Chastity: A Study in Perception, Ideals, Opposition

218 Pages·2008·2.454 MB·English

by  Nancy Deusen

Chastity
A Study in Perception, Ideals, Opposition
Edited by
Nancy van Deusen
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2008
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Presenting the Past
Central Issues in Medieval and Early Modern Studies
Across the Disciplines
General Editor
Nancy van Deusen
VOLUME 1
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On the cover: Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, c. 1416. Courtesy of Musée
Condé in Chantilly.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chastity : a study in perception, ideals, opposition / edited by Nancy
van Deusen.
p. cm. — (Presenting the past ; v. 1)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-90-04-16671-4 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Chastity. I. van
Deusen, Nancy (Nancy Elizabeth)
BJ1533.C4C43 2008
176—dc22
2008005744
ISSN 1875-2799
ISBN 978 90 04 16671 4
Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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CONTENTS
List of Contributors ................................................................... vii
Introduction ............................................................................... 1
Nancy van Deusen
Failed Chastity and Ovid: Myrrha in the Latin Commentary
Tradition from Antiquity to the Renaissance ........................... 7
Frank T. Coulson
Ambrose of Milan on Chastity ................................................. 37
Marcia L. Colish
The Prohibition of Clerical Marriage in the Eleventh
Century ...................................................................................... 61
Uta-Renate Blumenthal
An Arab Christian Philosophical Defense of Religious
Celebacy against its Islamic Condemnation: Yahyā ibn (cid:123)Adî ... 77
Thérèse-Anne Druart
Depictions of Chastity: Virtue Made Visible ........................... 87
Susan L’Engle
What Makes a Marriage: Consent or Consummation in
Twelfth-Century German Literature ........................................ 127
Claudia Bornholdt
“The Spirit of Fornication, Whom the Children of the
Hellenes Used to Call Eros:” Problematizations of Male
Homoeroticism in Late Antique Monastic Milieux .................. 151
Cristian Gaspar
The Cry of Eden ....................................................................... 185
Rafael Chodos
Index .......................................................................................... 209
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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Nancy van Deusen
Director, Claremont Consortium in Medieval and Early Modern
Studies, Claremont Colleges and Graduate University
Benezet Professor of Humanities, Claremont Graduate University
Frank T. Coulson
Director, Center for Epigraphical and Paleographical Studies,
Department of Greek and Latin, The Ohio State University
Marcia L. Colish
Department of History, Yale University
Uta-Renate Blumenthal
Department of History, The Catholic University of America
Thérèse-Anne Druart
Department of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America
Claudia Bornholdt
Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
The Catholic University of America
Susan L’Engle
Vatican Film Archive, Saint Louis University, St. Louis
Cristian Gaspar
Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University,
Budapest
Rafael Chodos, Esq.
Los Angeles
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INTRODUCTION
Nancy van Deusen
The topic of “Chastity” brings up a nexus of related considerations such
as moral ambiguity, the instability of moral value and ethical choices,
the inner life and its refl exive relationship to itself, of vices masquerad-
ing as virtues, or as virtues treated as vices, and the repercussions of
loss of innocence; of contempt, anger, pride, all subsumed under the
guise of humility, and fi nally, what can be seen as a certain paralysis of
the soul that becomes encased, even imprisoned within, irreconcilable
moral dilemmas. These are inner states—juxtapositions to be explored
within the discipline of moral philosophy as well as within the devel-
opment of characters in novels—involving the impact of perception
upon consciousness, but cultural conventions as well. There are, in
addition, legal implications of moral and cultural values, both within
an historical context, as, for example, an increasing interest in the topic
and issue of the celibacy of the clergy during what we commonly term
the “high middle ages,” as well as proscriptions against, and punish-
ments for, prostitution. One confronts a certain “virtuous pragmatism,”
historically, as well as, certainly, personally and culturally, with attendant
delusion and self-justifi cation. The topic of “Chastity” is interactive;
one immediately begins to add to the list of considerations.
Due to its rich internal implications as well as the fact that chastity can
be viewed as an access to basic historical problems, the topic has been
chosen for an interdisciplinary volume of essays that brings together
some of the questions, issues, repercussions, and perhaps unsolvable
problems inherent in the topic. Some of the essays can be located
within a recognizable disciplinary discourse, others take an approach
outside traditional academic discussion. Not all of the discordant
voices can be, or indeed should be, harmonized; nor can a resolution
be sought and found between all of the dichotomies presented here:
between inner life and outer scruples, between intention and action,
between professed spirituality and life as lived on a day to day basis,
and between proscription and effect. It is the goal and challenge of this
volume to focus on a topic from as many points of view as possible,
also encouraging, even provoking, the reader to follow lines of thought
that recur, or which all of the essays hold in common.
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2 nancy van deusen
Frank Coulson, in his contribution to this volume, “Failed Chastity
and Ovid: Myrrha in the Latin Commentary Tradition from Antiquity
to the Renaissance,” has explored what he describes as “the complex
tapestry of Ovidian infl uence” upon the Latin school tradition centered
upon Ovid and, in particular, the commentaries that were written on
the Metamorphoses from 1100–1600 CE. This commentary tradition is
not easy to discover, since the majority of the texts lack suitable editions,
thus must be read from manuscript sources. Focusing on the story of
Myrrha, one of Ovid’s most extensive and “psychologically developed
narratives” (occurring in Book Ten of the Metamorphoses), Coulson points
to allusions, as well as conceptual-verbal gestures, that identify the pres-
ence and progress of this particular narrative through the “Carolingian
Renaissance,” the cathedral school milieux, particularly of Chartres
and Orléans in the later 12th century, with writers such as Arnulf of
Orléans, leading then into the thirteenth-century commentators, such
as the Integumenta Ovidii of John of Garland, providing an alternative
allegorical interpretation of the Metamorphoses, and a commentary on
the entire Ovidian corpus, the Versus bursarii (Bursarii ovidianorum) of
William of Orléans, and fi nally, the “Vulgate” commentary, written
possibly at Orléans in the mid to later thirteenth century, a commentary
that has been designated as indispensable for the study of Ovid in the
Middle Ages—and beyond. Ovid’s text, together with its medieval and
renaissance commentators, can be seen to raise questions that provide,
not only a foundation for the discussion of important—and ambigu-
ous—moral issues for the Latin-based mental civilization of several
centuries of European intellectual history, but also provide a basis for
bringing into a viable connection the essays that follow within this vol-
ume. These questions include, whether a character can be interpreted
as a devil or a god, and on what basis, what is the nature of “forbidden
passions” (Myrrha’s incestuous liaison with her father that moves on
to the, in some ways, parallel relationship of her son, Adonis, with the
goddess, Venus); to a consideration of the methodology of allegory and
the “true” meaning of a literary work that also involves the “covering”
(integumentum) of irony, sarcasm, and allusion.
Marcia L. Colish’s essay, “Ambrose of Milan on Chastity,” brings
up the question of a philosophical basis for the theme of asceticism,
as viewed in the frequent depictions of the Bishop of Milan and great
teacher, for example, of Augustine, as exhorting his followers to fl ee
physical pleasures. The reason given for this exhortation is an interpreta-
tion of a “Platonic” conception of human nature as dualistic. Relating
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introduction 3
this problem of asceticism, with the further implication of celibacy, to
Ambrose’s anthropology in terms of his creation account and life in
Eden (in his commentary on the Book of Genesis, the Hexaemeron, De
paradiso)1 Colish points out that “In both works he [Ambrose] stresses,
against Manichees, Gnostics, and Originists, that the primal parents
God created and placed in Eden possessed gendered bodies as well as
souls. These attributes, and a sexual mode of reproduction, were not
consequences of the Fall.”2 The nature, then, of corporeal reality, of
ensouled bodies, of the union of two ensouled bodies in marriage, and
the meaning of self-regulation, or temperance, both within marriage and
without, comprises the rich panorama of topics explored in an article
that draws not only upon, and brings into an over-arching intellectual
context, Ambrose’s treatises dealing with creation, but also what would
seem to be a lifetime of thinking and learning on topic of material real-
ity. Paradise—the Garden of Eden—innocence and its gain or loss, seen
material compared with inner substance, desire and concupiscence, are
some aspects to be considered here, with a conclusion that “This high
appraisal of marriage and marital sexuality is a value that Ambrose,
in contrast to most of his contemporaries and predecessors who wrote
on celibate vocations, refuses to cede in the treatises he produced for
widows and consecrated virgins. Each of these three states of life, he
argues, can be a means of salvation for those called to it.”3
The increasingly important topic of celibacy in the eleventh century
is taken up by Uta-Renate Blumenthal in her article, “The Prohibition
of Clerical Marriage in the Eleventh Century,” in which a long-stand-
ing ambivalence toward marriage within the early Christian church,
as expressed, for example, by the Apostle Paul in his fi rst letter to the
Corinthians, is explored within, for example, the Liber decretorum of
Bishop Burchard of Worms (ca. 1023), the Panormia of Bishop Ivo of
Chartres (ca. 1093); which no doubt took as their sources the Paeni-
tentiale ad Otgarium of Hrabanus Maurus and the Libri duo de synodalis
causis by Regino of Prüm. Who, amongst the contemporaneous popes,
was for celibacy, who ignored the topic altogether, who was against it,
and on what grounds? What exactly were the issues at stake, and on
what authority? The topic, for example, appears to be totally lacking
1 A topic also to be explored in the concluding essay to this volume, Rafael Chodos,
“The Cry of Eden,” pp. xxx, below.
2 P. xx.
3 P. xx.
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