The Manly Priest
THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES
Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor
Edward Peters, Founding Editor
A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.
The Manly Priest
Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066–1300
Jennifer D. Thibodeaux
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
Philadelphia
Copyright © 2015 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 978–0–8122–4752–7
For Owen Edward
Contents
Gendered Bodies and Gendered Identities
Legal Discourse and the Reality of Clerical Marriage
The Marginality of Clerical Sons
“The Natural Right of a Man”: The Clerical Defense of Traditional Masculinity
“They ought to be a model and example”: The Expansion of Religious Manliness
Policing Priestly Bodies: The Conflict of Masculinities Among the Norman Parish Clergy
Introduction
Gendered Bodies and Gendered Identities
In the late twelfth century, the Anglo-Norman archdeacon Gerald of Wales questioned the custom of clerical unions by describing the misfortune that priests suffered through their sexual relationships with women:
For they rob you of your money and property, and you spend on them what should be used to adorn the churches and help the poor…. They rob you also of your good name and honor throughout the country when, because of them, you cannot hold your head high before your superiors, your patrons, or even your parishioners (among whom all your authority becomes worthless)…. To lose heaven because of this shameful part of the body and over a relationship which you possess neither by personal right nor as yours forever.1
Gerald acknowledged in his Jewel of the Church that nowhere in the Bible or in apostolic tradition was marriage prohibited for the clergy. Yet celibacy was advocated for “the sake of greater purity and integrity.” Throughout this work, he consistently linked priests with sexual temptation, sexual disorder, and the misfortune that resulted from such illicit behavior.
For the medieval clergy of the reform era, there was a growing conflict between the concept of the celibate male body and that of the sexual one. Post-Conquest England and Normandy present a vibrant story of the intense competition between monks and clerics over a redefinition of the religious male body, a competition spurred by the prevailing custom of that region, clerical
