Sexual Behavior and the Christian Church in the Germanic Kingdoms

During the decades immediately following their initial settlement in the west­ern territories of the old Roman Empire, Germanic kings and their subjects gradually accepted baptism and became, nominally at least, Latin Catholics.^[560] From the late fifth century, then, increasing numbers of Germanic settlers came under the discipline of the Church in sexual matters.

Family Structure

The differences between German practice and Church discipline were particu­larly acute with respect to marriage and family issues. The clash grew sharper, moreover, between the sixth and the ninth centuries as a result of the emer­gence of a new kind of household structure and, consequently, a new definition of the family in western Europe. In the generation of Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) and St. Isidore of Seville (ca. 560-636) West European households still retained the characteristic features of Mediterranean antiquity. The house­holds of the rich differed in structure from those of the poor, and the family, in the sense of a Coresidential unit consisting of a couple and their direct descen­dants, had not yet emerged. By the generation of Charlemagne (771-814), this had changed. The family had come to mean a Coresidential, primary descent group, and Carolingian administrators, when they set out to record the charac­teristics of a population for tax assessments or other reasons, commonly did so in terms of family units. Moreover, rich families and poor families no longer differed enormously from one another in membership, although they often dif­fered in size and of course in resources.

The family was greater than the sum of its members; its continuing exis­tence, prosperity, and prerogatives transcended the interests of any genera­tional segment within it. The sexual foibles of each member reflected upon the whole family, and marriage was a matter of family policy, not of individual choice.

By Charlemagnes time, moreover, European families were beginning to identify with the paternal lineage, rather than with both maternal and paternal lines. Also striking in the new family paradigm was the dawning consciousness of emotional bonding among family members as a central feature. In David Herlihy s phrase, the emerging family was marked by its symmetry (centered on the nuclear unit), its structure (identification with paternal lineage) and its sen­timent (emotional bonding within the family).^[561]

Marriage

The altered structure of the family probably bred additional tensions between the Germanic approach to marriage and the Church’s concept. Germanic folklaw treated marriage as a union that was contracted, sealed, and symbolized by sex­ual relations between the parties and dissoluble at will, at least for the man. Church leaders, in contrast, adopted the position that marriage created a life­long bond between man and wife, contracted by their consent and that of their families.^[562] Germanic custom and Christian teaching saw the role of marital sex quite differently. As noted earlier, the Germans considered sexual relations es­sential to the definition of marriage, whereas Christian teachers, under the in­fluence of patristic authorities, distrusted sex: they saw it as unclean, and in­compatible with their ascetic values.^[563]

Catholic writers in the eighth and ninth centuries were acutely aware of these conflicts about the role of sex in marriage, and some of them sought to harmonize Germanic tradition with Christian teaching.

A true coupling in legitimate marriage between free persons of equal status occurs when a free woman, properly dowered, is joined to a free man with paternal consent in a public wedding [followed by] sexual intercourse.^[564]

This formulation seems to have been original with Hincmar, although in framing it he borrowed phrases from earlier authorities, notably Pope St. Leo I and St. Augustine. But the writers whose words he appropriated and stitched together to suit his purposes would have been astonished at what he did with them, for Hincmars coital theory of marriage was a novel attempt to give sexual consummation a central role in the formation of Christian marriage. He re­tained the Roman concept that marriage was made by consent. But although necessary, consent by itself was not sufficient, according to Hincmar. Marriage by consent alone, he held, was not permanently binding. Marriage in a full and complete sense began only when the parties united physically in an act of sex­ual intercourse. Perhaps reflecting this new reading of the nature of marriage, about the time Hincmar was writing it began to become common practice for nuptial ceremonies to take place at dusk, at the time of day his contemporaries considered especially propitious for intercourse and procreation.^[565]

Hincmars coital theory of marriage possessed some juristic virtues: it enu­merated a set of conditions for marriage that were, in large part, susceptible of verification by witnesses or by inference from circumstantial evidence. These features made it possible to resolve questionable cases by reference to actions, rather than impressions about intentions. The coital theory also harmonized Roman and Christian concepts of marriage with traditional Germanic practice.

This conflict in value systems emerged openly in the rivalries between Ger­manic folklaw courts and prelates who sought to invoke theological principles in dealing with marital problems. Prior to the tenth century, the Church lacked jurisdiction over marriage in any technical sense. Ecclesiastical authorities could and did make judgments about marriages, of course, but the Church had not yet developed a juristic routine for dealing with matrimonial disputes. Few ecclesiastical writers in the eighth and ninth centuries entertained any illusion that the Church possessed an exclusive right to cognizance of marriage litiga­tion. The Church’s efforts to enforce compliance with its standards of Christian marriage were more hortatory than juridical.

Only during the tenth and eleventh centuries did Church officials seriously begin to assert exclusive jurisdiction over marriage.⁴³ Prior to that time, the Western Church limited its intervention in marriage cases essentially to re­viewing the legitimacy of particular unions, especially those of prominent per­sons, whose irregular marriages could create public scandal. Churchmen em­ployed various kinds of pressure to persuade couples to separate and imposed sanctions in order to insure conformity with the Church’s marriage rules. Those who resisted could be excommunicated until they showed their readiness to obey and to do penance.^{[566] [567] But all of this fell considerably short of full-fledged matrimonial jurisdiction.}

In the years between 6oo and goo the church failed to secure clear-cut con­trol of matrimonial matters, but ecclesiastical authorities continued to elabo­rate their opinions about sexual ethics. In retrospect it is clear that Christian spokesmen were in the process of formulating a theology of sex and marriage.

A few ecclesiastical writers in the sixth, seventh, and early eighth centuries were fairly positive in their valuation of marriage and marital love and even of the role of sex in marriage. St. John Damascene (ca. 675—749), ^a Byzantine theologian, was the most eloquent advocate during this period of the benefi­cent values of marriage and marital sexuality.

Let every man enjoy his wife [he wrote at one point], Nor should he blush, but let him go in and settle down in bed, day and night. Let them make love, keeping one another as man and wife, exclaiming: “Do not deny one another, save perhaps by mutual consent.” [1 Cor. 7:5] Do you abstain from sexual relations? You don’t wish to sleep with your husband? Then he to whom you deny your bounty will go out and do evil and his wickedness will be due to your abstinence.⁴⁷

Fragmentary evidence from saints’ lives, donations, wills, and burial inscrip­tions, suggests that many couples in the early Middle Ages valued marital love, including sexual love, as highly as Damascene. Loving sentiments embellished funerary monuments, husbands and wives were buried together, and some at least affirmed explicitly the tie between their sexual love and spiritual love.⁴⁸

But sentiments such as those of Damascene were rare among the clerical intelligentsia, either in the East or West. St. Isidore of Seville expressed a more typical attitude when he repeated ideas that he found in Jerome and Augustine: sex for pleasure was wrong, even for married couples, Isidore warned; pro­creative sex, however, was a good use of an evil thing, and hence married couples should confine their sexual relations to the minimum required for pro­creation.⁴⁹ Isidore likewise voiced the Stoic view, earlier adopted and approved by Jerome, that excessive marital intercourse, beyond the needs of procreation, was sinful, although Isidore considered this only a minor sin, and compared it to eating more than required for sustenance.⁵⁰ Gregory the Great also sym­pathized with these ideas, but he was inclined to rate the moral danger more seriously than Isidore did.

¹⁷John Damascene, De sacris parallelis, in PG 96:258; see also Damascene’s disciple, Theodore Abucara, Dogma de una uxore, in PG 97:1555; Boswell, CSTAH, p. 159.

⁴⁸Philippe Aries, “L’amour dans Ie mariage,” in Sexualites occidentales, p. 120; Leclercq, Monks on Marriage, pp. 49-50; Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, pp. 57, 103.

⁴⁹Isidore of Seville, Sententiae 2.40.13, in PL 83:645; De ecclesiasticis officiis 2.20.9-10, in PL 83:812; Payer, “Early Medieval Regulations,” p. 353.

⁵⁰Isidore of Seville, De ordine creaturarum 14.11, in PL 83:949.

“Gregory I, Moralia in Ioh 13.21 (12.18), ed. Marc Adriaen, in CCL 143A^97-98; Muller, Lehre des hl, Augustinus, p. 34; Flandrin, “Vie sexuelle,” p. 103. to avoid the temptations that sexual experience might generate. Several early medieval saints’ lives picture couples who did in fact choose to live in unions that were both loving and nonsexual.⁵² Those unable to make this sweeping sac­rifice were at least advised to abstain from sexual relations for two or three days following their marriage and, in addition, to refrain from sexual activities at regular periods during each year of their married lives.⁵³

Gregory of Tours (538-595) related an incident from his own experience that testifies eloquently to the way in which unsophisticated men and women might interpret ecclesiastical warnings about the spiritual dangers of marital sex. Gre­gory described a married woman who went to visit her widowed mother, who had become a nun. After talking with her mother, the younger woman decided to remain in the convent and sent her husband a message: “Go back and rear our children, for I shall not return to you. One who is joined in marriage will not see the Kingdom of Heaven.” This message may have been doctrinally in­correct—Gregory certainly believed it was wrong—but the incident reflects conclusions that people could easily have drawn from ecclesiastical teachings about marital sex.⁵⁴

Another Frankish bishop, Jonas of Orleans (ca. 780-843), the first Christian writer to devote a whole treatise expressly to the life of the Christian layman, firmly condemned those who sought pleasure in marital sex. Marriage is mor­ally good, Jonas argued, but only when it is ordered toward procreation. Couples who have sex just because it feels good commit a wrong and must atone for it by penance.⁵⁵ Some people, Jonas continued, contend that because God created the genitalia therefore sex is natural, and God approves of it. Not so, according to Jonas. Sex for pleasure is an abuse of God’s creation. The reproductive organs are precisely that and nothing else. Sex is allowed only to married couples, only at prescribed times and places, and only for reproduction.⁵⁶ Married men who believe that they can pleasure themselves and their wives whenever and how­ever they wish are wrong. Such “immoderate” marital sex is a serious sin.⁵⁷ Jonas also appealed to the values of a warrior society to support limitation of sexual activity. Sex, he maintained, is not only fraught with moral danger, but it is also physically debilitating. Excessive indulgence in sex robs a man of his health, vigor, and equilibrium; it makes him nervous and soft. Thus Jonas ar-

^szLeclercq, Monks on Marriage, p. 43, cites several examples.

⁵³Herard of Tours, Capitula 89, in PL 121:770; Payer, “Early Medieval Regulations,” P∙ 355, and Sex and the Penitentials: The Development of A Sexual Code, 550-1150 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), pp. 23-28; P. Saintyves, “Les trois nuits de Tobie ou la continence durant la premiere ou les premieres nuits du mariage,” Revue Unthropologique 44 (1944) 266-96.

⁵⁴Gregory of Tours, Historia Francorum g.33, ed. WiIhelm Arndt, in MGH₁ Scrip­tores rerum Merovingicarum 1:387.

⁵⁵Jonas of Orleans, De institutione Iaicali 2.1, 6, in PL 106:167—70, 179-82.

⁵⁶Jonas of Orleans, De inst. Iaicali 2.9, in PL 106:184-85.

⁵⁷Jonas of Orleans, De inst. Iaicali 2.3, in PL 106:172-74. gucd that sexual restraint, even total abstinence, was a source of power and en­ergy, a positive asset for the soldierly life as well as a moral virtue.^[568]

Theological writers in the period between 6oo and 900 were in the process of elaborating, slowly and haltingly, a sacramental theology. But none of the au­thorities of the age was prepared to see in marital activities any visible signs of operative sacramental grace. Tainted by lust and carnal desire, marriage did not seem to them a channel for the infusion of divine favor.^{[569] [570] [571] [572]}

Marriage was thus only a relative good: it served to prevent worse evils, such as fornication, but it had few positive virtues of its own, and those were offset by indulgence in sex. Consummated marriage fell far short of the ideal of vir­ginity; married folk could only try to reduce their sexual activity to the mini­mum. That marriage was best in which the sexual element was least.⁸⁰ But to condemn marriage entirely was doctrinally unacceptable, and Church councils continued to insist that those who held marriage unchristian were guilty of heresy.⁸¹

One facet of marriage law that drew special attention from ecclesiastical au­thorities in this age involved the so-called impediments to marriage. Early me­dieval canon law had not articulated clearly its doctrine concerning obstacles to marriage. The Church now attempted to define its marriage rules more pre­cisely. While it would be anachronistic during this period to call marriages that contravened the rules invalid, persons who infringed the regulations certainly came under considerable pressure to make amends for their action. Couples whose unions failed to meet the criteria that the Church established were strongly advised to separate.⁸²

A growing number of these rules concerned marriages between persons re­lated to one another through blood ties or linked together as in-laws or bap­tismal sponsors. The ostensible purpose of these regulations was to prevent incest, but the rules that came into currency during the seventh and eighth centuries forbade marriages where the relationship between the parties was so remote that incest seems unlikely to have been the central issue.

A group of texts attributed to Pope Gregory the Great were particularly im­portant in defining the new criteria for consanguinity and affinity. These texts, often called the Responsa Gregorii, were known (at least in part) as early as the time of St. Boniface (680-755), ^anc∣ some of them probably predated his pe­riod.^β3 One of the responsa enunciated the rule that marriages between blood kin within seven degrees of relationship were illegal and required married per­sons so related to separate. The seven-degree rule gradually became accepted during this period as the canonical norm on these matters, and as early as the tenth century it was beginning to dictate the marital strategies of the nobility in France.^{[573] [574] [575]}

Both the dubious Responsa Gregorii and genuine Merovingian legislation, moreover, banned sexual intercourse, either in marriage or outside of it, be­tween a married person and any of the blood kin of his or her spouse. Inter­course with the spouse’s kin created a legal affinity punishable by lifelong pen­ance, which effectively ended the sexual relationship between the married partners. Secular authorities also decreed that the property of those who of­fended in this way should be seized.⁸⁵

To complicate matters further, an impediment to marriage was established between godparents and those for whom they stood as baptismal sponsors. In addition sponsorship established a tie of coparenthood between the godparent and all of the adult members of the godchild’s family; the tie also carried with it matrimonial prohibitions. A similar relationship of cogodparenthood was cre­ated between the sponsors themselves and made marriage between them and any members of the other sponsor’s family illegal. Even unwitting incest might be punishable. The Council of Verberie (753 ~ 756) provided that if a man slept with a woman whom his brother later married, the brother must repudiate his wife upon learning of her prior relationship, and in reparation he must do seven years of penance, at the end of which he might marry someone else. Other Gregorian (or pseudo-Gregorian) texts prohibited marriage to nuns or to infidels, which was also forbidden by genuine patristic texts.⁶⁶

Church authorities insisted also in this period that marriage must be public. A letter doubtfully attributed to Pope Hormisdas (513-553) prohibited secret marriages and demanded that Christians celebrate their nuptials in public and receive the blessing of a priest, a practice already well established in the Byzan­tine Church by the seventh century.⁶⁷ Similar provisions appeared in the can­ons of some eighth-century councils in the West. These canons failed to solve the problem, however, and despite efforts to repress it, clandestine marriage remained common.⁶⁸

Many Church leaders continued to oppose remarriage of widows and wid­owers. The Second Council of Braga (572) not only penalized men who indulged in second marriages by excluding them from holy orders, but also prescribed that all those who married more than once should do penance for their lascivious conduct.⁶⁹ Ecclesiastical authorities wrestled in addition with the problem of the vanishing husband who disappeared during battle or on a foreign journey. Pope Leo I allowed women whose husbands had been missing for a long time to remarry on the presumption that the vanished husband must have died. Should he reappear, however, the wife must abandon her second husband to rejoin her original mate.⁷⁰

The Council of Verberie dealt with other complications of marital separation: if a man was summoned to distant parts by his lord, and his wife refused to accompany him, she could remain at home, but she must also remain single for

“Capitulary of Verberie (753 ~ 756) c. 18, in MGH, LL 1:23; Theodor Gottlob, “Der Ehebruch und seine Rcchtsfolgen in den Vorgratianischen Quellen und bei Gratian Selbst,” Studia Gratiana 2 (1954) 340-41; JE 1941; Maehielsen, “Spurii,” p. 267; on godparenthood and co-parenthood sec generally Joseph H. Lynch, “Spiritual Kinship and Sexual Prohibitions in Early Medieval Europe,” in Berkeley Proceedings, pp. 271-88, as well as Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 219-57.

⁶⁷A. Montan, “Alie origini della disciplina matrimoniale canonica: contributi per la ricerca,” Apollinaris 54 (1981) 178; Acuna, “Forma del matrimonio,” p. 148; Jean Gaud- emet, “Originalite et destin du mariage remain, ” in L’Europa e il diritto romano: Studi in onore di Paolo Koschaker, 2 vols. (Milan: A. Giuffre, 1954) 2:541, ^reP^r∙ in Gaudemets Societes et mariage, p. 168; Antonio Marongiu, “La forma religiosa del matrimonio nel diritto bizantino, normanno, e svevo,” Archivio Storico per la Calabria e la Lucania 30 (1961) 3-10, reprinted with original pagination in his Byzantine, Norman, Swabian, and Later Institutions in Southern Italy (London: Variorum, 1972).

“Council of Metz (755) c. 15, in Mansi 12:583; Synod of Reisbach (799) c. 12, in Mansi 13:1027; Justina Ruiz de Conde, El amor y el matrimonio secreto en Ios libros de Caballerias (Madrid: M. Aguilar, 1948), p. 6. For the problems that clandestine marriage gave rise to, see below, pp. 276-77.

^β92 Council of Braga c. 26, 80, as well as 2 Council of Seville (619) c. 4, in Vives, Concilios Visigoticos, pp. 94, 105, 165; cf. Leg. Visig. 3.6.1, in MGH, LL nat. germ. 1:166-67.

⁷⁰JK 536; PL 54:1135-37; MGH, LL 1:23; Hinschius, DPI, p. 620.

the rest of her days. Her husband, however, after doing penance, might be per­mitted to remarry.^[576] Clearly these provisions were not based upon a consistent doctrine of indissolubility. They demonstrate that the early medieval Church was prepared to adapt its policies to meet difficult situations. The Church’s spokesmen sometimes acknowledged that it was exceedingly difficult, if not al­together impossible, to prevent people, especially young people, from engaging in sexual activity. Authorities, therefore, tried to adjust their policies to take into account the facts of experience.^[577] For example, the Council of Worms in 868 decreed that married men who were doing canonical penance for their sins should not separate from their wives and that unmarried persons who found it impossible to practice continence should be allowed to marry, even while they were doing penance.^[578]

Divorce

Mitigation of the principle of indissolubility was further apparent in the treat­ment of divorce during this period. In 726, Pope Gregory II dealt with the case of a man with a chronically ill wife who was unable to have sexual relations. The husband wished to divorce her and marry a sexually active woman. The pope cautioned the petitioner that it would be better for him to remain continent, but nonetheless authorized the divorce and remarriage, provided that the man continue to support his first wife.^[579] Not all couples whose marriages were un­satisfactory sought ecclesiastical approval for terminating them. Divorce by mutual consent remained common in seventh and eighth century Gaul and probably elsewhere, too. Occasional efforts by churchmen and monarchs to re­strict the practice seem to have had little effect. Adultery was generally recog­nized as adequate grounds for divorce, and authorities often allowed remar­riage following divorce as a concession to human frailty.^[580]

Toward the close of the eighth century, however, both Church authorities and kings began to reassert older bans on remarriage following divorce for adul­tery. The Council of Friuli in 796, while acknowledging that adultery by the wife remained a legitimate reason for separation, disallowed remarriage by ei­ther party so long as the other lived.^[581] Charlemagne adopted this policy in a capitulary of 802, thus extending the principle throughout his empire and plac­ing imperial authority behind the rule.^[582] Louis the Pious reiterated the policy, as did several of his successors later in the ninth century.^[583]

The ability of married couples to have sexual relations gained renewed legal importance during the eighth and ninth centuries. When marriage was defined as a consensual contract, as it had been in Roman law, the sexual capacity of the parties was a secondary issue in determining whether they were married or not. Germanic concepts of marriage in which consummation was centrally im­portant, however, made the issues of impotence and frigidity far more acute. A mid-ninth century text that circulated under the name of Pope Gregory the Great (it was actually an excerpt from a letter by Archbishop Rabanus Maurus of Mainz [ca. 776-856]) authorized the separation of couples who found it impos­sible to have sexual intercourse.^[584] The policy stated in Rabanus s letter was sup­ported by earlier rulings, beginning with a letter of Pope Gregory II in 726, and included in the canons of at least two eighth-century councils.^[585] Companionate marriage was the preferred solution in such cases: in other words, the couple should remain together, despite their inability to have sex, and live a life of married chastity. Gregory II, however, was prepared to authorize the sexually capable partner in these situations to remarry.^[586]

Hincmar of Reims introduced a further subtlety into the treatment of impo­tence and frigidity. When Hincmar dealt with two notorious divorce cases—the one between King Lothair II (855-869) and Queen Teutberga, and the other between Count Stephen of Aquitaine and the daughter of Count Raymond of Toulouse—he found it helpful to distinguish between natural impotence, that is an inborn incapacity for sexual relations, and acquired impotence, which Hincmar thought might be induced by sorcery. Natural impotence was perma­nent and provided adequate reason to allow separation and remarriage of the healthy partner, while the impotent party must remain unmarried. Acquired impotence, however, might turn out to be reversible. Hence the parties could separate but not remarry, so that in case the impotence was cured they might reconstitute their marriage.^[587]

Concubinage

Concubinage remained common throughout this period, at least among the prominent and wealthy, and the Church’s attitude toward these relationships continued to be ambivalent.^[588] On the one hand, the Church treated concubinage as the functional equivalent of marriage for many purposes, including the de­termination oflegitimacy for entrants into religious life or the priesthood.^[589] On the other hand, ecclesiastical authorities were determined to restrict concubi­nage. They repeatedly warned married men that they must not keep a con­cubine as well as a wife. The Roman Synod of 863 also insisted that women must be free to choose whether to become concubines or not, since parents il­licitly persisted in forcing their daughters into these relationships.^[590]

Sex Offenses

That men ought to be held to the same standard of sexual conduct as women continued to appear as a theoretical norm in the moral manuals of this period. Society’s practice, however, was entirely different.⁸⁶ The Third Council of Aachen (862) declared that it was rare, almost unheard-of, for a man to remain a virgin until marriage. But men remained largely immune to punishment for their sexual adventures, at least so long as those adventures did not infringe the rights of other men.⁸⁷ Women, however, were heavily penalized, even for minor sexual peccadillos, partly because of the danger of pregnancy, partly because female chastity had an appreciable market value. Sexual misbehavior by a woman not only constituted a moral offense, but also diminished her desir­ability, either as wife or concubine.⁸⁸

Despite the Church’s disapproval of nonmarital sex, fornication was common­place in the early Middle Ages. We are best informed, of course, about sexual scandals among royalty and the higher ranks of the nobility; our information about the sexual practices of the lower classes comes mainly from clerical de­nunciations of their proclivity to lust. The Merovingian court had more than its share of lechers. A notable offender was King Dagobert I (623-638), who re­pudiated the wife his father had chosen for him and then married not only the beautiful Nanthild, but two other wives as well. For variety, he consorted with an Austrasian concubine whom he never married, but who bore him a son. The chronicler Fredegar was no doubt exaggerating, but perhaps not by much, in claiming that he could not include the names of all of Dagoberts mistresses in his book for fear of making the work too long. Dagoberts son, Clovis II (638-656), had an even more gaudy string of wives, concubines, and casual lovers.⁸⁹ Carolingian rulers, including Charlemagne himself, did not lag far be­hind the example set by the sexual adventures of the Merovingians.⁹⁰

“Jonas of Orleans, De inst. Iaicali 2.2, in PL 106:170-72; Toubert, “Theorie,” pp. 260-61; Weniple, Women in Frankish Society, pp. 75, 81.

⁸⁷Council of Aachen (862), in Mansi 15:625, citing Augustine, De bono coniugali; Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, pp. 41, 93; Herlihy, Medieval Households, PP∙ 3θ-37∙

⁸⁸Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, pp. 70-71.

⁸⁹Fredegar, Chronica 4.53, 58-60, ed. Bruno Krusch, in MGH, SS. rer. ιner. 2:146-47; Liber historiae Francorum 44, cd. Bruno Krusch, in MGH, SS rer. mer. 2:315; Gesta Dagoherti 1 regis Francorum 22, ed. Bruno Krusch, in MGH, SS rer. mer. 2:408; Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, ρ. 39; Janet L. Nelson, “Queens as Jezebels: The Careers of Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History,” in Medieval Women, Dedicated and Presented to Professor Rosalind M, T. Hill on the Occasion of Her Seventieth Birthday, ed. Derek Baker, Studies in Church History, Subsidia, vol. 1 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978; repr. 1981), pp. 46-48.

⁹⁰Charlemagnc had five wives, at least six concubines, and eighteen children; Wem- ple, Women in Frankish Society, pp. 78-79.

“Its hard to keep a pretty wife,” declared Isidore of Seville, testifying to the frequency of adulterous liaisons in Visigothic Spain. Conscientious churchmen throughout the West continued to worry about the never-ending difficulties of repressing adultery.⁹¹ While the early medieval Church continued to treat adul­tery as grounds for divorce or separation (with or without rights of subsequent remarriage), ecclesiastical writers in this period treated adultery primarily as a moral offense meriting penance, rather than as a canonical crime.⁹² Secular law was harsher and might impose substantial fines upon the adulterer.⁹³ Germanic rulers preferred to keep family units intact, however, and discouraged couples from separating simply because one of them was involved in an extramarital affair. The discouragement was apt to be most effective when divorce on grounds of adultery entailed financial hardship.⁹⁴ Ecclesiastical councils were deter­mined to prevent guilty parties in adultery cases from marrying their partners in crime, even after the death of the original spouses of both parties.⁹⁵

Prostitutes seem to^-have carried on a brisk trade in the Germanic kingdoms, despite a flurry of Carolingian measures designed to discourage commercial sex. Louis the Pious attempted to repress harlotry in his Empire by making both prostitutes and their clients liable to public whipping, but his efforts were short-lived and ineffective.⁹⁶ The counts and judges of Visigothic Spain likewise had little success in banishing commercial sex from that kingdom, despite the law’s insistence that they must prosecute every harlot who came to their atten­tion, under pain of suffering disciplinary action themselves.⁹⁷ Where criminal penalties failed, the Church’s efforts to exert moral pressure on wanton women were not much more successful. St. Columban attempted to express his indig­nation at prostitution by refusing to extend his blessing to the children whom

⁹Tsidorc of Seville, De eccl. off. 2.20.9, in J¹L 83:812: “Pulchra enim (ut ait quidam sapiens) cito adamatur et difficile custoditur, quod plures amant.”

⁹²2 Council of Braga (572) c. 76, in Vives, Concilios Visigbticos, p. 104; Council of Rome (826) c. 36, in MGH, Concilia 2:582; as well as a text of Pseudo-Grcgory (JE 1956) conflated from a genuine text of the Council of Arles (314) c. 11(10), in CCL 148:11, and a letter of Pseudo-Zacharias; Delpini, 'Tndissolubilita," pp. 80-81; J.R. Reinhard, “Burning at the Stake in Mediaeval Law and Literature,” Speculum 16 (1941) 186-209; Hans Bcnnecke, Die Strafrechtliche Lehre von Ehebruch in ihrer historisch~ dogmatischen Entwicklung (Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 1884), p. 34.

⁹³Lex Salica (100 title text) 14.1, ed. Eckhardt, p. 130.

⁹⁴Laws of Aethelbert 77(1), in Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Felix Liebermann, 2 vols. in 3 (Halle a∕S.: M. Niemeyer, 1903-06) 1:8.

"Council ofFriuli (796) c. 10, in MGH, Concilia 2:192-93; Council ofTribur (895) c. 40, in MGH, Capitularia 2:236-37; Gottlob, “Ehebruch,” pp. 341-43.

^s6Capitularia de disciplina palatii Aquisgranis (ea. 820) c. 3, in MGH, Capitularia 1:298; Richard Lewinsohn, A History of Sexual Customs, trans. Alexander Mayce (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), p. 145. An undated capitulary also banned prostitutes from bringing actions in the courts or testifying in actions brought by others; Capitula Francia 8, in MGH₁ Capitularia 1:334.

"King, Law and Society, pp. 81, 88-89.

King Theuderic II (612-613) had begotten by a woman alleged to be a harlot. But he succeeded only in enraging Theuderics grandmother, Queen Brunhild, who expelled the saint from the court and the kingdom.⁹⁸ The best the Church could do, it seemed, was to try to restrain its own clergy from marrying divor­cees or ladies of the street.⁹⁹

The Church was active during this period in efforts to repress sexual vio­lence, imposing its own penalties on rapists, in addition to punishments levied by secular authorities. Despite the efforts of both kings and bishops, however, the practice of seizing and making off with heiresses and other desirable women plagued early medieval society.¹⁰⁰ Evidently, too, not all of the cases reported as raptus by chroniclers and punished as raptus by the authorities involved rav­ishment of an unwilling victim. Raptus cases were often elopements of a girl with a suitor of whom her parents disapproved, a fact that helps to explain the apparent failure to prosecute many such occurrences and the frequent willing­ness, even eagerness, of victims to marry their abductors.¹⁰¹ When cases were prosecuted, both victim and perpetrator sometimes ended by entering religion as a way of appeasing their families and preventing further discord.¹⁰³ Church authorities understandably strove to penalize the rape of nuns with the strong­est weapons in their arsenal, but many of these rapes, too, involved the elope­ment of a nun (often a girl who had unwillingly entered the convent at the de­mand of her parents) with her lover.¹⁰³

⁹⁸Jonas, Vitae sanctorum: Columhanus 1. ιg, in MGH, scriptores rerum germani­carum in usum scholarum (hereafter SSRG) 34:187-91; Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, pp. 66-67.

"4 Council of Toledo (633) c. 44, in Vives, Concilios Visigoticos, p. 207; King, Law and Society, p. 153, n. 1.

^liwCouncil of Verneuil (844) c. 6 and Council of Meaux-Paris (845/46) c. 64, in MGH, Capitularia 2:384-85, 413-14; Kalifa, ¹Singularites matrimoniales,” pp. 212-13; Wem- ple, Women in Frankish Society, pp. 34, 41.

¹⁰¹Fransen, “Rupture,” p. 621.

¹⁰²An eighth-century rape case, heard by Duke Hildeprand of Spoleto, illustrates several of these themes. Rabenno, son of Count Rabenno of Fermo, agreed to marry Halerana. A certain Hermifrid, however, took the girl by force of arms and made off with her. Rabenno Soughtjudgment in the ducal court, where both the perpetrator and vic­tim were seized and turned over to him. Rabcnno agreed to spare their lives. He had Halerana put in a convent, but later changed his mind and married her. He pardoned Hermifrid, but subsequently regretted his generosity and killed him. As a result, all of Halerena s property and half of Rabenno s were forfeited to the king, who donated it to the monastery of Farfa. Rabenno then entered Farfa as a monk, while Halerana presum­ably returned to her convent. See Gregorio di Catino, Il regesto di Farfa, no. 144, 148, ed. I. Giorgi and U. Balzani, 5 vols. (Rome: La Societa, 1879-1914) 2:121-22. I am grateful to Dr. Richard Ring for bringing this case to my attention. See also on these matters the Council of Meaux-Paris (845/46) c. 64, in MGH, CapituIaria 2:413-14, and cf. Capitularia incerta c. 1, in MGH, Capitularia 1:315; Wemple, Women in Frankish Society, p. 82.

¹⁰³Council of Lerida (546) c. 6, in Vives₁ Concilios Visigoticos, p. 57; Council of Paris

The early medieval Church was also concerned over what one synod called “a new, unheard-of, and horrid wickedness,” namely “unnatural” sexual relations, whether between men and women or between persons of the same gender.^{[591] [592]} Although this particular canon was unusually strident about the matter, Church authorities in the early Middle Ages certainly disapproved of and attempted to suppress all kinds of sexual practices that they regarded as deviant.

Occasionally Church authorities refrained from passing judgment on com­plaints about such behavior, as is illustrated by one case reported by Hincmar of Reims. During the reign of Louis the Pious, according to Hincmar, a noble­woman named Northild complained to the emperor about the peculiar sexual preferences of her husband, Agembert. The emperor, perplexed, referred the matter to a synod for advice. After discussing the problem, the bishops re­spectfully refused to determine whether Agemberts sexual practices were suffi­ciently bizarre to warrant a divorce. The bishops declared that they would pre­fer to leave such questions to the judgment of married Iayfolk, who were in a better position to decide about them. Besides, they added, lay authorities had adequate laws to punish Agembert, should they feel that punishment was required.^[593]

Examples of such ecclesiastical restraint are uncommon; perhaps special cir­cumstances made this case particularly delicate. But if Church authorities in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries were sometimes reluctant to deal with deviant sex practices, secular authorities were not so restrained.^[594] In Spain the Visigothic laws prescribed castration for homosexual offenses, but homosexual culture seems to have flourished in Spanish cities during the eighth and ninth centuries.^[595]