ABSTRACT
Since the documents that survived from the Middle Ages did so mostly because of ecclesiastical care, in some ways this category consists of all those things that did not obviously belong in one of the other chapters. I have included saints’ lives, religious tracts, letters, sermons, episcopal visitation records, and inquisition registers. Due to medieval interests and university structures, there is much overlap between these sources and those listed under science, so these two chapters should be consulted jointly. The principal characteristic of the religious sources is their didactic purpose. Sexual information is not included as anecdotes (as in the historical sources), nor dispassionately (as in the scientific ones), but for morally uplifting reasons. Therefore, use of these sources poses a number of methodological problems. For example, can we assume people were actually doing what churchman were preaching against, or did sermons reflect the individual rather than the society? However, these and similar questions are only cautionary, and do not prevent these works from being useful sources of information on sexual attitudes and practices. The abundance of medieval religious sources keeps this list from being comprehensive, and there is much manuscript material that has not yet been analyzed.
