Hugh M. Thomas. The Secular Clergy in England, 1066–1216

This book’s title and breadth might suggest a mere survey of its subject. That suggestion misleads. Arguments, some larger, some smaller, drive Hugh M. Thomas’s discussion. Even when these lines of analysis are new, Thomas undertakes them on a much larger scale, often mining an extraordinarily broader array of evidence than heretofore deployed in these matters. The result is much more than a summary of previous scholarship. The consequences of the position of the secular clergy between the demands of the spirit and those of the world particularly concern Thomas. Of course, as Augustine might observe, any Christian can be said to have this problem. But as professional Christians, the secular clergy were committed more than most lay people to spiritual demands. At the same time, far more than the regular clergy (i.e., monks and nuns), secular clergy did as their name suggests: operate in the world, a world of ambition, wealth, and power. Indeed, the upper secular clergy—on whom Thomas focuses because the sources do—lived an aristocratic lifestyle.

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