Author: Vern L. Bullough
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
The book analyzes Christian assumptions about sexuality, chronicles the early institutionalization of these assumptions, and explores the theological debate about the meaning of marriage and the role of sex in marriage. The theological conception of sex, including issues such as rape, seduction, impotence, and prostitution, is then examined as it came to be developed by canon lawyers and justified by medical and scientific writers. The book concludes with an overview of late medieval sex practices as seen in the literature of the period and in demographic studies.
Sexual Practices & the Medieval Church
Author: Vern L. Bullough
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
The book analyzes Christian assumptions about sexuality, chronicles the early institutionalization of these assumptions, and explores the theological debate about the meaning of marriage and the role of sex in marriage. The theological conception of sex, including issues such as rape, seduction, impotence, and prostitution, is then examined as it came to be developed by canon lawyers and justified by medical and scientific writers. The book concludes with an overview of late medieval sex practices as seen in the literature of the period and in demographic studies.
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
The book analyzes Christian assumptions about sexuality, chronicles the early institutionalization of these assumptions, and explores the theological debate about the meaning of marriage and the role of sex in marriage. The theological conception of sex, including issues such as rape, seduction, impotence, and prostitution, is then examined as it came to be developed by canon lawyers and justified by medical and scientific writers. The book concludes with an overview of late medieval sex practices as seen in the literature of the period and in demographic studies.
Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe
Author: James A. Brundage
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226077896
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 714
Book Description
This monumental study of medieval law and sexual conduct explores the origin and develpment of the Christian church's sex law and the systems of belief upon which that law rested. Focusing on the Church's own legal system of canon law, James A. Brundage offers a comprehensive history of legal doctrines–covering the millennium from A.D. 500 to 1500–concerning a wide variety of sexual behavior, including marital sex, adultery, homosexuality, concubinage, prostitution, masturbation, and incest. His survey makes strikingly clear how the system of sexual control in a world we have half-forgotten has shaped the world in which we live today. The regulation of marriage and divorce as we know it today, together with the outlawing of bigamy and polygamy and the imposition of criminal sanctions on such activities as sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus, and bestiality, are all based in large measure upon ideas and beliefs about sexual morality that became law in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages. "Brundage's book is consistently learned, enormously useful, and frequently entertaining. It is the best we have on the relationships between theological norms, legal principles, and sexual practice."—Peter Iver Kaufman, Church History
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226077896
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 714
Book Description
This monumental study of medieval law and sexual conduct explores the origin and develpment of the Christian church's sex law and the systems of belief upon which that law rested. Focusing on the Church's own legal system of canon law, James A. Brundage offers a comprehensive history of legal doctrines–covering the millennium from A.D. 500 to 1500–concerning a wide variety of sexual behavior, including marital sex, adultery, homosexuality, concubinage, prostitution, masturbation, and incest. His survey makes strikingly clear how the system of sexual control in a world we have half-forgotten has shaped the world in which we live today. The regulation of marriage and divorce as we know it today, together with the outlawing of bigamy and polygamy and the imposition of criminal sanctions on such activities as sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus, and bestiality, are all based in large measure upon ideas and beliefs about sexual morality that became law in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages. "Brundage's book is consistently learned, enormously useful, and frequently entertaining. It is the best we have on the relationships between theological norms, legal principles, and sexual practice."—Peter Iver Kaufman, Church History
The Fires of Lust
Author: Katherine Harvey
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789144884
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
An illuminating exploration of the surprisingly familiar sex lives of ordinary medieval people. The medieval humoral system of medicine suggested that it was possible to die from having too much—or too little—sex, while the Roman Catholic Church taught that virginity was the ideal state. Holy men and women committed themselves to lifelong abstinence in the name of religion. Everyone was forced to conform to restrictive rules about who they could have sex with, in what way, how often, and even when, and could be harshly punished for getting it wrong. Other experiences are more familiar. Like us, medieval people faced challenges in finding a suitable partner or trying to get pregnant (or trying not to). They also struggled with many of the same social issues, such as whether prostitution should be legalized. Above all, they shared our fondness for dirty jokes and erotic images. By exploring their sex lives, the book brings ordinary medieval people to life and reveals details of their most personal thoughts and experiences. Ultimately, it provides us with an important and intimate connection to the past.
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789144884
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297
Book Description
An illuminating exploration of the surprisingly familiar sex lives of ordinary medieval people. The medieval humoral system of medicine suggested that it was possible to die from having too much—or too little—sex, while the Roman Catholic Church taught that virginity was the ideal state. Holy men and women committed themselves to lifelong abstinence in the name of religion. Everyone was forced to conform to restrictive rules about who they could have sex with, in what way, how often, and even when, and could be harshly punished for getting it wrong. Other experiences are more familiar. Like us, medieval people faced challenges in finding a suitable partner or trying to get pregnant (or trying not to). They also struggled with many of the same social issues, such as whether prostitution should be legalized. Above all, they shared our fondness for dirty jokes and erotic images. By exploring their sex lives, the book brings ordinary medieval people to life and reveals details of their most personal thoughts and experiences. Ultimately, it provides us with an important and intimate connection to the past.
Sexuality in Medieval Europe
Author: Ruth Mazo Karras
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000859274
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
Now in its fourth edition, Sexuality in Medieval Europe provides a lively account of a society whose attitudes toward sexuality both were ancestral to, and differed from, contemporary ones. The volume is structured not by types of sexual interactions or deviance, but to reflect the difference in gendered experiences when sex is seen as an act one person does to another. Sexual activity, within and outside of marriage, as well as sexual inactivity, had different meanings based on gender, social status, religious affiliation, and more. This book considers these iterations of medieval sexuality in its effort to show there was no single medieval attitude towards sexuality. With an emphasis on Christian Western Europe over the entire course of the Middle Ages, it also includes comparative material on neighboring cultures at the time. Alongside being reworked for further clarity and readability, the fourth edition offers substantial new material on trans scholarship and methodological attempts to recoup a trans past; changes in the treatment of sex work and its terminology; and new material on Byzantine and Muslim culture. Sexuality in Medieval Europe is an essential resource for all those who study medieval history, medieval culture, and the history of sexuality in Europe.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000859274
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Book Description
Now in its fourth edition, Sexuality in Medieval Europe provides a lively account of a society whose attitudes toward sexuality both were ancestral to, and differed from, contemporary ones. The volume is structured not by types of sexual interactions or deviance, but to reflect the difference in gendered experiences when sex is seen as an act one person does to another. Sexual activity, within and outside of marriage, as well as sexual inactivity, had different meanings based on gender, social status, religious affiliation, and more. This book considers these iterations of medieval sexuality in its effort to show there was no single medieval attitude towards sexuality. With an emphasis on Christian Western Europe over the entire course of the Middle Ages, it also includes comparative material on neighboring cultures at the time. Alongside being reworked for further clarity and readability, the fourth edition offers substantial new material on trans scholarship and methodological attempts to recoup a trans past; changes in the treatment of sex work and its terminology; and new material on Byzantine and Muslim culture. Sexuality in Medieval Europe is an essential resource for all those who study medieval history, medieval culture, and the history of sexuality in Europe.
The Corrupter of Boys
Author: Dyan Elliott
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812252527
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Book Description
In the fourth century, clerics began to distinguish themselves from members of the laity by virtue of their augmented claims to holiness. Because clerical celibacy was key to this distinction, religious authorities of all stripes—patristic authors, popes, theologians, canonists, monastic founders, and commentators—became progressively sensitive to sexual scandals that involved the clergy and developed sophisticated tactics for concealing or dispelling embarrassing lapses. According to Dyan Elliott, the fear of scandal dictated certain lines of action and inaction, the consequences of which are painfully apparent today. In The Corrupter of Boys, she demonstrates how, in conjunction with the requirement of clerical celibacy, scandal-averse policies at every conceivable level of the ecclesiastical hierarchy have enabled the widespread sexual abuse of boys and male adolescents within the Church. Elliott examines more than a millennium's worth of doctrine and practice to uncover the origins of a culture of secrecy and concealment of sin. She charts the continuities and changes, from late antiquity into the high Middle Ages, in the use of boys as sexual objects before focusing on four specific milieus in which boys and adolescents would have been especially at risk in the high and later Middle Ages: the monastery, the choir, the schools, and the episcopal court. The Corrupter of Boys is a work of stunning breadth and discomforting resonance, as Elliott concludes that the same clerical prerogatives and privileges that were formulated in late antiquity and the medieval era—and the same strategies to cover up the abuses they enable—remain very much in place.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812252527
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Book Description
In the fourth century, clerics began to distinguish themselves from members of the laity by virtue of their augmented claims to holiness. Because clerical celibacy was key to this distinction, religious authorities of all stripes—patristic authors, popes, theologians, canonists, monastic founders, and commentators—became progressively sensitive to sexual scandals that involved the clergy and developed sophisticated tactics for concealing or dispelling embarrassing lapses. According to Dyan Elliott, the fear of scandal dictated certain lines of action and inaction, the consequences of which are painfully apparent today. In The Corrupter of Boys, she demonstrates how, in conjunction with the requirement of clerical celibacy, scandal-averse policies at every conceivable level of the ecclesiastical hierarchy have enabled the widespread sexual abuse of boys and male adolescents within the Church. Elliott examines more than a millennium's worth of doctrine and practice to uncover the origins of a culture of secrecy and concealment of sin. She charts the continuities and changes, from late antiquity into the high Middle Ages, in the use of boys as sexual objects before focusing on four specific milieus in which boys and adolescents would have been especially at risk in the high and later Middle Ages: the monastery, the choir, the schools, and the episcopal court. The Corrupter of Boys is a work of stunning breadth and discomforting resonance, as Elliott concludes that the same clerical prerogatives and privileges that were formulated in late antiquity and the medieval era—and the same strategies to cover up the abuses they enable—remain very much in place.
Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs 900–1700
Author: Eve Levin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501727621
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Book Description
In this pioneering book, Eve Levin explores sexual behavior among the peoples of Serbia, Bulgaria, and Russia from their conversion to Christianity in the ninth and tenth centuries until the end of the seventeenth century. By ranging across all these societies, Levin is able to fulfill three basic aims: to delineate the general character of sexuality among the Orthodox Slavs, to enrich that account by drawing our attention to regional variations in the sexual mores of these peoples, and to draw suggestive comparisons between the world of the medieval Orthodox Slavs and their contemporaries in the Latin West. Levin begins with a study of the ecclesiastical image of sexuality as expressed in didactic and literary texts, showing that the Orthodox Church was deeply suspicious of sexuality. Her second chapter, on canon law and marfiage, examines the conditions for marriage, divorce, and remarriage, the obligation of the conjugal relationship, and the impact of these rules on social order. Levin looks at church regulations concerning sexual relations among relatives by blood, marriage, spiritual kinship, and adoption in Chapter Three, and she devotes Chapter Four to prohibited sexual practices, both inside and outside of marriage. In the fifth chapter she studies Russian and South Slavic responses to rape, and demonstrates that these societies simultaneously censured violence against women and sanctioned the attitudes and social structures that justified it. Chapter Six deals with the rules on sexual conduct for the clergy, whose job it was to enforce sexual precepts. Throughout her work, Levin argues that, despite its conviction that sexual expression was diabolical, the medieval Orthodox Church approached sexual matters in a surprisingly practical way; its official sexual ethic corresponded to a great degree with popular views. Historians of the Slavic world, both medieval and modern, will welcome this accessible study. It should also attract comparativists who work in such fields as church history, the history of women and the family, and the history of sexuality.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501727621
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Book Description
In this pioneering book, Eve Levin explores sexual behavior among the peoples of Serbia, Bulgaria, and Russia from their conversion to Christianity in the ninth and tenth centuries until the end of the seventeenth century. By ranging across all these societies, Levin is able to fulfill three basic aims: to delineate the general character of sexuality among the Orthodox Slavs, to enrich that account by drawing our attention to regional variations in the sexual mores of these peoples, and to draw suggestive comparisons between the world of the medieval Orthodox Slavs and their contemporaries in the Latin West. Levin begins with a study of the ecclesiastical image of sexuality as expressed in didactic and literary texts, showing that the Orthodox Church was deeply suspicious of sexuality. Her second chapter, on canon law and marfiage, examines the conditions for marriage, divorce, and remarriage, the obligation of the conjugal relationship, and the impact of these rules on social order. Levin looks at church regulations concerning sexual relations among relatives by blood, marriage, spiritual kinship, and adoption in Chapter Three, and she devotes Chapter Four to prohibited sexual practices, both inside and outside of marriage. In the fifth chapter she studies Russian and South Slavic responses to rape, and demonstrates that these societies simultaneously censured violence against women and sanctioned the attitudes and social structures that justified it. Chapter Six deals with the rules on sexual conduct for the clergy, whose job it was to enforce sexual precepts. Throughout her work, Levin argues that, despite its conviction that sexual expression was diabolical, the medieval Orthodox Church approached sexual matters in a surprisingly practical way; its official sexual ethic corresponded to a great degree with popular views. Historians of the Slavic world, both medieval and modern, will welcome this accessible study. It should also attract comparativists who work in such fields as church history, the history of women and the family, and the history of sexuality.
Images of Lust
Author: James Jerman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135862311
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 359
Book Description
Sexually explicit sculptures may be found on a number of medieval churches in France and Spain. This fascinating study examines the origins and purposes of these sculptures, viewing them not as magical fertility symbols, nor even as idols of ancient pre-Christian religions, but as serious works that dealt with the sexual customs and salvation of medieval folk, and thus gave support to the Church's moral teachings.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135862311
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 359
Book Description
Sexually explicit sculptures may be found on a number of medieval churches in France and Spain. This fascinating study examines the origins and purposes of these sculptures, viewing them not as magical fertility symbols, nor even as idols of ancient pre-Christian religions, but as serious works that dealt with the sexual customs and salvation of medieval folk, and thus gave support to the Church's moral teachings.
The Book of Margery Kempe
Author: Margery Kempe
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0140432515
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 449
Book Description
The story of the eventful and controversial life of Margery Kempe - wife, mother, businesswoman, pilgrim and visionary - is the earliest surviving autobiography in English. Here Kempe (c.1373-c.1440) recounts in vivid, unembarrassed detail the madness that followed the birth of the first of her fourteen children, the failure of her brewery business, her dramatic call to the spiritual life, her visions and uncontrollable tears, the struggle to convert her husband to a vow of chastity and her pilgrimages to Europe and the Holy Land. Margery Kempe could not read or write, and dictated her remarkable story late in life. It remains an extraordinary record of human faith and a portrait of a medieval woman of unforgettable character and courage.
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0140432515
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 449
Book Description
The story of the eventful and controversial life of Margery Kempe - wife, mother, businesswoman, pilgrim and visionary - is the earliest surviving autobiography in English. Here Kempe (c.1373-c.1440) recounts in vivid, unembarrassed detail the madness that followed the birth of the first of her fourteen children, the failure of her brewery business, her dramatic call to the spiritual life, her visions and uncontrollable tears, the struggle to convert her husband to a vow of chastity and her pilgrimages to Europe and the Holy Land. Margery Kempe could not read or write, and dictated her remarkable story late in life. It remains an extraordinary record of human faith and a portrait of a medieval woman of unforgettable character and courage.
Women and Gender in Medieval Europe
Author: Margaret Schaus
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0415969441
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 986
Book Description
Publisher description
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 0415969441
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 986
Book Description
Publisher description
Carnal Knowledge
Author: Martin Ingram
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107179874
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 483
Book Description
How was the law used to control sex in Tudor England? What were the differences between secular and religious practice? This major study, based on a wide range of church and secular court archives, explores sexual regulation in London and provincial England before, during and immediately after the Reformation.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107179874
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 483
Book Description
How was the law used to control sex in Tudor England? What were the differences between secular and religious practice? This major study, based on a wide range of church and secular court archives, explores sexual regulation in London and provincial England before, during and immediately after the Reformation.