her master, provided that the latter had not then any legitimate children.[1]
When Christian marriage had definitely abolished the Roman legal concubinate, custom naturally braved the laws, and the clergy themselves were the first to set the example, thus proving the truth of the assertion in Genesis, "It is not good for man that he should be alone." For a long time the anointed of the Lord had wives or concubines. The latter took the place of the former when, by St. Boniface, St. Anselm, Hildebrand, etc., and the Councils, the marriage of priests had become an atrocious crime.
In 1171, at Canterbury, an investigation proved that the abbot-elect of St. Augustine had seventy children in a single village.[2] During many years a tax, called by an expressive name (culagium), was systematically levied by various princes on priests living in concubinage.[3] Better still, it often happened that the lay parishioners obliged their priests to have concubines, by way of precaution. A canon of the Council of Palencia (1322) anathematises the laics who act thus.[4] In his History of the Council of Trent, Sarpi says that many Swiss cantons had adopted this custom. At the Council of Constance, an important speaker, Nicolas de Clemangis, declared that it was a widely-spread practice, and that the laity were firmly persuaded that the celibacy of the priests was quite fictitious. Bayle quotes on this point the following remarkable passage—"Taceo de fornicationibus et adulteriis a quibus qui alieni sunt probro cæteris ac ludibrio esse solent, spadonesque aut sodomitæ appellantur; denique laici usque adeo persuasum habent nullos cælibes esse, ut in plerisque parochiis non aliter velint presbyterum tolerare nisi concubinam habeat, quo vel sic suis sit consultum uxoribus, quæ nec sic quidem usque quaque sunt extra periculum."
If, leaving aside the middle age and its clergy, we cast our eyes around us in the most civilised and polished European societies, we see that the concubinate has indeed disappeared, but that its inferior form, concubinage, is very
