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Christianity is unique in having hated
and outlawed sex and in making people feel guilty because
they are sexual beings.
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Karen Armstrong, The Gospel According
to Women
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Despite the Church's revulsion at all matters sexual,
or perhaps because of it, churchmen have throughout the centuries
felt obliged to impose their views on others. Sex was held to
be disgusting enough even when it was carried out in the most
conventional way. It was acceptable only between a man and (one)
wife, only for the purpose of conception, only on approved days,
only at night, only in bed, only in moderation, and only in
the permitted manner. Priests encouraged couples to remain partially
clothed. Only one copulatory position was allowed.
Others were regarded as debauched or bestial. The story grew
up that the Devil mated women from the rear, so this method
was regarded with particular horror. To this day missionaries
try to stop converts from practising it, and encourage the adoption
of the one acceptable position — which is thus known as
the missionary position. Theologians once held that a wife's acquiescence in any deviation from their approved position was
as grave a sin as murder*.
The whole area was set about with danger. At one time sexual
intercourse of any sort was discouraged for much of the year.
As one commentator has observed:
Some rigid theologians recommended abstention on Thursdays,
in memory of Christ's arrest; Fridays, in memory of his
death; Saturdays, in honour of the Virgin Mary; Sundays in
honour of the Resurrection; and Mondays, in commemoration
of the departed. Tuesdays and Wednesdays were largely accounted
for by a ban on intercourse during fasts and festivals —
the forty days before Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas; the
seven, five, or three days before Communion; and so on*.
At one time there had been 273 fast days and feast days, but
the number was down to 140 by the sixteenth century. Copulating
at prohibited times could have terrible consequences. Churchmen
assured their flocks that it could lead to leprous, epileptic,
possessed or deformed children*.
Copulation was also prohibited while the wife was menstruating,
in accordance with the requirement of Leviticus 18:19. Pope
Gregory I warned that "the law of God punishes a man with
death if he has intercourse with a woman during menstruation"*.
Intercourse was also prohibited while the wife was pregnant,
since the object could not be procreation.
Marriage was tolerated as the best that ordinary people could
manage. According to St Jerome there was as much difference
between wedlock and virginity as there is between managing not
to sin and being a saint. Marriage was an unfortunate but practical
remedy against sin. Virginity was much more, a true holy state.
Childbirth was a particularly sinful activity and required reconciliation
with the Church. (This reconciliation was originally a ritual
purification after the birth, later to become the Churching
of Women.) Now the sin of bearing a child is rather underplayed,
but in the past a mother who died in childbirth might be refused
a Christian burial because of her sin*.
This did not happen everywhere. In some places she was permitted
a Christian burial, but her child, dead inside her, was not.
Not having had the chance of baptism, the child was infected
by Original Sin, and thus ineligible for a Christian burial.
The child had to be buried in unconsecrated ground. As one fifteenth
century priest, John Mirke, put it:
A woman that [has] died in childing shall not be buried in
church, but in churchyard, so that the child first be taken
out of her and buried outwith churchyard*.
In other words the dead baby had to be cut from its mother's womb so that it could be buried separately, on its own, in unhallowed
ground*.
The whole area of sex is set about with possibilities to sin.
Demanding sex from a spouse without intending to procreate was
venial sin. Lustfully exciting a spouse was a mortal
sin. Masturbation and coitus interruptus were grave
sins. The Christian obsession with limiting sexual activity
has led to some laws that now seem anachronistic. For example,
it is still an offence in England for a man to have anal sex
with his wife, although it is no longer an offence for him to
have anal intercourse with a man. Masturbation was still illegal
in at least one US state into the 1960s. So were other sexual
activities. In 1988 a certain Jim Mosely was shocked to find
himself sentenced to five years in gaol in Georgia, in the USA.
His crime, unwittingly revealed in a divorce hearing, was having
had oral sex with his wife*.
Around 1,000 years earlier, in Europe, he could have expected
seven to 15 years penance — roughly the same as for anal
intercourse, and twice that for murder*.
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