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The Catholic Historical Review 88.1 (2002) 110-111



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Book Review

Medieval Purity and Piety:
Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform


Medieval Purity and Piety: Essays on Medieval Clerical Celibacy and Religious Reform. Edited by Michael Frassetto. [Garland Medieval Casebooks, Volume 19; Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, Volume 2006.] (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1998. Pp. xix, 401. $75.00.)

This collection of fifteen essays is organized in four parts: (1) "History and Historiography"; (2) "Clerical Celibacy and Reform before the Age of Gregory VII"; (3) "Gregory VII, Celibacy and the Eleventh-Century Revolution"; and (4) "Medieval and Modern Consequences of Clerical Celibacy."

Edward Peters in "History, Historians, and Clerical Celibacy," after a brief overview of the Reformation and post-Reformation polemics, traces modern scholarship on the subject from the work of the Theiner brothers in 1828 to the studies produced after the Second Vatican Council. These investigations have enhanced our knowledge of developments far broader than that of clerical celibacy. For example, "the results of this research from Fliche [1924-1937] and Tellenbach [1936] to Liotta [1971] and Brundage [1991] have greatly transformed our understanding, not only of the issues and intellectual context of the Investiture Conflict but also of the history of doctrine, law, and the nature of clerical status itself in the history of the Church and in European society generally (p. 12). The title of R. I. Moore's study in this present volume, "Property, Marriage, and the Eleventh-Century Revolution: A Context for Early Medieval Communism," indicates how far afield the trail leads.

Several essays treating the period before Gregory VII find that the principal factor accounting for the importance attached to a celibate lifestyle for the clergy is ritual or cultic purity. Mayke de Jong in "Imitatio morum: The Cloister and Clerical Purity in the Carolingian World" notes that in the course of the ninth century the anointing of priests' hands became part of the ordination ritual. "Anointing clearly marked off kings and priests from the rest of the populus Christianus. The contrast was between those who had direct access to the sacred and those who did not; between those who 'corrected' and those who were the object of correctio" (p. 32). Phyllis Justice ("Why Celibacy? Odo of Cluny and the Development of a New Sexual Morality") finds that "celibacy became a potent force only through a combination of monastic spirituality, a strong emphasis on ritual purity, and the beginnings of a real effort to convince Christians that they could hope to emulate Christ" (p. 81).

While acknowledging that no pope before Gregory VII "so consistently and systematically sought to enforce obedience to papal decrees," Uta-Renate Blumenthal [End Page 110] concludes that the final legislation promulgated by Pope Innocent II at the Second Lateran Council of 1139 which forbade people to attend Masses by priests who had wives or concubines "owes nothing original" to him. Rather, the legislation of Leo IX at the Roman synod of 1059 "served as Gregory's guide throughout his pontificate" (p. 253). H. E. J. Cowdrey identifies Gregory's contribution as shifting "the emphasis from the cultic to the moral in arguing for continence, and his close association between the chastity of the individual clerk and the quest for a church which was truly the bride of Christ, without stain or wrinkle, added fresh depth to the concept of chastity as proposed to the clergy" (p. 291).

From the title of the fourth part, one would expect some treatment of modern times. There is, however, no discussion of primary sources beyond the twelfth century. Daniel Callahan in the concluding essay, "Ecclesia semper reformanda: Clerical Celibacy and Reform of the Church," does no more than summarize the previous articles and enumerate reasons why "Roman Catholicism worldwide seems to be the only major religion having serious difficulty filling the ranks of its ministers" (p. 377). The price tag makes it unlikely that many historians will want to acquire this volume for their personal libraries.

 



John E. Lynch, C.S.P.
The...

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