Christina of Markyate and Héloïse d’Argenteuil: Medieval Women on Sex, Love, and Marriage

In the medieval Christian world, marriage provided a controlled and sanctioned outlet for sensuality and sexual passion, which were otherwise considered to be precursors to sin. Two twelfth-century European women, Christina of Markyate and Héloïse d’Argenteuil, challenged this dominant understanding of the relationship between marriage and sexuality. Christina was a holy woman who rejected marriage to devote herself to Christianity. This devotion, however, did not prevent her from exploring her sensuality, which became a key facet of her religious experience. Heloise was an abbess and the wife of theologian Peter Abelard, who placed her passionate love for Abelard above both their marriage and her devotion to god. In some ways, Christina and Heloise appear to have had opposite aims: Christina wanted to evade earthly sexual bonds to dedicate herself completely to her spiritual pursuits, while Heloise prioritized her relationship with Abelard over her commitment to religion. My interest, however, lies in how both women rejected the institution of marriage and elevated sensuality from a sinful urge to a divine experience. According to the sacred biography The Life of Christina of Markyate, Christina forsook earthly marital bonds to remain faithful to Jesus, whom she saw as her true partner. Her relationship to Jesus was enhanced by a deep spiritual eroticism that satiated her earthly sexual desire. In turn, although she was in fact married to Abelard, Heloise challenged the importance of the institution in their correspondence, elevating their passionate and sensual love bond over their marital bond.

When comparing these two treatments of the relationship between sex and marriage, it is important to take into account the divergent modes of authorship at play in Heloise’s love letters and the hagiographic retelling of Christina’s life. While the first-person narration and somewhat private nature of Heloise’s letters seem to allow us entry into her personal thoughts, the life of Christina is told by an unknown author, most likely a man, who is writing not only to document her life but to present it as an example of a saintly existence. Thus, while Heloise is at times quite openly rebellious, Christina’s biographer is careful not to let the discussion of her sensuality undermine the ultimate narrative of her sanctity.

Although marriage was considered to be a sacred bond, The Life of Christina presents it as an earthly attachment that is subordinate to Christina’s sensual relationship to Christ, which is portrayed as a transcendent spiritual experience. Christina is pressured into marriage by religious authority figures and her family, whom the text implicitly condemns; she refuses, however, in the name of her fidelity to Christ. Stephen Jaeger notes that within the text “marriage, the law, [and] the arrangements that structure civil society, are relegated to a lower order of experience” (105). This fits into the general understanding of marriage at the time, which would have been seen as less holy than a life celibately devoted to god. What is perhaps more noteworthy is the way that the text integrates her sexuality into her religiosity. Christina’s series of close relationships with religious men throughout the text is characterized by entangled spiritual and sensual bonds. Her ultimate spiritual epiphany comes in the form of a sexually charged dream in which she is both penetrated by and gives birth to Christ, resulting in a feeling of ecstasy so great that she ceases to feel any kind of earthly sexual desire (119). Jaeger argues that “The idea is not to reject passion and intercourse, but to posit a passion so deeply, inwardly and ultimately satisfying that it ends the demon-inspired, earthly kind...the sexual is incorporated into a higher, purer kind of love by the deifying of human desires” (108). While her sexuality is ultimately reconciled with her religious devotion through the idea that she is in a sense married to Christ, the text toes a potentially subversive line by presenting intense sexual desire and devoted religiosity as intertwined rather than mutually exclusive.

Heloise presents a much more openly subversive view of the relationship between marriage and sexuality. She writes to Abelard that “The name of wife may have the advantages of sanctity and safety, but to me the sweeter name will always be lover, or, if your dignity can bear it, concubine or whore” (55). As in Christina’s vita, Heloise presents marriage as an attachment of convenience, one that secures social status but is not the substance of a relationship. Jaeger notes that “Heloise’s sentiments sanction a genuine, inward love of the soul for a man, which aims at no material or social gain, at the same time as they reject marriage, the institution made to sanction love” (100). Heloise portrays a love that is strong enough to exist outside the sanctioned bond of marriage as purer than that which is dependent upon the social and financial security that marriage provides, challenging the role that love plays in marriage.

Rather than reaching spiritual enlightenment through eroticism, as Christina does, Heloise perceives her carnal desire to be at odds with her ecclesiastic position. She challenges traditional conceptions of chastity, stating that “Men call me chaste who do not see the hypocrite I am. They count purity of the flesh among the virtues though the virtue belongs to the heart and not the body” (80). She does not condemn sexual desire, but rather her own hypocrisy in appearing chaste in her role as an abbess when in fact she still lusts for Abelard. She thus sees chastity more as a mental disposition than an action, a position that appears to be at odds with Christina’s definition, which is based only on abstaining from sexual relations. While Christina’s eroticism becomes entwined with her spiritual pursuits, Heloise’s religious role seems to exist in tension with her erotic desires.

In order to read these texts with and against one another, it is necessary to attend to their distinct narrative forms. Heloise’s letters are written in the first person, and intended mainly for Abelard’s eyes, thus allowing her to articulate private and potentially subversive thoughts that could have jeopardized her career were they to be made public. At the same time, the semi-public nature of letter writing during the middle ages indicates that the potential for broader readership may also have shaped the presentation of her arguments. The Life of Christina, however, was a hagiography written after her death by an unknown, but most likely male, author. The perspectives we get into Christina’s interior existence, her thoughts, motivations, and particularly her erotic desires, are largely projections. Regardless of the accuracy of the biography, the text is clearly trying to promote a particular narrative of her life and sexuality. Jaeger notes that the narrator “senses that Christina’s mode of feeling and loving, and that which she inspires in men, is highly open to misunderstanding and attack; otherwise it would not need such justification” (106). The author appears to be aware of the subversive potential both of her refusal to marry and of the sexual underpinnings of her relationships with men and her spiritual journey. However, by ultimately channeling her sensuality towards Christ, the narrative seeks to preserve her holy status. As Jaeger points out, “The narrative suggests – wants to suggest – that the awareness of sensuality and the successful facing of malice and misunderstanding in spiritual love are part of the pattern of sanctity” (106).

The ultimate message of the hagiography, in other words, is that Christ can offer a higher and more fulfilling kind of passion, one that allows Christina to overcome earthly lust and desires. Yet, the message of the narrative does not entirely erase the subversive potential that emerges throughout the text: Christina is a woman who evades familial and ecclesiastic pressures to marry and have socially-sanctioned sexual relationships with men, while still engaging in romantically–and sexually–charged, albeit celibate, relationships with men throughout her lifetime. While these texts function differently, then, both present medieval female figures who in some way pushed the boundaries of acceptable female sexuality, redefining the relationship between love, sex, and marriage in the process.