Anglo-Norman Canonical Views on Clerical Marriage and the Eastern Church

Abstract

Anglo-Norman Canonical Views on Clerical Marriage and the Eastern Church Maroula Perisanidi1 The Eastern and Western Churches shared much of their conciliar tradition, including both ecumenical and local ancient councils. These formed the basis of the twelfth-century canonical commentaries in Byzantium, while in the West they shaped the law both as authorities in support of newer conciliar decrees and through their inclusion in canonical collections, such as the Collectio Lanfranci, Ivo of Chartres' Decretum, the Tripartita, and the Panormia.2 Gratian's Decretum, the single most important canonistic work of the Middle Ages, quoted almost 200 chapters from Eastern councils, ranging from Nicaea I (325) to Constantinople IV (869-870), including eighteen references to the council in Trullo (691-692) which fixed the rules of clerical marriage for the Orthodox Church.3 This shared tradition meant that long after the last ecumenical council, there was still legal interaction between the [End Page 113] Western and Eastern Churches, at least in the minds of the canon lawyers who were confronted with laws advocating practices alien to their own.4 In this article, I will focus on one such alien practice—clerical marriage—in the commentaries of two Anglo-Norman decretists, Master Honorius and the author of the Summa Lipsiensis.5 At the end of the twelfth century, when these commentaries were written, clerical marriage was still a contentious issue in the West. As such, a hostile attitude might be expected, not only towards the practice itself, but also towards the Eastern clergy who still adhered to it. In what follows, I will argue that these Anglo-Norman decretists referred to the Eastern Church and its married priests much more often than one might expect, given the relative absence of interactions between Byzantium and the AngloNorman [End Page 114] realm, and that they did so without hostility.6 Their references include comments that sprang directly from the text of Gratian that they had in front of them, as well as more imaginative speculations about faraway priests. They accepted clerical marriage in the East as a tradition that was different from their own, but one that was also valid. In their treatment of the Western clergy, they adopted a moderate position. Regarding two of the most important issues of the reform period, church property was often mentioned, but the question of purity was rather muted. These attitudes towards Eastern and Western clerics and their marriages were likely to have stemmed from the two decretists' understanding (correct or not) of the historical development of clerical marriage, as well as their, perhaps inevitable, focus on the law. On the one hand, they thought that clerical celibacy was a man-made imposition; on the other, their purpose was to explore the limits of the laws, rather than to adopt a polemical stance. Finally, I will contrast this interest in the East to the rather indifferent and, if anything, hostile attitude that the twelfth-century Byzantine canon lawyers exhibited towards the marital customs of the West. This study hopes to be a useful addition to Brieskorn's recent article on Western canonical [End Page 115] attitudes towards the Eastern Church in the Liber Extra (1234) which also noted a rather positive and lenient attitude towards the married clergy in the East.7 Rules and Background: West and East In the West, bishops, priests, deacons, and eventually subdeacons were expected to observe complete sexual abstinence. This had been the theory since at least the late fourth century, when we find the first legislation concerning priests who were still allowed to be married, but were prohibited from having sex with their wives.8 A re-iteration of such rules continued periodically and with limited success until the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the papacy became more able to force Western clergy to play by its rules. In this period, celibacy rather than continence was expected, and the marriage of clerics in major orders was presented as sinful, polluting, and ultimately invalid.9 In some cases, priests, deacons, and subdeacons who refused to separate from their wives were forbidden to celebrate [End Page 116] mass and were deprived of their benefices, while the faithful were encouraged to...