Rape

This biblical passage clearly countenanced the rape of virgins, and Christians were generally prepared to follow God's guidance on the matter. If a Christian man wanted to marry an unwilling nubile woman one of the best ways to do it was to rape her and pay up. The idea held through the Dark and Middle Ages and into modern times. This happened not just among the lower classes. Eleanor of Aquitaine escaped two attempted rapes by ambitious Christian nobles in the short time between her divorce from the king of France and her marriage to the future king of England. Fifty shekels was not a bad price for the rich lands of Aquitaine. Mary Queen of Scots was less fortunate and was obliged to marry James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, after being raped by him.

Sometimes theologians ignored the words of Deuteronomy 22:23-27, which prescribed punishments for other categories of rape. Pope Gregory I confirmed explicitly that rape was not a defilement. On the other hand, women who invited rape by their looks were defiled, and thus sinful. In support he cited Matthew 15:11, which said that people are defiled by what goes out not by what goes in. Inviting looks went out, so that is where the sin lay, not with the rape itself*.

The practice of raping virgins in order to marry them was popular well into the twentieth century in conservative Christian countries. Until the 1980s it was common practice for Sicilian youths to rape girls in order to force them to marry. There was thought to be little wrong with this technique, after all it is sanctioned by the passage from Deuteronomy cited above and had by then enjoyed centuries of sanctification by the Church. The girl had virtually no rights in the matter. If she declined to marry the man concerned she could expect little sympathy, after all she was no longer a virgin. No other respectable man would want her. For the rest of her life she would be considered little better than a common prostitute, even though she was blameless. The practice may not yet be obsolete in Roman Catholic countries, nor in Orthodox ones, though it is no longer as universally acceptable as it once was, and it tends to make the newspaper headlines nowadays*. Being justified in scripture one can see why the Church should have difficulty in condemning premeditated rape like this. Yet the modern mind might marvel that men who regard themselves as the highest moral authority on earth can have accepted this practice while condemning masturbation as a heinous sin.

The Old Testament refers many times to rape — or what we now regard as rape. According to God's own infallible scripture rape is encouraged by God — He threatens it and on occasion he abets it. If the victim is a virgin she may be obliged to marry her rapist. If the victim is already married then she is to be stoned to death*.

Many books called penitentials have survived from the early Middle Ages. They list various sexual sins and for each a recommended penance, from which it is possible to establish the various rankings of seriousness in different places and at different times. The crime of rape did not feature at all. It became a crime only as the Church tightened its grip on all matters sexual. Gratian seems to have redefined an existing term raptus to cover what we would now call rape, adopting the idea from the Code of Justinian. Rape was still not necessarily a serious crime. Like other crimes against property, its seriousness depended on the value of the property. There was also a question of family honour. The greater the family honour, the greater the crime. Ordinary people had no great family honour to cite, so their daughters could not hope for the protection of the law. Where rapists were fined, the penalty was sometimes halved if the victim was a servant. There are still remnants of such views. For example rape is unusually difficult to prove in Chile because the penal code for sexual crimes from 1874 describes it as a "crime against the honour of families and good customs". No family honour: no crime.

In some towns gang rape seems to have been common, and the perpetrators were punished — if they were punished at all — by a fine or a short spell in prison*. The Church still did not regard certain types of rape as punishable offences. For example a man could still rape his wife. So too, he could rape as many prostitutes as he desired. In Europe, this changed only after the crime had been taken over by the secular courts.

§ Penitentials did mention raptus, but in Roman law raptus did not necessarily involve sex. The penitentials regarded raptus as the Roman law did — as a property offence, since a female chattel was being stolen from her legal guardian. Raptus corresponds most closely to what would now be called abduction or kidnapping. See Richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation, p 30.

§. Gregory the Great, Canonical Letter I. Modern versions tend to translate the passage from Matthew as referring specifically to what goes into and comes out of the mouth, but Gregory evidently had a broader understanding.

§. At the time of writing the practice is still common, for example in Georgia. "My hostage and my wife", The Tuesday Review, The Independent, features p 9, 20 th October 1998.

§. For God's observations on and instructions about rape see Deuteronomy 20:10-14, Deuteronomy 21:10-14, Deuteronomy 22:23-24, Deuteronomy 22:28-29, Judges 21:10-24, Numbers 31:7-18, 2 Samuel 12:11-14, Judges 5:30, Exodus 21:7-11, and Zechariah 14:1-2). For an effective summary see http://www.evilbible.com/Rape.htm

§. Richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation, pp 38-39 citing Ruggiero, Guido, The Boundaries of Eros ( Oxford, 1988) for cases in Dijon and Venice.