History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in Th Christian Church, Vol. 2 (Classic Reprint)

As time wore on, the Church sank deeper into the mire of corruption, and its struggles to extricate itself grew feebler and more hopeless. We have seen that, early in the fifteenth century, Gerson advised an organised system of concubinage as preferable to the indiscriminate licentiousness which was everywhere prevalent. Even more suggestive are the declarations of Nicholas de Clamenges, Rector of the University of Paris and Secretary of the anti-pope Benedict XIII. He does not hesitate to say that the vices of the clergy were so universal that those who adhered to the rule of chastity were the objects of the most degrading and disgusting suspicions, so little faith was there in the possible purity of any ecclesiastic. He also records the extension of a custom to which I have already alluded when he states that in a majority of parishes the people insisted on their pastors keeping concubines, and that even this was a precaution insufficient for the peace and honour of their families.1 Elsewhere he describes the mass of the clergy as wholly abandoned to worldly ambition and vices, oppressing and despoiling those subjected to them, and i Taceo de fornicationibus et adulteriis, a quibus qui alien! sunt probro caeteris ac ludibrio esse solent, spadonesque aut sodomitae appellantur ;denique laici usque adeo persuasum habent nuilos ccelibes esse, ut in plerisque parochiis non alitervelint presbyterum tolerare nisi concubinam habeat,quo vel sic suis sit consultum uxoribus, quae nee sic quidem usque-quaque sunt extra periculum. Nic. de Clamengis de Prasul. Simoniac (O pp. Lug. Bat. 1613, p. 165). VOL. II.
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