Medievalists.net

Where the Middle Ages Begin

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Home
  • Features
  • News
  • Online Courses
  • Podcast
  • Patreon Login
  • About Us & More
    • About Us
    • Books
    • Videos
    • Films & TV
    • Medieval Studies Programs
    • Places To See
    • Teaching Resources
    • Articles

Medievalists.net

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Home
  • Features
  • News
  • Online Courses
  • Podcast
  • Patreon Login
  • About Us & More
    • About Us
    • Books
    • Videos
    • Films & TV
    • Medieval Studies Programs
    • Places To See
    • Teaching Resources
    • Articles
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
Articles

Clerical “Concubines” in Northern Italy During the Fourteenth Century

by Medievalists.net
August 30, 2012

Clerical “Concubines” in Northern Italy During the Fourteenth Century

By Roisin Cossar

Journal of Women’s History, Volume 23, Number 1 (2011)

Abstract: This essay reconstructs the lives of a neglected group of women in the Christian church during the later Middle Ages. So-called clerical “concubines” were well-known in their communities, but their lived experience has been largely ignored by modern historians. Yet studying clerical concubines sheds light not only on the women themselves, but also on the social organization of the medieval Christian church. Drawing on information gathered from notarial acts across the northern Italian peninsula, I argue that concubines were not a unitary group. Their experiences varied instead according to their status and the regions they inhabited. For instance, while laywomen who became priests’ concubines moved into their lovers’ homes, nuns retained cells in their religious houses during these relationships. Furthermore, concubines in cities such as Treviso could openly live with their lovers and share their property, while in other places, such as Bergamo, severe legal restrictions on concubines made them a particularly vulnerable group.

Introduction: Long-term, stable sexual relationships between clerics and women remained common across Europe during the Middle Ages even after the Lateran council decrees of the twelfth century equated clerics’ sexual activities with fornication and branded their wives “concubines.” Some Christian laypeople were unconcerned about these arrangements. Certainly episcopal courts and laypeople across Italy tended to leave priests alone if they were involved in consensual sexual relationships with single women, saving their criticism for those clerics involved in more transgressive sexual relationships. In fourteenth-century Treviso, for instance, officials of the bishop’s court only prosecuted clerics who had sex with women who were very young or already married.

Those who argue that clerical concubinage was widespread and generally accepted have said little about concubines themselves, and as historian Marie Kelleher has noted, we are in danger of treating them “as a secondary element in the larger problem of clerical discipline.” We know almost nothing about clerical concubines’ social status: how they identified themselves, and what happened to them when their relationships ended. In this essay, I trace the lives of these women in fourteenth-century northern Italy, drawing on a range of notarial documents of practice from cities and dioceses in the northern half of the peninsula—in particular the rich archival holdings of two provincial centers, Bergamo and Treviso.

Click here to read this article from Project MUSE

See also: To Have and to Hold: Marriage in Pre-Modern Europe 1200 – 1700

Subscribe to Medievalverse




Related Posts

  • To Have and to Hold: Marriage in Pre-Modern Europe 1200 - 1700
  • The Clerical Wife: Medieval Perceptions of Women During the Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Church Reforms
  • The Clerical Wife: Medieval Perceptions of Women During the Eleventh‐ and Twelfth‐Century Church Reforms
  • The Church in Fourteenth-Century Iceland: Ecclesiastical Administration, Literacy, and the Formation of an Elite Clerical Identity
  • Promiscuous Priests and Vicarage Children: Clerical Sexuality and Masculinity in Late Medieval England
TagsFourteenth Century • Marriage in the Middle Ages • Medieval Ecclesiastical History • Medieval Italy • Medieval Social History

Post navigation

Previous Post Previous Post
Next Post Next Post

Medievalists Membership

Become a member to get ad-free access to our website and our articles. Thank you for supporting our website!

Sign Up Member Login

More from Medievalists.net

Become a Patron

We've created a Patreon for Medievalists.net as we want to transition to a more community-funded model.

 

We aim to be the leading content provider about all things medieval. Our website, podcast and Youtube page offers news and resources about the Middle Ages. We hope that are our audience wants to support us so that we can further develop our podcast, hire more writers, build more content, and remove the advertising on our platforms. This will also allow our fans to get more involved in what content we do produce.

Become a Patron Member Login

Medievalists.net

Footer Menu

  • Privacy Policy
  • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
  • Copyright © 2025 Medievalists.net
  • Powered by WordPress
  • Theme: Uku by Elmastudio
Follow us
  • Facebook
  • Twitter