Masculinizing Religious Life: Sexual Prowess, the Battle for Chastity and Monastic Identity

With the increasing turn to celibacy for monks and priests over the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one avenue for performing masculinity – sexual prowess and the engendering of children – closed for monks and priests. Jacqueline Murray explores the ways in which the myth of uncontrollable male lust became deployed to enable clerics to redefine masculinity: instead of actual battle, these second sons of the military aristocracy displayed strength and prowess through fighting lust; instead of actual sexual prowess, “real men” could demonstrate masculinity through rationally controlling sexual desires.