Letters of Leo the Great 4.2–12.3

The husband of a widow, and one who has been the husband of more than one wife, are to be kept from the sacred ministry. What kind of man ought to be associated with the ministry of the sacred altar, once the respectability of each one's birth and character has been established, we have learned both from the teaching of the Apostle and from the divine precept and from the rules of the canons; from these we find that many of the brothers have turned aside and strayed completely. For it is established that husbands of widows have come to the priesthood; and that some also, who have had numerous marriages and a life too free for every licence, have been allowed into the sacred order, the approaches being opened indiscriminately, against that voice of the blessed Apostle by which he cries out to such men, saying, “the husband of one wife,” and against that precept of the ancient law by which it is said and provided: “Let the priest take a virgin as wife, not a widow, not one divorced.” We order, therefore, by the authority of the apostolic see, that all such as have been admitted be kept from ecclesiastical offices and from the priestly name; for they cannot claim for themselves that of which, through what stood in their way, they were not capable. We specially claim for ourselves the care of this inquiry, so that whatever has perhaps been done in these matters may be corrected and may not be allowed to be done any more, and that no excuse may arise from ignorance; although it has never been lawful for a bishop to be ignorant of what has been defined by the rules of the canons. These things, then, we have sent in writing to your provinces through Innocent, Legitimus, and Segetius, our brothers and fellow bishops, so that what is known to have sprouted wrongly may be pulled up by the roots, and no tares may spoil the Lord's harvest. For what is sound will yield abundant fruit only if those things that usually choke the young crop are cut away the more diligently.

For we wish such men to be made priests for the Lord as fit all that has been defined by the ecclesiastical canons: that bishops, presbyters, and deacons be husbands of one wife, according to the judgment of the blessed Apostle, and that they have taken her, according to the precepts of the law, as a virgin, not a widow, not one divorced, as the writing of the law testifies. Nor let anyone think that he can come to the priesthood who before baptism, when the wife he had died, took another again after he had been renewed by the grace of baptism; since by baptism sins are blotted out, the number of wives is not abolished. Nor will he be able to put this forward as an excuse to such a degree that he could deny that he is the father of the children he begot before baptism. For a wife who is taken by the precept of the law cannot be counted among the sins that are washed away in baptism.

Carry round all the things you see enjoined on your care, keeping them as profitable for your reward, and resisting those who strive to undermine the discipline of the canons. Let the venerable sanction of the divine law and, more particularly, the decrees of the canons be observed. Throughout the provinces entrusted to you, let such men be consecrated priests for the Lord as are supported only by the merits of their life and of their clerical order. Allow nothing to be lawful for personal favour, nothing for ambition, nothing for bought votes. Let those who are to be ordained be examined very carefully and be trained in ecclesiastical disciplines through a long course of life; and only if everything established by the holy Fathers fits them, and they have kept what we read the blessed apostle Paul commanded about such men, that he be the husband of one wife, and that he took her as a virgin, as the authority of the divine law provides. This we wish to be kept so carefully that we take away room for all excuses: let no one believe that he can come to the priesthood who took a wife before he obtained the grace of Christ and, when she died, joined another to himself after baptism. For that wife cannot be denied, nor the number of the former marriage abolished; and he is as much the father of the sons he begot from her before baptism as of those he is known to have begotten from the other after baptism. For as sins and things known to be unlawful are abolished by the washing of baptism, so things granted or lawful by the precept of the law are not blotted out.

For since the Apostle says that, among the other rules of election, that man is to be ordained bishop who is established to have been or to be the husband of one wife, this precept has always been held so sacred that the same condition was understood to be kept also regarding the wife of a priest to be chosen: that she should not perhaps, before she came into marriage with him who had had no other wife, have known marriage with another man. Who, then, would dare to tolerate what is perpetrated to the injury of so great a sacrament, when this great and venerable mystery has not lacked even the statutes of the divine law, by which it is plainly defined that the priest is to take a virgin as wife, and that she who is to be a priest's wife is not to know the bed of another husband? For even then the spiritual marriage of Christ and the church was prefigured in the priests, so that, since the husband is the head of the wife, the Bride of the Word may learn to know no other husband than Christ, who rightly chooses one, loves one, and joins no other besides her to his fellowship. If, then, even in the Old Testament this form of priestly marriages was kept, how much more ought we, established under the grace of the Gospel, to serve the apostolic precepts, so that, however endowed with good character and adorned with holy works anyone may be found, he should by no means ascend either to the grade of deacon, or to the honour of the presbyterate, or to the summit of the episcopate, if it becomes clear either that he himself was not the husband of one wife or that his wife was not the wife of one husband?