Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages (The Middle Ages Series) by Elliott Dyan

Author:Elliott, Dyan [Elliott, Dyan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2010-08-02T16:00:00+00:00

1. Pollution, Illusion, and Masculine Disarray

An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the conference “Constructing Medieval Sexualities,” sponsored by the Newberry Library's Center for Renaissance Studies in Chicago, 4–5 March 1994. I would like to thank Peter Brown for several valuable suggestions about sources. I am also grateful to David Brakke for allowing me to read his paper on nocturnal emissions in the early church prior to its publication.

1. “Capsa plena vestibus si dimissa fuerit longo tempore, putrefient in ea vestes: Ita et cogitationes nostrae si non fecerimus eas corporaliter,” cited by Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale 15.100, in Speculum quadruplex; sive Speculum maius (Douai: B. Belleri, 1624), 4: 617.

2. “Quid per animam nisi mentis intentio; quid per ossa nisi carnis fortitudo designatur? Omne autem quod suspenditur procul dubio ab imis eleuatur. Anima ergo suspendium eligit ut ossa moriantur, quia dum mentis intentio ad alta se subleuat omnem in se fortitudinem uitae exterioris necat,” Gregory the Great, Moralia in Iob 8.25.44, ed. Marcus Adriaen, CCSL, vol. 143 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979), p. 415. Cf. Freud's definition of sublimation: “[the process of sublimation] enables excessively strong excitations arising from particular sources of sexuality to find outlet and use in other fields, so that a not inconsiderable increase in psychical efficiency results from a disposition which in itself is perilous,” Three Essays on Sexuality, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1953), 7: 238.

3. The effort to realign female sexuality in accordance with the male “norm” accords with the unisex model of the body discussed by Thomas Laqueur in Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 25–62. Despite these attempts at realignment, however, authorities like Albert the Great had to concede that women were less prone to nocturnal emissions than men. See Animalium libri XXVI 9.1.1, in Opera omnia, ed. A. Borgnet (Paris: Vivès, 1891), 11: 498.

4. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl,” in Tendencies (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1993), p. 111.

5. See David Brakke's discussion in “The Problematization of Nocturnal Emissions in Early Christian Syria, Egypt, and Gaul,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 419–60.

6. John Cassian, Conférences 12.7, ed. and trans. E. Pichery, SC, no. 54 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1958), 2: 131–33. For Serenus's spiritual mutilation, see Conférences 7.2, SC, no. 42, 1: 245. Alardus Gazaeus notes the analogues to Serenus's castration in Gregory the Great's account of Equitius (Dialogues 1.4) and in the life of Thomas Aquinas (see Gazaeus's commentary on Cassian's Collationes 7.2, PL 49, cols. 669–70, note c). Also see Michel Foucault's discussion of Cassian, “The Battle for Chastity,” in Western Sexuality: Practice and Precept in Past and Present Times, ed. P. Ariès and A. Béjin, trans. A. Forster (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), pp. 14–25.

7. Cassian, Conférences 12.11, SC, no. 54, 2: 139; 2.23, SC, no. 42, 1: 134.

8. Cassian, Institutions cénobitiques 6.7.2, ed. and trans. Jean-Claude Guy, SC, no. 109 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1965), pp.

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