The Body and Western Christendom

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the significance of both the male and the female body to the societies of Western Christendom during the Medieval period. It discusses the body through the various stages of youth, manhood and womanhood, old age and finally death. It examines the medieval understanding and view of natural biological processes such as menstruation. The paper examines the medieval view of the 'eastern' man and discusses the views of emissions of the body, such as the body's smell and noise, with particular attention being paid to laughter. It also looks at the way that bodies are dressed and the use of perfume.

From the Paper:

"The body was highly significant in the societies of western Christendom during the medieval period and was "central to the process of social classification according to categories of age, health, purity...which were regulated through constructed categories such as stigma and gender". However, whilst ecclesiastical influence was total over all aspects of the body and its behaviour, the enforcement of canonical law must not be overstated, due to the obvious difficulties in policing such infractions of laws on sex and nocturnal habits. The church was also not as morally rigid as has been assumed by many, and in fact during the medieval period in western Christendom, the church deemed that it was preferable to tolerate "behaviour that they disapproved of but that they perceived might meet some wider social need", with such behaviour including prostitution, some kinds of extra marital sex and other casual sexual liaisons."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Sarah Kay & Miri Rubin, Framing Medieval Bodies, Manchester University Press, 1994
• Claire A. Lees, Medieval Masculinities, Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, University of Minnesota Press, 1994
• D. M. Hadley, Masculinity in Medieval Europe, Longman, 1999
• Jeffrey Jerome Cohen & Bonnie Wheeler, Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, Garland Publishing Inc, 1997
• Helen Jewell, Women in Medieval England, Manchester University Press, 1996

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