ABSTRACT
Sexuality—the configuration of discourses and drives that generate and regulate desire—is central to the construction of sanctity in the Middle Ages. Medieval saints’ lives repeatedly celebrate virginity, celibacy, or repentance for past sexual activity. Rather than being effaced through the renunciation of genital sex, sexual agency—the right to dispose sexually of one’s body as one sees fit—becomes a crucial element in the construction of a saint’s identity as a saint. Medieval saints’ lives reinscribe sexuality even as they ostensibly seek to deny it; thus a saint’s desire not to have sex is often expressed in erotic terms, as when female virgin martyrs resist seduction, marriage, or rape, but are described as nubile “brides of Christ,” eagerly awaiting union with their “lover.” Moreover, other ingredients in the construction of medieval sanctity—such as pain, suffering, humility, and patience—are often associated with the erotic discourse that describes a saint’s ascension to sanctity: for example, virgin martyrs happily submit to torture, often of a sexually charged nature, at the hands of male pagan tyrants in order to achieve the desired union with Jesus, their “spouse.”
