Note 191 — VII. MONACHISM.
Reading edition
If further proof of this be required, beyond what has already been incidentally adduced, it is to be found in the 19th canon of the council of Ancyra, held about the year 314. By this, the vow of celibacy or virginity when broken only rendered the offender incapable of receiving holy orders. He was to be treated as a “digamus,” showing evidently that no punishment was inflicted, beyond the disability which attached to second marriages.
Even in the time of St. Augustin monks were frequently married, as we learn from his remarks concerning the heretics who styled themselves Apostolici and who gloried in their superior asceticism—“eo quod in suam communionem non reciperent utentes conjugibus et res proprias possidentes; quales habet Catholica [ecclesia] et monachos et clericos plurimos.”—Augustin. de Hæresib. No. XL.
Even Epiphanius, the ardent admirer of virginity, when controverting the errors of the same sect, declares that those who cannot persevere in their vows had better marry and reconcile themselves by penitence to the church rather than to sin in secret—“Melius est lapsum a cursu palam sibi uxorem sumere secundum legem et a virginitate multo tempore pœnitentiam agere et sic rursus ad ecclesiam induci, etc.”—Panar. Hæres. LXI.
We shall see hereafter how long it took to enforce the strict segregation of the cenobite from the world.