Marriage and Celibacy of the Clergy

• General:
  • 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia: (Read with caution)

  • Henry Charles Lea: History of Sacerdotal Celibacy, (1867). University Books, 1966. The standard, though now century-and-a-half old, reference on the subject.
    • Henry Charles Lea Papers Description of the collection at the University of Pennsylvania. --- Penn
  • Ann Llewellyn Barstow: Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy -- The Eleventh Century Debate, (1982). New York: Edward Mellen, 1982.
  • Michael Frassetto, editor: Medieval Purity and Piety, (1998). New York: Garland, 1998. Large collection of scholarly essays documenting the evolution of the celibate clerical ideal in the West, primarily in the Western Empire from Carolingian times through the High Middle Ages.

• Some pre-Schism advocates of clerical celibacy: St. Wulfstan II;

• Over-opposition to priestly celibacy: Priestly celibacy in the Orthoox Church is an option. Just as there were successful efforts in the West (and unsuccessful ones in the East) to make this option a requirement, so there were opposite efforts in the IV Century (and, in the West, again at the Reformation) to prohibit it. These efforts are especially associated with Jovinian and Vigilantius.
  • St. Jerome: Against Vigilantius, ii