Concubinage among the clergy of Malta and Gozo ca. 1420-1550

Abstract

By the early fifteenth century Western Europe recognised that the Catholic Church did not permit priests to marry - that, in fact, they could not marry, such 'marriages' being regarded as null and void. This did not prevent successive attempts at the later church councils, right down to and including the Council of Trent, to abrogate or, at least, to modify considerably the church requirement of strict clerical celibacy. In any case, as is generally known, evasion was very common throughout later medieval times, most frequently by resort to concubinage. The literature of the time, and university textbooks and other reference works of the present day, all teem with references to the problem.