behavior. Here the connection between the priestly body and the Christ body was conveyed. Despite the frequency of this concept, that priests taint the altar and sacrament by their sexual behavior, ecclesiastical authorities were not unified on this position. Anselm of Canterbury did believe that a corruption of the sacrament could occur if an impure priest ministered at the altar. In a letter to William, abbot of Fécamp, Anselm advised the abbot to uphold the rule of clerical celibacy because those priests who minister at the altars “do not serve, but pollute them by their very presence.”114 Pope Paschal’s letter (1102) to Anselm illustrates the problem with removing such priests from their churches. Paschal advised Anselm that when there was imminent death, it was better to receive the sacrament from the hand of a fornicating priest than to do without the sacrament entirely because no suitable priest could be found.115
Several months later, Anselm himself was in a position to advise Gerard, archbishop of York, on the same matter. Gerard’s chief complaint was that the priests and deacons who had wives and concubines were still serving at the altar. In addition, some rebellious clerics claimed they had violated no laws, since the Council of Westminster had only barred them from cohabitating with women, not from meeting with them in the homes of their neighbors. Regarding the consecration of the Host, Gerard said these men “long carried out these things within the filth of lust so that they repeatedly go back and forth, publicly, from the beds of their concubines to the altar, and then from the altar to the beds of wickedness.” Furthermore, Gerard stated he had trouble getting clerics to ascend the higher orders because “they resist me with stiff necks in case they should have to profess chastity at their ordination.”116 These sentiments were echoed by Geoffrey Grossus, hagiographer of Bernard of Tiron, who described the concubinous priests of Normandy as binding themselves to a life of fornication and, as a result, “never to approach the body and blood of Christ except as unworthy criminals.”117
Some writers believed bodily impurity could be alleviated by periodic abstinence. Gerald of Wales believed a period of sexual abstinence before consecration of the Host could mitigate the sexual corruption of the sacrament. While Gerald admonished unchaste priests, he also appealed to them to remain chaste for at least three days before consecrating the Host. He asked, “let the priest who lives and rolls about as if in his own pig-pen of impurity show at least this reverence to the sacred altar and to the Eucharist.” Gerald shunned to think, however, that three days was not enough to cleanse the impurity of unchaste priests, who “pollute themselves by fornication and concubinage.” For this reason, he argued that “they ought to shun not only concubinage, but also cohabitation with women.”118 In another section of the Gemma, he bluntly questions, “How will a priest who does not abhor to arise every morning from the bed of a damnable harlot or of a culpable concubine to consecrate and receive the greatest and most worthy of all sacraments shun any other vice?”119 Using a story told about Hugh of Lincoln, Gerald makes the point that priests are particularly susceptible to fornication: “We must resist, therefore, with all our manliness (viribus). If we courageously and faithfully apply our spiritual arms and our minds against spiritual evils, we will be victorious against the attacks of the clever enemy.”120 Priests must overcome their weaknesses, and “resist the desires of the flesh manfully (viriliter) … the greater the struggle, the greater the crown.”121 Gerald encapsulated the battle against the flesh as a masculine performance, leaving no doubt that religious celibacy was manly.
Religious writers of the reform period in England and Normandy conceived of manliness as an epic battle for sexual self-control. The discipline of the male body was always the centrally defining feature of monastic manliness, but it would be further extended to the secular clergy by way of celibacy legislation. The language of virility described those in religious orders as manly, in thought, action, and appearance. Throughout many texts, monastic writers posited their superior manliness against the lax, softened bodies of courtiers and priests. Chastity was the key to achieving religious manliness, but it depended on a sexualized body, one that could continually fight the desires of the flesh. Sexualized chastity allowed the chaste body to remain virile and, by extension, manly. A cleric rendered himself effeminate or “softened” by allowing women to dominate him and being subject to uncontrollable lust. As Chapter 2 will illustrate, it was this model of masculinity that intersected with the implementation of antimarriage laws for the secular clergy.
Chapter 2
Legal Discourse and the Reality of Clerical Marriage
In the year 1072, the reforming archbishop of Rouen, John d’Avranches, tried to enforce the 1064 canons of Lisieux at a provincial synod. Orderic Vitalis is the only chronicler to document the reaction of the clergy to the news that they could no longer have wives:
For ten years he fulfilled his duties as metropolitan with courage and thoroughness, continuously striving to separate immoral priests from their mistresses (pelicibus): on one occasion when he forbade them to keep concubines (concubinas) he was stoned out of the synod, and fled exclaiming in a loud voice: “O God, the heathens are come into thine inheritance.”1
This episode of priestly resistance was not unique in the region. It shows the vast difference between reformers and the priesthood they hoped to reform. Sexualized chastity and the ideology of the manly celibate must have appeared as strange concepts for the Anglo-Norman clergy as it did for the laity. Ecclesiastical reform was not just contrary to the practice of clerical marriage in Normandy and England; it enforced laws that went against the very fabric of traditional conceptions of manliness. Efforts to enforce sacerdotal celibacy may have begun in the early eleventh century, but clerics in these regions continued to marry like other men in their communities. How effective these early reform efforts were across Europe is not known, but Anglo-Norman clerics did not immediately put aside their wives on hearing of the first Roman decree on mandated celibacy.
In Normandy, monastic chastity and clerical marriage coexisted as two sides to religious life. Normandy produced and supported monastic revivals in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, while also supporting the tradition of clerical marriages. This was the climate of the Church until reformers like Lanfranc, John d’Avranches, and Anselm, among others, crossed the lines between the two ecclesiastical career paths, disseminating the model that made one vocation (monastic) the ideal for the other (clerical). Until the war on clerical marriage began, clerics lived like other men in their communities; they married, they had children, and they practiced a gender identity more similar to laymen than to monks. The laws prohibiting clerical marriage forced clerics into a dilemma, a choice between their marriage and their livelihood. Aside from the emotional aspects of separation, forsaking one’s wife deprived the priest of his social status in his local community, for it removed one of the perceived markers of adult male identity. It also forced the cleric to delegitimize his children publicly. A priest who refused clerical celibacy could theoretically lose his livelihood and impoverish his family.
Married clerics’ noncompliance with celibacy is indicative of their attitude toward the laws and the reformers themselves. The papacy may have been preaching against “fornicating” priests and their “whores” since 1059, a message enhanced by such notables as Peter Damian, but a different reality existed for Anglo-Norman priests and the secular clergy in general, a reality in which marriage formed a legitimate part of their lives and contributed to their masculine status in their communities. The ideal of the manly celibate contributed to and enhanced the laws against clerical marriage, laws that, if observed, would “monasticize” the priesthood. This fixed ideology of manliness left no place for the women and children of the secular clergy. Yet clerics found ways to circumvent these laws and to continue their customs well through the twelfth century.
Married Clergy and Manliness After the Conquest
