Gender and hierarchy: Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims (845–882) as a religious man

Summary

In 881 the clerics and laity of the city of Beauvais in Picardy were electing a new bishop. Beauvais had long been vulnerable to attacks by Vikings on the Carolingian Empire. The city was burned by raiders in the early 850s; in 859 a previous bishop, Ermenfrid, was killed by the Danes. The archbishop of the province in which the diocese of Beauvais lay, Hincmar of Rheims, sent the citizens a letter about the election, advising them of the procedure they should follow and the qualifications they should look for. hincmar is clear that the right sort of man has to be chosen:

Let him not be approved who has no dignity of birth nor morals, or he who is held bound by hereditary or other condition. No neophyte from the laity, that is newly tonsured and without discipline, or not promoted to ecclesiastical grades at the constituted times. This we therefore specially designate, since when the canons say: ‘Let no one be ordained from the laity’, they show that this does not refer to all laymen. For clerics cannot be born and cannot be made [from those who are already clerics], but the varieties (genera) are designated from which they [laymen] cannot attain to clerical office.

Hincmar goes on to list unsuitable types of men, including soldiers, those who have done public penance, those who have married twice and the illiterate.