The Anatomy of Melancholy

Read many such accounts, and then ask what should be done: should this vow be broken or not? No, says Bellarmine, chapter 38 of his book On Monks: “It is better to fornicate and burn than to pass from a vow of celibacy into marriage”—better to burn or stray than to break your vow.

And Coster, in his Handbook, “On the Celibacy of Priests,” says it is absolutely “a graver sin” for a priest to marry than to keep a concubine at home. Gregory of Valencia maintains the same in chapter 6, “On Celibacy,” as did those Essenes and Montanists of old.

Indeed, many people bound by vows, falsely convinced of the merit and holiness of this condition, will die sooner than marry, even if marriage would save their lives. In the year 1419, with Pius II as pope, James Rossa, nephew of the king of Portugal and then archbishop-elect of Lisbon, was very ill at Florence. When his physicians told him that his disease required him either to sleep with a woman, marry or die, he cheerfully chose to die. Now they praised him for it.

But Saint Paul teaches otherwise: “Better to marry than to burn.” And as Saint Jerome solemnly puts it, “The laws of the Caesars are one thing, Christ’s another; Papinian commands one thing, our Paul another.” There is a difference between God’s ordinances and human laws.

And therefore Cyprian, Letter 8, boldly declares: “Whatever is established by human madness to violate the divine order is impious, adulterous and sacrilegious.” What people devise and ordain in their own frenzy to thwart God’s laws is abominable, impious, adulterous and sacrilegious.

Georg Witzel, one of their own leading theologians, in his Survey of the Church, page 18, protests against it and against all such rash monastic vows. He would have those concerned seriously consider what they do and whom they admit, “lest they afterwards complain of fruitless sexual transgressions”—lest they repent it in the end.

For, as he continues, you must either allow them concubines or permit them to marry: among three thousand priests you will scarcely find three “who do not fall in love in the course of their lives,” who are free from burning lust. Therefore I conclude that to deprive people of this Christian liberty is unnatural and impious, an excessively severe and inhuman decree.

The little wren, and the titmouse too, The little robin, have their choice; I saw them fly and go together Wherever they wished, all round about, As their natural inclination moved them, And as Nature, their empress and guide, Pleases to provide for every creature.

But man alone—alas, his hard plight!— Is cruelly constrained by nature’s ordinance, Bound by statutes, And barred from all such pleasure. What does this mean? What is this claim Of laws, against every right of nature, To bind people so tightly without cause?