The Manly Priest. Jennifer D. Thibodeaux
linked to a conversion from worldly life to monastic living, some well-known monastics were included in the paradigm of religious manliness by their propensity at a young age for the monastic life.
The Dangers of Effeminacy
Just as the “new man” motif served to bolster monastic manliness as superior to clerical (and lay) manliness, there emerged another narrative technique designed to sharpen this distinction: the labeling of actions, behavior, and appearance deemed effeminate. The effeminate was one who gave into women sexually or one who became womanish through sex with men. This model posed many problems for Norman laymen and priests alike, as it seemingly devalued traditional marriage and procreation, cultural features of secular manliness. By normalizing religious celibacy, monastic writers problematized both procreative and nonprocreative sexuality. They characterized both lay and clerical bodies as disorderly through their sexual behavior, so that the elite at court, as well as married clerics, were rendered womanish or effeminate and, as a result, unable to govern effectively.
Religious writers depicted reformers in control of defining manliness during this period, not only the manly behavior of the clergy but also that of laymen. The following examples show the transformative moments when religious men corrected the gender performances of elite laymen and, in doing so, established themselves as the definers of masculinity for all men. For example, Anselm was quite bothered by effeminate behavior, both by the laity and the clergy. Eadmer describes how Anselm sought to masculinize the king’s court, particularly William Rufus’s courtiers, by reprimanding those who walked with an effeminate gait and wore their hair in the manner of women. Anselm preached against this custom successfully, and the men cut their hair and adopted a “manly bearing (virilem).”62
Appearance could profoundly affect behavior. Anselm’s great concern over masculine appearance found its way into the canons of Westminster in 1102. While four of the canons from this council concerned celibacy of the clergy, three others regulated appearance and other behavior. Canon 13 declared clerics should wear an appropriate tonsure, while canon 11 attempted to regulate wearing of brightly colored clothing, which was likely a safeguard against luxurious fabrics.63 Some scholars have noted the link between such fabrics, luxuria, and femininity. William of Malmesbury felt it necessary to offer the example of the saint Aldhelm, who warned his student against associating with prostitutes; in addition to the sexual danger they posed, prostitutes had a tendency to wear brightly colored clothing. The saint also believed that such luxurious clothing could “emasculate his mental vigour.”64 Not only could the male clerical body be effeminized through wearing certain fabrics, but so could the mind.
Other sources also point to the role that reforming bishops played in setting the standard for manly behavior and appearance, especially when secular men, kings, knights, and nobles, failed to maintain their manliness. Serlo, bishop of Sées, admonished King Henry I in 1105 at Carentan for his and his courtiers’ unkempt appearances. In particular, they were rebuked for wearing their hair in a “woman’s fashion”; instead, the bishop told them to “use your strength like men (virili robore perfrui debetis).” After admonishing the king and his men for having long beards reminiscent of “he-goats,” Serlo continued: “by growing their hair long they make themselves seem like imitators of women, and by womanly softness (mollicie) they lose their manly strength (virili fortitudine) and are led to sin.”65 The reformer deployed the language of hardness and softness to correspond with manliness and femininity. Bishop Serlo also pointed out the effeminacy present in the habit of wearing poulaines, shoes with curved tips: “The perverse sons of Belial grow the tresses of women on their heads, and deck their toes (pedum suorum) with the tails of scorpians, revealing themselves to be effeminates by their softness (molliciem femineos) and serpent-like by their scorpian stings.”66 Once Serlo’s speech was concluded, the king and his men were so inspired by his words that they stepped forward and willingly had their hair shorn by the bishop. The king was transformed by this gender reinforcement, as he then went on, as Orderic Vitalis narrates, and “wreaked vengeance manfully (viriliter) on the enemies of the Church of God.”67
The reformer Wulfstan of Worcester also took measures to establish what he considered to be a proper masculine appearance. According to William of Malmesbury, Wulfstan carried a pocket knife with him so that, when the occasion struck him, he could cut off the locks of men with long hair. To anyone who protested, Wulfstan would accuse of effeminacy: “men who blushed to be what they had been born, and let their hair flow like women, would be no more use than women in the defence of their country against the foreigner.” This failure to practice correct masculinity was used as a reason the Normans were successful in their conquest of England.68
Medieval society exhibited a strong degree of discomfort with inverted gender performances; manly women and womanly men disrupted normative gender relations.69 In this regard, writers viewed effeminacy and sodomy as equitable offenses against manliness, although not all conflated the two behaviors. Frequently, reformers equated effeminacy with a man’s overwhelming indulgence in women, but effeminacy could also be linked to sodomy, as in the history of Orderic Vitalis, who portrayed both as highly undesirable traits. His description of William Rufus’s court also displayed the same revulsion at men acting womanish and women sexually dominating men. Orderic said that “at that time effeminates (effeminati) set the fashion in many parts of the world: foul catamites (catamitae) doomed to eternal fire, unrestrainedly pursued their revels and shamelessly gave themselves up to the filth of sodomy.” His link to womanish behavior and appearance is made clear in the following passages, when he described how the courtiers “grew long and luxurious locks like women” and he lamented that “our wanton youth is sunk in effeminacy, and courtiers, fawning, seek the favours of women with every kind of lewdness.” This was not always the custom, Orderic remarked; in a previous era, “our ancestors used to wear decent clothes, well-adapted to the shape of their bodies; they were skilled horsemen and swift runners, ready for all seemly undertakings.”70
The lack of proper masculine performance had wider-reaching consequences than simply the decadence of court. It spelled disaster for proper governance and leadership. Orderic recorded the prophecy of a hermit who predicted that Rufus’s brother, Robert Courthose, would fail as an effective ruler and “catamites and effeminates will govern, and under their rule vice and wretchedness will abound.”71 Catamites and womanish men failed at proper governance because of their abnormal gender performances. The laxity of their bodies and their unrestrained sexual proclivities rendered them unsuitable for governance; from their disorderly bodies, disorder ensued.
Other writers also located the origins of disorder and disaster in incorrect gender performances. Henry of Huntingdon thought that the wreck of the White Ship in 1120 was due to the sodomy of the Anglo-Norman court. In his History, he writes that the king’s heirs all perished because “all of them, or nearly all, were said to be tainted with sodomy and they were snared and caught. Behold the glittering vengeance of God!…And so death suddenly devoured those who had deserved it.”72 Henry’s commentary suggests that sodomy at court was still a persistent problem, even years after Eadmer first commented on it.
William of Malmesbury also noted, like Eadmer and Orderic Vitalis, the decadent fashions of William Rufus’s court, although William not only provided greater detail of the problem with men’s fashions, he also underscored how courtiers had rejected their innate masculinity. He noted that the courtiers wore “flowing hair and extravagant dress” along with the infamous poulaines. William noted that “the model for young men was to rival women in delicacy of person, to mince their gait, to walk with loose gesture, and half naked. Enervated (enerves) and effeminate (emolliti), they unwillingly remained what nature had made them; the assailers of others’ chastity, prodigal of their own. Troops of pathics, and droves of harlots, followed the court (sequebantur curiam effeminatorum manus et ganearum greges).”73 In his Historia Novella, William also mentions the “wearers of long hair who, forgetting what they were born, enjoy transforming themselves to look like women.” William suggests that Anselm had tried to correct these problems, blocked by the will of his suffragan bishops.74 William of Malmesbury’s