If the council of Trent had thus failed utterly in its efforts to create that which had never existed—purity of morals under the rule of celibacy—it had at length succeeded in its more important task of putting an end to the aspirations of the clergy for marriage. With the anathema for heresy confronting them, few could be found so bold as openly to dispute the propriety of a law which had been incorporated into the articles of faith; and the ingenious sophistries and far-fetched logic of Bellarmine were reverently received and accepted as incontrovertible. Urbain Grandier might endeavor to quiet the conscience of his morganatic spouse by writing a treatise to prove the lawfulness of priestly wedlock, but he took care to keep the manuscript carefully locked in his desk.1545 A man of bold and independent spirit, fortified by unfathomable learning, like Louis Ellies Du Pin, might secretly favor marriage, and perhaps might contract matrimony.1546 Du Pin’s great antagonist, Bossuet, might incur a similar imputation, and be ready to partially yield the point if thereby he might secure the reconciliation of the hostile churches.1547 All this, however, could have no influence on the doctrines and practice of Catholicism at large, and the principle remained unaltered and unalterable.
Yet it was impossible that the critical spirit of inquiry which marked the eighteenth century, its boldness of unbelief, and its utter want of faith in God and man, could leave unassailed this monument of primæval asceticism, while it was so busy in undermining everything to which the reverence of its predecessors had clung. Accordingly, the latter half of the century witnessed an active controversy on the subject. In 1758, a canon of Estampes, named Desforges, who had been forced to take orders by his family, published a work in two volumes in which he attempted to prove that marriage was necessary for all ranks of ecclesiastics. The book attracted attention, and by order of the Parlement it was burnt, September 30, 1758, by the hangman, and the unlucky author was thrown into the Bastile. These proceedings were well calculated to give publicity to the work; it was reprinted at Douay in 1772; a German translation was published in 1782 at Göttingen and Munster, and an Italian one, with some omissions, had already appeared in 1770, without an acknowledged place of publication. The Abbé Villiers undertook to answer Desforges in a weak little volume, the “Apologie du Célibat Chretien,” published in 1762, which consists principally of long extracts from the Fathers in praise of virginity. Even Italy felt the movement, and an anonymous work, entitled “Pregiudizi del Celibato,” appeared in Naples in 1765, and was reprinted in Venice in 1766. Some more competent champion was necessary to answer these repeated attacks, and the learned Abate Zaccaria brought his fertile pen and his inexhaustible erudition to the rescue in his “Storia Polemica del Celibato Sacro,” which saw the light in 1774, and which not long afterwards was translated into German. In 1781 appeared a new aspirant for matrimonial liberty in the Abbé Gaudin, who issued at Geneva (Lyons) his work entitled “Les inconveniens du célibat des prêtres,” a treatise of considerable learning and no little bitterness against the whole structure of sacerdotalism and Roman supremacy. This was followed, in 1782, by Andreas Forster, in his “De Cœlibatu Clericorum Dissertatio,” published at Dillingen, and dedicated to Pius VI., for the purpose of replying to the attacks of the innovating Catholics.
The latter, indeed, had some hope for the approaching realization of their demands. The reforms which illustrated the minority of Ferdinand IV. of Naples excited the priests of Southern Italy to petition him for the right of marriage, and Serrao, the Jansenist Bishop of Potenza, does not hesitate to say that the request would have been granted if the unfriendly relations between the courts of Rome and Naples had continued much longer.1548 The Emperor Joseph II., amid his many fruitless schemes for philosophical reform, inclined seriously to the notion of permitting marriage to the priesthood of his dominions. In an edict of 1783 he asserted, incidentally, that the matter was subject to his control,1549 and the advocates of clerical marriage confidently expected that in a very short period they would see the ancient restrictions swept away by the imperial power. A mass of controversial essays and dissertations made their appearance throughout Germany, and the well-known Protestant theologian Henke took the opportunity of bringing out, in 1783, a new edition of the learned work of Calixtus, “De Conjugio Clericorum,” as the most efficient aid to the good cause. It is a striking illustration of the temper of the times to observe that this work, so bitterly opposed to the orthodox doctrines and practice, is dedicated by Henke to Archdeacon Anthony Ganoczy, canon of the cathedral church of Gross-Wardein and apostolic prothonotary. The hope of success brought out other writers, and the movement made sufficient progress to cause some hesitation in Rome as to the propriety of yielding to the pressure.1550
Zaccaria again entered the lists, and produced, in 1785, his “Nuova Giustificazione del Celibato Sacro,” in answer to the Abbé Gaudin and to an anonymous German writer whose work had produced considerable sensation. To this he was principally moved by a report that he had himself been converted by the facts and arguments advanced by the German, an imputation which he indignantly refuted in three hundred quarto pages.
The half-formed resolutions of Joseph II. led to no result, and the subject slumbered for a few years until the outbreak of the French Revolution. At an early period in that great movement, the adversaries of sacerdotal asceticism bestirred themselves in bringing to public attention the evils and cruelty of the system. Already, in 1789, a mass of pamphlets appeared urging the abrogation of celibacy. In 1790 the work of the Abbé Gaudin was reprinted, and was promptly answered by the prolific Maultrot. Even in Germany the same spirit again awoke, and an Hungarian priest named Katz published at Vienna, in 1791, a “Tractatus de conjugio et cœlibatu clericorum,” in which he argued strongly for a change. In Poland these doctrines made considerable progress, for in 1801 we find a little tract issued at Warsaw vehemently arguing against those who imperil their souls by violating their vows and the laws of the church.1551 In England, a Catholic priest distinguished for talents and learning, Dr. Geddes, published, in 1800, a work in which he denied the Apostolic origin of celibacy and urged that, at most, it should only be punished by degradation from the priesthood, without entailing disgrace. Indeed, he argued that the rule caused more proselytes to Protestantism than any other cause.1552
During this period it can hardly be supposed that the defiant immorality which characterized the eighteenth century had been favorable to the purity of a celibate priesthood. That the church, indeed, had made but scanty improvement in the character of its ministers is visible throughout the literature of the age, and I need only allude to a few instances where efforts at reform revealed the prevailing corruption.
In France the attacks upon the vow of celibacy, to which allusion has already been made, seem to have given rise to a spasmodic attempt to regulate the church. In 1760 an arrêt of the Parlement of Paris prohibited the organization of religious congregations without express royal permission, verified by that body. The assembly of the clergy in Paris in 1766 produced no notable improvement, nor was greater success obtained when the temporal power intervened in the Edicts of 1766 and 1767. Further effort apparently was requisite, and in the Edict of March, 1768, Louis XV. undertook to diminish in some degree the causes of the more flagrant disorders among the regular clergy. Men were not to be allowed to take the vows under the age of 22, nor women under 19; and as the smaller religious houses were especially notorious for laxness of discipline, all were suppressed which could not number at least fifteen professed monks or nuns, except those attached to larger congregations. The ecclesiastical authorities, moreover, were emphatically commanded to make a thorough visitation, and to compel the observance of the rules of discipline of the several orders.1553 The enforcement of this edict created no little excitement, and several of the smaller orders narrowly escaped destruction in their endeavors to evade its provisions. That these efforts did not succeed in accomplishing their object we may well believe, even without the testimony of an eye-witness.1554 As for the secular clergy, when Louis XV. amused himself by ordering the arrest of all ecclesiastics caught frequenting brothels, the number of victims in a short time amounted to 296, of whom no less than 100 were priests actively engaged in the service of the altar.1555
When the Grand-Duke Leopold of Tuscany undertook to reform the monasteries of his dominions and to put an end, if possible, to the abuse of the confessional, it led to a long diplomatic correspondence with the papal curia as to the jurisdiction over such cases. A public document of the year 1763 had already stated that the special crime in question had become less frequent, and attributed this improvement to the exceeding laxity of morals everywhere prevalent, for few confessors could be so foolish as to attempt seduction in the confessional when there was so little risk in doing the same thing elsewhere.1556 Specious as this reasoning might seem, the facts on which it was based were hardly borne out by the investigations of Leopold shortly after into the morals of the monastic establishments. Nothing more scandalous is to be found in the visitations of the religious houses of England under Morton and Cromwell. The spiritual directors of the nunneries had converted them virtually into harems, and such of the sisters as were proof against seduction armed with the powers of confession and absolution suffered every species of persecution. It was rare for them to venture on complaint, but when they did so they received no attention from their ecclesiastical superiors, and only the protection of the grand-ducal authority at length emboldened them to reveal the truth. The prioress of S. Caterina di Pistoia declared that, with three or four exceptions, all the monks and confessors with whom she had met in her long career were alike; that they treated the nuns as wives, and taught them that God had made man for woman and woman for man; and that the visitations of the bishops amounted to naught, even though they were aware of what occurred, for the mouths of the victims were sealed by the dread of excommunication threatened by their spiritual directors.1557 When it is considered that the convents thus converted into dens of prostitution were the favorite schools to which the girls of the higher classes were sent for training and education, it can readily be imagined what were the moral influences thence radiating throughout society at large, and we can appreciate the argument above referred to, as to the ease with which the clergy could procure sexual indulgence without recourse to the confessional. Leopold’s chief assistant in this struggle was Scipione de’ Ricci, Bishop of Pistoia and Prato, whose experiences in the investigation caused him to induce the council of Pistoia, in 1786, to declare the duties of the confessional wholly incompatible with the monastic state, and, in view of the improbability of any permanent reform, to propose the abolition of the monastic orders by restricting vows to the duration of a twelvemonth1558—propositions which were not approved by the congregation of Tuscan prelates held at Florence in 1787, and which were scornfully condemned by Rome.1559 Leopold, however, sought to palliate the evil by raising to the age of 24 the minimum limit for taking the vows, which the council of Trent had fixed at 16, but the benefit of this salutary measure was neutralized by the ease with which parents desiring to get rid of their children could place them in the institutions of the neighboring states, such as Lucca and Modena.1560
Rome itself was no better than its dependent provinces, despite the high personal character of some of the pontiffs. When the too early death of Clement XIV., in 1774, cut short the hopes which had been excited by his enlightened rule, St. Alphonso Liguori addressed to the conclave assembled for the election of his successor a letter urging them to make such a choice as would afford reasonable prospect of accomplishing the much-needed reform. The saint did not hesitate to characterize the discipline of the secular clergy as most grievously lax, and to proclaim that a general reform of the ecclesiastical body was the only way to remove the fearful corruption of the morals of the laity.1561 When we hear, about this time, of two Carmelite convents at Rome, one male and the other female, which had to be pulled down because underground passages had been established between them, by means of which the monks and nuns lived in indiscriminate licentiousness, and when we read the scandalous stories which were current in Roman society about prelates high in the church, we can readily appreciate the denunciations of St. Alphonso.1562 A curious glimpse at the interior of conventual life is furnished by a manual for Inquisitors, written about this period by an official of the Holy Office of Rome. In a chapter on nuns he describes the scandals which often cause them to fall within the jurisdiction of the Inquisition, and prescribes the course to be pursued with regard to the several offences. Among those who were forced to take the veil, despair frequently led to the denial of God, of heaven, and of hell; feminine enmity caused accusations of sorcery and witchcraft, which threw not only the nunneries, but whole cities, into confusion; vain-glory of sanctity suggested pretended revelations and visions; and these latter were also not infrequently caused by licentiousness, for in these utterances were sometimes taught doctrines utterly subversive of morality, of which Godless confessors took advantage to teach their spiritual daughters that there was no sin in sexual intercourse. As in Spain, it was the practice of the Roman Inquisition to treat the offenders mildly, partly in consideration of the temptations to which they were exposed, and partly to avoid scandal.1563 The contaminating influence on society at large, emanating from a church so incurably corrupted, was vastly heightened by the overgrown numbers of the clerical body. In 1775, for example, a census of the terra-firma provinces of Venice showed in that narrow territory no less than 45,773 priests, or one to every fifty inhabitants, while in the kingdom of Naples, exclusive of Sicily, there were, in 1769, one to every seventy-six.1564 Such overcrowding as this was not only in itself an efficient cause of disorder, but intensified incalculably the power of infection.
The virtues of the clergy, therefore, could offer but a feeble barrier to the spirit of innovation when the passions of the French Revolution were brought to bear upon the immunities and distinctive laws of the church. The attack commenced on that which had been the strength, but which was now the weakness, of the ecclesiastical establishment. As early as the 10th of August, 1789, preliminary steps were taken in the National Assembly to appropriate the property of the church to meet the fearful deficit which had been the efficient cause of calling together the high council of the nation. This property was estimated as covering one-fifth of the surface of France, yielding with the tithes an annual revenue of three hundred millions of francs. So vast an amount of wealth, perverted for the most part from its legitimate purposes, offered an irresistible temptation to desperate financiers, and yet it was a prelate who made the first direct attack upon it. On the 10th of October, 1789, Talleyrand, then Bishop of Autun, introduced a motion to the effect that it should be devoted to the national wants, subject to the proper and necessary expenses for public worship; and on the 2d of November the measure was adopted by a vote of 568 to 346. This settled the principle, though the details of a transaction of such magnitude were only perfected by successive acts during the two following years. One of the earliest results was the secularization of those ecclesiastics whose labors did not entitle them to support, a preliminary necessary to the intended appropriation of their princely revenues. This was accomplished by an act of February 13th, 1790, by which the religious orders were suppressed, monastic vows were declared void, and a moderate annuity accorded to the unfortunates thus turned adrift upon the world.
The great body of the parochial clergy, patriotic in their aspirations, and suffering from the abuses of power, had hailed the advent of the Revolution with joy; and their assistance had been invaluable in rendering the Tiers-État supreme in the National Assembly. These measures, however, assailing their dearest interests and privileges, aroused them to a sense of the true tendency of the movement to which they had contributed so powerfully. A breach was inevitable between them and the partisans of progress. Every forward step embittered the quarrel. It was impossible for the one party to stay its course, or for the other to assent to acts which daily became more menacing and revolutionary. Forced, therefore, into the position of reactionaries, the clergy ere long became objects of suspicion and soon after of persecution. The progressives devised a test-oath, obligatory on all ecclesiastics, which should divide those who were loyal to the Revolution from the contumacious, and lists were kept of both classes.1565 Harmless as the oath was in appearance, when it was tendered, in December, 1790, five-sixths of the clergy throughout the kingdom refused it. Those who yielded to the pressure were termed assermentés, the recusants insermentés or réfractaires, and the latter, of course, at once became the determined opponents of the new régime, the more dangerous because they were the only influential partisans of reaction belonging to the people. To their efforts were attributed the insurrections which in La Vendée and elsewhere threatened the most fearful dangers. They were accordingly exposed to severe legislation. A decree of November 29, 1791, deprived them of their stipends and suspended their functions; another of May 27, 1792, authorized the local authorities to exile them on the simple denunciation of twenty citizens. Under the Terror their persons were exposed to flagrant cruelties, and a prêtre réfractaire was generally regarded, ipso facto, as an enemy to the Republic.
Under these circumstances, sacerdotal marriage came to be looked upon as a powerful lever to disarm or overthrow the hostility of the church, and also as a test of loyalty or disloyalty. Yet the steps by which this conclusion was reached were very gradual. In the early stages of the Revolution, while it was still fondly deemed that the existing institutions of France could be purified and preserved, the National Assembly was assailed with petitions asking that the privilege of marriage should be extended to the clergy.1566 These met with no response, even after the suppression of the monastic orders. As late as September, 1790, when the Abbé Professor Cournand, of the Collège de France, made a motion in favor of sacerdotal marriage in the assembly of the district of St. Etienne du Mont in Paris, the question, after considerable debate, was laid aside as beyond the competence of that body. It was not until September 3d, 1791, that Mirabeau introduced into the Assembly a decree providing that no profession or vocation should debar a citizen from marriage or be considered as incompatible with marriage, and forbidding the public officials and notaries from refusing to ratify any marriage contract on such pretext. Though no allusion was made in this to ecclesiastics, its object was evident, and was so admitted in the eloquent speech with which he urged its adoption—a speech which contained a very telling résumé of the arguments in favor of priestly marriage, but which, in its glowing anticipations of the benefits to be expected from the measure, affords a somewhat lamentable contrast to the meagreness of the realization.1567 The principle, when once established, was considered of sufficient importance to deserve recognition in the Constitution of September, 1791, a section in the preamble of which declares that the law does not recognize religious vows or any engagements contrary to the rights of nature or to the constitution,1568 and this was followed, as Mirabeau had proposed, by a decree of September 20, 1791, which, in enumerating the obstacles to marriage, does not allude to monastic vows or holy orders.
Professor Cournand was probably the first man of position and character to take advantage of the privilege thus permitted, and his example was followed by many ecclesiastics who had won an honorable place in the church, in literature, and in science. Among them may be mentioned the Abbé Gaudin of the Oratoire, the author of a work already alluded to on the evils of celibacy, who in 1792 represented La Vendée in the Legislative Assembly, and who in 1805 did not hesitate to publish a little volume entitled “Avis à mon fils, âgé de sept ans”—although, in the preface to his work in 1781, he had described himself as long past the age of the passions. Even bishops yielded to the temptation. Loménie, coadjutor of his uncle the Archbishop of Sens, Torné Bishop of Bourges, Massieu of Beauvais, and Lindet of Evreux were publicly married. Many nuptials of this kind were celebrated with an air of defiance. Pastors announced their approaching weddings to their flocks in florid rhetoric, as though assured of finding sympathy for the assertion of the triumph of nature over the tyranny of man. Others presented themselves with their brides at the bar of the National Convention, as though to demonstrate that they were good citizens, who had thrown off all reverence for the obsolete traditions of the past.
A nation maddened and torn by the extremes of hope, of rage, and of terror, which met the triumphal march of three hundred and fifty thousand hostile bayonets with the heads of its king and queen, which blazoned forth to Europe its irrevocable breach with the past by instituting festivals in honor of a new Supreme Being and parading a courtesan through the streets of Paris as the Goddess of Reason, was not likely to employ much tenderness in coercing its internal enemies; and chief among these it finally numbered the ministers of religion. To them it soon applied the marriage test. To marry was to acknowledge the supremacy of the civil authority, and to sunder allegiance to foreign domination; celibacy was at the least a tacit adherence to the enemy, and a mute protest against the new régime. Matrimony, therefore, rose into importance as at once a test and a pledge, and every effort was made to encourage it. Among the records of the revolutionary tribunal is the trial of Mahue, Curé of S. Sulpice, Aug. 13, 1793, accused of having written a pamphlet against priestly marriage, and he was only acquitted on the ground that his crime had been committed prior to the adoption of the law of July 19, 1793.1569 A decree of November 19, 1793, relieved from exile or imprisonment all priests who could show that their banns had been published, and when, soon afterwards, at the height of the popular frenzy, the Convention sent its deputies throughout France with instructions to crush out every vestige of the dreaded reaction, those emissaries made celibacy the object of their especial attacks. Thus, in the Department of the Meuse, deputy De la Croix announced that all priests who were not married should be placed under surveillance; while in Savoy the harsh measures taken against the clergy were modified in favor of those who married by permitting them to remain under surveillance. One zealous deputy ordered a pastor to be imprisoned until he could find a wife, and another released a canon from jail on his pledging himself to marry. Many of those thus forced into matrimony were decrepit with years, and chose brides whose age secured them from all suspicions of yielding to the temptations of the flesh. Such was the venerable Martin of Marseilles, who, after seeing his bishop and two priests, his intimate friends, led to the scaffold, took, at the age of 76, a wife nearly 60 years old. As an unfortunate ecclesiastic, who had thus succeeded in weathering the storm, fairly expressed it, in defending himself against the reproaches of a returned emigré bishop, he took a wife to serve as a lightning rod. These unwilling bridegrooms not infrequently deposited with a notary or a trusty friend a protest against the violence to which they had yielded, and a declaration that their relations with their wives should be merely those of brother and sister.
Yet in this curious persecution the officials only obeyed the voice of the excited people. The press, the stage, all the organs of public opinion, were unanimous in warring with celibacy, ridiculing it as a fanatical remnant of superstition, and denouncing it as a crime against the state. The popular societies were especially vehement in promulgating these ideas. The Congrès fraternel of Ausch, in September, 1793, ordered the local clubs to enlighten the benighted minds of the populace on the subject, and to exclude from membership all priests who should not marry within six months. A petition to the National Assembly from the republicans of Auxerre demanded that all ecclesiastics who persisted in remaining single should be banished; while a more truculent address from Condom urged imperiously that celibacy should be declared a capital crime, and that the death-penalty should be enforced with relentless severity. In times so terrible, when suspicion was conviction and conviction death, and when such were the views of those who swayed public affairs, it is not to be wondered at if many pious churchmen, unambitious of the crown of martyrdom, thought matrimony preferable to the guillotine or the noyade.
Indeed, the only source of surprise is that so few were found to betray their convictions. In the vast body of the Gallican church it is estimated that only about 2000 marriages of men in orders took place, after the reign of terror had rendered it a measure of safety. In addition to this, about 500 nuns were also married; and though this proportion is larger, it is still singularly small when we consider that these poor creatures, utterly unfitted by habit or education to take care of themselves, were suddenly ejected from their peaceful retreats, and cast upon a world which was raging in convulsions so terrible.1570
This is doubtless attributable to the steadfast resistance which the better part of the clergy made to the innovation, in spite of the danger of withstanding the popular frenzy, and in disregard of the laws which denounced such opposition. Even the assermentés, who had pledged themselves to the Revolution by taking the oath of allegiance, were mostly unfavorable to the abrogation of celibacy, and the position thus maintained by the clergy gave tone to such of the people as retained enough of devout feeling still to frequent the churches and partake of the mysteries of religion. The existence of an active and determined opposition is revealed by an act of August 16th, 1792, guaranteeing the salaries of all married priests, thus showing that, in some places at least, their stipends had been withheld. Many pastors, indeed, were driven from their parishes by their congregations, in consequence of marriage, to put an end to which a decree of September 17th, 1793, ordered the communes to continue payment of salaries in all such cases of ejection.
There were not wanting courageous ecclesiastics who opposed the innovation by every means in their power. Although Gobel, Bishop of Paris, a creature of the Revolution, favored the marriages of his clergy, a portion of his curates openly and vigorously denounced them, and Gratien, Archbishop of Rouen, addressed to him a severe reproach for his criminal weakness. The same Gratien excommunicated one of his priests for marrying, and published, July 24th, 1792, an instruction directed especially against such unions. For this he was thrown into prison, where he was long confined. Fauchet, of Bayeux, for the same offence, was reported to the Convention, but was fortunate enough to elude the consequences. Philibert, of Sedan, issued, January 20th, 1793, a pastoral in which he more cautiously argued against the practice, and, after a long persecution, he was lucky to escape with a decree of costs against him. Pastorals to the same effect were also promulgated by Clément of Versailles, Héraudin of Châteauroux, Sanadon of Oléron, Suzor of Tours, and others.
The Convention was not disposed to tolerate proceedings such as these. To put a stop to them, it adopted, July 19th, 1793, a law punishing with deprivation and exile all bishops who interfered in any way with the marriage of their clergy. For a while this appears to have put a stop to open opposition, but when the reign of terror was past, and the Catholics saw a prospect of reorganizing the distracted church, one of their earliest efforts was directed to the restoration of celibacy. On the 15th of March, 1795, some assermentés bishops, members of the Convention, issued from Paris an encyclical letter to the faithful, in which they denounced sacerdotal marriage in the strongest terms. Those who entered into such unions were declared unworthy of confidence; the fearful constraint under which they had sought refuge in matrimony was pronounced to be no justification, and even renunciation of their wives was not admitted as entitling them to absolution for the one unpardonable sin.1571 In a second letter, issued December 15th of the same year, this denunciation was repeated in even stronger terms.
In these manifestoes the bishops did not speak by authority. They could not threaten or command, for they were acting beyond or in opposition to the law. With the progress of reaction they became bolder. In 1797 the church ventured to hold a national council, in which it forbade the nuptial benediction to those who were in orders or were bound by monastic vows, thus reducing their marriages to the mere civil contract, and depriving them of all the sanction of religion. The local synods which, encouraged by the fall of the Directory, were held in 1800, adopted these principles as a matter of course, and took measures to enforce them. That of Bourges even prohibited the churching of women who were wives of ecclesiastics.
This condemnation of the married clergy carried despair and desolation into the households of those who had offended, and upon whom the door of reconciliation was so sternly closed. Grégoire of Blois, a leading actor in all these scenes, records the innumerable appeals received from the unfortunates, who, torn by remorse and thus repudiated by the church, begged in vain for the mercy which was incompatible with the respect due to the ancient and inviolable canons.
All this, however, was merely local action. The Gallican church had not yet been reunited to Rome. In reconstructing a system of social order, Napoleon speedily recognized the necessity of religion in the state, and, despite the opposition of those who still believed in the Republic, the Concordat of 1801 restored France to its place in the hierarchy of Latin Christianity. There is nothing in the Concordat interfering with the right of the priest, as a citizen, to contract marriage; but as, in all affairs purely ecclesiastical, the internal regulation and discipline of the church were necessarily left to itself, the rights of the priest, as a priest, became of course subject to the received rules of the church, which could thus refuse the nuptial benediction, and suspend the functions of any one contravening its canons. In consequence of the power thus restored, when the question soon after arose as to the legality of sacerdotal marriages contracted during the troubles, the Cardinal-legate Caprara issued rescripts to those whose unions were anterior to the Concordat, depriving them of their priestly character, reducing them to the rank of laymen, and empowering the proper officials to absolve them and remarry them to the wives whom they had so irregularly wedded. This created a strong feeling of indignation among the prelates who had carried the tabernacle through the wilderness, and who, while opposing such marriages most strenuously, regarded this intervention of papal authority as a direct assault upon the liberties of the Gallican church. Their time was past, however, and their denunciations of this duplication of the sacrament were of no avail. Yet the legality of such marriages, and the unimpaired right of priests to contract them, were asserted and proved by Portalis, in his masterly speech of April 15th, 1802, before the Corps Législatif, advocating the adoption of the Concordat as a law, although he admitted that the duties of the priesthood and the feeling of the people rendered sacerdotal celibacy desirable.1572
Notwithstanding the authority thus restored to the church, and the certainty of ecclesiastical penalties following such infraction of the Tridentine articles of faith, the practice which had been introduced could not be immediately eradicated. Priests were constantly contracting marriage, and the question gave considerable trouble to the government, which hesitated for some time as to the policy to be pursued. Portalis, in 1802, as we have seen, declared the full legality of such marriages, and the unimpaired right of ecclesiastics to contract them; and the provisions of the code respecting marriage, adopted in 1803, make no allusions to vows or religious engagements as causing incapacity.1573 Yet in 1805, when Daviaux, Archbishop of Bordeaux, opposed the application of a priest named Boisset to the civil authorities for a marriage contract, Portalis, then minister of religious affairs, on being appealed to, replied that the government would not allow its officers to register such contracts. The local administrations sometimes assented to such applications and sometimes referred them to the central authority, until at length, in 1807, a definite conclusion was promulgated. This was to the effect that although the civil law was silent as regards such marriages, yet they were condemned by public opinion. The government considered them fraught with danger to the peace of families, as the powerful influence of the pastor could be perverted to evil purposes, and, if seduction could be followed by marriage, that influence would be liable to great abuse. The emperor therefore declared that he could not tolerate marriage on the part of those who had exercised priestly functions since the date of the Concordat. As for those who had abandoned the ministry previous to that period and had not since resumed it, he left them to their own consciences. Thus, in practice, although marriage was regarded as purely a civil institution, a limitation was introduced which was not authorized by the code, which rested solely upon the authority of the emperor, and which, far from indicating respect to the church, was a flagrant insult. As Napoleon withdrew himself more and more from the principles of the new order of things, we find him disposed to take even stronger ground in opposition to the civil privileges accorded to the priesthood by the Concordat. The question of sacerdotal marriage continued to present itself under perplexing shapes, and at length the emperor, on the eve of his downfall, perhaps with a view to propitiate the sacerdotal power, proposed to apply to married priests the penalty imposed by the law on bigamy.1574 It was too late, however; the empire was rapidly vanishing, and these suggestions were soon forgotten in the hurrying march of events.1575