Masculinizing Religious Life: Sexual Prowess, the Battle for Chastity and Monastic Identity

Abstract

With the increasing turn to celibacy for monks and priests over the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one avenue for performing masculinity – sexual prowess and the engendering of children – closed for monks and priests. Jacqueline Murray explores the ways in which the myth of uncontrollable male lust became deployed to enable clerics to redefine masculinity: instead of actual battle, these second sons of the military aristocracy displayed strength and prowess through fighting lust; instead of actual sexual prowess, “real men” could demonstrate masculinity through rationally controlling sexual desires.