Medieval sexual abuse & clerical crimes

From the late 1980s, allegations of sexual abuse of children as­s­ociated with Catholic institutions and clerics in several countries started to be the subject of formal investigations. In Ireland, in the 1990s, a series of criminal cases and Irish gov­ernment enquir­ies established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children over the decades.

Catholic sexual abuse cases in Australia have involved convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests and teachers that have come to light in recent decades, along with the growing awareness of sexual abuse within other religious and secular institutions.

A USA grand jury report recorded dozens of Penn priests accused of molesting 1,000 minors in 70 years. Now 12 other American states have announ­ced their own formal investig­ations into Catholic clerical child sexual abuse.

The German Catholic church presented the results of an investig­at­ion into decades of sexual abuse of children in 2018. The report detailed the cases of 3,677 mostly male children in 27 dioceses who were sexually abused since 1946. 1,670 cl­er­ics were implicated. The report detailed how 60% of abusive priests eluded punishment, or were moved to other German parishes to conceal their crimes.

Promiscuous Monks: Monastic Sexual Misconduct in Late Medieval England

Medievalist.net

After the Vatican investigators found crime conceal­ment in Chile, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of five of their bishops. Now special Chilean prosecutors are invest­igating 150 clerics across Chile’s 15 regions. The prosecutors are examining the offences that took place from 1960 on.

But was sexual abuse in the Catholic Church a C20th phenom­enon, ignored because no church had ever investigated its own clerical wrongdoings before 1980? No!

I have cited Emma Wells' paper, Monks behaving badly, as closely as possible. Monastic morality tales displayed a familiar and long lasting cul­t­ural stereo­type: promiscuous and corrupt cleric. Medieval bis­hops, monks, vicars and nuns got and get a bad press in literat­ure – because of their appetite for las­civ­ious­ness, greed and drinking.

Errant Catholic clergymen were a feature of mediev­al life, probably because of the nature of their profession: a] the decision to put boys into the priesthood was made by parents; b] the men lived celibate lives and c] the priests visited families in the privacy of their homes or schools. [Jewish and Islamic clergy were never celibate, so I have excluded them from this post. No doubt they were charged with other wrongdoings].

The problem wasn’t a product of the bishops’ indifference. On the contrary, ensuring that the clergy remained on their pedestal was paramount to the medieval church. In fact the ecclesiastical auth­orities were eager to uphold the highest of standards, and protect themselves from the wrath of God. They established mechanisms for disciplinary action in the case of failure. Across Christendom, monasteries, parishes and colleges were subject to assessments run by their own diocesan bishops.

In Catholic England, records first appeared in late C13th. In the 1430s, in an investigation by Canons Ashby Priory in North­amps, the Bishop’s Commissary found that the monks were indulging in feast­ing and games, frequenting the village inn, skipping choir services and not wearing their monastic habit. In the late Middle Ages, these results were serious: neglected parishioners, damage to the Catholic church’s reputation and some outbreaks of violence. Monk John Shrewesbury from Dorchester Abbey app­arently abducted a woman in 1441 and smuggled her into the mon­ast­ery bell tower in a trunk, where he had carnal relations with her.

In 1500 William Bell, Nottingham’s Greyfriars warden was accused of incontinence/homosexuality against another man. By the 1530s, King Henry VIII was already agitating for the diss­olution of the Catholic monasteries. So if clergymen did drink too much, if they did fornic­ate with prostitutes and if they did gamble with dice, their future was shaky. By the time Henry VIII wielded the axe in 1536, it was all over.

Clergy enjoying sex with each other

Patheos

Investigators exposed the extent of indisc­ret­ions eg from sexual misbehaviour down to inapp­ropriate clothing. The authorities investigated community gossip, documented indis­cret­ions and swiftly punished those found guilty. Wrong doers could expect shaming sentences, ranging from enforced silence, fasting, prison time, floggings, barefoot pilgrimages and excommunication. 

Medieval clergymen also had a bad record of frequenting brothels aka stews. The most notorious were situated in Bankside South London, on land owned and controlled by the bishop of Winchester. 

Although monks and nuns technically led cloistered lives, they were also an important part of wider society. They regularly left cloisters to visit family, conduct business, teach children and enter politics! Most of the secular deacons were members of a non-cloistered rel­ig­ious institution, and many of them lived lives similar to their flocks. They often travelled to other parishes, to administer to the spirit­ual, social and medical needs of the poorest families, but they also lodged in local alehouses!

In the Priory, a medieval monk seduced a nun, who became pregnant and had an illegitimate baby. 

She desperately disposed of the baby in the privy.
From the Miracles de Notre Dame, in Ancient Origins.

In 1531, Bishop of Lincoln John Longland went to the August­inian abbey of Missenden in Bucks. He convened a special tribunal to in­vestigate monastic bad behaviour - drinking, gambling and fornic­ating with prostitutes. A local canon, Robert Palmer, was accused of carnal relations with a married woman. But Palmer claim­ed that it was Abbot John Fox who had shared the woman’s bed. The Abbot was accused of many offences - nepotism, financial misconduct and of ignoring Palmer’s affair with the married woman. After investigat­ions, Longland passed judgment on both Palmer and Fox; Palmer was imprisoned indefinitely and Abbot Fox was suspended from office.

In early C16th, anti-monastic pamphlets were filled with vivid descript­ions of clerical misdemeanours. But this does not mean that late med­ieval clergymen were more tempted by bad behaviour than their predecessors. Rather it shows that the authorities made insp­ections of churches and monasteries specifically to unearth cler­ical failings!