Excerpt from History of Latin Christianity, Vol. 6 of 9: Including That of the Popes to the Pontificate of Nicolas V The fatal question of the celibacy of the clergy worked in both ways to the prejudice of their autho Cehbacy rity. The married clergy, on the whole no Clem doubt the more moral, were acting in violation of the rules of the Church, and were subject to the Opprobrious accusation of living in concubinage. The validity of their ministrations was denied by the more austere the doctrines of men charged with such grievous error lost their proper weight. The unmarried obeyed the out ward rule, but by every account, not the bitter satire of enemies alone but the reluctant and melancholy ad mission of the most gentle and devout, in general so flagrantly violated the severer principles of the Church, that their teaching, if they attempted actual teaching, must have fallen dead on the minds of the people. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.