The Manly Priest. Jennifer D. Thibodeaux

between secular and religious men. The vocabulary was the same, interchangeable language that could describe manliness on the battleground or inside the cloister. Writers relied on a terminology of oppositions to describe manliness and the lack of manliness. Physical and mental manliness appeared in contrast to physical and mental femininity. The most common terms to express masculine qualities and actions were duritia (hardness), robur (hardness), virtus (masculine virtue), viriliter (manfully), virile (manly), and fortiter (manfully). The terms used to portray a lack of manliness were mostly terms used to describe women but also could be terms that referred to unmanly behavior. Words like mollitia (softness/effeminacy), semivir (half-man), catamite (sodomite), effeminatus (effeminate), delicatus (effeminate), muliebriarius (womanly), and eviratus (unmanned), all evoked images of the disorderly, the softened, the penetrable, and the weak (physically and mentally), undesirable characteristics for any man, religious or secular.⁶

      Although armed with a rich terminology to describe virility, religious writers preferred to denote masculinity most commonly with the Latin derivatives of vir (man). Most recently, historians Kirsten Fenton and Maureen Miller have shown the gendered meanings of the term virtus, emphasizing its connotation with the military manliness of laymen as often as the spiritual manliness of religious men.⁷ Others have documented the “language of virility” in reform-era writing, particularly in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when terms like the adverb viriliter were frequently used to describe clerical action.⁸ In the context of war, virtus clearly translated into masculine power and strength. For instance, in Orderic Vitalis’s Ecclesiastical History, one finds numerous cases of manly language appearing in descriptions of war, knights, and battle generally. Scholars have not hesitated to translate these terms into masculine language.⁹ But for religious figures, historians have traditionally translated the term virtu as “virtue” in the spiritual or religious sense. By insisting on translating terms such as viriliter as “courageously” or “strongly,” scholars have essentially removed the original gendered language of the document, and at the same time have transposed their own gendered assumptions from the present onto the past. The use of terms like viriliter (manfully) in these writings is what reflects the gendered quality of this discourse.

      Religious writers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries used a variety of literary techniques in their works to show the superiority of religious masculinity to secular masculinity, and ultimately clerical masculinity, particularly through the contrast of the self-controlled body with the disorderly, uncontrolled one. Maureen Miller has shown that Gregorian-era writers depicted laymen as destroyers of churches and monasteries, as bloodthirsty warriors, as men out of control, while the clergy were depicted as morally superior, self-controlled men.¹⁰ Likewise, the same motifs were used by reform-minded religious writers of England and Normandy, but more often to highlight the orderly, self-controlled ascetic life of monks against the disorderly, sexually licentious behavior of secular clergy. Virile language emphasized this distinction.

      The use of such virile language to describe religious men might seem confusing and contradictory to the use of gendered language by some monastic orders. During the period of reform, the literature of the Cistercian order occasionally utilized maternal imagery to express a spiritual relationship to God and Christ.¹¹ Although Cistercians most frequently deployed this imagery, it was not uniquely theirs alone, and even reformers like Anselm used it. Various scholars have used this imagery to bolster their position that the clergy viewed themselves as feminine and were, in turn, viewed as feminine by medieval society.¹² However, the feminine language used by these monastic writers was very specific to their particular, Cistercian context; this language was strongly connected to Cistercians abbots’ own anxieties regarding their leadership and their pastoral duties.¹³ Furthermore, these maternal metaphors in their proper historical context were used as literary devices in Cistercian devotional literature. Bernard of Clairvaux, a writer who most frequently made use of maternal imagery, called his monks “women” not to suggest that he or his society viewed them as women but to present a gendered inversion that highlighted the humility present in the feminine.¹⁴ Finally, monastic writers, themselves clearly male, had a metaphorical problem when it came to describing their (often sexual) union with a frequently masculinized God. This logically explains the frequency with which monks portrayed themselves as female, as a bride of Christ, in order to wed God/Christ. Alternatively, they could portray God as female, and then their union was possible.¹⁵

      The abbot as “mother” and the feminized monk were literary devices firmly a part of a particular devotional literature of the twelfth century. But in both “public” and private writings, reform-era authors equated manly behavior and manly qualities with celibate men; they were not depicted as feminine or as an ambiguous “third” gender. For example, while there is evidence that Anselm of Bec/Canterbury employed feminized language and maternal imagery in one devotional prayer,¹⁶ he used virile language most often when he wrote to other clerics advising them. In his letter to William, a monk of St. Werburgh, Chester, he advises him to continue to seek spiritual perfection as all men must strive: “Let laymen in their state of life, clerics in theirs, monks in theirs manfully (viriliter) apply themselves to making continual progress.”¹⁷ He wrote to the bishops of Ireland that they should “act manfully (viriliter) and vigilantly according to God’s teaching, restraining with canonical severity anything found in your provinces contrary to the doctrine of the Church.”¹⁸

      The use of masculine language to describe a variety of ascetic actions and behavior reinforces that monastic writers conceived of the ascetic body as a virile body. Most frequently, this language depicted conflicts, both internal ones of the body and external struggles with others (both laymen and ecclesiastics). To be a man of the church required a constant struggle, a constant gender performance of virtus; this struggle could be spiritual or earthly. A letter from Benedict (whose full identity remains unknown) to Anselm about the problem of concubinous priests in England exhorts Anselm to “fight manfully (viriliter) to the very end for the faith of Christ,” in his battle to eradicate clerical marriage.¹⁹ John of Rheims, a monk of St. Evroul, after being promoted to the office of priest, “strove for perfection” and “taught others likewise to strive manfully (viriliter), both by his life and doctrine.”²⁰ Under the guidance of Abbot Mainier, the monks of St. Evroul, persevered in their holy living, “fighting manfully (viriliter) against sin.”²¹ Herbert of Losinga admonished his monks for their lackadaisical attitude toward building their cathedral. He portrayed hard work as a manly endeavor, telling the monks Ingulf, William, and Stanus to “persist untiringly in your work, let not your hand or foot rest, shiver in winter’s cold, swelter under summer’s sun, toil by day, watch by night. Gird yourselves and bear in mind those Israelites who, in repairing the walls of Jerusalem, fought with one hand and built with another. Persevere manfully (viriliter), labor faithfully, let the work go on fervently.”²² When Bernard of Tiron was harassed by his fellow monks, one of whom used “abusive language” against him, the instigator was subsequently punished by a fatal illness. The rest of the men, frightened for their own lives, “thereafter manfully (viriliter) girded themselves for stricter observance of the rigor of monastic life.”²³ And, while living in the wilderness of Tiron, outside the norms of society, Bernard “continuously behaved in a manly and steadfast manner.”²⁴

      The use of virile language commonly appears in descriptions of the battle against the flesh, more of which will be discussed below. Gerald of Wales, citing Jerome’s commentary on the Gospel of Mark, argued that “That man is an Andrew, who, by manfully (viriliter), conquering his flesh, makes war on his own death … on his body whose passions are often the cause of his death unless they are bridled.”²⁵ And, unbridled flesh, according to Gerald, was the cause of death for priests in particular.

      Writers viewed the struggle for the proper behavior of the clergy and for the rights of the church as a manly act. The clergy of York lauded their archbishop-elect Thurstan for his behavior during his struggle to assume the episcopal see of York. In a letter to Thurstan, the clerics told him, “you have played the man (viriliter egisti).”²⁶