at least in the West, proceeded in 385 from the Roman church in the form of a decretal letter of the bishop Siricius to Himerius, bishop of Tarragona in Spain, who had referred several questions of discipline to the Eoman bishop for decision. It is significant of the connection between the celibacy of the clergy and the interest of the hier- archy, that the first properly papal decree, which was issued in the tone of supreme authority, imposed such an unscriptural, unnatural, and morally dangerous restriction. Siricius con- tested the appeal of dissenting parties to the Mosaic law, on the ground that the Christian priesthood has to stand not merely for a time, but perpetually, in the service of the sanc- tuary, and that it is not hereditary, like the Jewish ; and he ordained that second marriage and marriage with a widow ' Can. 3, 4, and especially 12, 13, and 48. In the latter canon bishops are directed, aftei" ordination, to commit their wives to a somewhat remote cloister, though to provide for their support. 248 THIRD PEKIOD. A.D. 311-590, should incapacitate for ordination, and that continuance in the married state after ordination should be punished with deposi- tion.* And with this punishment he threatened not bishops only, but also presbyters and deacons. Leo tlie Great subse- quently extended the requirement of celibacy even to the sub- diaconate. The most eminent Latin church fathers, Ambrose, Jerome, and even Augustine — thougii the last Math mure moderation — advocated the celibacy of priests. Augustine, with Eusebius of Vercella before him (370), united their clergy in a cloister life, and gave them a monastic stamp ; and Martin of Tours, who was a monk from the first, carried his monastic life into his episcopal office, llie councils of Italy, Africa, Spain, and Gaul followed the lead of Rome. The synod of Clermont, for example (a. d. 535), declared in its twelfth can- on : " No one ordained deacon or priest may continue matri- monial intercourse. He is become the brother of her who was his wife. But since some, inflamed with lust, have rejected the girdle of the warfare [of Christ], and returned to marriage intercourse, it is ordered that such must lose their office for- ever." Other councils, like that of Tours, 461, were content with forbidding clergymen, who begat children after ordina- tion, to administer the sacrifice of the mass, and with confining the law of celibacy ad altiorem gradum." But the very fact of the frequent repetition of these enact- ments, and the necessity of mitigating the penalties of trans- gression, show the great difficulty of carrying this unnatural ' Epi?t. ad Ilimerium Episc. Tarracouonsem (in Harduin, Acta Cone. i. 849-850), c '7: "Hi vero, qui illiciti privilegii excusatione nituntur, ut sibi asserant veteri hoc lege concessum : noverint se ab omni ecclesiastico honore, quo indigne usi s«nt, apostolicae sedis auctoritate dejectos. ... Si quilibet episcopus, presbyter atque diaconus, quod non optamus, deinceps fuerit talis inventus,