¹ For a historiographical survey with references see Edward Peters, ‘History, historians, and clerical celibacy’, in Michael Frassetto (ed.), Medieval purity and piety: essays on medieval clerical celibacy and religious reform, New York 1998, 3–23.

² ‘It was in the late eleventh and twelfth century that the law of clerical continence was transformed into the law of clerical celibacy. This period, like the fourth century, marked a turning point in western society as well as in the church; the passage from one historical era to the next’: Paul Baudette, ‘ “In the world but not of it”: clerical celibacy as a symbol of the medieval Church’, ibid. 34.

³ Mayke De Jong, ‘Imitatio morum: the cloister and clerical purity in the Carolingian world’, ibid. 49–81.

⁴ Elizabeth Dachowski, ‘Tertius est optimus: marriage, continence and virginity in the politics of late tenth- and early eleventh-century Francia’, ibid. 118.

⁵ Michael Frassetto, ‘Heresy, celibacy, and reform in the sermons of Ademar of Chabannes’, ibid. 137.

⁶ Phyllis G. Jestice, ‘Why celibacy? Odo of Cluny and the development of a new sexual morality’, ibid. 81–117.

⁷ Brundage, James A., ‘“Allas! That evere love was synne”: sex and medieval canon law’, Catholic Historical Review lxxii (1986), 9–10Google Scholar.

⁸ On the reform papacy's approach to the question of married priests see Anne L. Barstow, Married priests and the reforming papacy: the eleventh-century debates, New York 1982, 47–173.

⁹ Ibid. 55.

¹⁰ James A. Brundage, Law, sex, and Christian society in medieval Europe, Chicago 1987, 218. Uta-Renate Blumenthal has questioned the tendency to attribute the novelties to the decree of 1059 because the decree refers to the lost constitutio de castitate clericorum of Pope Leo ix: ‘Pope Gregory vii and the prohibition of Nicolaitism’, in Frassetto, Medieval purity and piety, 243–4. Later, in a letter to Bishop Turin from 1064, Damian refers to a ruling on clerical chastity that might be the lost ruling of Leo ix.

¹¹ Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. Kurt Reindel, Munich 1983, no. 31 at pp. 283–330.

¹² While parish priests insisted that their marriages were canonical, Damian retorted that the Council of Nicaea had ruled that only lectors or cantors could be married, and that the papal legate at the Second Council of Carthage had convinced the council to issue a similar ruling: PL cxliv. 359–61.

¹³ Damian's main argument is that since Christ was born of a virgin, he wished to be served by virgin hands.

¹⁴ ‘In fact, the aggressive policy of the papacy had made the married clergy defiant, somewhat more conscious of themselves as a group within the church’: Barstow, Married priests, 66.

¹⁵ Very little is known of the activity at these two first councils. For a discussion see Somerville, Robert, ‘The councils of Gregory vii’, Studi Gregoriani xiii (1989), 43Google Scholar: ‘It is overwhelmingly probable that Gregory's synods of both 1074 and 1075 treated the issues of simony and clerical incontinence.’

¹⁶ Seventeen letters are of this type: Barstow, Married priests, 218 n. 43.

¹⁷ Brundage, Law, sex, and Christian society, 219. According to Blumenthal ‘The measures promulgated in February 1075 were sometimes circulated in Germany on the basis of Gregory's letters as part of small propagandist collections as well as in the local councils the pontiff instructed the bishop to hold’: ‘Pope Gregory vii’, 249.

¹⁸ Brundage, James A., ‘Sexuality, marriage, and the reform of Christian society in the thought of Gregory vii’, Studi Gregoriani xiv (1991), 71Google Scholar.

¹⁹ ‘I imagine, then, that if married clergy were common in eleventh-century England, the Gregorian reform had, over two centuries, a considerable effect’: Brooke, C. N. L., ‘Gregorian reform in action: clerical marriage in England, 1050–1200’, Cambridge Historical Journal xii (1956), 7Google Scholar.

²⁰ Brundage, Law, sex, and Christian society, 220.

²¹ ‘We have no knowledge of a literary defense of priestly marriage between the fifth and the eleventh centuries’: Barstow, Married priests, 105.

²² See Erwin Frauenknecht, Die Verteidigung der Priesterehe in der Reformzeit, Hanover 1997, 173–93.

²³ L. De Heinemann, Pseudo-Udalrici epistola de continentia clericorum ed. L. De Heinemann, MGH, Libelli de lite, Hanover 1891, 254.

²⁴ Carl Mirbt, Die Publizistik im Zeitalter Gregors VII. (1894), Leipzig 1965, 12.

²⁵ Henry C. Lea, History of sacerdotal celibacy in the Christian Church, i, London 1907, 119.

²⁶ Augustin Fliche, La Reforme gregorienne, Louvain 1937, 1–12.

²⁷ Bernhard Schmeidler, Kaiser Heinrich IV. und seine Helfer im Investiturstreit. Stilkritische und Sachkritische Untersuchungen, Leipzig 1927, 193, 195.

²⁸ Mirbt, Die Publizistik, 12.

²⁹ Ian S. Robinson, Authority and resistance in the Investiture Contest: the polemical literature of the late eleventh century, Manchester 1978, 167.

³⁰ H. E. J. Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 1073–1085, Oxford 1998, 288.

³¹ Frauenknecht, Die Verteidigung, 40, 70.

³² According to Barstow (Married priests, 116), the false ascription of the treatise to the tenth-century Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg (923–73) was probably an attempt by the Gregorian papacy to create a distance in time and space to the scholarly defence of clerical marriage.

³³ Colin Morris, The papal monarchy: the western Church from 1050 to 1250, Oxford 1989, 104.

³⁴ On Gratian's embracement of the reform movement's views on celibacy see Brundage, Law, sex, and Christian society, 251.

³⁵ The so-called Bolognese ‘approved format’ for a letter consists of salutatio, captatio benevolentiae, narratio and petitio: James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: a history of rhetorical theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance, Berkeley 1981, 225.

³⁶ ‘Cum tua, o pater et domine, decreta super clericorum continentia nuper mihi transmissa a discretione invenirem aliena, timor me turbavit cum tristicia. Timor quidem propter hoc, quod dicitur: Pastoris sententia sive iusta sive iniusta timenda est’: Der Pseudo-Udalrich-Brief, ed. E. Frauenknecht, Hanover 1997, 203–4. The quotation is from Gregory i, Homilia in Evangelia xxxvi. 6, PL lxxvi: ‘Sed utrum iuste an iniuste obliget pastor, pastoris tamen sententia gregi timenda est, ne is qui subest, et cum iniuste forsitan ligatur, ipsam obligationis suae sententiam ex alia culpa mereatur.’

³⁷ ‘Quid enim gravius, quid tocius aecclesiae compassione dignius, quam te summae sedis pontificem, ad quem tocius aecclesiae spectat examen, a sancta discretione vel minimum exorbitare?’: Der Pseudo-Udalrich-Brief, 204.

³⁸ ‘Non parum quippe ad hac deviasti, cum clericos, quos ad abstinentiam coniugii monere debueras, ad hanc imperiosa quadam violentia cogere volebas’: ibid.

³⁹ ‘Nunquidnam merito communi omnium sapientium iudicio haec non est violentia, cum contra evangelicam institutionem ac sancti Spiritus dictationem ad privata aliquis decreta cogitur exequenda?’, ibid.

⁴⁰ For a more detailed analysis see Leidulf Melve, Inventing the public sphere: the polemical literature of the Investiture Contest, c. 1030–1122, Leiden 2007, 45–119.

⁴¹ Cassian's notion of discretion is outlined in the Second Conference of Abbot Moses, PL xlix. 523–58a. Casiday, See also Augustine, ‘Tradition as a governing theme in the writings of John Cassian’, Early Medieval Europe xvi (2008), 191–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴² Gebhard of Salzburg is the only writer to uses the quotation in the same abridged form: Epistola ad Herimannum Mettensem episcopum data, ed. K. Francke, MGH, Libelli de lite, Hanover 1891, i. 267. In addition to Gebhard, it was also used by other polemicists, including Manegold of Lautenbach, Liber ad Gebehardum, ed. K. Francke, MGH, Libelli de lite, Hanover 1891, i. 392; Liber canonum contra Heinricum quartum, ed. F. Thaner, MGH, Libelli de lite, Hanover 1891, i. 484; De unitate ecclesiae conservanda, ed. W. Schwenkenbecher, MGH, Libelli de lite, Hanover 1892, ii. 245–6; Deusdedit, Libellus contra invasores et symoniacos, ed. E. Sackur, MGH, Libelli de lite, Hanover 1892, ii. 361; and Hugh of Fleury, Tractatus de regia potestate et sacerdotali dignitate, ed. E. Sackur, MGH, Libelli de lite, Hanover 1892, ii. 478.

⁴³ Frauenknecht interprets the introduction in relation to the ‘Aufruhrkanon für erhebliche mißstimmung’ of the German episcopate: Die Verteidigung, 84.

⁴⁴ ‘Cum ergo plurima veteris ac novi testamenti suppetant exempla, sanctam, ut nosti, discretionem docentia, tuae, rogo, ne grave sit paternitati vel pauca ex pluribus huic paginae interseri’: Der Pseudo-Udalrich-Brief', 204.

⁴⁵ ‘Quod illi postmodum interdixisse non legitur; sed idem in evangelio loquitur: Sunt eunuchi, qui se castraverunt propter regnum caelorum; sed non omnes capiunt hoc verbum. Qui potest capere, capiat’: ibid. 204–5.

⁴⁶ Although the two scriptural passages were commonly connected in discussions on priestly marriage, Pseudo-Udalric is the first to juxtapose the passages in the present discussion: Frauenknecht, Die Verteidigung, 86 n. 86.

⁴⁷ ‘Quapropter apostolus quoque ait: De virginibus praeceptum Domini non habeo, consilium autem do […] Propter fornicationem, dixit, unusquisque habeat suam uxorem’: Der Pseudo-Udalrich-Brief, 205.

⁴⁸ ‘Nam illud apostolicum: Unusquisque habeat suam uxorem nullum excipit vere nisi professorem continentiae vel eum, qui de continuanda virginitate votum in Domino praefixit’: ibid.

⁴⁹ Ibid. 206.

⁵⁰ Whereas incidents of fornication are reported from the ninth and the tenth centuries, there are few recorded instances of homosexual behaviour from the eleventh century.

⁵¹ ‘Quibus utique verbis liquido claret, quia non sacerdotes sed populum corripiebat apostolus, qui sectas faciebant scismatum, dum diversorum se discipulos assererent esse doctorum. Cum ergo diceret unusquisque suam uxorem habeat, ille quoque coniugium indulgebat ad quos eloquium dirigebat’: Die Briefe des Petrus Damiani, ed. Kurt Reindel, Munich 1989, no. 141 at p. 496.

⁵² ‘Nempe si apostolus hic etiam sacerdotibus carnalem copulam concederet, profecto contrarius sibi esset, qui ad Titum scribens percipit, ut sacerdotes sobrii iusti sint atque continentes’: Bernold of Constance, Apologeticus, ed. F. Thaner, MGH, Libelli de lite, Hanover 1892, ii. 73.

⁵³ Bernold of Constance, De prohibenda sacerdotium incontinentia, ed. F. Thaner, ibid. 7–26. Barstow states that ‘The six letters they exchanged indicate how tenaciously the publicists fought over the interpretation of historical records, how each side bent the evidence of tradition to fit its cause’: Married priests, 125. The best treatment of the correspondence is that of Frauenknecht, who regards the first reception of the Paphnutius chapter as resulting from oral communication that then became the point of departure for the epistolary correspondence between 1074 and 1076: Die Verteidigung, 18–28.

⁵⁴ ‘Lambert's account uses scripture (Matthew 19: 11–12 and I Corinthians 7:9) and some terminology similar to Pseudo-Udalric's: the papal decree, by its violenta exactione, forced (cogere) men to live like angels, and fornicationis … frena laxeret’: Barstow, Married priests, 236 n. 15. Frauenknecht, however, has questioned the link to Pseudo-Udalric: Die Verteidigung, 45.

⁵⁵ The letters from both Cambrai and Noyon are found in MGH, Libelli de lite, Hanover 1897, iii. 573–8.

⁵⁶ Cowdrey, Pope Gregory VII, 289. See also Robinson, Authority and resistance, 166.

⁵⁷ Barstow, Married priests, 125.

⁵⁸ Ernst Dümmler noted that the Epistola probably had an extensive diffusion: ‘Eine Streitschrift für die Priesterehe’, in Sitzungsberichte der Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften, Jahrgang 1902, Berlin 1902, 421. Later, Carl Erdmann stressed the extent to which the discussion of priestly marriage was conducted by oral as well as written means: Studien zur Briefliteratur Deutschlands im elften Jahrhundert (1938), Stuttgart 1962, 246.

⁵⁹ ‘adhortor … ut ad castitatem clericorum predicandam atque inculcandam … studiosius accingaris’: Das Register Gregors VII, ed. E. Caspar, MGH, Epistolae selectae, Berlin 1955, i. 223.

⁶⁰ Cassidorius, Historia tripartita, ed. R. Hanslik and W. Jacob, CSEL lxxi (1952), i. 10, 1; ii. 14. According to Frauenknecht textual differences render it less likely that the source of the Paphnutius example is Pseudo-Udalric. Instead, the source is probably a version of the Cassidorius text: Die Verteidigung, 31–2.

⁶¹ Der Pseudo-Udalrich-Brief, 207–8.

⁶² Robinson, Authority and resistance, 166. By comparing the story of Paphnutius with the subscription list of the synod as well as contemporary literary sources, Friedhelm Winkelmann contends that the story most likely is fabricated: ‘Die Problematik der Entstehung der Paphnutioslegende’, in Joachim Herrmann, Helga Köpstein and Reimar Müller (eds), Griechenland – Byzanz – Europa: ein Studienband, Berlin 1985, 32–43. According to Peter L'Hullier the story of the intervention of Paphnutius is probably a legend fabricated in the east at the beginning of the fifth century in order to constitute a form of censure in the face of attempts by Rome to impose permanent celibacy on clerics in holy orders: The Church of the ancient councils: the disciplinary work of the first four ecumenical councils, New York 1996, 36.

⁶³ Robinson, Authority and resistance, 166.

⁶⁴ The dating of the treatise is contested. While Fliche, Barstow and McLaughlin find that it is composed ‘around 1065’, Robinson and Cowdrey accept the date given by the MGH editor E. Dümmler, namely between 1075 and 1080. See also Frauenknecht, Die Verteidigung, 108–25.

⁶⁵ ‘Concerning women who have been brought in to live with the clergy. This great synod absolutely forbids a bishop, presbyter, deacon or any of the clergy to keep a woman who has been brought in to live with him, with the exception of course of his mother or sister or aunt, or of any person who is above suspicion’: Decrees of the ecumenical councils, i, ed. N. P. Tanner, London 1990, 7.

⁶⁶ It is not credible that the Fathers of Nicaea wanted to impose celibacy: such an important decision would not only have been clearly formulated, but it would also have resonated in the sources: L'Hullier, The Church, 35–6.

⁶⁷ Tractatus pro clericorum conubio, ed. E. Frauenknecht, Hanover 1997, 254–6.

⁶⁸ ‘Adhuc eadem sententia, quae prius de coniugatis sacerdotibus fuerat ventilata, nunc etiam in omni ordine clericorum ab illis decernitur, cum regula nostra hoc habeat, ut unius matrimonii clericus federetur vinculo … cum etiam Paphnutius de hoc eodem ita intulerit in Nicena sinodo’: Cameracensium et Noviomensium clericorum epistolae, ed. H. Böhmer, MGH, Libelli de lite, Hanover, 1897, iii. 575.

⁶⁹ The example and its similar argumentative use strengthens the case of literary borrowing from the Epistola.

⁷⁰ ‘Quanto enim minus de earundem personarum sanctitate dubitamus, tanto magis nenias iisdem asscriptas, canonicis institutionibus contrarias, credimus esse falsas’: Bernold of Constance, De incontinentia sacerdotum, ed. F. Thaner, MGH, Libelli de lite, Hanover 1892, ii. 14.

⁷¹ ‘In hac synodo (1079) papa … scriptum quod dicitur sancti Oudalrici ad papam Nicolaum de nuptiis presbiterorum et capitulum Pafnutii de eadem re, immo omnia sacris canonibus adversa, damnavit’: idem, Chronicon, ed. I. S. Robinson, Darmstadt 2003, 422.

⁷² One argument for the dating of the Fragmentum has pointed to the fact that after the condemnation of the Epistola further polemical encounters were not necessary: Frauenknecht, Die Verteidigung, 82. Peter Classen, however, notes that Gerhoch of Reichersberg referred to Pseudo-Udalric's text as late as 1131: Gerhoch von Reichersberg: eine Bibliographie mit einem Anhang über die Quellen, ihre handschriftliche Überlieferung und ihre Chronologie, Wiesbaden 1960, 52 n. 35.

⁷³ Alois Fauser suggests Bernold of Constance as the author: Die Publizisten des Investiturstreites: Persönlichkeiten und Ideen, Würzburg 1935, 53. Frauenknecht, however, only situates the Fragmentum in the Constance environment: Die Verteidigung, 82.

⁷⁴ ‘Pretendunt sue temeritati et adhuc epistolam, quam dicunt sanctum Ŏdalricum Augustensem Nicholao pape, continentiam clericis precipienti, legasse, et eum talia affectantem indiscrete humanitatis insimulasse et, ne hoc ordinatos strangularet laqueo rogasse’: Fragmentum Merseburgense de caelibatu cleri, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH, Libelli de lite, Hanover 1897, iii. 587.

⁷⁵ ‘Sed cum temporibus sancti Ŏdalrici non fuerit papa huius nominis, epistolam hanc in prima fronte mendacii damnatam’: ibid.

⁷⁶ Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg is regarded as the first saint to be solemnly canonised by a pope and was the object of widespread veneration. Thiemar of Merseburg calls him a ‘gem of the priesthood’ and Ulrich's biography, Vita sancti Oudalrici episcopi Augustani, was probably important in establishing the later cult.

⁷⁷ ‘Preterea cum eadem epistola imponat doctori Gregorio, quod non in eius vita, non in eius regesto, non in scripto eius aliquo vel alicuius de eo invenitur’: Fragmentum Merseburgense, 587.

⁷⁸ The period lacked an agreed interpretive model, and therefore infused an interpretive dynamic similar to the one evident within what Brian Stock calls ‘textual communities’: The implications of literacy: written language and models of interpretation in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Princeton 1983.

⁷⁹ This approach accords with Bernold's general concern with contextualisation as well as with the clearly delineated hierarchy of authorities emerging from his approach to canon law.

⁸⁰ ‘Es ist geradezu eine lächerliche Tollkühnheit oder traurige Unwissenheit, wenn man sich auf Gregor i beruft’: Mirbt, Die Publizistik, 297; ‘in deploring the popular assumption that Gregory the Great was the founder of celibacy, he tells an incredible tale in order to prove that, in fact, Gregory did not insist on celibacy’: Barstow, Married priests, 108; ‘Die macabre Erzählung ist längst als Fiktion abgetan’: Frauenknecht, Die Verteidigung, 92.

⁸¹ ‘Sunt vero aliqui, qui sanctum Gregorium suae sectae sumunt adiutorium, quorum quidem temeritatem rideo, ignorantiam doleo. Ignorant etenim, quod periculosum huius heresies decretum a sancto Gregorio factum condigno penitentiae fructu postmodum ab eodem sit purgatum’: Der Pseudo-Udalrich-Brief, 208.

⁸² Ibid.

⁸³ ‘suoque decreto prorsus dampnato, apostolicum illud laudavit consilium: Melius est nubere quam uri, addens ex sui parte: Melius nubere quam mortis occasionem praebere’: ibid.

⁸⁴ For an overview of possible sources see Frauenknecht, Die Verteidigung, 93–5.

⁸⁵ Der Pseudo-Udalrich-Brief, 209–10.

⁸⁶ ‘Quid enim prodest corporis pudicicia animo constuprato, si caeteras virtutes, quas propheticus sermo describit, non habuerit?’: ibid. 210.

⁸⁷ Fauser, Die Publizisten, 90–2.

⁸⁸ For discussions of eleventh- and twelfth-century individualism with references see Melve, Leidulf, ‘“The revolt of the medievalists”: directions in recent research on the twelfth-century Renaissance’, Journal of Medieval History xxxii (2006), 231–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁹ ‘The contrasting views of Jerome and Augustine have dominated Christian thinking about sexual issues since the fifth century’: Brundage, ‘ “Allas! That evere love was synne”’, 9. See also C. N. L. Brooke, The medieval idea of marriage, Oxford 1991, 54–6.

⁹⁰ Dümmler, ‘Eine Streitschrift’, 421.

⁹¹ Brundage, Law, sex, and marriage, 221.

⁹² Fliche, La Reforme gregorienne, 11–12.

⁹³ ‘Fliche's attitude reveals his own bias; he assumes that the tradition of the early church merely tolerated married clergy and therefore he judges all defenders of clerical marriage as going against tradition’: Barstow, Married priests, 109, 115.

⁹⁴ Dümmler, ‘Eine Streitschrift’, 418–44.

⁹⁵ Dümmler suggested that the author was a German married priest: ‘Eine Streitschrift’; Fliche, however, argued that it was composed by a married Norman priest and a student of Anselm: La Reforme gregorienne, 21–31.

⁹⁶ Wenrich of Trier, Epistola, ed. K. Francke, MGH, Libelli de lite, Hanover 1891, i. 284–99.

⁹⁷ Sigebert's polemic, the Epistola adversus laicorum in presbyteros coniugatos calumniam, has been edited anew: Frauenknecht, Die Verteidigung, 217–39. For an analysis see Barstow, Married priests, 140–50.

⁹⁸ The texts are De coniugio legitimo et non legitimo atque de sacerdotio and De sancta virginitate et de sacerdotum matrimonio: die Texte des Normannischen Anonymus, ed. K. Pellens, Wiesbaden 1966, 116–24, 204–8. For analyses of the texts see Karl Pellens, Die Kirchendenken des normannischen Anonymus, Wiesbaden 1973, 207–14; Barstow, Married priests, 157–73; and Megan McLaughlin, ‘The bishop as bridegroom: marital imagery and clerical celibacy in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries’, in Frassetto, Medieval purity and piety, 226–7.

⁹⁹ See Stephen E. Buckwalter, Die Priesterehe in Flugschriften der frühen Reformation, Göttingen 1998, 72–6.