Notes about Sexuality and Religion

by Geoffrey May, 1930

It is this supposed weakening effect of sexual relations — and its complement, the belief that male semen is a source of strength-that have led many and divers tribes to enjoin continence on warriors and hunters. Activities which demand strength and fortitude demand, of necessity, chastity.

https://ia801400.us.archive.org/10/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.221642/2015.221642.Social-Control.pdf

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However the evidence of this proprietary right in women may show itself, whether it be pre-maritally or during the marriage relation, it is clear that the sense of ownership has exerted a strong influence in building up restrictions on promiscuous sexual expression. Less widely recognized than this property basis for chastity is the contamination basis. Though the influence of this contamination basis has persisted only indirectly in our present social concepts, its diffusion was just as widespread, its influence just as real.

Contamination we may divide for convenience into its two expressions: contagion which results from direct sexual contact, and infection which, magically, affects distant objects.

With a unanimity which is practically universal, the male sex ascribes to the female a relative inferiority in physical strength. This idea arises, of course, out of the differences in secondary sexual characteristics. In the same way that a comparatively civilized man may fear that an excess of female association will cause effeminacy in him, so more strongly does the savage feel that intimacy of contact with the female will transfer her properties to him and, less important, his properties to her. In the closest form of contact, the sexual, it is natural that this fear should be accentuated.

There is, however, another and a better reason for the primitive man to feel that he is being contaminated with female inferiority in strength. As has been suggested in our passing notice of the physiological process of de- tumescence, sexual intercourse is followed by a temporary depression resulting from increased blood-pressure. This temporary depression has led to the almost world-wide

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belief that sexual intercourse is weakening. The savage, associating with the act the person acting, has accepted the fact that woman herself is a weakening influence.1

It is this supposed weakening effect of sexual relations — and its complement, the belief that male semen is a source of strength-that have led many and divers tribes to enjoin continence on warriors and hunters. Activities which demand strength and fortitude demand, of necessity, chastity.”

Besides these dangers of contagion with female characteristics, the fear of contamination from sexual intercourse expresses itself in a notion of diffused infection, a permeation of a deadly disease to things far afield from the sexual act itself. The germ of this infection may in some cases be illicit intercourse; in other cases it may be any sexual connexion, even if matrimonial.

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Ancient Hebrew continence rested on the property basis and the contamination basis. But there was among the Israelites another reason for further restriction of sex expression; that was the heresy basis. So strong was their concept of monotheism that any intimate contact with the followers of other gods was looked upon as an injury to the Hebrew god. Where such intimacy was the greatest, in sexual union, the danger was the greatest and added a new and righteous reason for legal severity.

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Among the Biblical Hebrews, as among their savage forebears, the fear of contamination from sexual contacts was as strong a reason for their legal restrictions on sex expression as was their interest in the protection of ownership of women. The contamination was again of two sorts: a contagion from the sexual act itself that would weaken the male, and an infection with which the act might taint the general property and welfare of the community.

Because sexual intercourse causes temporary physical depression, the Proverbs warned against the weakness that would result to man. “He that keepeth company with harlots spendeth his substance.” And again, ” Give not thy strength unto women.”3 Strength here means not wealth but virility. The advice is directed against such debauchery as is described in the early chapters of the Proverbs.4 The importance of continence to warriors, probably as conserving their strength, was definitely emphasized by David; women, he said, had been kept from his soldiers for three days.5 There are other inferences too in the Old Testament that there was a taboo on sexual intercourse to Israelitish warriors.

It is, however, more notably in the belief that sexual expression caused infection that the Hebrews applied the contamination basis and extended it. Not only did sex offences cause a sterilizing effect upon the fruits of the earth and domestic animals, but also upon women.

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There was, however, an element in Paul’s teachings on sex which was more than temporary and specific. This element was his acceptance of the idea of dualism. In his writings Paul emphasized again and again the conflict between the spirit and the flesh. “In my flesh dwelleth no good thing.” The mind serves the law of God, the flesh the law of sin.5 The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other. The works of the flesh are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness.

If the flesh is necessarily evil, Paul’s conclusion is correct : “Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth.” ? If the flesh expresses itself in acts of sex, mortification of the flesh demands a suppression of

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sexual activity. In announcing this doctrine Paul planted the Scriptural seeds of an attitude that was to flourish abundantly in later Christian teachings.

The doctrine which Paul implanted was amply nourished from without. The environment in which Christianity developed was particularly favourable to the growth of the hardy seed of asceticism. There was a consciousness of religion and an interest in religious appeal such as Western civilization had never before witnessed. There was an inequality and a restlessness in the social structure of the conglomerate Roman Empire amidst which men sought solution or escape.

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Plato himself had condemned extra-marital sex expression so harshly that affection free from physical taint still bears his name. He had considered illicit sexual intercourse a public offence which ought to be punished by civic ostracism.ª Plato’s philosophical idea that sex expression was deleterious spiritually was fortified by his misconceived medical idea that it was injurious physically. Empedocles and Diocles had thought that semen came from the brain and spinal marrow and that excessive copulation injured the senses and the spine. This notion was adopted by Plato.3

The Platonic doctrine of sex was but a part of the Platonic principle of dualism.4 When this principle was merged with elements of Oriental philosophy, the result was a bizarre mysticism. The exponents of this Neo-platonism, Plotinus and Porphyry, denounced all passion as degrading to the soul.5 Not only illicit sexual indulgence but all pleasure, Porphyry condemned. Horse-racing, the theatre, dancing, marriage, and mutton-chops were equally accursed; those who indulged in them were the servants not of God but of the devil. St Augustine called Porphyry ” the most learned of philosophers.”

The Roman world into which these dualistic ideas were flung was far from ideal. In large parts of the Empire the population was little above barbarity.

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In Rome adultery was exceedingly frequent. It burst out like a plague in the highest classes. The grand-niece of the Emperor Augustus, the sister of Caligula, the niece of the Emperor Claudius, were among those of the early Empire who were tried and punished as adulteresses. At the end of the second century the Emperor Septimius Severus attempted energetically to give effect to the laws against adultery. During his reign 3000 processes for adultery were instituted. The war against manners, however, proved unsuccessful; the emperor
tired of his efforts ; prosecutions stopped.3

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That the emphasis of early Christian asceticism was focused upon the evil of sex may be due to social or to psychological reasons. Christian asceticism was a revolt against the excesses of the pagan Empire. These pagan practices were expressed most obviously in sexual licence.

A revolt against paganism was a revolt against sexual indulgence.

In a more general sense, however, there is a strong interaction between the religious and the sexual impulses. M’Dougall has pointed out that the intensification of thought and feeling which is caused by the repression of the sex impulse may easily affect religious interests. It is true to-day, for example, that religious conversions are characteristic of adolescence. But the action of sex and religion is reciprocal. Even before its ascetic period Christianity had taught the evil of sex. When the aroused religious sense has once showed sex expression to be evil, the sex instinct gives rise to a ” consciousness of sin,” an awareness of the powerful temptation to wrong-doing.

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The subtle psychological consequences of Christian asceticism may be illustrated by two of the more obvious sorts of expressions. They are the attitude toward women and the engendering of sexual perversions.

Dualism, and its association of the devil with the flesh, meant that temptation constantly presented itself in the form of sexual desires. Hell contained female constituents, whose mission it was to seduce men from virtue, even the most eminent of saints. At the convent near Subiaco there is still the rose-bush into whose thorns the naked St Benedict threw himself in order to resist this unholy temptation. Even more familiar are the stories of the temptations of the courageous St Antony.

Because temptation of man lay in the direction of woman, woman became ipso facto an evil.

[On the whole subject see Ellis, Psychology of Sex, VI, 154-160; Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, I, 30-32. ]

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Before beginning the study of the Christian doctrines in England in their more purely legal manifestations, it is interesting to note how closely the English conversion is tied up with the whole development of the ascetic attitude in the person of Augustine.

[Augustine of Canterbury (early 6th century – most likely 26 May 604) was a Christian monk who became the first archbishop of Canterbury in the year 597.]

In his early years as a professor of rhetoric Augustine had lived with a woman in an illicit relationship. “Then did I learn by my own experience the difference between the chaste alliance of marriage … and the licentious bargain of carnality.”1 In fact, Augustine had had two mistresses and one natural son,” when, in reading the books of the Platonists, he was won over to the better life.” In his youth Augustine had been one of the Manichaeans; he had lived among them in Africa for nine years. Possibly it was because of this early familiarity with dualism that he more readily accepted Platonism. Certain it is that the acceptance of the dualistic and ascetic attitude expressed in these two cults made Augustine one of the outstanding proponents of the doctrine of the goodness of the spirit, of the evil of the flesh.

Considering the vast indirect effect of Augustine on the succeeding generations through his writings and his vast direct effect on England through his personal leadership in the conversion, it is no exaggeration to say that Neo- latonic dualism, in the cloak of Christian asceticism, was handed down by Augustine in English tradition and English law.5

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Anyone who broke the fast of Lent by intercourse with woman, he provided, was to pay not ordinary but double compensation.

The acceptance by the kings of the burden of enforcing the Church’s doctrines led finally to their acceptance of the doctrines themselves. Under the earlier Anglo-Saxon law adultery and fornication had been punished only as violations of a property-right.

From the tenth century onwards, however, the secular law looked upon such sex expression as more than a private wrong to the husband or the father. Chastity was enforced in the name of the State itself. It was enforced not for the safety of property but for the safety of the soul. Retribution was not to be made for the reimbursement of the person injured but for punishment of the person offending. The adulteress was to lose both her nose and her ears. Besides, those guilty of adultery were deprived by the secular law of spiritual benefits: they were denied the right of consecrated burial.

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The bases for the penitential rules of sex repression were the Scriptural restrictions as interpreted by the Church Fathers.ª They condemned adultery and fornication, incest and sodomy. They restricted sexual connexion on various occasions, but on many more occasions than did the Scriptures. Sex, they declared, was unclean. In consequence, everything connected with sex, physical or merely mental, was unclean.

In the prohibitions of fornication and adultery there was no evidence of the old Biblical bases of the offence. Voluntary sex expression was no longer considered an injury to the husband or the father, or even to society; it was considered an injury to the offender’s chances to attain salvation. For the sinner to re-establish himself with the Deity the penances were varied. The penance imposed by Theodore and Bede for simple formication was generally one year, but this was increased according to the frequency of the act and the age and discretion of the parties.

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This exceptional amount of attention paid to self-abuse has led psychologists to say that Christian asceticism caused an increase of masturbation. The Christian theology condemned all forms of sex expression, and it was auto-erotism that was the weakest point of resistance.

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The reports of Leyton and Legh, Thomas Cromwell’s inspectors, were, of course, not fair pictures.

Nor was the preamble of the statute unbiased, whereunder the monasteries were taken over. The inmates, it announced, have been known for two centuries for their “manifest synne, vicious carnall and abhomynable lyvyng.” The evidence least likely to adverse prejudice is that of the religious authorities themselves. From the thirteenth century onwards they talked of the corruption of the monasteries, of the unchastity of the monks and nuns. Cases of monastic incontinence were numerous.

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Syphilis had a eugenic social effect. It caused the most promiscuous sexual offenders to die out. It induced into physical indulgence a fear that led to caution. At the close of the fifteenth century the standard of sexual morality in England had struck its lowest ebb.

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Under the methods of citation used in the spiritual courts, any person could implead
another. The Norwich Leet Rolls of 1375 and 1391 show that such persons made a profit out of ” procuring ” cases for the Courts Christian. Inasmuch as they provided business for the ecclesiastical judges, who could exact pecuniary penance, they would deserve a commission for such assistance. Inasmuch too as the fear of impleading by a non-official person might well be as great as the fear of citation by the summoner himself, the sinner could be effectively blackmailed by any neighbourhood spy. Such spies were generally women who would, doubtless, make their pin-money thereby.

Christiana, wife of William Mattishall, is a common touter of the Dean (12d., arrest).

Mathilda de Paris is a common touter of the Official Corrector and the Dean, and has caused many men and women to lose their money wrongfully (18d., arrest).

Margery Wonder is a common touter of the Corrector and the dean (arrest).1

The extortions were not always small. In one case the blackmailers demanded £27 as a price for their silence regarding incontinence.

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violations were frequent. In 1696 & society was formed “For the Reformation of Manners in the Cities of London and Westminster.” In 1703 this society published a list of 858 ” lewd and scandalous persons ” whose conviction it had effected during the past year. In 1704 there were 863 convictions, in 1707, 706. Thereafter they increased enormously. In 1708, 1255 lewd and disorderly men and women were convicted. During the 34 years of its endeavour this society was responsible for 99,380 prosecutions. When one realizes that this was the work of one organization, confined to one district, occupying itself
largely with one class of offences, one begins to compass the scope of the conditions of immorality.

Foreign travellers visiting England in the eighteenth century were surprised at the low state of sexual morality. Archenholtz writes that in his day it was estimated that London harboured 50,000 common prostitutes, of which there were in the parish of Marylebone alone 13,000. Nor does this take account of the mistresses kept by many men of wealth.” So outspoken was the practice of extra-marital intercourse that the newspapers of the last half of the eighteenth century carried advertisements not for wives but for mistresses and even advertisements for concealing pregnancies and for preventing scandal by disposing of offspring.