You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos (23 page)

The rhetoric of the Church Fathers was not limited to faulty reasoning. St. Jerome, the virginophile, was so enamored with sexual purity that he fraudulently spun his Latin translation of the Bible (the one adopted by the Catholic Church) so that it appeared more anti-sexual.
⁷¹

It should also be recognized that St. Augustine had a very active sex life before taking up his love of celibacy, and there is no evidence that Tertullian and Paul were sexually restrained as young men. Testosterone levels drop off considerably as men age. For Tertullian, who converted in his forties, and St. Paul and St. Augustine, who converted in their thirties, this suggests hypocrisy.

Lastly, there was opposition to transforming Jesus’ religion into an anti-sexual vehicle. One such challenger was Pelagius. Pelagius was a man who disagreed with Augustine’s view that original sin was transferred to everyone through semen. He accused Augustine of being heavily influenced by another religion, Manichaeism. (Augustine was formerly a Manichean.) In 416 A.D. Augustine wrote to the bishop of Rome advising him that Pelagius’ ideas would threaten the Church’s power. An African bishop who was friends with Augustine sent eighty Numidian stallions to the imperial court as a bribe. In 418 A.D. the Pope sided with Augustine and Pelagius was excommunicated.

The Roman Empire, which so heavily influenced Christianity, eventually waned. The first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine, moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in 330 A.D. This move was the result of a steady decline of the Roman Empire’s strength in Europe. Over the previous hundred years the Empire had degenerated into an unstable state with generals becoming emperors and then being assassinated in quick succession.

During this tumultuous time the Germanic tribes from the north picked away at the Western Roman Empire province by province. Rome was sacked, first by the Visigoths in 410 A.D., and again by the Vandals forty-five years later. In 476 A.D. the Western Roman Empire officially ended when the German barbarian Odoacer became King of Italy.

The usurpation of power away from Rome was gradual. As the floundering Roman government lost the allegiance of the people, Rome had to rely more and more on German soldiers. By the time Odoacer officially deposed the last Western Roman Emperor, the child Romulus Augustus, most of the soldiers and officers of the Roman army were Germanic.

Relatively little is known about the culture of the Germanic tribes because, unlike the Romans, they had an oral tradition that left no written records. It is likely the Germanic tribes practiced the resource polygyny of the Neolithic era:
⁷²
that is, it was acceptable to have more than one wife, but few men had the resources to do it.

Although German leaders officially adopted Christianity soon after inheriting Europe, it is unlikely their populaces actually practiced it until much later.
⁷³
The rural Germans’ Christianity was probably limited to being baptized and adding Christ to their pantheon of gods. Worshipping their old gods and the new Jesus was a way of hedging their divine bets.
⁷⁴
This would not change until monks and priests slowly penetrated Europe’s vast forests.

Priests in medieval Europe used regional guides called penitentials. To understand penitentials, one must understand the practice of confession. Early Christians confessed their sins publicly before other Christians, but by the sixth century, Christians would confess privately to a priest. The priest would forgive the sinner and set a penance. The penance was a voluntary self-punishment to atone for the sin. (Giving money to the Church could substitute for penance and was called an indulgence.) Penitentials were guidelines for setting penances.

The advantage of sex’s omnipresence was that it led to continuous sinning. This in turn led to a reliance on priests to continuously purge one’s soul for the afterlife and, conveniently, it also produced regular indulgences to the church. Therefore,
penitentials categorized sexual sins in great detail. Nocturnal emissions warranted seven days of fasting (eating only bread and water). Masturbation required twenty days of fasting. Coitus interruptus (the withdrawal of the penis immediately prior to ejaculation to prevent pregnancy) warranted two to ten years of penance. Anal intercourse, oral sex, and potions that created sterility were almost as sinful as homicide.
⁷⁵

Homosexual acts were explicitly broken down into type of contact, result, and age of participants. For example, in one seventh-century penitential, offenders younger than twenty who kissed were advised to do six special fasts, however, if the kissing resulted in ejaculation, that was upped to ten.
⁷⁶

The sexual scrutiny extended to marital sex as well. Marital sex was only acceptable at night, if the participants were partially clothed, and if they used the missionary position. The woman could not be pregnant, nursing, or menstruating. Major saints’ days, Lent, Advent, Fridays, and Sundays were off-limits. This left roughly fifty nights a year available for sex.
⁷⁷
Thinking about sex was also off-limits, with lustful thoughts requiring penance as well. Even the “sin” of marriage required that a couple not enter the Church for thirty days.
⁷⁸

Getting the populace to associate sex with shame was a slow process, as evidenced by the court and tax records of England at the start of the second millennium. At this point in history surnames (last names) were still not in use, and people used bynames instead. Bynames were often taken from a person’s father, for example “John Son of Samuel”; from the name of a town, such as “John of York”; or from an occupation, such as “John the Smith.” There were also bynames that came from notable characteristics, and this latter category shows how comfortable people still were with sex.

John Fillecunt (fill cunt) was recorded in 1246 and Bele Wydecunthe (wide cunt) was recorded in 1328.
⁷⁹
Other bynames included Balloc (testicle), Coyldeor (golden testicles), Assbollock (donkey’s testicles), Levelaunce (raise spear, the French version of Wagstaff or Shakespeare), Wytepintell (white penis), Coltepyntel (colt’s penis), Cuntles (without cunt), Clawcunte, Preyketayl (penetrate-vagina), Strekelevedy
(stroke lady), and Swetabedde (sweet in bed).
⁸⁰
Numerous streets contained sexual references as well, like Gropecuntelane in London and a Rue Grattecon (Scratchcunt Street) in Paris.

The Roman Catholic Church’s medieval influence on sexual attitudes was dubious. For example, premarital sex was a sin. However, sexual relations between unmarried men and women seemed natural and inevitable. Over one thousand years after Europe was first Christianized, people still could not understand how such conduct could be sinful,
⁸¹
and many priests concurred. Reflecting a frustration expressed in other writings of his time, one twelfth-century cleric wrote bluntly, “there are certain stupid priests, [priests] in name only, who believe that simple fornication is a [minor] sin.”
⁸²

Another example of sex’s resilience was clerical celibacy. Since celibacy was the spiritually superior state, as early as 385 A.D. Pope Siricius tried to require it for all clergy. This was strongly opposed and largely ignored. It was so disregarded that villages would sometimes insist a priest take a mistress to ensure the fidelity of the parishioners’ wives.
⁸³
This was not done in folly, as one remarkable bishop in the thirteenth century fathered sixty-five illegitimate children before being deposed.
⁸⁴

The Church’s tolerance would not last. By the twelfth century it had grown extremely rich and there was now an added incentive to enforcing clerical celibacy— preventing this wealth from passing out of the Church via heirs.
⁸⁵
In 1139 A.D. the Church again ruled that the clergy could no longer be married, but the response was not any warmer in this millennium. The outraged clergy in Paris violently drove their bishop out of his cathedral and the royal family had to protect him from further harm. A century earlier the clergy in what is now Wales had burned alive a supporter of clerical celibacy.

Understandably, some fearful bishops refused to publish the decree. Eventually the Church was able to create an unmarried clergy, but not a chaste one. The clergy resorted to mistresses, prostitutes, or a succession of sexual partners to fulfill their “natural instincts.”
⁸⁶
It is estimated that by the sixteenth century England had a hundred thousand prostitutes whose prime customers were clergy.
⁸⁷

This toleration of clerical sexual activity, which extended into the twelfth century, was also applied to prostitution. The general attitude was that of St. Thomas Aquinas (circa 1225–1274), who compared prostitution’s value to sewers in a palace. If you take away the sewers the palace becomes polluted. Even the venerable Augustine believed prostitution was a necessary evil. One of the greater evils prostitution was thought to prevent was the rape and seduction of honest women by men who did not have a sexual outlet. Dijon, France, used prostitution as a preventative measure for an epidemic of gang rapes.
⁸⁸

For this reason, many towns regulated prostitution through taxes or institutionalized municipal brothels. In towns run by the Church, and in some parts of Europe, monasteries ran brothels. In the city of Avignon, in what is now France, there was a Church brothel in which the women spent part of the day praying and handling religious duties and the rest servicing Christian customers.
⁸⁹
The capital of the Church itself, Rome, is estimated to have had seven thousand prostitutes in 1490. The women lived in houses owned by the church and it was common to see them walking the streets with priests,
⁹⁰
unsurprising considering several popes maintained “holy brothels.”
⁹¹

The relative tolerance for premarital sex, clerical sexual activity, and prostitution for much of the Middle Ages demonstrated the Church’s lack of progress in making sex a shameful act in the minds of the people. However, the difficulty of the task must be recognized.

Fewer than one percent of Europe’s population were well-born nobility, that is, the class studied in high school history lessons.
⁹²
Rural peasants were eighty to ninety percent of Europe’s population and they had no qualms about going naked in the summertime. Most medieval people did not have the luxury of privacy. Parents would be naked and have sex around children and other relatives—often in the same bed— simply because there was nowhere else to go.
⁹³
Many residences consisted of only one room with one hearth as a heat source. Medieval weddings commonly involved a couple being placed in bed together, naked, in front of witnesses.
⁹⁴
In addition, most Europeans were accustomed to seeing the sexual behavior of farm animals.

Sex in this environment was like eating, a banal and unremarkable event, noteworthy only when it impinged on the property rights of a male, such as a father or a husband. To give sex the psychological weight that it now has was a gigantic endeavor and it required a stronger tool than the confessional.

During the Middle Ages, people who sinned fell under the jurisdiction of the church courts. Through fees and fines these courts brought in a significant amount of money. Up until 1200 A.D., these courts operated under an accusatory process, much like other medieval courts. Under an accusatory process, the individual had to accuse someone of a crime openly in court and produce witnesses. Court costs were paid by the accuser until the verdict. This process protected defendants against frivolous and malicious cases.

Church lawyers realized that sexual crimes and heresies were difficult to prosecute in this manner. Finding the common requirement of two witnesses was rare and people did not like making these accusations publicly. Proceedings were developed to make prosecution easier.

Under these proceedings
per inquisitionem
a judge began the investigation, called the witnesses, made judgment, and then passed sentence. The accused was denied a right to counsel, not told where or when the offense occurred, and was not told who the witnesses were.
⁹⁵
The judge could use torture to generate a confession and to root out other wrongdoers. In 1231 A.D. Pope Gregory IX established a formal tribunal to conduct proceedings
per inquisitonem
. It was called the Inquisition.

Over time the Inquisition became a terrifying machine. Answering only to the pope, its power was virtually unchecked. It began as only one prosecutorial option, but predictably became the only one used. The accusatory process was deemed too “litigious.”
⁹⁶
Inquisitors and their assistants were soon allowed to carry arms and had the right to absolve each other of any acts of violence. When torture victims died it was deemed that the devil broke their necks. Inquisitors grew immensely wealthy. They collected bribes from the rich,
⁹⁷
and could claim all the money and property of alleged heretics.
⁹⁸