Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- From salve to weapon: Torah study, masculinity, and the Babylonian Talmud
- Gender and hierarchy: Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims (845–882) as a religious man
- The defence of clerical marriage: Religious identity and masculinity in the writings of Anglo-Norman clerics
- Writing masculinity and religious identity in Henry of Huntingdon
- ‘The quality of his virtus proved him a perfect man’: Hereward ‘the Wake’ and the representation of lay masculinity
- Episcopal authority and gender in the narratives of the First Crusade
- ‘What man are you?’: Piety and masculinity in the vitae of a Sienese craftsman and a Provençal nobleman
- ‘Imitate, too, this king in virtue, who could have done ill, and did it not’: Lay sanctity and the rewriting of Henry VI's manliness
- John of Bridlington, mitred prior and model of the mixed life
- Why men became monks in late medieval England
- Feasting not fasting: Men's devotion to the Eucharist in the later Middle Ages
- Index
Episcopal authority and gender in the narratives of the First Crusade
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- From salve to weapon: Torah study, masculinity, and the Babylonian Talmud
- Gender and hierarchy: Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims (845–882) as a religious man
- The defence of clerical marriage: Religious identity and masculinity in the writings of Anglo-Norman clerics
- Writing masculinity and religious identity in Henry of Huntingdon
- ‘The quality of his virtus proved him a perfect man’: Hereward ‘the Wake’ and the representation of lay masculinity
- Episcopal authority and gender in the narratives of the First Crusade
- ‘What man are you?’: Piety and masculinity in the vitae of a Sienese craftsman and a Provençal nobleman
- ‘Imitate, too, this king in virtue, who could have done ill, and did it not’: Lay sanctity and the rewriting of Henry VI's manliness
- John of Bridlington, mitred prior and model of the mixed life
- Why men became monks in late medieval England
- Feasting not fasting: Men's devotion to the Eucharist in the later Middle Ages
- Index
Summary
REFORM AND THE REPRESENTATION OF CRUSADERS
Analysis of medieval masculinities, and the various ways in which men were conceptualised and represented in different contexts, has often focussed on the rich evidence provided by the impact of the eleventh-century reform movements. One significant consequence of this movement was the unrelenting insistence by religious reformers that there should be a greater distinction made between the lives of the clergy and the laity. There were repeated calls for the improvement of clerical behaviour and education; celibacy was more strictly enforced upon the male clergy; and priests were restricted from taking up arms. The behaviour of male professional religious discussed in explicitly gendered terms was thus a particular target, in part in order to establish the superiority of religious men over laymen. However, reform also left a wider mark on society as a whole. There was an increasing tendency to position religious values and terminology within the secular sphere, as part of attempts to transform cultural attitudes concerning what was appropriate conduct for men and women. This was not a simple one-way process, as reform ideals encouraged a receptive and sometimes proactive laity to seek new spiritual outlets. Taking the crusading cross, for instance, was one way members of the laity could express their piety. However, the texts which advocated these reform ideals were often written by the clergy and for the clergy; and, thus, as Katherine Cushing put it, these accounts ‘may often be evidence merely of aspirations to effect change rather than real change’.
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- Information
- Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages , pp. 94 - 111Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013