Virginitas: An Essay in the History of a Medieval Ideal

176 Pages·1975·5.681 MB·English

by  John Bugge (auth.)

VIRGINITAS
AN ESSAY IN THE HISTORY OF A MEDIEVAL IDEAL
ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES
INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
Series Minor
17
VIRGINITAS
AN ESSAY IN THE HISTORY OF A
MEDIEVAL IDEAL
Directors : P. Dibon (Paris) and R. Popkin (Washington Univ., St. Louis)
Editorial board: J. Aubin (Paris); J. Collins (St. Louis Univ.) ; P. Costabel
(Paris); A. Crombie (Oxford); I. Dambska (Cracow); H. de la Fontaine
Verwey (Amsterdam); H. Gadamer (Heidelberg); H. Gouhier (Paris); T.
Gregory (Rome); T. E. Jessop (HuH); P. O. Kristeller (Columbia Univ.) ;
Elisabeth Labrousse (Paris); S. Lindroth (Upsala); A. Lossky (Los Angeles) ;
J. Orcibal (Paris); I. S. Revaht (Paris);]. Roger (Paris); H. Rowen (Rutgers
Univ., N.].); C. B. Schmitt (Warburg Inst., London); G. Sebba (Emory
Univ., Atlanta); R. Shackleton (Oxford); ]. Tans (Groningen); G. Tonelli
(Binghamton, N.Y.).
VIRGINITAS:
AN ESSA Y IN THE HISTORY OF A
MEDIEVAL IDEAL
by
lOHN BUGGE
•
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V
© I975 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Martinus Nijhotf, The Hague, Netberlands in 1975
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce tMs book or parts thereof in any form
ISBN 978-90-247-1695-1 ISBN 978-94-015-6886-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-6886-9
CONTENTS
Preface VII
I ntroduction
I
CHAPTER I: SEXUALITY AND THE FALL OF MAN 5
I. Gnostic Cosmogony 6
2. Christian Gnostics and the Book of Genesis 12
3. Augustinian Orthodoxy and the Original Sin 21
CHAPTER II: VIRGINITY AND THE MONASTIC ECONOMY OF
PERFECTION 30
I. Vita angelica 30
2. Simplicitas 35
3. Contemplation and Prophecy 41
4· Milites Christi 47
CHAPTER III: SPONSA CHRISTI: VIRGINITY AND EPITHALAMIAN
MYSTERY 59
I. The Song of Songs and Christian Exegesis 59
2. Encratism and Marriage 67
3· Epithalamian Gnosis 75
CHAPTER IV: VIRGINITY SEXUALIZED 80
I. The Twelfth-Century Context: Ideas and Influences 81
2. Victorine Spiritual Marriage 84
3. St. Bernard and the Song of Songs 90
4. The Katherine Group and Erotic Spirituality 96
VI CONTENTS
CHAPTER V: SURVIVING ELEMENTS OF CHRISTI AN GNOSIS III
1. Sin as Sexual I II
2. Traditional Features of Virginity Deontologized IIS
3. Virginity and Moral Conflict 123
Afterword 134
Appendix: The Virgin Mary: Virgin Birth and Immaculate
Conception 141
Bibliography ISS
Index 164
PREFACE
Apreface is best written last, after a book is done and its author may
look back to survey what he hopes he has accomplished and what he
must admit he has not. In hindsight virginity by itself has seemed a
very large field to till, but with that reflection also comes a sense of
misgiving, the awareness that a really comprehensive treatment of
that subject would somehow have to encompass an enormous ter
rain, the whole length and breadth of Christianity's attitude toward
sexuality from the earliest times down to the high Middle Ages. It
could be argued that no small book could cover so much ground, and
I would be the first to agree. As its subtitle is meant to suggest, the
present work is, in at least two senses of the word, an essay: both an
initial and tentative effort to get at the meaning of an extremely
important but as yet unprobed medieval belief in the perfective
value of the virginal life; and an interpretive study of a complex
subject from a limited point of view, specifically, that in which the
virgin appears in devotional literature as the bride of Christ. An
exhaustive investigation of the theological ideal would require mas
sive documentation; with no claim to such thoroughness this at
tempt may perhaps be pardoned for trusting to a minimum of foot
noting, and that of the exemplary, rather than the statistically con
clusive sort. Indeed, in one sense I have not seen my task as one of
persuading the reader to accept a new verdict, but as one of offering
a way of structuring his oldest suspicions about the incompatibility
of normal human sexuality and spiritual perfection within Christian
ity.
I should like to record my indebtedness to three men who have
shaped my thinking in various ways. Every student of monasticism
finds himself beholden to the awesome learning of Fr. Jean Leclercq,
and, while at times Ichallenge his conclusions, I have largely de-
VIII PREFACE
pended on his infonned seholarship for the facts of medieval monas
tic belief. I owe mueh to Morton W. Bloomfield for the eneourage
ment and generous help he gave me at the start of this projeet and
throughout the time it was under way, but not less for the standard
of eminenee his own work in the history of ideas has set for a gener
ation of seholars. I am especially grateful to Gregor Sebba, the truest
exponent of the humane letters it has been my privilege to know, for
the eogent editorial suggestions and advice he so freely gave.
One woman, too, has been extremely helpful in seeing this book to
eompletion: my own sponsa, long sinee subintroducta, whose support
and unfailing good eheer have made it impossible for this enquiry to
be anything more than disinterested.
J.B.
Cambridge, Massaehusetts
INTRODUCTION
The subject of this enquiry is virginity, until comparatively recent
times the single most essential prerequisite for a life of perfection in
Christianity. The problems are formidable; one need only consider
the regularity with which some sort of impulse toward sexual puri
tanism has made itself feIt in the course of western Christianity to
appreciate the immensity of the undertaking that would presume to
treat the subject in anything like its entirety. From the very be
ginning the Church as a whole has insisted on restraint in sexual
matters, but, properly speaking, it is only the institution of monas
ticism to which the ideal of virginity has remained, now as always,
direct1y relevant.! This book will therefore seek to explore the
meaning of virginity in the ascetic philosophy of medieval monasti
cism.
Ernst Curtius has written, "Much of what we call Christianity is
purely and simply monastic."2 If so, one cannot expect to know very
much of the mind of medieval Christianity without first sharing the
reflections of the medieval monk. Beyond that, however, is the main
1 Arecent work by the Dominican J. M. Perrin, entitled simply Virginity,
trans. Katherine Gordon (Westminster, Md., 1956), is an example of modern
enthusiasm for a theme that is "allied to whatever is deepest in the human
heart, ... lies also at the centre of the Catholic Church," and is "intimately
related to the Christian conception of life present and to come" (pp. vii-ix).
In an entirely different spirit, Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., Celibacy, trans.
C. A. L. Jarrott (New York, 1968), discusses the present celibacy crisis in the
Roman Church as merely another phase of a historical concern that dates
from the twelfth century. And as recently as September 1970, as part of the
liturgical revisions growing out of the reforms of Vatican II, the Sacred Con
gregation of Divine Worship introduced a rite of consecration for women who,
not drawn to the conventual life of the nun, nevertheless desire to remain
chaste in secular society.
2 European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard Trask
(New York, 1953), p. 515.
2 INTRODUCTION
argument that emerges from the findings of this study, that a sym
pathetic appreciation of the strictly monastic view of soteriology is
impossible without a clear understanding of the fundamental impor
tance of the ideal of virginity within that scheme. Indeed, the evi
dence suggests that the notion of a sexless state of existence is the
very leaven of monastic thought, and therefore a principle upon
whose viability as a spiritual ideal the development of the institution
has largely depended.
Quite early it became apparent that no study of monastic virginity
could be of value unless it also undertook to deal with the attitude
of early Christianity toward human sexuality itself. Chapter I, ac
cordingly, is retrospective in more than one way. It not only looks
back to the patristic period, but concerns itself especially with the
relationship between sexuality and the doctrine of the Fall in the
thought of certain representative commentators on the story of
Genesis. The special point at issue there was simply how to define
man's true, original nature; the speculation that was to have a
lasting influence upon monastic belief held that prelapsarian man,
like the angels, was created virginal, and that sexuality is a result of
his sin. Chapter II attempts to show how this remarkable appraisal
of man's original innocence is, in fact, the organizing principle in the
monastic economy of perfection. Considered structurally, theideal
of asexuality stands in a vital, logical relation to such traditional
monastic concerns such as contemplation, the ideal of a simple life,
and the concept of the monk as a soldier of Christ, themes which are
especially manifest in some of the literary productions of early
English monasticism before the Conquest.
In the remaining chapters the focus narrows to an approach that
makes use of the popular and historically durable motif of the sponsa
Christi, the "bride of Christ," as a sort of touchstone with which to
assay the changes the ideal of virginity unrlergoes from earliest
Christianity to the twelfth century. By a selective probing of devo
tionalliterature which extols virginity as a kind of sacral marriage,
it will be possible to disco ver the outlines of an evolving theological
concept lying beneath the unchanging literary metaphor. While
Chapter III will consider the origins of the bridal idea and the
growth of epithalamian mysticism in the early Church, the next two
will deal with momentous developments of the later Middle Ages.
During the hundred years between II50 and 1250, the ancient mys
tery of marriage to God underwent a profound transformation, one
that found expression in an unprecedented outpouring of devotion al