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Articles

Priestly Marriage: The Tradition of Clerical Concubinage in the Spanish Church

by Medievalists.net
August 2, 2011

Priestly Marriage: The Tradition of Clerical Concubinage in the Spanish Church

By Michelle Armstrong-Partida

Viator, Vol.40:2 (2009)

Abstract: The image of priests as family men is contrary to the one of a lecherous, sexually promiscuous clergy so often highlighted in the works of medieval historians. Yet visitation records from fourteenth-century Catalunya show that a great number of Catalan clerics entered into marriage-like unions despite the church’s two hundred year ban on priestly marriage. Indeed, many parish clergy went to great lengths to engage in relationships that could offer them a sexual outlet, as well as a union that would create a family and household. This article explores the practice of clerical concubinage in the dioceses throughout the region of Catalunya and draws comparisons with other regions in Spain. It argues that clerical concubinage was a custom entrenched in Spanish society. Synodal decrees banning concubinage and the fines attached to them did not to deter clerics from forming long-term unions with women. Ecclesiastical officials tolerated the tradition of concubinous unions and did little to change clerical culture and practice.

Click here to read this article from Academia.edu

See also this interview we filmed with Michelle Armstrong-Partida in 2009:

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Related Posts

  • To Have and to Hold: Marriage in Pre-Modern Europe 1200 - 1700
  • Promiscuous Priests and Vicarage Children: Clerical Sexuality and Masculinity in Late Medieval England
  • Habere rem: Concubinage and references to sexual life in Catalan pastoral visitations from the 14th century
  • Clerical “Concubines” in Northern Italy During the Fourteenth Century
  • The Medieval Marriage Market
TagsCatalonia • Marriage in the Middle Ages • Medieval Ecclesiastical History • Medieval Religious Life • Medieval Social History • Medieval Spain

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