ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Do (Don’t?) Make a Habit of It: Sex and Sin Circa 1300

• In Event: The Science and Medicine of Habits III: Habits, the Body and Disorder

English Abstract

For the medieval Christian in Western Europe, the contemplation of sexual intercourse placed one between Scylla and Charybdis. There was a virtual tug of war between the university-trained physician and the strictures of the church. Should or should one not make a habit of routine, sexual intercourse? The learned, secular doctor recommended regular sexual activity for both men and women—not too much, and not too little. The consequences of not doing so could be dire, less so for the male, far more so for the woman. According to medical authorities circa 1300, failure to engage in intercourse would at the very least make a man ill-tempered, given to unpleasant thoughts, and susceptible to illness, unless, perhaps, he was prone to experience nocturnal emissions. For women, a lack of intercourse could prove fatal. The dreaded condition of suffocation of the womb (suffocatio matricis) threatened the virgin, the widow, and any woman who lacked opportunity for sex. The consequences of the condition ran the gamut from migraines to angina. Indeed, death might result from accumulation of a woman’s poisonous seed, otherwise released via the sexual act, or from the rise of her womb up through her body and into her throat, killing her by strangulation. While the doctor advised intercourse as a crucial element of the regimen sanitatis, the Catholic priest was at pains to do so, if not entirely nonplussed when it came to sanctioning masturbation to maintain health in lieu of (or in addition to) intercourse within marriage, And the stakes were even higher in the case of religious celibates. For them, the way to break a habit, or to keep it from taking hold, was often through a rigorous form of disciplina.

Authors

• Racha Kirakosian, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg

• Philip Liston-Kraft