ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the changing attitudes toward sexual intercourse with animals in the Middle Ages. The early medieval desire to prohibit bestiality came from Christian impulses that began with patristic reflections on human nature. Medieval thinkers inherited the classical tradition with its view of the relationship between humans and animals. The early medieval desire to prohibit bestiality came from Christian impulses that began with patristic reflections on human nature. The Eastern father Basil seems to have considered sexual sins to be largely one category, linking bestiality, homosexuality, and adultery together by assigning all three the same penance. Factors of age, marital status, and ecclesiastical rank served to increase or decrease penances for all sexual sins. There were also mitigating factors specifically for bestiality, beginning with ecclesiastical attempts to define the nature of the act of bestiality. The occasional practice of bestiality seems to continue to be part of rural society.
