ook up again
the fifth-century doctrine in its popular form, but it evidently led
directly up to the heresy that the validity or benefit of the sacrament
depended on the purity of the priest. In his zeal for celibacy
Hildebrand fell into this heresy, although a man was burned for it at
Cambrai in 1077.[487] Hildebrand also gave civil authorities power over
ecclesiastics in order to carry out his reform.[488] In the middle of
the twelfth century the "reform" was directed against the women (wives),
for fear of the resistance of the men. In Rome the women were enslaved
and given to the church of the Lateran. All bishops were ordered to
seize the women for the benefit of their churches.[489] In 1095 the
sacrament of marriage was declared by the lateran council less potent
than the religious vow, although the contrary had been the church
doctrine.[490] Thus what came out of the popular mores underwent the
growth of formulated dogma and deduction. In the thirteenth century
marriage of the clergy ceased, but concubinage continued, concubines
being a legitimate but inferior order of wives, whose existence was
tolerated on payment of a fee known as _cullagium_.[491] "Scarcely had
the efforts of Nicholas and Gregory put an end to sacerdotal marriage at
Rome when the morals of the Roman clergy became a disgrace to
Christendom."[492] "Those women [clerical concubines] came to be
invested with a quasi-ecclesiastical character, and to enjoy the dearly
prized immunities attached to that position."[493] Gerson (1363-1429)
paid admiration to virginity and celibacy, but he "saw and appreciated
its practical evils, and had no scruple in recommending concubinage as a
preventive, which, though scandalous in itself, might serve to prevent
greater scandals." In districts it became customary to require a new
parish priest to take a concubine.[494] "This was the inversion which
the popular opinion had undergone in four centuries."[495] "The
principles of the church led irrevocably to the conclusion, paradoxical
as it may seem, that he who was guilty of immorality, knowing it to be
wrong, was far less criminal than he who married, believing it to be
right."[496] At Avignon, when it was the seat of the papacy, sex license
and vice became proverbial. A speech of the most shameless cynicism is
attributed to Cardinal Hugo, in which he described the effect, in 1251,
of the residence of the papal court there for eight years. In the
fourteenth century t