Editing Late antiquity (section)

===Laity vs. clergy===
Within the recently legitimized Christian community of the 4th century, a division could be more distinctly seen between the [[laity]] and an increasingly [[celibacy|celibate]] male leadership.<ref>Jerome of Stridon wrote in {{Circa|406}} the polemical treatise Against Vigilantius in order to, among other disputes concerning relics of the saints, promote the greater spiritual nature of celibacy over marriage</ref> These men presented themselves as removed from the traditional Roman motivations of [[public sphere|public]] and [[Private sphere|private life]] marked by pride, ambition and kinship solidarity, and differing from the married pagan leadership. Unlike later strictures on [[priestly celibacy]], celibacy in late antique Christianity sometimes took the form of [[Sexual abstinence|abstinence from sexual relations]] after marriage, and it came to be the expected norm for urban [[clergy]]. Celibate and detached, the upper clergy became an elite equal in prestige to urban notables, the ''potentes'' or ''[[dynatoi]]''.<ref>Brown (1987) p.&nbsp;270.</ref>