ABSTRACT
Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God. Alongside seven other blessings enjoined upon believers in the Gospel of St. Matthew – including meekness, mercy, peace-making and poverty – the sixth beatitude urges Christians to be “clean of heart,” promising them a direct experience of God in return. In medieval culture, ideas of purity were inextricably tied up both with sexuality and with religion – indeed, purity is a term that mediates between those two categories, making a separation of them impossible. Concern over sexual purity informs innumerable medieval texts and genres, but this chapter will concentrate its discussion of purity and sexuality by focusing on one late-medieval poem: Cleanness. Cleanness states that there are numerous things that prevent individual purity, among them sloth, arrogance, pride and covetousness. If the story of the Flood defines impure sexuality in relation to disobedience, promiscuity and miscegenation, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah concentrates more narrowly on same-sex acts.
