a. and sb. [ad. med.L. concubīnāri-us, f. concubīna: see below and -ARY. Cf. F. concubinaire (16th c. in Littré).]
A. adj. Relating to concubinage; (of persons) living in, or sprung from, concubinage.
1563–87. Foxe, A. & M., 1074 (R.). The first crime of these concubinarie priests.
1661. Morgan, Sph. Gentry, I. iv. 43. His concubinary lying with Venus in Ovid.
1737. L. Clarke, Hist. Bible (1740), I. I. 39. Sarai … prevailed with her husband to take her handmaid Hagar to be his concubinary wife.
1861. Sir F. Palgrave, Norm. & Eng., III. 17. According to the Civil law … a subsequent marriage legitimates all the previous concubinary issue.
1888. H. C. Lea, Hist. Inquisition, I. 63. The married or concubinary priesthood actually burned at the stake an unfortunate who resolutely maintained the orthodoxy of the papal rescripts.
fig. a. 1659. Osborn, Observ. Turks (1673), 330. Italy … need not be concubinary to so many wanton desires of Strangers, would all her small and new-hatched Governments shelter themselves under her Wings.
B. sb. One who lives in concubinage.
15[?]. Alleg. agst. 6 Articles, in Foxe, A. & M., 1064 (R.). Take from the church honourable marriage and the bed vndefiled, shalt thou not replenishe it with concubinaries, with incestuous persons, etc.
a. 1667. Jer. Taylor, Serm., I. vi. (R.). The Holy Ghost will not descend upon the simonical unchaste concubinaries, schismaticks and scandalous priests.
1875. Gladstone, Vaticanism, 124. It is the duty of each concubinary (or party to concubinage), with or without the consent of the other party, to quit that guilty state.
