presuppositions about religious manliness circulated in these texts, some to mixed audiences of lay, clerical, and monastic readers.3
The religious texts examined here discursively re-created the religious male body—a new man, one with self-control, who embraced orderliness and who was fit to rule. The manly celibate model was expressed through chronicles, vitae, histories, and theological treatises; legal discourse, discussed in the next chapter, placed this model behind the force of law.
The Celibate Male and the Language of Virility
Masculinity is defined in large part by language, and the language produced by Anglo-Norman religious writers shows that a certain masculine performance was expected of both laity and clergy, albeit very different performances. Religious writers particularly created a standard of masculinity through their use of virile language to describe the actions and behavior of celibate men in a variety of situations; most notably, the use of this language in papal correspondence greatly increased during the reform era. As this chapter will show, such language also increased in the reform-era texts of England and Normandy.4
In the late Roman Empire, such masculine language had been used by Christian writers to assert the manliness of their men at a time when pagan Romans defined manhood.5 Anglo-Norman writers of the reform era used the same terminology of manliness, often drawing on this late antique vocabulary of words and images to evoke an association of manliness with ascetic practices. The gendered language used by religious writers to portray masculinity did not distinguish between secular and religious men. The vocabulary was the same, interchangeable language that could describe manliness on the battleground or inside the cloister. Writers relied on a terminology of oppositions to describe manliness and the lack of manliness. Physical and mental manliness appeared in contrast to physical and mental femininity. The most common terms to express masculine qualities and actions were duritia (hardness), robur (hardness), virtus (masculine virtue), viriliter (manfully), virile (manly), and fortiter (manfully). The terms used to portray a lack of manliness were mostly terms used to describe women but also could be terms that referred to unmanly behavior. Words like mollitia (softness/effeminacy), semivir (half-man), catamite (sodomite), effeminatus (effeminate), delicatus (effeminate), muliebriarius (womanly), and eviratus (unmanned), all evoked images of the disorderly, the softened, the penetrable, and the weak (physically and mentally), undesirable characteristics for any man, religious or secular.6
Although armed with a rich terminology to describe virility, religious writers preferred to denote masculinity most commonly with the Latin derivatives of vir (man). Most recently, historians Kirsten Fenton and Maureen Miller have shown the gendered meanings of the term virtus, emphasizing its connotation with the military manliness of laymen as often as the spiritual manliness of religious men.7 Others have documented the “language of virility” in reform-era writing, particularly in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when terms like the adverb viriliter were frequently used to describe clerical action.8 In the context of war, virtus clearly translated into masculine power and strength. For instance, in Orderic Vitalis’s Ecclesiastical History, one finds numerous cases of manly language appearing in descriptions of war, knights, and battle generally. Scholars have not hesitated to translate these terms into masculine language.9 But for religious figures, historians have traditionally translated the term virtu as “virtue” in the spiritual or religious sense. By insisting on translating terms such as viriliter as “courageously” or “strongly,” scholars have essentially removed the original gendered language of the document, and at the same time have transposed their own gendered assumptions from the present onto the past. The use of terms like viriliter (manfully) in these writings is what reflects the gendered quality of this discourse.
Religious writers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries used a variety of literary techniques in their works to show the superiority of religious masculinity to secular masculinity, and ultimately clerical masculinity, particularly through the contrast of the self-controlled body with the disorderly, uncontrolled one. Maureen Miller has shown that Gregorian-era writers depicted laymen as destroyers of churches and monasteries, as bloodthirsty warriors, as men out of control, while the clergy were depicted as morally superior, self-controlled men.10 Likewise, the same motifs were used by reform-minded religious writers of England and Normandy, but more often to highlight the orderly, self-controlled ascetic life of monks against the disorderly, sexually licentious behavior of secular clergy. Virile language emphasized this distinction.
The use of such virile language to describe religious men might seem confusing and contradictory to the use of gendered language by some monastic orders. During the period of reform, the literature of the Cistercian order occasionally utilized maternal imagery to express a spiritual relationship to God and Christ.11 Although Cistercians most frequently deployed this imagery, it was not uniquely theirs alone, and even reformers like Anselm used it. Various scholars have used this imagery to bolster their position that the clergy viewed themselves as feminine and were, in turn, viewed as feminine by medieval society.12 However, the feminine language used by these monastic writers was very specific to their particular, Cistercian context; this language was strongly connected to Cistercians abbots’ own anxieties regarding their leadership and their pastoral duties.13 Furthermore, these maternal metaphors in their proper historical context were used as literary devices in Cistercian devotional literature. Bernard of Clairvaux, a writer who most frequently made use of maternal imagery, called his monks “women” not to suggest that he or his society viewed them as women but to present a gendered inversion that highlighted the humility present in the feminine.14 Finally, monastic writers, themselves clearly male, had a metaphorical problem when it came to describing their (often sexual) union with a frequently masculinized God. This logically explains the frequency with which monks portrayed themselves as female, as a bride of Christ, in order to wed God/Christ. Alternatively, they could portray God as female, and then their union was possible.15
The abbot as “mother” and the feminized monk were literary devices firmly a part of a particular devotional literature of the twelfth century. But in both “public” and private writings, reform-era authors equated manly behavior and manly qualities with celibate men; they were not depicted as feminine or as an ambiguous “third” gender. For example, while there is evidence that Anselm of Bec/Canterbury employed feminized language and maternal imagery in one devotional prayer,16 he used virile language most often when he wrote to other clerics advising them. In his letter to William, a monk of St. Werburgh, Chester, he advises him to continue to seek spiritual perfection as all men must strive: “Let laymen in their state of life, clerics in theirs, monks in theirs manfully (viriliter) apply themselves to making continual progress.”17 He wrote to the bishops of Ireland that they should “act manfully (viriliter) and vigilantly according to God’s teaching, restraining with canonical severity anything found in your provinces contrary to the doctrine of the Church.”18
The use of masculine language to describe a variety of ascetic actions and behavior reinforces that monastic writers conceived of the ascetic body as a virile body. Most frequently, this language depicted conflicts, both internal ones of the body and external struggles with others (both laymen and ecclesiastics). To be a man of the church required a constant struggle, a constant gender performance of virtus; this struggle could be spiritual or earthly. A letter from Benedict (whose full identity remains unknown) to Anselm about the problem of concubinous priests in England exhorts Anselm to “fight manfully (viriliter) to the very end for the faith of Christ,” in his battle to eradicate clerical marriage.19 John of Rheims, a monk of St. Evroul, after being promoted to the office of priest, “strove for perfection” and “taught others likewise to strive manfully (viriliter), both by his life and doctrine.”20 Under the guidance of Abbot Mainier, the monks of St. Evroul, persevered in their holy living, “fighting manfully (viriliter) against sin.”21 Herbert of Losinga
