Contemporary Authors

• Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages ( "Genders and Sexualities in History" series) Palgrave Macmillan (New York, NY), 2010
• The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia, PA), 2015

1. The manly priest : clerical celibacy, masculinity, and reform in England and Normandy, 1066-1300 LCCN 2015017689 Type of material Book Personal name Thibodeaux, Jennifer D., author. Main title The manly priest : clerical celibacy, masculinity, and reform in England and Normandy, 1066-1300 / Jennifer D. Thibodeaux. Published/Produced Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2015] Description viii, 230 pages ; 24 cm ISBN 9780812247527 (alk. paper) Shelf Location FLM2016 048667 CALL NUMBER BV4597.56 .T45 2015 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2) 2. Religious men and masculine identity in the Middle Ages LCCN 2012277841 Type of material Book Main title Religious men and masculine identity in the Middle Ages / edited by P.H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis. Published/Created Woodbridge : Boydell & Brewer, 2013. Description x, 214 p. ; 24 cm. ISBN 184383863X 9781843838630 Shelf Location FLM2014 022595 CALL NUMBER HQ1090.5.E85 R44 2013 OVERFLOWA5S Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM1)

• University of Wisconson - http://www.uww.edu/news/archive/2016-06-thibodeaux

  Medieval scholar garners international award
  June 02, 2016
  259 10 0 4
  Jennifer Thibodeaux

  The evidence is embroidered on a world-famous tapestry created almost a millennium ago. Amid scenes depicting the events leading up to the Norman Conquest of England and the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the Bayeux Tapestry demonstrates that, in the medieval period, priests in both England and Normandy were not only permitted to marry, they had traditional families and participated in other conventionally masculine behaviors.

  A scene from the tapestry depicting a virile priest is featured on the cover of a book that tells the story of how the Anglo-Norman Church came to impose clerical celibacy on members of the priesthood, shepherding in a new definition of masculinity for religious men that endures to this day.

  "The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity and Reform in England and Normandy 1066-1300," written by University of Wisconsin-Whitewater associate professor of history Jennifer Thibodeaux, was published in 2015 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. The book was the winner of the Society of Medieval Feminist Scholarship's 2016 Best Book Prize, which was awarded to Thibodeaux on May 14.

  The author has taught courses on the history of sexuality, women and gender issues on campus since 2004 and participates in the International Medieval Congress, a conference of more than 3,000 medieval scholars, every year. To be awarded the SMFS's top prize was an especially significant honor.

  Jennifer Thibodeaux

  "It's a great moment of pride," said Thibodeaux. "It's an honor to have scholars in my field recognize my work. And it means so much to me that I was the unanimous choice."

  University of Pennsylvania Press accepted Thibodeaux's monograph — a detailed study of a single topic by one author — in a competitive process that includes a rigorous peer review. The Ivy League press is a top-tier medieval studies press known for its gender and sexuality publications, according to Thibodeaux.

  When the press prepared to print her book and the topic of the cover was broached, Thibodeaux recalled a scene in the Bayeux Tapestry, an embroidered cloth nearly 230 feet long and 20 inches tall that is a unique visual document of medieval arms, apparel and other objects — including Haley's Comet — unlike any other artifact surviving from the period. Completed in the 1070s, shortly after the conquest, it consists largely of battle scenes with a few exceptions — including an unexpectedly unclothed male figure that was later depicted with clothing in copies made of the famous work. The figure's proximity to another clerical figure garbed in noble dress interacting with a noble woman suggests that at the time priests were accepted to have sexual lives.

  Thibodeaux contacted the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux in Bayeux, France, where the tapestry resides, for permission to use the image. With the museum's approval, book designer John Hubbard incorporated the scene into the cover and designed a faux embroidered font to spell out the title.

  Jennifer Thibodeaux

  Even before the SMFS's award, the publication garnered interest among medieval scholars and those who study the history of sexuality. Notches, a peer-reviewed international blog that explores the history of sexuality, published an almost 4,000-word posting about the monograph in February 2016.

  In the book, Thibodeaux explored the new model of religious masculinity for the priesthood and depicts clerical celibacy as a deeply contested movement in medieval England and Normandy, one that led to a new model of manliness for the medieval clergy.

  "Medieval people were really not so different from us in terms of how they thought about gender and sexuality," said Thibodeaux. "Modern people would be really surprised."

  The author considers herself fortunate that her research interest in how medieval society defined women and men aligns so closely with what she teaches. One especially popular course of hers, which was the first history class on campus to fill up when it was last offered, is "From Goddesses to Witches: Women in Pre-modern European History."

• Notches Blog - http://notchesblog.com/2016/02/09/the-manly-priest-an-interview-with-jennifer-thibodeaux/

  The Manly Priest: Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in the Medieval Period
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  By Katherine Harvey on February 9, 2016 in Author Interviews

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  Interview by Katherine Harvey

  In The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066-1300, Jennifer Thibodeaux tells the story of the imposition of clerical celibacy in the Anglo-Norman realms. For much of the medieval period, priests in both England and Normandy were not only permitted to marry, but also to prepare their own sons for ecclesiastical careers. Then, in the late eleventh century, the Roman Catholic Church began to require its priests to remain celibate. Thibodeaux explores the wide-reaching consequences of this radical shift, focusing in particular on its consequences for clerical masculinity. Whilst the introduction of compulsory celibacy initially met with staunch resistance from married priests, it eventually became a clerical norm. In the process, a new model of clerical manliness was created.

  Manly Priest Cover

  Katherine Harvey: What motivated the 11/12/13th century drive towards universal celibacy?

  Jennifer Thibodeaux: I don’t think there was one element which motivated the drive towards universal clerical celibacy. In fact, there were many elements which seemed to coalesce together at a certain moment in time, and together produced the eleventh-century reform movement of the Roman Church. Looking back at the earlier centuries of the Roman Church, there was always a certain amount of discomfort with priestly sexuality. Church councils in the fourth and fifth centuries tried to place restrictions on a priest’s sexuality by dictating that he live in continence with his wife, or by some interpretations, that he live in periodic continence with his wife. By the eleventh century, there was an increasing sacredness associated with the Eucharist, which made the continence of the priest all that more important to many. Peter Damian is famous for criticizing priests who rolled around in bed with their women, and then touched the altar and sacrament. Many were uncomfortable with this idea; we know that, from a theological perspective, a priest cannot contaminate the sacrament, but reformers repeatedly honed in on this possibility. Can a priest touch the most sacred Body of Christ, after having sexually touched his wife? The eleventh-century Roman Church was very much a monasticized one; we see the beginning of an exaltation of the monastic way of life, and the appointment of monks to higher positions, like bishop and pope. Since monks took a vow of chastity, they lived the ideal. And as they entered higher ecclesiastical offices, they took with them this ideal, which they then tried to enforce upon the parochial clergy.

  KH: Why did a celibate man need to experience sexual desire and how could he act manfully? Why was physical castration not a good option for a priest? What was spiritual castration and how might it be achieved?

  JT: Proponents of ascetic masculinity were well aware of the problems with glorifying the asexual man. This is perhaps the reason that the “soldier of Christ” ideology became so prominent in the eleventh century. If you read the saints’ lives from this time, you notice an intense glorification of the monastic life; monastic writers portrayed it as a masculinized life, so much so that even knights are converted to this path. Some suggest that the warrior motif presented in these stories was meant to not only encourage knights to enter the monastery, but also to make their transition to the ascetic life easier. With this in mind, a celibate man, or monk, or priest, needed to experience sexual desire because he needed to continually fight against his own desires. If he no longer experienced sexual desire, then he no longer struggled. Masculinity always needed to be re-asserted through some kind of conflict; this did not have to be a violent one, but something that provided a context for defining manliness. Ascetic masculinity was built on self-control. In order for one to conquer his sexual desires, one needed to experience sexual urges.

  Physical castration would seem to be a solution for those pesky sexual urges, except that by removing the genitals, one would lose his claim on being a man. The early Church took up this question; should a Christian man be castrated as a solution to end sexual desire? The answer was no. In the Norman world, possession of male genitalia was key to male status. Normans struck back at their political enemies by castrating them; essentially, they deprived them of their masculinity. It was the only place in medieval Europe where castration was used as punishment for a non-sexual crime. Elsewhere in Europe, castration was used to punish rapists. Spiritual castration was available only by divine intervention. There were stories of “mystical castration” whereby a holy man conquered his sexual desires by a miracle, literally. These stories are a bit problematic for achieving manliness, since this kind of miracle ended the war against the flesh. There are not many of those stories, and I have to think that it did not become a popular motif precisely because it rendered a holy man completely asexual.

  KH: What were the signs of effeminacy, and why did it pose such a threat to clerics?

  JT: In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, religious writers noted the prevalence of “softened” men at the courts of Anglo-Norman kings. These men wore their hair in a female fashion, long and curling, walked with a delicate gait, and also were associated with sodomy. All of this behavior was associated with effeminacy, and clearly, this points to men acting like women. But, religious writers also defined effeminacy as an excessive love of, and domination by, women. In the Middle Ages, you could risk your manliness by acting like a woman, or by allowing a woman to dominate you. For clerics, this meant that they were often ridiculed by monastic writers for spending church revenue on luxurious clothing for their women. Clerics were also ridiculed for their inability to withstand sexual temptation.

  Priest says mass
  A priest celebrates mass (BL Royal 6 E VI)
  KH: Can you explain how the church enforced clerical celibacy? How did the rise of clerical celibacy alter relations between different groups of clergymen—between clerical elites and their subordinates, and between monks and secular clergy?

  JT: In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Church did not enforce clerical celibacy very well at all. At that point in the Middle Ages, bishops had little means of enforcement; they generally decreed laws at councils, and then either in person, or by proxy, sent those laws to synods, where the clergy of many parishes gathered together to hear the latest “news.” Anselm, as archbishop of Canterbury (1093-1109), held two councils to deliver and reinforce these laws requiring priests to separate from their wives. At the first council in 1102, he simply ordered that priests could not live with their wives. He thought, perhaps naively, that without cohabitation, priests would not be able to have sex with their wives. We find out from letters exchanged between the archbishop and one of his bishops that the priests simply moved their women to their neighbor’s houses. The culture of married clergy was so entrenched that it was likely impossible to find a priest who did not have a wife or female partner. How do you patrol morality when everyone is guilty of the same sin? There was undoubtedly a large amount of hostility directed from priests towards these reformers, almost all of whom were monks who never married and would never marry.

  KH: How much resistance was there to these new restrictions on clerical sexuality? What arguments did opponents of sacerdotal celibacy use to defend the right of clergymen to marry? Why were they ultimately defeated?

  JT: Imagine that you are living the very same life your father and grandfather and great-grandfather lived. You marry, have children, and minister to your local community. One day, a bishop or archdeacon comes to your village, and announces that you no longer have a legitimate wife or children, and that you must toss them out to the road. Imagine that the person making this pronouncement is a monk, a man who has never married. I think that in some cases, priests just shrugged it off, went back to their homes, and continued with their lives, as they always had. In other cases, we hear of a very active and hostile resistance. The chronicler Orderic Vitalis tells us of two stories, one in which a synod of priests threw stones at their bishop shortly after this announcement; and in the other, priests are incredulous and aghast at such a ridiculous decree. Clerical writers who defended a priest’s right to marry relied upon historical precedent and appeals to morality. Some pointed out that many bishops and even popes in the early Church had married. They also suggested that if they were not allowed to have a wife, priests might instead be driven to fornication, and other sexual crimes, such as sodomy. In some of the more hostile polemics, writers suggested that monks were driving this movement (as they were) because they were sodomites. Finally, we see these writers raised the question of masculine honor as a factor in retaining their marriages.

  KH: How did the rise of clerical celibacy influence contemporary attitudes to/discussions of sodomy?

  JT: This is a very interesting question. Some clerical writers, such as Serlo of Bayeux, definitely associated sodomy with monasticism, and particularly insinuated that reformers were sodomites who went unpunished while they punished lawfully married priests. We know that legislation in England and Normandy focused overwhelmingly on outlawing clerical marriage. We also see that sodomy, seen as a heinous offense by many chroniclers and their contemporaries, is absent in conciliar legislation. The writer William of Malmesbury asserted that originally there were laws against sodomy passed at the Council of Westminster (1102), but that for reasons unknown, Anselm did not promulgate them. So you must imagine what married priests were thinking, when they saw homoerotic behavior at court and in the monasteries go unpunished, while their marriages were decreed unlawful. The late John Boswell noted this exclusion, and argued it was evidence that the early medieval Church tacitly accepted homosexuality. The Boswell thesis is controversial, but I do think that it is notable that at a time when war was waged over priestly marriage that male homoeroticism was not similarly punished.

  KH: How did the position of clerical sons change during this period? Why were they so problematic for proponents of clerical celibacy?

  JT: To put it simply, clerical sons (sons of priests who were themselves priests/clerics) were visible reminders of their fathers’ sexual incontinence. Many clerics and reformers believed that clerical sons could not be punished for their fathers’ immorality. But, since priestly fathers tended to pass down church benefices to their sons, this set up a cycle of hereditary benefices, which could result in the alienation of church property and revenues. In fact, this was one of the factors contributing to the campaign for a celibate priesthood. Very early church councils had recommended that clerical sons could only be ordained if they were cloistered monks. The assumption here was that a son who was a cloistered monk would not alienate church revenue because he would (presumably) remain chaste. In Normandy, it was expected that a priest’s son would be ordained and assume his father’s position. All men, with the exception of monks, would pass their occupation or vocation to their sons. Priests were no different. There was legislation passed in England which specified that a clerical son could be ordained and assume a church benefice, but only if succession between father and son was interrupted. There had to be a third-party to break the cycle of hereditary succession.

  KH: You identify a shift in the ecclesiastical agenda around the time of the Fourth Lateran Council; the Anglo-Norman reforms were “almost exclusively devoted to the problems of clerical sexuality,” whereas their thirteenth-century counterparts promoted a broader model of religious manliness. What was this new model and how/why did it develop?

  JT: Lateran IV (1215) held by Pope Innocent III, the original papal “monarch,” was definitely a watershed moment in the history of the medieval Church. All of the objectives of reform were presented along with actual mandates for carrying out those reforms, such as periodic visitation of parishes by bishops. The Church was creating a set of hard guidelines for clerical morality, which included standards for clerical appearance, and prohibitions on other typically masculine forms of behavior and activity, like gambling, tavern-frequenting, etc. So why were these concerns not expressed earlier in the eleventh and twelfth century church councils? I think the eradication of clerical marriage was an attempt to impose a monastic masculinity, or what I call “the manly priest model” upon the priesthood; obviously, the primary distinction between a monk and a priest is that the latter was traditionally married. But once reformers succeeded in eliminating, in theory, clerical marriage, they found that priests did not embrace the ideal of the “manly priest.” In fact, marriage was but one part of a priest’s gender identity. He still went to taverns, drank excessively, and sometimes gambled away his clerical robe. Lateran IV, then, was an all-inclusive attempt to formally monasticize the priesthood and to separate them from the laity, while elevating them in status. From the perspective of the Church, you cannot be an effective minister, judging parishioners’ sins, if you get drunk every night in the taverns. The Church needed priests to be spiritual leaders, not “one of the boys.” Meanwhile, a priest who lived up to this intensive model of clerical masculinity found himself somewhat socially isolated from his peers, alone without a woman or children, and forced to hold himself to a higher moral state. In an age when community was everything, that must have been quite difficult to attain. Monks were never socially isolated from their peers; instead, the nature of monasticism dictated that they live in a community together. Most monks, then, could attain the high spiritual standard expected of them, while cohabitating with their peers.

  Becoming a priest
  A new priest leaves worldly ties (represented by a woman) behind him. (MS Bodl. 270b)
  KH: The last chapter of the book opens with the case of a Norman priest who was “ill famed of incontinence with a stone-cutter’s wife, who is said to have borne him a child…he is nonresident, plays ball, and rides about in an open cape…” How did the church deal with men like this? Were the parish clergy ever effectively reformed?

  JT: That case came from the register of the archbishop of Rouen, Odo Rigaldus (also known as Eudes Rigaud). Odo was a zealous reformer, and although quite advanced in age, he made the rounds of his Norman parishes probably twice. He recorded the behavior of his parish clergy in his register, making this a great source for examining clerical behavior in the mid-thirteenth century. Laws against clerical marriage had been well established by this time. A priest could not claim that he did not know about the laws. So what was an archbishop to do about this? Odo kept records, and indeed his record-keeping is a part of his policing of the parish clergy. He often ordered a priest to swear an oath that he would abstain from the errant behavior, and the priest was obligated to resign if he was found “defamed” (accused) of such behavior again. The letter was either copied or appended to the register, so that in the future, there was a “paper trail” of the priest’s misconduct. Yet, in spite of these measures, Odo often gave repeat offenders additional opportunities to reform their behavior. It was only occasionally that Odo actually removed a priest. I think there was a shortage of priests, and as previous archbishops had discovered, simply too many fornicating priests to remove them all. Who would staff the parishes if they were all removed? So, the question was: were they ever effectively reformed? I don’t think so. Many of these men were from powerful families, and they paid lip service to the archbishop’s demands, but they continued doing what they wanted. Although visitation was a more effective enforcement of laws than ever before, it still could not eradicate bad behavior on the part of the parish clergy.

  KH: Priests who acted like laymen were clearly unsatisfactory from an ecclesiastical perspective, but did such behavior cause problems for the priests themselves, in terms of their status and their relationship with their parishioners?

  JT: This is a great question. My research does not provide all of the answers, but it seems that parishioners may have preferred a priest have his own wife, rather than prey upon the single (and married!) women of the parish. Evidence from fabliaux and other fictional narratives indicates that medieval people believed that a priest’s celibate state often led to an out-of-control eruption of sexual desires. Priests deflowered virgins, seduced married women, etc. I have evidence from Odo’s register, and from later fifteenth-century court records which indicate that priests did have adulterous affairs with women in their communities. I think that parishioners were likely to accept a priest who lived with a long-term concubine (who would have been a wife a century earlier), but who performed his duties adequately. Any priest who openly fornicated, and got involved in drunken brawls risked his social status as a priest in the community, but possibly reinforced his masculine status as a man. There’s a great case from Odo’s register in which a group of parishioners stop the archbishop’s men as they pass through town to tell him that their priest roamed the town at night armed with weapons. Clearly, they were being terrorized by this nutty priest. Also, it is important to remember that the accusations levied against priests in Odo’s register are coming from the local parishioners. We think that in some communities, priests and their concubines were left alone in peace, but as soon as someone had a problem or dispute with that priest, he could be reported for his illicit behavior. At the end of the day, those relationships were illegal.

  KH: By imposing celibacy on the entire of the priesthood, did the church create more problems than it solved?

  JT: Possibly so. By imposing the manly priest model upon a married clergy, the Church immediately cast its ministers as fornicators and adulterers. During the reform-era, some local bishops encouraged the laity to ban the services of a married priest. By this action, a priest’s status was automatically lowered, not elevated, and his professional identity called into question. This seemed to create the exact opposite of what the Church intended by its pastoral reform.

  Temptation by lechery
  Temptation by lechery (BL Royal 19 C I)
  KH: What does the figure of the celibate priest tell us about the relationship between sexuality and masculinity in medieval Europe?

  JT: It was possible for a celibate man to demonstrate his masculinity by his resistance of sexual desires. Modern society assumes that men who do not have sex are somewhat deficient in their manhood; it becomes fodder for jokes and ridicule. But the Christian Middle Ages offered an alternative masculinity for the vowed religious. At the same time, it illustrates how problematic is was for a celibate man to achieve a position of masculine authority in his local community. Monks had an easier time, particularly if they were cloistered, which the majority of them were. But the European Middle Ages had particular standards of masculinity, and one which was common to all men was their sexual performance. The sexual control or domination of a woman was key to establishing manliness. To achieve social adulthood, one had to marry and acquire a household. All men, regardless of their social status or occupation, had this common foundation for male gender identity. The exception, of course, is the religious celibate. Popes, cardinals, archbishops and bishops could claim extraordinary institutional power and authority, which I think, partially made up for their chastity. They could also claim domination over women by their support and monitoring of female religious communities. So, there were ways in which vowed celibate men could exercise, in some form, the common masculine expectations. Parish priests, however, were different. Most of them would have grown up in a small community, knowing everyone in their village, and assumed a higher status as the curate. If one grows up as a typical boy in a village community, then one day is ordained as priest, how does that man negotiate his place in this community as a priest, and as a man? His friends are in the tavern, drinking and gambling, but he is not allowed to enter that masculine space, where men bond with other men. He’s not allowed to engage in physical competitions, and he must always wear his clerical robe and be tonsured. And he is not allowed to fornicate, marry, or even live with a woman. You have to wonder how often a celibate priest was ridiculed by men in his community for his lack of sexual activity, but also for his alienation from male bonding.

  KH: What was the long-term legacy of clerical celibacy and the model of the manly priest?

  JT: The manly priest model, with its compulsory celibacy, became the standard expectation for Catholic priests, from the Middle Ages until today. This does not mean all medieval priests abided by these standards. The Council of Trent in the sixteenth century mandated seminary school training as a means to further improve the quality and morality of the pastoral clergy. There has been little research undertaken on the clergy in the modern age, so we can only speculate at how effective this model was in improving the moral standards of the clergy. But the twentieth-century Catholic priest is a monasticized priest. The restrictions on dress have been relaxed, and of course, contemporary priests enter bars and they play sports. So in that manner, the manly priest model has been modified for a modern age. Yet, priests are still obligated to celibacy, and this is still one of the hot button issues of our modern Catholic Church. Many believe that priests should be able to marry, and there is a certain discomfort around mandated celibacy. Catholic priests will argue that celibacy is a struggle they endure every day. In that manner, it offers up a re-affirmation of manliness through self-control, much like it did in the Middle Ages. Some in contemporary society make the erroneous assumption that mandated clerical celibacy is responsible for the sex abuse scandal of the Catholic Church. Still, some within the Catholic Church have expressed concern over an increasing “feminization” of the Church, especially since Vatican II. I think this concern points to the shift after Vatican II towards offering Mass in the vernacular and allowing deacons to serve as married men. More recently, girls are allowed to serve the altar as boys always have. The traditional power of the priest has been eroded somewhat with the laicization of the Church and the entry of married men who could function as deacons. At the same time, there is a backlash against these measures, and an increasing anxiety about a loss of religious manliness. There is a Catholic group called The New Emangelization which has decried a “man-crisis” in the Church, and appeals for Catholic men to return to active engagement in the Church, for the same of keeping the Church masculine. So, I think the manly priest model has a profound legacy and is still very relevant today.

  Jennifer ThibodeauxJennifer D. Thibodeaux is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. She earned her Ph.D in Medieval European History from the University of Kansas, with a focus on Church History and Gender History. She has published extensively on the subject of the medieval clergy and masculinity, including an edited volume, Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks, and Masculinity in the Middle Ages (Palgrave, 2010).

  KHarveyPhotoKatherine Harvey is Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London, where her research focuses on the pre-Reformation English episcopate. Her first book, Episcopal Appointments in England, c. 1214- c. 1344, was published by Ashgate in January 2014, and she has also written several articles on the medieval episcopal body. Her current research project is ‘Medicine and the Bishop in England, c. 1100- c. 1500.’ She tweets from @keharvey2013

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Thibodeaux, Jennifer D.: The manly priest:
clerical celibacy, masculinity, and reform in
England and Normandy, 1066-1300
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Affectionate Authorities: Fathers and Fatherly Roles in Late Medieval Basel
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Medieval Review.
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Thibodeaux, Jennifer D. "Affectionate Authorities: Fathers and Fatherly Roles in Late Medieval Basel." Medieval
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Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages
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Van Houts, Elisabeth. "Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages." The
Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vol. 63, no. 1, 2012, pp. 135-136. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA294434858&it=r&asid=52e5e59e20182d30ad4b80b838b8313d. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
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Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages
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Coon, Lynda. "Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages." Medieval Review,
2011. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA316121478&it=r&asid=07ffd4902b4ef5a67131bb7a85e9eeb0. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
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Sexuality in the Middle Ages And Early Modern Times: New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme
Jenny Jochens
The Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 109.2 (Apr. 2010): p272. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2010 University of Illinois Press http://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/jegp.html
Full Text:
SEXUALITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES AND EARLY MODERN TIMES: NEW APPROACHES TO A FUNDAMENTAL CULTURAL-HISTORICAL AND LITERARY-ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEME. Edited by Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 3. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008. Pp. viii + 903. $149.95.
This hefty volume is the result of the Fifth International Symposium on Medieval and Early Modern Studies held at the University of Arizona in May 2007. Not until the end of Albrecht Classen's lengthy and laborious introduction that would suffice as a small monograph in itself is this fact revealed (p. 139). Both the conference and the collection owe their existence to Classen's initiative and energy. In addition to the introduction he gives generous summaries of the twenty-eight articles, two of which are his own, offers comments and additions to the authors' footnotes, provides abstracts of the articles presented in German, and personally prepared the camera-ready copy for final publication. The result is impressive with few typos, but only mistakes in numbering of the footnotes.
The theme of the volume is the irrepressibility of sex, as can be deciphered from Classen's unwieldy title to his introduction that deserves to be cited in full: "The Cultural Significance of Sexuality in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and Beyond. A Secret Continuous Undercurrent or a Dominant Phenomenon of the Premodern World? Or: The Irrepressibility of Sex Yesterday and Today" (p. 1). The introduction is divided into fourteen minichapters of which the most interesting are entitled the "Eroticization of the Reader/Listener" (no. 8) and "The Erotic, Sexuality, and the Pornographic?" (no. 9). He furnishes penetrating analyses of the double entendres in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Jean de Meun's Roman de I'a Rose, and Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron, but his results are too pointu for an introduction for which conclusions would have served better. Important for his argument of the cultural continuity of sexuality is the chapter entitled "Sexuality and the Process of Civilization" (no. 12), where he criticizes both Norbert Elias and Hans Peter Duerr for their diverging views on shame caused by the naked body--obviously an issue important for sexuality. In contrast to Classen's continuity, Elias, a sociologist, saw shame emerging as a sign of modernity by the end of the Middle Ages, whereas Duerr, an anthropologist, argued for its universality in time and space.
The twenty-eight articles are arranged vaguely according to the principles of chronology and geography and the authors comprise twenty women and eight men from the academic hierarchy ranging from graduate students to full professors. Most were trained and are employed in the United States, but participants from Australia, Austria, France, Germany, and Spain represent the larger world. Particularly noteworthy are those from lesser-known institutions in the United States. This broad spectrum confirms the ubiquity of sexuality as a new theme in medieval historiography. German essays are furnished with English abstracts. The collection reveals remarkable teamwork; not only has Classen read all the contributions but the authors have scrutinized the introduction and are aware of each other's essays, as evidenced by many cross-references.
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Although the subject of sexuality is of interest to historians as well as to literary scholars, it becomes clear that literary texts provide more information than historical documents. In fact, only five of the essays treat historical subjects. Peter Dinzelbacher deals straightforwardly with "Gruppensex im Untergrund," a subject that largely concerns heretical movements. Andrew Holt treats "Feminine Sexuality and the Crusades," Jennifer D. Thibodeaux "The Sexual Lives of Medieval Norman Clerics," Sara McDougall "The Prosecution of Sex in Late Medieval Troyes," and Stephanie Fink DeBacker a funeral memorial in Spain constructed about 1580 in Toledo to which I shall return. Gertrud Blaschitz examines even the brothel--seemingly a straight historical subj ect--exclusively from literary and artistic sources in "Das Freudenhaus im Mittelalter."
The remaining twenty-three essays analyze sexuality from literary or artistic sources. Sometimes present-day concerns dominate the research; Rasma LazdaCazers who examines "Oral Sex in the Songs of Oswald von Wolkenstein" feels compelled to add to her title in the table of contents "Did it Really Happen?" Given Albrecht Classen's extensive work in medieval German literature it is not surprising that this field is better represented than normally in such anthologies. No less than seven essays deal with German subjects. In addition to those by Blaschitz and Lazda-Cazers, they include Classen's two essays, "Naked Men" and "Sexual Desire and Pornography," in which he provides literary illustrations to his opposition to Elias's and Duerr's views in a somewhat rambling fashion, in the first from well-known texts and in the second from the almost unknown "Das Nonnenturnier" or "The Tournament of the Penis" from the fifteenth century. Eva Parra Membrives's interesting analysis "Lust ohne Liebe" treats Roswitha of Gandersheim's Latin works, in which punishment for identical sins is measured out according to gender differences. Christopher R. Clason treats the language of erotic desire and fulfillment in Gottfried's Tristan. Working within hermeneutics Siegfried Christoph provides guidelines for identifying sexual innuendos. Although his examples are chosen mainly from German literature, his article is the one most often cited by his fellow authors, indicating his ideas' broad applicability. This is demonstrated by the following essay by Julia Wingo Shinnick entitled "Singing Desire: Musical Innuendo in Troubadour and Trouvere Song." She works primarily with the Old French poem Bele Ysabiauz (Beautiful Isabelle) and Arnaut Daniel's Lo ferm voler (The firm Desire)--a poem written in a new poetic form later named the sestina. For both she supplies musical annotations, texts, and translations, and she is able to demonstrate a musical "narrative" that matches the progression of the narrator's desire. Her essay opens up a new field for the study of medieval sexuality.
Shinnick's article forms a transition to the French essays. To the two authors who used French historical sources, eleven additional authors have chosen their subjects from French literature. Stacey L. Hahn examines "Feminine Sexuality in the Lancelot-Grail Cycle"; Sarah Gordon analyzes food imagery and sexuality in the fabliaux; Paula Leverage focuses on sex and the sacraments in Tristan de Nanteuil, a fourteenth-century chanson de geste; Kathleen M. Llewellyn treats death and sex in early French literature; Anglo-Norman literature is included in Suzanne Kocher's imaginative reading of the twelfth-century romance Ipomedon by Hue de Rotelande; and Christina Weising focuses on visual art in her study that categorizes the most public and most frank depictions of sexuality found on the corbels under the cornices of Romanesque churches in Southern France.
In the French group four essays deserve attention for their originality and new interpretations. Molly Robinson Kelly is one of the few scholars who have been puzzled by the near total absence of reproductive results from the many sexual activities in the literature of courtly love, and she is naturally attracted to Marie de France's Lais. Dividing Marie's translations of twelve Breton lays into three groups according to their treatment of sexuality and reproduction, she finds four in which the principal couple does not engage in intimate relations; four who do but remain childless, and four who produce one child. Robinson Kelly demonstrates the multivalent aspects of sexuality and the interaction between the sexual act and fertility throughout the collection. She is also among those who have noticed Marie's remarkable knowledge of proper care of infants.
Undoubtedly the most revolutionary essay is Juanita Feros Ruys's "Heloise, Monastic Temptation, and Memoria" that should be required reading for all Abelard and Heloise scholars. Focusing on Heloise's fourth letter, Ruys dismisses most modern scholarship that has claimed that Heloise--in particular in this letter--articulates her erotic self as she confesses to Abelard her repressed desire. Instead, she argues convincingly, that Heloise is tapping into a venerable but still active monastic discourse on sexual temptation and nocturnal emission. Its best spokesman was the fifth-century monk John Cassian, but contemporary authors continued to treat the problem. Imbued with these writings Heloise aligned herself in this tradition, but she feminized the discourse by regendering her own sexual desire as male. Her most startling innovation is her use of memoria. Rather than discarding her sexual memories as sinful, she relied on
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them to practice the exercise of memoria rerum. As outlined by Augustine, this entailed the creation, retention, and recall of images and emotions. In this way Heloise did not repudiate her past with the knowledge of her body but was able to endorse it. As Ruys concludes, Abelard may never have understood her.
Alexa Sand puzzles over the Old Testament figure of Ruth who makes a brief and sudden appearance in the second half of the thirteenth century in depictions on glass and parchment. Most elaborate are the illustrations in the so-called Morgan Old Testament Picture Book produced about 1250 for the French royalty. It provides ten scenes that contain more information about Ruth than can be found in the Bible, to which Sand provides a sophisticated multidisciplinary explanation. From a theological standpoint Ruth is important because, as a gentile woman from Moab, she became a foremother for David in her second marriage to the Jew Boaz and thus introduced gentile lineage into Jesus's genealogy. Romance literature provides a model for her love story with Boaz, and the emphasis on seeds and fruit stresses her fertility in securing an heir and a dynasty. Sand assumes that the concern for fertility was uppermost in royal and noble circles during the reign of Saint Louis when many men perished during the crusades, and she credits Ruth's popularity to this concern.
Building on Plato's conception that writers are justified in seeing their authorship as procreation, Reinier Leushuis quickly surveys the growth of French vernacular literature--poetry as well as prose--in the period 1250-1550, making three halts at Jean de Meun who continued Guillaume de Lorris's Roman de la Rose, at Jean Lemaire de Belges and his La Concorde de deux langages (French and Italian) in 1511, and finally at Rabelais in his Prologue to Tiers Livre (1546). In all three texts the author figure is depicted as a linguistic reproducer during events of metaphysical and/or real wars, seemingly inspired by the need for sexual reproduction brought on by wartime devastation. (Neither Sand nor Leushuis provides historical evidence in support of their assumptions of the effects of war.)
Spain is represented with two essays. Connie L. Scarborough provides an analysis of the famous Libro de buen amor, focusing on the rape of men and other lessons about sex. In "Prescription, Passion, and Patronage in Early Modern Spain," Stephanie Fink DeBacker tells the remarkable story of a mother (Maria, a noble widow), a father (Diego de Castilla, her confessor), and their son Luis, probably conceived about 1538 when Maria was lodged in luxurious quarters at the Cistercian convent of Santa Domingo de Silos in Toledo where she spent her last 38 years. Although their relationship was hidden during their lives, the parents were apparently able to support their child. When Maria died she provided for a memorial for herself, and from her estate Diego and Luis managed to construct a new chapel for the convent where the family was united in burial in a resplendent memorial adorned with paintings by El Greco.
Northern Europe is not treated, but England is represented with three essays. Asa Simon Mittman and Susan M. Kim examine "The Exposed Body and the Gendered Blemmye," a creature that appears as one of several illustrations of fantastic creatures in the Anglo-Saxon manuscript Wonders of the East from about the year 1000. This human-like but headless being whose gender is difficult to determine permits the authors to contrast it with Rene Magritte's painting The Rape. Jean E. Jost provides a comparison of sexual relationships in three Middle English poetic works, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, the anonymous Athelston from the mid-fourteenth century, and the late thirteenth-century Sir Tristrem (unfinished but for Walter Scott). A detailed comparison between the first and the last text does not take into consideration Alan Lupack's suggestion that the latter should be read as parody. Daniel F. Pigg treats Thomas Malory's creation of Sir Gareth, one of the preeminent knights in the Arthurian legend of the Round Table. With few sources from which to draw, Malory was free to construct his own vision of masculinity in the late fifteenth century. It was centered on the idea of performativity not only in combat but also in discourse, and naturally in service to women. In this last area certain restrictions became apparent when men were encouraged to postpone sexual pleasure until the wedding. The three English articles are overly demanding of readers and might have been appreciated better in specialized journals than in this collection aimed at a general audience.
The last article by Allison P. Coudert is entitled "From Clitoris to the Breast: The Eclipse of the Female Libido in Early Modern Art, Literature, and Philosophy." In a wide-ranging analysis based on medicinal and sociological works, she traces the development during the "long eighteenth century" (1660-1800) during which the old idea of the irrepressible female libido was replaced by a new form of essentialism that glorified motherhood as women's most important function, at least in the middle and upper classes, ideas that had social, political, and economic repercussions throughout society.
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The collection is equipped with almost one hundred illustrations generously distributed after the essays they illuminate. Rich bibliographies are found in the footnotes, and the book is furnished with an index of contemporary authors, texts, and terms.
Albrecht Classen and his collaborators have amply proven the unsurprising thesis that "the discourse of sexuality ... permeated all aspects of medieval and early modern society, whether informed by negative or positive values" (p. 90).
JENNY JOCHENS Baltimore and Paris Jochens, Jenny
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Jochens, Jenny. "Sexuality in the Middle Ages And Early Modern Times: New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-
Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme." The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 109, no. 2, 2010, p. 272+. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA411335823&it=r&asid=ade60c307d74fa4f235db8cabfd0d5d2. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A411335823
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Classen, Albrecht, ed. Sexuality in the Middle
Ages and Early Modern Times: New Approaches
to a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and
Literary-Anthropological Theme
Carol A. Leibiger
Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German.
42.1 (Spring 2009): p102. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2009 American Association of Teachers of German http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291756-1221
Full Text:
Classen, Albrecht, ed. Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 3. New York: De Gruyter, 2008. Cloth, viii + 903 pp., $149.95. <>
Albrecht Classen justifies this study of sex and sexuality in earlier times by the ubiquity of these phenomena, their obvious presence in the time periods under consideration, their impact on private and public life, and the effects of medieval and contemporary views of sex and sexuality on both their articulation and the study of these phenomena. Since sex is a significant motivator of behavior, how did these eras represent sexuality, how did social structures react to and seek to control it; and how have the contexts of subsequent periods affected our ability to perceive and understand evidence of sex/sexuality in cultural artifacts?
This work comprises Classen's 141-page introduction and 28 contributions spanning literature, art, music, and ecclesiastical pronouncements on sexuality, arranged in chronological order. The book's essays represent, for the most part, papers presented at the Fifth International Symposium on Medieval and Early Modern Studies held at the University of Arizona-Tucson in 2007 (some unidentified "outside scholars" provided additional papers). Literature predominates with 17 papers, and the other areas represented are covered fairly equally in the remaining 11 papers. The literary analytical contributions primarily treat the "warhorses" of German, French, and English medieval literature, e.g., Tristan, Marie de France's lais, and Chaucer, and attempt to provide a necessary corrective to the obfuscation of medieval and early modern sexuality due to the imposition of subsequent eras' sexual standards upon literature of earlier times. Welcome additions are the chapters that treat less-known literary works (e.g., Classen's discussion of "Das Nonnenturnier"), as well as those that examine art and music as vehicles for the expression of sexual desire. Finally, the writings dealing with Church policy and jurisprudence in the areas of sexual practice and expression present fascinating views into the history of ecclesiastical involvement with private behavior.
A fundamental methodological flaw that runs through many of the contributions is a failure to define sex and sexuality. Except for Molly Robinson Kelly's discussion of sex and impregnation in Marie de France's lais, there is no attempt to provide an individual or collective understanding of these terms. Both words are used interchangeably, despite their different meanings both colloquially and within the social sciences. With potentially as many different views of sex and sexuality as there are authors, the discussion of these fundamental constructs becomes individualistic and potentially confusing.
Another methodological problem, found mostly in the articles on literature, is an overgeneralization, i.e., that medieval and early modern times represented a monoculture with a uniform practice of sex and articulation of sexuality, due to the failure consistently to stipulate the effect of the cultural, social, or regional/geographical context of the works under discussion. It is important to remember that sexuality, as a social construct, is directly affected by its context, and that
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the contributions can tell us only how sex and sexuality were perceived, enacted, and constrained in a given context, not universally.
The essays on visual art and music are well written and highly engaging. Their value lies in making accessible the full context of art that enacts the discourse of sex. For instance, Julia Wingo Shinnick's "Singing Desire: Musical Innuendo in Troubadour and Trouvere Song" explores how the performance of songs enhanced their discourse of sexuality and reminds us that works of art need to be considered in the entirety of their contexts, be they visual or aural. Contributions of literary analysis function to raise issues of sexuality in medieval discourse that are coded or otherwise hidden from us, perhaps because meanings and constructs have changed over time. Siegfried Christoph's methodological study on innuendo in medieval literature discusses the possibilities in and, importantly, the limitations of, comprehending possible instances of sexual innuendo in medieval texts. Other contributions that provide interesting analyses of sexual discourse are Juanita Feros Ruys' "Heloise, Monastic Temptation, and Memoria," an investigation of Heloise's appropriation of male sexual discourse in her correspondence with Abelard; Connie L. Scarborough's analysis of amor loco as represented in the rape and mistreatment of men in the Libro de buen amor, and Kathleen M. Llewellyn's "Deadly Sex and Sexy Death in Early Modern French Literature," a study of the literary link between female sex and death that expressed male fear of female insatiability. These essays are interesting, understandable, and elegantly written. Contributions by historians Andrew Holt ("Feminine Sexuality and the Crusades") and Jennifer D. Thibodeaux ("The Sexual Lives of Norman Clerics") provide evidence of the Church's changing views on chastity, considering women's "harmful' participation in the Crusades and competing representations of masculinity among the sexually active and chaste clergy, respectively.
An exception to the generally high quality of the contributions is Jean E. Jost's "Intersecting the Ideal and the Real, Chivalry and Rape, Respect and Dishonor: The Problematics of Sexual Relationships in Troilus and Criseyde, Athelston, and Sir Tristrem," which is marred by excessive linear plot narration (cf. the detailed retelling of Troilus and Criseyde [609-19]) and an overreliance on other critics' analyses (e.g., 623-30). The writing is poorly edited, contains inaccuracies (e.g., St. John Chrysostom is called John of Chrysostom and simply Chrysostom [601]), and displays infelicities of language inexplicable in a Professor of English (for example, "[Isonde] lies her body upon [Tristrem]" [630]). Finally, the conclusion, that sex with love is good, but sex without love is bad (630-32), is trivial and disappointing, especially given the nuanced discussions elsewhere in this book.
Because Classen's contributions (introduction and two papers) comprise one quarter of this tome, his work deserves special consideration; additionally, he organized the conference that produced this work, functioned as copy editor, and published the volume in a series of which he is co-editor. The introduction justifies the examination of sexuality and supports Classen's assertions with a tour de force of explication of sexual content and innuendo in works of medieval and early modern times. While his point, that sex is an essential component of life that found expression in earlier times and thus deserves attention, is certainly valid, his 96-page excursus verges on overkill, and some of his "surprising realizations" are already known to the reader (e.g., that mysticism's unio mystica utilized sexual imagery [92]). His introduction ends with a 45-page summary of all of the contributions, superfluous material for readers who will, it is hoped, engage themselves with the individual papers.
Classen's two literary analytical contributions (on naked men in Middle High German literature and on a late medieval text describing the anthropomorphization of a castrated penis and a convent's battle for its favors) are entertaining and valuable contributions to the discussion of the representation of sex in medieval literature. Unfortunately, he uses these analyses and his introduction to make claims about the applicability of this book's findings to the resolution of a "debate" between the sociologist Norbert Elias and the anthropologist Peter Duerr about shame. (Briefly, Elias argued that shame at personal nakedness underwent a "paradigm shift" [Classen's term] in early modern times; Duerr disputed this claim, demonstrating that shame is universally present, in varying degrees, among humans). Classen indicates correctly that the analysis of medieval and early modern literature clearly supports both scholars' claims that sexuality has played an important role in public and private discourse in Western culture, regardless of its connection with greater/lesser shame. However, his argument reiterates discussions that have already occurred in the social sciences (e.g., Mennell & Goudsblom's "Civilizing Processes--Myth or Reality? A Comment on Duerr's Critique of Elias." Comparative Studies in Society and History 39.4 [1997]:729-33), i.e., the recognition that both scholars acknowledge shame's universal manifestation to a greater or lesser degree, as determined by context.
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Finally, Classen, as sole editor, would have done well to have consulted a native speaker of English in the preparation of the camera-ready publication copy. Particularly in his own contributions, awkward phraseology is evident, mostly due to strong influence from German (for instance, "not allowed positions" [2]). Additional problematic language involves grammatically incorrect English (e.g., "they both engage in sex with each" [i.e., each other, 58]) and puzzling word choices (for example, "ways to subterfuge those attempts" [i.e., subvert, 15]). Inaccuracies also remain uncorrected in other contributors' essays (e.g., Hahn writes about "the offspring of adulterous children" when she actually means adulterous parents [595], and Gordon misuses the plural fabliaux as a singular noun [614]). Such errors certainly affect their credibility in the eyes of the reader.
Despite its weaknesses, this book is to be recommended as a wide-ranging and fascinating study of an essential human sphere of action that continually and universally finds representation in culture. To study sexuality is to understand both the similarities and differences between our time and previous eras, in terms of the expression of desire and the suppression of its enactment, and the regulation of public and private behavior. Classsen and his colleagues have presented us with new views on an old subject, and this work is to be recommended for all who would better understand the influence of sexuality on almost every aspect of modern life and culture.
Carol A. Leibiger
The University of South Dakota Leibiger, Carol A.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Leibiger, Carol A. "Classen, Albrecht, ed. Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: New Approaches to
a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme." Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching
German, vol. 42, no. 1, 2009, p. 102+. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA200979563&it=r&asid=ba35b563aa5c9dab73bfd0834b25774a. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A200979563
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FORBES, HELEN FOXHALL1
Source:
Gender & History. Aug2011, Vol. 23 Issue 2, p444-445. 2p.

In the study of clerical masculinity, sexuality and celibacy have frequently been key topics of discussion, understandably enough since in many cases they are highly significant. The essays in this collection argue that celibacy is not necessarily the defining characteristic of clerical masculinity, and seek to identify new approaches to masculinity in a range of clerical contexts in medieval Europe. The essays cover north-western Europe and Scandinavia as well as Crusaders and reactions to them, and explore case studies ranging in date from the Carolingian period through to the Reformation. Some of the best discussions in the book are found in attempts to distinguish connections between the normative and the actual in considering a variety of masculinities. Janelle Werner explores the realities of the non-celibate priesthood and how parish priests in England asserted their masculinity much like non-celibate men (although she might usefully have referred to the work of James Brundage in this context); Tanya Stabler Miller considers Robert of Sorbon’s efforts to present beguines ´ as examples for clerics, but also (and perhaps more interestingly) discusses evidence for clerical interest in beguines ´ , including collections of sermons preached at the beguinage which were copied and consulted by clerics connected with the Sorbonne. There are also careful and interesting interpretations of medieval texts in the essays by Andrew Romig and Anthony Perron, which consider Odo of Cluny’s Life of Gerald of Aurillac and Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum respectively. Katherine Allen Smith’s essay is notable as one of the few which relates concepts of clerical masculinity to a particular type of femininity for religious women, and discusses how masculinity and femininity were blended in different contexts and in different measures for those of both sexes in religious life. The aims of the book are both sensible and interesting, but only in places do the essays come close to achieving those aims. One of the key arguments running throughout the collection is that there were multiple clerical masculinities which should be seen in their own contexts. Despite this, several of the essays do not explicitly compare clerical masculinity (or masculinities) in a given geographical area and/or time period to the perceived secular masculinity (or masculinities), perhaps assuming that this would be self-evident, but non-clerical masculinity was also not static or monolithic. Another key point is a rejection of the idea of a third gender (such as Robert Swanson’s proposed ‘emasculine’) in considering clerical identity. As a result, there seems occasionally to be an underlying assumption that if clerics were not considered masculine they must have been considered effeminate: the focus on presence of absence of masculinity leaves little exploration of degrees of masculinity, or whether in some contexts there was ‘good’ and ‘bad’ masculinity. The authors are right to assert that clerics retained their masculinity, albeit a masculinity defined specifically for clerical contexts, but it is surely significant that the ungendered angels were important role models for clerical and especially monastic behaviour. It is also significant that clerics often seem to have asserted their masculinity precisely by not being celibate. C 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Reviews 445 The production quality seems surprisingly poor for a major publisher, and occasional typographical errors and inconsistent editing spoil the text in places, particularly where these have a significant effect on the content (for example, Goscelin of St Bertin wrote his Liber Confortatorius in the 1080s, not the 1180s (p. 98)). The essays are not always well connected or integrated, and the overall effect is one of repetition: discussions or arguments in one chapter often do not cite relevant chapters elsewhere in the collection, and overlap is frequently ignored. Articles by Jo Ann MacNamara, Robert Swanson and/or Vern Bullough are discussed in most chapters, and while this emphasises the significance of these authors’ contributions and the scholarly dialogue that they have provoked, the collection as a whole would have read more smoothly and appeared more unified if there had been a slightly heavier editorial hand here. The index is rather sparse, and it would have been helpful to have a combined bibliography. The collection as a whole is an interesting step in the history of medieval masculinity, which has received much less attention than the history of women and femininity in the Middle Ages. Its focus on men in religious life who were (at least supposedly) celibate is interesting in that this is a group which does not appear with the same frequency in ancient or more modern studies of masculine identity, and it is important too that the essays seek to approach clerical masculinity without using ‘celibacy itself [as] the principal category of analysis’ (p. 4). However, a collection which examines clerical masculinity specifically, rather than masculinity for a range of groups in any particular time or place (including celibate and non-celibate men, and potentially women too), runs the risk of doing exactly that.

Huffman, J.P. "Thibodeaux, Jennifer D.: The manly priest: clerical celibacy, masculinity, and reform in England and Normandy, 1066-1300." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 2016, p. 1537. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454942965&it=r. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017. Thibodeaux, Jennifer D. "Affectionate Authorities: Fathers and Fatherly Roles in Late Medieval Basel." Medieval Review, 2016, p. NA(NA). PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA467548676&it=r. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017. Van Houts, Elisabeth. "Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages." The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, vol. 63, no. 1, 2012, pp. 135-136. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA294434858&it=r. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017. Coon, Lynda. "Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages." Medieval Review, 2011. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA316121478&it=r. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017. Jochens, Jenny. "Sexuality in the Middle Ages And Early Modern Times: New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme." The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 109, no. 2, 2010, p. 272+. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA411335823&it=r. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017. Leibiger, Carol A. "Classen, Albrecht, ed. Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme." Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, vol. 42, no. 1, 2009, p. 102+. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA200979563&it=r. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.

• Indiana University
  https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/22816/28681
  Word count: 2384

  Thibodeaux, Jennifer D. The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066-1300. The Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. pp. 230. $59.95 (hardback). ISBN: 978-0-8122-4752-7 (hardback).

  Reviewed by:

  Bertil NilssonUniversity of Gothenburg, Emeritusbertil.nilsson@lir.gu.se
  This book, consisting of six chapters, is chronologically outlined. It starts in the 11th century with the so called reform movement, when the popes from Leo IX (1049-1054) and onwards emphatically demanded that clerical celibacy should be put into practice on all levels in Western Christendom. The study comprises England and Normandy until the beginning of the 13th century, and after that Normandy only, since this province was conquered by France in 1204 and, accordingly, the direct contacts with the English Church ceased. Thibodeaux maintains that there was a considerable change concerning the theme studied by her in the beginning of the 13th century, particularly as a consequence of the decisions made by the IV Lateran Council in 1215. From the latter part of the 13th century Thibodeaux uses source material hitherto not observed consisting partly of Archbishop Odo Rigaldus's (archbishop of Rouen 1248-1275) synodal sermons, partly notes taken at his visitations in the church province containing among other things judicial cases with parish priests involved.

  When presenting the theoretical framework for the research task, Thibodeaux's point of departure is that "the discourse of celibacy that the reformers [of the 11th century and onwards] promoted throughout England and Normandy was inspired by a new gender paradigm for the priesthood." Her aim is to scrutinize "how this norm affected the religious male body..." (2). The long period of time studied, almost 250 years, gives perspectives to changes concerning the view of clerical masculinity among monks as well as married secular priests. The priests defended their right to be married despite the fact that the upholders of the reform required that all clerics in major orders (ordines maiores) were obliged to live sexually continent in order to protect the purity of the Eucharistic sacrament and to prevent that churchly property and benefices were inherited by sons of the married priests, who themselves often were priests.

  Even if there is a certain degree of discrepancy among scholars as to what was the primary reason for the demand for celibacy--cultic purity or moral-- Thibodeaux points out that in England and Normandy after 1066 it was about the purity of the secular clerics' bodies and the masculinization of them, meaning the priest's bodily image and outward behavior. A higher degree of manliness was expressed, according to Thibodeaux and her sources, through a body which refrained from sex. Thus, religiously the monk's body was a better expression of manliness than was the married secular priest's, because the monk had to fight (manly) to overcome bodily lust. In what way could it be possible to motivate this opinion also for the secular priests?

  All chapters are well structured. They start with a short presentation of the question at issue; every subsection is concluded with a short summary, and, at the end, the chapter as a whole is analytically summarized in a way that leads up to the next chapter. This means that the book is easily read and easy to understand; the entirety keeps very well together. However, modern technique should have made it possible to print the book with footnotes not endnotes. Perhaps, a reviewer could wish more of distinctly outspoken source criticism, kept together in one section: What can you actually count on when using precisely the sources applied by Thibodeaux in relation to her questions at issue? Regarding method, Thibodeaux writes that you have to "look at the ways that masculinity was understood and expressed implicitly" (10). The reviewer would like to know in more detail how you do when reading implicitly and how reliable that kind of reading is.

  In the first chapter Thibodeaux studies what she calls religious manliness characterized by the masculinization of the body through discipline, integrity, and "impenetrability" (16). Of course, an important question is how to define masculinity; as a matter of course, the language is of decisive importance. By way of introduction Thibodeaux presents the language of her sources, and maintains that the use of a masculine language--often with the help of the word viriliter--implies that the authors looked upon an ascetical body as a manly body, fighting against the lusts of the flesh. Through such a life the man became "a new man." Thus, the secular priests were expected to adopt monastic manliness, based on self-control and chastity in order to become real men. This was one side of the matter. The other was that the sources contained manifest warnings against getting feminized through different ways of behavior. Particularly it was about men who had sex with women--in the light of the monastic ideal as being regarded as the manliest one--and men who had sex with men. But, as Thibodeaux can demonstrate, it was also about the colors of the clothes or the hair-style as well. Thibodeaux gives a number of amusing examples regarding how the authors expressed themselves and/or what they considered necessary measures to take in order to prevent feminization. Thibodeaux means that it had to do with the fact the ordinary people during the Middle Ages to a high degree felt uncomfortable with inverted gender performances and considered such things as being conducive to disasters, for instance shipwrecks. According to the authors there was also another aspect, namely that the secular clergy was feminized because the priests were sexually dominated by women. Here you would like Thibodeaux to have written shortly about the way of looking at women expressed by this standpoint. The only way for a cleric to avoid feminization was, according to Thibodeaux, what she calls "sexualized chastity." It seems to be a very precise and appropriate term for what it was all about, i.e. a fight against the sexual lusts, which meant that the clerics actually experienced the bodily sexuality. Is was about, as Thibodeaux correctly lays stress upon, a sort of inverted sexuality, which she clearly illustrates with the authors' rhetoric as well as their own imaginations and thoughts.

  Chapter 2 deals with decrees issued against marriage among the secular priests. By way of introduction Thibodeaux gives an example which very well serves as illustration to the studied period as a whole: When the archbishop of Rouen at a provincial council in 1072 tried to impose the celibacy for the secular clergy, the priests started throwing stones at him, which made him flee. Well-known from the whole of the Western Church--not only from England and Normandy--and from the whole of the Middle Ages is the fact that the legal discourse on celibacy over and over again was met with resistance among the secular clergy. Here Thibodeaux contributes with some additional and very concrete examples enriching our knowledge of regional conditions. It is worth underlining, as Thibodeaux does, that it was during this period (the latter part of the 11th century) that the monastic ideal started to be proposed as an ideal also for the secular clergy. However, Thibodeaux writes: "How effective these early reform effort were across Europe is not known" (41). Yes, we do know! They were not effective. The decrees meaning that priests became excommunicate and irregular when celebrating mass if they at the same time lived in matrimony--or had sex at all--resulted in a great deal of complications with regard to the parishes' needs for the administration of the sacraments. Thibodeaux analyses this complex of problems convincingly illustrating it with enlightening examples that show that the married priests and their families were supported by the parishioners for their way of life, also when children were born. Especially problematic became the question of how to deal with the sons of priests who themselves wished to become ordained. Thibodeaux treats this problem in Chapter 3.

  T. shows that the adherents of the reform immediately criticized a candidate for an episcopal see, if it turned out that he was a son of a priest, irrespective of the fact that his life had been totally impeccable. However, as usual the reality was more complex than the ideal tends to show. Society in England and Normandy saw no contradiction between being a priest and a father. Thibodeaux demonstrates, among other things, that the cathedral chapters in Normandy on several occasions had a father and his son as canons, and the same was the case in England. Thibodeaux makes the interesting observation that (probably) there was a change, meaning that offices among the elite of the Church gradually were not allotted to sons of priests. Even so they continued to receive appointments as secular parish priests. Thibodeaux's linguistic usage, however, indicates that deeper studies should be made concerning the theme, although the lack of source material is evident. But, of course, there was also resistance against the fact that sons of priests in fact could become ordained. Apart from the opinion that the sons bore witness to their fathers' sexual crimes, another fundamental factor was to prevent the emergence of priestly dynasties when the sons of the priests inherited their fathers' benefices. Despite these efforts the number of sons of priests in office in England was in the majority, leading among others Pope Pascal II (1099-1118) to considerations that took the actual reality into account. Dispensations for ordination became the model for England, and, it can be added, for the rest of the Western Church as well.

  In chapter 4 Thibodeaux analyses issues pointed out by clerical writers who defended the priests' right to marry: the decrees ended in that married priests were being dishonored and ridiculed; the decrees were new and harsh and did not consider the consequences for the priestly families; sex for the purpose of begetting children was but natural; those who issued decrees of this kind were sodomite reformers. Thus, there was among the clerics an opinion which corresponded with that of the laymen, not with the monastic ideal. We are here in the time before 1123 and the first Lateran council, when it was decided that all marriages contracted by people in major orders were to be dissolved.

  Chapter 5 deals with what Thibodeaux calls "the expansion of religious manliness" (112), by means of a study of Archbishop Odo Rigaldus's synodal sermons. In this way Thibodeaux gives a good balance to the legal decrees and demonstrates how the highest representative of the Norman Church tried to implement them through his preaching for precisely the clergy only. The legal prescriptions, concerning not only sexual continence but also speech, clothing and outward appearance and behavior on the whole can be traced back to the second Lateran council 1139, but started to be spread in Normandy only in the 13th century, and at the time also with the help of papal legates. Thibodeaux sees in both the legal prescriptions and the sermons an obvious change from focus almost entirely on the celibate life to stress upon the manly priest in all respects as a model to corporeity. The control of the clergy increased considerably compared to the conditions during the 11th and 12th centuries due to the development of the papal and the local institute of visitation respectively after the IV Lateran Council in 1215. Regularly recurring provincial councils and diocesan synods were required. However, Thibodeaux shows that the Church in Normandy went its own way in managing to keep characteristic features from the previous centuries, despite Archbishop Odo's intense efforts to implement the ideal into practice through leading no less than 70 councils and synods. The anti-norm concept which came up during the first half of the 13th century, thus becomes an important key to the understanding of the priestly ideal in the Western Church during the whole of the rest of the Middle Ages. This is what Thibodeaux calls a religious manliness/masculinity evidently distinguishable from the laymen's manliness/masculinity. Since English is not my native language, I might not have been able to fully understand if Thibodeaux makes any difference between the two terms, viz. manliness/masculinity, which she seems to use alternately. Perhaps she should have made clear her use of them in order to facilitate the understanding of her text, since, if I understand her correctly, this terminological use originates in texts utilizing especially the word viriliter concerning the fights against the lusts of the flesh which the celibate clerics had to go through. But is this enough in order to designate the medieval priest as especially manly or masculine? Sometimes the terms of manliness and masculinity may appear a little bit pasted on a source material and a development which is scholarly understandable without the theoretical framework of a gender analysis, however, sometimes it seems legitimate to use them.

  In the last chapter (chapter 6) Thibodeaux gives examples as to how the parish priests in Normandy remained in the old paradigm of life; they continued to live together with women, beget children, spend time in the taverns etc. Thus, Thibodeaux's primary sources from the local level show that it was the higher clergy, bishops, archdeacons and canons, who at least partly adjusted themselves to the new decrees and the new ideal. In the local parishes really nothing happened; the priests continued living in marriage-like relations. Thibodeaux's conclusions in this respect, and the sources which she brings forward to support them, correspond very well with the conditions in, for instance, the Scandinavian realms. Additionally they strengthen the overall impression emphasized in earlier research that the demand for celibacy and the connected way of life did not gain acceptance among the parish priests in the Western Church as a whole.

  Without doubt, Thibodeaux has written a very valuable book being an important contribution to a field of research which has been studied in other parts of the Western Church and especially during the latter part of the Middle Ages. Her book brings new analyses to new source material of different kinds and a new perspective to the very much studied question regarding the efforts at implementing the clerical celibacy in the medieval Roman Church and the consequences that the efforts got--or did not get--also in an early phase of papal advance.

  Copyright (c) 2016 Bertil Nilsson

• University of Pennsylvania
  http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/15447.html
  Word count: 495

  The Manly Priest
  Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066-1300
  Jennifer D. Thibodeaux
  240 pages | 6 x 9
  Cloth 2015 | ISBN 9780812247527 | $59.95s | Add to cart || Outside USA | £52.00
  Ebook 2015 | ISBN 9780812291940 | $59.95s | £39.00 | Add to cart || About
  A volume in the Middle Ages Series
  View table of contents

  Winner of 2016 Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship Book Prize

  "An important and convincing book—Thibodeaux adds to the literature on clerical marriage and clerical celibacy by firmly and consistently moving the issue of masculinity to the center. Indeed, she considers the model of clerical masculinity an important cause of the drive for clerical celibacy."—Hugh M. Thomas, University of Miami
  "We have known for a long time that the compulsory celibacy of priests was not universally approved in all times and all places. Thibodeaux shows exactly how contested this structure was by turning to one area of Europe (the Anglo-Norman realms) where documents survive for various levels at which the battle played out. This is a clear contribution to a growing area of interest within medieval, religious, and gender history that addresses a transitional period in the history of the western church."—Derek Neal, Nipissing University

  During the High Middle Ages, members of the Anglo-Norman clergy not only routinely took wives but also often prepared their own sons for ecclesiastical careers. As the Anglo-Norman Church began to impose clerical celibacy on the priesthood, reform needed to be carefully negotiated, as it relied on the acceptance of a new definition of masculinity for religious men, one not dependent on conventional male roles in society. The Manly Priest tells the story of the imposition of clerical celibacy in a specific time and place and the resulting social tension and conflict.
  No longer able to tie manliness to marriage and procreation, priests were instructed to embrace virile chastity, to become manly celibates who continually warred with the desires of the body. Reformers passed legislation to eradicate clerical marriages and prevent clerical sons from inheriting their fathers' benefices. In response, some married clerics authored tracts to uphold their customs of marriage and defend the right of a priest's son to assume clerical office. This resistance eventually waned, as clerical celibacy became the standard for the priesthood.

  By the thirteenth century, ecclesiastical reformers had further tightened the standard of priestly masculinity by barring other typically masculine behaviors and comportment: gambling, tavern-frequenting, scurrilous speech, and brawling. Charting the progression of the new model of religious masculinity for the priesthood, Jennifer Thibodeaux illustrates this radical alteration and concludes not only that clerical celibacy was a hotly contested movement in high medieval England and Normandy, but that this movement created a new model of manliness for the medieval clergy.

  Jennifer D. Thibodeaux is Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. She is the editor of Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages.

• Parergon
  https://muse.jhu.edu/article/651572
  Word count: 730

  The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066–1300 by Jennifer D. Thibodeaux (review)
  Sabina Flanagan
  From: Parergon
  Volume 33, Number 2, 2016
  pp. 170-172 | 10.1353/pgn.2016.0099
  In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
  Reviewed by
  Sabina Flanagan
  Thibodeaux, Jennifer D., The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066–1300 (Middle Ages), Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015; cloth; pp. 240; R.R.P. US$59.95, £39.00; ISBN 9780812247527.
  A reviewer should doubtless resist the temptation to judge a book by its cover, but the dust-jacket of The Manly Priest provides an apt key to its contents. It comprises a reproduction from the Bayeux Tapestry where a tonsured man [End Page 170] in lay clothing appears to be aggressively, or at least assertively, touching the face of a veiled woman while a naked, squatting male figure mirrors the gesture of the cleric in the lower register. The book’s title, The Manly Priest, mimics the form and stitching of the titulus of the tableau, ‘Hic unus clericus et Aelgifu’, which it replaces. The whole equivocal ensemble – does clericus here mean ‘priest’?; what behaviour is he enacting?; what does it tell us about masculinity? – encapsulates many of the complexities of interpreting and integrating the different kinds of evidence marshalled in support of the author’s thesis.
  Professor Thibodeaux aims to demonstrate ‘the complex system of gender ideology that affected the creation, negotiation, and acceptance of the celibate ideal’, thus supplementing the received account that the drive towards clerical celibacy was based upon concerns about ‘sacramental purity and the economic alienation of ecclesiastical property’. She goes further, however, in arguing that the project ‘to reconceive the religious male body’ eventually led to an attempt to ‘control and regulate a full spectrum of behavior’ (p. 11).
  Who were the subjects of such regulation? ‘Clerical’ could refer to anyone who had been tonsured and admitted to any of the seven ecclesiastical grades. Monks could theoretically be called ‘clerics’ though the word is usually understood to refer to seculars. Members of the regular orders, whether monks or canons, are easy enough to categorise. So too are priests, as men ordained to the priesthood, but to complicate matters, some members of the regular orders were priests, though not all secular clerics were. Many clerics did not pursue a sacerdotal vocation but were essentially civil servants or Church officials. Finally, towards the bottom of the ecclesiastical pecking order – though high in terms of sacramental orders – were the rural parish priests who figure so largely in Chapters 5 and 6. Such considerations make statements about ‘clerics’ or even ‘priests’ subject to many qualifications.
  The first chapter explores gendered language used by and about regulars in letters, chronicles, and hagiography. Thibodeaux notes that ‘virile language commonly appears in descriptions of the battle against the flesh’ and thus ‘sexualised’ the celibate body (p. 19). This struggle provided the foundation for other forms of manly action, such as maintaining the rights of the convent against encroachment. Monastic writers tended to advance this ideal for secular clerics, and even the laity more broadly, often denigrating markers of elite lay manliness. The results are sometimes counterintuitive; thus beards are labelled effeminate (p. 28); likewise, frequent heterosexual activity (p. 31).
  Chapter 2 presents a useful chronological account of the laws against clerical marriage. Unfortunately, such provisions were often vague or inconsistent regarding the personnel to whom they applied. Generally, the minor orders were exempted, though, of course, the priesthood was not the [End Page 171] only major order. Sanctions against married clerics were also hard to enforce. But clerical marriage produced clerical sons who, it is argued in Chapter 3, were particularly marginalised, sometimes retrospectively, by such decrees. Thibodeaux’s examination of lesser-known works, including those of Serlo of Bayeux and the Norman Anonymous, that attempted to turn the tables, are illuminating. However, why such written opposition seems to have waned by around the 1130s is not fully explained.
  Chapters 5 and 6 are principally concerned with Normandy. Thibodeaux links the expansion of priestly manliness to the pastoral reforms of Lateran IV. Much use is made of Odo Rigaldus’s sermons and visitation records to illustrate attempts to enforce stricter standards, though examples from Clerisy-la-Forêt in the concluding chapter show that success was only partial. A broadening of the evidence to include penitentials would have indicated...

• Hortulus
  https://hortulus-journal.com/journal/volume-13-number-1-2017/whitaker/
  Word count: 1461

  BOOK REVIEW: The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy–Review by Natalie Whitaker
  Jennifer D. Thibodeaux, The Manly Priest: Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066-1300. The Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Hardback. Pp. 230. $59.95. ISBN: 978-0-8122-4752-7

  Jennifer D. Thibodeaux’s monograph on gender identity and Anglo-Norman priests is a novel consideration of how church reformers, in hopes of ending clerical marital unions, redefined masculinity in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. Her work is valuable for scholars interested in Anglo-Norman social and church history along with those interested in gender identity and masculinity studies. Thibodeaux presents a revisionist examination of celibacy in the medieval church, claiming that previous scholarship looks primarily at the later Middle Ages, when celibacy was already firmly entrenched in the elite clergy. Thibodeaux examines gender identity and the conflicting masculinity of the laity, parish clergy, and elite clergy, illuminating the broader picture of masculinity across the medieval period and into the Reformation. Through six succinct and well-structured chapters, Thibodeaux clearly discusses the reality of clerical marriages, the legal reforms, the liminal status of clerical sons, the response to the shifting paradigm of masculinity, the defense of clerical unions, the expansion from chastity to purifying the entire priest, and the parish priests’ conflicts with the church’s attempts to reform and dictate their masculinity.

  Following an introduction that asserts how the post-conquest celibacy laws created a new gender paradigm for the priesthood, Thibodeaux develops her argument that religious writers in the reform period between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries redefined the ascetic body as the epitome of masculinity, and depicted the battle against the desires of the flesh as an essential factor of gender identity. Thibodeaux often cites various synods and councils, including Lateran Councils I-IV; especially Lateran IV, which she claims provided much needed definition and unity for the Church against errant priests. Thibodeaux first examines the language of the reformist documents that glorified a celibate clerical life, showing how the third gender theory, that the celibate clergy represented a third gender situated between the feminine and masculine, is not supported by the overt use of masculine terms (viriliter, virile, fortiter). The evidence actually points to the creation through language of a new masculine gender identity: the celibate male who conquers his body through sexual chastity. Through the rhetoric of the “new man” (who rejects a secular form masculinity for a chaste, monastic one), the reformist documents depict a view of the unchaste cleric as effeminate and unfit for leadership positions.

  After framing the reformers’ argument of the chaste priest as the supremely masculine, Thibodeaux explores the legal and realistic situation of clerical marriages and the repercussions of the reform laws. She argues that masculine gender identity was based on the ability to marry, support a family, and procreate, and that forcing celibacy laws went directly against these secular social ideas of masculinity. Prior to these new reforms, and even after for parish clerics, priests married, had children, trained sons to follow in their profession as priests, and bestowed on them their benefices; no conflict existed between traditional Norman masculinity values and the priesthood. In order to end this lack of conflict and promote the “new man” idea of masculine celibacy, reformers, such as Anselm (1033-1109) and Lanfranc (1005-1089), wrote prolifically against clerical marriages and promoted legislation prohibiting such marriage in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. In the following two chapters, Thibodeaux considers how these clerical reforms attacked the societal masculine norm and caused damaging repercussions for the sons of priests.

  In examining the repercussions of reform legislation, and its execution, on clerical families, Thibodeaux focuses primarily on the clerical sons. The clerical sons’ status as both culturally legitimate in the eyes of the community but illegitimate within the church reflected poorly on their fathers and limited their own futures as priests. Thibodeaux examines several texts, including the Rescripta, Tractatus, and tracts J22/26 and J25, and their justifications for clerical marriage. These documents argue that it is wrong to judge the son for the father’s perceived sins, that there is no biblical support for the ban on clerical marriages, that marriage protects against other impurities (such as sodomy and incest), and that continence must be a gift from God, not achievable through personal will. According to Thibodeaux, these defenses of clerical marriage were short-lived, evidence that they lasted only into the 1130s.

  Thibodeaux states that by the mid-twelfth century the new ideals of chaste masculinity had been completely accepted by the higher clerical orders, although the parish clergy were still resistant. Reformers expanded on this ideal, arguing that masculinity was defined by complete control over every aspect of the body. Priests were expected to model a visualized manliness not only through their chastity but also in how they dressed, cut their hair, and even moved their hands. Thibodeaux demonstrates how these reforms of masculine gender identity led to the expansion of ideals of purity and impurity that would last for centuries.

  In her final chapter, Thibodeaux uses documented examples of Norman parish clergy to establish how this new definition of masculinity created conflict between the elite clergy and the secular clergy. By the thirteenth century, the expansion of the extended ideals of purity reviewed in Thibodeaux’s fifth chapter led to stricter laws and punishments for errant clerics. For example, bishops no longer needed a formal accusation to place a priest on trial. Thibodeaux argues that the records of Norman parish clerics’ trials show that the laity generally accepted even unchaste priests, and that often the parish clerics still adopted the masculine gender identity of society, one that was sexually virile and procreative, rather than the chaste masculinity of the reformist church.

  Thibodeaux concludes that while the new gender paradigm was widely accepted by elite clergy, evidence illustrates how local social ideals of masculinity still dictated the secular clergy’s gender performance. She briefly follows this redefinition of masculinity into the Reformation and its ideals of masculine gender identity, which would incorporate the purity and control of the priesthood into ideals of marriage and fatherhood. Thibodeaux does an admirable job in tracking how the priesthood and church developed through this new paradigm of masculine gender identity. However, while Thibodeaux examines priests and their clerical sons closely, there is a noticeable lack of analysis of the female perspective. There are moments where Thibodeaux briefly mentions women as a part of a clerical and social conundrum; however, she does not analyze their position. One instance of this is in chapter six, where Thibodeaux states: “Lay society might have consented to the use of prostitutes by the clergy, in an effort to keep these men away from their own wives and daughters” (140), but there is no analysis of the wives, daughters, or prostitutes in this situation. Although Thibodeaux’s focus is admittedly on clerical masculinity during this period, an analysis of the women who were so intimately involved would be beneficial for understanding an important facet to why these priests continued to marry despite the Church’s regulations and punishments. Furthermore, an analysis of the daughters of such unions, just as Thibodeaux discusses the clerical sons, is surprisingly absent. What Thibodeaux’s revisionist examination now begs for is further study of the female counterpart to this new masculinity in the Church. What other documentation on the women involved, whether wives, daughters, or prostitutes, can be found? How did members of the female orders of the church respond, if at all? How does research in female orders reflect on this study or how can they now be reinterpreted?

  With its new perspective on the old issue of celibacy in the Western medieval church, Thibodeaux’s text is an important contribution to medieval scholarship that all scholars, whether armchair or experts in the field, could find beneficial. Her revisionist examination of gender identity and the paradigm behind the clerical reforms of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries is a comfortable read, while remaining an academic and logical analysis of a complex topic. It is thoughtfully laid out and, despite taking on the hard task of revising long held perspectives and previous scholarship, stimulates questions for further study of clerical history and the complexity of gender and sexuality in medieval Western Europe and its influence on later social norms.

  Natalie Whitaker

  Natalie Whitaker is a doctoral student at Saint Louis University. Her research interests are primarily in Anglo-Saxon literature and history, especially Anglo-Saxon depictions of emotions and otherness in relation to gender and identity, and how Anglo-Saxonism influenced literature of later periods in England and America.

• recensio
  http://www.recensio.net/rezensionen/zeitschriften/sehepunkte/16/05/the-manly-priest
  Word count: 1258

  Jennifer D. Thibodeaux: The Manly Priest. Clerical Celibacy, Masculinity, and Reform in England and Normandy, 1066-1300 (reviewed by Jean A. Truax)
  by Recensio Net — last modified Jun 02, 2016 10:48 AM

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  sehepunkte 16 (2016), Nr. 5
  Jennifer D. Thibodeaux: The Manly Priest
  Jennifer Thibodeaux's study, The Manly Priest , paints a detailed picture of the Anglo-Norman Church in transition to a celibate priesthood during the period 1066-1300, a time and place fortunately rich in primary sources dealing with the subject. What sets this work apart is its disciplined focus on the issue of masculinity and the new standard of manliness required by the imposition of celibacy on the clergy. The author begins by discussing the definition of masculinity in the Anglo-Norman world, a standard which the married clergy shared. Masculinity was defined by the ability to father sons and to protect and provide for the family. Anglo-Norman noble society was based on extended kinship networks, and clerics were not only part of these groupings themselves but also created their own networks through marriage and the inheritance of benefices. Many of the bishops were married, and often the priest or one of his family members was the local lord, owning both the land and the church itself. Once celibacy was imposed, a new definition of masculinity was required, one based on self-restraint, orderliness, and chastity. The celibate priest now struggled against sexual temptation as his knightly neighbor struggled against an armed enemy.

  Clerical marriage persisted in England and Normandy well into the twelfth century because it was firmly imbedded in society. For example, in 1076 at the synod of Winchester, Archbishop Lanfranc of Canterbury allowed already married priests to keep their wives, but forbade the ordination of any more married men. It was not until 1102 that all married priests in England were required to leave their wives. Suppression of the rights of priests' sons also moved in stages. First the inheritance of benefices was restricted, then the ordination of sons born after the father's ordination was banned, and finally the ordination of priests' sons was entirely prohibited except within a monastery. Resistance was strong, and in 1102 Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury had to write to Pope Pascal II because so many priests had chosen to resign rather than give up their wives that a shortage had resulted. Anselm was therefore granted the right to make dispensations locally to allow individual priests to remain with their wives if necessary.

  The position of priests' sons was particularly difficult during this reform period, and Thibodeaux is at her best in describing their plight. Thanks to the richness of her sources and her skill in selecting among them, the reader hears the authentic voices of clerical sons like Serlo of Bayeux, Thibaud d'Étampes and the Norman Anonymous. Naturally these authors argued that faithfulness in marriage was a type of continence and that restrictions might lead to worse kinds of sexual sins. Their personal pain is evident in passages accusing the reformers not only of depriving them of their livelihoods but also of dishonoring them socially by encouraging the laity to avoid their services. Not surprisingly, such defenders of clerical marriage and the rights of priests' sons also accused the reformers themselves of being the unnatural ones and hurled accusations of sodomy at them.

  As the thirteenth century dawned, the Church moved toward an expanded definition of religious manliness, which now frowned not just upon marriage but also on drunkenness, gluttony, gambling, fighting, cursing, gossip, and even hunting, participating in sports, and visiting taverns. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 established an enforcement mechanism by mandating visitations by local bishops, and Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) instituted reforms designed to speed up discipline by reducing the number of witnesses needed to initiate proceedings. Accused priests might clear themselves by a process known as canonical purgation. The priest first swore an oath on the gospels that he was innocent of the charge and then produced a number of witnesses, called compurgators, to swear that they believed him.

  Thibodeaux makes extensive use of the register of Archbishop Odo Rigaldus of Rouen, who required errant clerics to sign diffamationes , or letters of defamation, acknowledging their faults. Typically the priests promised to pay fines, to resign from their positions, or to exchange their churches for others if they transgressed again. The diffamationes were formulaic and did not allow the accused clerics to speak for themselves, but nevertheless Thibodeaux uses these documents to construct a picture of the position of the lower clergy during this transitional period. She demonstrates that, over 100 years after clerical marriage had been officially banned, many of the accused priests were in stable, long-term relationships with their concubines that were marriages in all but the name. Some of them hid their concubines in other villages, including, for example, the priest of Sauchy-au-Bosc, who kept one woman in the parish of Berengeville and another at Coqueraumont.

  The example of Walter, rector of Aronville, is especially interesting. Accused of sexual misconduct in 1261, Walter was unable to produce seven compurgators and therefore failed his canonical purgation on two separate occasions over a period of six months. He then appealed, stating that he did not think a canonical purgation requiring so many compurgators was realistic because he lived so far from Rouen that he could not find seven priests willing to travel there with him for the proceedings. He stated that the archbishop had not sufficiently investigated his case and urged him to interview both his parishioners and the priests in neighboring churches. There is some evidence in the appeal that Walter was actually guilty, since the document acknowledges that although he greatly loved the woman, he would give her up and would be willing to sign a diffamatio promising to resign his position if he were accused again. Despite his guilt, Walter seems to have felt confident that his parishioners and fellow priests would stand up for him, which is a testament to the degree of acceptance that such clerical relationships still enjoyed.

  Thibodeaux's masterful use of anecdotes like the story of Walter of Aronville makes what could have been a very dull subject come alive. More important, the discussion of masculinity that is carefully woven throughout the book drives home to the reader the magnitude of the changes imposed upon the clergy during this reform period. It was not simply a matter of the denial of sexual relations to the current generation of priests and the necessity for their offspring to find new occupations. Rather the new requirements struck at the very heart of what it meant for the priest to be a man. As married priests, they had shared their parishioners' concern for kinship, property and family. They had frequented taverns and played at sports, gambled, eaten, drunk, and even fought with them. By 1300 the priest was held to a different standard of masculinity and the common ground that they had shared with the men in their congregations was now closed off to them. A higher standard it may have been, but it also made for a lonely life.

  The Manly Priest will most naturally attract students of masculinity and sexual identity, as well as those specifically interested in the question of clerical celibacy. In addition, Thibodeaux's remarkable ability to capture the thoughts and feelings of the people who lived through these momentous changes should earn her work a place in the library of anyone interested in the Gregorian Reform.

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