Author: Earl Evelyn Sperry

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2016-08-31

Total Pages: 72

ISBN-13: 9781333422516

Excerpt from An Outline of the History of Clerical Celibacy in Western Europe: To the Council of Trent At the outset it may be well to warn the reader that in form ing an opinion concerning clerical morality there are certain important facts which should be kept constantly in mind. The written evidence upon the subject which has been preserved seems to indicate that during the Middle Ages and the opening centuries of the modern period the clergy as a class were very immoral. It must be remembered, however, that the period of time under discussion is a long one, extending from the fourth to the sixteenth century, and while the sources of information are comparatively abundant, it is unreasonable to suppose that they give us a fair and adequate picture of the clergy of all Europe for more than a millennium. Further, these sources consist largely of conciliar enactments and of the utterances of those engaged in reform. It is evident that they must be used with caution, for a future student who judged the nine teenth century only by its codes of criminal law and the denun ciatory writings of social reformers would obtain a grotesque idea of its current morality. 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.