PROPOSED ACTION ON CLERICAL CELIBACY.

[The Acts are not extant.]

NOTES.

Often the mind of a deliberative assembly is as clearly shown by the 

propositions it rejects as by those it adopts, and it would seem that this  

doctrine is of application in the case of the asserted attempt at this 

Council to pass a decree forbidding the priesthood to live in the use of 

marriage. This attempt is said to have failed. The particulars are as 

follows:

HEFELE.

(Hist. Councils, Vol. I., pp.  et seqq.)

Socrates, Sozomen, and Gelasius affirm that the Synod of Nicaea, as 

well as that of Elvira(can. ), desired to pass a law respecting 

celibacy. This law was to forbid all bishops, priests and 

deacons(Sozomen adds subdeacons), who were married at the time of 

their ordination, to continue to live with their wives. But, say these 

historians, the law was opposed openly and decidedly by Paphnutius, 

bishop of a city of the Upper Thebais in Egypt, a man of a high 

reputation, who had lost an eye during the persecution under 

Maximian. He was also, celebrated for his miracles, and was held in so 

great respect by the Emperor, that the latter often kissed the empty 

socket of the lost eye. Paphnutius declared with a loud voice, "that too 

heavy a yoke ought not to be laid upon the clergy; that marriage and 

married intercourse are of themselves honourable and undefiled; that 

the Church ought not to be injured by an extreme severity, for all 

could not live in absolute continency: in this way(by not prohibiting 

married intercourse) the virtue of the wife would be much more 

certainly preserved(viz the wife of a clergyman, because she might 

find injury elsewhere, if her husband withdrew from her married 

intercourse). The intercourse of a man with his lawful wife may also 

be a chaste intercourse. It would therefore be sufficient, according to 

the ancient tradition of the Church, if those who had taken holy orders 

without being married were prohibited from marrying afterwards; but 

those clergymen who had been married only once as laymen, were not 

to be separated from their wives(Gelasius adds, or being only a reader 

or cantor)." This discourse of Paphnutius made so much the more 

impression, because he had never lived in matrimony himself, and had 

had no conjugal intercourse.  Paphnutius, indeed, had been brought up 

in a monastery, and his great purity of manners had rendered him 

especially celebrated.  Therefore the Council took the serious words of 

the Egyptian bishop into consideration, stopped all discussion upon 

the law, and left to each cleric the responsibility of deciding the point 

as he would.

If this account be true, we must conclude that a law was proposed to 

the Council of Nicaea the same as one which had been carried twenty 

years previously at Elvira, in Spain; this coincidence would lead us to 

believe that it was the Spaniard Hosius who proposed the law 

respecting celibacy at Nicaea. The discourse ascribed to Paphnutius, 

and the consequent decision of the Synod, agree very well with the 

text of the Apostolic Constitutions, and with the whole practice of the 

Greek Church in respect to celibacy. The Greek Church as well as the 

Latin accepted the principle, that whoever had taken holy orders 

before marriage, ought not to be married afterwards. In the Latin 

Church, bishops, priests, deacons. and even subdeacons, were 

considered to be subject to this law, because the latter were at a very 

early period reckoned among the higher servants of the Church, which 

was not the case in the Greek Church. The Greek Church went so far 

as to allow deacons to marry after their ordination, if previously to it 

they had expressly obtained from their bishop permission to do so. 

The Council of Ancyra affirms this(c. ). We see that  the Greek 

Church wishes to leave the bishop free to decide the matter; but in 

reference to priests, it also prohibited them from marrying after their 

ordination. Therefore, whilst the Latin Church exacted of those 

presenting themselves for ordination, even as subdeacons, that they 

should not continue to live with their wives if they were married, the 

Greek Church gave no such prohibition; but if the wife of an ordained 

clergyman died, the Greek Church allowed no second marriage. The 

Apostolic Constitutions decided this point in the same way. To leave 

their wives from a pretext of piety was also forbidden to Greek priests; 

and the Synod of Gangra(c. ) took

up the defence of married priests against the Eustathians. Eustathius, 

however, was not alone among the Greeks in opposing the marriage of 

all clerics, and in desiring to introduce into the Greek Church the Latin 

discipline on this point. St. Epiphanius also inclined towards this side. 

The Greek Church did not, however, adopt this rigour in reference to 

priests, deacons, and subdeacons, but by degrees it came to be 

required of bishops and of the higher order of clergy in general, that 

they should live in celibacy. Yet this was not until after the 

compilation of the Apostolic Canons(c. ) and of the Constitutions; for 

in those documents mention is made of bishops living in wedlock, and 

Church history shows that there were married bishops. for instance 

Synesius, in the fifth century. But it is fair to remark, even as to 

Synesius, that he made it an express condition of his acceptation, on 

his election to the episcopate, that he might continue to live the 

married life. Thomassin believes that Synesius did not seriously 

require this condition, and only spoke thus for the sake of escaping the 

episcopal office; which would seem to imply that in his time Greek 

bishops had already begun to live in celibacy. At the Trullan Synod(c. 

.) the Greek Church finally settled the question of the marriage of 

priests. Baro-nius, Valesius, and other historians, have considered the 

account of the part taken by Paphnutius to be apocryphal. Baronius 

says, that as the Council of Nicaea in its third canon gave a law upon 

celibacy it is quite impossible to admit that it would alter such a law 

on account of Paphnutius. But Baronius is mistaken in seeing a law 

upon celibacy in that third canon; he thought it to be so, because, 

when mentioning the women who might live in the clergyman's house-

-his mother, sister, etc.--the canon does not say a word about the wife. 

It had no occasion to mention her, it was referring to the 

 suneisaktoi   whilst these  suneisaktoi   

and married women have nothing in common. Natalis Alexander gives 

this anecdote about Paphnutius in full: he desired to refute Ballarmin, 

who considered it to be untrue and an invention of Socrates to please 

the Novatians. Natalis Alexander often maintains erroneous opinions, 

and on the present question he deserves no confidence. If, as St. 

Epiphanius relates, the Novatians maintained that the clergy might be 

married exactly like the laity, it cannot be said that Socrates shared 

that opinion, since he says, or rather makes Paphnutius say, that, 

according to ancient tradition, those not married at the time of 

ordination should not be so subsequently. Moreover, if it may be said 

that Socrates had a partial sympathy with the Novatians, he certainly 

cannot be considered as belonging to them, still less can he be accused 

of falsifying history in their favour. He may sometimes have 

propounded erroneous opinions, but there is a great difference 

between that and the invention of a whole story. Valesius especially 

makes use of the argument ex silentio against Socrates.(a) Rufinus, he 

says, gives many particulars about Paphnutius in his History of the 

Church; he mentions his martyrdom, his miracles, and the Emperor's 

reverence for him, but not a single word of the business about 

celibacy.(b) The name of Paphnutius is wanting in the list of Egyptian 

bishops present at the Synod. These two arguments of Valesius are 

weak; the second has the authority of Rufinus himself against it, who 

expressly says that Bishop Paphnutius was present at the Council of 

Nicaea. If Valesius means by lists only the signatures at the end of the 

acts of the Council, this proves nothing; for these lists are very 

imperfect, and it is well known that many bishops whose names are 

not among these signatures were present at Nicaea. This argument ex 

silentio is evidently insufficient to prove that the anecdote about 

Paphnutius must be rejected as false, seeing that it is in perfect 

harmony with the practice of the ancient Church, and especially of the 

Greek Church, on the subject of clerical marriages. On the other hand, 

Thomassin pretends that there was no such practice, and endeavours 

to prove by quotations from St. Epiphanius, St. Jerome, Eusebius, and 

St. John Chrysostom, that even in the East priests who were married at 

the time of their ordination were prohibited from continuing to live 

with their wives. The texts quoted by Thomassin prove only that the 

Greeks gave especial honour to priests living in perfect continency, 

but they do not prove that this continence was a duty incumbent upon 

all priests; and so much the less, as the fifth and twenty-fifth Apostolic 

canons, the fourth canon of Gangra, and the thirteenth of the Trullan 

Synod, demonstrate clearly enough what was the universal custom of 

the Greek Church on this point. Lupus and Phillips explained the 

words of Paphnutius in another sense. According to them, the 

Egyptian bishop was not speaking in a general way; he simply desired 

that the contemplated law should not include the subdeacons. But this 

explanation does not agree with the extracts quoted from Socrates, 

Sozomen, and Gelasius, who believe Paphnutius intended deacons and 

priests as well.