Holiness and Masculinity in the Middle Ages

Bibliographic Data

ID9798140
AuthorsHenrietta Leyser (Saint Peter's University, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume123
Issue500
Pages163-164
Publication date2008-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe English Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-8266 • E-ISSN: 1477-4534
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ehr/cem404
OpenAlexW1964859941
LanguageEN
Citations received12

This book is the fruit of a conference held in Huddersfield in 2001 and contains papers both from well-established scholars such as William Ormrod, as well as from doctoral students just starting out on their careers. As the editors themselves acknowledge in their introduction, a steady stream of work has been published on medieval masculinity since 2001, so that this collection, far from being the lonely volume envisaged in its planning stages, can now take its place alongside related titles, such as Samantha Riches and Sarah Salih (eds.) Gender and Holiness: Men, Women and Saints in Late Medieval Europe (London, 2002). What makes Cullum and Lewis's collection distinctive is that it ranges very widely indeed—from fifth-century Syria (ch. 4), via Byzantium (ch. 7) to sixteenth-century York (ch. 14). It might be expected that such diversity would lead to a fragmented picture of holiness or of masculinity or of both, but what is in fact striking is that, irrespective of period, each essay serves to illustrate the complexity of reconciling the two. ‘Real men’ were expected to fight, to exercise power and to demonstrate their virility. What happened then if they relinquished arms and vowed themselves to obedience and chastity? Was the tonsure, as Robert Mills suggests, ‘a kind of figurative castration’ (p. 115), a mark of ‘ascetic triumph’ (p. 123) or both? But what then does it mean that in late medieval art Christ is so often portrayed ‘sporting a beard and hair’? (p. 120). How, for men, did Christ's masculinity affect their spirituality? Did they feel able to ‘marry’ him as women did? Sometimes, it seems, the answer was yes. Thus Christopher C. Craun describes how Theodoret of Cyrrhus depicted Syrian holy men as ‘Brides of Christ and Matrons of God, who bear spiritual children from this relationship’ (p. 43). Similarly, the devotional lives of Henry Suso and Hermann-Joseph studied in Chapter Five by Carolyn Diskant Muir demonstrate their ability ‘to move fluidly between feminine and masculine identities’ (p. 73) so that Hermann-Joseph could feel himself to be both the bridegroom of Mary and the bride of Christ, and Suso the bridegroom of Eternal Wisdom and the bride of Christ. Eunuchs, by contrast, according to Shaun Tougher (ch. 7) remained resolutely male. Kings, such as Edward II, Richard II and Henry VI, who during their reigns had failed to be ‘properly’ masculine, could be given new identities as martyrs and in this way, argues Ormrod, might even achieve an aura of sanctity: ‘if piety was the duty of queens, holiness was evidently the prerogative of kings—or more specifically, of martyred kings’ (p. 187). The argument, and much else besides in this collection, would seem to lend weight to C.W. Bynum's thesis (‘Women's Stories, Women's Symbols: A Critique of Victor Turner's Theory of Liminality’ in Fragmentation and Redemption (1991: rev. ante, cx [1995], 429–31) that women in the middle ages tended to be born into sanctity whereas for men the path was marked always by some major turning-point or crisis

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Asceticism · Honour · Identity (music · Masculinity · Middle Ages · Obedience · Period (music · Political science · Power (physics · Sociology · Virility · Classics · Gender Studies · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History

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