ABSTRACT
Since the pontificate of Gregory VII, the clergy in the western church, in theory at least, had been separated from the laity by their obligation to celibacy. From the perspective of the mid-sixteenth century, John Foxe could still find cause to rejoice in the death of John Hus, over a century before. In the condemnation of Hus, the church might have silenced one individual, Foxe claimed, but divine providence had ensured that the cause for which Hus had died would not perish with him. 'God hath opened the press to preach,' Foxe declared, 'whose voice the Pope is never able to stop with all the puissance of his triple crown. The debate on clerical celibacy cannot be considered in isolation from other key Reformation controversies; most obviously the polemical literature on clerical marriage was heavily influenced by the dispute over the relative authority of Scripture and tradition in Reformation polemic.
