nt opponents--it was received with bitter resentment
and incompliance. But it had the popular favor for it on one side, and
on the other the passionate energies of the three great Latin
fathers,--Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome. The people had not yet reached
that state of mind when it clamored imperiously either for priestly
marriage, or, in simple self-defence, for an organized substitute. Mr.
Lea at this point devotes a chapter to the Eastern Church, of which it
is sufficient for us to say, that in this establishment the question of
celibacy was less violently agitated than among its neighbors, and that
a final decision was more speedily reached. Early in the sixth century,
Justinian published an edict which still forms the basis of its
celibatarian discipline. Marriage in orders is forbidden, and men who
have been twice married are inadmissible. Monks are of course bound to
chastity, but the lower grades of the secular clergy are free to marry.

The rise of the monastic orders in the West dates from the close of the
fifth century, when St. Benedict founded in the Latian Apennines the
community which subsequently became famous as the Convent of Monte
Cassino. With this enterprise begins the real growth of the Church,
which, of course, we do not propose to trace. With each succeeding
century its area expanded, its power increased, and its responsibilities
multiplied. It was called to preside at the organization of a new
Europe, to witness and to accelerate the extinction of the Roman Empire
and the foundation of the new nationalities, to save whatever was worth
saving from the wreck of the old society, to stand firm against the
Barbarians, to prosecute constant and wholesale conversions, and to
preserve in the midst of these various cares the integrity of the idea
of sacerdotal chastity. The idea, we say; for we may be sure that the
practice was left to take care of itself. We are told that the Barbarian
invaders were inexpressibly shocked by the licentiousness and immorality
of the Latin civilization; and if this were so, it promised well for a
thorough purgation of the Church in proportion as the new-comers were
admitted into its fold. But as we continue to read, we see that,
although upon society at large their arrival may have produced in
certain directions a healthful and renovating effect, they speedily
became converted to the general tolerance of ecclesiastical laxity.
Italy and France, up to the domination of Ch