434.] The Pope, having cast his eye on the monks as the basis of his authority, was determined to reduce them under strict rules of obedience, to procure them the credit of sanctity by an appearance of the most rigid mortification, and to break off all their other ties which might interfere with his spiritual policy.

Under pretence, therefore, of reforming abuses which were in some degree unavoidable in the ancient establishments, he had already spread over the southern countries of Europe the severe laws of the monastic life, and began to form attempts towards a like innovation in England.

The favorable opportunity offered itself, (and it was greedily seized,) arising from the weak superstition of Edred, and the violent, impetuous character of Dunstan.
As the bishops and parochial clergy lived apart with their families, and were more connected with the world, the hopes of success with them were fainter, and the pretence for making them renounce marriage was much less plausible.
But a mistaken piety had produced in Italy a new species of monks, called Benedictines; who, carrying farther the plan sible principles of mortification, secluded themselves entirely from the world, renounced all claim to liberty, and made a merit of the most inviolable chastity.
These practices and principles, which superstition at first engendered, were greedily embraced and promoted by the policy of the court of Rome.
The Roman pontiff, who was making every day great advances towards an absolute sovereignty over the ecclesiastics, perceived that the celibacy of the clergy alone could break off entirely their connection with the civil power, and, depriving them of every other object of ambition, engage them to promote, with unceasing industry, the grandeur of their own order.

He was sensible that so long as the monks were indulged in marriage, and were permitted to rear families, they never could be subjected to strict discipline, or reduced to that slavery, under their superiors, which was requisite to procure to the mandates, issued from Rome, a ready and zealous obedience.

Celibacy, therefore, began to be extolled as the indispensable duty of priests; and the pope undertook to make all the clergy, throughout the western world, renounce at once the privilege of marriage; a fortunate policy, but at the same time an undertaking the most difficult of any, since he had the strongest propensities of human nature to encounter, and found that the same connections with the female sex, which generally encourage devotion, were here unfavorable to the success of his project.