Celicacy required for a vocation in medicine and law?

[Mt_28_19_20]

Found this in newadvent.org:
" Celibacy, however, was obligatory on all scholars and masters; as a rule, a master who married lost his position, and though married scholars are sometimes mentioned, e.g. at Oxford, they were disqualified for taking degrees. Still, celibacy was not universally enforced; there were married professors of medicine at Salerno, and at the university of the Roman Curia, which was under the direct supervision of the pope, the masters of law had their wives and children. One of the famous canonists of Bologna was Joannes Andrea (1270-1328, whose daughter Novella sometimes lectured in his stead. At Paris the obligation of celibacy for masters in medicine was removed by Cardinal Estouteville in 1452, for those in law by the statutes of 1600."
newadvent.org/cathen/15188a.htm

I had never heard of this before. How many lawyers and doctors today would have chosen to remain single for their career?

What was the rationale? Did people think marriage would make people less smart or unable to perform their responsibilities? Or was this a way to pressure people into single vocation and keep influential positions among celibates?

Curious what others think of this and what the rationale may have been.

Michael

 

[Friar_David_O.Carm]

Part of it is, I believe, that all who attended the Universities during the Middle Ages were clergy. You had to be ordained into at least minor orders to continue on into school.

This is why King Henry II could pick St Thomas Becket to be the Archbishop of Canterbury even though St Thomas was not a deacon or priest.

 

[Mt_28_19_20]

Part of it is, I believe, that all who attended the Universities during the Middle Ages were clergy. You had to be ordained into at least minor orders to continue on into school.

From the referenced newadvent article:
“The frequent use of the work clericus or “clerk” to designate a university student, does not imply that every student was an ecclesiastic. At Bologna the distinction was clearly drawn between the scolaris and the clericus; the statutes concerning the rector provide that he must be a scholar of Bologna and, in addition, “an unmarried cleric, wearing the clerical dress and not belonging to any religious order”. Similar provisions are found at Florence, Perugia, and Padua. Long before the rise of the universities, clerics enjoyed certain privileges and immunities, and these were extended, when the universities had been established, to all the students, lay and clerical alike. The layman would naturally wear the clerical garb not merely as an academic costume but as an evidence that he was entitled to clerical privileges. Even at Paris and Oxford, where the ecclesiastical element dominated, the enjoyment of these privileges was not dependent on the reception of tonsure, i.e. on admission to the clerical state in the canonical sense (Rashdall, II, 646). Celibacy, however, was obligatory on all scholars and masters; as a rule, a master who married lost his position,”

Michael