together with the pope’s wife, Stephania (868).^332 The wicked pope Benedict IX. sued for the
daughter of his cousin, who consented on condition that he resign the papacy (1033).^333 The
Hildebrandian popes, Leo IX. and Nicolas II., made attempts to enforce clerical celibacy all over
the West. They identified the interests of clerical morality and influence with clerical celibacy, and
endeavored to destroy natural immorality by enforcing unnatural morality. How far Gregory VII.
succeeded in this part of his reform, will be seen in the next period.
§ 76. Domestic Life.
The purity and happiness of home-life depend on the position of woman, who is the beating
heart of the household. Female degradation was one of the weakest spots in the old Greek and
Roman civilization. The church, in counteracting the prevailing evil, ran into the opposite extreme
of ascetic excess as a radical cure. Instead of concentrating her strength on the purification and
elevation of the family, she recommended lonely celibacy as a higher degree of holiness and a safer
way to heaven.
Among the Western and Northern barbarians she found a more favorable soil for the
cultivation of Christian family life. The contrast which the heathen historian Tacitus and the Christian
monk Salvian draw between the chastity of the Teutonic barbarians and the licentiousness of the
Latin races is overdrawn for effect, but not without foundation. The German and Scandinavian
tribes had an instinctive reverence for the female sex, as being inspired by a divinity, possessed of
the prophetic gift, and endowed with secret charms. Their women shared the labors and dangers
of men, emboldened them in their fierce battles, and would rather commit suicide than submit to
dishonor. Yet the wife was entirely in the power of her husband, and could be bought, sold, beaten,
and killed.
The Christian religion preserved and strengthened the noble traits, and developed them into
the virtues of chivalry; while it diminished or abolished evil customs and practices. The Synods
often deal with marriage and divorce. Polygamy, concubinage, secret marriages, marriages with
near relatives, mixed marriages with heathens or Jews or heretics were forbidden; the marriage tie
was declared sacred and indissoluble (except by adultery); sexual intemperance restrained and
forbidden on Sundays and during Lent; the personal independence of woman and her rights of
property were advanced. The Virgin Mary was constantly held up to the imagination as the
incarnation of female parity and devotion. Not unfrequently, however, marriages were dissolved
by mutual consent from mistaken ascetic piety. When a married layman entered the priesthood or
a convent, he usually forsook his wife. In a Roman Synod of 827 such separation was made subject
to the approval of the bishop. A Synod of Rouen, 1072, forbade husbands whose wives had taken
the veil, to marry another. Wives whose husbands had disappeared were forbidden by the same
Synod to marry until the fact of death was made certain.^334
Upon the whole, the synodical legislation on the subject of marriage was wise, timely,
restraining, purifying, and ennobling in its effect. The purest and brightest chapter in the history
(^332) Ibid. p. 373.
(^333) Ibid. p. 707.
(^334) For all these details see the scattered notices in vols, III. and IV. of Hefele.