"B.M.COOK" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>>orderic vitalis mentions a certain physician (forgot his name) who was a
canon of Chartres, and who also happened to be married and was not,
apparently, a cleric of any kind.

>We need to be clear about our terms here (with due respect, 
Christopher).

respect duely noted.

and i'm all for clarity.

>The physician may not have been a "cleric" in the modern sense 

and, Orderic does not style him using that word.

>but if he was a University-trained physician (as opposed to a barber-surgeon)
then he was definitely "Clericus" in the Neck-Verse, benefit-of-the-Clergy
sense.

as best i can recall, the fellow was around a full generation (at least)
before Orderic himself --1060's or so.  Orderic was interested in him,
apparently, because he had some sort of connection with Orderic's St. Evroul
(i don't remember what that connection was, of course --property gift, i
believe, and Orderic publishes the charter of gift).

hard to understand what "University-trained physician" might mean in a 1060
context.  the phrase sounds more than a bit anachronistic at this date, to
me.

>As I understand it, the post-Gregorian position 

if my creakie memory is in the ball park, then we're not talking
"Post-Gregorian" in the 1060's;  but, more to the point (as i see it) is a
whole set of assumptions which i make when i'm dealing with, i don't know,
pre-1250 (just to grab a date out of the air) conditions --generally, and in
the Chartraine specifically.

the ad hoc viewpoint i've developed over the years, trying to make sense of
the charters i've come across, is that the situation on the ground before
things got "regularized" (which was a slow, progressive/regressive process,
occuring over a very long period of time) was that there was a *lot* of wierd
(by our lights) stuff going on.

(btw, this methodological question has come up before on this list when we've
talked about various questions --the question of saying masses in return for
property donations, for instance, springs to mind.  in the universe of 11-12th
cc. documents which i live in, this situation is a *given*, often expressly
stated, more often just understood.  when this came up before on the list, i
mentioned that my documents seem to indicate that masses-for-$$ was common,
but was told --quite rightly, i'm sure-- that this was strictly against canon
law.

(and, indeed it surely was.  but local conditions vary greatly, and when and
whether any given "legal" prohibition was enforced at any given place was a
function of a wide variety of essentially locally-driven circumstances. 
simply quoting the situation in, say, England in the 14th c. and assuming that
one can project those sets of circumstances back to, say, Chartres in the 11th
just won't do.)


Chartres in the second half of the 11th c. was far from a "regular" place
--though i would *not* say that it was particularly, exceptionally,
"irregular."  a bishop or two had been deposed for simony and nepotism and
whatnot (don't ask for the details), the chapter was controlled by various
factions of local families....

Situation Normal, All Fouled Up, as they say in the censored movies.

the system worked very well.

Bishop Ivo's election (1090) was, as i see it dimly, an extraordinary event
which i've never really understood.  Philip I --then philandering with
Bertrada de Montfort/Anjou-- had certain "regalian" rights over the see (which
was *not* in the "Royal Domain", per se), and yet Ivo was "elected" and
installed.  

and he immediately became the center of a rather fierce opposition (much, if
not most, of which was politically driven) to the king's hanky-panky (and
spends some time as a prisoner of the Viscount of Chartres in the tower at
LePuiset --a _castrum_ which the Viscount held from the King, not the count,
btw).

so, even the 25 year reign of Ivo didn't mean that everything was "regular" by
the time of his death in 1115; and seeing things in terms of what came later,
in some cases, *much* later is not particularly productive, best i can make
out.

>was that a Canon could be in Minor as opposed to Major Orders; a man in Minor
Orders MIGHT marry 

i've heard this "Minor" vs. "Major" order argument before and it seems to me
that it just *might* be something of a fudge.

real problem is, we just don't have the sources to say *what* the situation
was in the 1060's --or later, for that matter-- with any detail at all.

if, say, Ivo's _Panormia_ allows as how "a man in Minor Orders MIGHT marry"
(*does* it???), that's one thing, and certainly an important factor which
needs to be taken into account.  

but that actually tells us little or nothing about what the situation might
*actually* have been viz-a-viz any *particular* canon at any *partular* time
--even a canon of Chartres, even a canon of Chartres during I'vo's
episcopacy.

our historical lens just won't "resolve" things that finely --the documents
(and that's all we have) just don't exist.
 
for example, in the specific case Orderic mentions, i don't believe that i
found any other significant trace of the fellow in the Chartres documents. 
failing something new being discovered in an old binding, Orderic is *it,* as
far as sources is concerned.

in considering any particular historical case should we take into account what
the "Law" was?   

absolutely.

should we consider that, just because the "Law" was clear, it was the
Operative Principle in a given case?  

at our peril.

>BUT if a Canon married he was expected to forfeit his prebend. 

"expected" being the operative word --and such "expectation" would have only
applied, i submit, in the mind of someone like Ivo, who was clearly in a
minority.

>Possibly where such a canon had family influence his matrimonial status might
be overlooked .....

the "Church" was many things, not least an integral part of a power structure
which was *entirely* in the control of the local "nobility," i.e., the 2% of
the population which owned *every*thing.

to the extent that She was made up of human beings, those human beings came
--in the overwhelming majority-- from the Local Families dominant in any given
region.

*all* canons belonged to families with "influence" --by definition.  

big "NO PEASANTS NEED APPLY" sign used to hang over the West Portal 
--taken down during the Revolution.  *might* have been a son of the Upper
Bourgeoise in the chapter before, say, 1200, but i've never come across one
(in fairness, detailed knowledge of the prosopography of the chapter at large
is practically non-existant).

some families were more equal than others, and they were the "Dignataries"
(_Personae_) who held the real power in the chapter and governed it via
long-established factions, which themselves reflected family alliances in the
"Outside" world, and which were at the same time of ancient origin and
constantly shifting and evolving.

again, i speak here of the situation as i see it in Chartres (which, as i say,
i have no reason whatever to believe was in any way exceptional) in the period
before c. 1200.   

after that --and elsewhere-- all bets are off.

best to all from here,

christopher








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