11.For example, see Book for a Simple and Devout Woman: a Late Middle English Adaptation of Peraldus’ Summa de vitiis et virtutibus and Friar Laurent’s Somme le roi, ed. F. N. M. Diekstra (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1998), p. 257, of which there are two surviving manuscripts; The Book of Vices and Virtues, p. 51; Summa Virtutum de Remediis Anime, p. 266; Jacob’s Well, p. 143.
12.Cassian, The Conferences, II.22.
13.Ibid., II.21.
14. The Fyve Wyttes: a Late Middle English Devotional Treatise, ed. R. H. Bremmer (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987), p. 25. The text exists in but one copy.
15.Ibid., p. 26.
16.Ibid., p. 26.
17.London, British Library, MS. Harl. 2276, f. 96v–99r. This sermon is an exposition of Dives and Lazarus. The mid-fifteenth century manuscript contains an English translation of a Latin sermon collection Filius matris. See, Repertorium of Middle English Prose Sermons, p. 1224.
18.The early fifteenth-century Mirror of Man’s Saluacion, for example, links the Fall—“glutterie is þat vice þat the feend first temptis man inne”—with the first temptation of Christ. Mirour of Mans Saluacioune: a Middle English Tranlsation of Speculum Humanae Salvationis, ed. Avril Henry (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1986) pp. 91–3. Speculum Humanae Salvationis was enormously popular, existing in hundreds of manuscripts. The Mirror of Salvation: Speculum humanae salvationis: an Edition of British Library Blockbook G.11784, ed. Albert C. Labriola and John W. Sneltz (Duquesne, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 2002).
19.“The Canticum de Creatione,” in The Apocryphal Lives of Adam and Eve, ed. Brian Murdoch and J. A. Tasioulas (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2002), lines 589ff. The poem exists in one manuscript from the late fourteenth century.
20.Peraldus, Summa Viciorum, p. 6.
21.On the general ill effects of gluttony on the body, the compiler of Jacob’s Well develops the devil’s tavern as a negative archetype of miraculous healing. In “the chapel of holy cherche,” God performs miracles allowing the blind to see, the limp to walk, the dumb to speak, and so on; yet the devil, in “his chapel of þe tauerne, schewyth his myraclys. he takyth awey mannys feet, þat he may noʒt go, & his tunge, þat he may noʒt speke, alle his wyttes & his bodyly strengthe.” Jacob’s Well, p. 148.
22. Memoriale Credencium: A Late Middle English Manual of Theology for Lay People, ed. J. H. L. Kengen (Diss. Catholic University of Nijmegen, 1979), p. 131. Dating from c. 1400, the text exists in four complete manuscripts. Ralph Hanna, “The Text of Memoriale Credencium,” Neophilogus 67 (1983): 284–92.
23. Sidrak and Bokkus, ed. T. L. Burton, EETS o.s. 311, 312 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998–1999), p. 253. (There are seven manuscripts of this text dating from the fifteenth century.) However, there is a reference to the “grete and fatt paunches” of the people who are “curyous” to “make them fatte” in Caxton’s Mirrour of the World, ed. Oliver H. Prior, EETS e.s. 110 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913), p. 20.
24.See Susan E. Hill, “The Ooze of Gluttony: Attitudes Towards Food, Eating and Excess,” in Seven Deadly Sins, ed. Newhauser, pp. 57–71 (p. 58) and Georges Vigarello, The Metamorphoses of Fat: a History of Obesity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), pp. 6–7.
25.Ibid., p. 132.
26.For example, in the Anglo-Saxon Blickling Homilies, the “deofol þonne þurh þa attor berendan næddran, mid hire þære yfelan scoenesse & facne, beswac þone ærestan wifmon.” Blickling Homilies, ed. Richard Morris, EETS o.s. 58, 63, 73 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 3.
27. The Book of Vices and Virtues, p. 284.
28.Gower, Mirrour de l’Omme, p. 188.
29.Ibid., p. 119.
30. Book to a Mother, p. 63.
31.Medieval gluttons vomit ubiquitously. In Fasciculus Morum, simply, “taking more food than one can easily and naturally digest. This vice frequently leads to vomiting.” (p. 629).
32.Lotario dei Segni, De Miseria Condicionis Humane, ed. and trans. Robert E. Lewis (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1978), p. 166. Several hundred manuscripts are extant of this text, 45 of which are of an English provenance, as well as several early printed editions.
33.Vomit was a common image for confession. See, for example, Lesley Smith, “William of Auvergne and Confession,” in Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages, ed. Peter Biller and A. J. Minnis (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 1998), pp. 95–107 and Ancrene Wisse, p 124.
34.Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I–II, qu. 30, art. 1.
35.Ibid., I–II, qu. 30., art. 3.
36.Ibid., II–II, q. 148, art. 6.
37.Ibid., I.II, qu. 33, art. 3.
38. Fasciculus Morum, p. 637.
39.Ibid., p. 633.
40.Peraldus, Summa Viciorum, p. 4.
41.Lanfranc, Science of Chirurgie, p. 8.
42. On the Properties of Things , Vol. 1, p. 146.
43.“Cleanness” in The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, ed. Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron (Exeter, 1996), ln.1420.22.
44. On the Properties of Things, Vol. 1, p. 208.
45.Ynez Violé O’Neill, Speech and Speech Disorders in Western Thought Before 1600 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), pp. 63–4.
46.“Henry Daniel’s Liber Uricrisiarum,” ed. Ralph Hanna III, in Popular and Practical Science of Medieval England, ed. Matheson, pp. 185–218 (p. 208).
47.Guy de Chauliac, The Cyrurgie, p. 116.
48.Lavynham, A Litil Tretys, p. 21.
49. Jacob’s Well, p. 158.
50.Mirk, Festial, p. 191.
51. Jacob’s Well, p. 117.
52. The Book of Vices and Virtues, p. 156.
53.Guy de Chauliac, The Cyrurgie, p. 116.
54. Vizi capitali e pianeti in un sermone del Cinquecento inglese, p. 79.
55. Summa Virtutum de Remediis Anime, p. 266.
56.Ibid., p. 268. For the quotation on excessive fasting and pride, pp. 276–77.
57. Pastors and the Care of Souls, ed. Shinners and Dohar, p. 171.
58. Speculum Sacerdotale, p. 91.
59.Ibid., p. 93.
60.Mirk, Festial, p. 228.
61.Ibid., p. 229.
62. Book for a Simple and Devout Woman, p. 254.
63. Quattuor Sermones, p. 57.
64.Ibid., p. 57.
65.Langland, Piers Plowman, VI.271.
66.Chaucer, “Parson’s Tale,” X.831; The Book of Vices and Virtues, p. 51.
67. Summa Virtutum de Remediis Anime, p. 266.
68. Book for a Simple and Devout Woman, p. 257.
69. Quattuor Sermones, p. 58.
70.Peraldus, Summa Viciorum, p. 5.
71.Ibid., p. 4, 186.
72.Oxford, Bodley MS 95, f. 80r.
73. The Institutes, V.9.
74. Jacob’s Well, p. 143.
75. On the Properties of Things, Vol. 1, p. 147.
76. The Chastising of God’s Children compiles various religious texts, including Henry of Suso’s (d. 1366) Wisdom’s Watch upon the Hours, Ancrene Riwle (c. 1225–40) and John of Ruysbroek’s (d. 1381) Spiritual Espousals. On the text’s provenance and manuscript history, see Michael Sargent, “The Transmission by the English Carthusians of Some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 27 (1976): 225–240; Annie Sutherland, “The Chastising of God’s Children: a Neglected Text,” in Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale: Essays in Honour of Anne Hudson, ed. Helen Barr and Ann M. Hutchison (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 353–373.
77. Chastising of God’s Children, p. 211.
78.Ibid., p. 212.
79. Dives and Pauper, p. 95.
80.Oxford, Bodley MS. 95, f.80r.
81. Caxton’s Mirrour, p. 21.
82.MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 31b cited in Owst, Literature and Pulpit, p. 442.
83.Ibid., p. 442.
84.Ibid., p. 442.
© The Author(s) 2016
Virginia LangumMedicine and the Seven Deadly Sins in Late Medieval Literature and CultureThe New Middle Ages1
0.1057/978-1-137-44990-0_9
9. Lechery
Virginia Langum1
(1)Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
Like gluttony, luxuria or lechery was always to some extent medicalized by medieval religious writers. Early theorists of lechery understood the natural desire for self-preservation in terms of sexual acts as well as health in the purging of desire. As we have seen, medieval theologians and moralists disagree about the relationship between physical or medical changes and lechery. In City of God, Augustine argues that physical changes cannot conquer lust, and that the claim—that fasting can suppress lechery—is probably a sign of pride. 1
However, plenty of other texts, from Cassian’s fifth-century Conferences to the fourteenth-century Fasciculus Morum, recommend particular physical acts to reduce temptation: “no lust burns too hot that it cannot be stilled by withdrawing unnecessary food and drink, according to the words of Proverbs 26: ‘When the food fails, the fire will go out.’” 2 Some specific suggestions include drinking less water, avoiding strong, spiced wines, and pouring water over oneself. The medical arguments for these prescriptions are addressed a little later.
Ockham takes on these medical suggestions for continence, arguing that people cannot be deemed virtuous for following medical advice. People can only be judged on their rational choices, not on the natural or artificially induced inclinations of their bodies. 3 In Quodlibetal Questions, Ockham notes that physicians can “weaken concupiscence and in this way dispose people toward chaste acts” by cooling the body. Likewise, actions that heat the body can incline a person to lust. 4
In the Middle Ages, lechery consumes much intellectual thought from the desert fathers and patristic writers, with extended discussion of the culpability for nocturnal emissions and the medical need to cleanse the body of excess sperm. However, lechery joins gluttony as the last or penultimate sin of the flesh in the Gregorian order and most other orderings found in late medieval texts. As for the significance of lechery in texts produced in the later Middle Ages, many scholars have noted writers’ almost prurient interest in cataloguing possible lecherous sins. 5 Yet pastoral writers were also attuned to the perils inherent in learning about the details of sins. Under the heading of the “hows” of sin, one manual advises priests to enquire into “scurrilous inventions and many improper practices, even between married couples, which it is disgusting to mention or describe.” If the priest suspects such practices, he should ask about them while taking care not to implant any ideas that were not there before confession. 6 The detailed taxonomies of and proscriptions against lecherous activities suggest a gap between theory and praxis. Included among the heretical propositions condemned in 1277 is the proposition that fornication is not a sin. 7
To lechery, Gregory attributes caecitas mentis [blindness of mind], inconsideratio [thoughtlessness], inconstantia [inconstancy], praecipitatio [rashness], amor sui [self-love], odium Dei [hatred of God], affectus praesentis saeculi [love of this world], and horror uel desperatio futuri [abhorrence or despair of the afterlife]. 8 Yet the late medieval Fasciculus Morum lists fornication, violating a virgin, adultery, incest, and sodomy as species of lechery. Like greed and as these two lists suggest, lust can be a capacious term, referring to excess desires of many kinds. I limit myself here to discussion of sexual desires, thoughts, and actions.
Metaphorical Lechery
No doubt owing to lechery’s association with the flesh, many of its metaphorical associations suggest symptoms of decomposing and deteriorating flesh. For example, in “Templum domini,” “Lichery I likkyn wille/Un to þe flix & flesch stynkynge.” 9 “A Treatise of Ghostly Battle” aligns the sin with other bodily functions occurring in the anatomical regions of lechery, for example, “menysone [dysentery or menstruation] or in the flyxe [diarrhea].” 10
The rottenness of the flesh recalls leprosy, as John Gower enumerates along with other symptoms in Mirror of Man: “leprosy makes an abominable blemish in the rotten flesh of man; likewise lechery that is incurable makes a more grievous blemish, which will never be cured, in the soul.” 11 Furthermore, “leprosy is so virulent that it corrupts the air altogether with all the wind that blows by its side, and in this respect stands for Lechery,” drawing on medieval ideas of contagion, as dependent upon air. Finally, leprosy “will naturally cause man to have a foul breath. Lechery also, wherever she goes, stinks in filth more vile than anyone can say.” 12 While the material relevance of lechery and leprosy is debated in histories of medicine, lechery has a clear and persistent metaphorical association with leprosy and its symptoms. 13
Metonymic Lechery
Having already discussed views on natural concupiscence and pleasure in the chapters on avarice and gluttony, I focus in this section on the role of pleasure in sexual desire and its potential for sinfulness. Pleasure in sex was not in itself bad, according to many theologians. In De Animalibus, Albertus Magnus explains that pleasure is necessary for procreation and the survival of species. Otherwise, given the hardships of labor and parenting, many species would perish. 14
Furthermore, theologians wrestled with the idea of whether conception could take place at all without pleasure. The relationship between pregnancy and pleasure and thus, of course, consent, had a critical implication for the cultural conception of rape, which has surfaced again in recent years. 15 However, the role of pleasure in conception was debated, as was the extent to which the will could control the body’s pleasurable sensations. 16 According to certain medical theories, both parents needed to experience pleasure to ensure conception, drawing on the “two seed” theory of conception; and both parties needed to experience pleasure in order to ejaculate seed. 17 Yet as scholars have shown, theologians and medical writers were not in agreement about the complicity of pregnant rape victims. 18
However, many theologians and other religious writers speculate that procreation without desire is the pre-lapsarian ideal. Owing to the unity of sensual appetite and intellect, pre-lapsarian people experienced only those passions directed toward good, such as joy and love, not those directed toward bad, such as fear or sorrow. Nor did they desire that which they did not possess; that is, they did not experience lust. 19 Bridget of Sweden writes that pre-lapsarian conception occurs by “Goddes charite and loue … and menginge togidir of kinds … þe blode of charite suld haue bene fructuouse and growen in þe womens wombe withoute ani foule luste.” Charity facilitated birth rather than the “lusti comoninge of flesh,” obviating the need for sexual desire or pleasure. 20
Given the pleasure of sex in facilitating procreation, lechery—much like gluttony—is generally treated with a fair amount of lenience in terms of veniality. The boundary between venial lechery and deadly lechery is similar to that between passion and sin. For example, explaining lechery under the Sixth Commandment, The Book of Vices and Virtues states that all branches of lechery, specifically those resulting from “meuynges of þe flesche,” are not “dedly,” as “a man may not al wiþstonde” them. Yet the faithful can resist such stirrings by avoiding overindulging in food and drink or dwelling on the stirrings themselves. 21
Material Lechery
In humoral terms, lechery relates to sanguis, or blood. In Rypon’s sermon on the material bases of the sins, the hot and moist sanguine complexion disposes one to lust and naturally characterizes the “third age,” or adolescence (14–28 years old). As he explains, “heat is naturally in continuous motion and especially with its contrary, and therefore heat when it is dominant agitates moistness or the humors of the body and provokes them to lust.” 22 However, these natural, physiological inclinations are “not thought to be shameful” but rather how people “provoke themselves willingly and with deliberate intention.” Rypon’s sermon coheres with the medical consensus that as the body cooled with age, so did lust and the possibilities of its release. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, in fact, lists this as one of the few benefits of old age, among a host of medical, social, and psychological miseries. Age “makeþ end of lust,
and brekeþ of fleischelich likinge.” 23 Lust is a young person’s sin.
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