Among the Guanches of the Canary Islands there were virgins, called Magades or Harimagades, who presided over the cult under the direction of the high-priest, and there were other virgins, highly respected, whose function was to pour water over the heads of newborn children, and who could abandon their office and marry whenever they pleased.53 The priestesses of the Tshi- and Ew̔e-speaking peoples on the West Coast of Africa are forbidden to marry.54 In a wood near Cape Padron, in Lower Guinea, lives a priestly king who is allowed neither to leave his house nor to touch a woman.55

In ancient Persia there were sun priestesses who were obliged to refrain from intercourse with men.56 The nine priestesses of the oracle of a Gallic deity in Sena were devoted to perpetual virginity.57 The Romans had their Vestal virgins, whose office, according to tradition, was instituted by Numa. They were compelled to continue unmarried during thirty years, which time they employed in offering sacrifices and performing other rites ordained by the law; and if they suffered themselves to be debauched they were delivered up to the most miserable death, being placed in a subterraneous cell, in their funeral attire, without any sepulchral column, funeral rites, or other customary solemnities.58 After the expiration of the term of thirty years they might marry on quitting the ensigns of their priesthood; but we are told that very few did this, as those who did suffered calamities which were regarded as ominous by the rest, and induced them to remain virgins in the temple of the goddess till their death.59 In Greece priestesses were not infrequently required to be virgins, if not for their whole life, at any rate for the duration of their priesthood.60 Tertullian writes:—“To the Achaean Juno, at the town Aegium, a virgin is allotted; and the priestesses who rave at Delphi know not marriage. We know that widows minister to the African Ceres; they not only withdraw from their still living husbands, but they even introduce other wives to them in their own room, all contact with males, even as far as the kiss of their sons, being forbidden them…. We have heard, too, of continent men, and among others the priests of the famous Egyptian bull.”61 There were eunuch priests connected with the cults of the Ephesian Artemis,62 the Phrygian Cybele,63 and the Syrian Astarte.64

Among the Todas of the Neilgherry Hills the “dairy man” or priest is bound to a celibate existence;65 and among the Hindus, in spite of the great honour in which marriage is held, celibacy has always commanded respect in instances of extraordinary sanctity.66 Those of the Sannyāsis who are known to lead their lives in perfect celibacy receive on that account marks of distinguished honour and respect.67 Already the time-honoured Indian institution of the four Āśramas contained the germ of monastic celibacy, the Brahmacārin, or student, being obliged to observe absolute chastity during the whole course of his study.68 The idea was further developed in Jainism and Buddhism. The Jain monk was to renounce all sexual pleasures, “either with gods, or men, or animals”; not to give way to sensuality; not to discuss topics relating to women; not to contemplate the forms of women.69 Buddhism regards sensuality as altogether incompatible with wisdom and holiness; it is said that “a wise man should avoid married life as if it were a burning pit of live coals.”70 According to the legend, Buddha’s mother, who was the best and purest of the daughters of men, had no other sons, and her conception was due to supernatural causes.71 One of the fundamental duties of monastic life, by an infringement of which the guilty person brings about his inevitable expulsion from Buddha’s order, is that “an ordained monk may not have sexual intercourse, not even with an animal.”72 In Tibet some sects of the Lamas are allowed to marry, but those who do not are considered more holy; and in every sect the nuns must take a vow of absolute continence.73 The Buddhist priests of Ceylon are totally debarred from women.74 Chinese law enjoins celibacy on all priests, Buddhist or Taouist.75 And among the immortals of Taouism there are some women also, who have led an extraordinarily ascetic life.76

A small class of Hebrews held the idea that marriage is impure. The Essenes, says Josephus, “reject pleasure as an evil, but esteem continence and the conquest over our passions to be virtue. They neglect wedlock.”77 This doctrine exercised no influence on Judaism, but probably much upon Christianity. St. Paul considered celibacy to be preferable to marriage. “He that giveth her (his virgin) in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better.”78 “It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.”79 If the unmarried and widows cannot contain let them marry, “for it is better to marry than to burn.”80 These and other passages81 in the New Testament inspired a general enthusiasm for virginity. Commenting on the words of the Apostle, Tertullian points out that what is better is not necessarily good. It is better to lose one eye than two, but neither is good; so also, though it is better to marry than to burn, it is far better neither to marry nor to burn.82 Marriage “consists of that which is the essence of fornication”;83 whereas continence “is a means whereby a man will traffic in a mighty substance of sanctity.”84 The body which our Lord wore and in which He carried on the conflict of life in this world He put on from a holy virgin; and John the Baptist, Paul, and all the others “whose names are in the book of life”85 cherished and loved virginity.86 Virginity works miracles: Mary, the sister of Moses, leading the female band, passed on foot over the straits of the sea, and by the same grace Thecla was reverenced even by lions, so that the unfed beasts, lying at the feet of their prey, underwent a holy fast, neither with wanton look nor sharp claw venturing to harm the virgin.87 Virginity is like a spring flower, always softly exhaling immortality from its white petals.88 The Lord himself opens the kingdoms of the heavens to eunuchs.89 If Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator he would have lived for ever in a state of virgin purity, and some harmless mode of vegetation would have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings.90 It is true that, though virginity is the shortest way to the camp of the faithful, the way of matrimony also arrives there, by a longer circuit.91 Tertullian himself opposed the Marcionites, who prohibited marriage among themselves and compelled those who were married to separate before they were received by baptism into the community.92 And in the earlier part of the fourth century the Council of Gangra expressly condemned anyone who maintained that marriage prevented a Christian from entering the kingdom of God.93 But, at the end of the same century, a council also excommunicated the monk Jovinian because he denied that virginity was more meritorious than marriage.94 The use of marriage was permitted to man only as a necessary expedient for the continuance of the human species, and as a restraint, however imperfect, on the natural licentiousness of desire.95 The procreation of children is the measure of a Christian’s indulgence in appetite, just as the husbandman throwing the seed into the ground awaits the harvest, not sowing more upon it.96

These opinions led by degrees to the obligatory celibacy of the secular and regular clergy. The conviction that a second marriage of a priest, or the marriage of a priest with a widow, is unlawful, seems to have existed from the earliest period of the Church;97 and as early as the beginning of the fourth century a synod held in Elvira in Spain insisted on the absolute continence of the higher ecclesiastics.98 The celibacy of the clergy in general was prescribed by Gregory VII., who “looked with abhorrence on the contamination of the holy sacerdotal character, even in its lowest degree, by any sexual connection.” But in many countries this prescription was so strenuously resisted, that it could not be carried through till late in the thirteenth century.99

The practice of religious celibacy may be traced to several sources. In many cases the priestess is obviously regarded as married to the god whom she is serving, and is therefore forbidden to marry anybody else. In ancient Peru the Sun was the husband of the virgins dedicated to him.100 They were obliged to be of the same blood as their consort, that is to say, daughters of the Incas. “For though they imagined that the Sun had children, they considered that they ought not to be bastards, with mixed divine and human blood. So the virgins were of necessity legitimate and of the blood royal, which was the same as being of the family of the Sun.”101 And the crime of violating the virgins dedicated to the Sun was the same and punished in the same severe manner as the crime of violating the women of the Inca.102 Concerning the priestesses of the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, Major Ellis remarks that the reason for their celibacy appears to be that “a priestess belongs to the god she serves, and therefore cannot become the property of a man, as would be the case if she married one.”103 So also the Ew̔e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast regard the women dedicated to a god as his wives.104 In the great temple of Jupiter Belus, we are told, a single woman used to sleep, whom the god had chosen for himself out of all the women of the land; and it was believed that he came down in person to sleep with her. “This,” Herodotus says, “is like the story told by the Egyptians of what takes place in their city of Thebes, where a woman always passes the night in the temple of the Theban Jupiter. In each case the woman is said to be debarred all intercourse with men.”105 In the Egyptian texts there are frequent references to “the divine consort,” neter ḥemt, a position which was generally occupied by the ruling queen, and the king was believed to be the offspring of such a union.106 As Plutarch states, the Egyptians thought it quite possible for a woman to be impregnated by the approach of some divine spirit, though they denied that a man could have corporeal intercourse with a goddess.107 Nor was the idea of a nuptial relation between a woman and the deity foreign to the early Christians. St. Cyprian speaks of women who had no husband and lord but Christ, with whom they lived in a spiritual matrimony—who had “dedicated themselves to Christ, and, retiring from carnal lust, vowed themselves to God in flesh and spirit.”108 In the following words he condemns the cohabitation of such virgins with unmarried ecclesiastics, under the pretence of a purely spiritual connection:—“If a husband come and see his wife lying with another man, is he not indignant and maddened, and does he not in the violence of his jealousy perhaps even seize the sword? What? How indignant and angered then must Christ our Lord and Judge be, when He sees a virgin, dedicated to Himself, and consecrated to His holiness, lying with a man! and what punishments does He threaten against such impure connections…. She who has been guilty of this crime is an adulteress, not against a husband, but Christ.”109 According to the gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, the Virgin Mary had in a similar manner dedicated herself as a virgin to God.110 The idea that the deity is jealous of the chastity of his or her servants may also perhaps be at the bottom of the Greek custom according to which the hierophant and the other priests of Demeter were restrained from conjugal intercourse and washed their bodies with hemlock-juice in order to kill their passions,111 as also of the rule which required the priests of certain goddesses to be eunuchs.112

Religious celibacy is further connected with the idea that sexual intercourse is defiling. In Efate, of the New Hebrides, it is regarded as something unclean.113 The Tahitians believed that if a man refrained from all connections with women some months before death, he passed immediately into his eternal mansion without any purification.114 Herodotus writes:—“As often as a Babylonian has had intercourse with his wife, he sits down before a censer of burning incense, and the woman sits opposite to him. At dawn of day they wash; for till they are washed they will not touch any of their common vessels. This practice is also observed by the Arabs.”115 Among the Hebrews both the man and woman had to bathe themselves in water, and were “unclean until the even.”116 The idea that sexual intercourse is unclean implies that some degree of supernatural danger is connected with it;117 and, as Mr. Crawley has pointed out, the notion of danger may develop into that of sinfulness.118 Where woman is regarded as an unclean being119 it is obvious that intercourse with her should be considered polluting, but this is not a sufficient explanation of the idea of sexual uncleanness. A polluting effect is ascribed to any discharge of sexual matter120—originally no doubt on account of its mysterious propensities and the veil of mystery which surrounds the whole sexual nature of man.