ABSTRACT
Medieval European society, imbued as it was with Christian teaching, inherited Christianity’s vexed relationship with the flesh. While teaching that all creation – including the human body – was good, church authors also taught that the flesh must be controlled and subdued for the sake of the salvation of the soul. Sex was not the only bodily drive that had to be subdued. The desires for necessities like food, drink, and sleep, as well as luxuries like comfortable clothing, also had to be combated. Sex, however, as perhaps the most tempting of the human desires, got more than its share of attention from medieval writers. Indeed, whether one was sexually active or chaste came to be a fundamental definition of what kind of person one was. Why was the medieval church so concerned with avoidance of sexual
activity? Why was this activity polluting even if involuntary (as with nocturnal emissions)? Why did it disqualify individuals from the highest spiritual status? In part the answers have to do with the idea of ritual separation. Most religions have something that sets their priestly caste apart from common believers, usually the observance of particular taboos. For Christianity the important taboo was sexual. Lust (and the disobedience that went along with it) was the original sin, and Eve the original sinner (here shown depicted by the twelfth-century sculptor Gislebertus on the lintel of the cathedral church of Autun, serpent-like and seductive; see Figure 2.1). According to medieval theologians Adam and Eve did not feel con-
cupiscence in the Garden of Eden. They did have sexual intercourse but it, like eating, was for the creation and sustenance of life, not for pleasure. The original sin was disobedience to God, but concupiscence was its clear result. Eve came in for most of the blame, since she persuaded Adam to sin, although some theologians thought that since a woman could not help being weaker, Adam actually bore more responsibility. A dualist strain has always run through Christianity – the spirit is good
but the flesh is bad. This dualism has received more emphasis at some times than at others, and it has never been so dominant as to exclude all positive valuations of the flesh (after all, Christians believe that God chose to be
incarnated in a material body and born of a woman), but it still characterizes the teachings of many Christian churches and the views of many Christians. The idea that sex was polluting also had a great deal to do with gender.
