Distinction XXXV

GRATIAN. Part I. From which orders twice-married men are prohibited, whether those who had one wife before baptism and another after baptism are reckoned twice-married, and whether those established in sacred orders are permitted to obtain wives have been shown briefly by many authorities. §1. There follows in that apostolic description that one who is to be ordained is to “be sober,” “not given to wine,” which was introduced from the authority of the Old Testament. For ministers of the temple are prohibited from freely drinking wine and strong drink, lest their hearts be weighed down by drunkenness, so that their sense may always be vigorous and subtle, or because a belly heated with wine quickly foams forth into lusts. Hence Noah in drunkenness bared his thighs; wines conquered Lot, whom Sodom did not conquer. §2. The prohibition against being given to wine is to be understood not as being filled with wine once, but frequently. Hence it is also read in the Canons of the Apostles [canons 43 and 42]:

Let a bishop, priest, or deacon serving gambling and drunkenness either desist or certainly be condemned. But let a subdeacon, reader, or singer doing similar things either desist or be deprived of communion. Likewise also a layman.

Likewise Jerome [Book I, Against Jovinian]. From the beginning of the creation of the human race, we neither fed upon meats, gave a repudiation, nor had our foreskins taken from us as a sign, and by this course we arrived at the flood. But after the flood, together with a giving that no one could fulfill, meats were offered to be eaten, the hardness of repudiation was conceded, and the knife of circumcision was applied, as though God’s gift had created in us more than was necessary. But after Christ came at the end of the times and the Omega revealed the Alpha—that is, drew the end back to the beginning—we are neither permitted to give a repudiation, are circumcised, nor eat meats, the Apostle saying: “It is good not to drink wine and not to eat meat.” For wine together with meats was dedicated after the flood.

Likewise from the epistles of the same. Wine is a luxurious thing and drunkenness full of reproach; but everyone who mingles with these will not be wise.

The same, on the prophet Micah [at c. 2]. The prophetic discourse describes the princes of the Church who abound in delicacies and believe that they preserve modesty amid feasts and wanton pleasures, “that they are to be cast out of spacious houses, sumptuous banquets, and foods sought with great labor because of their evil thoughts and works.” And if you wish to know where they are to be cast, read the Gospel: “into the outer darkness, namely, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Is it not confusion and ignominy to preach Jesus crucified, poor and hungry, with stuffed bodies? And to bring forth the doctrine of fasts with reddened cheeks and swollen faces? If we are in the place of the Apostles, let us imitate not only their discourse but their manner of life and abstinence.

[PALEA.

The same to Oceanus, epistle 83. A belly heated with wine quickly foams forth into lusts. Where drunkenness is, there lust and fury rule.]

[PALEA.

The same to Nepotian, On the Life of Clerics. Both the Apostle condemns a priest given to wine and the old law prohibits one. Priests who minister in the temple of God are prohibited from drinking wine and strong drink, lest their hearts be weighed down in surfeiting and drunkenness. In the Hebrew language every drink that can intoxicate is named strong drink. And below: Flee whatever intoxicates and overturns the state of the mind, just as you flee wine. “Do not,” says the Apostle, “be drunk with wine, wherein is luxury.” And above: Let those who serve the altar not drink wine and strong drink. Let the bride of Christ flee wine as poison. Wine and drunkenness are a conflagration.]

[PALEA.

Likewise Prosper, On the Contemplative Life, Book II, c. 22. It is excessive reception of wine, not its nature, that causes and nourishes luxury.]

Likewise Ambrose in the sermon On Fasting. The divine oracle resounds toward the Father. On the sixth day beasts were created, and with the beasts arose the power of eating and the use of foods. Where food began, there the end of the world was made. Where it began not to know its own increases, there the divine works concerning it began to cease. By this sign it was declared that the world would be diminished through those foods through which it ceased to be increased. And below: §1. That we may know fasting is not new, he established there the first law concerning fasting. And below: Up to that point no one had known how to transgress, since the first transgression had not yet arisen. Fasting was enjoined, a law of abstinence by the Lord God; transgression of the law by the devil; fault through food, a hiding place after food; knowledge of infirmity in food, the virtue of strength in fasting. The serpent counsels gluttony; the Lord determines fasting. Thus gluttony expelled the one reigning in paradise; abstinence recalled the wandering one to paradise. And below: §2. At the beginning of the human race drunkenness was unknown. Noah first planted a vineyard; he gave it nature but did not know its power. Thus wine did not spare even its own author. But his drunkenness counsels sobriety to us. For Noah was intoxicated once. When he recognized the evil of drunkenness, he moderated his beast for a remedy; he did not pour it out for vice. §3. Before wine was discovered, however, liberty remained unshaken for all; no one knew how to exact the obedience of servitude from a sharer of his own nature. Envy of a brother’s precedence had indeed already crept in, yet reverence for paternal piety still remained. Piety was injured when drunkenness was mocked. Therefore wines harm not only those whom they tempt, but even more those before whose eyes the drunken members of intoxicated persons are bared. And below: §4. We also read that Lot’s daughters intoxicated their father on the mountain to which they had fled in fear of the conflagration of the Sodomites, and they dwelt in a cave. §5. Thus drunkenness was the origin of incest, the worse offspring of a most wicked mother. §6. But Abraham did not minister wines at his banquet; rather, he sacrificed a calf and displayed butter and milk even to his angelic guests. Rightly, indeed, was the material of sin absent where there was remission of sins. Finally, John announced the Lord, “neither eating bread nor drinking wine.” For one who announces Christ ought to keep himself alien from every incentive of vices.

Likewise from the Council of Agde [c. 41]. Before all things drunkenness, which is the kindling and nurse of all vices, is to be forbidden to clerics. Therefore one who is established to have been drunk is either to be removed from communion for the space of thirty days, as his order permits, or subjected to corporal punishment.