William of Malmesbury recounted the story of the bishop Aelfheah, who ordained three monks to the priesthood only to find that one of them, Aethelstan, “later threw off the monastic habit, rejected celibacy, and died in the arms of a whore.”59 William, like Orderic, established the connection between the impenetrability of the male body marked by the state of chaste perfection that, through rejection of that state, became penetrable and disorderly.
How did this promotion of the “new man” affect those who were raised inside monastery walls? Child oblates lacked the ability to transform themselves, but religious writers found a way to explain their sanctity. Child oblates who grew up with ascetic values, surrounded by examples of monastic living, may have acquired a religious male identity more easily. Unable to reference secular manliness in a household or on a battlefield, these young boys may have been at an advantage in acquiring an appropriate masculine identity. Adult converts had to conquer the ingrained notions of gender identity from secular life in order to abandon the world and enter a monastic community, and writers highlighted the significance of that transformation. Yet child oblates represented to some the purity of monastic life, untainted by the outside world. The position of monastic writers on the subject of child oblates varied. One way child oblates were included in the “new man” motif was by emphasis on their monastic tendencies as children. Orderic Vitalis recounts numerous examples of child oblates who were models of monastic living. Some notable monastic reformers were identified in youth as having an extraordinary propensity for the contemplative life. Orderic Vitalis, himself a child oblate, emphasized the sanctity of those who were raised in the monastic life. For example, Reginald had been entrusted to the monastery of St. Evroul at five and was a good model of monasticism for the next fifty-two years.60 William, son of Guy Bollein, a knight, entered St. Evroul at nine; he was a monk for fifty-four years, and a model one at that. Orderic writes that “carefully brought up in the bosom of holy mother church, and removed from all worldly strife and carnal lust, he distinguished himself in those kinds of knowledge that are more useful to sons of the church.”61 Thus, while becoming a “new man” is frequently linked to a conversion from worldly life to monastic living, some well-known monastics were included in the paradigm of religious manliness by their propensity at a young age for the monastic life.
The Dangers of Effeminacy
Just as the “new man” motif served to bolster monastic manliness as superior to clerical (and lay) manliness, there emerged another narrative technique designed to sharpen this distinction: the labeling of actions, behavior, and appearance deemed effeminate. The effeminate was one who gave into women sexually or one who became womanish through sex with men. This model posed many problems for Norman laymen and priests alike, as it seemingly devalued traditional marriage and procreation, cultural features of secular manliness. By normalizing religious celibacy, monastic writers problematized both procreative and nonprocreative sexuality. They characterized both lay and clerical bodies as disorderly through their sexual behavior, so that the elite at court, as well as married clerics, were rendered womanish or effeminate and, as a result, unable to govern effectively.
Religious writers depicted reformers in control of defining manliness during this period, not only the manly behavior of the clergy but also that of laymen. The following examples show the transformative moments when religious men corrected the gender performances of elite laymen and, in doing so, established themselves as the definers of masculinity for all men. For example, Anselm was quite bothered by effeminate behavior, both by the laity and the clergy. Eadmer describes how Anselm sought to masculinize the king’s court, particularly William Rufus’s courtiers, by reprimanding those who walked with an effeminate gait and wore their hair in the manner of women. Anselm preached against this custom successfully, and the men cut their hair and adopted a “manly bearing (virilem).”62
Appearance could profoundly affect behavior. Anselm’s great concern over masculine appearance found its way into the canons of Westminster in 1102. While four of the canons from this council concerned celibacy of the clergy, three others regulated appearance and other behavior. Canon 13 declared clerics should wear an appropriate tonsure, while canon 11 attempted to regulate wearing of brightly colored clothing, which was likely a safeguard against luxurious fabrics.63 Some scholars have noted the link between such fabrics, luxuria, and femininity. William of Malmesbury felt it necessary to offer the example of the saint Aldhelm, who warned his student against associating with prostitutes; in addition to the sexual danger they posed, prostitutes had a tendency to wear brightly colored clothing. The saint also believed that such luxurious clothing could “emasculate his mental vigour.”64 Not only could the male clerical body be effeminized through wearing certain fabrics, but so could the mind.
Other sources also point to the role that reforming bishops played in setting the standard for manly behavior and appearance, especially when secular men, kings, knights, and nobles, failed to maintain their manliness. Serlo, bishop of Sées, admonished King Henry I in 1105 at Carentan for his and his courtiers’ unkempt appearances. In particular, they were rebuked for wearing their hair in a “woman’s fashion”; instead, the bishop told them to “use your strength like men (virili robore perfrui debetis).” After admonishing the king and his men for having long beards reminiscent of “he-goats,” Serlo continued: “by growing their hair long they make themselves seem like imitators of women, and by womanly softness (mollicie) they lose their manly strength (virili fortitudine) and are led to sin.”65 The reformer deployed the language of hardness and softness to correspond with manliness and femininity. Bishop Serlo also pointed out the effeminacy present in the habit of wearing poulaines, shoes with curved tips: “The perverse sons of Belial grow the tresses of women on their heads, and deck their toes (pedum suorum) with the tails of scorpians, revealing themselves to be effeminates by their softness (molliciem femineos) and serpent-like by their scorpian stings.”66 Once Serlo’s speech was concluded, the king and his men were so inspired by his words that they stepped forward and willingly had their hair shorn by the bishop. The king was transformed by this gender reinforcement, as he then went on, as Orderic Vitalis narrates, and “wreaked vengeance manfully (viriliter) on the enemies of the Church of God.”67
The reformer Wulfstan of Worcester also took measures to establish what he considered to be a proper masculine appearance. According to William of Malmesbury, Wulfstan carried a pocket knife with him so that, when the occasion struck him, he could cut off the locks of men with long hair. To anyone who protested, Wulfstan would accuse of effeminacy: “men who blushed to be what they had been born, and let their hair flow like women, would be no more use than women in the defence of their country against the foreigner.” This failure to practice correct masculinity was used as a reason the Normans were successful in their conquest of England.68
Medieval society exhibited a strong degree of discomfort with inverted gender performances; manly women and womanly men disrupted normative gender relations.69 In this regard, writers viewed effeminacy and sodomy as equitable offenses against manliness, although not all conflated the two behaviors. Frequently, reformers equated effeminacy with a man’s overwhelming indulgence in women, but effeminacy could also be linked to sodomy, as in the history of Orderic Vitalis, who portrayed both as highly undesirable traits. His description of William Rufus’s court also displayed the same revulsion at men acting womanish and women sexually dominating men. Orderic said that “at that time effeminates (effeminati) set the fashion in many parts of the world: foul catamites (catamitae) doomed to eternal fire, unrestrainedly pursued their revels and shamelessly gave themselves up to the filth of sodomy.” His link to womanish behavior and appearance is made clear in the following passages, when he described how the courtiers “grew long and luxurious locks like women” and he lamented that “our wanton youth is sunk in effeminacy, and courtiers, fawning, seek the favours of women with every kind of lewdness.” This was not always the custom, Orderic remarked; in a previous era, “our ancestors used to wear decent clothes, well-adapted to the shape of their bodies; they were skilled horsemen and swift runners, ready for all seemly undertakings.”70
