ABSTRACT
An issue of great concern to eleventh-century reformers was the sexual purity of the clergy, hence their concern with nicolaitism, or clerical marriage. Yet there had been a time in the Western Church when the marriage of priests, or at least of the lower clergy, was not yet disallowed. In this chapter Dyan Elliott explores the issues of clerical marriage and the worsening treatment of priests’ wives by examining successive versions of the Life of Severus, archbishop of Ravenna in the fourth century. This bishop had been married and had a daughter and was well known to have been buried next to them. One version of the life of Severus was written and commented on in the ninth century, but it was then rewritten in several forms during the eleventh century. Elliott’s comparison of the various versions of this life brings the tools of critical theory to bear on their evidence of changes in attitudes toward the wives of priests up to the time of the Investiture Controversy and focuses on the harsh view of the famous polemicist of the Gregorian reform, Peter Damian (1007-72). We see the progressive demonization of those women who had once legitimately been married to priests and who had served important functions in the local church. Elliott stresses the sexual anxieties of a clergy on whom celibacy had been newly enjoined because of concern that the purity of priests affected the validity of sacraments, but also because of the economic burdens that the Church claimed were being placed on its property by clerical marriage and the children of priests. Much of the action in this chapter takes place in eleventh-century northern Italy, a region characterized by economic revival, rivalry between Pope and Emperor, and concern about ecclesiastical reform. This selection comes from Dyan Elliott, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp. 81-106; original Latin quotes have been eliminated from notes and text.
