to the
number of their children.[1] Ecclesiastical legislators, on the other
hand, have frequently favoured the unmarried state; and celibacy,
partial or complete, has been more or less stringently enforced upon the
ministers of different religions; many instances are quoted by H.C. Lea.
The best known, of course, are the Roman Vestals; though here even the
great honours and privileges accorded to these maidens were often
insufficient to keep the ranks filled. In the East, however, this and
other forms of asceticism have always flourished more freely; and the
Buddhist monastic system is not only far older than that of Christendom,
but also proportionately more extensive.[2] In early Judaism, chastity
was indeed enjoined upon the priests at certain solemn seasons; but
there was no attempt to enforce celibacy upon the sacerdotal caste. On
the contrary, all priests were the sons of priests, and the case of
Elizabeth shows that here, as throughout the Jewish people, barrenness
was considered a disgrace. But Alexander's conquests brought the Jews
into contact with Hindu and Greek mysticism; and this probably explains
the growth of the ascetic Essenes some two centuries before the
Christian era. The adherents of this sect, unlike the Pharisees and
Sadducees, were never denounced by Christ, who seems on the contrary to
have had real sympathy with the voluntary celibacy of an exceptional few
(Matt. xix. 12). St Paul's utterances on this subject, though they go
somewhat further, amount only to the assertion that a struggling
missionary body will find more freedom in its work in the absence of
wives and children. At the same time, St Paul claimed emphatically for
himself and the other apostles the right of leading about a wife; and he
names among the qualifications for a bishop, an elder and a deacon,
that he should be "the husband of one wife." Indeed it was freely
admitted by the most learned men of the middle ages and Renaissance that
celibacy had been no rule of the apostolic church; and, though writers
of ability have attempted to maintain the contrary even in modern times,
their contentions are unhesitatingly rejected by the latest Roman
Catholic authority.[3]

The gradual growth of clerical celibacy, first as a custom and then as a
rule of discipline, can be traced clearly enough even through the scanty
records of the first few centuries. The most ascetic Christians began to
question the legality of second marriages on the