Bible Encyclopedias
Caupona

Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature

Search for…

Enter query below:

or

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z

Prev Entry
Caumont, Arcisse de

Next Entry
Causby, Stephen

Resource Toolbox

Print Article

(or a tavern). The apostolical constitutions enumerate the caupo, or tavern-keeper, among the persons whose oblations are not to be accepted. If such oblations were forced on the priest, they were to be spent on wood and charcoal, as being only fit for the fire. A later constitution still numbers the caiupo among those who could not be admitted to the Church unless they gave up their mode of life. It is clear, from too many evidences, that the ancient tavern differed little from a brothel. A constitution of Constantine (A.D. 326), while declaring that the mistress of a tavern was within the laws as to adultery, yet if she herself had served out drink she was classed among tavern servants, who were "not deemed worthy to observe the laws." A cleric found eating in a caupona, unless under the necessities of travel, was, by the apostolical canons (46th), sentenced to excommunication. The Council of Laodicea enacts that none of the priestly order, from the presbyter to the deacon, nor outside of the ecclesiastical order, to the servants and readers, nor any of the ascetic class, ‘ shall enter a tavern. In spite of these enactments, we find by later ones that clerics, who were forbidden to enter taverns, actually kept them. Thus certain "Sanctions and Decrees," from a codex at the Vatican, but evidently from a Greek source, require that the priest be neither a caupo nor a tabernarius. In the East, it appears that in the first half of the 6th century, and presumably since the days of Constantine, taverns were held on behalf of the Church. But apparently this tavern-keeping for the Church was not held equivalent to tavern-keeping by clerics, since the 9th canon of the Council of Constantinople in Trullo, A.D. 691, orders "that it shall not be. lawful for any cleric to have a tavern." lie must therefore either give it up or be deposed. It will thus appear that while the severity of the apostolical constitutions against the individual tavern-keeper is not followed ins later times, yet that the Western Church, at least during the anti-Carlovingian period, persistently treated the use of the tavern by clerics, otherwise than in cases of necessity, still more their personal connections with it, as incompatible with the clerical character. The witness of the Eastern Church is also to the same effect, but its weight is marred by the trade, including that in liquors, which for two centuries at least seems to have been carried on at Constantinople for the benefit, not, indeed, of individual devices, but of churches and charitable foundations.