Note 90 — Chapter XLI · CELIBACY

This opinion was held by Gregory of Nyssa and, in a later time, by John of Damascus. It was opposed by Thomas Aquinas, who maintained that the human race was from the beginning propagated by means of sexual intercourse, but that such intercourse was originally free from all carnal desire (von Eicken, Geschichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung, p. 437 sq.; see also Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ii. 186).