Could members of the religious really get married in Fidelmas time?
Of the numerous and varied questions addressed to the Society, no subject has engendered so many queries than that of clerical marriage. It seems that some readers just cannot accept that there were clerical marriages among the religious in ancient times nor that there were `mixed communities’ in many early religious houses. Peter Tremayne contributed an article in a recent edition of The Brehon, and we requested him to expand that article for this website. CLERICAL MARRIAGES: CELIBACY IN FIDELMA’S TIME In most religions, both ancient and modern, there have always been ascetics who believed that celibacy somehow brought them close to the deity. They have sublimated physical love, a natural life, in a dedication to whatever deity they worshipped. Celibacy within the Western Christian movement was something that took many centuries to become a universally accepted idea, even then it was a means of causing schisms within that movement. Only from the 12th Century AD did the Roman Church be
