>
>
>Hedwig, widow (1243): Aunt of St Elizabeth of Hungary - after bearing
>some children, she convinced her husband to agree to a celibate
>marriage - after 1209 she spent most of her life based at Trebnitz
>monastery, but spent her time administering her many activities aiding
>the poor; noted for ascetic living and working of miracles.
>
May I respectfully submit that we medievalists, to whom the subject is one
of active scholarly interest, have a vested interest in being purists about
the word "celibate." It means "unmarried" and therefore a celibate marriage
is a contradiction in terms and a celibate clergy is not necessarily a
chaste clergy. Chaste marriage has sometimes been used to describe a
marriage in which sexual relations have been sacrificed but that raises
another set of semantic problems. I myself prefer encratic, an adjective
derived from encrateia, a Greek term commonly used among Christians in the
early period.
Jo Ann
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