Eleventh-century Western Europe experienced an upsurge of Church power as the result of the Church hierarchy seeking to implement a ruthless scheme to separate lay and ecclesiastical life. Two issues, in particular, stood out for correction, simony and married clergy. Simony is the practice of buying and selling of ecclesiastical offices and churches. It was identified and forbidden in an attempt to wrest control over physical churches, their income, and their priests from the exploitation and influence of lay landholders. Similarly, clerical marriage, which had until then been widely practised, was prohibited, and clerics were told to set aside their wives and families. Of course, this ideal of celibacy for priests had always existed in the Christian church, especially for bishops, but real agreement on the matter, much less consistent enforcement, was lacking throughout the early Middle Ages. In the eleventh century, increasingly the church sought a tightening and extension of these rules. Ideologically, these efforts were motivated by the belief that priests should not be polluted by sex when they administered the sacraments such as baptism and Mass, but material concerns also played a role: the resources to maintain churches and clergy were disappearing as married priests provided inheritances and dowries for their children.

As we shall see, these two issues of simony and celibacy were deeply intertwined because large scale donation to monasteries of rural and urban churches – along with their patrimonies – was taking away the livelihood for their priests and families at the same time as they were told to turn themselves into men who were no longer sexually active. Furthermore, because the priesthood had long been mostly a de facto hereditary caste, the anti-simony and celibacy rulings affected not only the priests’ wives but also the priests’ sons. For, since priests’ marriages were forbidden, priests’ children were deemed to be illegitimate, and their sons were banned from being ordained priests. In the words of Christopher Brooke, as a result of the two reform policies the eleventh century witnessed ‘a social revolution’. This paper explores the progress and reaction to this social revolution in one particular region of Europe – Normandy – and pays attention to voices of opposition, especially that of Serlo of Bayeux. It will consist of three parts.