Masculinity in Medieval Europe

Dawn Hadley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317882978
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

An original and highly accessible collection of essays which is based on a huge range of historical sources to reveal the realities of mens' lives in the Middle Ages. It covers an impressive geographical range - including essays on Italy, France, Germany and Byzantium - and will span the entire medieval period, from the fourth to the fifteenth century. The collection is divided into four main sections: attaining masculinity; lay men and churchmen: sources of tension; sexuality and the construction of masculinity; and written relationships and social reality.
The contributors are:
Dawn Hadley, Jenny Moore, William M. Aird, Jeremy Goldberg, Matthew Bennet, Janet Nelson, Conrad Leyser, Robert Swanson, Patricia Cullum, Ross Balzaretti, Shaun Tougher, Julian Haseldine, Marianne Ailes and Mark Chinca.

Chapter One
Introduction: Medieval Masculinities

D.M. HADLEY

For a generation of scholars gender has been an important analytical category for the study of the Middle Ages.¹ It has come to be accepted that gender is socially constructed; that is, that masculinity and femininity do not exist as fixed organic categories, but are produced socially and vary. It has also been recognized in recent work that we must be prepared to think in terms of a whole series of masculinities and femininities. Much attention has been focused on medieval women in recent years, but although this work is extremely valuable it has not really been about gender; it has served to 'add' women to the historical picture, but has lacked insight into the relational aspect of gender identity (the ways, that is, in which men and women were defined in relation to one another), and tire various ways in which gender identity was formed and reproduced. To develop the study of gender in the Middle Ages we need to move beyond the separate study of women, and in order to do so we have to address the gendered identity of men. There is a growing awareness that medieval men, and medieval masculinities, equally require theorizing and detailed analysis. This volume is the first multi-disciplinary contribution to that endeavour written for students of medieval history.² It proceeds through a series of case studies ranging in time from the fourth to the sixteenth century, which draw on documentary and literary sources, and on the evidence of archaeology and material culture, from England, France, Italy, Germany, Byzantium and Scandinavia. Insights into medieval masculinities are offered from legal, political, ecclesiastical, social, literary and archaeological perspectives. The diversity of evidence and viewpoints presented enables the contributors to the collection to expose a myriad of masculinities. No one methodological or theoretical approach predominates in the collection, and this allows the contributors, and the reader, to explore the multi-faceted nature of male experience and identity in the Middle Ages.

Any study which takes masculinities as its central theme is, however, liable to be received with scepticism and suspicion: it is prone to accusations that it is 'an unwelcome take-over bid ... unacceptably subversive ... a modish irrelevance';³ it is likely to be regarded as anti-feminist; it may even be regarded as being unnecessary on the grounds that 'the subjects of traditional historical discourse were for the most part men'.⁴ The present collection is none of these things; the contributors have all been aware of the potential riskiness of the undertaking, and consequently three main concerns have predominated in the production of this volume. First, we have taken as our task the need to examine the divergent and constantly changing ways in which masculine identities were constructed throughout the Middle Ages, and in so doing to disaggregate the generality of the term 'men" in so much literature on the Middle Ages. Accordingly, in order to avoid a reductive approach, each of the contributors has examined the experiences of groups of men, and of individual men, in given historical contexts. It is apparent that when we begin to think of men as gendered beings we find divergent notions of masculinity, constructed in historically specific contexts, and this offers a necessary corrective to the premise, inherent in much scholarly writing on the Middle Ages, that masculinity is universal, unchanging and unquestioned. The chapters in this volume demonstrate that, on the contrary, masculinities were constructed, reconstructed and challenged; they were also situational constructs, created through social interaction. It has recently been observed that we must strive to elucidate the lives of 'die millions of men who were only men', rather than continuing with the apotheosis of the perceivedly important men.⁵ In response to this, we offer studies of a variety of medieval masculinities, as we recognize that the experiences of medieval men cannot be made visible through the continued concentration on the histories and experiences of kings, law-makers and bishops. Where such figures appear in this volume there is concern to assess the representativeness of the experiences and attitudes of such people, the extent to which their actions and ideas impinged on wider society, and the responses their stances elicited.

Second, we see this as a contribution to the valuable feminist scholarship on the Middle Ages which, although exploring the diversity of female experience during the period, has tended to ignore the gendered status of men; ironically privileging 'men' as universal, ahistorical, atemporal and genderless.⁶ Men have commonly been projected as a single oppositional category. It is to be noted that the so-called 'men's studies' have made little impact on this collection. This results from a general unease with the 'men's studies' programme, which has recently been criticized as a reassertion of male prerogatives, as a re-presentation and repackaging of a fundamentally unchanged 'male power', and as the perpetuation of reductionist and essentialist notions of masculinity; its proponents have also failed to respond to issues raised by feminist scholarship.⁷

Third, we believe that by focusing on the construction of masculinities we will add important new insights into the study of the Middle Ages, and will, we hope, encourage the rewriting of traditional historical discourses. Recent studies elucidating the experiences of women in given historical periods have, for example, urged the need to reassess traditional approaches to historical periodization;⁸ the disaggregation of male experience and identity may also contribute to such an endeavour.

A number of themes emerge and are explored in this volume: the plurality of masculinities, and the existence of dominant and subordinated masculinities; the fluidity of gender categories; the contested nature of gender identities; the relationship between age and gender; the ways in which masculine identities were constructed within all-male environments; the relationship between masculinity and power; the inadequacy of the blunt bi-polarities of male/female and masculine/feminine; the performative nature of gender and the importance of the repeated rehearsal of gendered identities; the role of material culture in the construction of masculinities and the importance of physical and sartorial appearance; the relationship between text and social 'reality', and the role of text as a medium for gender construction; and the complex nature of the relationship between sexuality and masculinity. These themes are worth examining in a little more detail.

The plurality of masculinities: dominant and subordinated variants

It is clear that 'masculinity' is problematic as an analytical category, and that such a universal category has to be questioned if not rejected. Masculinity was created and recreated in historically specific contexts; consequently we would be better advised to think in terms of a series of masculinities, and to explore the competing and contradictory forms present within any given society, or even within an individual member of that society. Although masculinity and femininity are often seen as 'relational constructs' defined by reference to each other, this is clearly an insufficiently subtle approach; equally important in tire dynamics of gendering is the competition between different notions of acceptable masculine behaviour.

Within any given society there might be contrasting and competing forms of dominant masculinity; with men differentiating themselves from other men by a variety of means. For example, several of the chapters in this book discuss the relationship between ecclesiastical views of masculine behaviour, on the one hand, and secular notions, on the other. If ecclesiastical and secular men occupied 'the same moral universe', to use Conrad Leyser's words, then it was one constructed and disseminated largely by ecclesiastical authors through the medium of text, and it is apparent that there was resistance to the views of appropriate masculine behaviour presented in those texts, both within the Church and among the laity. Several chapters highlight the tensions exhibited between secular and ecclesiastical notions of appropriate masculine behaviour. Matthew Bennett contrasts the expectations expressed in literary texts concerning the appropriate appearance and behaviour of aristocratic warriors, with the consternation this caused in ecclesiastical circles. Janet Nelson discusses the cases of ninth-century aristocratic men who were offered divergent careers and who experienced actual physical symptoms as a result of the anxieties caused by the choices presented to them. In Nelson's chapter, and in some of the examples discussed by Robert Swanson and Patricia Cullum, we are introduced to a series of individuals who experienced variant notions of masculinity, and who had to respond to the competing, contradictory and undermining images with which they Were presented. The transgressive clergy of the legal court and the literary topos show clearly the difficulties that certain groups of men might encounter in attempting to adhere to the restrictions placed on their actions, and, in particular, on their capacity to behave like other men. In the face of these competing models for behaviour some men found it very difficult to conform, whereas others, to use Nelson's phrase, 'learned somehow to live with dissonance'.

A number of the chapters draw out the ways in which dominant masculinities within given societies were both underpinned, and also challenged, by subordinated masculinities. William Aird demonstrates that part of the authority of William the Conqueror depended on his ability to control the behaviour of his eldest son, Robert Curdiose: [his] inability to receive 'the public recognition and affirmation of his fully gendered adult self' was a cause of Robert's disaffection from his father. It is notable that Robert attempted to improve his status through an imitation of his father's behaviour, but that this was criticized by an early twelfth-century chronicler who drew on biblical images to present a model of what Robert's behaviour, as a son, should have been. It seems clear that in Anglo-Norman aristocratic society in the eleventh and twelfth centuries there were normative codes of masculine behaviour and that the aristocratic iuvenis was not permitted to adopt the attributes of adult masculinity until the adult had deemed it appropriate for him to do so. Both Aird and Matthew Bennett show that military prowess was only valorized when it was displayed in appropriate contexts and with the required level of caution: in itself, military prowess 'did not make the man'.

Intergenerational tensions between men were an important constituent factor in the construction of masculine identities. Patricia Cullum suggests that one of the tensions which the late medieval clergy experienced was their lack of social adulthood, and it was from this that their problems concerning their masculine status stemmed. Jeremy Goldberg details the relationship between late medieval English masters and apprentices in the urban environment: although the master and the apprentice were usually from the same social background, and of the same sex, they were distinguished by the fact that the former was usually married and a householder, while the latter was unmarried and a household dependant. Goldberg reveals that it was a relationship fraught with tension and the potential for conflict, in which the apprentice was expected to adhere to a strict code of behaviour within the household, and would be punished if he did not. Yet it was also one in which there was a community of interest when challenged by those beyond this relationship, as is demonstrated by the support the apprentice John Semer gave to his master Thomas Nesfeld against the latter's wife. What we witness here is the establishment of a dominant masculinity by the masters through the control of their apprentices, but which ultimately serves to ensure the 'defence of patriarchy' from any subversive influences, such as the transgression of acceptable behaviour by other men in the hierarchy and the challenges of women.

Jenny Moore and I discuss the ways in which the relationships between infant, adult and older males in early medieval society were both reflected in, and determined through, the burial rite and the grave goods with which their societies deemed it appropriate for them to be interred. The funerary ritual was a moment at which familial and communal relationships and identities were negotiated and reasserted; as such, it had more relevance for the living community than for the deceased. Ross Balzaretti points up the expectation in the writing of Liutprand that adult men should set an example to the young, and at the same time indicates that there was an expectation that the young might be prone to bad behaviour (here, sexual transgression), although their youth did not excuse that. Pope John XII is castigated for failing to set a good example ('how many chaste youths by his example have become unchaste?'), but is, to some extent, excused by the remarks of Otto I concerning his youth ('he is only a boy, and will soon alter if good men set him an example'). Liutprand makes Otto fill the gap created by the death of John's father, and casts John's behaviour as filial disobedience. In the didactic and polemical literature of the Middle Ages there emerges a concern not only to condemn the behaviour of young and subordinated versions of masculinity, but also to place a burden of responsibility on the more mature to set a good example.

This volume throws up an important point concerning the very notion of a plurality of gender identities. Although gender studies has urged on us the need to think in terms of pluralities of masculinities and femininities, we must be aware of the fact that many authors in the Middle Ages sought to impose very rigid modes of behaviour: Ross Balzaretti, for example, describes Ratherius of Verona as depicting a world characterized by a 'typically (deliberately?) simplistic gender divide'. Perhaps there was even a contemporary perception that there really only should be two fairly rigidly defined genders: masculinity and femininity. This is the conclusion that Robert Swanson reaches in his chapter. If the imposition of clerical celibacy and restriction of clerical marriage entailed the construction of a new gender identity, then it was an experiment that was doomed to failure; by the end of the period considered by Swanson, the reformer Justus Jonas commented that, 'If you are a man, it is no more in your power to live without a woman than it is to change your sex ... it is the way that God has created and made us." Attempts to polarize gender identity were, according to a study by Joan Cadden, made by some medical and scientific theorists in the later Middle Ages.⁹ Similarly, recent work by Miri Rubin suggests that although hermaphrodites were not especially stigmatized, it was expected that they should choose between two polarized sexual identities, adopt the characteristic gendered behaviour related to the chosen sexual identity, and maintain 'this choice.¹⁰

Although from our perspective we may recognize a whole range of gender identities in the Middle Ages, we must, then, be sensitive to the possibility that contemporaries thought rather less theoretically about such matters, and that they broadly recognized only two essential gender categories. Indeed, a number of the chapters demonstrate that in discussing appropriate forms of behaviour many medieval authors tended to point up polarized identities: thus, for example, there is a single notion of societal masculinity held up by clerical reformers in the eleventh and twelfth centuries – of which marriage and procreation were essential elements – in opposition to which the clergy were attempting to con...