Publisher Description

Although studies of gender in medieval culture have tended to focus on femininity, the study of medieval masculinities has developed greatly over the last few years. This collection is the first to concentrate on this specific aspect of medieval gender studies, and looks at the ways in which varieties of medieval masculinity intersected with concepts of holiness. Individual essays in this volume explore differing notions of medieval holiness, understood variously as religious, saintly, sacred, pure, morally perfect, and consider topics such as the significance of the tonsure, sanctity and martyrdom, eunuch saints, and the writings of Henry Suso. The volume as a whole deals with a wide variety of texts and historical contexts, from Byzantium to Anglo-Saxon and late-medieval England.

Author Biography

Patricia H. Cullum is a principal lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Huddersfield. Katherine J. Lewis is a lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Huddersfield.

Table of Contents

Introduction, 'Holiness and Masculinity in Medieval Europe'; Emma Pettit (York) - 'Holiness and Masculinity in Aldhelm's opus geminatum De virginitate'; Jacqueline Murray (University of Guelph - Canada) - 'Masculinizing Religious Life: Sexual Prowess - the Battle for Chastity and Monastic Identity'; Christopher C. Craun (St. Andrews) - 'Matronly Monks: Attracting Divine Grace in Theodoret's Historia Religiosa'; Carolyn Diskant Muir (Hong Kong) - 'Bride or Bridegroom? Masculine Identity in Mystic Marriages'; Meri Heinonen (Turku - Finland) - 'Henry Suso and the Divine Knighthood'; Shaun Tougher - 'Holy Eunuchs! Masculinity and Eunuch Saints in Byzantium'; Robert Mills (Kings - London) - 'The Signification of the Tonsure'; Dawn Marie Hayes (Montclair State University - New York) - 'Christian Sanctuary and Repository of France's Political Culture: The Construction of Holiness and Masculinity at the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis in the Later Middle Ages'; Edward Christie (West Virginia University) - 'Self-Mastery and Submission: Masculinity and Holiness in the Lives of Anglo-Saxon Martyr-Kings'; Katherine J. Lewis (Huddersfield) - Edmund of East Anglia - Henry VI and Ideals of Kingly Masculinity'; W.M. Ormrod (York) - 'Monarchy - Martyrdom and Masculinity: England in the Later Middle Ages'; Fiona Dunlop (York) - 'Making Youth Holy: Holiness and Masculinity in The Interlude of Youth'; Sarah Bastow (Huddersfield) - 'The Catholic Gentlemen of the North: Unreformed in the age of Reformation?'

Review

'This collection goes some of the way to addressing this dearth of scholarship, and encourages new thinking on attitudes to the past and sainthood ... this is a well edited and coherent production'. Church Times

Long Description

A collection of 14 essays by various scholars exploring masculinity and holiness in medieval European culture as manifested in a wide variety of historical, literary and art sources from Byzantium, England, France, Germany and Syria, with detailed explanatory notes. 15 black-and-white illustrations.

Review Text

Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages SeriesHoliness and Masculinity in the Middle AgesEdited by P. H. Cullum and Katherine J. Lewispp xvi227 216x138mm July 2004 hardbackISBN 0-7083-1894-0*Contents*ContributorsStudies of gender in medieval culture have tended to focus on femininity; however, the study of medieval masculinities has developed into an important area of enquiry in the last few years. This collection is the first to concentrate on the ways in which varieties of medieval masculinity intersected with concepts of holiness. Individual essays in this volume explore differing notions of holiness which had currency in the Middle Ages, understood variously as religious, saintly, sacred, pure and morally perfect. They also consider the ways in which the performance of both holiness and masculinity was affected by other categories such as monasticism, kingship, mysticism, social status, body and age.For some men the practice of holiness embodied the masculine capacities of self-control and intellectual decision, but for others it involved identities that challenged conventional ideas of masculine autonomy. Therefore masculinity could either be a source of validation, or a matter for anxiety - an issue explored in several of the essays. Others consider holy masculinity alongside holy femininity and the ways in which both could sometimes be achieved by men and women. Topics include sanctity and martyrdom, eunuch saints, meanings attached to the tonsure, mystical marriage, models of ideal conduct and virginity. The volume as a whole deals with a wide variety of texts and sources drawn from Byzantium, Syria, Germany, France, Anglo-Saxon and later medieval England. P. H. Cullum is a Principal Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Huddersfield. She has published widely on hospitals and charity in late medieval England.Katherine J. Lewis is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Huddersfield. She is the author ofThe Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in Late Medieval England. ContentsList of illustrationsAcknowledgementsAbbreviations*Introduction: Holiness and Masculinity in Medieval Europe Patricia H. Cullum*Holiness and Masculinity in Aldhelm''s Opus Geminatum De Virginitate Emma Pettit*Masculinizing Religious Life: Sexual Prowess, the Battle for Chastity and Monastic Identity Jacqueline Murray*Matronly Monks: Attracting Divine Grace in Theodoret''s Historia Religiosa Christopher C. Craun*Bride or Bridegroom? Masculine Identity in Mystic Marriages Carolyn Diskant Muir*Henry Suso and the Divine Knighthood Meri Heinonen*Holy Eunuchs! Masculinity and Eunuch Saints in Byzantium Shaun Tougher*The Signification of the Tonsure Robert Mills*Christian Sanctuary and Repository of France''s Political Culture: The Construction of Holiness and Masculinity at the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis in the Later Middle Ages Dawn Marie Hayes*Self-Mastery and Submission: Masculinity and Holiness in the Lives of Anglo-Saxon Martyr-Kings Edward Christie*Edmund of East Anglia, Henry VI and Ideals of Kingly Masculinity Katherine J. Lewis*Monarchy, Martyrdom and Masculinity: England in the Later Middle Ages W. M. Ormond*Making Youth Holy: Holiness and Masculinity in The Interlude of Youth Fiona S. Dunlop*The Catholic Gentlemen of the North: Unreformed in the Age of Reformation? Sarah L. BastowContributorsSarah L. Bastow lectures in medieval and early modern history at the University of Huddersfield and the Trinity and All Saints College, Leeds. She also teaches A-level History at Greenhead College, Huddersfield. Her research interests are in early modern religious history and her Ph.D. was entitled ''Aspects of the History of the Catholic Gentry of Yorkshire from the Pilgrimage of Grace to the First Civil War'' (2002). She has also published two articles, ''"Worth Nothing but Very Wilful": Catholic Recusant Women of Yorkshire, 1536-1642'', Recusant History, 25 (2001) and ''The Catholic Gentry and the Catholic Community of the City of York, 1536-1642: The Focus of a Catholic County?'', The York Historian, 18 (2001). These examine the role played by women in maintaining the Catholic religion and the position that the city of York held as a focus for Catholicism in the Tudor and Stuart eras.Edward Christie took his Ph.D. from West Virginia University, where his research focused on the representation of the alphabetical letter as an atomic unit of text and a medium of cultural memory from the grammatical culture of Anglo-Saxon England to later typographical and digital remediations of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. He continues to research in Anglo-Saxon representations of literacy, history and the materiality of the sign.Christopher C. Craun is a doctoral student in Medieval History at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. He is currently finishing his thesis entitled ''A Contextualization of the Martyrologium Hrabani'' and plans on submitting it later in 2004. While his Ph.D. focuses upon the Carolingian West, Christopher is also deeply interested in early asceticism throughout the Mediterranean world of Late Antiquity. Aside from academic labours he and his wife, Kala, are busy raising their three children and the family currently resides in the USA.Pat Cullum is Head of History at the University of Huddersfield. She has published widely on hospitals and charity in late medieval England, and has interests in female piety and clerical masculinity.Fiona S. Dunlop has recently completed a Ph.D. at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York, with a thesis on the representation of young noblemen in the early Tudor interlude. She teaches English at Bootham School, York.Dawn Marie Hayes received her Ph.D. in medieval European history from New York University in 1998. Having taught at Iona College and for the City University of New York, she joined the history faculty at Montclair State University in the fall of 2003. She is the author ofBody and Sacred Place in Medieval Europe, 1100-1389 (2003) and will soon publish ''Body as Champion of Church Authority and Sacred Place: The Murder of Thomas Becket'', a chapter deconstructing accounts of the archbishop''s murder in ''A Great Effusion of Blood''?: Interpreting Medieval Violence (2004). She is currently working on Medieval Maternity, an examination of pregnancy and childbirth in medieval Europe. She has been a Speaker in the Humanities for the New York Council for the Humanities and a participant in a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar on Gothic architecture in the Ile-de-France.Meri Heinonen is a Phil. Lic. (Licentiate of Philosophy) at the University of Turku, Finland. She is currently completing her dissertation which is entitled ''Mystical Experience and Gender in German Mysticism, 1200-1400''.Katherine J. Lewis is a Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield. She is the author ofThe Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in Late Medieval England (2000) and co-editor of A Companion to Margery Kempe (2004). She is currently working on a study of gender and society in late medieval England (forthcoming, 2005).Robert Mills is a lecturer in English at King''s College London. His research interests include medieval visual culture, late medieval literature in the vernacular and modern critical theory. Recent publications includeThe Monstrous Middle Ages, co-edited with Bettina Bildhauer (2003) and Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality, and Sight in Medieval Text and Image, co-edited with Emma Campbell (2004). His book on medieval punishment iconography is forthcoming, and he is now working on a new project: a study of the links between eroticism and religious devotion in medieval culture.Carolyn Diskant Muir received her BA from Wellesley College and her MA from the University of Pennsylvania. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts of the University of Hong Kong, where she teaches European art of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Her research focuses on issues of religious iconography in early European art, especially the imagery of saints. Recent publications include articles on St Catherine of Alexandria and St Hermann-Joseph. She is currently working on a large-scale study of mystic marriage imagery of male and female saints in Northern Renaissance art.W. M. Ormrod is professor of Medieval History at the University of York. He is the author of The Reign of Edward III (1990), Political Life in Medieval England, 1300-1450 (1995) and numerous articles on the politics, government and political culture of later medieval England.Emma Pettit has recently completed a Ph.D. at the University of York. Her thesis is entitled ''Aldhelm''s opus geminatum De virginitate in its Early Anglo-Saxon Context''. She considered how this double treatise on sexual renunciation related to Aldhelm''s influential ecclesiastical and political career, the composition of the text''s audience and the purpose and nature of its spiritual advice.Shaun Tougher is Lecturer in Ancient History in the Cardiff School of History and Archaeology at Cardiff University, and has also taught at the Queen''s University of Belfast and the University of St Andrews. He specializes in late Roman and Byzantine history, and has written several articles on subjects such as eunuchs, Julian the Apostate and Leo VI. He is the author of The Reign of Leo VI (886-912) (1997) and the editor of Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond (2002).Jacqueline Murray is Professor of History and Dean of the College of Arts at the University of Guelph. She has published widely on ideas about sexuality and gender and marriage and family in medieval society. Her publications include Love, Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages (2002) and Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West (1999). Her current work focuses on masculinity and male embodiment.

Review Quote

"This, the fourth volume in this handsomely produced series by the University of Wales Press . . . is a pioneering collection of interdisciplinary essays . . . shedding new light on familiar topics."

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