Friar Tuck and other Medieval Warrior Clerics
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Friar Tuck is famous in the Robin Hood stories, one of
Robin’s Merry Men who lived in Sherwood Forest. He is shown as jolly, fat, a bit of a glutton and a tough
fighter, the equal of Robin himself. He is described as a curtal friar, meaning
that his gown was curtailed or tucked up. This may also be the reason for his
name Tuck.
There is no evidence that such a cleric existed, and
stories about him do not appear until the 1400s. However the tradition of fighting
clerics was very real and the name Friar Tuck was used as an alias by the
chaplain Robert Stafford in 1417 to cover his own violent criminal activities. Earlier
in the middle ages, in 1066, Odo, bishop of Bayeaux, fought at the Battle of
Hastings with his half-brother William. As clerics were not supposed to draw
blood, Odo is depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry wielding a club or stave. Odo
died in 1097, on the way to the Holy Land to fight in the first crusade.
Odo had been a bishop and bishops were seen as part of
the secular world, often part of the king’s regime. So in 1295, Anthony Bek,
bishop of Durham, was with King Edward the First when the king fought in Wales
and again the year after when the king invaded Scotland. Bek even attacked his
own cathedral, following a dispute with Durham’s Prior, leading to this
contemporary verse:
"From
boyhood Bishop Anthony
Had learned to fight most readily,
And in violence trusted more
Than in the texts of canon law.".
Canon and church law was in fact confused on the issue of fighting clerics.
From 1049 to 1079 twelve church synods said clerics should not bear arms—suggesting that many clerics did so. At the same time, the military order of the Knights Templar, created in 1119 to protect pilgrims in the Holy Land, was avidly supported by the Christian mystic and Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux. In 1289 Pope Nicholas IV allowed the Franciscans the right to bear arms “with the permission of their ministers.” By the late fourteenth century canon lawyer Giovanni da Legnano gave examples when it was appropriate for a priest to fight and even to kill. This included the priest defending himself if attacked whilst baptising a dying child (lest the child, unbaptised, was sent to purgatory) and also the priest killing someone in self-defence during mass.
The middle ages could
be very violent!
You can read more about my own medieval stories if you
visit my Prairie Rose Publications author page:
http://prairierosepublications.com/authors_2/lindsay-townsend/
Happy Reading!
Lindsay Townsend
I genuinely knew none of this and learned a lot from reading it. It never even occurred to me that 'tuck' referred to anything to do with his costuming. Thanks so much for posting.
ReplyDeleteWow. Better late than never. What a great post and full of unknown, to me, information. Thank you. Doris
ReplyDelete