Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages

Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages
Author: P. H. Cullum
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2005-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780802048929

Studies in gender in medieval culture have tended to focus on femininity, however the study of medieval masculinities has developed greatly over the last few years. Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages is the first volume to concentrate on this specific aspect of medieval gender studies, and looks at the ways in which varieties of medieval masculinity intersected with concepts of holiness. Patricia Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis have collected an exceptional group of essays that explore differing notions of medieval holiness, understood variously as religious, saintly, sacred, pure, morally perfect, and consider topics such as significance of the tonsure, sanctity and martyrdom, eunuch saints, and the writings of Henry Suso. Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages deals with a wide variety of texts and historical contexts, from Byzantium to Anglo-Saxon and late-medieval England.

Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages

Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages
Author: P. H. Cullum
Publisher:
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2004
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780708318850

Concentrating on the topic of masculinity in medieval gender studies, these essays examine the ways in which varieties of medieval masculinity intersected with concepts of holiness. Noting a wide variety of texts and historical contexts, these writings explore differing notions of medieval holiness understood as religious, saintly, sacred, pure, and morally perfect, as well as a variety of topics that include the significance of the tonsure, sanctity and martyrdom, eunuch saints, and the writings of Henry Suso.

Gender and Holiness

Gender and Holiness
Author: Sam Riches
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2005-07-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134514891

This volume examines gender-specific religious practices and contends that the pursuit of holiness can destabilize binary gender itself. Though saints may be classified as masculine or feminine, holiness may also cut across gender divisions and demand a break from normally gendered behaviour.

Gender Differences and the Making of Liturgical History

Gender Differences and the Making of Liturgical History
Author: Teresa Berger
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2020-03-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 135193466X

Mapping uncharted territory in the study of liturgy's past, this book offers a history to contemporary questions around gender and liturgical life. Teresa Berger looks at liturgy's past through the lens of gender history, understood as attending not only to the historically prominent binary of "men" and "women" but to all gender identities, including inter-sexed persons, ascetic virgins, eunuchs, and priestly men. Demonstrating what a gender-attentive inquiry is able to achieve, Berger explores both traditional fundamentals such as liturgical space and eucharistic practice and also new ways of studying the past, for example by asking about the developing link between liturgical presiding and priestly masculinity. Drawing on historical case studies and focusing particularly on the early centuries of Christian worship, this book ultimately aims at the present by lifting a veil on liturgy's past to allow for a richly diverse notion of gender differences as these continue to shape liturgical life.

Nine Centuries of Man

Nine Centuries of Man
Author: Lynn Abrams
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2017-01-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 1474403913

What did it mean to be a man in Scotland over the past nine centuries?Scotland, with its stereotypes of the kilted warrior and the industrial ahard man has long been characterised in masculine terms, but there has been little historical exploration of what masculinity actually means for men (and women) in a Scottish context. This interdisciplinary collection explores a diverse range of the multiple and changing forms of masculinities from the late eleventh to the late twentieth century, examining the ways in which Scottish society through the ages defined expectations for men and their behaviour.How men reacted to those expectations is examined through sources such as documentary materials, medieval seals, romance, poetry, begging letters, police reports and court records, charity records, oral histories and personal correspondence. Focusing upon the wide range of activities and roles undertaken by men a work, fatherhood and play, violence and war, sex and commerce a the book also illustrates the range of masculinities which affected or were internalised by men. Together, they illustrate some of the ways Scotlands gender expectations have changed over the centuries and how more generally masculinities have informed the path of Scottish history.ContributorsLynn Abrams, University of GlasgowKatie Barclay, University of AdelaideAngela Bartiem University of EdinburghRosalind Carr, University of East LondonTanya Cheadle, University of GlasgowHarriet Cornell, University of EdinburghSarah Dunnigan, University of EdinburghElizabeth Ewan, University of GuelphAlistair Fraser, University of GlasgowSergi Mainer, University of EdinburghJeffrey Meek, University of GlasgowCynthia J. Neville, Dalhousie University Janay Nugent, University of Lethbridge Tawny Paul, Northumbria University

Defiant Priests

Defiant Priests
Author: Michelle Armstrong-Partida
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2017-06-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501707817

Two hundred years after canon law prohibited clerical marriage, parish priests in the late medieval period continued to form unions with women that were marriage all but in name. In Defiant Priests, Michelle Armstrong-Partida uses evidence from extraordinary archives in four Catalan dioceses to show that maintaining a family with a domestic partner was not only a custom entrenched in Catalan clerical culture but also an essential component of priestly masculine identity. From unpublished episcopal visitation records and internal diocesan documents (including notarial registers, bishops' letters, dispensations for illegitimate birth, and episcopal court records), Armstrong-Partida reconstructs the personal lives and careers of Catalan parish priests to better understand the professional identity and masculinity of churchmen who made up the proletariat of the largest institution across Europe. These untapped sources reveal the extent to which parish clergy were embedded in their communities, particularly their kinship ties to villagers and their often contentious interactions with male parishioners and clerical colleagues. Defiant Priests highlights a clerical culture that embraced violence to resolve disputes and seek revenge, to intimidate other men, and to maintain their status and authority in the community.

Negotiating Clerical Identities

Negotiating Clerical Identities
Author: J. Thibodeaux
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2010-10-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 0230290469

Clerics in the Middle Ages were subjected to differing ideals of masculinity, both from within the Church and from lay society. The historians in this volume interrogate the meaning of masculine identity for the medieval clergy, by considering a wide range of sources, time periods and geographical contexts.

Celibate and Childless Men in Power

Celibate and Childless Men in Power
Author: Almut Höfert
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2017-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317182375

This book explores a striking common feature of pre-modern ruling systems on a global scale: the participation of childless and celibate men as integral parts of the elites. In bringing court eunuchs and bishops together, this collection shows that the integration of men who were normatively or physically excluded from biological fatherhood offered pre-modern dynasties the potential to use different reproduction patterns. The shared focus on ruling eunuchs and bishops also reveals that these men had a specific position at the intersection of four fields: power, social dynamics, sacredness and gender/masculinities. The thirteen chapters present case studies on clerics in Medieval Europe and court eunuchs in the Middle East, Byzantium, India and China. They analyze how these men in their different frameworks acted as politicians, participated in social networks, provided religious authority, and discuss their masculinities. Taken together, this collection sheds light on the political arena before the modern nation-state excluded these unmarried men from the circles of political power.

Affectionate Authorities

Affectionate Authorities
Author: Philip Grace
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2016-03-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317184742

In one of his sermons, the medieval preacher Bernardino of Siena listed seven ’fathers’ to whom one owed obedience: God, one’s natural father, godfather, confessor, benefactor, a government official, and any elderly man. This book seeks to answer the question of why medieval Europeans saw the need for so many ’fathers.’ Why was fatherhood so appealing as a metaphor? Situated at the intersection of social and cultural history, the study draws upon a variety of late-medieval and early-modern sources including witness depositions, personal letters and pedagogical treatises from the city of Basel, Switzerland. It focuses on how people from different walks of life invoked ideas about fatherhood in the pursuit of various goals - not only the ideological agendas of scholarly elites, but also the more pragmatic problems of closing a business deal, claiming an inheritance, or choosing sides in a fistfight - before turning to what these ideas reveal about fatherhood ’on the ground.’ The book argues that it was precisely fatherhood’s basis in lived experience that gave it a familiar ’shape’ in the several roles that fathers played, including provision, affection, disciplinary authority, and education. The most potent rhetorical aspect of fatherhood, however, was not as a static image or shape, but rather the possibility of invoking connections between one role and another. The most potent connection between roles was the idea that fathers were 'affectionate authorities,' combining power over subordinates with desire for their well-being. Tracing the connections and contradictions of these identities, this study provides a nuanced view of concepts of fatherhood on the eve of the Reformation.