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SEX AND SEXUALITY IN EUROPE, 1100-1750
Transcending the traditional categories of ‘medieval’ and ‘early modern’ to analyse pan-European attitudes and behaviours, Sex and Sexuality in Europe, 1100-1750 provides students with a grounding in the history of sexuality by supplying both a detailed analysis of the existing historiographical debates but also analysis of the primary sources such as autobiographies and contemporary literature.
Offering an accessible overview that places sex and sexuality within the historical context of the time period, it creates a deeper understanding of connections and differences across Europe. An interdisciplinary work, it draws on cultural, social, religious, philosophical, literary, economic and scientific ideas while incorporating theory from within the field to broaden perspective of the history of sexuality. Challenging the separation of the medieval and early modern ‘periods’, this volume highlights a great deal of continuity between 1100 and 1750 across Europe, with change occurring more notably towards the eighteenth century. Key interventions on the role of the passions, the imagination, the ‘two worlds’ motif and subordination are made across the work. Moreover, it questions the belief that the ‘Middle Ages’ was one of sexual repression and highlights a second ‘world’ in which sex was a natural, even celebrated part of life and engages with the belief that the eighteenth century saw a ‘sexual revolution’.
This book is essential reading for students, scholars and the general public interested in the history of sexuality.
Andrew Mansfield is a Research Associate in the Department of History at the University of Sussex. He specialises in the history of sexuality and the history of political thought, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Laura Pilsworth and Natasha Hodgson at Routledge for their encouragement, support and patience in the writing of this book. Laura in particular has been incredibly helpful throughout the process of this work as my editor and who initially sought me out to write the book based loosely on a module that I taught at Goldsmiths, University of London. I would like to extend this thanks of gratitude to Liz James and the Department of History and the School of Media, Arts and Humanities at the University of Sussex more generally for giving me a home, as well as colleagues past and present for their assistance and guidance. In writing the book advice was offered by Richard Grayson, Rob Iliffe, Richard Whatmore and Pat Willan, and I would like to thank them for this.
My main debts have been accrued amongst family and friends who have been fascinated by the ‘sex book’ as it was known to my youngest daughter. This includes my mother Megan Mansfield, Paddy O’Keeffe, Kay and Lee Holden, Andy Gasson, Jon Harris, David Kmiot, Amanda McKeever, Ben Miller and Lindsey Read-Fitch. I wish to dedicate this book to my daughters Charlotte, Lana and Alethea. They have been a source of inspiration, and both intrigued and appalled by some of the things that have heard discussed regarding the work. Yet most of all I dedicate the book to my wife Sam, who has been a continual source of encouragement and strength as I worked on the project — as she always is.
INTRODUCTION
In St. Birgitta’s 1340s dialogue, Christ warns a bride concerning the temptations that face the pious and virtuous in the world to watch ‘out for the devil’s roast, the one he cooks on fires of lust and desire’. For when ‘fat is put on a fire, something starts necessarily dripping from it. Sins proceed in this way from worldly dealings and worldly company’. ‘Though you do not know what is in a person’s conscience, external signs bring out what is hidden in the mind’ (St. Birgitta, 2008, p. 199). These temptations, often sexual, undermined the individual’s ability to serve God faithfully and without selfishness because people became distracted by the pleasures of the flesh and forgot their spiritual journey towards God. While it is acknowledged that sex served a purpose for subsistence like food and drink, feelings of desire and attraction were so strong they could derail the message of Christ and mire people in sinful activity by indulging in it to excess.
Sex was to be in marriage and in moderation, practised through penile-vaginal penetration for procreation, and was not meant to be enjoyed according to the Christ of St. Birgitta because the Devil could pull people into marital sin. Marriage was a recognition by the Church that most people could not fulfil a life lived in chastity or celibacy, the ideal, so married life was therefore a compromise for the flock and their need to sate the sexual urge. For those that could live the ideal life of ascetic spiritual and bodily purity like Thomas 4 Kempis, one should ‘[s]trive to withdraw your heart from the love of visible things, and direct your affections to things invisible. For those who follow only their natural inclinations defile their conscience, and lose the grace of God’ (Kempis, 1995, p. 1). True spirituality meant becoming dead to yourself to prevent temptation, particularly from the passions which disturbed peace of heart.
As has been intimated, this ideal was for the most devout of clerical and lay followers of the Church, for the vast majority of people this was not the case. Indeed, as will be shown in this book many people throughout the period of 1100 to 1750 were unable to live anywhere near this paragon of virtue. Instead, there is a wealth of material that eschews excessive piety and encompasses a life pursuing whatever sexual and other pleasures they can take. Such works regale in the bawdy, the earthy and the material world as people tried to muddle their way through what was a hard life and embraced their desires either in actuality or in the imagination. As can be shown from the Carmina Burana there was often a humour around sexual matters away from the pious indignation of the Church: ‘Thanks to Lady Venus! She | has granted melone famous victory: | charitably | induced my girl | to yield the pearl | of her virginity!’ (Anonymous, 1986, pp. 78).
Sexual activity is not an uncommon occurrence in works and it portrays a gamut of behaviours and situations, including the consequences of such behaviour: ‘Milun visited the damsel so often and loved her so much she became pregnant’ (de France, 1999, p. 97). As will be shown, sexual matters were not really shied away from, although the way they have been described varies contextually across Europe and over the centuries. What is evident is that Europeans have been deeply fascinated by sex.
As animals, human beings are extreme in that they can have sex and reproduce all year round, which perhaps partly accounts for the centrality of sex for people. In relation to the animal kingdom human sexuality is ‘abnormal’ according to Jared Diamond. Most people remain in monogamous pairs, marriage is for the joint rearing of children, people live with other embedded couples in society, marriage partners usually have sex in private, human ovulation is concealed and sex is often for fun, and women of a certain age will go through the menopause while men’s fertility does not shut down (Diamond, 1998, p. 4). Our brains, posture and sexuality make us human, and key elements of this sexuality are the capacity to thrive in a social system and the commitment to child-rearing from the woman. For Lawrence Stone:
The abnormal size and development of man’s cerebral cortex means that the sexual drive is stimulated or controlled by cultural norms and learned experience. Despite appearances, human sex takes place mostly in the head. The Freudian assumption that sex is an unchanging infrastructure, and that there has been no change in the strength of the libido over time, has therefore no basis in reality, so deeply is it overlaid by cultural norms.
Human beings are thereby a complicated animal with a range of needs and desires, physically, mentally and spiritually. As we can see, the cultural involvement of the Church was important throughout the timeframe of this book and did shape the people of Europe’s behaviour in many ways. Yet it was not the only driver that we find, and human society, nature and culture are so complex that there was variation in how people lived their everyday lives and reacted to the strictures of the Church, state and society.
The History of Sexuality
Scientific discussions of human sex and sexuality are quite often at variance to those from the field of the history of sexuality. For Richard Dawkins sex has developed — rather than asexual reproduction — for an evolutionary benefit, and sexuality (the gene) is to manipulate the other genes to achieve its ends. The reason for sex, therefore, is to widen the ‘gene pool’ and create greater chances for success (Dawkins, 2016, pp. 57-58, 190). This view is echoed by Nick Lane, who states that the goal of cells is to become two cells; i.e. to reproduce. There are two fundamental aspects to sex in Lane’s opinion: firstly, the need to mate at all, and secondly, specialised mating types, as in two sexes rather than one.
Most evolutionary biologists ‘believe that the advantage of sex lies in the recombination of DNA from distinct sources, which may help to eliminate broken genes and to foster variety, keeping one step ahead of inventive parasites, or rapid changes in environmental factors’. Sex allows competition and creates an ‘evolutionary arms race in which each sex exerts an influence over the adaptations of the other, countering some of the more preposterous mating strategies’ (Lane, 2018, pp. 343-45). The presence of two sexes brings together a ‘perfect match’ for the fittest offspring and their survival.
Moving away from the cellular level, the neurobiologist Dick Swaab states that a person’s sexuality ‘is determined in the womb by his or her genetic background and the effects of hormones and other substances on the developing brain’. Hormones and ‘other chemical substances importantly affect the development of our sexual orientation’ and this includes heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality. Gender too is seen by Swaab as biologically determined by our chromosomes, and hormones in utero with the brain differentiating ‘along male or female lines in the second half of pregnancy’ (Swaab, 2014, pp. 55-57, 60-62). He deems that gender identity and sexuality are fixed in the brain while in the womb when established circuits are made and are tied to hormones which are ‘involved in every aspect of sexual behaviour’ (Ibid., pp. 98-100).
Swaab dismisses the notion that our orientation is environmentally determined as dangerous because it leads to attempts at social engineering, and he considers that the social constructionist view went out of date in the 1960s and 1970s.” Swaab claims it died a death with a belief in the ‘blank slate’ and a desire to change society.? Similarly, William M. Reddy rejects the notion that human beings are so flexible, as the ‘absolute plasticity of the individual is a necessary implication of strong constructionist stances on questions of sexuality, ethnicity and identity’ (Reddy, 1997, p. 327). Reddy argues that to focus solely on social constructionism is to lose part of what it means to be human because people have agency — as seen in their emotions — and therefore not all of human sexuality is construction (Ibid., p. 340).
Others, however, feel that the way forward for a true reflection of the human condition and sexuality is a mixture of essentialism with social constructionism. As Mark W. Moffett points out, as ‘social beings, we depend on our awareness of others’ and we are hardwired for society (from development as a baby). As a group human beings have ‘mind-tomind coupling’ which has been described as a ‘mechanism for creating and sharing a social world’ and it means that every society or community is ‘socially constructed in the imagination of its people’ (Moffett, 2019, pp. 161-62, 164). In Robert M. Sapolsky’s opinion, it ‘actually makes no sense to distinguish between aspects of behaviour that are “biological” and those that would be described as, say, “psychological” or “cultural”’ as they are ‘utterly intertwined’.
Understanding human beings is ‘a mess, a subject involving brain chemistry, hormones, sensory cues, prenatal environment, early experiences, genes, both biological and cultural evolution, and ecological pressures, among other things’ (Sapolsky, 2017, pp. 4-5). ‘Stimulating environments, harsh parents, good neighbourhoods, uninspiring teachers, optimal diets’ all ‘alter genes in the brain’ (Ibid., p. 222). Relative to human sexual experience, it ‘is shot through with the influence of language and culture and it is various beyond belief. For this reason, neither biology nor psychology can provide the whole of any explanation of the social affair which is human sexuality’ (Denman, 2004, p. 37). Chess Denman thereby advocates the need to use a range of disciplines that bring together the social sciences, science (biology) and history to develop a picture of sexuality. Human sexuality is so complex and is impacted by so many factors, it is necessary to combine a social constructivist and essentialist approach (Lehmiller, 2014, p. 21).4
Human sexuality is such an important topic because sexual pleasure has been seen as ‘momentous’, leading people to lose their dignity, pursue opportunities and exhibit a range of behaviours to obtain it. Such is its power that it is argued that it requires regulation, which can be problematic. Crucially, regulation is necessary (from early humans onwards) to control the production of offspring and heirs. Likewise, if ‘sexual pleasure can be stolen, forced, or manipulated to support a variety of hostile functions, then regulation may be required to maintain social harmony, and ultimately, some semblance of social stability’ (Abrahamson & Pinkerton, 1995, p. 55). Martin Ingram has made clear, ‘all societies regulate sexual behaviour and sexual expression’, although there is a great deal of cultural variation in how they do this (Ingram, 2017, p. 5).
As we will see in this book, ‘[l]ate medieval and early modern Europe was one area ... where systematic attempts were made to regulate sexual and other forms of personal behaviour by legal means’ (Ibid., p. 8). The urge for sex has meant that sexuality has always contained ‘animal features’ for Christians, and is connected to the ‘lesser’ species. Sex has been both ‘praised as a universal bond of organic nature and damned as a degrading and unworthy vestige of our primitive past’. This means that sexuality in Europe ‘has been portrayed in an antagonistic relationship to society ... a corrupter or enemy of human culture, an unruly impulse that needs regulation or ritual to control it’ (Nye, 1999, p. 3). Juxtaposed with this view is the coterminous belief that sexuality can be liberating for individuals and communities, but while the two contrary relations of sexuality and society seem more in ‘balance’ in the present day this has not always been the case.
What is essential in the scope and aims of this work is to reveal the continuity that existed over the period of 1100 and 1750. While there were changes and alterations of views and behaviour, taking Nye’s coterminous views one can see that they existed throughout this timeframe. This challenges the perspective that the Middle Ages were simply a time of repression and that in the development of modernity from the seventeenth century, something changed.
Michel Foucault espoused such an opinion. To his mind, ‘when one looks back over these last three centuries with their continual transformations, things appear in a very different light: around and apropos of sex, one sees a veritable discursive explosion’ (Foucault, 1990, p. 17). The implication is that sex was discussed less frequently or openly before that time, and that secondly, there has been a rupture or discontinuity somewhere from the sixteenth century.
For Foucault, the Reformation was the key. Christians prior to the seventeenth century had to discuss sex and desire in confession to avoid sin, but from the seventeenth century the Church lost its power through secularisation and the state (and its institutions) took control of sex. The ‘Christian pastoral’ mindset, however, was so ingrained in Europeans that for three centuries ‘Western man’ has been obsessed with ‘telling everything concerning his sex’. Unshackled from spirituality, from the eighteenth century this proclivity to discuss sex has become allied to ‘political, economic, and technical needs’ to talk about sex and define sexuality via ‘analysis, stocktaking, classification, and specification’ as the state became pre-eminent (Ibid., pp. 23-25).°
What is often depicted is a repressive Middle Ages under the dominance of the Church and its morality concerning sex and sexuality. This is met by the late seventeenth century and eighteenth century in which there was a ‘sexual revolution’ when a phallocentric conception of society took hold as there was a move towards penetrative vaginal-penile sexual intercourse in which women’s pleasure was no longer a consideration (for procreation). The confluence of a range of factors including the appearance of the ‘third sex’ (Trumbach), the rise in illegitimacy (Hitchcock) and Enlightenment ideas on desire and pleasure (Dabhoiwala) benefitted men in particular. What can therefore be found in-between is Anna Clark’s ‘twilight moments’ in which those:
sexual activities or desires which people are not supposed to engage in, but they do. The twilight fades into the deepest darkness and then the light returns at dawn, so twilight moments were those acts which people committed, or desires they felt, which could be temporary; they returned to their everyday lives, and evaded a stigmatised identity as deviant.
(Clark, 2008, p. 6)
For Clark, these ‘twilight moments’ are bound up with a degree of ‘grudging acceptance’ or toleration of this behaviour which was regulated by being hidden or people being (publicly) gossiped about.
Yet despite the profound impact of the Church on shaping attitudes towards sex and sexuality, it has been argued that attitudes regarding sexuality ‘varied widely’ throughout the Middle Ages. While theologians and the Church espoused chastity, many people behaved quite differently, and doctors for example argued that sex was good for balancing the body’s humours (Evans, 2014, pp. 2-3). For Kim M. Phillips and Barry Reay, many in the Church such as priests did not achieve full celibacy and parishioners knew of cohabiting monks, nuns and priests in the earlier centuries of this book. Moreover, culturally only sexually active men were ‘real men’ so they ignored the Church’s prescriptions concerning sexual behaviour (Phillips & Reay, 2011, pp. 33-35, 37-38). This has led Ruth Mazo Karras to highlight two visions of medieval sexuality: a ‘vision of total repression’, and an ‘earthier one’ which ‘dismisses the Church and its repressive teachings as full of hypocrisy’ meaning that it was ‘generally ignored by medieval people, who went about their business’ (Karras, 2005, p. 1).° Additionally, gender was tested throughout the ‘Renaissance’ period (1450-1650, or indeed 1300-1650) as art, the stage and other elements challenged the idea of gender and gender roles. The Renaissance saw the ‘understanding and representation of sexuality’ branch off into multifarious directions, always with one eye on the alluring remains of the ancient world’ (Talvacchia, 2014, p. 9).
What can be seen therefore, is that prior to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries sex and sexuality were dynamic and Europe was not simply a repressive whole dominated by the Church with people living a life under the shadow of the ideal of chastity, or celibacy. Instead there was great variation in sexual practices and behaviour amongst Europeans. It must also be stated that while there is much truth in Foucault’s underlining in the importance of the Reformation, it did not cause an immediate rupture and the role of the Church and organised religion did not rescind so forcefully against the presence of growing state power in the timeframe of this book. What will be demonstrated is that many elements of sex and sexuality are built upon long-standing antecedents that have resonance throughout the entirety of 1100 to 1750. This book thereby agrees with Phillips and Reay’s contention that there is a need to undermine the division between the medieval and early modern ‘periods’ because ideas and views of sex were similar prior to the nineteenth centuries construct of ‘sexuality’ (Phillips & Reay, 2011, p. 15). In fact, what will be argued in this book is that there was a great deal of continuity between 1100 and 1750 and subsequently, the existence of an ’early modern’ period is not helpful in terms of the history of sexuality.
Periodisation
Phillips and Reay point to the nineteenth-century construction of the terminology for sex and sexuality —- when terms such as ‘heterosexual’, ‘homosexual’, ‘lesbian’, ‘bisexual’, ‘sadist’, ‘masochist’ and ‘sexuality’ were coined — to provide new structures of knowledge and styles of reasoning according to Foucault. In the modern era (post-1800) preoccupations developed with the ‘centrality of sexual habits, tastes and preferences (what are often termed “orientations”, “identities”) to one’s true or inner self? (Ibid., pp. 7-8). According to Phillips and Reay such language and ways of conceptualising human sexual behaviour did not exist prior to 1800. The years 1100 to 1800 share a continuity that is pre-medicalisation and pre the creation of sexuality. As will be demonstrated in the chapters below, although there are changes and shifts over the timeframe of the book, there is much continuity from the twelfth century to the eighteenth century in terms of sexuality. The Reformation does play an important role in shifting attitudes, but this has a drawn-out impact that begins to appear in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but it is coupled with the effects of global trade and the impact of commercial society and urbanisation on morality. What is quite evident in this book is that the ‘early modern’ period does not really fit in to the account of what is happening historically particularly when competing with sliding interpretations of where the Middle Ages end, and when the Renaissance should be overlaid for both periods.
As Jacques Le Goff has explained, one of ‘the chief problems facing human beings, from the very first moment of their existence on Earth, has been the problem of mastering time’. Because humanity is unable to predict the future it organises the past, sometime with the hope of determining the future. Periodisation, or the division of history into units of time stems from the Greek root periodos (‘periods’) meaning ‘a circular path’. For Le Goff, there is ‘nothing neutral, or innocent, about cutting time into smaller periods’ as it is based on other people’s judgements and values (Le Goff, 2015, pp. 1-2). Periodisation contains the ‘idea of transition’ as well as a ‘collection of chronological units’, so the changes between periods ‘have a very special meaning’. Moreover, scholars ‘assert that history constitutes a seamless garment, but they cannot render the past intelligible until they subdivide it into manageable and coherent units of time’. Unfortunately, these ‘period frontiers can become intellectual straightjackets that profoundly affect our habits of mind’ (Green, 1992, p. 13). This problematically results in a ‘rigidifying power’ that is evident in universities and textbooks, which can interfere with the interpretation of evidence, separating or pigeonholing findings that are adjudged to belong to a particular period. Periods can also be kept separate or seen to be different, as we find in this book with the labels of ‘medieval’, ‘Renaissance’ and ‘early modern’.
For Euan Cameron, early modern historians and theologians assumed that chaotic events were profoundly important because they ‘demonstrated the guiding hand of God’. Ruptures and chaos therefore offered meaning. At ‘its most extreme, the search for clear markers of historical periods reflected a deeply felt need to see the hand’ and ‘footprints of God all over human events’ (Cameron in Poole & Williams, 2019, p. 71). Periodisation is thereby a subjective undertaking, but it has always been carried out to provide meaning when ordering time. Significantly, from the seventeenth century history was divided into three periods: ancient, medieval and modern. Due to Petrarch there was consciousness of an intervening period or a ‘middle age’, with ‘medieval’ being a term of denigration: a ‘dark age’ between the glory of classical times and the Enlightenment (Arnold, 2021, pp. 8-10). In following Augustine, Petrarch had perceived time in a ‘linear’ fashion with a negative conception of humanity due to the collapse of Rome, after which followed a time of ‘darkness’ that he hoped would end. The humanists took up this idea, and from the fifteenth century began to believe that their time was one ‘of reborn classical culture’ having ‘rescued Greek from near-oblivion, removed errors from Latin, cleared fog from philosophy, crassness from theology, crudeness from art’ (Nelson, 2007, pp. 193-94). They engendered a binary between their enlightenment and the previous ‘darkness’, which was a perspective followed by the historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) who spoke of a ‘sleep of a 1000 years’. Well into the twentieth century, the Middle Ages were still conceived to be a ‘dark age’ suppressed by religion and offering a stark contrast to the Enlightenment (Mommsen, 1942, pp. 226-27).
The term ‘early modern’ was invented in the 1920s, slowly coming into use in the mid-twentieth century before general acceptance in the 1990s. The ‘early modern’ is seen to contain the Renaissance, the Reformation, the voyages of exploration, the transformation of the European economy via trade, investment, production and then industrialisation. Of greater symbolism, the ‘early modern’ is credited with the ‘rise of capitalism’ and the birth of the individual from the Renaissance (Wiesner-Hanks, 2021, p. 12). Yet the ‘early modern’ period is hugely problematic. There are issues over when it starts and finishes, for as the ‘modern’ period has grown larger the ‘early modern’ was invented to accommodate this (Cooper, 2013, pp. 134). To Randolph Starn, its creation represents a ‘rather ungainly chronology’ which emerged through the activities of a number of Renaissance scholars who were intent on focusing on what they saw as secular and rational ruptures, while providing a teleology to modernity (Starn, 2002, p. 296). The ‘early modern’ category was created to explain the time between the Middle Ages and the modern, as it was seen as a ‘democratic alternative to the old high culture eras, Renaissance to Enlightenment’ (Chakrabarty, 2011, p. 666).’ The so-called ‘muddle’ of the ‘early modern’ has led Jack A. Goldstone to claim, that ‘a rigorous review of evidence would show that the “early modern” world was neither “early” nor “modern”’ (Goldstone, 1998, p. 249). For Goldstone, the ‘early modern’ should be abandoned as a period in part because ‘the assumption that history from 1500 to 1850 marked a steady progress of “Europe” as a whole, a dynamic “early modern” period that paved the way to modernity, has grossly deformed our view of world history’ (Ibid., p. 276).
In examining 1100 to 1750 in Europe, one will see there is much that unites the events and themes that we encounter, to the extent that the timeframe will largely appear as one unit of time. The continuity of the book within the field of the history of sexuality thereby does much to discredit the notion or the need for an early modern period. Rather, the continuity appears to extend until at least the late seventeenth century and eighteenth century. There are changes, however, and as mentioned the Reformation is a significant event that caused long-standing transformation but much of this was slow-burning and took two centuries to really manifest itself juxtaposed with increased trade, demographic change and the pre-eminence of the state. In terms of the history of sexuality, many of the old ways of viewing and doing things remained similar until 1750 and any change does appear to follow wider slow cultural shifts as will be demonstrated.
Aims and Chapters
The Devil’s Roast proposes five key findings that it will promulgate alongside offering an introduction to the history of sexuality. It has been set out in a manner that allows the reader to embrace the historical background while joining this to observations on sex and sexuality and key debates from the history of sexuality. The five interventions include, firstly, the apparent continuity of many of the same ideas and conceptions of sexuality from the twelfth century to the eighteenth century. Moving beyond this, the other four innovations have been termed: passions, imagination, two worlds and subordination. As the reader will see, conceptions of the passions do change quite markedly over the timeframe of the book in elite circles. Moving from a damning and negative perspective that they must be controlled or else fear St. Birgitta’s fires and the Devil, they were later understood to be an integral part of what it meant to be human. The implications of this are valuable, as there was less demonisation of desire and lust by the eighteenth century for some, notably men. The imagination is also shown to be an important tool in discussions of sex and sexuality, in multiple ways. Not only could the imagination be sinful it could also lead to worry and panic, and reflect wider concerns of the individual and society in relation to sexual matters. Two worlds demonstrate the crucial dichotomy that began our introduction, and the separation between an ideal world of the Church and a more realistic view of sex and sexuality. And finally, subordination is an overarching term that not only reflects the power of the Church and the state over people, but also the power that people have over each other and themselves, and notably the power that men have over women.
This book has been broken down into five chapters that move through the timeframe of 1100 to 1750 but do so without offering a teleology — i.e. there is no presupposition that there is a sense of progress or that this history of sexuality was moving towards something —- and the chronology will be played with to move back and forth. The chapters have been named Christendom, Renaissance, Reformation, Exploration and Enlightenment and reflect concerns within the field of the history of sexuality as well as wider historiographical themes and events. They are used to drive the narrative forward while engaging in the debate of periodisation by undermining the notion of a rupture between the ‘Middle Ages’ and the ‘early modern’ periods. Instead, one will see that many of the views around sex and sexuality emerged in medieval times, if not earlier, and while slowly adapted to the historical context, do not radically change for some centuries. Each chapter consists of three sections, in which the first section will act predominantly to provide historical background anchoring the discussion of sex and sexuality within its context. It has been noted by Victoria Harris that context and history are quite often lacking within the field of the history of sexuality (Harris, 2010, p. 1096). Mindful that this book is an introduction, it is hoped that remedying this issue will elucidate what happened culturally, socially and historically to reinforce a wider contextual understanding of sex and sexuality.
In Chapter 1, Christendom, the book will explore Europe as a geographical, political and cultural area. By the eleventh century Christendom had come to exist in a ‘tenuous and fragile’ manner, and there can be seen to be connections between a core headed by the Catholic Church and a wider periphery. This was a periphery that included not just Catholic Christians but also Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Jews and pagans. Christendom or Europe was a geographical space of movement, connection and conflict as people made contacts through war, trade and migration. These interactions led to diversity, but also there was a unifying cultural influence in the Church which had a great impact upon how people lived their sexual lives. Coupled with the Papacy’s reforms from the eleventh century onwards, there was a more direct engagement in the everyday lives of the laity as the Church sought to expand its influence and power over people. What will be shown, is that not only did the Church’s views on sex and sexuality have a profound effect on Europeans at this time and onwards, but that not everyone lived in accordance with the Church’s proscriptions. There is evident a dichotomy between the spiritual ideal and chastity and reason with an earthly reality of the body and sex.
In ‘Renaissance’, the ‘two worlds, three cultures’ motif is introduced to further examine the dichotomy between the elite and realist worlds while utilising the belief of Keith Thomas and Jacques Le Goff that there were essentially two Europes: one that was Christianised and one that remained pagan. Building upon this, the theory of Guido Ruggiero expresses two sexual worlds: the world of chastity and marriage and a world of ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’. The ‘two worlds, three cultures’ theory points to not only a separation between the Christian ideal and a bawdier earthy realism but also three separate cultures: church elite, aristocratic elite culture and popular culture. Here there will be an extended analysis of transgressions (including rape and prostitution) and perversion (including sodomy), to reflect upon European conceptions of sexuality and permitted behaviour. It will be noted that there is no great rupture between the first and the second chapter also, and the apparent innovations of the ‘Renaissance’ should be seen as part of a ‘process’ rather than a distinct period of its own. Chronologically, the Renaissance is part of both the Middle Ages and the early modern periods spanning as it does from 1300 to 1650, and while it forms the title of the chapter its innovations will be shown to be medieval as will its sexual practices.
The Reformation forms the third chapter, and the impact of this sixteenthcentury schism of Catholic Christendom by those who protested for reform will be discussed. The initial shock of the Reformation was a method for many Protestants to reform the Catholic Church, but circumstances and events witnessed that it resulted in the permanent division of the Christian faith in Latin Europe. Within that reform was a desire to address perceived problems surrounding sex and sexuality, and this saw a protracted focus on marriage as a key institution. Europe became an area that made systemic attempts to regulate sexual and other forms of behaviour. This was built upon a moral theology that had been developing from the thirteenth century but gained traction in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Alongside these discussions will be an exploration of the growth in the power of the state, the notion of a ‘General Crisis’ triggered by these events which took hold in the seventeenth century and an exposition of the supernatural and witchcraft. In which important ideas of fantasy and imagination reflect a darker side to humanity, and its prurient nature relating to the sex lives of Europeans and their (symbolic) fears.
In ‘Exploration’ the book examines the ‘Age of Exploration’, notably the fifteenth century, as Europeans motivated by trade began to search for new routes to China and Asia as well as down the coast of west Africa. In so doing, the Spanish were to inadvertently arrive at the new continent that would become known as the Americas, altering the European perception of the world and of themselves. Part of this perception saw an elevated sense of superiority against others, meaning that exploration of the Europeans had far-reaching consequences for both Europe and the wider world. It led to a variety of sexual behaviours and sexual experiences, in what has been called an attempted ‘sexual conquest’ of the Americas. Away from the confines of European society, men behaved in diverse ways — including rape, murder and slavery — that were often ignored until European women began to move overseas in greater numbers. Linking with the utopia literary genre, the realisation of the dangerous nature of sex was discussed as it was believed that people must be safeguarded against the power of desire and lust. It was felt in life, and expressed in utopias, that if sex was not controlled then unbridled human sexuality would lead to a (Hobbesian) state of anarchy.
‘Enlightenment’ forms the final chapter. Seen by many scholars as an ‘age of reason’ in which liberty and equality were extended to many, in recent discussions within the history of sexuality it has been seen as the location for a ‘sexual revolution’ beginning in the seventeenth century and gaining traction from the eighteenth century. This ostensible ‘sexual revolution’ was one that favoured men and promoted a renewed focus on heterosexual penetrative sex of women leading to the genesis of a new phallocentric society. While there is truth in a new shift in sexual behaviour at this time, it will be argued that European society had over the course of this book been largely phallocentric and concerned with penile-vaginal penetrative intercourse.*® By bringing in the ‘heroic manliness’ motif, it will be shown that there was always a particular type of masculinity that was valued within Europe which appeared to come under threat (to an extent) by polite, commercial society.
This chapter will explain the importance of the Enlightenment in new attitudes towards the passions and reason, as the human condition was inspected from a new position which is reflected in pornography and erotica. Yet it was a position that remained tempered by the ongoing influence for the majority of the populace’s morality from religion. Since the outset of this book, it had advocated the centrality of penetrative sex in marriage for procreation and this was still being promoted in the eighteenth century.
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