Distinction LVI

GRATIAN. Part I. The sons of priests also are not to be admitted to sacred offices. Hence Pope Urban II says:

We remove the sons of priests from sacred ministries unless they have been proved to live religiously either in monasteries or among canons. Part II. GRATIAN. But this is to be understood concerning those who were imitators of their father’s incontinence. Yet if honesty of morals has made them commendable, by examples and authority they can become not only priests but even high priests.

[PALEA.

Pope Hosius was the son of Stephen the subdeacon. Pope Boniface was the son of Jocundus the priest. Pope Felix was the son of Felix, priest of the title of Fasciola. Pope Agapitus was the son of Gordian the priest. Pope Theodore was the son of Theodore, bishop of the city of Jerusalem. Pope Silverius was the son of Silverius, Bishop of Rome. Pope Deusdedit was the son of Stephen the subdeacon. ] For Felix III, a Roman by nation, was born of his father Felix the priest. Likewise Gelasius, an African by nation, was born of his father, Bishop Valerius. Likewise Agapitus, a Roman by nation, drew his origin from his father Gordian the priest. Very many others also are found who, born of priests, presided over the Apostolic See. Hence Augustine says [Book On the Good of Marriage, c. 16]:

From whatever source human beings are born, if they do not follow the vices of their parents, they will be honorable and saved. For the seed of a human being from whatever human being is God’s creation, and it will go badly for those who use it badly; it itself will never be evil. Just as the good children of adulterers are no defense of adulterers, so the bad children of married persons are no crime of marriages.

Likewise John Chrysostom, above on Matthew, homily III [c. 1]. Let us never blush at the vices of our parents, but let us seek that one thing and always embrace it, namely virtue. For a person of this kind, even if he has a foreign mother, even if one polluted by fornication or defiled by any disgrace of this kind, will nevertheless be darkened neither by her lowliness nor polluted by her crime. For if his prior life by no means stains the fornicator himself when converted to better things, much more is one born of a prostitute and adulteress not discolored by the reproaches of his parents if he is adorned by his own virtue. Likewise: §1. One is altogether not—not at all—to be praised or blamed either for the virtue or the vice of one’s parents; no one is truly obscure or illustrious from that. Indeed, let us say something even more considered and explicit: I do not know how, but one shines more who, though from parents altogether alien to virtues, has himself nevertheless been wonderful by the power of God.

Likewise Jerome in the epistle against Rufinus. To be born from adultery is not the fault of the one born, but of the one who begets. Just as in seeds the earth that warms them does not sin, nor the seed that is cast into the furrows, nor the moisture and heat by which the tempered grains sprout into a shoot, but, for example, the thief and robber who by fraud and force seizes the seeds, so the earth—that is, the womb—receives the human kind, receives what is its own and warms it; what has been warmed it gives bodily form; what has been given bodily form it distinguishes into members; and amid those straits of the sacred belly the hand of God always works, and the same one is creator of body and soul. Do not despise the goodness of the potter who fashioned you and made you as he willed. He is the power of God and the wisdom of God, who built for himself a house in the womb of the Virgin. Jephthah, numbered among holy men by the Apostle’s voice, is the son of a prostitute. Esau from Rebecca and Isaac, hairy in mind as in body, degenerates like good wheat into darnel and oats, because the cause of vices and virtues is not in seeds but in the will of the one born.

Likewise Augustine [Against Faustus, Book XXII, c. 64]. That bridegroom who was to call the good and the bad to the wedding, corresponding to those invited, willed also to be born of the good and the bad, so that by his example they might learn that the iniquities of their parents cannot harm them.

Likewise Gregory [to Columbus, Bishop of Numidia, Book X, epistle 8]. It is proved sufficiently perverse and contrary to ecclesiastical judgment that anyone should be deprived in vain because of the desires of certain persons, when his own fault or crime does not cast him down from the office or grade in which he serves.

Likewise Jerome. Our Lord Jesus Christ willed to be born not only from foreigners but even from adulterous unions, furnishing great confidence to us that, in whatever manner we are born, provided that we imitate his footsteps, we are not separated from his body, whose members we have been made through faith. And just as he, the true pontiff, was born from adulterous unions, so anyone, in whatever order he was born, provided that he has perfect faith, fulfills in works what he holds by faith, is lettered, and is the husband of one wife, is by no means repelled from the priesthood. For Judah the patriarch lay with Tamar his daughter-in-law, and from that intercourse were born Perez and Zerah; from there afterward Salmon, who was a leader in the desert; from there Obed and from there Boaz; from there afterward Jesse, who was the father of David. From that progeny, moreover, the origin of Christ, who is the true priest, is drawn; and therefore, if we are his sons, we ought to imitate the things he did.

Likewise Augustine, On the One Baptism [Against the Donatists, Book I, c. 15]. That Ishmael was separated from the people of God was not caused by his mother being a slave woman, but by fraternal discord; nor did the power of the wife, whose son he rather was, profit him, because by her marital rights he was both sown in the slave woman and received from the slave woman. Part III. GRATIAN. To the contrary, Boniface the Martyr to the King of the English:

If the nation of the English—as has been divulged throughout these provinces, is cast against us as a reproach in Francia and Italy, and is set before us as a reproach by the pagans themselves—has lived a foul life after the likeness of the Sodomite nation, despising lawful marriages, committing adultery, and luxuriating, it is to be thought that from such a mingling of prostitutes degenerate and ignoble peoples, raging with lust, are to be begotten; and that at last the whole people, inclining toward worse and more ignoble things, is finally to come forth neither strong in secular war, nor steadfast in faith, nor honorable to human beings, nor lovable to God, just as happened to other nations of Spain and to the peoples of Provence and the Burgundians, who, departing from God in this way, fornicated until the judge of such crimes permitted avenging punishments to come and rage through ignorance of God’s law and through the Saracens. Hence the same Urban, making a distinction at the end of the preceding chapter, added:

Unless they have been proved to live religiously either in monasteries or among canons.

Likewise Alexander II. By apostolic authority we command you that, if you prove the one who was elected by the Church to be worthier than the other and his election to be canonical, supported by our authority you shall consecrate him. For because he is called the son of a priest, if the other virtues converge in him, we do not reject him, but, his merits supporting him, receive him with forbearance. GRATIAN. What is said concerning the sons of priests, however, seems to have been introduced by dispensation of the Church, and what is introduced by dispensation cannot be drawn into the consequence of a rule. Hence Urban [Pope II] writes to Bartholomew, Archbishop of Tours:

We do not reject the bishop-elect of Le Mans because he is called the son of a priest, if the other virtues converge in him; rather, his merits supporting him, we receive him patiently—not, however, so that this be assumed as a rule for the future, but counsel is being taken for the Church’s peril for the present time. GRATIAN. Therefore, when those born of priests are read above to have been promoted to the highest pontificate, they are to be understood as born not of fornication but of lawful marriages, which were permitted to priests everywhere before the prohibition and are proved to be permitted to them in the Eastern Church even to the present day. §1. But that the vice of origin is denied to be imputed to the offspring seems contrary to that sentence, “The children of adulterers are an abomination to the Lord.” Yet just as was said above concerning the sons of priests, so this also seems to be understood concerning the children of adulterers: those are said to be an abomination to the Lord to whom their fathers’ crimes descend by hereditary succession. Similarly that statement of Urban is to be understood which he writes to Patronus, Bishop of León:

Because, coming in simplicity to the Apostolic See, you humbly confessed a sin that seemed to impede the office of your pontificate—namely, that you were begotten of an unlawful mother whom your father is known to have known while his own wife was living—we, admonished by the grace of apostolic gentleness, recognizing you to be free from the other crimes that impede the priesthood both by your profession and by the testimony of the brethren who are with you, and hearing that your life is religious, absolve you from the bond of this sin and confirm you in the priestly office received.