Love, Medieval Style!: Women and Sex: What is Right, What is Wrong?

Love in the Middle Ages presented a great paradox surrounding sex and Christianity: a push and pull between desire and celibacy. Although the act of sex is an innate biological desire and necessary for our survival, particular religious theories restricted lovers from sex because of their fear of offending God or losing a coveted place in Heaven. In The Life of Christina of Markyate, Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, and The Acts of Thomas, I.1-16, one can pay attention to the way in which these confusing ideals impacted women in particular.

In The Life of Christina of Markyate, the young nun Christina is portrayed as a devout Christian who displays conflicting feelings toward sex. Christina gets closer and closer to chastity with each new partner she takes. Starting with Bishop Ranulf, a sexual lover; to Burthred, who she does not care for; to Roger and a cleric who represent sensual asceticism and spiritual desire; to a completely devout love for Geoffrey. Christina becomes an anchoress, taking a vow of chastity, and retreating from society for the sake of prayer and devotion to God. Christina is conflicted by her devotion and her desire to be touched. As the story reads, she remembers the “the thoughts and stings of the flesh with which she had been troubled, and even though she was not conscious of having fallen either in deed or in desire, she was chary of asserting that she had escaped unscathed” (Life, p. 127), displaying Christina’s guilt for experiencing lust.

Because of the intense pressure to remain chaste, she was guilted into thinking solely about God. Therefore, Christina and women like her would sometimes transfer desire to their devotion to God, as this was the only socially acceptable option. Christina displays this forbidden sentiment in a scene in which she imagines the feeling of Christ pressed “to her bosom” and the “immeasurable delight” of “feeling his presence within her or rather through the barrier of the flesh” (Life, p. 119). The scene represents a joining with God, of Christina losing her virginity in a sense: a sensation that is more orgasmic and fulfilling than any sexual interaction with any other man. At the end of the story, Christina and Geoffrey see God in each other and thus find themselves attracted to one another. Christina says to Geoffrey, “let us join hands in agreement that neither meanwhile will touch the other unchastely, neither will one look upon the other except with a pure and angelic gaze, promising God” (Life, p. 12), demonstrating that she is aware of the desire that once plagued her. To avoid any guilt or disloyalty to God, she must verbally assert that they will follow through and remain pure.

Paul asserts a similar idea in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 5-7): in order to remain on the right side of Christianity, one must avoid all sexual pursuits, a view that was commonly held during the early 100s CE and onward. He believes that “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:1), expressing the sentiment that a devout individual’s mind, body and soul should belong only to God. Paul recognizes, however, that some do not have the self-control to remain chaste all their lives. In this case, he offers the solution that it is tolerable to have one consistent partner to quell this impiousness: “it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion” (1 Cor. 7:1). Marriage is condoned only under the condition that there is a specific time each day that the desire be curbed in order to return one’s attention to prayer: “Do not deprive one another except perhaps by agreement for a set time, to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self‐control” (ibid.). The mention of the devil’s name shows a deep scorn toward those who cannot resist these natural urges, a mentality that created a social structure of power; those who could hold back were regarded as pure, whereas the others were thought of as impulsive.

A groundbreaking opinion that Paul reveals, however, is the notion that a wife has authority over her husband’s body, which challenges the era’s standard patriarchy. He makes statements such as, “The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband” (ibid.), and “the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does,” (ibid.) and vice versa. Paul makes clear that it is not simply within the man’s control, but that women too possess sexual desires that they have the power to manage as well. Although this is a separate issue from devout celibacy, it is worth noting that as early as the 50s AD, there exists an eminent text regarding female equality.

In The Acts of Thomas, I. 1-16, the background of Judas Thomas and his views on sex is discussed. Thomas rejects all sex, an example of radical asceticism. There is a story in the Acts that involves a wedding that Thomas attends where he acts as a savior for the bride, yet again displaying a focus on female sexuality. Thomas leads her to a room and convinces her through a religious epiphany that God is the only man that can be loved, and her groom is not worth His scorn. The bride then exclaims to her disgruntled father, “I have had no intercourse with a temporary husband, which ends only in lust and bitterness of soul, since I have been united with a true husband [God]” (Thomas, 14, p. 89). Following Thomas’ advice, she realizes that her time in heaven is more sacred than her “temporary” life on Earth, thus vowing to refrain from sex and marriage. Rather than marrying her betrothed, she commits to a higher power, making her love pure and removing any guilt or shame she experienced from her physical sexual desires.

Modern-day readers are able to discern this conflicting mentality in which sexual desires are recognized because they are widely experienced, yet that it is more important to remain celibate during one’s short time on Earth in order to please God and enjoy a longer afterlife. Female desire is recognized, and women are urged to devote themselves to pleasing themselves only through God, or not at all. A pure holy woman is revered more than a promiscuous and impulsive one, as is often the case to this day. These devout mindsets still exist in many parts of the world, although clearly much has changed in reducing the stigma around sex. How did this transition occur and how was sex, particularly for women, eventually accepted? From Paul’s letter written in the 50s AD, Thomas’ acts in the 200s, and Christina’s story from the 1100s, it is difficult to discern a chronological pattern, but instead a spectrum of unsettled beliefs.

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