Concerning the problem of the lack of clergy faced by the Roman Catholic Church in Western Europe and the United States in the last decades, there have been tendencies among catholic theologians to rethink the purposefulness of the practice of celibate clergy. The interest of the public in the West for the problem of the marriage of priests has encouraged us to more fundamentally address the theological and historico-canonical aspects of the development of the idea of celibacy. The object of this paper is to examine the issue of relationship between marriage and priesthood in East and West during first four centuries, on the basis of canonical provisions and works of the Holy Fathers. Since the ritual purity and its apostolic origin are stated among western theologians as the principle reasons for keeping the current practice of celibate clergy, the aim of this work is to examine its antiquity and its consent/disagreement with the teaching of Christ and the Church Tradition. My proposal is that celibate clergy. My conclusion is that celibacy was not a legal obligation not in the West nor in the East in the first three centuries, and that this idea appeared for the first time in West in the fourth century under the influence of ascetic deviant movements.