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7 - Clerical Status and Monks

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2022

D. L. d'Avray
Affiliation:
University College London
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Summary

Clerics and monks were originally chalk and cheese. The clergy were an increasingly complex system committed to highly structured hierarchy – but there were unresolved uncertainties about the precise form it should take. The chapter discusses for instance the clerical cursus honorum, reactions against fast-track promotion, and the bigamia rule against clerics in higher orders marrying more than once and the rule’s relation to pagan marriage. The apostolic see was called in to clarify problems arising from these systems and also from the awkward relation between clerics and monks. Monasticism was an unstructured movement, sometimes out of control, at one point banned from towns by imperial law. The interpenetration of the clerical and monastic systems only intensified the challenge of integrating them. The problem would recur in different forms throughout the history of the Latin Church, and the difficulty of coordinating the two overlapping systems had the unintended consequence of strengthening the papacy, constantly called in to integrate monks within the religious legal system and adjust the differences between the two religious elites. The process is already in evidence with the earliest papal jurisprudence.

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Chapter
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Papal Jurisprudence, 385–1234
Social Origins and Medieval Reception of Canon Law
, pp. 74 - 86
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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  • Clerical Status and Monks
  • D. L. d'Avray, University College London
  • Book: Papal Jurisprudence, 385–1234
  • Online publication: 10 March 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108595292.008
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  • Clerical Status and Monks
  • D. L. d'Avray, University College London
  • Book: Papal Jurisprudence, 385–1234
  • Online publication: 10 March 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108595292.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Clerical Status and Monks
  • D. L. d'Avray, University College London
  • Book: Papal Jurisprudence, 385–1234
  • Online publication: 10 March 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108595292.008
Available formats
×