manliness was strongly connected to marriage and kinship, and the inability to procreate removed one from the primacy of the social network built on these values. Marriage was so entrenched among the elite clergy that even bishops had wives and cathedral canons placed their sons into prominent positions. Secular clerics drew their gender identity from lay society, participating in the same cultural framework that connected manliness to sexual prowess. Celibacy legislation directed at the clergy may not have been wholly successful in enforcing chastity, but it did begin to shape a new social understanding of clerical marriage, as these marriages were eventually legally invalidated.
Clerical sons were the most glaring reminders of their father’s virile bodies. In Chapter 3, I show how the manly celibate ideology had implications for clerical children, especially sons who intended to inherit their fathers’ benefices. Clerical sons first had liminal and then marginal bodies; while they were once assured of a career path, the passage of reform legislation ensured that they faced an existence in between cultural acceptance and legal bastardization. Certain communities in England and Normandy supported the training and education of clerical sons, and many clerical fathers passed their occupations to their sons, just as the sons of the laity did. Clerical sons faced an uncertain future and a marginal status, not through any actions of their own but because they were visible signs of priestly sexuality. Laws against ordination of clerical sons and inheritance of benefices reflected not only the desire of reformers to prevent this system but also to eliminate procreation completely as a model of manliness for the secular clergy. The legal state of clerical sons became more precarious as clerical marriage, in law and practice, was gradually extinguished.
While Chapters 2 and 3 describe the reformers’ perspective behind the manly celibate ideology, Chapter 4 presents the view of this concept from married priests, their sons, and their advocates and shows how this response was based on a model of lay manliness. A large number of pro-clerical marriage treatises appeared in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Clerical writers, presumably married ones, confronted ascetic discourse by using the scriptures and medieval theology to defend the righteousness of marriage, the very sources used by advocates of celibacy. These tracts illustrate how married clerics perceived the chaste bodies of their opponents. Clerical marriage, they argued, was a natural right, and mastery of the male body depended on marital sex. Their arguments rested on the presumed vulnerability of the male body, along with the concept of a heteronormative sexuality. Married clerics perceived celibacy decrees as a new tradition, one directed at them by sodomites (monastic reformers) and one which went against the laws of God. The tracts defending the ordination of clerical sons used similar rhetoric as the tracts for clerical marriage.
Chapter 5 shows the expansion of the manly celibate ideology by examining the thirteenth-century province of Normandy after its separation from England. The pastoral revolution of the thirteenth century brought an expanded model of religious manliness to Normandy, disseminated through councils and synods and enforced by a series of reforming archbishops. Once closed off to papal reform initiatives, Normandy opened the door to these reform canons as they originated in Lateran IV and were reissued throughout the province. Bishops now had more legal control over priestly behavior and also more means of effective enforcement. They expanded their reach to control not only clerical sexuality but also priestly conduct and appearance. The apex of reform was reached with the episcopacy of archbishop Odo Rigaldus of Rouen, whose sermons preached the very ideals embodied in pastoral reform.
Chapter 6 illustrates the state of the priestly body in the thirteenth century, when reform was extended beyond the chaste body, to a new clerical manliness built on appearance, behavior, and comportment. By the mid-thirteenth century, reform was successful for the elite clergy in Normandy; they were largely celibate, and they embraced, for the most part, the ideology of the manly celibate. This chapter shows the contrast between the “monasticized” elite and the rank-and-file parish clergy by focusing on the reform efforts of Odo Rigaldus. Thirteenth-century Norman priests exhibited inappropriate behavior beyond sexual activity and clerical marriage; they gambled, frequented taverns, engaged in violent behavior, and wore inappropriate secular clothing, all aspects of lay manliness in rural Normandy. Parish clerics were caught between the social status of a cleric and acceptance into a community of their peers. New legal maneuvers were used to eradicate scandal but also to serve as a mechanism to control priestly behavior and appearance.
During the period of ecclesiastical reform in England and Normandy, the real struggle of masculinity occurred not between the clergy and laity but between monastic reformers and the secular clergy. Celibacy was the crucial issue of this period, but it was not the only conflict that would emerge between these groups. Monastics and seculars would compete in a gendered arena, one in which women did not have an explicit role. As the seeds of reform sprouted, the radical changes in religious life clashed with traditional clerical culture. As these reforming ideals took root, the upper clergy began the transformation from householder to celibate elite. By the middle of the thirteenth century, when virtually all the bishops of England and Normandy were chaste and lived and supported the ideal of the manly celibate, the lower clergy were still unreformed. The extension of the manly priest model to include behavior and appearance made it even more difficult for the parish clergy to embrace their religious status as priests, to function in a social sphere that isolated them from the very deeds that equated manliness to them.
Chapter 1
The Manly Celibate
The priest Odelerius advised the Norman aristocrat Earl Roger to endow a Benedictine monastery; he persuaded him by portraying Benedictine monks in the following manner:
Consider now what duties are performed in monasteries obedient to a rule by those trained in the service of God. Countless benefits are obtained there every day, and Christ’s garrisons struggle manfully (viriliter) against the devil. Assuredly the harder the struggle of the spiritual warrior the more glorious will be his victory, and the more precious trophies in the courts of Heaven…. when I consider the rites of men in different parts of the world, and carefully look into the lives of hermits and canons, I see that all are inferior in their way of life to monks who live canonical lives under a rule… I admonish you to found a monastery while you may in your county… as a citadel of God against Satan, where the cowled champions may engage in ceaseless combat against Behemoth for your soul…. Rise up at once; begin manfully (viriliter), perform God’s work nobly.1
Odelerius was the father of the Anglo-Norman chronicler Orderic Vitalis, a priest himself who also took monastic vows. This passage portrays the glorification of monastic life that took place during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the period of reform in England and Normandy. Narratives like this defined the manly celibate model of masculinity. This gendered model, which reemerged during the reform era, originated in the Western practice of monasticism; by using the language of virility and ascetic ideology, religious writers elevated monastic manliness to a hegemonic level. Religious manliness, as I will call it, was distinguished from secular conceptions of masculinity by its focus on the superior celibate body.
The purpose of this chapter is to explore how this discourse appeared in Anglo-Norman reform-era texts and how these ideas ultimately affected the transitioning standards for priests and other secular clerics. Texts produced during this time underscore that reform was the establishment of a correct religious masculinity, one built on the ethos of self-restraint and virtus and one focused on chastity as a centrally defining feature. The religious male body was masculinized through
