These associated articles offer exploratory investigations into constructions of masculinity at the courts of the Anglo-Norman kings as contributions to the larger study of gender in the Anglo-Norman realm. Using contemporary chronicle accounts, each examines representations of men and masculine behaviour at the royal court during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Recent historiography has seen this period as critical in the emergence of courtly behaviour and ideas. Much of this has been in response to Norbert Elias' great book, The Civilizing Process, which saw the courts of early modern European monarchs as focal points for the diffusion of civilized behavioural norms that helped stabilize the state as a whole. It was C. Stephen Jaeger, however, who first investigated how Elias' thesis related to the Middle Ages and ultimately challenged the Elias narrative. For Jaeger the great moment and mechanism of social change was to be found not in the early modern period but in late tenth-century Ottonian Germany. It was here in the figure of the courtier bishop that Jaeger traced how a new social code, devised from classical models, allowed the court to be identified as a civilizing institution that helped promote political cohesion. Despite their chronological differences both Elias and Jaeger are concerned with larger historical narratives and debates concerning the role of the court within the transformation of the state and the nation.

In the latter years of Henry I's reign, one of his knights (milites) experienced a troublesome dream. Whilst asleep he dreamt that his long, luxurious hair was strangling him. He was so unnerved by this vision that upon waking he promptly had it all cut off. The knight (miles) was apparently one of a number of long-haired men who, forgetful of their natural sex, had wished to grow their hair long in order to look like women. This dream episode and subsequent hair-cutting is reported by the twelfth-century Benedictine monk William of Malmesbury. Malmesbury goes on to comment that as a result of this dream many others also had their hair cut but that it was a short-lived fashion. Indeed, according to Malmesbury, barely a year had passed before:

Malmesbury's explicit use of gendered imagery raises a whole series of questions. Men are here compared to women with their long flowing hair in a way that makes clear that this is not how men should act.

In 1125 the papal legate John of Crema arrived in England where he presided over an ecclesiastical council held at Westminster. At this council, according to the twelfth-century chronicler Henry of Huntingdon, John

The apparent glee with which Henry tells this story adds new vitality to the idiom about the pot calling the kettle black. However this narrative episode does have more serious undertones. Right at its heart is the question of clerical celibacy and how far this was a marker of religious identity for men like the papal legate and the English chronicler. The public shaming of John after he was caught in bed with a woman despite his earlier denunciations suggests that sex and sexual behaviour was problematic and even a source of tension for religious men at this time. It also highlights that religious reform was a live issue in twelfth-century England given the legate's earlier criticism of those priests who were married.

One of the more unusual explanations for English defeat in 1066 appears in the Life of St Wulfstan. In it Bishop Wulfstan lambastes English noblemen for their luxurious style of living as well as their long flowing hair and he warns them that this will lead to disaster if they do not mend their ways. Not one to be accused of being all talk and no action, Wulfstan proceeds to cut the hair of all those that he can with a special knife which he kept to hand precisely for this purpose.

Wulfstan's prophetic awareness of the coming of the Normans is particularly striking not only because of the wonderful image of Wulfstan as a barber but also because of its explicit use of a gendered language. Men here are compared to women with their long flowing hair and are accused of effeminacy, which implies that they were not acting as men should. Is it also the case that Wulfstan, a cleric reprimanding laymen, is in turn being cast as the ‘real man’ here? He is certainly presented as a figure of power and authority and as a prophet to the English. Is he also a hero in the sense of a masculine ideal? This passage suggests that a gendered reading of the text, with especial reference to the presentation of Wulfstan, may be worth exploring further.