Prostitution, Miscegenation and Sexual Purity in the First Crusade

Abstract

THE FIRST Crusade was, from the beginning, a pilgrimage and an act of penance for the sins of its participants. The crusaders hoped that their presence in the expedition would cleanse them of the guilt and purge them of the penance that their sins merited. 1 A substantial part of the guilt that crusaders felt undoubtedly involved sexual offences. Early medieval writers on moral issues were virtually unanimous in teaching that sex was an unclean, unholy business that defiled both body and soul; thus sex of any kind was exceedingly difficult to reconcile with the highest ideals of Christian life. Even within marriage, prominent authorities taught, sexual relations were tainted with impurity, for marital coitus was always tinged with traces of the sin of lust. 2 Yet, at the same time, married couples were obliged to have sexual relations with one another on demand; in obedience to St Paul’s dictum (1 Cor. 7:5) they should abstain from coitus only for short periods of time by mutual consent. 3 Rather inconsistently, however, early medieval penitential handbooks prescribed that married persons must refrain from sexual activities during substantial parts of the ecclesiastical year: throughout Lent and Advent, on Sundays, feast days, the vigils of major feasts, the week before Pentecost, and, according to some, on all Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays throughout the year. 4 Complete sexual abstinence was also normally required for persons who were doing penance - such as pilgrims, for example. 5

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 15 citations exist upstream.