Don't judge this book by its title. Michelle Armstrong-Partida has examined thousands of early fourteenth-century documents of practice (parish visitation records, court records, episcopal registers, etc.) from Catalunya, a trove of documentation “without equal anywhere in western Europe” (5). This evidence reveals clearly that the majority of parish priests in the region (the ecclesiastical proletariat as it were) established marital households (which included children) and participated fully in the culture of violence that appears to have characterized their villages and towns. Armstrong-Partida argues that they did so because such activities were crucial to their masculine gender identities, which they perceived to be incompatible with ecclesiastical ideals such as celibacy and nonviolence. The male lower clergy of Catalunya did have a gendered identity distinct from that of lay men, but only because they superadded the privilege and authority of their profession to shared common behaviors such as having sex with women, disciplining children, and bearing arms. All of this is richly, indeed incontrovertibly, demonstrated through a wealth of documentary evidence. The only problem with the book (and it is a very minor problem) is that the author chose to label her subjects “defiant because they defied canon law, synodal statutes, and church expectations” (4). The label is somewhat misleading and (more importantly) deflects attention from what seems to me to be the most innovative finding of the study: the violent priestly pater familias of late medieval Catalunya was ubiquitous across the landscape, accepted by his community, and tolerated by his social superiors (both lay and ecclesiastical). Armstrong-Partida martials so much evidence to demonstrate the reality of this status quo that the rare man who refrained from marriage-like unions, procreation, and violent deeds would seem to be the truly “defiant” one, given the immense cultural pressures that led most male clerics to conform to lay ideals of masculinity. The chapter on “Becoming a Priest: Clerical Role Models and Clerics-in-Training” (198–231) illustrates beautifully how engaging in brawling and sexual relationships would have been completely normalized for aspirants to the priesthood (many of whom were sons of priests themselves) while exemplars of celibate, pacifistic masculinity were few and far between.

This is a wonderful, generative book that deserves to be widely read. It is guaranteed to stimulate the thinking of medievalists and ecclesiastical historians along many different lines. Armstrong-Partida seeks to press the implications of her findings to their maximum extent and uses those findings to encourage her readers to rethink fundamental assumptions about the medieval European Christian church. First and foremost among these is the long-standing assumption that celibacy and sexual self-control were somehow central to clerical gender identity and ideals of manliness. That may have been true for a small number of elite clerics but not for the typical parish priest, whom Armstrong-Partida insightfully describes as a member of the working class. “Parish priests in Catalunya constructed a clerical masculinity that adopted hegemonic patterns of masculinity in late medieval society, functioned best in a parochial setting, and promoted their status and authority as priests” (21). For these men, sexuality and violence were essential features of their clerical masculinity, not stains on or departures from it.

One striking finding of this study is that clerical masculinity may have been more violent than lay masculinity was due to the enhanced status such men enjoyed through ordination, access to the sacraments and the like, and their privileged immunity from prosecution by civil authorities. Armstrong-Partida describes the village dynamic in measured tones: “Parish clergy used their status and clerical authority to establish a hierarchy in the parish that allowed them to subordinate their parishioners . . . and improve their professional and masculine standing among their colleagues” (26–27). But the plethora of documented incidents of extremely bad behavior invites the even stronger conclusion that the parish priests of fourteenth-century Catalunya were frequently outright bullies: “quarrelsome men” (as in the title of chapter 4) prone to verbal abuse of, and physical assaults on, their neighbors. While dozens of vivid anecdotes attest to the aggressive, belligerent character of the lower clergy of Catalunya, a wealth of other evidence (drawn from the same extraordinary set of sources) simultaneously indicates that they were committed partners and caring fathers who willingly suffered the negative consequences (generally financial) imposed by ecclesiastical authorities on their marriage-like relationships in order to keep their illicit families together. This is yet another way in which Armstrong-Partida revises received views of the medieval European Christian clergy: when they were sexually active, they were upstanding family-men, not lecherous patrons of prostitutes who also threatened to cuckold the married men of their community.

The fact that the concubinous priestly family-men of Catalunya were subject to penalties for their personal lives does provide some justification for the author's description of them as “defiant priests.” The Church definitely criminalized the sexuality of the clergy, subjecting concubinous clerics to fines, suspension from office, and/or excommunication. However, evidence from the region shows that the judicial and administrative apparatus for investigating sexual crimes and imposing the relevant penalties was half-hearted and inefficient at best. Officials recognized that attempts to stamp out the omnipresent practice, indeed the traditional custom, of clerical unions among the Catalan clergy would be both impractical and futile. Because the policies of church officials (along with the attitudes of lay communities) are best described as “tolerant” towards clerical couples, I continue to question whether the male partners in these marriage-like unions should be considered “defiant” or “conformist.” Nevertheless, that is a small quibble with a wonderful book.