Dear Bill and the rest of you
I don't think anyone has done a study specifically of the wives of
clerics in the middle ages, at least not in the 12th c. It's not
difficult to see why. There is plenty of evidence for clerics being
married/ being more or less married/ living in sin/ having more
casual sexual liaisons (I believe there is a poem by Peter of Blois
about a one-night stand, though I am afraid I have forgotten all the
details) but all the scraps of evidence are scattered over a very
wide range of sources and indeed different types of sources. Also,
doing a survey from the point of view of the women involved would be
made very tricky by the fact that they are often not named. For
example, there is a nice charter in the PRO which discloses the fact
that Gerald of Wales' nephew, Gerald de Barri the younger, archdeacon
of Brecon in succession to his uncle, had three children by the
sister of a rural dean. We know the name of the rural dean and his
brothers, but we don't know their sister's name.
What intrigues me is at what point in time people began to think it
was disreputable for women to be married to clerics (in higher
orders, that is - clerics in lower orders could get married). I think
Christopher Brooke thinks this process happened in the middle of the
twelfth century, but I wonder if in many social milieux it mightn't
have been a bit later?
Julia Barrow
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