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Theobald of Étampes (French: Thibaud; Latin: Theobaldus Stampensis) (1080 - after 1120) was a schoolmaster, scholar and theologian of the early 12th century. As a theologian he is recalled for his hostility to the concept of priestly celibacy. In education he is remembered as the first scholar to settle at Oxford, and as a founder or forerunner of Oxford University.

Biography
The details of Theobald's biography were delineated only in 2009. He was born in Étampes, France, the son of a canon, and probably educated at Chartres cathedral school. He was in early life acquainted with many married priests, at a time shortly before the Gregorian reform requiring that priests be celibate.

The historian Bernard Gineste has shown that Theobald became master of the parish school of Saint-Martin of Étampes, and private tutor to the young Viscount of Chartres Hugh III of Le Puiset. These early stages of his career took place against a backdrop of social change in Étampes, where King Philippe I de France, and especially his eldest son, the future Louis VI, had recently regained control of the city from the Viscounts of Le Puiset. The king was also a patron of the monks of Morigny, whom he was beginning to favour to the detriment of the local married clergy. Theobald's pupil Hugh rebelled against the imposition of royal authority, and was captured and imprisoned twice, prompting Theobald in 1113 to quit the royal domain in favour of land owned by Henri Beauclerc, hoping to escape the increasingly forceful imposition of the requirement for priestly celibacy and the ascendancy of the monks at the canons' expense.

Theobald next became a schoolmaster at Caen, where he seems to have considered leaving France for Denmark, before eventually electing to travel to Oxford in England. There he taught audiences of 60 to 100 clerics: this assembly of clerical scholars has been described as a precursor to the foundation in the following decades of Oxford University.

Theobald died after 1120, probably in Oxford.

Work and thinking
Six letters by Theobald of Étampes have been preserved.


 * Two were written in Caen, the first being addressed to a certain Philippe, who had committed an undetermined sexual deviation and sustained harassment accordingly. Theobald counsels his correspondent that such offenses are not of the most serious order and far less grave than pride; he very clearly suggests that those who profess chastity often fall into paedophilia. The second letter is sent to a Queen Margarita, thought until recently to be Saint Margaret of Scotland (died 1093); Gineste has shown instead that she is Margrete Fredkulla, Queen of Denmark, who was still alive in 1116. In the letter Theobald thanks the Queen for her liberality to the "Abbaye aux Hommes" of Caen, and seems to make service offerings.
 * Four are written from Oxford. Scholars have been unable to determine their chronological order. One is addressed to Farrizio, Abbot of Abingdon, contradicting a charge of heresy. In the letter Theobald protests that his teaching is orthodox: dead children, if not baptized, go to hell. The second (and longest) letter is directed to the Bishop of Lincoln. It argues, by reference to the authority of scripture and the fathers of the Church, that even the greatest sinners can access salvation if they repent in their final hours. The third is addressed to the heretical Roscelin of Compiègne. It is concerned not with Roscelin's controversial doctrine regarding the Trinity, but with his criticisms of the sons of priests; Theobald defends these by pointing out that Saint John the Baptist was one; he also expresses an extremely rare opinion on this subject: that the Virgin Mary was also daughter of priest. The last of these four Oxford letters of Oxford argues that monks have no right to take the place of clerics in collecting the tithes and benefits that had, until recently, been the monopoly of the clerics and the canons. It is addressed to an anonymous monk, and written partly in verse.

Place in the history of ideas and tradition
Theobald of Étampes was not a major author, but is regarded as one of the early intellectuals who paved the way for the great renaissance of the 12th century. The major principles of his teaching are respect and a methodical approach, advocating the exposure to reasoning of the doctrine of the Church. He was a participant in the great debates of his age: the consequences of the Gregorian reform; the shifting balance of power within the Church from the clergy to the more ascetic monks, with the backing of the Popes of the age.

Oxford historiographers have often seen him as the founder of the University. A 1907 dramatic production portrayed him as the father of the enlightenment in Oxford, in opposition to the forces of darkness represented by the monks of Abingdon.

His hostility to the principle of priestly celibacy, a position which aligned him with the approach of churches throughout Northern Europe until the end of the Middle Ages, has also made him a sympathetic figure from the perspective of the Anglican Church. In his native, Catholic France, by contrast, his work was gradually forgotten.