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1 results

  • 1 - Clerical purity and the re-ordered world

  • from PART I - INSTITUTIONS AND CHANGE: 1100–1200
  • Edited by Miri Rubin, Queen Mary University of London, Walter Simons, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Christianity
    Published online:
    28 March 2010
    Print publication:
    02 July 2009, pp 9-21

  • Summary

    Caesarius of Heisterbach combines his relish in telling stories that discomfit priests with a knowledge, even an acceptance of human frailty. For Caesarius celibacy is indeed of paramount importance for both clerks and monks; nonetheless, even those who fail to observe it can count on forgiveness provided they truly repent. The Lateran Council of 1215, and the subsequent dissemination of its canons, set the seal on the new order in the Christian world. The decrees of Lateran IV in effect secured the monasticisation of the clergy. A sinful clergy, insisted Innocent III, is the root of all evil, 'faith decays, religion grows deformed, liberty is thwarted. In Summa confessorum, Thomas of Chobham argues that it was a lesser sin for a cleric to marry secretly than it was for him to have extra-marital sex and to express in more general terms doubts about the legitimacy of enforcing clerical celibacy.