Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variationsin hyphenation and accents remain but all other spelling andpunctuation remains unchanged.
Footnote 1219 is missing. The footnote from a different edition hasbeen included for information.
More doubtful typographical errors:
Page 341 They succeeded in making way with him. way changed to away.
Footnote 1620 reads L’Esaminatore, 15 Ott. 1867. This has been changedto 15 Oct.
The cover image was prepared by the transcriber and is placed in thepublic domain.
SACERDOTAL CELIBACY
IN THE
CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
BY
HENRY C. LEA.
SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED.
Οὐ γαρ θεου ἐστι κινειν ἐπι τα παρα φυσιν.
Athenagoræ pro Christianis Legatio.
BOSTON
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
New York 11 East Seventeenth Street
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1884
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884, by
HENRY C. LEA,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress. All rights reserved.
DORNAN, PRINTER.
v
The following work was written several years since, simply as anhistorical study, and with little expectation of its publication. Recentmovements in several portions of the great Christian Church seem toindicate, however, that a record of ascetic celibacy, as developed inthe past, may not be without interest to those who are watching thetendencies of the present.
So far as I am aware, no work of the kind exists in Englishliterature, and those which have appeared in the Continental languagesare almost exclusively of a controversial character. It hasbeen my aim to avoid polemics, and I have therefore sought merelyto state facts as I have found them, without regard to their bearingon either side of the questions involved. As those questions havelong been the subject of ardent disputation, it has seemed proper tosubstantiate every statement with a reference to its authority.
The scope of the work is designedly confined to the enforced celibacyof the sacerdotal class. The vast history of monachism hastherefore only been touched upon incidentally when it served tothrow light upon the rise and progress of religious asceticism. Thevarious celibate communities which have arisen in this country, suchas the Dunkers and Shakers, are likewise excluded from the plan ofthe volume. These limitations occasion me less regret since theappearance of M. de Montalembert’s “Monks of the West” andMr. W. Hepworth Dixon’s “New America,” in which the studentwill probably find all that he may require on these subjects.
Besides the controversial importance of the questions connectedwith Christian asceticism, it has seemed to me that a brief historylike the present might perhaps possess interest for the general reader,vinot only on account of the influence which ecclesiastical celibacy hasexerted, directly and indirectly, on the progress of civilization, butalso from the occa