ABSTRACT
This chapter acts as an introduction to the question of the purity of marital sex, by focusing on another example which involves the secretion of sperm: wet dreams or nocturnal emissions. Nocturnal emissions form an interesting case study because their discussion combined physiological and psychological aspects. They could be understood as a natural secretion or as a manifestation of sexual desire. One of the conclusions of this chapter is that Byzantine and English pollution discourses are comparable. The main contrast which emerges between the two societies involves the different treatment of laymen and clerics by the law. Contrary to their English counterparts, who were treated as a separate category of men, Byzantine clerics were not sharply distinguished from their flock. This prefigures the conclusions of the following chapter, where we see that in Byzantium abstinence rules for clerics and laymen were not substantially different, while in England, the sacred and the profane were more clearly demarcated.
