The Manly Priest. Jennifer D. Thibodeaux

and other forms of extortion did not persist. Archdeacons and deans were singled out for their likely involvement in such extortion. Finally, the council declared that priests who abided by the law and put aside their women were to abstain from celebrating the divine office for forty days and have suitable vicars serve their churches. If they relapsed into their former habits, these clerics would have their property seized, along with their concubines, and both handed over to the bishop.⁴⁵

      What is notable about Eadmer’s reporting of the 1108 council is that of the numerous, lengthy directives regarding clerical unions, not one uses the term uxor (wife) to describe the female partner of a priest. Eadmer’s choice to describe priests’ partners differently from his description of the 1102 council may have been intentional. In 1102, he describes these women as they must have appeared to all in Anglo-Norman society: legitimate wives. But by 1108 the necessity of further legislation to eradicate this problem led him to address them as the Church now viewed them—the “women” (feminas or mulieres) of priests.⁴⁶