Adulthood has held many surprises—that my mom really was right about everything, that cheese is criminally expensive—but for me one of the biggest has been the ascendance of the hot-priest trope.
I knew a lot of priests growing up, both in Catholic school, which I attended through the 12th grade, and at weekly mass with my family. It’s hard to lump the members of an entire profession together without flattening them into a stereotype: some priests were kind, some were funny, more than a few were grumpy. One went to jail and a few more allegedly belonged there. One taught me sex ed, one taught me French, one gave out mini Kit Kats when we were having a bad day. But one thing they had in common? Not a single one, ever, was hot.
Nevertheless, I can understand the basis for the fantasy—the profane thrill of lusting after a man of God. During our annual reenactment of the Stations of the Cross, the student who played Jesus had to be disrobed by “Roman soldiers” in front of the whole school, finally standing before us all in nothing but white boxer shorts. We weren’t supposed to whistle and cat call, but sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants.
Despite the dearth of hot priests when I was younger, they seem to be everywhere now. Just last week, the internet melted down over paparazzi photos of Josh O’Connor in a clerical collar on the set of Knives Out 3. (He’s actually a seasoned hot priest at this point, having already played one in Emma in 2020.) And, as more than one social media user has pointed out, the Knives Out cast also includes Andrew Scott, who has been lots of things as an actor, but to many will always be, first and foremost, the Hot Priest from Fleabag.
But where—and how—did all this begin? I encountered the founding father of the genre, so to speak, in a medieval French literature class. After Abelard, a priest, was hired to tutor the teenage Heloise in 12th-century Paris, the two had an illicit affair, chronicled in their surviving correspondence. It’s a long and dramatic story, one that involved Heloise becoming pregnant and then hiding out in a convent, and her uncle ultimately castrating Abelard as revenge. But, in short, Abelard’s priestly ambitions were at odds with his romantic and sexual liaisons, though the horny letters between him and Heloise were also deeply theological. Finally, when Heloise told Abelard that she couldn’t sleep in the convent because when she closed her eyes she had visions of their lovemaking, he told her to give all her love to Christ instead, and the two never saw each other again.