Gender in Medieval Culture

Michelle M. Sauer

• Editorial: Bloomsbury Academic
• Año: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781441186942
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: European Medieval History

Gender in Medieval Culture provides a detailed examination of medieval society's views on both gender and sexuality, and shows how they are inextricably linked. Sex roles were clearly defined in the medieval world although there were exceptions to the rules, and this book examines both the commonplace world view and the exceptions to it. The volume looks not only at the social and economic considerations of gender but also the religious and legal implications, arguing that both ecclesiastical and secular laws governed behaviour. The book covers key topics, including femininity and masculinity and how medieval society constructed these terms; sexuality and sex; transgressive sexualities such as homosexuality, adultery and chastity; and the gendered body of Christ, including the idea of Jesus as mother and affective spirituality. Using a clear chapter structure for easy navigation and categorisation, as well as a glossary of terms, the book will be a vital resource for students of medieval history.

CHAPTER ONE

The social world: Law, medicine, and science

Although the Church had a significant impact on the development of gender roles and sexual ideals, the social world also influenced sexual codification and reflected the systematic patriarchal society of medieval Europe. Understanding how women were treated under the law and how medicine viewed them reveals the great discrepancies in medieval society—ones that still underpin many attitudes in today’s society. Medieval women were subjugated to men legally in practically every way, thus making them almost wholly dependent upon men economically. While religion provided the basis for many of the attitudes toward women, medicine and law also provided the basis for discrimination; in fact, these disciplines worked in tandem to create a pervasive view of woman as naturally subordinate to man, and nonhuman as subordinate to human.

Sex discrimination regarding wealth and property was built into the legal system under English common law. Coverture was the legal doctrine whereby, upon marriage, a husband subsumed a wife’s legal rights.¹ One of the earliest and clearest writers on this practice was English jurist Henry of Bracton (ca. 1210–68 CE). Around 1235 CE, he wrote a treatise called De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae (On the Laws and Customs of England). In it, he identified the legal rights of individuals, placing women in an inferior position to men by defining women’s legal standing by categorizing women as living under the legal guardianship of their husbands. Upon marriage, a man and woman became “one flesh, one blood,” so the woman gained access to a male body with all its rights and privileges. Therefore, a woman could only be defined as a person under the law if she was married—an unmarried woman could not be a person since she had no male body to become part of—although she was only a person as far as being an extension of her husband.² Although in theory this was meant to strengthen the marital relationship, as it would remove discord from the union, as Sara M. Butler notes, “the implication in reality, however, was total erasure of a woman’s legal personality.”³ An examination of English Year Books (condensed reports of legal cases that went before the common law courts) reveals that coverture grew increasingly restrictive as the Middle Ages drew to a close. Early Year Books indicate ways around the restrictions of coverture, especially where necessities or maintenance were concerned. For instance, a wife could clothe herself without her husband’s express permission as long as she remained within the bounds of her social status. Similarly, she could purchase items in the marketplace as long as they were for the good of the household. However, by the fifteenth century, these so-called laws of necessities greater restrictions came into play, as even for basic goods, “the husband’s consent, implicit or explicit, before or after the purchase, was needed.”⁴ Presumably this practice served to decrease debt, as a husband was liable for his wife’s debts, even if she acted without his knowledge. In practice, however, it decreased women’s agency, increased their dependency, and reduced their adult status. Butler further asserts that “coverture reared its ugly head primarily in times of crisis,” but there is a little more to it than that.⁵ Certainly, the rights of coverture were invoked more assiduously when men were faced with a potentially lowering situation, such as divorce or property challenges. Since a woman had no legal rights apart from her husband, he was almost assured a victory in such cases. In turn, women who may have otherwise sought to escape untenable situations likely chose to remain simply because they had no other recourse.

Furthermore, while the legal impact on women’s everyday lives might have been slight, culturally, coverture, coupled with religion, gave husbands the right to govern wives. Governance with a firm hand was expected: “late medieval English people perceived violence as an instrument and a sign of good social order . . . violence was normatively thought to be rightly exercised in the maintenance of divinely instituted order.”⁶ Both canon law and secular law acknowledge the rights, and the duty, of husbands to control their wives, and the complete subordination of women. Restraint and confinement were expected methods of control, as was physical punishment.⁷ The law addressed this topic only vaguely, admonishing husbands to, “treat and govern her [your wife] well and honestly, and to do no injury to her body other than that permitted lawfully and reasonably to a husband for the purpose of control and punishment of his wife.”⁸ The boundaries of spousal control are difficult to discern, and this writ merely implies limits, it does not actually set them. Thus, marital violence was inscribed within the culture both through religion and through the law, both of which placed women completely in the power of their spouse.⁹ Women were not “people” with full rights and privileges; instead, they were objects to be used as necessary for pleasure and profit.¹⁰

One part of medieval law codes that typify both the reduction of women to chattel and the use of women for male pleasure are laws that address rape and ravishment. Such laws demonstrate the gender imbalance within the culture. Women were, for the most part, legal property, so laws reflected damage and compensated the “rightful owners,” not the actual victims.¹¹ These laws illustrate the extreme commodification of women, and even when prosecution became technically more possible, the success rate dropped dramatically, indicating that as women grew more visible and gained small victories, in general, society feared female empowerment, and sought to control women’s bodies even more vigorously. When women did attempt to exercise their rights by appealing or pursuing prosecution, they were subjected to an exacting pretrial process that was physically and emotionally draining and damaging to their reputation, only for the majority of the cases to be dismissed. In some cases, the victim was then prosecuted herself for a “false appeal.” These private problems were thus publicly made into a spectacle, and like all spectacles, these trials carried a message of social control, here more specifically connecting to the subjugation of women.

Medieval medical perspectives of gender and sexuality are reflected in rape laws. Corrine J. Saunders asserts, “rape became a kind of touchstone for medical thinkers, an instance of female weakness as well as an example of the way that the reproductive processes worked.”¹² For one thing, the pervasive guilt of the female body is present in medieval law—derived from the Galenic physiological model—that a woman could not conceive a child unless she consented to intercourse because she could conceive only by the releasing of female sperm through orgasm; therefore, she had to take at least a modicum of pleasure in the act. If a woman would then subsequently conceive, her right to appeal was lost.¹³ This exception was generally held true throughout English rape law history, perhaps most notably in Bracton’s treatise and Fleta, another late-thirteenth-century legal commentary.¹⁴ This dual notion of female weakness and susceptibility to pleasure becomes intertwined in rape legislation. Saunders notes, for instance, that William of Conches writes, “and if the start of the act of rape is displeasing, in the end as a result of the weakness of the flesh, it becomes pleasing,” which corresponds to the English medical text The Prose Salernitan Questions (ca. 1200 CE), which asserts that women were particularly disposed to pleasure.¹⁵ Here, woman’s tendency toward temptation is integrated with the legal discourse in order to reduce the potentially criminal actions of men. While no English rape laws went so far as to say that rape was always inherently pleasurable, the lack of prosecution and punishment speaks to the prevailing view on the subject—women somehow “asked for it,” at least in many cases.¹⁶ Coupled with legal exposition, “medical theory and natural philosophy intersected with ideas of theologians regarding gender, sexuality, and the frailty and bodiliness of women to form a powerful and insidious set of cultural assumptions.”¹⁷ The female body was firmly inscribed as being the source of human frailty, sinfulness, and at least to some extent, criminal behavior. In turn, one of the most problematic constructions of the female body created through the conflation of all these discourses is their combined insistence that women desired to be ravished and dominated.¹⁸

Although medical texts support the theories about female weakness in the face of temptation, an even more significant aspect of medieval medicine as far as gender studies is concerned is the idea of the “one-sex” model. This idea originated during the Classical era and held sway through the eighteenth century. Under this concept, women and men as essentially the same beings, only women’s bodies are “inside out” men. However, as a response to cultural demands, post-Enlightenment science developed the “two-sex model” out of fear of women possessing power. To further differentiate the power held by men and women, two models were formed so that a woman would not simply be seen as an unfinished man, but rather as a different and inferior being. The two-sex model was an attempt to take power from women, making them the “other” sex. As with the “one-sex” model, the male body serves as the paradigm.¹⁹ While the “one-sex” model is just as inherently patriarchal as the “two-sex” model, it opens up different possibilities for gender fluidity and even transformation, such as hermaphrodism.

Alongside the one-sex model, the “two-seed” theory of conception, wherein both male and female sperm were required for an embryo, seemingly provides for a measure of biological equality. On the contrary, however, the two-seed model works in tandem with the rest of Galenic and Hippocratic theories to reinscribe biological inferiority through the establishment of women as cold, wet, and composed of inferior biological matter. Moreover, just as the two-seed model made women responsible for rape and conception, it similarly made them responsible for infertility, since they were clearly incapable of producing enough passion (heat) to properly release their seed. Similarly, the desire to release their semen could account for vulnerability to lust or for falsely inducing passion in an unsuspecting man. The inherent inferiority and vulnerability to temptation made women susceptible to disease and disorder. Finally, the attempts by women to control their own bodies and their own fertility were first construed as medically and socially dangerous, and eventually interpreted as interference with God and nature, both hallmarks of witchcraft, the ultimate defiance of male authority.

Rape and raptus

Scholars have long lamented the lack of cohesive studies regarding rape in the Middle Ages, and while some of that dearth has been rectified, there is still more work to be done. In particular, the voice of rape victims is rarely heard in these studies. Rape was a vexed crime in the Middle Ages, problematized by the conflicts between secular and canon law as well as by varying medical and social perceptions. Unlike modern definitions of the term, which rely primarily on constructions of power, medieval “rape,” at least early on, carried the explicit sense of sexual violation. Although this perception gradually shifted toward one of power—expressed in medieval terms as “ravishment”—the sense of sexuality was only lessened, and not erased. Further, issues of consent, sin, and consequences swirled almost impenetrably around the topic.

Medieval rape laws descended from the Roman legacy surrounding raptus, literally “carrying off by force,” which in its original conception did not even require sexual intercourse, and could be used to describe property theft.²⁰ Raptus did not become a public crime until after Constantine (ca. 272–337 CE). Constantine was also the first to address women who conspired to stage their own abduction—they, as well as their abductor, would be subject to the death penalty.²¹ Here the problem is not so much the removal of the daughter from the family home, but rather the damage done to parental property through marriage without approval. In the sixth century, Justinian added a new penalty, the confiscation of property, and further more narrowly defined raptus as being applicable only to unmarried women, widows, or nuns. Married women—women who regularly engaged in sexual activity—could not be raped. The theft of innocence was a requirement for rape, and married women could never be fully innocent since they owed their husbands the marriage debt.

English laws regarding rape have their basis in Roman law codes as well as the elaborate Anglo-Saxon justice system. Problematically, these two systems are directly oppositional in their approach. Roman law basically treated rape as “a blemish on the woman rather than as an offence committed against her,” whereas Anglo-Saxon laws “recognized rape as a serious crime of devaluation.”²² In both systems, the woman herself is less important than the subsequent consequences; however, the Anglo-Saxon approach insisted on some form of restitution, whereas the Roman tradition resulted in the permanent disgrace, if not death, of the victim. The earliest English laws insisted on monetary payment, if not marr...