Medieval Sexuality Analysis

Sexuality is a complex understanding of sexual acts and desires, that fluctuates based on variables such as culture, gender, religion, exposure, and preference. When trying to understand medieval sexuality, it is crucial to keep in mind one lens from modernity. In modern society today, it would be extremely difficult to find two people who felt and believed the exact same way in reference to sexuality. This variation, though influence by different factors, still existed in medieval culture, and particularly among medieval women mystics. These women had wide arrays of mystical experience, some often erotic in nature, and despite all belonging to the same Christian faith, no two seem to agree on what exactly sexuality is. Here is a comparison …show more content…
“She renegotiated her marriage contract with John, freeing herself from the sexual contract of marriage, and then constructed a new marriage agreement with Christ, who appears to her in vivid and erotic visions,” (Schroeder v). Following her devotion to Christ but even before her evolution into a celibate marriage with John, Margery Kempe began to see sexual acts as repulsive and sinful, leading her to push John even more to stop the practice all together between them. It was not until a supposed vision that her affections were redirected toward Christ and she was allowed ‘to re-channel her sexual energies toward something pure, Christ, thereby simultaneously purifying and granting power to her sexuality,” (Schroeder 7). This would shape the remainder of thoughts about sexuality according to Margery Kempe. The flesh was considered weak and sinful, even in marriage, sexuality was not a positive, or even tolerable, state of being. Instead, if sexuality was redirected from the physical aspect and instead toward the spiritual, in this cast toward Christ, then it was pure and …show more content…
The first, and probably more familiar, depiction of Heloise is that of a rebel and erotic heroine, who stood out boldly against the patriarchal society of her time, before falling into the role of a submissive wife to Abelard. The other is a depiction of a highly intelligent and insightful abbess, who challenged the Benedictine rule, not only by seeking another rule under the belief that it was in no way written to govern women, but also by extending it to show that the ideals which it was built upon, could not even be applied realistically to men. As modern society shifts and recognizes that women do not in fact fit within a “whore” verses “Madonna” binary, recent scholars have made great efforts to look past these two typical divisions of Heloise. Instead they have begun trying to reconsider the woman all together, reinterpreting her work as a whole, instead of dividing her letters into categories, and as a result scholars have started to construct a more historical Heloise, rather than a character that seemed far more fictional then having been an actual