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2 results

  • 1 - Clerical purity and the re-ordered world

  • from PART I - INSTITUTIONS AND CHANGE: 1100–1200
  • Edited by Miri Rubin, Queen Mary University of London, Walter Simons, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Christianity
    Published online:
    28 March 2010
    Print publication:
    02 July 2009, pp 9-21

  • Summary

    Caesarius of Heisterbach combines his relish in telling stories that discomfit priests with a knowledge, even an acceptance of human frailty. For Caesarius celibacy is indeed of paramount importance for both clerks and monks; nonetheless, even those who fail to observe it can count on forgiveness provided they truly repent. The Lateran Council of 1215, and the subsequent dissemination of its canons, set the seal on the new order in the Christian world. The decrees of Lateran IV in effect secured the monasticisation of the clergy. A sinful clergy, insisted Innocent III, is the root of all evil, 'faith decays, religion grows deformed, liberty is thwarted. In Summa confessorum, Thomas of Chobham argues that it was a lesser sin for a cleric to marry secretly than it was for him to have extra-marital sex and to express in more general terms doubts about the legitimacy of enforcing clerical celibacy.

  • 21 - The papacy in the eighth and ninth centuries

  • from PART III - CHURCH AND SOCIETY
  • Edited by Rosamond McKitterick, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    14 September 1995, pp 561-586

  • Summary

    This chapter provides the understanding of papal history in the areas of political symbolism and manifestations of public authority and sheds some light on the economic life of papal Rome. The assumption of territorial rule and the entry of the local Roman nobility into the clergy brought about an increase in the routine business and a refinement of the structures of the Roman church. The Roman church also exercised significant jurisdiction and influence in and around Rome in ways that were only marginally connected to the spiritual functions of the church. In the ninth century, the popes began to reassert themselves. Gregory IV, for example, explicitly quoted Gelasius in a letter dated 833 to some Frankish bishops. Gregory, on his arrival in Francia, claimed that he had come to restore the peace of the Christian world, while the bishops told him he had no business sitting in judgement upon the emperor.