The Fires of Lust by Katherine Harvey

Author:Katherine Harvey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books

Heretics

In the early twelfth century Guibert, abbot of Nogent, described a heretical sect near Soissons. Its members had unorthodox beliefs: they were nominally Christian, but were distinguished from the rest of the population by their refusal to accept key Catholic doctrines. Moreover, or so he claimed, they had extremely unusual views on sex, condemning both marriage and procreation. Most scandalously of all, they met ‘in underground vaults and hidden cellars’, where ‘as soon as the candles are extinguished, they shout “chaos!” . . . and everyone has intercourse with the first person who happens to be at hand’ – of whatever sex. Any children born as a product of these orgies were ritually killed and made into bread, which was consumed ‘as a sort of sacrament’.89 Surprisingly, this orgiastic sect was not a one-off, and similar stories can be found throughout the Middle Ages. Around two centuries later, for example, John of Viktring came across a group of Austrian heretics who met in dark caves after midnight; there they held religious rituals, but also engaged in feasting, dancing and sex. This, they said, was the state of paradise in which Adam and Eve lived before the Fall.90

Claims that religious deviants also engaged in sexual deviancy dated back at least to Roman times, when early Christian converts were accused of participating in incestuous orgies and worshipping the genitals of their spiritual leaders.91 From the twelfth century onwards the Inquisition, a group of Catholic institutions specifically set up to deal with heresy, seized on this tradition and characterized heretics as sexual deviants with strange ideas and a particular penchant for orgies. Such claims stemmed from the idea that heretics were hypocrites (because they preached one thing but did another), and from a (possibly deliberate) misinterpretation of the common heretical belief that it was possible to obtain a state of sin-free perfection, which allowed the supposedly perfect individual to indulge in all sorts of sin without consequence.92 They were frequently accused of having eccentric ideas. In early eleventh-century Italy, the heresiarch Gerald told Bishop Aribert of Milan: ‘We esteem virginity above all else, although we have wives . . . No one knows his wife carnally, but carefully treats her as his mother or sister.’ The bishop asked how the human race would perpetuate itself if everyone remained a virgin, to which Gerald replied that once humanity was free of corruption it would reproduce sinlessly, like bees.93

At least some Cathars apparently taught that marital sex was a sin; indeed, it could even be considered worse than sex with a stranger, since it (hopefully) happened more often and therefore caused greater shame.94 In 1245–6 the Inquisition extracted confessions on this subject from several Cathars in Toulouse. Peire Farcias saw the body as an unfortunate reminder of the Fall, for it was steeped in corruption and was the prison of the soul. He also believed that ‘Matrimony, as an encouragement to procreate and so to the making of more flesh, was therefore nothing but prostitution; the only true marriage was that of the soul with God.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.