CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE AND MORALITY 45 



times in large numbers. A Spanish abbot was dis- 

 covered in tlie year 1130 to have seventy concubines, 

 and a bishop of Li^ge in 1274 was deposed for having 

 sixty-five illegitimate children. Enactments had to 

 be passed forbidding priests to live with their mothers 

 and sisters, because of the prevalence of incest among 

 them; nunneries and monasteries were hotbeds of 

 debauchery; and congregations who had an unmarried 

 priest to minister to them stipulated in some cases, 

 with a view to the protection of their wives and 

 daughters, that he should keep a concubine.^ In a 

 similar spirit it was decreed by a council that no 

 priest should be allowed to go out at night without 

 a candle. 



Despite the views of the fathers and the various 

 enactments of the Church against marriage, many 

 devout persons never lost faith in an institution which 

 had been pointedly approved by St. Paul, and although 

 marriage was a civil contract with which, for a 

 thousand years at least, the Church, in its collective 

 capacity, would have nothing to do, those exemplary 

 Christians acquired the habit of calling in a priest to 

 bless the nuptial union, which they very properly 

 regarded as an important event in their lives. Ulti- 



^ Lea's History of Sacerdotal Celibacy, 



