endeavor, telling the monks Ingulf, William, and Stanus to “persist untiringly in your work, let not your hand or foot rest, shiver in winter’s cold, swelter under summer’s sun, toil by day, watch by night. Gird yourselves and bear in mind those Israelites who, in repairing the walls of Jerusalem, fought with one hand and built with another. Persevere manfully (viriliter), labor faithfully, let the work go on fervently.”22 When Bernard of Tiron was harassed by his fellow monks, one of whom used “abusive language” against him, the instigator was subsequently punished by a fatal illness. The rest of the men, frightened for their own lives, “thereafter manfully (viriliter) girded themselves for stricter observance of the rigor of monastic life.”23 And, while living in the wilderness of Tiron, outside the norms of society, Bernard “continuously behaved in a manly and steadfast manner.”24
The use of virile language commonly appears in descriptions of the battle against the flesh, more of which will be discussed below. Gerald of Wales, citing Jerome’s commentary on the Gospel of Mark, argued that “That man is an Andrew, who, by manfully (viriliter), conquering his flesh, makes war on his own death … on his body whose passions are often the cause of his death unless they are bridled.”25 And, unbridled flesh, according to Gerald, was the cause of death for priests in particular.
Writers viewed the struggle for the proper behavior of the clergy and for the rights of the church as a manly act. The clergy of York lauded their archbishop-elect Thurstan for his behavior during his struggle to assume the episcopal see of York. In a letter to Thurstan, the clerics told him, “you have played the man (viriliter egisti).”26 Gerald of Wales was able to protect his church from a neighboring bishop’s usurpation; and the local nobility and king lauded him for his behavior, the latter saying that the archdeacon “withstood him [the bishop] manfully and defended your Church right well.”27 The archdeacon himself was not above reproaching others who had failed in their duties to correct clerical behavior in their dioceses. He told a council of Irish clergy that “if the prelates from the days of Patrick, through so many rolling years had manfully, as their office demands, given themselves to preaching and instruction and likewise to rebuke and chiding, then would they have rooted out some of the great enormities of the nation.”28 Eadmer’s Historia Novorum in Anglia makes comparatively few uses of virile language, but, when he does, it is very suggestive.29 For instance, when describing how the archbishop Lanfranc defended monks in his realm, he portrayed the archbishop as a manly adversary. Lanfranc first defended the monks of Winchester against the designs of Bishop Walkelin, who desired to expel the monastic clergy from the cathedral chapter and install secular clerics in their place. Then, according to Eadmer, the secular bishops of England conspired to remove the monks at Canterbury. Lanfranc would not permit this, and he “opposed it with all his might and stood out manfully (viriliter) against the pressure and enmity of them all.”30
The defense of monastic leadership required the use of virile language. When Bernard of Tiron was preaching in Coutances, he was confronted by an archdeacon, his wife, and his children. The question, however, was not about clerical concubinage but about the right of monks to preach when they are supposed to be “dead to the world.” Clearly, many priests and secular clerics saw a vast difference between the clerical vocation and the monastic life. Bernard’s response was lengthy, drawing on biblical sources to defend his right to preach. In a thinly veiled criticism of Norman priests, Bernard drew on an analogy of hardness and softness. He admonished the archdeacon: “The preacher must have the strength of bone, because he must manfully (viriliter) resist sin and vice and bear hardship bravely in the defense of justice and holiness. The preacher must be harder than the soft flesh (mollitie carnis), because through harder abstinence he must remove carnal delight in pleasure from his existence and way of life and must not weakly allow his mind to be enslaved by softening vices.”31
Virile language appears frequently in descriptions of competition between monastic and secular clerics. Hugh the Chanter, a York chronicler, utilized such terminology in his discussions of the primacy dispute between Canterbury and York. Hugh, a secular cleric and York member, pointed out that the monks of Canterbury nefariously planned to have the newly installed archbishop of York make a profession to Canterbury. Hugh said, “the monks of Canterbury do not cease to aim at and shamelessly demand what is unjust; they think on it while awake and dream of it in their sleep.”32 Hugh’s portrayal of this event suggested that leadership was an issue of manliness. About the archbishop of Canterbury, he said, “let him be a man (viriliter), let him [the archbishop of Canterbury] call our archbishop elect [of York] to Canterbury to be consecrated, and refuse to consecrate him till he has made his profession.”33 Hugh’s chronicle also shows how the York clerics supported their archbishop, Thomas II, who was being pressured to make a profession of submission to Canterbury. The chapter reminded Thomas of how his predecessor refused to be cowed by the Canterbury contingent: “Look at Archbishop Gerard! How honest, how manly (viriliter), how excellent this action of his! He refused to sit in the council at London because Archbishop Anselm had been given a higher seat than himself, until a seat of equal dignity was made ready for him.”34
To define manliness, religious writers used a gendered language, one emphasizing virile action. By underscoring the masculine nature of the religious life, Christian writers of the reform era presented the virility of ascetic values and the manliness of struggle. Feminized language, such as the maternal imagery of a mothering abbot/Jesus was not used in a more “public” discourse.
Becoming a “New Man”: The Hegemony of Ascetic Manliness
What did Christian writers mean when they called on celibate men to act “manfully”? Manly action was part of a process to adopt ascetic/monastic manliness; writers presented this often in the motif of the “new man,” derived from the New Testament letter to the Ephesians (“that he might create in himself one new man”).35 In this manner, monastic writers particularly were able to highlight the superiority of the monastic life over the worldly; such assertions implied the superiority of monastic masculinity over clerical and aristocratic masculinity. In the context of eleventh and twelfth century Anglo-Norman religious writings, to become a “new man” was to abandon all worldly ambitions and the secular life and to adopt monastic manliness. For many, this meant the assumption of a new masculine identity, one based on self-control and chastity. In fact, writers presented entrance into the monastic life as the adoption of a new bodily comportment, one that profoundly marked the male body as impenetrable, disciplined, and orderly. This narrative is most apparent in texts written by monastic writers. While it is true that many of these texts were intended for monastic audiences, others, like Orderic Vitalis’s Ecclesiastical History, were written for a literate audience of lay and religious. These texts conveyed a particular ideology of manliness that was defined by the ascetic male body.
At a time when many warriors entered monastic life, the theme of becoming a “new man” appeared frequently in monastic texts. From the eleventh century on, large numbers of knights entered monastic communities; as Katherine Smith has shown, their connection to their experiences of war was directly tied to the presentation of martial imagery in monastic texts.36 Anselm, while abbot of Bec, wrote a letter to a young man, William, to advise him regarding his desire to follow his brother to Jerusalem. Anselm instead admonished him to join the service of Christ at Bec and become a “soldier of such a king,” abandoning worldly desires and embracing the “heavenly Jerusalem.”37 Roger of Warenne, a knight, was persuaded by the preaching of Gerold of Avranches to become a monk and enter St. Evroul with his fellow knights; Orderic called his profession to monasticism “like one escaping from the flames of Sodom.”38
While scholars are very familiar with the motif of the warrior-turned-monk in medieval hagiography and other texts, I would suggest that this construct forms a larger narrative regarding the adoption of a superior form of manliness, a kind of persuasive rhetoric to reinforce this gender paradigm. Orderic Vitalis contributed to the “new man” model by presenting
