<P> "Despite six hundred years of decrees, canons, and increasingly harsh penalties, the Latin clergy still did, more or less illegally, what their Greek counterparts were encouraged to do by law--they lived with their wives and raised families . In practice, ordination was not an impediment to marriage; therefore some priests did marry even after ordination ." "The tenth century is claimed to be the high point of clerical marriage in the Latin communion . Most rural priests were married and many urban clergy and bishops had wives and children ." "A terrible picture of the decay both of clerical morality and of all sense of anything like vocation is drawn in the writings of St. Peter Damian, particularly in his Liber Gomorrhianus . The style, no doubt, is rhetorical and exaggerated, and his authority as an eyewitness does not extend beyond that district of Northern Italy, in which he lived, but we have evidence from other sources that the corruption was widespread...Undoubtedly during this period the traditions of sacerdotal celibacy in Western Christendom suffered severely but even though a large number of the clergy, not only priests but bishops, openly took wives and begot children to whom they transmitted their benefices, the principle of celibacy was never completely surrendered in the official enactments of the Church ." </P> <P> In 888, two local councils, that of Metz and that of Mainz, prohibited cohabitation even with wives living in continence . This tendency was taken up by the 11th - century Gregorian Reform, which aimed at eliminating what it called "Nicolaitism", that is clerical marriage, which in spite of being theoretically excluded was in fact practised, and concubinage . </P> <P> The First Lateran Council (1123), a General Council, adopted the following canons: </P> <Dl> <Dd> Canon 3: We absolutely forbid priests, deacons, and subdeacons to associate with concubines and women, or to live with women other than such as the Nicene Council (canon 3) for reasons of necessity permitted, namely, the mother, sister, or aunt, or any such person concerning whom no suspicion could arise . </Dd> <Dd> Canon 21: We absolutely forbid priests, deacons, subdeacons, and monks to have concubines or to contract marriage . We decree in accordance with the definitions of the sacred canons, that marriages already contracted by such persons must be dissolved, and that the persons be condemned to do penance . </Dd> </Dl>

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