ABSTRACT
This chapter examines whether clerical marriage was considered polluting. While in England both proponents and opponents of clerical celibacy used the language of impurity, the Byzantine canonists, Theodoros Balsamon and Ioannes Zonaras, did not motivate their abstinence in terms of pollution fears, emphasising instead the undefiled nature of the marital bed. In the case of bishops who, like their English counterparts, were expected to observe absolute abstinence, emphasis was placed on respecting the laws and on maintaining a good reputation. Even transgression of the rules of continence among Byzantine clergy did not induce fears of pollution. Sources referred instead to sexual intercourse as a distraction: temporary abstinence was necessary because sexual intercourse could sway the cleric’s mind away from prayer and communion with God. This chapter explains this difference by positing that in Byzantium transgressions of the rules of clerical continence created a smaller discrepancy between law and practice than in the West: (1) Byzantine clerics had more opportunities to play by the rules, combining their ecclesiastical careers with a family; (2) when they ignored the rules it was more difficult to prove and perhaps also more acceptable, because of the positive image of the clerical wife in society and the lack of a reformist drive to separate clerics from the rest of Christian society.
