Introduction

Medieval medical knowledge about sexuality and psychological thinking about the nature of love is not confined simply to medical texts, but has a very visible influence on the wider culture. Jacquart and Thomasset suggest that ‘medieval medical thought relating to sexuality was all-pervasive’. Hence they and others read passages in Andreas Capellanus as containing double entendres which make it a manual for coitus interruptus. Medieval medical knowledge was founded on authorities, classical and Arabic: Aristotle, Galen, Avicenna, Averroes. Vern L. Bullough argues that the ancient world's medical and scientific assumptions about sexuality make a significant contribution to medieval misogyny. The sort of love is what Arabic commentators called 'ishq, ‘passionate love,’ translated into Latin as amor, eros, or ‘amor heros’.