The promulgation of this edict produced, as may well be conceived, the greatest possible agitation and distress throughout the whole of Christendom. Up to this time, right or wrong, marriage had been the rule, celibacy the exception. And the injustice of the edict made it more intolerable, for it fell as severely on the most virtuous as on the most vicious, and stigmatized them all alike as guilty of concubinage. We must leave the reader to imagine the effect of such a decree on thousands and tens of thousands of happy families; details would fill a volume. It dissolved the most honorable marriages, rent asunder what God had joined together, scattered husbands, wives, and children, and gave rise to the most lamentable contentions, and spread everywhere the direst calamities; wives, especially, were driven to despair, and exposed to the bitterest grief and shame. But the more vehement the opposition, the more loud the anathemas against any delay in the plenary execution of the pontiff's commands. The disobedient were delivered over to the civil magistrates, to be persecuted, deprived of their properties, and subjected to indignities and sufferings of various kinds. Part of one of his letters said on this point, "He whom flesh and blood moveth to doubt or delay is carnal; he is condemned already; he hath no share in the work of the Lord; he is a rotten branch, a dumb dog, a cankered limb, a faithless servant, a time-server, and a hypocrite."
But as none of the sovereigns of Europe were disposed to fight for the wives of the clergy, the pope soon had the matter all his own way, and many of the lewd priests were not sorry to be delivered from the obligations of their evil ways.
Simony. The conflict arising from the twin law for the suppression of simony was more difficult to deal with; and, being protracted through many years, it involved both the church and state in many and great calamities.