Pueri, Iuvenes, and Viri: Age and Utility In the Gregorian Reform

This article explores the role played by ideas about age and appropriate behavior for different stages of life in shaping the eleventh-century ecclesiastical reformers' vision for an ordered Christian society-notable at a time when the role of the Church and especially the papacy as both the definer and enforcer of utilitas was increasingly emphasized. By focusing on how some influential reformers and writers characterized youth, adulthood, and that shadowy stage between them, the iuventus, this article examines the extent to which the reformers not only drew upon the language of age and life stages but also combined them with ideas of suitability and utility in a powerful rhetoric that reinforced their scheme of social definition. The definition of precise roles for all parts of the societas Christiana has long been acknowledged as a fundamental part of the movement for ecclesiastical reform in the later eleventh century.1 Old assumptions of privilege and status were often set to one side as individuals were increasingly evaluated in terms of their efficacy in the promotion of the reformers' goals.2 Not only were kings and nobles-friends and foes alike-reprimanded and castigated for their failure to live up to the reformers' expectations, even the clergy were pointedly reminded of their specific place in the new order of things.3 Indeed, it can be argued that Gregory VII in particular, as well as reformers associated with him, by increasingly defining individuals in terms of their function, their suitability (idoneitas), and perhaps especially their utility (utilitas), thereby focused their attention less on the broader issues of pastoral care, penance, and personal salvation than on more pressing practical and ecclesiological issues. Such a view-however tenable in part-nevertheless presents a problematic characterization of the reformers and their program for the renovation of the Church and Christian society, one in which both pastoral care and concern for penance, in fact, played an integral part. Gregory VII, for instance, repeatedly displayed a strong interest in the spiritual well-being of the wider Christian familia. He exhorted and offered spiritual advice to individuals as diverse as Matilda of Tuscany, Empress Agnes, Queen Judith of Hungary, William the Conqueror, Count Albert of CaIw, Olaf III of Norway, the kings and princes of Spain, Centullus of Beam, the people of Bohemia, and the monks of Vallombrosa and Cluny as well as addressing numerous letters, especially in the later years of his pontificate, to all the faithful.4 Indeed, it can be argued in many ways that even his letters of chastisement were motivated by pastoral concern, perhaps most notably seen in his rebuke of Abbot Hugh of Cluny over the monastic profession of Duke Hugh of Burgundy in 1079.5 Both before and during his pontificate, Gregory was clearly devoted to urging monastic and canonical orders to ever more stringent interpretations of religious life, and as Cowdrey has argued, "before all else, his motives were religious."6 Moreover, at his November synod in Rome in 1078, Gregory famously promulgated an important initiative against false penances and described how true penance should be given. Here he not only showed himself to be especially preoccupied with specific consideration of individuals' positions and occupations but also stressed the importance of inner contrition largely lacking in the earlier penitential tradition where, when determining the amount of penance required, considerable emphasis had been placed on formulaic compensation along with the status, age, and condition of individuals (be it clerical or lay).7 Although the connection of penance and reform in the eleventh century is beyond the scope of the present article,8 the extent to which ideas about age and appropriate behavior for different stages of life played a role in shaping the reformers' vision for an ordered Christian society remains something of a neglected topic. …