Christian History and Sexuality: Catholicism and Clerical Concubinage

After the Lateran Council in the twelfth century, Catholic priests supposedly engaged in ?fornication? if? they undertook sexual relationships with specific women, and their unmarried but monogamous relationships were formed with women designated as ?concubines.? Today, we would call such women ?de facto wives?, given that they are engaged in long-term monogamous but unmarried cohabitation with men. Most episcopal courts and laypeople ignored such relationships if the priest was not involved with someone either already married or too young.?

Although sexual harrassment of housekeepers occurred in the Middle Ages, ?concubines? were distinguished from sex workers and housekeepers, in that they entered unacknowledged marital relationships with given priests. They were often laywomen and totally dependent on their clerical partners for food, shelter and income. Nuns also became involved sometimes, but they were relatively better off, given their monastic dwelling and degrees of financial independence. However, if relationships either broke up or were ended by the death of a priestly partner, the situation of his surviving concubine and any children born of the relationship could become desperate, unless the priest had made provision for her and any dependents in their wills, or insured that they were then married to financially secure laypeople.

All of which leads me to ponder this. Clearly, this is a much healthier situation for Catholic priests and nuns alike than the dogmatic insistence on priestly celibacy that the Catholic hierarchy insists on. At least Protestants try to deal with it through allowing their ministers to marry. Still, it does also highlight the degree to which the institutional Catholic Church is being hypocritical in denying same-sex couples the same opportunities for fulfilment and long-term solemnised relationships that their own priests enjoyed in the past.

Recommended:

Roisin Cossar: ?Clerical Concubines in Northern Italy During the Fourteenth Century? Journal of Womens History: 23:1 (Spring 2011): 110-191.

James Brundage: Love, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe: Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1987.

Vern Bullough and Jmaes Brundage (eds) Sexual Practises and the Medieval Church: New York: Prometheus: 1982.

Ruth Karras, Joel Kaye and E.Anne Matter (eds) Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe: Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 2008.

Source: http://www.gaynz.com/blogs/redqueen/?p=1587

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