Eroticism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Magic, Marriage, and Midwifery

192 Pages·2016·2.877 MB·English

by  Ian Moulton

Eroticism
in the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance:
Magic, Marriage, and Midwifery
Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance
Volume 39
General Editor
Robert E. Bjork
Eroticism
in the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance:
Magic, Marriage, and Midwifery
Edited by
Ian Frederick Moulton
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
© 2016 BREPOLS
Printed on acid-free paper
D/2016/0095/53
ISBN 978–2–503–56788-4
e-ISBN 978–2–503–56789-1
DOI: 10.1484/M.ASMAR-EB.5.110263
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Magic, Marriage, and Midwifery: Eroticism in the Middle ix
Ages and the Renaissance
Ian Frederick Moulton
The Erotic and the Quest for Happiness in the Middle Ages: 1
What Everybody Aspires To and Hardly Anyone Truly Achieves;
Medieval Eroticism and Mysticism
Albrecht Classen
The Erotic as Lewdness in Spanish and Mexican Religious Culture During 35
the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Asunción Lavrin
Disarticulating Lilith: Notions of God’s Evil in Jewish Folklore 59
Sharonah Fredrick
Sex and the Satyr in the Pastoral Tradition: Isabella Andreini’s La Mirtilla 83
as Pro-Feminist Erotica
Rosalind Kerr
Erotic Magic: Rings, Engraved Precious Gems and Masculine Anxiety 99
Liliana Leopardi
Figuring Marital Queerness in Shakespeare’s Sonnets 131
David L. Orvis
Sexual Education and Erotica in the Popular Midwifery Manuals of 151
Thomas Raynalde and Nicholas Culpeper
Chantelle Thauvette
List of Contributors 169

Acknowledgments
Many of the essays collected in this volume were originally presented as papers at
the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference on “Erotica
and the Erotic in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,” held in Tempe, Arizona,
in February of 2012.
Thanks are due to all who contributed to making that conference a success,
especially Robert Bjork, Director of ACMRS, William Gentrup, the Associate
Director, Kendra TerBeek, the Outreach Coordinator, and Michele Peters, the
Program Coordinator.
I would like to take the opportunity to thank all the anonymous readers who
gave useful and insightful suggestions on each of the essays here.
And lastly thanks are due to Roy Rukkila, Todd Halvorsen, and Erin McCarthy
at ACMRS, for doing such a wonderful job on the production of the volume.
Ian Frederick Moulton

Introduction:
Magic, Marriage, and Midwifery: Eroticism
in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Ian Frederick Moulton,
Arizona State University
Magic rings; seductive she-devils; satyrs bound and whipped on stage; a woman
coerced to touch her priest’s genitals in the confessional; a boy caught masturbating
over a midwifery manual; a marriage of true minds between two men; a prince led
to repentance at the sight of a naked, virginal girl prepared to give her life for his.
These varied manifestations of medieval and early modern sexuality — each at the
center of one of the essays in this volume — suggest the ubiquity and diversity of
eroticism in the period. The erotic is the stuff of legend, but also of daily life. It is
inextricable from relations of power and subordination, and it plays a fundamental
role in the hierarchical social structures of the period. It is as private as masturbation,
and as public as a pageant. The erotic is also very much a part of the spiritual realm,
often in morally ambiguous ways. In a German romance, an erotic vision leads to
spiritual renewal; in a Jewish legend, a demonic spirit seduces upright men to her
bed. And this is to say nothing of actual clerics seducing and sexually abusing their
parishioners in the confessional.
I have argued elsewhere that one of the distinguishing characteristics of
premodern eroticism is that it circulated widely throughout the culture as a whole
rather than being confined to a demarcated sphere called pornography. The seven
essays collected in this volume would support this thesis. They demonstrate the role
the erotic played in notions of happiness or fulfillment, in clerical life, in Jewish
legend, heretical magic, and Christian marriage, in poetry, on the public stage, and
in medical manuals.
Albrecht Classen’s essay on “The Erotic and the Quest for Happiness” opens
the volume by attempting to assess the relationship between erotic pleasure and
spiritual content in the Middle Ages. Although eroticism was seldom seen as a
Eroticism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Magic, Marriage, and Midwifery, ed. by Ian Frederick
Moulton, ASMAR 39 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. ix–xvi.
FHG
DOI 10.1484 /M.ASMAR-EB.5.111053
x ian frederick moulton
source of lasting happiness in the period, medieval texts frequently employ erotic
language and imagery to express spiritual union and transcendence. Boundaries
between the sexual and the sacred were not firmly fixed. Theologians like Richard
of St. Victor used sexual language to describe the love of God. Conversely, Gottfried
von Strassburg’s Tristan reconfigures sexual passion as a virtual religion.
Classen analyzes the complex interplay between spirituality and eroticism in
a variety of texts. In Hartmann von Aue’s verse narrative Der arme Heinrich (ca.
1200), the ailing prince Heinrich can only be cured by blood taken from a willing
virgin’s heart. A peasant girl who adores Heinrich offers herself up, thinking that
her sacrifice will not only save her beloved but assure her own salvation. Waiting
outside the doctor’s chambers for the sacrifice to be completed, Heinrich cannot
restrain himself from peeking in the door. Seeing the maiden’s naked body bared
for the surgeon’s knife, Heinrich is struck by a spiritual epiphany. He immediately
halts the procedure and resolves to submit himself to God’s will. Heinrich is saved,
as Classen argues, not because he attends church and goes to confession, but
through his erotic vision of the virgin’s body.
Following the biblical example of the Song of Songs, thirteenth-century female
mystics, such as Mechthild of Magdeburg and the Flemish poet Hadewijch,
frequently resort to erotic imagery and language to describe their spiritual
experiences. In the anonymous fourteenth-century text, Christus und die minnende
Seele [Christ and the Loving Soul], Christ himself appears as an idealized wooer,
serenading the loving soul like a minstrel and kissing her passionately before
proposing marriage. The eroticism of such mystical writing, Classen contends,
should not be understood as a simple expression of repressed or thwarted sexuality.
Instead it defines and explores a spirituality firmly rooted in the human experience
of erotic pleasure and desire.
Whereas Classen examines the role of erotic language in Medieval spiritual
writing, Asunción Lavrin analyses the role that eroticism played in the lives of male
and female clerics in early modern Spain and Mexico. Her essay amply documents
the fundamental hostility towards eroticism at the core of Counter-Reformation
theology. But despite a plethora of hortatory writing and preaching condemning
sexual activity of all kinds, people — clergy included — continued to have sex. As
Lavrin documents, sexual activity among the clergy was a persistent problem for the
Inquisition. Like Classen, Lavrin stresses the uncertainty of boundaries between
divine and human love, between sacred ecstasy and sinful passion.
The institutional demonization of sexual desire was accompanied by severe
misogyny: friars were to avoid even looking women in the face. To avoid potentially
polluting contact with half the human race, particularly pious friars would lock
themselves away, passing their days venerating the Virgin Mary and contemplating
the wounds of Christ — ideal ingredients for powerfully sensual fantasies of drink-
ing milk from Mary’s breasts and blood from Christ’s wounds. No wonder defining