and elsewhere, bishops finding it impossible to enforce the decree,
frankly licensed the breach of it by individual clergy in return for
an annual payment. It is interesting to note that several important
writers of the age speak with studied moderation on this question. The
great lawyer Gratian admits that in the earlier period of the Church
marriage was allowed to the clergy. The Parisian theologian, Peter
Comestor, publicly taught that the enforcement of the vow of celibacy
on the clergy was a deliberate snare of the devil. The English
historians, Henry of Huntingdon, Matthew Paris, and Thomas of
Walsingham, speak with disapproval of the attempts to enforce it, and
even St. Thomas Aquinas holds that the celibacy of the secular clergy
was a matter of merely human regulation. Thus the protest of the
reformers of the eleventh century in favour of purity of life among
the clergy had met with the smallest possible success, but like all
such protests, it helped to keep alive the idea of a higher standard
of personal and official life until such time as secular circumstances
were more favourable.




CHAPTER V

CANONS AND MONKS


[Sidenote: Secular canons.]

So far, in speaking of the attempted purification of the Church in the
eleventh century, we have dealt merely with the bishops and the