The Clergy in the Medieval World: Secular Clerics, their Families and Careers in North-Western Europe, c.800c.1200 [Paperback]

The first broad-ranging social history in English of the medieval secular clergy.Unlike monks and nuns, clergy have hitherto been sidelined in accounts of the Middle Ages, but they played an important role in medieval society, in pastoral care, education and administration. This book examines how clerics built up their careers, and identifies the principal factors influencing their advancement.Unlike monks and nuns, clergy have hitherto been sidelined in accounts of the Middle Ages, but they played an important role in medieval society, in pastoral care, education and administration. This book examines how clerics built up their careers, and identifies the principal factors influencing their advancement.Unlike monks and nuns, clergy have hitherto been sidelined in accounts of the Middle Ages, but they played an important role in medieval society. This first broad-ranging study in English of the secular clergy examines how ordination provided a framework for clerical life cycles and outlines the influence exerted on secular clergy by monastic ideals before tracing typical career paths for clerics. Concentrating on northern France, England and Germany in the period c.800c.1200, Julia Barrow explores how entry into the clergy usually occurred in childhood, with parents making decisions for their sons, although other relatives, chiefly clerical uncles, were also influential. By comparing two main types of family structure, Barrow supplies an explanation of why Gregorian reformers faced little serious opposition in demanding an end to clerical marriage in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Changes in educational provision c.1100 also help to explain growing social and geographical mobility among clerics.1. Introduction; 2. The clerical office, grades of ordination and clerical careers; 3. Rules for life: monastic influence on the secular clergy; 4. Clergy as family men: uncles and nephews, fathers and sons among the clergy; 5. The fostering of child clerics: commendatil3y