Abstract
That multiple notions of masculinity existed in medieval Europe can be demonstrated from Bernard of Clairvaux’s early twelfth-century treatise promoting the Knights Templar.1 Indeed, Bernard highlighted competing constructs of masculinity even within Europe’s warrior class, as seen in his curious distinctions between the ‘new knighthood’ and secular knights. Bernard found it especially troublesome that secular knights, once the backbone of Europe’s warrior class, had by his time grown to love ‘effeminate tresses’ and silk clothing decorated with silver, gold and precious stones that were impractical for combat. This was in stark contrast, Bernard noted, to the unwashed Templars, who wore their hair dirty and short and always maintained what, for Bernard, was the proper rugged appearance of the true warrior. Indeed, Bernard even took a jab at the highly prized traditional masculine persona of secular knights when, regarding their flamboyant apparel, he asked, ‘Are these the trappings of a warrior or are they not rather the trinkets of a woman?’2
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Notes
Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia, 2003), 22–3.
Frances Gies, The Knight in History (New York, 1984), 4.
Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe (New York, 2005), 121.
Jean Leclercq, Monks on Marriage: A Twelfth Century View (New York, 1982), 69 and P.J. Payer, ‘Early Medieval Regulations Concerning Marital Sexual Regulations’, Journal of Medieval History, 1 (1980): 370–1.
James Brundage, ‘Prostitution, Miscegenation and Sexual Purity in the First Crusade’, in Crusade and Settlement, edited by Peter W. Edbury (Cardiff, 1985), 57.
Charles A. Frazee, ‘The Origins of Clerical Celibacy in the Western Church’, Church History 57 (1988): 126.
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (Philadelphia, 1986), 23.
James M. Powell, Anatomy of a Crusade: 1213–1221 (Philadelphia, 1986), 54.
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© 2010 Andrew Holt
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Holt, A. (2010). Between Warrior and Priest: The Creation of a New Masculine Identity during the Crusades. In: Thibodeaux, J.D. (eds) Negotiating Clerical Identities. Genders and Sexualities in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230290464_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230290464_9
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