The Manly Priest. Jennifer D. Thibodeaux

who placed the laity in a position of authority, at least in cases involving incontinent clerics.

      On the other side of the English Channel, Lanfranc’s successor Anselm continued to battle clerical marriage, adopting even more severe measures. After Lanfranc’s death, English cathedral chapters experienced a “heyday” of married clerics, beginning around 1090.³⁵ Anselm’s Council of Westminster (1102) reiterated that archdeacons, canons, priests, and deacons could not marry, and if currently married could not retain their wives. His measures marked a sharp departure from Lanfranc’s leniency thirty years earlier. Subdeacons, a group not always included in previous legislation, also had to renounce their wives, if they had made a profession of chastity. Priests could not celebrate Mass as long as they were married, and parishioners were banned from attending services officiated by concubinous priests. In recognition of the growth of the office of archdeacon and its concomitant power, those who became archdeacons had to be ordained, at a minimum, to the rank of deacon (which required celibacy). The harsher aspects of these decrees lay in the ban on attendance at Masses celebrated by married priests.³⁶ By mandating that the laity boycott the church services of married priests, these laws once again provided the means of assault on the masculine honor of the clergy, an assault encouraged by distant reformers, whether from Rome or an Anglo-Norman council. The married priest was removed as a leader in his community, with respectable social status, and transformed into an object of derision, subject to ridicule and denigration at the hands of his parishioners. Yet it is not clear that the parishioners of these communities were opposed to the marriage of their village priest and would have ceased attending services. Daniel Bornstein’s work on late medieval Cortona indicates that, even centuries after the prohibition on clerical marriage, rural priests were still living with women, and that this was publicly known in the community without censure; the community was strictly concerned that church services not be neglected.³⁷ Still, the most curious aspects of this council lie not in the canons promulgated but in those bishops present at this council. Of those prelates present, three already had, or would, marry and have clerical sons: Samson of Worcester, Robert Bloet of Lincoln, and Roger of Salisbury. The laws should have had some impact on these married bishops, even if they had married before their consecration. There is, however, no indication the laws adversely affected their personal or professional lives.

      Anselm’s actions in 1102 produced a flurry of letters addressed to him from his ecclesiastical colleagues on the subject, especially from bishops who had difficulty with the implementation of these policies. After the council, Herbert of Losinga, bishop of Norwich, experienced such problems in enforcing the statutes. The priests in his diocese were unwilling to give up their women, and this posed a problem since married/concubinous priests were not allowed to officiate at services. Anselm advised Herbert to find chaste priests who could serve instead; if not, then the archbishop advised his suffragan that monks were to replace unchaste priests at the altar. Anselm also suggested that Herbert elicit the support of the laity in expelling such clerics from their churches; if these clerics were not willing to go, “let all the Christians act against them.” Referring to a specific case of clerical incontinence, Anselm went even farther with his directive, urging parishioners to expel both the fornicating priest and his wife from their community and to seize their land, “until they come to their senses.”³⁸

      Implementing such severe decrees on married priests would have resulted in a shortage of priests, as the letter to Herbert of Losinga suggested. Without a priest, a community would not have had access to final absolution. This was such a pressing issue that Anselm sought advice from Pope Paschal II on the matter, asking, “is it permitted to receive absolution and the body of the Lord when in danger of death from priests who have women when no chaste priest is present? If this is permitted, and such priests refuse to administer to those in need because their masses are scorned, what is to be done?” Paschal’s reply was that viaticum from any cleric, even an unchaste one, was preferable to jeopardizing the soul. This series of letter exchanges suggests that some married priests rebelled because their masses were banned by the Church, and they were being publicly denounced by their own parishioners. Paschal’s comment was that, if these priests refused to provide the last sacrament to a dying parishioner, “they are to be punished most rigorously as murderers of souls.”³⁹

      Married clerics found ways to keep their women, even claiming that it was legal to do so. Gerard, the archbishop of York, sought counsel from Anselm because those clerics closest to him, secular canons of his cathedral chapter, were devising loopholes to evade the statutes of Westminster. The canons argued to Gerard that “according to the council there will be no women in our houses. But no regulation of the Council prohibits us from meeting women alone and without witness in the houses of our neighbors.” Gerard complained that those canons who had been appointed priests and deacons had never renounced their wives and still publicly acknowledged them. These clerics seemed more interested in benefiting financially from their prebends than in benefiting spiritually from their duties at the altar. Other clerics resisted ordination because they did not want to take a vow of chastity.⁴⁰ Anselm’s response to Gerard’s letter did not discuss the problem of the canons’ loophole, but his letter to William, the archdeacon of Canterbury, did provide guidance on the subject. As in the case of York, clerics in William’s archdeaconate were also seeking a way around the legislation prohibiting clerical marriage. In particular, archdeacons and canons moved their women out of their homes in the towns, but into their country manors.⁴¹ Anselm made a somewhat surprising decision, saying that “for the time being, until something else is laid down, this should be tolerated if they make a resolute promise not to have intercourse with them, nor to speak to them without legitimate witnesses.” For those priests who refused to abandon their wives, the canons of the council were to be observed, and these priests were not to celebrate Mass. Yet Anselm allowed that, if these priests could find chaste replacements, they could then keep their benefices until Lent.⁴²

      The Westminster canons of 1102 were not upheld, and, with Anselm in exile, Henry I began collecting the cullagium, a tax on married clerics, as a revenue-raising tactic. William of Malmesbury records that the decrees of the council were immediately ignored and “the first to offend were those who had made the rules,” a statement likely referring to the bishops who presided over that council.⁴³ The collection of the cullagium by the king’s officials made it appear that the practice of clerical marriage was officially tolerated, especially in the absence of the reforming archbishop. In 1105, Anselm’s letter to Prior Ernulf about concubinous priests shows that many priests and even the king may have inherited an unclear understanding of the decrees of Winchester, which allowed then currently married priests to keep their wives. The king’s decree that “they could have both churches and wives as they had at the time of his father [the Conqueror] and Archbishop Lanfranc” was either a misunderstanding of the Winchester decrees or an intentional tactic to justly collect the cullagium from concubinous priests. Anselm declared boldly that such “execrable unions” had never been accepted by the Council of Winchester and that any priests living with women anywhere in England faced deprivation of their benefices.⁴⁴

      After Anselm’s second exile had ended, he held a second Council of Westminster (1108), in which the effort to eradicate clerical marriage was renewed; in fact, the only records of this council suggest it was exclusively concerned with the problem of clerical marriage. Anselm’s biographer Eadmer, who documented the proceedings, explained that many priests in England had fallen back into their old marriages or even taken on new relationships during the time of the archbishop’s exile; this laxity explained the need for another directive, one that would attempt to prevent the “loopholes” of the previous council. The 1108 decrees were even more severe than the ones promulgated six years earlier. While the spirit of the decrees remained the same as the 1102 conciliar statutes, the change in administrative enforcement was most notable. Priests, deacons, and subdeacons could not cohabit with any women, except close relatives as defined by the Nicene consanguinity canons. Priests had to put away their women, out of their homes and out of proximity to their homes. Priests and their women could not meet in any private home; if necessity required that they speak to their women, they had to do so “out of doors” in front of at least two witnesses. If priests violated this decree and were accused by two witnesses or by the “common talk of the parishioners,” they faced canonical