Froibirg Gives a Gift: The Priest’s Wife in Eleventh-Century Bavaria

Abstract

This paper focuses on a priest’s wife, Froibirg, who donated a manuscript to the Bavarian monastery of Benediktbeuern in 1055 and was remembered by the monks as an “uxor presbiteri” until the eighteenth century. Although Froibirg appears in the historical record only once during her lifetime, the broader social and religious contexts of her donation were richly documented by the communities with which she was associated: the monastery of Benediktbeuern, the cathedral community of Augsburg, and the eleventh-century church, which was deeply concerned with the “problem” of clerical marriage around the time of her gift. By focusing on Froibirg and on her social role as a priest’s wife at the mid-eleventh century, the paper considers the celibacy movement from the standpoint of individuals and communities, rather than clerical denunciations or restrictive papal legislation