History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [233]
The power of the clergy as a whole could only be secured by very considerable sacrifices on the part of individual ecclesiastics. The two great evils against which all clerical reformers directed their energies were simony and concubinage. Something must be said about each of these.
Owing to the benefactions of the pious, the Church had become rich. Many bishops had huge estates, and even parish priests had, as a rule, what for those times was a comfortable living. The appointment of bishops was usually, in practice, in the hands of the king, but sometimes in those of some subordinate feudal noble. It was customary for the king to sell bishoprics; this, in fact, provided a substantial part of his income. The bishop, in turn, sold such ecclesiastical preferment as was in his power. There was no secret about this. Gerbert (Sylvester II) represented bishops as saying: 'I gave gold and I received the episcopate; but yet I do not fear to receive it back if I behave as I should. I ordain a priest and I receive gold; I make a deacon and I receive a heap of silver. Behold the gold which I gave I have once more unlessened in my purse.'1 Peter Damian in Milan, in 1059, found that every cleric in the city, from the archbishop downwards, had been guilty of simony. And this state of affairs was in no way exceptional.
Simony, of course, was a sin, but that was not the only objection to it. It caused ecclesiastical preferment to go by wealth, not merit; it confirmed lay authority in the appointment of bishops, and episcopal subservience to secular rulers; and it tended to make the episcopate part of the feudal system. Moreover, when a man had purchased preferment, he was naturally anxious to recoup himself, so that worldly rather than spiritual concerns were likely to preoccupy him. For these reasons, the campaign against simony was a necessary part of the ecclesiastical struggle for power.
Very similar considerations applied to clerical celibacy. The reformers of the eleventh century often spoke of 'concubinage' when it would have been more accurate to speak of 'marriage'. Monks, of course, were precluded from marriage by their vow of chastity, but there had been no clear prohibition of marriage for the secular clergy. In the Eastern Church, to this day, parish priests are allowed to be married. In the West, in the eleventh century, most parish priests were married. Bishops, for their part, appealed to St Paul's pronouncement: 'A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife.'2 There was not the same clear moral issue as in the matter of simony, but in the insistence on clerical celibacy there were political motives very similar to those in the campaign against simony.3
When priests were married, they naturally tried to pass on Church property to their sons. They could do this legally if their sons became priests; therefore one of the first steps of the reform party, when it acquired power, was to forbid the ordination of priests' sons.4 But in the confusion of the times there was still danger that, if priests had sons, they would find means of
illegally alienating parts of the Church lands. In addition to this economic consideration, there was also the fact that, if a priest was a family man like his neighbours, he seemed to them less removed from themselves. There was, from at least the fifth century onwards, an intense admiration for celibacy, and if the clergy