Beyond Celibacy: Medieval Bishops, Power and Masculinity in the Middle Ages
Matthew M. Mesley
This chapter explores the intersection of politics and masculinity by considering how thirteenth-century German English (arch)bishops wielded power in secular arena. It argues that issues celibacy sexuality were far less important than recent treatments reform ideology suggest. Critics bishops instead more likely to question appropriateness political activities bishops. In focusing on Adolf Altena his relationship with Innocent III within context civil war succession, Mesley ways which expected behave similar high-status elite men their enactment ‘lordship’, while at same time noting they bound vocation dictates Church.