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Defiant Priests
Domestic Unions, Violence, and Clerical Masculinity in Fourteenth-Century Catalunya
Michelle Armstrong-Partida (Author)
9781501748424
Paperback / softback, published 15 April 2020
366 pages, - 2 Maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.907 kg
Defiant Priests is a detailed and engaging study of the ecclesiastical responsibilities, household organization, and survival strategies of clerics in fourteenth-century Catalunya, and it makes an important contribution to this growing body of literature [exploring clerical responses to the rigid demands of Christian church reform measures].... The volume of [visitation] records used in the study is striking, and the wealth of relationships that Armstrong-Partida has identified within them makes the book a valuable contribution to the field. Defiant Priests enormously extends the work initiated by scholars on the spot to provide an instructive and continuously illuminating account of the domestic bliss enjoyed (or suffered) by the local clergy. This is a study tightly focused in place and time. [Defiant Priests] raises plenty of important questions for further exploration.
Two hundred years after canon law prohibited clerical marriage, parish priests in the late medieval period continued to form unions with women that were marriage all but in name. In Defiant Priests, Michelle Armstrong-Partida uses evidence from extraordinary archives in four Catalan dioceses to show that maintaining a family with a domestic partner was not only a custom entrenched in Catalan clerical culture but also an essential component of priestly masculine identity. From unpublished episcopal visitation records and internal diocesan documents (including notarial registers, bishops' letters, dispensations for illegitimate birth, and episcopal court records), Armstrong-Partida reconstructs the personal lives and careers of Catalan parish priests to better understand the professional identity and masculinity of churchmen who made up the proletariat of the largest institution across Europe. These untapped sources reveal the extent to which parish clergy were embedded in their communities, particularly their kinship ties to villagers and their often contentious interactions with male parishioners and clerical colleagues. Defiant Priests highlights a clerical culture that embraced violence to resolve disputes and seek revenge, to intimidate other men, and to maintain their status and authority in the community.
Introduction: Understanding Priestly Masculinity
1. Marriage Defines the Parish Priest
2. Proof of Manhood: Priests as Husbands and Fathers
3. Laymen in Priestly Robes
4. "Quarrelsome" Men: Violence and Clerical Masculinity
5. Becoming a Priest: Clerical Role Models and Clerics-in-Training
6. Hierarchy, Competition, and Conflict: The Parish as a Battleground
Conclusion