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Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock

Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock

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AuthorsElliott, Dyan H.
TagsMarriage—Religious Aspects—Christianity—History of Doctrines, Sexual Abstinence—Religious Aspects—Christianity History of Doctrines, Marriage—Religious Aspects Christianity—History of Doctrines—Middle Ages 600-1500, Sexual Abstinence—Religious Aspects—Christianity—History of Doctrines—Middle Ages 600—1500, Europe—Social Life And Customs, Europe—Church History—Middle Ages 600-1500.
PublisherPrinceton University Press
Published14 apr 1993
Date25 apr 2019
Languageseng
Identifiersisbn: 9780691086491, uri: https://www.fulcrum.org/epubs/jd472w76t, Amazon.com, oclc: 664330217, google: XRO9StoSWSMC, lcn: BV835.E424 1993, url: https://archive.org/details/SpiritualMarriage
FormatsPDF, PDF_OCR

Description

This study explores the early Christian and medieval practice of spiritual marriage, in which husband and wife mutually and voluntarily relinquished sexual activity for reasons of piety. It describes how this practice was manipulated[!] by the clergy and medieval royalty.

This book would be more properly titled "Marital Perpetual Continence".
Mentions St. Catherine of Genoa, who was infertile and seemed to have lived in a "purgatorial" marriage on earth, due to her volatile husband, who died a Franciscan tertiary.
Also mentions St. Peter Damian's struggle against illicit clerical marriages.

The Appendices (PDF pp. 320-337) contains table of marriage dates, years of marital continence, etc.

42. A Christian may therefore live in concord with his wife, whether with her providing for a fleshly craving, a thing which the apostle speaks by permission, not by commandment; or providing for the procreation of children, which may be at present in some degree praiseworthy; or providing for a brotherly and sisterly fellowship, without any corporeal connection, having his wife as though he had her not, as is most excellent and sublime in the marriage of Christians: yet so that in her he hates the name of temporal relationship, and loves the hope of everlasting blessedness.

15.42. Potest igitur christianus cum coniuge concorditer vivere sive indigentiam carnalem cum ea supplens, quod secundum veniam non secundum imperium dicit Apostolus 126, sive filiorum propagationem, quod iam nonnullo gradu potest esse laudabile, sive fraternam societatem sine ulla corporum commixtione, habens uxorem tamquam non habens 127, quod est in coniugio christianorum excellentissimum atque sublime, ut tamen oderit in ea nomen temporalis necessitatis et diligat spem sempiternæ beatitudinis.

87. Est quaedam haeresis rusticana in campo nostro, id est Hipponiensi, vel potius fuit; paulatim enim diminuta in una exigua villa remanserat, in qua quidem paucissimi, sed omnes hoc fuerunt. Qui omnes modo correcti et Catholici facti sunt, nec aliquis illius supersedit erroris. ABELOIM vocabantur, Punica declinatione nominis. Hos nonnulli dicunt ex filio Adae fuisse nominatos qui est vocatus Abel, unde ABELIANOS vel ABELOITAS eos possumus dicere.

Non miscebantur uxoribus, et eis tamen sine uxoribus vivere sectae ipsius dogmate non licebat. Mares ergo et feminae sub continentiae professione simul habitantes puerum et puellam sibi adoptabant in eiusdem coniunctionis pacto successores suos futuros. Morte praeventis quibusque singulis alii subrogabantur, dum tamen duo duobus disparis sexus in illius domus societate succederent. Utrolibet quippe parente defuncto, uno remanenti, usque ad eius quoque obitum filii serviebant. Post cuius mortem etiam ipsi puerum et puellam similiter adoptabant. Nec umquam eis defuit unde adoptarent, generantibus circumquaque vicinis, et filios suos inopes ad spem hereditatis alienae libenter dantibus.

transl.:

LXXXVII. There is, or rather there was, an unsophisticated heresy in our countryside, that is, around Hippo. It gradually diminished, but continued to exist in a single small village, in which only a few people, but the whole population, were its members. Now all of these have been corrected and have become Catholics, and no one from that error survives. They were called the Abeloim†222 in the Punic form of the name. Some say that they were named after the son of Adam who was called Abel; hence, we can also call them Abelians or Abeloites.

They did not have intercourse with their wives, and they were, nonetheless, not permitted by the teaching of this sect to live without wives. Husbands and wives, therefore, lived together under the vow of chastity and, by the agreement of their union, adopted for themselves a boy and a girl to be their successors. If any of these died, others were chosen to take their place, provided, of course, that two of the opposite sex took the place of the other two in the same household. If either of the parents died, the children served the one remaining until he or she also died. After that parent's death, they likewise adopted a boy and a girl. There was never a lack of children for them to adopt, since their neighbors on all sides bore children and gladly gave them their poor children in the hope that they would become their heirs.

* I also never knew the heretical bishop Julian was in a spiritual marriage.

"I speak to you, O you the clerics' charmers, Devil's choice tidbits, expulsion from paradise, virus of minds, sword of souls, wolfbane to drinkers, poison to companions, material of sinning, occasion of death. You, I say: I mean the female chambers of the ancient enemy, of hoopoes, of screech owls, of night owls, of the she-wolves, of the bloodsuckers, which say: Give, give! without ceasing (Prov. 30.15). And so come, hear me whores, prostitutes, lovers, wallowing pools of greasy hogs, bedrooms of unclean spirits, nymphs, sirens, lamiae, followers of Diana . . . For you are the victims of demons destined to the fall into eternal death.

He's right in calling them those names ∵ they certainly practiced abortion and contraception.

The chastity of

1. non-consecrated virgins
2. unmarried repentant non-virgins
3. marrieds
4. widows
5. consecrated virgins
6. ordained priests
7. the religious (monks, nuns)

There are many married people who cannot have children, as well as many who, if they have children, live badly, die, and end just as badly. And for such people, it would have been preferable not to have had them. Because of this—the uncertainty of heirs and deceiving and treacherous riches, which are the cause of death and eternal damnation—it is not safe to put oneself in peril. But the state of virginity, which is firm and sure and very pleasing and agreeable to God, is to be embraced above all. For such people accompany the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, and the Virgin Mary, his Mother, as their familiars.

{cf. St. Jerome Adversus Jovinianum §47, the only source of Aristotle's disciple Theophrastus's "golden book" ("worth its weight in gold") On Marriage , the ending of which ("Indeed, the surest way of having a good heir is to ruin your fortune in a good cause while you live, not to leave the fruit of your labour to be used you know not how.") is remniscent of Ecclesiastes 2:18-19: "…being like to have an heir after me, Whom I know not whether he will be a wise man or a fool, and he shall have rule over all my labours with which I have laboured and been solicitous: and is there anything so vain?"}

A friend even apologized to her for entering a second marriage, saying it was for procreation. St. Dauphine replied (Elliott p. 271fn18):

Bene fecistis contrahere matrimonium propter liberos procreandos, tamen in bona constancia vobis dico quod nolo fuisse matrem alicuius ex apostolis Ihesu Christi!

She was quite the character, like St. Jerome!

Elliott also uses the Douay version for New Testament translations. ☺

Spiritual Marriage cited in:

cf. Maritain's Carnet de Notes [Notebooks] ch. "Love and Friendship", § "Although Christian contemplation does not require chastity of the body it has however an affinity with it":

it happened formerly that spouses, at a given moment of their conjugal life, not only renounced mad, boundless love [amour fou] for each other, but further sometimes made a vow to renounce the flesh itself in order to devote themselves more exclusively to Jesus. These were doubtless very infrequent cases, and ones due to a clearly manifested particular vocation. In actual fact, no one was astonished at it. One knew that the sacrament of marriage was only more profoundly lived by them, because one of the essential ends of marriage, the spiritual companionship between spouses in order to mutually help themselves to advance towards God, found itself strengthened and realized in a higher manner in mad, boundless love for God. As to the other essential end, procreation, it was not denied but transferred to another plane, it was a spiritual progeniture that these spouses awaited from God, and it was to it that they devoted themselves.

PDF p. 169 cites, regarding how St. "Albert the Great's advice that if a man has difficulty consummating his marriage, the woman should be warned to dress more provocatively, while the man should be instructed on how a more lovable woman can be fashioned.":

Chapters:

  1. "A Place in the Middle": Intramarital Chastity as Theoretical Embarrassment and Provocation 16
  2. Spiritual Marriage as Insoluble Problem or Universal Nostrum? 51
  3. Eleventh-Century Boundaries: The Spirit of Reform and the Cult of the Virgin King 94
  4. The Conjugal Debt and Vows of Chastity: The Theoretical and Pastoral Discourse of the High and Later Middle Ages 132
  5. Spiritual Marriage and the Penitential Ethos 195
  6. Virgin Wives 266

Appendixes showing history of spiritual marriages (OCRed PDF, PNG)