Annotation CCCXXV

”If any is without crime, the husband of one wife.” — Titus 1:6

Whether a bigamist is to be chosen for bishop.

Jerome, in the commentary on the epistle to Titus, thus expounds this passage: “MANY, more superstitiously than truly, think that even those who, when they were gentiles, had one wife — she being lost [dead], [they] after the baptism of Christ took another — are not to be chosen [legendos] in the priesthood; whereas surely, if this is to be observed, those rather ought to be barred from the episcopate who, before, exercising a wandering lust through harlots, received one wife [only after being] regenerated [baptized]. And [it is] much more detestable to have fornicated with many, than to be found a bigamist. For in the one [there] is the infelicity of matrimony; in the other, a lasciviousness prone to sin.” Anselm, bishop of Canterbury, repeats almost the [same] in this place. See above, Annotation 318 of this book.