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Custom, Truth, and Gender in Eleventh-Century Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Conrad Leyser
Conrad Leyser*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

The Lord did not say, “I am custom”, but “I am Truth”.’ So, allegedly, Pope Gregory VII, in words that – among medievalists at least – have become almost as well known as the Scriptural text to which they refer, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14.6). The Gregorian dictum embodies the paradox at the centre of the movement for Church Reform in the eleventh century, a paradox which continues to shape historiographical discussion of the period. On the one hand, Gregory and his circle presented themselves as uncompromising fighters for the truth of their vision of the Church, prepared to dismiss any appeal to established practice, however venerable; on the other, and in the same moment, however, they themselves appealed explicitly to past precedent in broadcasting their manifesto. In the comment attributed to Gregory, the authority of ‘the blessed Cyprian’ (mediated in turn by Augustine) is invoked to sanction the rejection of custom. To ‘custom’, then, the reformers opposed not ‘truth’ as a timeless absolute, but a notion of truth embedded in a tradition of moral language. Like many revolutionaries, they saw themselves as restoring their society to a pristine state from which it had fallen away – deaf to the accusation of their opponents that such ‘reform’ was in fact irreparably destructive of the peace of the community. In part because eleventh-century questions about the moral, and in particular the sexual, behaviour of the priesthood continue to be relevant in modern churches, modern scholars continue to take sides over Reform, depicting Gregory VII either as faithful restorer or as demonic innovator. This interpretative deadlock suggests, perhaps, that we should look again at the reformers’ paradoxical notion of truth as it emerges through their use of inherited language. My suggestion is that crucial to the truth of Reform in the eleventh century was its reassertion of a very ancient rhetoric of gender.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 34: Gender and Christian Religion , 1998 , pp. 75 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1998

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References

1 Cowdrey, H. E. J., ed., The ‘Epistolae vagantes’ of Pope Gregory VII (Oxford, 1972), p. 151,Google Scholar and the references there on the question of attribution. My thanks to Kate Cooper, Kathleen Cushing, Mary Douglas, Henrietta Leyser, Janet Nelson, R. I. Moore, Frederick Paxton, and to the editor for their kindness and advice.

2 See the contrasting accounts of Goody, J., The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge, 1983), esp. pp. 133–46 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Herlihy, D., Medieval Households (Cambridge, MA, 1985) esp. pp. 79–111 Google Scholar.

3 Guibert of Nogent, Monodiae, 1.11, Benton, J. F., ed., Self and Society in Medieval France (New York, 1970), p. 59 Google Scholar.

4 Gregory VII, Epistolae, 1.15, E. Caspar, ed., MGH Epistolae selectae 2, p. 24; trans. A. G. Remensnyder, ‘Pollution, purity, and peace: an aspect of social reform between the late tenth century and 1076’, in Head, T. and Landes, , eds, The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000 (Ithaca, NY, 1992), pp. 280–307 at pp. 298–9 Google Scholar. My debts to Remensnyder’s study go far beyond the use of this quotation.

5 For Gregory’s accusation of Henry, see K. Leyser, ‘Early medieval canon law and the beginnings of knighthood’, now in Reuter, T., ed. Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: the Carolingian and Ottoman Centuries (London, 1994), pp. 64–5 and nn. 64–7 Google Scholar. For Henry’s accusation of Gregory, involving his relationship with Matilda of Tuscany, see the decree of the Synod of Worms, Die Briefe Heinrich IV, ed. C. Erdmann (Leipzig, 1937), pp. 65–8. I am grateful to Henrietta Leyser and Kathleen Cushing for these references.

6 See in particular, Remensnyder, ‘Pollution, purity, and peace’, and Moore, R. I., ‘Family, community, and cult on the eve of the Gregorian reform’, TRHS, 5th ser., 30 (1980), pp. 49–69 Google Scholar. The vilest pollution of all, in the eyes of Peter Damián at least, was represented by sexual relations among the clergy themselves. See Leyser, C., ‘Cities of the Plain: the rhetoric of sodomy in Peter Damian’s Book of Gomorrah’, Romanic Review, 86 (1995), pp. 191–211 Google Scholar.

7 See e.g. Barstow, A., Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: the Eleventh-Century Debates (New York and Toronto, 1982), pp. 22, 58,Google Scholar and the ground-breaking essay by J. A. McNamara, The Herrenfrage: the restructuring of the gender system, 1050–1150’, in Lees, G A., ed., Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis, 1994), pp. 3–29 Google Scholar. Cf. the classic study of Lea, H. C., Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church (4th edn, London, 1932)Google Scholar which, while not considering the politics of gender, does not hesitate understand clerical celibacy in terms of the ‘impalpable but irresistible power’ of the medieval Church (p. 2).

8 Douglas, M., Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, 1966).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 See in particular, Duby, , The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest, trans. B. Bray (New York, 1983)Google Scholar, and R. I. Moore, ‘Family, community, and cult’.

10 R. I. Moore, ‘Duby’s eleventh century’, History, 69 (1984), pp. 36–49.

11 See e.g. most recently D. Barthélémy and S. D. White, ‘Debate: the “feudal revolution”’, P&P, 152 (Aug. 1996), pp. 196–223.

12 See e.g. G. Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, trans. Goldhammer, A. (Chicago, 1980), pp. 147–66 Google Scholar.

13 See J.-F. Lemarignier, ‘La dislocation da pagus et le problème des consuetudines (x’-xf siècles)’, in Mélanges dédiés à la mémoire de Louis Halphen (Paris, 1950), pp. 401–10.

14 Hilton, R. H., Bond Men Made Free (London, 1973), pp. 70–1 Google Scholar.

15 Moore, , ‘Family, community, and cult’ see also his The Origins of European Dissent (London, 1977), pp. 36–168 Google Scholar.

16 Douglas, Purity and Danger, ck 9.

17 For a narrative account of the Patarenes, see Whitney, J. P., Hildebrandine Essays (Cambridge, 1932), pp. 143–57;Google Scholar for an analysis, H. E. J. Cowdrey, The papacy, the Patarenes, and the church of Milan’, TRHS, 5th ser., 18 (1968), pp. 25–48.

18 Moore, ‘Family, community, and cult’, pp. 64–5 and passim.

19 See e.g. ibid., p. 51.

20 Andrew of Strumi, Vita Gualberti, MGH SS 30, 2, p. 1105, cited by Moore, ‘Family, community, and cult’, p. 68.

21 See Moore, Origins of European Dissent, pp. 8–20.

22 Cooper, K., The Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA, 1996)Google Scholar.

23 See Brown, P. R. L., The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988), p. 153 and n. 57.Google Scholar

24 Cooper, Virgin and Bride, p. 4.

25 Suleri, S., Meatless Days (London, 1990), p. 20.Google Scholar

26 Cooper, Virgin an J Bride, p. 19.

27 Markus, R. A., The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, 1990), ch. 11.Google Scholar

28 See C. Leyser, Family and Monastery in Early Medieval Europe (in preparation).

29 Above, pp. 51–73.

30 D. Herlihy, ‘Land, family, and women in continental Europe, 700–1201’, Traditio, 18 (1962), pp. 89–120 on the difficulty of interpreting matronymics in charters.

31 The phrase is Cooper’s, describing the work of Paul Veyne: Virgin and Bride, p. 2.

32 Stafford, ‘La mutation familiale, a suitable case for caution’, paper delivered at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 1995.

33 Above, n. 5.

34 The formulation is Janet Nelson’s: ‘Monks, secular men, and masculinity, c. 900’, in D. M. Hadley, ed., Images of Masculinity in the Middle Ages (forthcoming).

35 Robinson, R. A., ‘The friendship network of Gregory VII’, History, 63 (1978), pp. 1–23 Google Scholar; idem, ‘Periculosus homo: Pope Gregory VII and episcopal authority’, Viator, 9 (1978), pp. 103–31.

36 For this and what follows, see Robinson, ‘Friendship network’, pp. 15–18 and the references there given; also J. R. Williams, ‘Archbishop Manasses I of Rheims and Pope Gregory VU’, AHR, 54 (1948-9), pp. 804–24.

37 For this letter see MGH, Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit, 5, pp. 178–82, esp. p. 179.

38 Guibert, Monodiae, i.11, trans. Benton, p. 59.

39 See Robinson, ‘Friendship network’, for several other instances.

40 See C. Carezzi, ‘Les fondements de la tripartition sociale chez Adalbéron de Laon’, Annales, 33 (1978), pp. 683–702; Moore, ‘Family, community, and cult’, pp. 55–6.

41 See e.g. R.-H. Bautier, ‘L’hérésie d’Orleans et le mouvement intellectuel au débuts du XIe siècle: documents et hypothèses’, in Enseignement et vie intellectuelle, DC-XVT siècle. Actes du 95e Congrès national des sociétés savants (Rheims, 1970): section de philologie et d’histoire jusqu’à 1610 tome 1 (Paris, 1974), 1, pp. 63–88; Duby, Three Orders, pp. 21–54.

42 F. Paxton, ‘Abbas and Rex: image of authority in the biographical literature of Fleury (987-1044)’ (unpublished paper). My thanks to the author for making available a copy of this paper.

43 Aimo of Fleury, Vita s. Abbona, 20, PL 139, col. 4ro. For discussion see Head, T., Hagiography and the Cult of the Saints: the Diocese of Orleans, Soo-tzoo (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 236–57;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and also idem, The judgement of God: Andrew of Fleury’s account of the Peace League of Bourges’, in Head, T. and Landes, R., eds, The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000 (Ithaca, NY, 1992), pp. 219–38.Google Scholar

44 Jotsald, Vita s. Odilonis, 1.13, PL 142, col. 908.

45 T. N. Bisson, The “feudal revolution’”, P&P, 142 (Feb. 1994), pp. 8–42.

46 See above, n. 11; see also J. L. Nelson, reviewing Head and Landes, Peace of God in Speculum, 69 (1994), pp. 163–9, on the possibility that ‘the crowd’, at least in the early eleventh century, is a rhetorical construct.