Notes

Introduction. Castitas/Virginitas

1Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels, Harmondsworth, England, Penguin, 1983, p. 52.

2For a survey of the literature on theories about the body (with extensive bibliography), both medieval and modern, see Caroline Walker Bynum, "Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist's Perspective," Critical Inquiry, Autumn 1995, vol. 22, pp. 1-33. More than a survey, however, this essay takes issue with current discussions of the body in medieval scholarship. For a fascinating study of the body as an effect of diagnostic narratives, see Julia Epstein, Altered Conditions: Disease, Medicine, and Storytelling, New York and London, Routledge, 1995.

3John Bugge's Virginitas: An Essay in the History of a Medieval Ideal, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1975, remains an important starting point for an understanding of virginity in Western Europe. Vern L. Bullough's and James Brundage's work, such as their collection of essays, Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church, Buffalo, Prometheus Books, 1982; Peter Brown's The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, New York, Columbia University Press, 1988; and Pierre J. Payer's The Bridling of Desire: Views of Sex in the Later Middle Ages, Toronto and Buffalo, University of Toronto Press, 1993; provide valuable insights into the psychology of medieval sexuality. See Joyce Salisbury, Church Fathers, Independent Virgins, London and New York, Verso, 1991, who furnishes a superb analysis of patristic positions on virginity.

4Davies, The Rebel Angels, pp. 52-53.

5Patristic writers usually identified three distinct states of female chastity: virginity, widowhood, and marriage. However, later writers sometimes formulated their own models. Aldhelm, for example, in De virginitate (late 7th c.), replaces this tripartite scheme with another: virginitas ("spontaneous desire for celibacy"), castitas (continent marriage) and iugalitas (accession to the necessity of procreation). Aldhelm goes on to compare the three states in an elaborate set of metaphors: "virginity is the sun, chastity a lamp, conjugality darkness . . . virginity is a queen, chastity a lady, conjugality a servant . . . virginity is the royal purple, chastity the re-dyed fabric, conjugality the undyed wool." Aldhelm: The Prose Works, Michael Lapidge and Michael Herren (trans.), Cambridge, England, D. S. Brewer/Totowa, NJ, Rowman & Littlefield, 1979, XIX, p. 75; Latin, PL 89.116-7.

6See Brown, Body and Society, pp. 306-22, for a different interpretation. He argues that Chrysostom's emphasis on virginity "elevated the Christian household so as to eclipse the ancient city," p. 313.

7John Chrysostom, De Virginitate, in On Virginity, Against Remarriage, Sally Rieger Shore (trans.), Studies in Women and Religion 9, New York and Toronto, Edwin Mellen Press, 1983, p. 8.

8Mary D'Angelo, in "Veils, Virgins, and the Tongues of Men and Angels: Women's Heads in Early Christianity," makes a similar point about Tertullian's polemical De Virginibus Velandis (c. 211; usually translated as "On the Veiling of Virgins"; D'Angelo prefers the more literal "That Virgins Must be Veiled"). She argues that this text represents a moment in the struggle for power in the formation of the early church between the Montanists (who were ultimately judged as heretics, and believed in a rigid sexual and ascetic code) and their "orthodox" opponents. Though Tertullian rejected the Montanist idea that women had a right to preach, he was influenced by other tenets of the sect, such as the requirement that virgins cover themselves in public. Tertullian argues that virgins must be veiled because they can be both corrupted (by the male gaze) and corrupting (by sexually arousing those men who look upon them). Chastity constructed as so vulnerable (and so powerful), one might conclude, begs for institutional protection. D'Angelo says of Tertullian, and of Paul before him, that both "write in the context of communities which are trying to establish themselves, and both must deal with the issue of religious innovation in a culture in which antiquity is the test of truth," p. 132. In Howard Eilberg-Schwartz and Wendy Doniger (eds) Off with Her Head!: The Denial of Women's Identity in Myth, Religion, and Culture, Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 1995, pp. 131-64.

9John Chrysostom, De Virginitate, pp. 8, 115.

10For a helpful introduction to the subintroductae, as the virgins who shared households with men were called, see Elizabeth A. Clark, "John Chrysostom and the Subintroductae," Church History 1977, vol. 46, pp. 171-85.

11John Chrysostom, On the Necessity of Guarding Virginity, Elizabeth A. Clark (trans.), in Jerome, Chrysostom, and Friends: Essays and Translations, New York and Toronto, Edwin Mellen, 1979, p. 242. Reprinted in Clark, Women in the Early Church, Wilmington, DE, Glazier, 1983, p. 147. This translation is based on Comment Observer la Virginité, in Saint Jean Chrysostome: Les Cohabitations Suspectes et Comment Observer la Virginité, Jean Dumortier (ed. and trans.), Paris, Bude, 1955, pp. 133-34.

12The Principal Works of St. Jerome, trans. W. H. Fremantle [1893], Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 6, 2nd series, Peabody, MA, Hendrickson, rpt. 1994, p. 346. Latin: "evangelico atque apostolico vigore conterrerem," PL 23.221.

13See R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love, University of Chicago Press, 1991, pp. 97-100. Courtly love, argues Bloch, contains "a contradiction every bit as powerful as the paradox of virginity: that love only exists to the degree that it is secret; that secret love only exists to the degree that it is revealed; and revealed, it is no longer love," p. 123.

14Ambrose, De Virginitate [On Virginity], Daniel Callam (trans.), Toronto, Peregrina, 1980, rpt. 1989, IV.15, p. 13. Latin: "Videte quod meritum non sola carnis virginitas facit, sed etiam mentis integritas," PL 16.284.

15Jerome, On the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mary Against Helvidius, in Saint Jerome: Dogmatic and Polemical Works, John N. Hritzu (trans.), The Fathers of the Church 53, Washington, D.C., Catholic University of America Press, 1965, p. 43. Latin: "quæ institorias exercet artes, nescio an corpore quod scio, spiritu virgo non permanet," PL 23.215. Cf. Song of Songs, 3:1-2; Ambrose expresses similar sentiments about the marketplace in On Virginity VIII.46, p. 26; Latin: PL 16.292.

16Augustine, De Civitate Dei, George E. McCracken (ed. and trans.), Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press/London, William Heinemann, 1957, I.xviii. Latin: "nullus autem magnanimus et pudicus in potestate habeat, quid de sua carne fiat, sed tantum quid adnuat mente vel renuat."

17Aldhelm: The Prose Works, Lapidge and Herren (trans.), XVI, p. 72; PL 89.115.

18Bugge, Virginitas, p. 136; also see pp. 80ff.

19See Chapter Six, "The Virtue of Temperance," and Chapter Seven, "Continence, Chastity, and Virginity" in Payer, Bridling of Desire, and p. 161.

20Payer, Bridling, p. 7. Payer also notes that some twelfth- and thirteenth-century scholastic thinkers departed from the traditional threefold division of virgins, widows, and married persons in order to propose that "the three states of chastity are (1) those who never have and who propose never to experience sex willingly (virgins); (2) those presently unmarried who have experienced sex willingly and who propose never more to experience it ('widows'); (3) those who are married and who legitimately exercise their rights to sex," p. 161. Payer puts scare quotes around widows to indicate that this category was not restricted to widows, but could also include those who had not married but still experienced intercourse, pp. 162-61.

21Payer, Bridling, p. 162.

22Payer summarizes the four kinds of virginity in Bridling, p. 162. See Albertus Magnus, De Bono, Quaestio III: De Castitate, Opera Omnia, H. Kühle, C. Feckes, B. Geyer, and W. Kübel, (eds), Münster, Aschendorff, 1951, vol. 28, art. 5, pp.157-60. Tertullian includes a similar, but less elaborate, scheme in De Exhortatione Castitatis, PL 2.963-94.

23Payer, Bridling, p. 163.

24Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, Thomas Gilby (ed. and trans.), Blackfriars, in conjunction with New York, McGraw Hill/London, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1968, 2a2æ.151,2, p. 161. Latin: "Dicendum quod nomen castitatis dupliciter accipitur. Uno modo proprie, et sic est quædam specialis virtus habens specialem materiam, scilicet concupiscentias delectabilium, quæ sunt in venereis. Alio modo nomen castitatis accipitur metaphorice," p. 160.

25Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ 2a2æ.151, 2, pp. 160-61.

26Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ 2a2æ.152, 1, pp.168-69.

27Mary Wack, Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: The Viaticum and its Commentaries, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.

28R. Howard Bloch, Medieval French Literature and Law, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1977, p. 242.

29Ellen Ross and Rayna Rapp, "Sex and Society: A Research Note from Social History and Anthropology," in Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson (eds) Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1983, p. 51.

30For an overview of chastity tests found in medieval vernacular languages and their possible sources, see Tom Peete Cross, "Notes on the Chastity-Testing Horn and Mantle," Modern Philology, January 1913, vol. X.3, pp. 1-11; Edmund Karl Heller, "The Story of the Magic Horn: A Study in the Development of a Mediaeval Folk Tale," Speculum, l934, vol. 9, pp. 38-50; F. J. Childs' introduction to The Boy and the Mantle in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads I, 1882-84; rpt. New York, Dover, 1965, pp. 257-71; and Marianne Kalinke, Introduction, Möttul's Saga, Editiones Arnamagnaeanae, Series B, vol. 30, Copenhagen, C. A. Reital, 1987. For a critical treatment of chastity tests, see Bloch, Medieval Misogyny, pp. 94ff.

31Floris and Blauncheflur, Franciscus Catharina de Vries (ed.), Groningen, Druk. V.R.B., 1966, ll. 618-22. All quotations are taken from this edition of the Egerton MS; henceforth, line numbers will be given in the body of the text in parentheses. In the Old French version, if a virgin attempts to cross a rivulet from the fountain, the water will run clear, but it turns muddy when an unchaste woman crosses it. Floire et Blancheflor, Margaret M. Pelan (ed.), Paris, Société d'édition, 1937, rev. 1956, ll.1830-35.

32Gray's Anatomy states that, in the neonate, "the orifice of the vagina is surrounded by a thick elliptical ring of connective tissue, the hymen. During childhood the hymen becomes a membranous fold along the posterior margin of the vaginal lumen," Gray's Anatomy: The Anatomical Basis of Medicine and Surgery, 38th ed., New York/Edinburgh, Churchill Livingstone, 1995. p. 351.

33OED: "The virginal membrane, a fold of mucus membrane stretched across and partially closing the external orifice of the vagina." Random House, 2nd ed.: "a fold of mucus membrane partly closing the external orifice of the vagina in a virgin." American Heritage, 3rd ed.: "a membranous fold of tissue that partly or completely occludes the external vaginal orifice."

34See Abbey Berenson, Astrid Heger, and Sally Andrews, "Appearance of the Hymen in Newborns," Pediatrics, April 1991, vol. 87.4, p. 459; Abbey Berenson, Astrid Heger, Jean M. Hayes, Rahn K. Bailey, and S. Jean Emans, "Appearance of the Hymen in Prepubertal Girls," Pediatrics, March 1992, vol. 89.3, pp. 387-94; and S. Jean Emans, Elizabeth R. Woods, Elizabeth N. Allred, and Estherann Grace, "Hymenal Findings in Adolescent Women: Impact of Tampon Use and Consensual Sexual Activity," Journal of Pediatrics, 1994, vol. 125.1, pp. 153-60. Also see Astrig Heger and S. Jean Emans, et.al., Evaluation of the Sexually Abused Child: A Medical Textbook and Photographic Atlas, New York, Oxford UP, 1992, for photographs of different kinds of hymens.

35See The New Our Bodies Our Selves: A Book By and For Women, New York, Simon and Schuster/Touchstone, 1992, which contains illustrations of "some hymen variations," as the caption for the illustration puts it, p. 244. Also see Ruth Bell, et al., Changing Bodies, Changing Selves, New York, Random House, 1980, pp. 26-27. In You're in Charge: A Teenage Girl's Guide to Sex and Her Body, New York, Fawcett Columbine, 1993, Niels H. Lauersen defines the hymen as "a thin tissue that covers the vaginal opening," and acknowledges that appearances of the hymen may vary; that, in fact, a girl may not be born with one, or may lose it "during activities like horseback riding or cycling," pp. 100, 101. (A point contested by Emans, et al., cited above, n35.) Lauresen on tampon use: "If a girl has a thick hymen . . . she may have difficulty using a tampon, but most of the time the tissue of the hymen is thin and a girl can comfortably insert a tampon"; moreover, Lauersen notes that one may destroy the hymen with a tampon, p. 101. Lauersen also notes the trope of the "bloody sheet," which I discuss in Chapter Five.

36Giulia Sissa, Greek Virginity [1987], Arthur Goldhammer (trans.), Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1990, p. 2.

37Sissa, Greek Virginity, pp. 1, 2.

38Ambrose, De Virginitate, Callam (trans.), XI.66, p. 34. Latin: "Claude integritatis clave," PL 16.296; De Institutione Virginis, "aperi mentem, serva signaculum," PL 16.321. Cf. "you have heard that you are an enclosed garden," De Virginitate, Callam (trans.), XII.69, p. 36. Latin: "audisti quia hortus es conclusus," PL 16.297. And cf. Jerome, Ad Jovinianum, when he speaks of "That which is shut up and sealed reminds us of the mother of our Lord who was a mother and a Virgin" ("Quod clausum est atque signatum, similitudinem habet Matris Domini, matris et virginis"). In The Principal Works of St. Jerome, W. H. Fremantle (trans.) [1893], Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 6, Second Series, Peabody, MA, Hendrickson, rpt. 1994, p. 370; Latin: PL 23.265.

39Mary Louise Pratt, "Interpretive Strategies/Strategic Interpretations," Boundary 2, Fall-Winter 1982-83, vol. 11.1-2, p. 228.

40Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, New York, Routledge, p. 164.

41I am influenced here by E. Jane Burns' discussion of repetition as a sign of textuality in Arthurian Fictions: Rereading the Vulgate Cycle, Columbus, published for Miami University by the Ohio State University Press, 1985.

42Jacques Derrida, "The Double Session" [1970], in Dissemination, Barbara Johnson (trans.), Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1981, p. 180.

43Chapter One builds on and synthesizes the research of a number of historians of medicine to whose work I am heavily and happily indebted. A full accounting of the history of gynecological and medical knowledge and practices in antiquity and the Middle Ages is yet to be written, and only then will we be able to reconstruct fully the history of the hymen and its analogues. See Chapter One, note 67.

44Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (trans.) [1890], Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers vol. 1, Second Series, Peabody, MA, Hendrickson, rpt. 1994, VI.XLI, p. 284.

45Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex", London and New York, Routledge, 1993, p. ix.

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