Ancient Rome taxed bachelors but made its Vestal Virgins vow 30 years of chastity
Romans regarded the unmarried life as an oddity and imposed financial penalties on it, with one exception: the Vestal Virgins, sworn to three decades of chastity to tend the state's rituals. Across world religions celibacy has been prized, tolerated or rejected outright, and Japan even legalised marriage for Buddhist clergy in 1872.
The word comes from Latin caelebs, unmarried, which traces back to Proto-Indo-European roots meaning alone and living. In the strict sense, celibacy refers to staying unmarried because of a sacred vow or religious conviction; loosely, people use it to mean going without sex. Abstinence, or continence, usually describes refraining for a limited time, and asexuality is a separate thing again, since celibacy and abstinence describe behaviour rather than orientation.
Religions split sharply. Hindu brahmacharya encourages celibacy while young, to focus on study, and later in life as a road to liberation. Jainism demanded it even of young monks as essential to attaining moksha, and the Buddha set it as the ideal for monks and nuns after leaving his own wife and son; both later joined his community. Shinto, most African and Native American traditions, Judaism and Islam generally viewed it negatively, though the Jewish Essenes practised it. In Japan, clerical celibacy was violated so widely for so long that the state made marriage legal for Buddhist clerics in 1872, after which about ninety percent married.
Christianity has no New Testament command for disciples to stay single, yet Paul, himself celibate, ranked it above marriage while calling marriage acceptable. One explanation is that early believers expected the world to end soon, so founding families seemed pointless. Around AD 270 Anthony the Great, moved by a sermon, gave away his goods and withdrew into the desert, and so many imitators followed that his biographer called the desert a city.
Rules for clergy vary today. Catholic, Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox bishops must be celibate, while Eastern Catholic and Orthodox priests and deacons may marry, provided they wed before ordination. Researchers still struggle with definitions: A. W. Richard Sipe found no clear working definition even among American Catholic priests.
Source: Celibacy
