Religious Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages ed. by P. H. Cullum, Katherine J. Lewis (review)

Abstract

Men and Masculine Identity in the Middle Ages. Edited by P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis. [Gender in the Middle Vol. 9.] (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, an imprint of Boydell and Brewer. 2013. Pp. x, 214. $99.00. ISBN 978-1-84383-863-0.)This work is the result of the conference on Religious Men in the Middle Ages, which took place at the University of Huddersfield in July 2012. The editors, P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewis, are to be commended for so quickly producing a fine set of essays and bringing them to publication. The various chapters of the work seek to advance our understanding of the Herrenfrage, or the idea that the concept of masculinity was undergoing rapid changes during and after the period of the Gregorian reforms, especially in relation to more stringent insistence on clerical celibacy. This book is particularly good in demonstrating the vitality of male clerical and monastic forms of life into the Middle Ages and helps to redress what perhaps had been an overemphasis of medieval female religiosity over the last twenty-five years.Cullum and Lewis provide an exceptionally helpful introduction wherein they situate the current state of scholarship regarding male religiosity as it relates to gender. This is a very useful tool, which will enable students and scholars to understand the emphases and directions of contemporary study. Indeed, nearly all the contributors include useful historiographical discussions at the beginnings of their papers-something of broad usefulness to the reader, especially when the research becomes very specialized.Although this is fundamentally a book about Christian Europe and the various experiences of maleness within the context of clerical and religious life, the first chapter by Michael Satlow discusses gender as it relates to Torah study among European rabbis. This provides a foil for the rest of the work, with its interesting description of how values relating to masculine aggression became transposed into academic study of the Torah and religious argumentation. Rachel Stone follows with an exposition of Hincmar of Rheims and his understanding of masculinity. She usefully explores both his ideal theory and the reality he confronted, closing with the interesting notion that clerical masculinity was defined in relation to other men, rather than in opposition to femininity. Jennifer Thibodeaux provides a fascinating glimpse into anticelibacy critics in the period following the Gregorians. She carefully details how much of the struggle was focused on control of the male body. …