LITMIR.BIZ

       Legal Discourse and the Reality of Clerical Marriage

      In the year 1072, the reforming archbishop of Rouen, John d’Avranches, tried to enforce the 1064 canons of Lisieux at a provincial synod. Orderic Vitalis is the only chronicler to document the reaction of the clergy to the news that they could no longer have wives:

      For ten years he fulfilled his duties as metropolitan with courage and thoroughness, continuously striving to separate immoral priests from their mistresses (pelicibus): on one occasion when he forbade them to keep concubines (concubinas) he was stoned out of the synod, and fled exclaiming in a loud voice: “O God, the heathens are come into thine inheritance.”¹

      This episode of priestly resistance was not unique in the region. It shows the vast difference between reformers and the priesthood they hoped to reform. Sexualized chastity and the ideology of the manly celibate must have appeared as strange concepts for the Anglo-Norman clergy as it did for the laity. Ecclesiastical reform was not just contrary to the practice of clerical marriage in Normandy and England; it enforced laws that went against the very fabric of traditional conceptions of manliness. Efforts to enforce sacerdotal celibacy may have begun in the early eleventh century, but clerics in these regions continued to marry like other men in their communities. How effective these early reform efforts were across Europe is not known, but Anglo-Norman clerics did not immediately put aside their wives on hearing of the first Roman decree on mandated celibacy.

      In Normandy, monastic chastity and clerical marriage coexisted as two sides to religious life. Normandy produced and supported monastic revivals in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, while also supporting the tradition of clerical marriages. This was the climate of the Church until reformers like Lanfranc, John d’Avranches, and Anselm, among others, crossed the lines between the two ecclesiastical career paths, disseminating the model that made one vocation (monastic) the ideal for the other (clerical). Until the war on clerical marriage began, clerics lived like other men in their communities; they married, they had children, and they practiced a gender identity more similar to laymen than to monks. The laws prohibiting clerical marriage forced clerics into a dilemma, a choice between their marriage and their livelihood. Aside from the emotional aspects of separation, forsaking one’s wife deprived the priest of his social status in his local community, for it removed one of the perceived markers of adult male identity. It also forced the cleric to delegitimize his children publicly. A priest who refused clerical celibacy could theoretically lose his livelihood and impoverish his family.

      Married clerics’ noncompliance with celibacy is indicative of their attitude toward the laws and the reformers themselves. The papacy may have been preaching against “fornicating” priests and their “whores” since 1059, a message enhanced by such notables as Peter Damian, but a different reality existed for Anglo-Norman priests and the secular clergy in general, a reality in which marriage formed a legitimate part of their lives and contributed to their masculine status in their communities. The ideal of the manly celibate contributed to and enhanced the laws against clerical marriage, laws that, if observed, would “monasticize” the priesthood. This fixed ideology of manliness left no place for the women and children of the secular clergy. Yet clerics found ways to circumvent these laws and to continue their customs well through the twelfth century.

       Married Clergy and Manliness After the Conquest

      In 1096, a party of Anglo-Norman bishops gathered to witness the consecration of two bishops-elect: Samson, to the diocese of Worcester, and Gerard, to the diocese of Hereford.² These two men represented the two vast spectrums of those who served the episcopacy. Samson, bishop-elect, was married with at least one son. Gerard was committed to the cause and enforcement of clerical celibacy. The other bishops present fell somewhere in between. Thomas I, archbishop of York, brother of Samson, and a priest’s son, had a reputation for chastity. Maurice, bishop of London, was not known for celibacy and supposedly was prescribed an “emission of humours” to remedy his ill health.³ Herbert Losinga, bishop of Norwich, had previously lived an unchaste life but changed for the better and became a model bishop. Gundulf of Rochester was a bishop known for his saintly life. At the head of this party was the archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, whose reputation for holiness and reform was known throughout England and Normandy. At the turn of the eleventh century, these bishops represented the older traditions of the Anglo-Norman clergy and the newer one, based on an ascetic, celibate ideal of clerical life.

      As the medieval Church was establishing its control over marriage, redefining it as indissoluble and monogamous, Normans continued to operate under a cultural system that placed control over marriage in the hands of the parties involved. Marriage was dictated by local custom, not by a remote group of reforming clergy.⁴ There was nothing exceptional about the way that Normans associated marriage and procreation with masculine social status; other medieval cultures made similar connections. The Normans did, however, place great emphasis on the possession of functioning male genitalia. To achieve the social status of a male, one was required to have a functional male body. This is the reason Norman aristocrats frequently engaged in castrating their political enemies, even for nonsexual crimes.⁵ The ability to govern, over one’s household or one’s locale, was tied to an essentialist definition of masculinity.

      Norman culture exalted fecundity as part of a system of “predatory kinship,” a system that would seem to exclude vowed celibates, yet this network of power included ecclesiastics, both married and celibate. In 989, Duke Richard gave the archbishopric of Rouen to his son Robert, who served the see until 1037. Archbishop Robert had three sons with his partner Herleva. William the Bastard continued this tradition and appointed trusted kinsmen to all of the episcopal seats in Normandy. His brother Odo took the see of Bayeux in 1049; he, along with the (married) Hugh of Lisieux, William of Evreux, Ivo of Sées, and John of Avranches, were warriors “drafted into the family business as bishop.”⁶ In the post-Conquest Church, it was largely the aristocratic elite who entered the elite ranks of bishops, deans, and archdeacons, along with the “new men,” ambitious royal servants who received powerful positions.⁷ These men were appointed by the king/duke to high ecclesiastical positions and, in many cases, had already established marital households. While the Anglo-Norman Church could include celibate clerics in elite positions, married clerics were certainly not excluded.

      The

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