a back-door to such a mitigating practice the Christian emperors conversely deteriorated the situation of children born in totally illicit relations where there was no possibility for parents to marry. One category of illegitimate children now become more sharply discriminated against, theadulterini to whom no legal remedy was available. Could clergy marry or must they remain celibate? This question was raised already during the first Christian century. The answers developed differently. By the time of Constantine, celibacy was advancing, though the Church was not ready to take the decisive step and ban clerical marriage. Emperor Justinian tried to discourage clerics in major orders from marrying and having children. By children of clerics were no longer allowed to neither inherit from their fathers nor receive gifts from the paternal side. This action taken by the emperor was perhaps more concerned with preventing the transferral of ecclesiastical property into private hands than with favouring celibacy as such. In any case, another group of illegitimate children was outlawed: sons and daughters of clerics, to whom like the adulterini no remedy was available by the parents' subsequent marriage.20 The turn of the tide came in the s. During the previous two or three centuries, the Western Church had on the one hand successfully converted most of the Germanic world in Northern Europe to Christianity but on the other hand, failed to establish a common 123 Legitimacy and clerical celibacy 20 Brundage (1987), 110-112. M. Boehlens, Die Klerikerehe in der Gesetzgebung der Kirche unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Strafe: Eine rechtgeschichtliche Untersuchung von den Anfängen der Kirche bis zum Jahre 1139. (Paderborn 1968: Schöning.) - For a survey of the literature on clerical marriage, cf. A. L. Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: The Eleventh-Century Debates. (N.Y. & Toronto 1982: Edwin Mellon Press.)
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