Introduction / P.H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis -- From salve to weapon : Torah study, masculinity, and the Babylonian Talmud / Michael L. Satlow -- Gender and hierarchy : Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims (845-882) as a religious man / Rachel Stone -- The defense of clerical marriage: religious identity and masculinity in the writings of Anglo-Norman clerics / Jennifer D. Thibodeaux -- Writing masculinity and religious identity in Henry of Huntingdon / Kirsten A. Fenton -- 'The quality of his virtus proved him a perfect man' : Hereward 'the Wake' and the representation of lay masculinity / Joanna Huntington -- Episcopal authority and gender in the narratives of the First Crusade / Matthew Mesley -- 'What man are you?' : piety and masculinity in the vitae of a Sienese craftsman and a Provençal nobleman / Marita von Weissenberg -- '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 / Katherine J. Lewis -- John of Bridlington, mitred prior and model of the mixed life / Catherine Sanok -- Why men became monks in late medieval England / James G. Clark -- Feasting not fasting : men's devotion to the Eucharist in the later Middle Ages / P.H. Cullum.
Summary:
The complex relationship between masculinity and religion, as experienced in both the secular and ecclesiastical worlds, forms the focus for this volume, whose range encompasses the rabbis of the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud, and moves via Carolingian and Norman France, Siena, Antioch, and high and late medieval England to the eve of the Reformation. Chapters investigate the creation and reconstitution of different expressions of masculine identity, from the clerical enthusiasts for marriage to the lay practitioners of chastity, from crusading bishops to holy kings. They also consider the extent to which lay and clerical understandings of masculinity existed in an unstable dialectical relationship, at times sharing similar features, at others pointedly different, co-opting and rejecting features of the other; the articles show this interplay to be more far more complicated than a simple linear narrative of either increasing divergence, or of clerical colonization of lay masculinity. They also challenge conventional historiographies of the adoption of clerical celibacy, of the decline of monasticism and the gendered nature of piety.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.