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Handout #69 |
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Bishop Paphnutius and the married life of the clergy, at the Council of Nicaea |
| Socrates (380-440
A.D.), a lawyer at Constantinople, takes over from Eusebius of Caesarea by
relating the religious events between 305 A.D. and 439 A.D. As he
reproduces his sources literally, he is an inestimable source of
information.
Paphnutius then was bishop of one of the cities in Upper Thebes: he was a man so favored divinely that extraordinary miracles were done by him. In the time of the persecution he had been deprived of one of his eyes. The emperor honored this man exceedingly, and often sent for him to the palace, and kissed the place where the eye had been torn out ... It seemed fit to the bishops to introduce a new law into the church, that those who were in holy orders, I speak of bishops, presbyters and deacons, should have no conjugal intercourse with the wives whom they had married when they were still laymen. Now when discussion on this matter was impending, Paphnutius having arisen in the midst of the assembly of bishops, earnestly entreated them not to impose so heavy a yoke on the ministers of religion: asserting that 'marriage itself is honorable, and the bed undefiled, urging before God that they ought not to injure the church by too stringent restrictions. 'For all men, he said, 'cannot bear the practice of rigid continence; neither perhaps would the chastity of the wife of each be preserved; and he termed the intercourse of a man with his lawful wife chastity. It would be sufficient, he thought, that such as had previously entered on the their sacred calling should abjure matrimony, according to the ancient tradition of the church: but that none should be separated from her to whom, while yet unordained, he had been united. And these sentiments he expressed, though himself without experience of marriage and, to speak plainly, without ever having known a woman: for from a boy he had been brought up in a monastery, and was specially renowned above all men for his chastity. The whole assembly of the clergy assented to the reasoning of Paphnutius; wherefore they silenced all further debate on this point, leaving it to the discretion of those who were married. Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, I., 11 |
