Additional notes on the campaign to reform the clergy by

enforcing celibacy in the western Christian Church (Hist

033-70)
Although the campaign was begun by Pope Leo IX (1049-1054) and
continued with even greater ferocity by Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085), it took
more than a century to achieve adherence to celibacy, at least technically
(many priests still had concubines).

Gregory VII, in particular, attempted to put pressure on married clergy

by rousing lay people against them in sermons and by working with local
leaders to oust married clergy. For example, in the city of Milan, a group
called the Patarenes began to brutally attack married clergy. The Patarenes,
who held to the (heretical) idea that the sacraments could not be valid if the
priest administering them was not pure, were supported by Pope Gregory VII.
Pope Gregory asked all laity to boycott divine service if a priest conducting it
was known to be unchaste or married.

Abbot Guibert of Nogent wrote from northern France in the early

twelfth century, “At that time (i.e. the time of Pope Gregory VII) the Apostolic
See [the Papacy] was making a fresh attach on married priests; this led to an
outburst of rage against them by people who were so zealous about the
clergy that they angrily demanded that married priests should either be
deprived of their benefices or should cease to perform their priestly duties.”
1
Subsequent Church Councils [Soisson in 1121 and the Second Lateran in
1139] continued to denounce married priests. It was a slow process of
reform. Married priests were still common in England in the mid-twelfth
century, although it had become unacceptable for bishops to be married.

There were many defenders of married clergy, including Italian and

German bishops and also anti-papal intellectuals. A treatise by Wenric of
Trier argued that the attack on married clergy divided families and destroyed
the authority of the paterfamilias. It threatened to destroy the papacy and
was an unwarranted attack on the German nation. The rulers of
Scandinavian kingdoms asked to be exempted from this reform. Others
decried Gregory’s use of the laity to attack married priests. Guido of Ferrara
described his objections to laity who terrorized and murdered priests.

But the anti-Gregorians could also use terror tactics. Many of the
reformers found themselves the object of assassination attempts. The
1
Self and society in Medieval France; the memoirs of Abbot Guibert of Nogent (1064?-c. 1125) edited with an introd. and
notes by John F. Benton. ( 1970), p. 51
Church responded by declaring clerical wives slaves of the Church and
decreeing that sons of clergy could not take orders, unless they were to
become monks. There were desperate actions taken on the part of priests’
wives. Some committed suicide; others physically attacked bishops; one
reportedly poisoned the wife of the lord who forced her from her husband. 2
The life of a former priest’s wife and her children was bleak, and often their
reputation was ruined in addition to their economic circumstances.

Despite all the turmoil, the Church gradually made progress, and by
the year 1200 there were few, if any, married priests, and the Church was
making headway in declaring that even deacons and subdeacons could not
have wives.

2
Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Married priests and the reforming papacy: the eleventh-century
debates (1982)