Ruth Mazo Karras - Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others

SEXUALITY IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE

Sexuality in medieval Europe has become a vital scholarly field that is now recognized as central to the study of the Middle Ages. Using a wide collection of evidence from the late antique period up until the fifteenth century, this new edition of the standard overview on the topic demonstrates that medieval culture developed sexual identities that were quite different from the identities we think of today, yet that were still in some ways ancestral to our own.

Challenging the way the Middle Ages have been treated in general histories of sexuality, Ruth Mazo Karras shows how views at the time were conflicted and complicated; there was no single medieval attitude towards sexuality any more than there is one modern attitude. The well-known lusty priest and the repressed penitent have their roles to play, but set here in a wider context these figures take on fascinating new dimensions. Focusing on acceptable marital sexual activity as well as what was seen as transgressive, the chapters cover such topics as chastity, the role of the church, and non-reproductive activity.

Combining an overview of research on the topic with original interpretations, now updated with the latest scholarship and additional material from medieval Christian Europe, Jewish medieval culture, and the Islamic world, Sexuality in Medieval Europe is essential reading for all those who study medieval history and culture, or who have an interest in the way sexuality and sexual identity have been viewed in the past.

Ruth Mazo Karras is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. She has published widely on the history of women, gender, and sexuality in the Middle Ages. Her books include Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages; From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe; Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England; and Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia. She is a co-editor of the journal Gender and History.

SEXUALITY IN
MEDIEVAL EUROPE

Doing unto others

Second edition

Ruth Mazo Karras

First published 2005, this edition published 2012

by Routledge

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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge

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2005, 2012 Ruth Mazo Karras

The right of Ruth Mazo Karras to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Karras, Ruth Mazo, 1957-Sexuality in Medieval Europe : doing unto others / Ruth Mazo Karras.

p. cm.

Rev. ed. of: Sexuality in Medieval Europe : doing unto others. 2005.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Sex customsHistoryTo 1500. 2. EuropeSocial conditionsTo 1492.

3. Social historyMedieval, 500-1500. I. Title.

HQ14.K37 2012

392.6dc23

2011038747

ISBN: 978-0-415-69388-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-69389-9 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-12413-0 (ebk)

FOR ELENA KARRAS

CONTENTS

FIGURES

Reproduced by kind permission of the holding institutions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The idea for this book, and for a revised second edition, came from Victoria Peters of Routledge, who read a chapter I wrote for a general book on the Middle Ages and suggested that I expand it. I am grateful to a number of fellow medievalists and other historians who read the entire draft of the first edition and made suggestions: Joan Cadden, Anna Clark, Matthew Kuefler, Jacqueline Murray, John Van Engen. A number of published reviews of the first edition were helpful in revision; so were the reviews commissioned by Routledge from Judith Bennett, Sarah Salih, and four erudite but anonymous readers. Michael Ryan shared portions of the draft second edition with his students. I am also grateful to non-academic readers who helped give me a sense of what would be most interesting and helpful for them to know: Christopher Karras, Nicola Karras, Henry Langsam, Barbara Ziv. Research assistance on the first edition was provided by Ellen Arnold and Kathryn Kelsey Staples. I am also grateful to Laura Mothersole of Routledge for her work on the permissions.

I owe a huge intellectual debt to a group of scholars too large to list here, but whose names and works appear in the Further Reading section at the end of the book. Although I have used notes only when I have quoted directly, a broad synthesis like this inevitably relies on the scholarship of others, and I have indicated which parts of the book have drawn on the ideas of which scholars.

The first edition of this book was dedicated to John Boswell, the teacher and scholar who first led me to realize that the study of sexuality in history could be a legitimate academic pursuit. This version is for Elena Karras, who was too young to take much notice of the first edition, and her generation of students.

Sex and the Middle Ages

The combination of medieval Europe and sexuality conjures up one of two images in most peoples minds. One is a vision of total repression. A church controlled by celibate men defines all sexual acts and thoughts as impure. Any sexual behavior or thought is a sin calling for severe acts of penance. Even marital sex for the purpose of reproduction is barely tolerable; it becomes a sin if the participants enjoy it. Sexuality threatens human salvation: it is a nearly irresistible force, but a force for evil. The devil is always at the ready to use sexual temptation to drag humankind to destruction and damnation.

Plenty of medieval texts support this vision of negative and repressive medieval attitudes toward sexuality. We can look, for example, at the Desert Fathers tradition. In the late antique period (fourth to fifth centuries) there were several collections of the sayings and deeds of the monks who lived in individual cells (eremitic monasticism) or in groups (cenobitic monasticism) in the Egyptian desert. These texts were translated into Latin and then into the various European vernaculars, and became quite popular. The tales include stories of heroic penance for sexual thoughts. In one story, the devil sends a woman to tempt a monk. She claims to be lost, and asks to stay in his cell because she is afraid of wild beasts. As a thirteenth-century French poetic version tells it:

The monk soon had great desire of her and he knew well that it was the devil who caused him so much anguish . And when he burned with the most passion he said, Those who do such things go into torment. This will test whether you can suffer the eternal fire where you must go. And he extended his finger and put it in the flame . But the finger did not feel the heat, because he was so filled with fleshly fire. Thus one after the other he held his fingers in the fire, so that they were all burned by daybreak.