Defiant Priests by Michelle Armstrong-Partida - 9781501748424

Defiant PriestsDomestic Unions, Violence, and Clerical Masculinity in Fourteenth-Century Catalunya\nAuthor(s): Michelle Armstrong-Partida\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Cornell University Press, United States\nImprint: Cornell University Press\nISBN-13: 9781501748424, 978-1501748424\nSynopsis\nTwo hundred years after canon law prohibited clerical marriage, parish priests in the late medieval period continued to form unions with women that were marriage all but in name. In Defiant Priests, Michelle Armstrong-Partida uses evidence from extraordinary archives in four Catalan dioceses to show that maintaining a family with a domestic partner was not only a custom entrenched in Catalan clerical culture but also an essential component of priestly masculine identity.\n\n From unpublished episcopal visitation records and internal diocesan documents (including notarial registers, bishops' letters, dispensations for illegitimate birth, and episcopal court records), Armstrong-Partida reconstruc.