Although studies of gender in medieval culture have tended to focus on femininity, the study of medieval masculinities has developed greatly over the last few years. This book concentrates on this aspect of medieval gender studies, and looks at the ways in which varieties of medieval masculinity intersected with concepts of holiness.

Introduction, 'Holiness and Masculinity in Medieval Europe'; Emma Pettit (York) - 'Holiness and Masculinity in Aldhelm's opus geminatum De virginitate'; Jacqueline Murray (University of Guelph - Canada) - 'Masculinizing Religious Life: Sexual Prowess - the Battle for Chastity and Monastic Identity'; Christopher C. Craun (St. Andrews) - 'Matronly Monks: Attracting Divine Grace in Theodoret's Historia Religiosa'; Carolyn Diskant Muir (Hong Kong) - 'Bride or Bridegroom? Masculine Identity in Mystic Marriages'; Meri Heinonen (Turku - Finland) - 'Henry Suso and the Divine Knighthood'; Shaun Tougher - 'Holy Eunuchs! Masculinity and Eunuch Saints in Byzantium'; Robert Mills (Kings - London) - 'The Signification of the Tonsure'; Dawn Marie Hayes (Montclair State University - New York) - 'Christian Sanctuary and Repository of France's Political Culture: The Construction of Holiness and Masculinity at the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis in the Later Middle Ages'; Edward Christie (West Virginia University) - 'Self-Mastery and Submission: Masculinity and Holiness in the Lives of Anglo-Saxon Martyr-Kings'; Katherine J. Lewis (Huddersfield) - Edmund of East Anglia - Henry VI and Ideals of Kingly Masculinity'; W.M. Ormrod (York) - 'Monarchy - Martyrdom and Masculinity: England in the Later Middle Ages'; Fiona Dunlop (York) - 'Making Youth Holy: Holiness and Masculinity in The Interlude of Youth'; Sarah Bastow (Huddersfield) - 'The Catholic Gentlemen of the North: Unreformed in the age of Reformation?'