Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle Ages

313 Pages·1998·18.89 MB·English

by  Dyan Elliott

Fallen Bodies
THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES
Ruth Mazo Karras, General Editor
Edward Peters, Founding Editor
A complete list of books in the series is
available from the publisher.
Fallen Bodies
Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology
in the Middle Ages
Dyan Elliott
PENN
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
Copyright © 1999 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Elliott, Dyan, 1954-
Fallen bodies : pollution, sexuality, and demonology in the Middle
Ages / Dyan Elliott.
p. cm. — (The Middle Ages series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN o-8122-346o-X (cloth : alk. paper). —
ISBN 0-8122-1665-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
I. Sex — Religious aspects — Christianity — History of doctrines —
Middle Ages, 600-1500. 2. Demonology—History of doctrines —Middle
Ages, 600-1500. I. Tide. II. Series.
BT708.E43 1998
26I.8'357'o902 — 98-29858
CIP
For Paul Strohm
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Contents
Acknowledgments be
Abbreviations xi
Introduction I
1. Pollution, Illusion, and Masculine Disarray:
Nocturnal Emissions and the Sexuality of the Clergy 14
2. From Sexual Fantasy to Demonic Defloration:
The Libidinous Female in the Later Middle Ages 35
3. Sex in Holy Places: An Exploration of a Medieval Anxiety 61
4. The Priest's Wife: Female Erasure and the
Gregorian Reform 81
5. Avatars of the Priest's Wife: The Return of the Repressed 107
6. On Angelic Disembodiment and the Incredible Purity
of Demons 127
Afterword 157
Notes 165
Bibliography 267
Index 289
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Acknowledgments
A NUMBER OF PEOPLE have contributed to this project. Many thanks to
David Brakke, Peter Brown, and Elizabeth Clark, whose patient responses
to my often importunate questions helped me thread my way through the
unfamiliar ambages of late antique thought. John Efron pointed to oppor-
tune analogues in the Jewish tradition. Charlotte Schoell-Glass provided
stimulating parallels informed by her own discipline of art history. Barbara
Newman and Mary Baine Campbell offered careful readings of Chapters 2
and 6 respectively. Miri Rubin drew my attention to relevant materials from
her own work on host desecration. Peter Jelavich gave the manuscript an
energetic reading and was an important resource for discussing its wider
implications. In addition, I am most appreciative of the encouragement I
received from Ruth Karras and Jerry Singerman of the University of Penn-
sylvania Press.
I also have been the beneficiary of generous institutional assistance. I
am exceedingly grateful to Indiana University and the Institute for Ad-
vanced Study in Princeton for their support of this undertaking. The Na-
tional Humanities Center provided a productive environment for its final
stages.
Different parts of the book initially were aired in various public fo-
rums. "Sex in Holy Places" was presented at the University of Minnesota
(March 1992). The Newberry Library was an especially formative venue in
this respect, since my work on nocturnal emissions, the basis for Chapter i,
was first vetted there (March 1994), as was its companion study on female
sexuality (February 1997), which became the basis for Chapter 2. I am
grateful to Mary Beth Rose, then director of the Newberry's Center for
Renaissance Studies, for these opportunities. The workshop on women and
religion in the Middle Ages at the University of Groningen (October 1995)
first prompted me to revisit the thorny problem of the priest's wife (Chaps.
4 and 5). I would like to thank Anneke Mulder-Bakker and Peter Hatlie,
who were responsible for organizing this event. The questions raised by