Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto ...

Ruth Mazo Karras. Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing
Unto Others. Routledge, 2005. pp. viii + 200.

Sexuality has been a can accurately be said to be
popular topic in medieval the medieval one, the range
studies for a number of sexual identities possible
of years, owing in part to the in medieval Europe must be
pioneering work of such authors understood in relation to a key
as James Brundage, Vern distinction between then and
Bullough, and John Boswell now: sexual activity in medieval
as well as to more recent essay culture was largely understood
collections edited by Karma as actively asymmetrical,
Lochrie, Peggy McCracken, something done to one partner
James A. Schultz, and by Cindy by another. This above all else,
Carlson and Angela Jane Weisl. Karras believes, should inform
Yet a succinct and accessible our understanding of
introduction for students, medieval gender roles and
primarily undergraduates, has social subjectivity.
to this point been lacking.
This interesting and useful The first chapter, “Sex and
introduction to medieval the Middle Ages,” provides
sexuality by Ruth Mazo an overview of “sexuality,”
Karras brings together a which Karras describes as “the
number of subjects of interest universe of meanings that
to medievalists in general people place on sex acts, rather
and feminist medievalists in than the acts themselves” (5).
particular, chief among them Asserting that sexuality is
the conflicted and complex an ideological discourse and
attitudes towards sexuality cultural effect rather than, like
in medieval culture and the biological sex, a somatic fact,
disparate ways these attitudes Karras emphasizes that the
are represented and interpreted, distinctions and definitions
both then and now. Writing for that constitute sexuality in the
non-specialists, Karras explains modern world did not obtain
that because no single attitude in medieval Europe. Rejecting

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the essentialist notion that they of “chastity” (sexually inactive
exist on their own and across for moral reasons), “celibacy”
time and place, she argues, (the state of being permanently
“[h]eterosexuality both in the unmarried), and “virgin” (not
Middle Ages and today tends yet sexually active, a term
to be an unmarked category: rarely used for men), Karras
most people assume it is normal describes the typical medieval
and thus often do not notice life-cycle phenomena–virginity,
that it is socially constructed marriage, widowhood–with an
in the same way homosexuality emphasis upon the differences
is” (8). She clarifies that in expectations for men and
“If medieval people did not women with women subjected
think of “homosexuals” as a to greater scrutiny and higher
category, they did not think of expectations of restraint.
“heterosexuals” as one either,” Focusing on Christianity’s
and thus, “[t]his book works teachings on chastity as the
from the assumption that we foundation for centuries of
must look at how medieval medieval attitudes, Karras
people thought about sexuality, finds that while Christianity
rather than impose our own was hardly the first religion
categories on them” (8). to endorse sexual abstinence
Situating the book’s chapters in appropriate contexts,
in relation to current terms “Christianity’s innovation was in
of categorical distinction, she making the belief in abstinence
demonstrates the need for part of the mainstream” (32) in
current readers to frame their recognition and respect, if not
understanding of medieval in practice.
sexuality in medieval, rather
than modern, categories. The subsequent chapter,
“Sex and Marriage,” notes
“The Sexuality of Chastity” that marriage was expected in
considers what Karras describes medieval society, and while
as “the fundamental definition there were some who remained
of what kind of person one unmarried for religious or
was,” the distinction between economic reasons, matrimony
being chaste and being sexually was the universal norm. Karras
active. Clarifying the definitions points to the obvious influence

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of the Church in creating this of controlling them but also
expectation, noting the irony to the social correlation of
that most texts about marriage honor and virtue with sexual
were written by the celibate status. Unlike men, who had
and the additional irony that commercial, military, and
marriage was considered the political avenues to establish and
only legitimate outlet for sexual maintain their value in society,
desire by the same Church women were largely relegated
writers who denigrated it as to the home and thus to the
the second-best option, after context of parents and spouses.
chastity. Sexual practices within Adultery, unmarried women’s
marriage, which Karras gleans fornication, prostitution, same-
from penitential handbooks sex relationships, and rape are
and literary representations topics of analysis, all of which
(primarily fabliaux) focused are tied to economic concerns
primarily on what constituted and class structure. Women of
acceptable practice (those the aristocracy, for instance,
leading to conception or at tended to marry at a younger
least the possibility thereof ) and age and, because of the family
those considered unacceptable and political interests at stake,
(where conception would not were expected to be virgins at
logically result, e.g., oral sex, that time, whereas female wage
anal sex, manual stimulation). workers were less scrutinized
and the consequences of
A pair of related chapters premarital sex much less
focuses on the sexual significant for their families.
activities of women and men,
respectively, outside of the “Men Outside of Marriage”
category of marriage. Noting notes, in relation to the double
that “women’s sexual activity standard by which men’s sexual
outside of marriage did not activities outside of marriage
receive anything like the same were regarded as less serious
toleration or acceptance that and not unexpected, that
men’s did” (87), Karras ascribes although sex between a man
this not only to the Church’s and a chaste woman or another
insistence upon women’s man’s wife would be subject to
lustfulness and the necessity criticism and the possibility of

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legal action, his sexual activity instructors, will likely find this
with an unmarried non-virgin accessible and informative book
would be regarded as much both useful and entertaining.
less problematic (or even, as in
Muslim tradition, notes Karras, Catherine S. Cox
not a sin at all). But male same- University of Pittsburgh
sex activity was regarded as
highly sinful, in part because at Johnstown
it was non-reproductive, and
in part because, as noted by
Peter Damian in the eleventh
century, it was associated with
clerical misconduct. Because of
the active/passive distinction in
the roles undertaken by each
partner, the passive partner was
reviled as feminine and unmanly
and treated more harshly,
with implications for our
contemporary understanding of
gender construction and
gender ideology.

An Afterword, “Medieval and
Modern Sexuality,” expands
briefly on the distinctions
introduced in the first chapter.
Reiterating the book’s argument
that “there was indeed a field of
discourse that could be called
‘sexuality’ in the Middle Ages”
(155), Karras asserts that we,
as modern readers, can perhaps
come to better appreciate and
understand our own world by
first understanding the medieval
one. Students, and their

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