strom.) VI. 14：“我们听见‘你的信救了你’（《马可福音》5:34），不可把他的话绝对地理解为：无论以何种方式相信的人都必得救，除非随之也有行为。他这话只是对犹太人说的；他们遵守律法，生活无可指摘，所缺少的唯有对主的信心。”↩︎
《罗马书注释》(Ep. ad Rom.) 第iii章，de la Rue版，iv，507页：“Donec quis hoc tantum facit, quod debet, i.e. quae praecepta sunt, inutilis servus. Si autem addas aliquid ad praeceptum, tunc non jam inutilis servus eris, sed dicetur ad te: Euge serve bone et fidelis. Quid autem sit quod addatur praeceptis et supra debitum fiat Paulus ap. dixit: De virginibus autem praeceptum Dominiai non habeo, consilium autem do, tamquam misericordiam as-secutus a Domino（《哥林多前书》7:25）。Hoc opus super praeceptum est. Et iterum praeceptum est, ut hi qui evangelium nunciant, de evangelio vivant. Paulus autem dicit, quia nullo horum usus sum: et ideo non inutilis erit servus, sed fidelis et prudens.”（“一个人只要仅仅做他应当做的事，就是所吩咐的事，他就是无用的仆人。但你若在诫命以外再加上什么，就不再是无用的仆人，反而必有话对你说：‘好，你这又良善又忠心的仆人。’至于什么是在诫命以外加上的、超出本分所行的，使徒保罗说：‘论到童身的人，我没有主的命令，但我既蒙主怜恤，就提出劝告。’这就是超出诫命的行为。又有命令说，传福音的应当靠福音养生。但保罗说，这些权利我全没有用过；所以他不是无用的仆人，而是忠心又有见识的仆人。”）↩︎
Opera supererogatonia（超义务的善功）。↩︎
《马太福音》19:21；《路加福音》14:26；《哥林多前书》7:8及下节、25节。因此有 consilia evangelica（福音劝谕）一语，用以区别于……↩︎
《路加福音》17:10。↩︎
《马太福音》25:21。↩︎
《马太福音》19:21。↩︎
Τίς ὁ σωζόμενος πλούσιος^*.↩︎
例如，在那颇无价值的伪经《保罗与特克拉行传》(Acta Pauli et Theclae) 中就是如此。德尔图良最先提及此书（《论洗礼》De Baptismo, 第17章，称它为亚细亚某位长老的作品），所以它必定在二世纪就已存在。书中借保罗之口说：Μακάριοι οἱ ἐγκρατεῖς, ὅτι αὐτοῖς λαλήσει ὁ θεός μακάριοι οἱ ἔχοντες γυναῖκας ὡς μὴ ἕχοντες, ὅτι αὐτοί κληρονομήσουσι τὸν θεόν μακάρια τὰ σώματα τῶν παρθένων, ὅτι αὐτὰ εὐαρεστήσουσιν τῷ Θεῷ καὶ οὐκ ἀπολέσουσιν τὸν μισθὸν τῆς ἁγνείας αὐτῶν^*。参见蒂申多夫 (Tischendorf)：《伪经使徒行传》(Acia Apostolorum Apocrypha)，莱比锡 (Lips.)，1851年，42及下页。↩︎
Ἐν ἀκαυχησίᾳ μενέτω^*（应当保持不自夸）。↩︎
Ἐὰν γνωσθῇ πλὴν τοῦ ἐπισκόπου^*，这是希腊文长订本第5章的读法，叙利亚文译本（第2章）及亚美尼亚文译本也与之相合。但希腊文短订本将 πλήν^* 读作 πλέον^*，如此便是说：“他若（因此）自以为高过那位（已婚的）主教；si majorem se episcopo censeat。”↩︎
伊皮法纽 (Epiphan.)，《驳异端》(Haer.) 67；奥古斯丁 (August.)，《论异端》(Haer.) 47。比较尼安德、瓦尔希 (Walch)，以及哈纳克 (Harnack) 在赫尔措格 Herzog（VI. 100）和萨蒙 (Salmon) 在史密斯与韦斯 Smith & Wace（III. 24）中的条目。异端搜捕者伊皮法纽虽以尊重的态度对待希拉卡斯 (Hieracas) 的禁欲生活，却可能夸大了他的教义。很难相信他竟将已婚基督徒及所有儿童排除于天国之外，除非如尼安德所提示的，他所指的只是最高程度的福乐。↩︎
参见§ 99，367页。↩︎
Nuptae Deo, Christo（嫁与上帝、嫁与基督的女子）。↩︎
Ἀδελφαί^*，sorores（姊妹；《哥林多前书》9:5）；后来又被巧妙地称为 γυναῖκες συνείσακτοι^*，mulieres subintroductae, extraneae（引入家中的女子、外来的女子）。↩︎
《比喻》(Simil.) IX，第11章（Gebhardt与Harnack版，218页）。那些 Virgines（童女）无疑象征基督徒的美德（fides, abstinentia, potestas, patientia, simplicita, innocentia, castitas, hilaritas, veritas, intelligentia, concordia, and caritas，即信心、节制、能力、忍耐、纯朴、无辜、贞洁、喜乐、真实、悟性、和睦与爱；比较第15章）。当黑马 (Hermas) 称赞傍晚散步时，她们在那里对他说：Οὐ δύνασαι ἀφ’ ἡμῶν ἀναχωρῆσαι Μεθ’ ἡμῶν κοιμηθήσῃ ὡς ἀδελφός, καὶ οὐχ’ ὡς ἀνήρ ἡμέτερος γὰρ ἀδελφὸς εἶ: Καὶ τοῦ λοιποῦ μέλλομεν μετὰ σοῦ κατοικεῖν, λίαν γάρ σε ἀγαπῶμεν^*。随后，这些童女中的第一位，fides（信心），走向面红耳赤的黑马，开始亲吻他。其余的也照样行；她们领他到塔那里（塔象征教会），同他嬉戏。夜幕降临，她们一同退去，在歌唱和祷告之后安歇；καὶ ἔμεινα^*，他接着说，μετ’ αὐτῶν τὴν νύκτα καὶ ἐκοιμήθην παρὰ τὸν πύργον. Ἔστρωσαν δὲ αἱ παρθένοι τοὺς λινοὺς χιτῶνας ἑαυτῶν χαμαί, καὶ ἐμὲ ἀνέκλιναν εἰς τὸ μέσον αὐτῶν, καὶ οὐδὲν ὅλως ἐποίουν εἰ μὴ προσηύχοντο: Κἀγὼ μετ’ αὐτῶν ἀδιαλείπτως προσηυχόμην^*。无法想象使徒时期的黑马会写出这种愚蠢的东西。这听来更像是二世纪中叶前后一位较晚的黑马所写的。↩︎
《书信》(Ep.) I、Xll，另见V及VI。↩︎
《提摩太前书》3:2、12及《提多书》1:5中，圣保罗指示长老—主教和执事必须是“一个妇人”的丈夫（μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἄνδρις^*）；这些经文有不同的解释。希腊教会既把这些话当作命令（δεῖ^*），规定教士须结婚一次（但主教除外，他们必须不婚），也当作禁止再婚的规定。罗马教会方面则认为，保罗是体恤肉体的软弱，才容许一次婚姻，但也暗示完全禁欲乃是更美的道路（比较《哥林多前书》7:7、32、33）。新教释经家也有分歧；有些人认为这两处经文指同时有多个配偶，另一些人则认为指先后有多个配偶。甚至有些希腊作家，如摩普绥提亚的狄奥多若 (Theodore of Mopstueste) 和狄奥多勒 (Theodoret)，也持前一种看法；但《提摩太前书》5:9中与之平行的表述 ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή^*，似乎支持后一种看法，因为使徒时期的教会极不可能存在一妻多夫的情形。然而，保罗明明容许人在原配丈夫或妻子死后再婚，并未加以谴责，见《罗马书》7:2、3；《哥林多前书》7:39；《提摩太前书》5:14。因此，有些释经家，如马蒂斯 (Matthies)、霍夫曼 (Hofmann)，以及迈耶《注释》(Com.) 中的许特尔 (Huther)，认为使徒是在禁止纳妾或一切不合法的两性结合。↩︎
《哥林多前书》9:5：“难道我们没有权利（ἑξουσίαν^*）娶信主的妻子，带着一同往来（ἀδελφὴν γυναῖκα^*），仿佛其余的使徒（οἱ λοιποὶ ἀπ.^*）和主的弟兄（οἱ ἀδελφοὶ τ. Κυρίου^*）并矶法一样吗？”定冠词似乎表明，使徒和主的弟兄，即使不是全体，至少大多数都是已婚的。唯一确定的例外是约翰，保罗也可能是例外，尽管他也可能是鳏夫。德尔图良出于盲目的热忱，主张 γυναῖκα^* 应译作 mulierem（女人），而不是 uxorem（妻子）（《论一夫一妻制》De Monog.，第8章）；但与他同时代的亚历山大的革利免并不质疑正确的解释，他说彼得、保罗和腓利都是已婚的，并说腓利曾将自己的女儿嫁人。传统认为彼得有一个女儿，即圣彼得罗尼拉 (St. Petronilla)。↩︎
《使徒行传》21:8、9。↩︎
《提摩太前书》4:1–3。↩︎
比较《希伯来书》13:4：“婚姻，人人都当尊重；床也当保持无玷污”（Τίμιος ὁ γάμος ἐν πᾶσι, καὶ κοίτη ἀμίαντος^*）。↩︎
《致腓立比人书》(Ep. ad Phil.) 第11章。有人认为这里指的是放纵情欲或奸淫；但正确的读法是 φιλαργυρία^*，avaritia（贪财），而不是 πλεονεξία^*。↩︎
《驳异端》(Adv. Haer.) I. 13, 5（Stieren版，I. 155↩︎
《杂学》(Strom.) VII. 12，1). 741。↩︎
《致妻书》(Ad Uxor. 1.) 7: 1，Ut quod in matrimonionon valuimus, in viduitate sectemur.（我们在婚姻中未能做到的，愿在寡居时追求。）这清楚地表明，夫妻间的性交仍在继续。德尔图良提出这一原则：“Defuncto viro matrimonium defungitur.”（丈夫死了，婚姻也就终止。）↩︎
居普良 (Cyprian)，《书信》(Epist.) 52，第2章，牛津版及Hartel版（其他版本为48）。他以最阴暗的笔调描绘这位制造分裂的对手，指控他踢打怀孕的妻子，以致流产，却没有因他结婚而责备他。↩︎
《教会史》(Hist. Eccl.) V. 22：“在东方，所有教士，甚至主教本人，都与妻子禁绝房事；但他们这样做是出于自愿，并无任何现行法律强制他们如此；因为他们中曾有许多主教，在担任主教期间，仍与自己的合法妻子生育儿女。”↩︎
见致埃及修士德拉孔提乌斯 (Dracontius) 的一封信；他对于接受担任主教的呼召，心存疑虑。↩︎
从优西比乌、伊皮法纽及金口约翰 (Chrysostom) 的若干暗示，以及他们对《提摩太前书》3:2的解释来推断，他们大体上也持这一立场，尽管都认为独身是更高的境界。参见丰克 (Funk)，前引书（l.c.），305页。四世纪中叶以后召开的冈格拉会议 (Synod of Gangra)，宣告凡认为参加已婚祭司所主持的圣餐礼拜是错误的人，均当受咒诅（《法规》Can. 4）。参见黑费勒 (Hefele) I. 782；他反驳巴罗尼乌斯 (Baronius)，指出这条法规所指的祭司，不仅有妻子，而且与妻子过夫妻生活（mit denselben ehelich leben）。凯内尔 (Quesnel) 所编《罗马教会法规集》(Codex Ecclesiae Rom) 删去了这条法规。↩︎
伦迪 (Lundy)（《基督教遗迹》Monumental Christianity, N. Y. 1876，第343页及后）从格鲁特 (Gruter)、博西奥 (Bosio)、阿林吉 (Arringhi)、伯贡 (Burgon) 及其他来源，引录了以下这一类铭文：

“长老巴西尔 (Basil) 及其费利基塔斯 (Felicitas) 的安息之所。

他们为自己修建了此墓。”

“苏珊娜 (Susanna)，昔日长老加比努斯 (Gabinus) 幸福的女儿，

在此与父亲同享安息。”

“长老高登提乌斯 (Gaudentius)，为自己及其贤德的妻子塞韦拉 (Severa) 修建此墓。她享年42岁3个月10天。安葬于提马西乌斯 (Timasius) 与普罗穆斯 (Promus) 任执政官之年，四月诺奈日后第4日。”

“佩特罗尼娅 (Petronia)，一位利未人的妻子，贞淑的典范。我将骨骸安放在此；亲爱的丈夫和女儿们，收起你们的眼泪吧，要相信，为活在上帝里面的人哭泣，是不被允许的。于十月诺奈日前第3日，安然入葬。”

同一碑上还刻着三个孩子的名字，无疑就是佩特罗尼斯 (Petronis) 所提到的孩子；名字旁附有以执政官纪年记载的安葬日期。她本人于公元472年入葬。

格鲁特和勒布朗 (Le Blant) 都刊载了纳博讷 (Narbonne) 一篇作于公元427年、十分冗长而详尽的铭文，大意是：主教鲁斯提库斯 (Rusticus)，即主教博诺修斯 (Bonosius) 之子、另一位主教阿拉托里斯 (Aratoris) 的侄儿等，与长老乌尔苏斯 (Ursus) 和执事赫尔梅图斯 (Hermetus) 一同开始兴建这座教堂；副执事蒙塔努斯 (Montanus) 则完成了后殿等工程。↩︎
他愤然质问大公教会信徒：“Quot enim et digami praesident apud vos, insultantes utique apostolo, certe non erubescentes, cum haec sub illis leguntur? .... Digamus tinguis? digamus offers?”（你们中间有多少再婚者居于领袖之位，分明是在侮慢使徒；在他们主持之下宣读这些话时，他们竟毫不羞愧！……你这再婚者，竟施行洗礼吗？你这再婚者，竟献祭吗？）《论一夫一妻制》De Monog.，第12章。↩︎
《驳斥一切异端》Philosoph. IX. 12。↩︎
《使徒宪章》Const. Ap. VI. 17。↩︎
《法规》Can. 17、18、19、27。犹太人的大祭司同样必须娶本族的处女。利21:16。↩︎
罗马天主教学者丰克 (Funk) 教授承认这一点；他引证了英诺森 (Innocent) 的《致马其顿主教书》Ep. ad Episc. Maced.，第2章；以及利奥一世 (Leo I) 的《书信》Ep. XII，第5章。他也承认，保罗的指示不容许作这样的区分。见克劳斯 (Kraus)，《实用百科全书》Real-Enc. I. 304及下页。↩︎
《法规》Can. 33：“Placuit in totum prohibere episcopis, presbyteris, et diaconibus, vel omnibus clericis positis in ministerio, abstinere se a conjugibus suis, et non generare filios; quicunque vero fecerit, ab honore clericatus exterminetur.”（议决一概禁止主教、长老、执事，或一切在职的教士与妻子交合，务须禁欲，不得生育儿女；凡违犯者，应革除其教士职分。）黑费勒 (Hefele) 说（I. 168）：“这条著名的法规包含了第一条独身法令。”奇怪的是，这条法规的拉丁文十分拙劣，字面上似乎是禁止教士与妻子禁欲，实际上却是要禁止交合。由于其中有 positis in ministerio（在职任中）一语，有人认为，这里只是像犹太律法一样，禁止教士在履行圣职期间行房；但这一点本来就是不言而喻的，也达不到那个时代的纪律标准。然而，即使在西班牙，这第一条独身法令也很少得到遵守；从教皇西里修斯 (Siricius) 致塔拉戈纳 (Tarragona) 主教希梅里乌斯 (Himerius) 的信中便可推知，四世纪末仍有 plurimi sacerdotes Christi et levitu（许多基督的祭司和利未人）过着婚姻生活。↩︎
《法规》Can. 6（29，见黑费勒 I. 217）：“Praeterea, quod dignum, pudicum et honestum est, suademus fratribus, ut sacerdotes et levitae cum uxoribus satis non cogant, quia ministerio quotidiano occupantur. Quicunque contra hanc constitutionem fecerit, a cleritatus honore deponatur.”（此外，为了合宜、贞洁、端正，我们劝勉弟兄们，祭司和利未人不应与妻子交合，因为他们每日忙于圣职。凡违背此项规定者，应革除其教士职分。）↩︎
《法规》Can. 10（黑费勒，《会议史》Conciliengesch. I，第230页，第2版）。此条法规收入《教会法大全》Corpus juris can.，第8条，Dist. 28。314至325年间的新凯撒利亚会议 (Synod of Neo-Caesarea)，在第1条法规（can. 1）中禁止祭司结婚，违者革职。这与另一条法规并不冲突，也同样收入《教会法》，第9条，Dist. 28。见黑费勒，I. 244。↩︎
“在那些未婚而进入教士行列的人中，我们只准许诵经员和歌咏员在日后有此意愿时结婚。”↩︎
帕夫努提乌斯 (Paphnutius) 的这件重要事迹，有消息灵通的历史学家苏格拉底 (Socrates)（《教会史》Hist. Eccl. I. 11）、索佐梅恩 (Sozoinen)（《教会史》H. E. I. 23）和基齐库斯的格拉修斯 (Gelasius Cyzic.)（《尼西亚会议史》Hist. Conc. Nic. II. 32）的一致见证为依据；见曼西 (Mansi)、阿尔杜安 (Harduin) 及黑费勒（I. 431–435）。此外，它也符合《使徒宪章》与《使徒法规》的指示，以及东方各教会现今在这一问题上的惯例。巴罗尼乌斯 (Baronius)、贝拉明 (Bellarmine)、瓦莱修斯 (Valesius) 及其他罗马天主教学者的异议毫无根据，已为纳塔利斯·亚历山大 (Natalis Alexander) 和黑费勒（前引书，l.c.）所驳斥。丰克（罗马天主教徒）说：“Die Einwendungen, die gegen^* den Bericht, vorgebracht wurden, sind völlig nichtig”（针对这一记载所提出的异议，全然无效）。↩︎
这种女子被冠以悦耳的名称：συνείσακτος^*、subiatroducta（引入作伴者）、ἀγαπητή^*、soror（姊妹）。见黑费勒，T. 380。关于这条法规，比较 W. 布赖特 (W. Bright)，《前四次大公会议法规注释》Notes on the Canons of the First Four General Councils. 牛津，1882年，第8、9页。安提阿的一次会议曾因这种污秽的行径以及异端，罢免了安提阿主教、撒摩撒他的保罗 (Paul of Samosata)。优西比乌 (Eusebius)，《教会史》H. E. VII. 30。↩︎
尽管教会法规明令禁止，这种有损名誉的习俗仍然延续。金口约翰 (Chrysostom) 写过一篇讲论，“反对那些ἔχοντας παρθένους συνεισάκτους^*（与童贞女同居）的人”，又写了另一篇，劝告献身的童贞女不要与他们同住。哲罗姆 (Jerome) 抱怨这种“pestis agapetarum”（属灵姊妹之瘟疫）（《书信》Ep. XXII. 14）。↩︎
《书信》Ep. XXII：“Laudo nuptias, laudo conjugium, sed quia mihi virgines generant.”（我赞美婚礼，我赞美婚姻，但只是因为它们为我生养童贞者。）比较《书信》Ep. CXXIII。↩︎
而罗马教会似乎更关心教士的权势，而非他们的纯洁。格列高利七世 (Gregory VII) 以百折不挠的精力强制推行独身制，曾公开说：“Non liberari potest ecclesia a servitude laicorum, nisi liberentur clerici ab uxoribus.”（除非教士摆脱妻子的束缚，否则教会就不能摆脱平信徒的奴役。）教士独身既属纪律问题，而非教义问题，教皇随时都可将其废除。埃涅阿斯·西尔维乌斯 (Aeneas Sylvius) 在以庇护二世 (Pius II，1458至1464年) 之名登上彼得的宝座以前，曾说，禁止祭司结婚固然有充分而正当的理由，但如今有更强的理由要求恢复他们结婚的权利。与罗马联合的希腊教会信徒及马龙派 (Maronites) 教徒获准保留妻子。约瑟夫二世 (Joseph II) 曾提议扩大这一许可的范围。法国革命期间，以及《政教协定》(Concordat，1801年) 签订之前，许多祭司和修女都结了婚。然而，教阶制度的利益最终总是使这类运动归于失败，宁愿让教士与平信徒保持隔离，以便对后者施加更大的权力。利 (Lea) 在《独身制史》History of Celibacy 中说：“拉丁教会是历史上最奇妙的组织；它的领袖若要同意这样的改革，就必须先承认，它那充满值得自豪的回忆的历史，原来是一场错误。”↩︎
比较本书第VI卷，§ 79，第473页及后。↩︎

《基督教会史》·第二卷·第九章禁欲倾向

第九章禁欲倾向

目录

§ 104. 禁欲的德行与敬虔

§ 105. 异端与大公教会的禁欲主义

§ 106. 自愿贫穷

§ 107. 自愿独身

§ 108. 教牧人员的独身制

Original Text

CHAPTER IX. ASCETIC TENDENCIES.

§ 104. Ascetic Virtue and Piety.

§ 105. Heretical and Catholic Asceticism.

§ 106. Voluntary Poverty.

§ 107. Voluntary Celibacy.

§ 108. Celibacy of the Clergy.

Original Footnotes

脚注

Best guess 对照表

第九章 禁欲倾向

目录

§ 104. 禁欲的德行与敬虔

§ 105. 异端与大公教会的禁欲主义

§ 106. 自愿贫穷

§ 107. 自愿独身

§ 108. 教牧人员的独身制

Original Text

CHAPTER IX. ASCETIC TENDENCIES.

§ 104. Ascetic Virtue and Piety.

§ 105. Heretical and Catholic Asceticism.

§ 106. Voluntary Poverty.

§ 107. Voluntary Celibacy.

§ 108. Celibacy of the Clergy.

Original Footnotes

脚注

Best guess 对照表

第九章禁欲倾向