Apology of the married clergy
a real letter from XI century
by Ulrich, Bishop of Imola
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND THE LETTER
We know very few things concerning the author of this letter-apology. Ulrich was bishop of Imola (near Ravenna, Italy) from 1053 to 1074, year of his death. In AD 1059 the bishop wrote this letter to Pope Nicholas II, in order to defend his married clergy from the new pro-celibate reforms in the breast of the Roman Church. The epistle's style is redundant and rethoric, typical of some Patristics. In the letter many public people are called to remembrance but without their name, perhaps to not scandalize the Pope, or maybe for they were already well known to the corrispondent.
ULRICH - BY GOD'S GRACE BISHOP OF IMOLA
TO HIS HOLYNESS NICHOLAS THE SECOND, POPE OF OLD ROME
Me, Ulrich, bishop by name, son in love but servant in fear, to the guardian of the Roman See.
As I Had found no sense of the measure, oh father and lord, in your decrees on the continence of clerics, which had recently come to me, fear and sadness troubled me a single feeling. Fear, since it is written: "the opinion of those who command, both right and wrong, must be respected" (St. Gregory the Great, Homily in Evang., II 26,6). In fact, I was worried for those who find it difficult to stick to the Scriptures, because they, who barely obey a just prescription, once they have transgressed the unjust - an oppressive, indeed intolerable disposition of their pastor - would no longer feel bound from the commandments. I was sad and in pain as I thought how much the members needed their head, invalidated by such a large body. What is more serious, what is more worthy of the compassion of the whole Church than you, bishop of the highest See, which is called to herd everyone, you have lost the sense of moderation (1)? And not just from this you have deviated, when you wanted to force the clerics to abandon the marriage with a certain violence, while you should have only exhorted them. Is it not, in the judgment of all the masters of the faith, violence that compels us to obey arbitrary decisions, taken against the gospel rule and the teaching of the Holy Spirit? Since there are plenty of examples of the Old and New Testaments in favor of moderation, you know, after all, and I beg your paternity of not bothering to have anyone mentioned in these pages.
