Getting Biblical: Sexual Honesty, Scripture, and the Reconstruction of Clerical Manhood by Tudor Reformers, 1530–70

In 1554, English Catholic activist Thomas Martyn despaired that his Protestant opponents would "require…[priests] to be as lay men and all to have wives."  Martyn was half-right.   For many Tudor reformers, marriage did not make an English cleric into a layman.  But it helped turn a fraudulent priest into an "honest…ministe[r]."  Using their writings and polemical hagiographies, this paper will argue that these activists saw a crucial relationship between the clergy's functions, sexuality and legitimacy.  Merging the methodologies of Reformation and masculinity studies, it will show how that relationship hinged on the Biblical character of Protestant identity and the diverse meanings of the word "honesty" in Tudor England.

Honorable Tudor manhood meant truthfulness in interactions and self-presentation.  For reformers, the traditional priesthood was one elaborate scam; it usurped the divine authority incarnate in Scripture, defrauding Christians of their sacred birthright to hear and read the Bible for themselves.  Thus, priests were socially "false men."   These lies exceeded those of thieves and traitors; by concealing God's Word, the traditional priesthood blasphemed.  Finally, this dishonesty depended upon a sexual deceit: clerical celibacy.  Reformers contended that no man could conquer desire by will alone.  Celibacy was a pretense to superhuman self-control, used to justify the priesthood's illegitimate authority, while cloaking the clergy's sexual licentiousness.

In Scriptural Protestantism, holiness and textual truth became one.  Pointing to passages decreeing matrimony for laymen and clergy, these reformers saw marriage as the cornerstone of a clerical masculinity that was entirely "honest."  Sexually, an honest minister publicly admitted his vulnerability to desire, accepting the one Biblicaly-ordained remedy: a wife.  This act made him socially honest in his self-presentation, as an ordinary, sin-weakened man.  It made him spiritually honest, as he renounced the celibate and Sacramental charade.  Which allowed him to undertake his legitimate calling: preaching the Gospel "honestly."