Sex and History

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF"> <div> <A HREF="http://www.blue1water.com/ux/id112.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.blue1water.com/ux/id112.htm"><U><I><B><IMG SRC="fec23230.jpg" border=0 width="35" height="35" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></I></U></A><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#99CCFF" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="http://www.blue1water.com/ux/id112.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.blue1water.com/ux/id112.htm"><U><I><B>Quick Jump to Erotic Tales <IMG SRC="114537510.jpg" border=0 width="55" height="81" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></I></U></A></FONT><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#FFCC99" FACE="Book Antiqua" ><I>Tales of decadence, debauchery, lust, passion, desire, seduction, etc. etc. etc. I think you get the idea. - Mild to Wild . . . . </I></FONT></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>==============</B></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="http://www.blue1water.com/spa/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.blue1water.com/spa/"><U><I> Spanish .</I></U></A><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#FF6633" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="http://www.blue1water.com/spa/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.blue1water.com/spa/"><U> Pages <IMG SRC="112f1e140.jpg" border=0 width="30" height="20" ALT="Spain" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></U></A></FONT></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.blue1water.com/spa/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.blue1water.com/spa/"><U>Páginas en Español</U></A><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FF6633" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="http://www.blue1water.com/spa/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.blue1water.com/spa/"><U> </U></A></FONT></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.blue1water.com/spa/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.blue1water.com/spa/"><U><I>cuentos eróticos</I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.blue1water.com/spa/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.blue1water.com/spa/"><U><I>And many thanks to Iruntxu for her translations to Spanish. </I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="http://www.blue1water.com/spa/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.blue1water.com/spa/"><U><I>She just needs to learn to keep her fingers on the keyboard,</I></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <B>==============</B></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id42.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Gourmet Erotic Deviant"><U>Gourmet Erotic Deviant</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id28.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Cyrano"><U>Cyrano</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id29.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Cyrano Contents"><U>Cyrano Contents</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id30.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="In the Beginning"><U>In the Beginning</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id31.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Increase the Momentum"><U>Increase the Momentum</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id32.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Warmer Sentiments"><U>Warmer Sentiments</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id33.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Warmer Words"><U>Warmer Words</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id34.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Open the Door"><U>Open the Door</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id35.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Invite Yourself In"><U>Invite Yourself In</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id36.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Obsession Trap"><U>Obsession Trap</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id37.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Enflame her Imagination"><U>Enflame her Imagination</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id38.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Fire Up the Thoughts"><U>Fire Up the Thoughts</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id39.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Light the Flame"><U>Light the Flame</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id40.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Fuel the Fires"><U>Fuel the Fires</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id41.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Keep the Flames Burning"><U>Keep the Flames Burning</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id43.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Naughty But Nice"><U>Naughty But Nice</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id44.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="100 Ways"><U>100 Ways</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id45.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="For the Moment"><U>For the Moment</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id46.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Cry For Love"><U>Cry For Love</U></A></div> <bR> <div> sssssssssss</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id54.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="What You Dont Know"><U>What You Don't Know</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1271.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="What Men Should Know"><U>What Men Should Know</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id52.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Lover"><U>Lover</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id53.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Touching"><U>Touching</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id57.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Location"><U>Location</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id58.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="What IS Eroticism"><U>What IS Eroticism</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id64.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Nudity in Ancient Times"><U>Nudity in Ancient Times</U></A></div> <bR> <div> sssssssssss</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id48.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Macho Man"><U>Macho Man</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id50.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Make Her Feel Good About Herself"><U>Make her feel good about herself</U></A></div> <bR> <div> sssssssssss</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id68.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Tantric Sex"><U>Tantric Sex</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id67.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Positions "><U>Positions </U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id69.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Embraces "><U>Embraces </U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id191.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Tantric Sex Excerpt"><U>Tantric Sex Excerpt</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id70.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Energy Orgasm"><U>Energy Orgasm</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id71.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Sexercises"><U>Sexercises</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id72.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Satisfaction Guaranteed for Women"><U>Satisfaction Guaranteed for Women</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id73.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Expanding Our Neural Connections"><U>Expanding Our Neural Connections</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id74.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Communications"><U>Communications</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id75.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Outdoors"><U>Outdoors</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id79.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Pillow Book"><U>Pillow Book</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id76.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Tantric Art"><U>Tantric Art</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id77.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Japanese Art"><U>Japanese Art</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id78.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Notes"><U>Notes</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id80.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Misc. Stuff"><U>Misc. Stuff</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id81.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Wet Pussy"><U>Wet Pussy</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id82.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="From Around the World"><U>From Around the World</U></A></div> <bR> <div> sssssssssss</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id369.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Here is the Secret"><U>Here is the Secret</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id351.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Tantra"><U>Tantra</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id343.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Erogenous Zones"><U>Erogenous Zones</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id342.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Hot Erotic Talk"><U>Hot & Erotic Talk</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id338.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Exotic Erotic"><U>Exotic - Erotic</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id339.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ultimate Orgasm"><U>Ultimate Orgasm</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id340.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Sacred Sexuality"><U>Sacred Sexuality</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id345.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="How to Satisfy a Woman"><U>How to Satisfy a Woman</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id347.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Add Variety"><U>Add Variety</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id361.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Relaxing Her"><U>Relaxing Her</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id362.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Explore Her"><U>Explore Her</U></A></div> <bR> <div> sssssssssss</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id355.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Talk Naughty to Her"><U>Talk Naughty to Her</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id356.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Naughty is NOT Dirty"><U>Naughty is NOT Dirty</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id358.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Be Adventurous"><U>Be Adventurous</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id359.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Benefits of Music"><U>Benefits of Music</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id372.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="WildWoman Within"><U>Wild-Woman Within</U></A></div> <bR> <div> sssssssssss</div> <bR> <div> <I>History and More</I></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id155.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Eros"><U>Eros</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id152.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="History of Love and Sex"><U>History of Love and Sex</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id153.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="History of Dance"><U>History of Dance</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id154.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="History of Heels"><U>History of Heels</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1260.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="History of Stockings"><U>History of Stockings</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id157.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Holy Harlot"><U>Holy Harlot</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id159.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Whores of Babylon"><U>The Whores of Babylon</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id160.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Pussy"><U>Pussy</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id161.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Mythology of Sex"><U>Mythology of Sex</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id170.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dionysius Eros Pan"><U>Dionysius - Eros - Pan</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id164.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Nudity and Sex"><U>Nudity and Sex</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id165.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Nudity and Sex 2"><U>Nudity and Sex 2</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id162.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ovid"><U>Ovid</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id163.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Sappho"><U>Sappho</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id166.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Novel XLV"><U>Novel XLV</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id171.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Satyra Sotadica"><U>Satyra Sotadica</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id243.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Romance and History"><U>Romance and History</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id195.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Perfumed Garden"><U>The Perfumed Garden</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id196.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Nefzaoui 1"><U>Nefzaoui 1</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id197.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Nefzaoui 2"><U>Nefzaoui 2</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id198.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Nefzaoui 3"><U>Nefzaoui 3</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id199.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Nefzaoui 4 "><U>Nefzaoui 4 </U></A></div> <bR> <div> sssssssssss</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id1189.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Sex and History"><U>Sex and History</U></A></div> <bR> <div> sssssssssss</div> <div> <A HREF="id364.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Horny Corner"><U>Horny Corner</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id365.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Erotic Smorgasbord"><U>Erotic Smorgasbord</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id366.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Intimacy and More"><U>Intimacy and More</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id367.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Lifestyles"><U>Lifestyles</U></A></div> <bR> <div> sssssssssss</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id383.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Romantic Excerpts"><U>Romantic Excerpts</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id384.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Sensual Thoughts"><U>Sensual Thoughts</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1145.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Sexual Thoughts"><U>Sexual Thoughts</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id381.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Shower"><U>The Shower</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id380.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Having Fun"><U>Having Fun</U></A></div> <bR> <div> sssssssssss</div> <bR> <div> <I>Passionate Pen</I></div> <div> <I>Sensuous Reading</I></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id1149.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Passionate Pen"><U>Passionate Pen</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1151.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Torrid Acts"><U>Torrid Acts</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1153.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Memory is a Friend"><U>Memory is  a Friend</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1154.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="My Lady"><U>My Lady</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1155.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Life is a Dream"><U>Life is a Dream</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1156.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Isle of Love"><U>Isle of Love</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1157.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Oh Oh She Cried"><U>Oh Oh She Cried</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1158.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Your Sweet Lips"><U>Your Sweet Lips</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1194.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Mmmm Yes"><U>Mmmm Yes</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1199.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Gargamel"><U>Gargamel</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1200.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dont Stop"><U>Don't Stop</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1201.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Concert"><U>The Concert</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1213.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Fucked by a Cucumber"><U>Fucked by a Cucumber</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1214.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="A Fondle a Tease"><U>A Fondle a Tease</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1215.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Sacred Fire of Life"><U>Sacred Fire of Life</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1248.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Arigh Bayar"><U>Arigh Bayar</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1254.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Walter"><U>Walter</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1255.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Satyra Sotadica"><U>Satyra Sotadica</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1272.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Love of My Choice"><U>The Love of My Choice</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1273.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Minnesang"><U>Minnesang</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1316.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Pietro Aretino"><U>Pietro Aretino</U></A></div> <bR> <div> -<FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#00FFFF" FACE="Wingdings" >sssssssssss</FONT></div> <bR> <div> <I>Romantic Pages</I></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id176.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Romantic Pages"><U>Romantic Pages</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id174.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Good Morning Kiss"><U>Good Morning Kiss</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id175.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Eroticism"><U>Eroticism</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id177.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Forbidden Dreams"><U>Forbidden Dreams</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id190.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Collection"><U>The Collection</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id178.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="To Crave"><U>To Crave</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id187.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Embrace"><U>Embrace</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id182.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Hot Romance"><U>Hot Romance</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id179.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dinner Thoughts"><U>Dinner Thoughts</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id192.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dreams of Moments"><U>Dreams of Moments</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id183.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Foreplay"><U>Foreplay</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id180.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Your Name"><U>Your Name</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id193.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Doorway to Understanding"><U>Doorway to Understanding</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id188.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Journey"><U>Journey</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id184.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Game"><U>The Game</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id194.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Lovers Touch"><U>The Lovers Touch</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id186.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dreams"><U>Dreams</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id185.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Erotic Massage"><U>Erotic Massage</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id189.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Touch"><U>The Touch</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id181.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Prose and Poetry"><U>Prose and Poetry</U></A></div> <bR> <div> sssssssssss</div> <div> <I>Humor - Pics</I></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id275.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="For Thought"><U>For Thought</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id277.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Classes for Men"><U>Classes for Men</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id276.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="A Bit of Humor"><U>A Bit of Humor</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id278.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Funny Bumber Stickers"><U>Funny Bumber Stickers</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id279.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Sale Items"><U>Sale Items</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id280.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Humor 2"><U>Humor 2</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1250.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Cucumber Better"><U>Cucumber Better</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id378.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Pussy Definitions"><U>Pussy Definitions</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id285.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Penis Parade"><U>Penis Parade</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id283.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Cataloged Pussy"><U>Cataloged Pussy</U></A></div> <bR> <div> sssssssssss</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id244.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="One Night"><U>One Night</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id246.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Wine Quotations"><U>Wine Quotations</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id249.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Wine Quotations 2"><U>Wine Quotations 2</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id247.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Wine Toasts"><U>Wine Toasts</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id248.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Wine and Health"><U>Wine and Health</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id250.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Burn the Bra"><U>Burn the Bra</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id256.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Other Good Stuff"><U>Other Good Stuff</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1135.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Rude Food"><U>Rude Food</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id1146.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="My Twisted Dictionary"><U>My Twisted 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width="500" height="1" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> Sex and History</div> <div> <A HREF="id152.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="History of Love and Sex"><U><B>back to History of Love and Sex <<</B></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Directory"><U><B> </B></U></A><A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Directory"><U><B>back </B></U></A><A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Directory"><U><B>to Directory</B></U></A><A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Directory"><U><B> </B></U></A><B> <<</B></div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <I>Sex and History</I></div> <bR> <div> TOWARDS the end of the Middle Ages, Pope Innocent VIII issued the Bull Summa desiderantes. This is almost invariably described as a Bull against witchcraft, but a glance at the text suggests that this is hardly an adequate description. </div> <div> It has indeed lately come to Our ears . . . that in some parts of Northern Germany. . . many persons of both sexes . . . have abandoned themselves to devils, incubi and succubi, and by their incantations, spells and conjurations . . . have slain infants yet in their mother`s womb, as also the off-spring of cattle, have blasted the produce of the earth, the grapes of the vine, the fruit of trees, nay, men and women, beasts of burden, herd beasts, as well as animals of all kinds.... These wretches further afflict and torment men and women, beasts of burthen . . . with terrible and piteous pains and sore diseases . . .; they hinder men from performing the sexual act and women from conceiving, whence husbands cannot know their wives, nor wives receive their husbands.... </div> <div> It is evident that Innocent is not here concerned with magical practices in general-he says nothing of the use of magic for traveling great distances, speaking foreign tongues or averting disasters-he is concerned solely with certain pathological sexual phenomena, of just the sort which we have been discussing; namely, fantasies of sexual congress, failures of fertility and, more particularly, psychic impotence and frigidity He believes that this impotence has been caused by charms and conjurations; he is not attacking the attempt to use charms for this purpose as a crude superstition, although he is writing at the very close of the Middle Ages; on the contrary his objection is that these charms have been only too effective. </div> <div> Nor need we dismiss his fears as unreal. Placing severe taboos on sexual activity, associating it as strongly as possibly with feelings of guilt, is a course well calculated to produce certain amount of psychic impotence. In view of the fact that psychoanalysts still have to deal with a great deal of this kind of impotence today, when the taboos are much weaker than they were in the Middle Ages, it is just possible that psychic impotence may have been growing so widespread as to become a real threat to human fertility. But Innocent also feels that there is a threat to the fertility of beasts and crops too, so that some further explanation is called for. We can see in it a projection of the unconscious hopes and fears of the principal actors: purely on theoretical grounds one would be inclined to diagnose the existence of unconscious fears of impotence on the part of those who drew up the Bull, but, still more, strong resentments of those who were able to have satisfactory intercourse. No doubt, on the sour grapes principle, they were determined to deny to others what they could not enjoy themselves: their conscious concern with a decline in fertility covers a real unconscious desire to destroy fertility. Only by some such analysis can one explain the apparent paradox of the Church, which had labored so long to restrict the performance of the sexual act, becoming so agitated by a development which threatened to do its work for it. </div> <bR> <div> But we are not, as a matter of fact, obliged to base our speculations solely on the Bull. Innocent drew up this document at the request of two German members of what we should nowadays call the Papal secret police. (i.e. the Dominicans named Sprenger and Kramer. These men, having been appointed Inquisitors, began to accuse and condemn persons for witchcraft in certain German cities with such ferocity and obvious injustice that not only was there a popular outcry but even the local bishops and clergy refused their support. As a result of this, Sprenger and Kramer now went to the Pope and induced him to draw up the Bull I have just quoted: it ends with a declaration that Sprenger and Kramer have been appointed to go into these matters, that they have plenary powers, and that they must be given every help. It therefore reflects Papal credulity rather than Papal policy.</div> <div> Soon after, Sprenger and Kramer prepared the famous handbook, the "Malleus Malleficarum", and browbeat the Senate of the University of Cologne, to its shame, into endorsing it. The immense popularity of this work, which ran through ten editions in a few years, shows that it reflects the unconscious preoccupations not merely of its authors but of many people in northern Europe: it was followed during the next century by a spate of similar works from other Inquisitors, such as De Lancre, Delrio, Bodin, Torreblanca and others. It is, in many respects, a casebook of sexual psychopathy, and is concerned principally with three subjects: impotence, sexual fantasies and conversion hysterias. It also discusses the causing of storms, but, as these are treated simply as a method of destroying crops, the topic only represents a variation on the general theme of preoccupation with sex and fertility. It prescribes the questions which investigators of witchcraft are to ask, gives excellent clinical descriptions of the phenomena to be looked for, supported by case-histories; and it discusses the aetiology. </div> <bR> <div> In fact, it is clear that by this date the activities which we normally call witch-hunting had ceased to be concerned with magical acts, as such, but revolved round certain sexual phenomena and represented a psychotic preoccupation with sex on the part of the instigators. To understand what was happening, it is essential to realize that the circumstance which at this date normally gave rise to a witch-trial was not the existence of a specific individual, supposedly a witch, but the existence of certain phenomena, usually sexual in character. From the occurrence of these phenomena, the existence of a witch was inferred as a necessary cause. It then remained to find the witch, and for this purpose the sufferer was invited to make a denunciation, or, failing this, the public at large might do so. Naturally, those with scores to pay off, and those with insane resentments, obliged. The victim was then arrested tortured for a confession, and burnt. </div> <bR> <div> Naturally, persons of all ages, from eight to eighty, and of both sexes, were accused, though the biggest group consists of young girls from fourteen up. The idea that the persecutions were confined to a number of half-crazed old women is completely false, and the victims included many persons of prominence in public life. To take but a single instance, in the mass persecutions in Bamberg between 1609 and 1633, when 900 persons were burnt, one of those killed was Johannes Junius, a burgomaster of the city. Under torture, he confessed to witchcraft; asked to name accomplices, he denied having any, but, tortured again, named some. Afterwards, before his execution, he was allowed to write to his daughter. He told her not to believe what he had confessed - "It is all falsehood and invention.... They never cease the torture until one says something." </div> <bR> <div> In short, every case of impotence or sexual fantasy which came to the attention of the Inquisitors was bound, if pursued, to lead to a burning; hence the number of executions provides no index of the number of persons actually believing in witchcraft: if it is an index of anything, it is of the number of cases of sexual psychopathy occurring. The expression "witchcraft trials" is, in fact, quite misleading as to the aims and motives` involved. The Church wished to suppress certain sexual, phenomena, and, just as we do today, it chose to make use of the existing machinery for the purpose-in this case, the machinery of the Inquisition. </div> <bR> <div> Sprenger and Kramer, though their own observations were often accurate and describe phenomena which we can readily recognize as forms of sexual pathology, were always ready to accept, at second hand, wild stories which supported their preconceptions, however extraordinary. Thus, though they quite accurately distinguish loss of potency due to lack of semen from that due to inability to obtain an erection, they also describe a third form in which the penis becomes invisible and intangible-caused by a woman casting a "glamour" (it is to this power of bewitching that we refer today when we speak of the glamour of film stars).</div> <bR> <div> <I>Sprenger and Kramer illustrate the casting of a glamour with the following story: </I></div> <bR> <div> A certain young man had  an intrigue with a girl. Wishing to leave her, he lost his member: that is to say, some glamour was cast over it so that he could see or touch nothing but his smooth body. In his worry over this he went to a tavern to drink wine; and after he had sat there for a while he got into conversation with another woman who was there, and told her the cause of his sadness, explaining everything and demonstrating in his body that it was so. The woman was shrewd and asked if he suspected anybody. </div> <div> The young man named a certain person. The woman advised him to persuade this person to restore to him his integrity, by violence if need be. He took this advice and stopped the woman in question in a lonely place, demanding that she withdraw the spell. When she protested that she was innocent and knew nothing about it, he fell upon her, and, winding a towel tightly round her neck, choked her, saying; "Unless you give me back my health you shall die at my hands." Then she, being unable to cry out, and with her face already swelling and growing black, said: "Let me go, and I will heal you." The young man then relaxed the pressure of the towel, and the witch touched him with her hand between the thighs, saying: "Now you have what you desire." And the young man, as he afterwards said, plainly felt, before he had verified it by looking or touching, that his member had been restored to him. </div> <div> If we treat the optical verification as an ingenious invention designed to give characteristic verisimilitude to the narrative, we can explain this as an hysterical manifestation. We note that the delusion began when he wished to stop sleeping with his mistress. Can we suppose that the young man deluded himself that he had lost his member in the same way as psychotics sometimes suppose their pelvis to be made of glass, and that the girl, finding herself in danger of strangulation, had the wit to try the effect of a little counter suggestion by the most obvious method? Sprenger and Kramer themselves end the story by warning us: </div> <div> But it must in no way be believed that such members are really torn right away from the body but that they are hidden by the devil through some prestidigitatory art, so that they can be neither seen nor felt. </div> <div> In the case of hysterical and schizophrenic manifestations, of the sort then referred to as "possession", it was obviously insufficient to burn the person alleged to have caused them; in view of the erotic symptoms displayed by the persons possessed, it was necessary to find some way of showing them to be guilty also. This was managed by employing the argument that the devil cannot enter a person unless he be destitute of all holy thoughts. Accordingly, all deluded or possessed persons were presumed to be in deadly sin, which is as much as to say that lunacy was made a capital crime, the only admissible defense being that one was possessed by God and not by the devil. The Church`s attempt to impose this principle came up against the strong medieval belief that lunacy varies with the phases of the moon. Against this it was argued, rather as in a modern libel action, that the devil deliberately caused the manifestations to vary with the phases of the moon in order to bring one of God`s creatures (meaning the moon) into disrepute; or if he did not, then the devil was himself affected by the moon; or if he was not, men were more susceptible to diabolic influence at full moon. The frightful casuistry of such arguments does not seem to have worried anyone. </div> <div> With the fantasies of intercourse with incubi and succubi we need not deal, as these have been discussed in a previous chapter. Concerning the purely sexual character of the phenomena which the Inquisitors were attacking under the rubric of "witchcraft" the Malleus is quite explicit: "All witchcraft comes from carnal lust," it says, Which in women is insatiable." With perfect realism, it adds that the most prolific source of witchcraft is quarrelling between unmarried women and their lovers.</div> <bR> <div> At all periods, of course, there were a few men honest enough, intelligent enough and courageous enough to stand out against this nonsense. Friedrich Spee and Father Kircher in the seventeenth century, Agrippa von Nettesheim and de Weier in the sixteenth, Paracelsus in the fifteenth, Bartholomeus Anglicus in the thirteenth, and others. De Weier succeeded in convincing a priest who thought himself troubled by a succubus that his trouble was imaginary, and managed to cure him. Du Laurens similarly cured two women.  De Weier was able to insist on rational treatment in several cases of "possession", and subsequently in his "De praestigiis daemonum, without daring to deny the existence of witchcraft outright, he pressed for the use of medical methods until it was certain that the case was not a medical one. This book was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum-primae classis, which means that all other works by the same writer are automatically prohibited- and it remains there to this da</div> <bR> <div> The Inquisitors realized, naturally, that if they asserted that all such cases were due to witchcraft, they would be made ludicrous whenever a doctor managed to effect a cure. They therefore laid down rules for discriminating between the results of witchcraft and ordinary illness, the principal rule being that any disease which the doctors could not cure was due to witchcraft! Because of this, epilepsy, regarded as a form of possession, was often regarded as caused by sorcery. </div> <bR> <div> Despite the dictum that all witchcraft originates in lust, however, it is clear that a proportion of witchcraft trials were concerned with attempts to commit murder, and a few with attempts, or alleged attempts, to cause illness or damage crop and cattle. It is entirely natural, during a period when witch-trials were so common that the subject was in everyone`s mind, that some people should be led to attempt to perform magical acts; and it is natural too, that malign individuals, having suffered some illness or loss, should seek the satisfaction of vengeance by accusing someone else; it was a convenient way to remove someone one disliked, or who stood in one`s way. The Inquisitors could not refuse to try such cases, even had they wished; actually, being convinced that any witch would have committed sexual crimes in addition to any others of which she might be accused, they were perfectly willing to administer the question. It was, indeed, a basic assumption that any witch had  intercourse with the devil. All Inquisitors worked with an interrogatory, or manual of questions, and as these questions were almost wholly sexual they usually succeeded in finding sexual guilt. </div> <bR> <div> But while a great part of the time of the Inquisition was taken up, especially in Germany, with the examination of these clinical sexual phenomena, it is almost certainly true that some of those coming forward belonged to an entirely different category. Some thirty years ago, Margaret Murray brought forward detailed evidence in support of the view that a form of pagan worship, probably of very ancient totemic origin, had survived into medieval times, and had grown increasingly popular. This worship was devoted to a horned deity, one or whose names was Cernunnos, and an altar to him has beer found below the foundations of Notre Dame de Paris. The worship was of an ecstatic variety, and, like certain other pagan religions, such as the worship of Dionysos, culminated in the sexual act. </div> <bR> <div> Though torture was frequently used to obtain confessions, and while many confessions are undoubtedly worthless, yet there is a residuum of cases where torture was not used, in which the persons accused confessed freely. Their God, they , said, had promised them that they would be happy in the after life, and they died without remorse or terror. </div> <bR> <div> To the Church it was evident that this deity must be the devil, for it was axiomatic that all pagan deities were devils. At the very beginning of the Christian era, the author of Revelation had called the altar of Zeus at Pergamos "the throne of Satan". In The Anatomy of Melancholy, Burton makes the identification of pagan deities with Christian devils quite clear, and points to the tradition that they could have intercourse with human beings:</div> <bR> <div> "Water devils are those naiads or water nymphs. Paracelsus hath several stories of them that hath lived and have married to mortal men.... Such a one was Egeria, with whom Numa was so familiar, Diana, Ceres, etc.... Terrestrial devils are Lares, Genii, Fauns, Satyrs, Wood-nymphs, Foliots, Fairies, Robin Goodfellows, Trulli...." </div> <div> In a Bull issued against a sect known as the Stedingers, in 1233, Gregory IV accused them of communion with devils, and of scorning sacraments, and added that the ceremony ended in "indiscriminate debauchery". In the same century, the minister of the Scottish parish of Inverkeithing was presented for leading a fertility dance in the churchyard. In 1282, Dame Alice Kyteler was tried for worshipping a deity other than Christ. Margaret Murray has brought forward numerous other indications of the survival of a pagan worship. (182) It is also well established that the sabbat constituted a form of religious ceremony, including hymns, prayers, sermon, homage to the god and a ritual meal. Converts were required to make a public profession of faith and were then given a new name (baptized). </div> <div> The Church would naturally object to the existence of a rival religion, as it objected to Jewry and Mohammedanism, but we can imagine that the especial fury with which it attacked this religion was due to the fact that where the Christian Church despised and hated the sexual act, the worshippers of the Horned </div> <div> God elevated it to a sacrament .</div> <bR> <div> It is clear, then, that the witchcraft trials covered at least four entirely different phenomena: (i) the worship of the Horned God; (ii) sexually based hysterias and delusions; (iii) other inexplicable illnesses, such as epilepsy; (iv) actual maleficium, or the performing of magic routines. The common feature in all these was supposedly the use of witchcraft. Actually however, it does not seem to be the case that the worshipper of Cernunnos were normally practitioners of witchcraft Since the Church christened them witches, a number of actual sorceresses may have drifted into their ranks, and there is some evidence of a gradual perversion of the original rite; but there are certainly many cases where maleficium was never in question, Joan of Arc being a well known instance.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> The desperate fear of sex developed by patrists under the stimulus of Christianity has already been briefly examined. We have seen how sexual restrictions, by damming up Eros, lent a special virulence to the destructive drives of Thanatos. But during the Middle Ages Thanatos combined with Eros in other forms, of a matristic type; forms anathematised by the Church, but which contributed to the power of Europe the concepts of honor, gentleness and romantic love. This is a story which is less well understood, for the Christian Church has destroyed much of the data. Nevertheless we must try to trace it. </div> <bR> <div> This counter movement emerged under the hot sun of Provence and Languedoc, when a period of peace and stability had permitted a leisured and civilized life to develop, especially in the castles of the feudal lords, and at the court of Guilhem of Aquitaine, who ruled over a larger proportion of France than did the French king. Here, towards the beginning of the twelfth century, there appeared an heretical movement and a school of poets; the former called themselves the Cathari, or pure ones, the latter called themselves troubadours. </div> <bR> <div> The troubadours did more than simply write poetry and set it to music. Each troubadour chose as the object of his affections the wife of a feudal lord, and devoted to her all his poetry. In it he extolled the virtues of a relationship between a man and a woman in which the woman is placed on a pedestal and the man seeks to win her favor. He addressed the lady of his choice as Mi-dons, My Lord, and sought to win her approval by his probity. In the Heidelberg MS. we can see a picture of his hands being symbolically bound by his mistress: the very word mistress, in its sense of a woman in an enduring, non-marital relationship with a man, derives from the relationship which the troubadours created. This relationship became known as `domnei` or `donnoi`. </div> <bR> <div> To appreciate the novelty of this development, one must bear in mind that previously it had been an offence, often punishable by death, to address a love-song to a married woman: it was conceived as a form of magical attack. Nevertheless the new movement spread before long to northern France, and later to England, under the influence of the strong minded Alienor of Aquitaine and her daughter Marie. It also took root in Germany. </div> <bR> <div> It is not difficult to detect other earmarks of matrism in the troubadours: they were innovators and progressives, interested in the arts and sometimes pressing for social reforms; they eschewed the use of force; they delighted in gay and colorful clothes. Above all, they erected the Virgin Mary into their especial patron: many of their poems are addressed to her, and in 1140 a new feast was instituted at Lyons - a feast which, as Bernard of Clairvaux protested, was "unknown to the custom of the Church, disapproved of by reason and without sanction from tradition" - the Cast of the Immaculate Conception. It is even said that some Provencal priests blessed the relationships between troubadours and their mistresses by placing them under the protection of the Virgin.(60) </div> <bR> <div> It therefore seems justifiable to suspect the presence of mother fixation. But, if so, it was mother fixation of a rather different type from that of the Celts, for many of the troubadours -for example, Gaucelm Faidit - explicitly disclaim any desire to possess their mistress physically. Merely to see her is enough for some of them; others will be contented with a tuft of fur from her mantle or a few threads from her glove. Others, it is true, speak of undressing their lady, of gazing upon her naked body, of caressing it, or clasping it to them, but scarcely ever do they suggest complete possession. Says one: "He knows nothing of `donnoi` who wants fully to possess his lady."Guilhem Montanhagol says: "E d`amor mou castitaz"-From love comes chastity. </div> <bR> <div> Most writers on the subject have assumed without hesitation that the relationship was fully adulterous. Even the usually percipient Briffault unhesitatingly concludes that the relationship was not only sensual but consummated: but if we inspect the references he gives in support of this view we find that they always refer to intimate caresses or to clasping of the naked body, but never refer to such ideas as climax, satisfaction, complete possession and the like. A few writers, however, such as Lucka, have maintained the contrary view. </div> <bR> <div> There are various facts which make the assumption of actual adultery rather unlikely - for instance, the fact that bastard children are seldom if ever referred to. Indeed, the husbands of the ladies in question accepted the relationship and supported the troubadours in their castles, sometimes elevating them to knighthood if they were not knights already. In early Celtic times such tolerance might have been inconclusive, but in twelfth-century Provence husbands were not, as a rule, prepared to be cuckolded openly. Again, we should hardly expect priests to bless an open adultery. Certainly by the fourteenth century the relationship had become so conventional that Petrarca, a canon of the Church, could write passionate sonnets to Laura without arousing any comment. </div> <bR> <div> Denomy, a Jesuit, whose avowed object is to prove the sensual character of the love of the troubadours, accepts that the relationship was never consummated. He concludes: "The analysis reveals that from Guillaume IX there has existed a constant tradition and conception of pure love - `fin amor `..... arising from the contemplation of the beauty of the beloved and effecting a union of the hearts and minds of the lovers. It was a love that yearned for, and at times was rewarded by, the solace of every delight of the beloved except physical possession of her by intercourse. Far from being pure in the accepted sense, or disinterested, it is sensual and carnal in that it allows, approves and encourages the delights of kissing and embracing, the sight of the beloved`s nudity and the touching and lying beside her nude body-in short, all that fans and provokes desire."</div> <bR> <div> As I shall show in a moment, this question of consummation is of some psychological significance, and we can approach it from another angle. I have argued, in the previous chapter, that the matrist`s chief fear is of incest. We may therefore ask, did the troubadours betray any signs of incest fears? For if they did, it becomes intelligible that they might hesitate to consummate a relationship which seemed incestuous in character, as a relationship with a mother substitute necessarily must seem. </div> <bR> <div> The rules governing "courtly love" as it was called, were elaborately worked out and were written down about 1186 by one Andrew the Chaplain, at the court of Queen Alienor. This Treatise on Love was immediately translated into the principal foreign languages, and became a standard work. It is therefore rather striking that, in the third part of the work, when he comes to consider reasons why it may be inadvisable to love at all, the reason which he places before all others is that "love leads to incest". This is hardly the reason which would first occur to one today.</div> <bR> <div> <I>Eros and Thanatos</I></div> <bR> <div> A FAVORITE figure of popular writers was to depict the sexual appetite as a "biological urge": a mysterious uneasiness, dimly linked with the sun, which annually stirs the eel to his long trek from the Sargasso, sets the infusoria churning in the pond and makes the iris gleam more brightly in the plumage of the burnished dove. According to this simple notion, biology also accounted for the appearance of cars parked after sunset in dark lanes, the chairs standing in couples in the public parks and the nameless objects floating like bladderwrack in the river`s scum. </div> <bR> <div> But of course the treatment of sex as merely a biological urge is sadly inadequate. Sex is both more complex and more metaphysical than that. More complex because it can demand strange and highly unbiological modes for its fulfillment: not just any man or woman, but this man and that woman; not just the archetypal act but a specialized stimulus, a personal idiosyncrasy. More metaphysical, because it can be sublimated into creative activities or denatured into aggressive and destructive ones. The history of sex must pay heed to both these factors. </div> <bR> <div> Psychology has given us some understanding of the forces which channel sex into specialized forms of expression, but its connection with violence remains essentially obscure. For many people, both topics exert an unending fascination, and the crimes which arouse the greatest public sensation are those in which they are combined. Each strikes chords which come from deeply buried levels of the personality. But while we openly admit the existence of the sexual mystery, we make no such clear recognition of the destructive urge, and avert our eyes from the fascination of violence and death. This horrid perturbation is the magnet which draws many of those who frequent speedways and boxing contests: but it can be seen in its purest form, perhaps, when a man is put to death by the law. In the eighteenth century there were many who traveled long distances to attend public executions, and the guillotine had its regular audience. Today, we no longer permit public executions, but the bare knowledge that an execution is taking place is enough to draw crowds. When Bentley was executed in 1953, people drove all night from places hundreds of miles distant to be present in the street outside the prison, for the meager reward of seeing the death notice hung upon the gates. Some of those present told reporters that it was the fourth or fifth execution which they had attended. Most extraordinary are the reactions of the onlookers when the warder appears at the gates with the notice. A ripple runs through the crowd, which emits a noise-half-sigh, half-boo. An angry hand strikes the board, so that the warder cannot hang it on the hooks. At once there is a general outburst of violence: arms flail, noses bleed. Ten police officers link arms and form a cordon, against which the crowd charges again and again. Elsewhere other police officers are embroiled with members of the crowd, both men and women, punching, scratching and kicking. There is a crash of breaking glass. A shower of coins rattles against the notice board. For twenty minutes the battle continues, until the police and the warders manage to force the door shut. The crowd surlily begins to look for hats, shoes and coat-belts torn off in the scrimmage. A burly man who has not shaved observes: "Pretty small crowd, all considered Haven`t missed one of these in fifteen years. Nice fresh June morning and a little more sun, that`s what you want, really."</div> <bR> <div> Even today - perhaps especially today - we do not like to look too closely at the irrational forces in the human psyche, and the averagely rational man, as he reads the account in his morning paper, perhaps comforts himself that there are always a few abnormal people in society. But the columns of the popular papers, those great hornbooks of the appetites, are proof enough of the universality of man`s obsessive interest in violence, and of his equally obsessive interest in sex. Man has other appetites indeed, but they are controllable. He does not surround his appetite for food with the same prohibitions and taboos that surround his cravings for cruelty and lust, nor does he daily purchase printed accounts of the food consumed by others. With his conscious mind he builds an ideal of co-operation and restraint, and on this shining picture he concentrates his attention, secretly aware that if he pays any heed to the evil shapes which mutter behind him, he may become so fascinated that they will enslave him.</div> <bR> <div> The history of civilization is the history of a long warfare between the dangerous and powerful forces of the id, and the various systems of taboos and inhibitions which man has erected to control them. Sometimes man has attempted to cap the volcano, but the molten matter has then forced its way out through fissures in the rock, and the damage done has been as great as if he had made no such attempt. Sometimes he has managed to control and render harmless the prisoned energy by providing adequate institutions for its expression. Rarely has he managed to harness it to do creative work. The purpose of this book is to survey these various attempts to control the irrational as they have been developed in western Europe and particularly in England during the Christian era. Or rather its purpose is to survey the treatment men have accorded to the sexual drive - but from this subject the study of violence cannot be wholly divorced. In the language of Freud, man has two inborn capacities, and each may manifest in a nobler or a baser form. There is Eros, which is love and creativity, but also lust; and there is Thanatos, which is hate and destruction, but may also become the power to control and manipulate for useful purposes. Often these two drives become fused: love can make a divine marriage with mastery, just as lust can make a diabolic marriage with pain. Sadomasochism is the reverse side of a coin whose obverse is creative achievement. </div> <bR> <div> A century ago, duped and doped by a false analogy between evolutionary progress, which is progress in complexity, and a progress in the social, moral and aesthetic spheres, men could believe that it needed but time and effort to pass irrevocably from barbarism to civilized restraint. Today, we are beginning to realize that civilization is only to be maintained by a continuous struggle against the forces of destruction which beset it, just as the life of the body is maintained only by continuous expenditure of energy from disruption by the force of decay. And while history has demonstrated how easily the destructive forces can break out to create an Auschwitz or a Buchenwald - those same forces which also make a lynching or a scuffle outside prison gates - Freud has forced us to the painful realization that those forces are present within every one of us, as potentialities for good as well as ill.</div> <bR> <div> Thus the story of how man has handled his sexual drives is also the story of how he has handled his creative impulse. His attitudes to these imperatives color his whole scheme for society, his politics, his art and his religion. To compress this story within the covers of a single book, without entirely losing sight of these wider implications, is a task of alarming difficult and many omissions and over simplifications are unavoidable. For these I here apologize comprehensively and shall not do so severally. </div> <bR> <div> To summarize sexual history is the more difficult for the fact that it is almost impossible to view it objectively. From earliest youth we are taught to approve and condemn, and these judgments derive from buried emotions, so that they are held with great force and passion. All judgment tends to be egocentric, but in this field unusually so: the very word moral is derived from mores, customs. The moral is what is customary And what is customary constantly changes. The range of possible variation is wide - just how wide the anthropologist have taught us. In the Trobriand Islands, for instance, adult do not mind if children engage in sexual play and attempt precociously to perform the sexual act; as adolescents they may sleep with one another, provided only that they are not in love with one another. If they fall in love, the sexual act becomes forbidden, and for lovers to sleep together would outrage decency. </div> <bR> <div> It may be a healthy discipline, therefore, to study the processes by which the present system of attitudes has been developed. Our sexual codes represent a strange hodgepodge of fragments from different periods in history pre-Christian magic has mingled with Christian asceticism, Romantic idealism has mingled with Rationalist "common sense", to produce a strange and arbitrary amalgam. So far from being natural and inevitable, our existing sexual codes, seen in Perspective, must appear grotesque - though not more grotesque than those of most other periods. But though they are irrational enough, when viewed from the standpoint of ethics, from a psychological viewpoint they display great internal consistency and accurately regret the conflicts in the human psyche.</div> <div> In studying attitudes to sex, one precaution is especially necessary: we must always distinguish between the ideal held up by the dominant group in society as the proper, approved, way of behaving, and actual behavior. Today, for instance, it is still part of the official sexual ideal that the sexual act shall only be performed by legitimately married couples, all pre-marital sexual experience being disapproved. Nevertheless, as many surveys have shown, the great majority of persons do have some Premarital sexual experience, and usually, it would seem, without experiencing any marked sense of guilt. These are not people who have rejected the whole sexual code: most of them will marry in due course, and some of them may feel quite strongly about certain other sexual regulations - say, those concerning homosexuality or the seduction of minors. Their private code simply differs in certain respects from the official code. Of course, a man may also fail to live up to his private sense of what is proper, and subsequently will experience feelings of guilt and shame. It is with this gap between behavior and private conscience that the psychiatrist is frequently concerned; but in this book, I shall be concerned chiefly with the average gap between general behavior and official ideal. This gap, as we shall see, has varied greatly in width from time to time: sometimes when standards have been at their most restrictive, performance has displayed the greatest licence.</div> <bR> <div> These remarks may sound platitudinous, for it is difficult to envisage the curiously persistent character of officially maintained standards until some incident happens to dramatize them. As it happens, while I was first collecting notes for this work, an incident occurred which vividly illuminated the point at issue. The divorce laws of Britain do not recognize incompatibility of temperament as a reason for divorce. Yet it is no secret that a considerable proportion of the population, perhaps a majority, feel that when friction between husband and wife has become so acute that the whole relationship has become poisoned beyond recovery, then divorce may be justifiable. In such circumstances, there is an evident temptation to satisfy the demands of the law by providing the necessary evidence to prove adultery, and satirists have not been slow to point out that the law is actually driving people to adultery, or at the least to the pretence of committing adultery. Yet when it was suggested in court, recently, that collusion of this kind was not unknown, the judge administered a sharp rebuke, declaring that no such collusion was known to occur. </div> <bR> <div> If we still entertained the delusion that men were rational beings, such an inconsistency between "private knowledge" and "public knowledge" would greatly astonish us. Since, fortunately, it IS more than fifty years since Freud began to transform the study of the irrational, and showed us in detail how far from rational we are, it will not astonish, but may serve to remind us of the nubbly and obstinate nature of the attitudes and motives we are about to examine. </div> <bR> <div> In tracing the history of attitudes to sex, it is therefore constantly necessary to distinguish between the pretended position and the actual. This is the more difficult since the data about the actual position are consistently suppressed and distorted. Even today, when we are supposedly so emancipated, our history books continue to be written with a determined disregard for facts which the historian considers to be unpleasant. The best known social history of our day makes no reference to sexual matters, other than normal wedlock. Yet the belief that sexual desires and habits are something which can be placed in an airtight compartment, and sealed off from history without affecting the development of the story, is no longer tenable. Eros and Thanatos permeate every compartment of human activity, and a history which attempts to ignore this fact is not merely emasculated but unintelligible. The first purpose of this book is to demonstrate how closely attitudes to sexual matters interlock with other social attitudes and even dictate them.</div> <div> Since the western world is still strongly under the influence of the tradition established by the mediaeval Church, let us start by examining that tradition in some detail, before attempting to trace the developments which sprang from it.</div> <bR> <div> <I>Mediaeval Sexual Behavior</I></div> <bR> <div> The Church never succeeded in obtaining universal acceptance of its sexual regulations, but in time it became able to enforce sexual abstinence on a scale sufficient to produce a rich crop of mental disease. It is hardly too much to say that medieval Europe came to resemble a vast insane asylum. Most people have a notion that the Middle Ages were a period of considerable licence, and are aware that the religious houses were often hotbeds of sexuality, but there seems to be a general impression that this was a degenerate condition which appeared towards the end of the epoch. </div> <bR> <div> If anything, the reverse is the case. In the earlier part of the Middle Ages what we chiefly find is frank sexuality, with which the Church at first battles in vain. Then, as the Church improves its system of control, we find a mounting toll of perversion and neurosis. For whenever society attempts to restrict expression of the sexual drive more severely than the human constitution will stand, one or more of three things must occur. Either men will defy the taboos, or they will turn to perverted forms of sex, or they will develop psycho-neurotic symptoms, such as psychologically-caused illness, delusions, hallucinations and hysterical manifestations of various kinds. The stronger personalities defy the taboos: the weaker ones turn to indirect forms of expression. </div> <bR> <div> The free sexuality of the early Middle Ages can be traced in early court records, which list numerous sexual offences, from fornication and adultery to incest and homosexuality, and also in the complaints of moralists and Church dignitaries. Thus in the eighth century, Boniface exclaims that the English "utterly despise matrimony" and he is filled with shame because they "utterly refuse to have legitimate wives, and continue to live in lechery and adultery after the manner neighing horses and braying asses...." A century later Alcuin declares that </div> <div> "the land has been absolutely submerged under flood of fornication, adultery and incest, so that the very semblance of modesty is entirely absent".</div> <div> Three centuries after this John of Salisbury puts his views in verse: </div> <bR> <div> Thys is now a common synne</div> <div> For almost hyt is every-whore</div> <div> A gentyle man hath a wife and a hore;</div> <div> And wyves have now comunly</div> <div> Here husbandys and a ludby </div> <bR> <div> The pages of Chaucer reveal that even in the fourteenth century there were still many-such as the Wife of Bath ready to enjoy sexual opportunity without inhibition; and Chaucer Chauntecleer, we are told, served Venus "more for delyte than world to multiplye". </div> <bR> <div> So far from accepting the Church`s teaching on sex, most people held that continence was unhealthy. Doctors recommended a greater use of sexual intercourse to some of their patients; and it was for this reason that the Church demanded and obtained, the right of passing upon all appointments the medical profession, a right which in Britain it formally retains to this day, though it does not exercise (The issue remains a live one, and Dr. Kinsey, in his report on male sexual behavior, thought it worth his time to show statistically that persons who practice continence are more likely to have histories of instability than those who do not.) </div> <bR> <div> Aphrodisiacs were much sought after - usually on principles of sympathetic magic. The root of the orchis, which was thought to resemble the testicles, as its popular name "dog-stones" shows, was eaten to induce fertility: though it was important to eat only that one of the stones which was hard, the soft one having a contrary effect. By the complementary arguments nuns used to eat the root of the lily, or the nauseous `agnus castus` to ensure chastity. The famed restorative powers of the mandrake were similarly derived from its phallic appearance.</div> <bR> <div> In the later period frank sexuality is also betrayed by the clothing. In the fourteenth century, for instance, women wore low-necked dresses, so tight round the hips as to reveal their sex, and laced their breasts so high that, as was said, "a candle could be stood upon them". Men wore short coats, revealing their private parts, which were clearly outlined by a glove-like container known as a braguette, compared with which the codpiece was a modest object of attire. In the time of Edward IV, the Commons petitioned that  "No knight, under the estate of a Lord . . .nor any other person, use or wear . . . any Gowne, Jaket, or Cloke, but it be of such a length as it, he being upright, shall cover his privy members and buttokkes."</div> <div> Persons of the estate of a Lord or higher might naturally do as they pleased. Even the clergy shortened their frocks to their knees, and in the following century made them "so short that they did not cover the middle parts``.</div> <div> Prostitution was extremely widespread, and at most periods was accepted as a natural accompaniment of society. The Early Church had been tolerant of prostitution, and Aquinas said (precisely as Lecky was to do six hundred years later) that prostitution was a necessary condition of social morality, just as a cesspool is necessary to a palace, if the whole palace is not to smell. The English were especially apt to prostitution, and Boniface commented: "There is scarcely a town in Italy, or in France, or in Gaul, where English prostitutes are not found." The Crusades introduced to Europe the public bath, which became a convenient center for assignations, though it was not until later that they became brothels as we now understand the term. Henry II issued regulations for the conduct of the "stews" (i.e. baths) of Southwark, which make it clear that they were houses of ill-Fame. These regulations were confirmed by Edward III and Henry IV, and the stews remains until the seventeenth century. Many of these stews belonged to the Bishopric of Winchester, the Bishop`s palace being near by - hence the euphemism "Winchester geese" and at least one English cardinal purchased a brothel as an investment for church funds. Some jurists argued that the Church was entitled to ten per cent of the girls` earnings, but this view was not officially accepted; however, just as today, the Church did not draw the line at receiving rent from property put to this use.</div> <bR> <div> On the Continent the open acceptance of prostitution went considerably further. Queen Joanna, of Avignon, established a town brothel, as better than having indiscriminate prostitution, and when Sigismond visited Constance, the local prostitutes were provided with new velvet robes at the corporation`s expense; in Ulm, the streets were illuminated by night whenever he and his court wished to visit the town lupanar.</div> <bR> <div> Yet with all this there went a kind of simplicity. Men and women could go naked, or nearly naked, through the street to the baths in a way which today would be impossible, except perhaps at a bathing resort, or for undergraduates living out of college at one of the major British universities. The daughters of the nobility thought it an honor to parade naked in front of Charles V. And it was by no means unheard-of for a young man to pass the night chastely with his beloved, as we hear from the romance, "Blonde of Oxford". </div> <bR> <div> One of the things which has done much to build up in our minds a false and idealized conception of the Middle Ages is the representation of King Arthur and his knights as paragon of chaste and gentlemanly behavior. This has been done primarily by the Christian authorities, who rewrote the old British folk-tales so as to bring them in line with the approved morality of the Middle Ages, though the process was carried further by the romantics of the eighteenth century and by Victorian sentimentalism. The facts are very different. Gildas, as a Christian historian, is no doubt somewhat biased, but he describes the knights as "sanguinary, boastful, murderous, addicted to vice, adulterous and enemies of God", adding "Although they keep a large number of wives, they are fornicators and adulterers." The morals of the ladies are no stricter. At King Arthur`s court, when a magic mantle is produced which can only be worn by a chaste woman, none of the ladies present is able to wear it. </div> <bR> <div> When we examine these stories in their original form, we begin to see, not immorality as such, but a completely different system of sexual morality at odds with the Christian one: a system in which women were free to take lovers, both before and after marriage, and in which men were free to seduce all women of lower rank, while they might hope to win the favors of women of higher rank if they were sufficiently valiant. Chrestien de Troyes explains:</div> <div> "The usage and rules at that time were that if a knight found a damsel or wench alone he would, if he wished to preserve his good name, sooner think of cutting his throat than of offering her dishonor; if he forced her against her will he would have been scorned in every court. But, on the other hand, if the damsel were accompanied by another knight, and if it pleased him to give combat to that knight and win the lady by arms, then he might do his will with her just as he pleased, and no shame or blame whatsoever would be held to attach to him." </div> <div> As Briffault comments, however, the first part of the rule does not seem to have been regarded so strictly as the poet suggests. Traill and Mann say, "To judge from contemporary poems and romances the first thought of every knight on finding a lady unprotected was to do her violence." Gawain, the pattern of knighthood and courtesy, raped Gran de Lis, in spite of her tears and screams, when she refused to sleep with him. The hero of Marie de France`s Lai de Graelent does exactly the same to a lady he meets in a forest - but in this case she forgives him his ardour, for she recognizes that "he is courteous and well behaved, a good, generous and honorable knight". And as Malory recounts, when a knight entered the hall of King Arthur and carried away by force a weeping, screaming woman "the king was glad, for she made such a noise".</div> <div> In Christianized versions of early folk-tales, the knight or hero is often offered the hand of the king`s daughter in marriage if he performs the allotted task; but in the original versions the question of marriage rarely arises. Thus in the Chanson de Doon de Nanteuil, the warriors are promised that if they "hit the enemy in the bowels, they may take their choice of the fairest ladies in the court". The knight who loves the chatelain of Couci exclaims simply: "Jesus, that I might hold her naked in my arms!" And this is precisely the reward which the ladies themselves frankly promise. In any case, marriage itself was often regarded as a temporary liaison, so that the reward of the hand of the king`s daughter implies few obligations. </div> <bR> <div> It is noticeable how, more often than not, it is the women who made the advances: Gawain, for one, is pestered by women and they are sometimes curtly refused. They make their proposition in the clearest terms: Vees mon cots, corn est amanevis</div> <div> Mamele dure, blanc le col, cler le vis</div> <div> Et car me baise, frans chevalier gentis</div> <div> Si fai de moi trestor a ton devis. </div> <bR> <div> It is a praiseworthy act to offer oneself to a valiant knight: "Gawain praises the good taste of his own lady-love, Orgueilleuse, for having offered her favors to so valiant warrior as the Red Knight. In a Provencal romance, a husband reproaches his wife with her infidelity. She replies: `My Lord, you have no dishonor on that account, for the man I love is a noble baron, expert in arms, namely Roland, the nephew of King Charles.` The husband is reduced to silence by the explanations and is filled with confusion at his unseemly interference."</div> <bR> <div> It must be understood that in thus ignoring the Christian code, the knights were not abandoning morality, but were simply continuing in the manner which had been traditional before the arrival of the Christian missionaries, and which continued to be traditional for many hundreds of years after. Our knowledge of the behavior of the Celtic and Saxon tribes is limited partly by the fewness of the written records they produced, and still more by the systematic way in which the Church destroyed them and substituted its own purified and moralized redactions. However, we do know something about the Irish in the first few centuries of the Christian era, for they produced a considerable literature. It shows us a people strongly matriarchal and with few inhibitions about sexual matters. Virginity was not prized, and marriage was usually a trial marriage or a temporary arrangement. Queen Medb boasts to her husband that she always had a secret lover in addition to her official lover, before she was married. Sualdam marries Dechtin, the sister of King Conchobar, knowing her to be pregnant, and when Princess Findabair "mentions to her mother that she rather fancies the messenger who has been sent from the opposing camp, the Queen replies: `If you love him, then sleep with him tonight!"`</div> <div> In this pre-Christian era, even more notably than in the early Middle Ages, the running was made by the women. Their method of wooing was often most determined: Deirdre seizes Naoise by the ears, tells him that she is a young cow and wants him as her bull, and refuses to release him until he promises to elope with her. Nevertheless, polygamy was not uncommon, and many of the heroes are portrayed as having two or more wives. Marriage, even more so than in the days of chivalry, was a temporary affair: thus Fionn marries Sgathach with great pomp "for one year", and frequent change of partners was usual until quite late in the Middle Ages, a fact which makes Henry VIII`s marital experiments more easily understandable. Dunham asserts that most of the Frankish kings died prematurely worn out, before the age of thirty. </div> <bR> <div> Nudity was no cause for shame: not only were warriors normally naked, except for their accoutrements, but women also undressed freely: thus the Queen of Ulster and all the ladies of the Court, to the number of 610, came to meet Cuchulainn, naked above the waist, and raising their skirt "so as to expose their private parts", by which they showed how greatly they honored him. </div> <bR> <div> In such times, to be called a bastard was a mark of distinction, for the implication was that some especially valiant knight had slept with one`s mother: this is why the bastard son of Clothwig, the founder of the Frankish kingdom, received a far larger share than his legitimate brothers when the kingdom was divided up after his father`s death. William the Conqueror by no means resented the appellation "William the Bastard", as our history books usually fail to make clear. Indeed, it was almost obligatory for a hero to be a bastard, and bastardly was constantly imputed to Charlemagne, Charles Martel and others, as also to semi-legendary figures, such as King Arthur, Gawain, Roland, Conchobar and Cuchulainn.  This pride in bastardly is not wholly unknown in modern times: some twenty years ago, for instance, a British Prime Minister used to boast of his illegitimacy. </div> <bR> <div> In circumstances such as these, the Church`s first object was necessarily to establish the principle of lifelong monogamous marriage, without which its stricter regulations were practical meaningless. The Anglo-Saxon synod of 786 decreed "that the son of a meretricious union shall be debarred from legal inheriting.... We command, then, in order to avoid fornication, that every layman shall have one legitimate wife, and every woman one legitimate husband, in order that they may have and beget legitimate heirs according to God`s law."` It was long before this attempt succeeded. The tenth-century ordinances of Howel the Good, for instance, allow seven years` trial marriage, and one year`s trial marriage existed in Scotland up to the Reformation.</div> <bR> <div> <I>Sense and Sensuality</I></div> <bR> <div> We need not doubt that the processes father and mother identification still occurred, but when fathers and mothers permitted themselves every licence, children in copying them, would learn to do the same. This sense of licence naturally extended itself to sexual matters and the Age of Reason is an age of astonishing sensuality. The arts and trades of an increasingly complex civilization were invoked to create new triumphs of creative endeavor, but they were also exploited to satisfy the wildest vagaries of sexuality. </div> <bR> <div> Such movements seem to start among the leaders of the community and then to filter slowly downwards: it was certainly so in this case. The Court of Charles II displays in microcosm all the major trends which were to appear more widely in the following century. Quite incorrectly, the Restoration has gained the reputation of being a period of general licence. The plays of the Restoration dramatists, written principally by courtiers or noblemen, set a new standard of frankness and have given the age a name for debauchery, but they were seen by only a minute fraction of the population. The plays themselves constituted only two per cent of the sales of booksellers, most of whose trade consisted of scientific and religious works. And while Charles licensed two theatres - as compared with a maximum of six or seven in Elizabeth`s time - they received so little support that the two companies were obliged to merge. A few court rakes, like Rochester or Medley, wenched and cheated themselves into premature graves, but the mass of the population remained unaffected. </div> <bR> <div> However, it is certainly true that the overthrowing of Puritan rule and the restoration of the king caused a great outburst of popular rejoicing, in which the erection of maypoles of unprecedented height played a significant part. It is true that a king is a father figure and normally is seen as authoritarian. But Charles was indulgent. Cromwell had embodied all the everest features of a father figure; Charles profited by receiving he affection due to a loving and permissive parent. It was recalled that the Puritans had been regicides, and it became a mark of loyalty to pull down all they had set up. "To be debauched", says Krutch, with pardonable exaggeration, was the easiest way of clearing oneself of the suspicion of disloyalty." Sons, too, are frequently in reaction from their fathers, and now the times favored such a reaction. Thus, Philip, Lord Wharton, whose father had been so strict a Calvinist that he forbade not only poems, dancing and playgoing, but even hunting, acquired the reputation of being the greatest rake in England, while still maintaining an influential political position. </div> <bR> <div> Charles himself was no authoritarian, but a cynic who </div> <div> "had a very ill opinion of both men and women; and did not think there was either sincerity or chastity in the world out of Principle".</div> <div> Bored by long sermons while in the hands of the Puritans, he now demanded church music he could beat time to, entertained himself with both the Catholic and Protestant whores, and, as Dryden said "scattered his maker`s image through the land". </div> <div> Charles was, one imagines, a matrist: though loving pleasure, he betrayed no signs of the vindictive and destructive aggressiveness which was to mark the eighteenth century, and his political acts were both far-seeing and restrained. His reign saw the Act of Indulgence to religious dissenters, the Habeus Corpus Act, and the foundation of the Royal Society- . three landmarks in history. Under his permissive rule, learning received a great stimulus: Boyle, Hooke, Harvey and Newton produced their greatest discoveries, while in art was inaugurated a period which reached its peak in the reign of Anne, when the accession of another Queen gave a more stimulus to the matrists, and the age blossomed with playwrights, poets, musicians and architects. .</div> <bR> <div> It is to the court rakes that one has to turn for the first warnings of eighteenth century vindictiveness, sensuality an exhibitionism. Whether we think of Rochester tempting Charles to a brothel and then arranging for all his money be stolen, or of Sedley, naked at a window in Covent Garden profanely haranguing the crowd (Pepys said there were a thousand people): whether we think of the Countess of Pembroke arranging for the stallions to leap the mares in front of the house ("and then", says Aubrey, "she would act the like sport herself with her stallions") or whether we think of Dr. Triplet, Protected by armed men, singing a scabrous ballad beneath the windows of the flagellomaniac Dr. Gill, head master of St. Paul`s, and "so frighted that he beshitt himself most fearfully", the picture is not an attractive one . </div> <bR> <div> But in reading the memoirs of the time, it is not so much the licence as the unscrupulousness and brutality that impress one .The Earl of Oxford did not hesitate to achieve seduction by entering into a spurious marriage; Farquhar was deceived by fake heiress. Hired bravi were employed, as in the Italian Renaissance, to execute revenges: Rochester had Dryden beaten up for a supposed slight in one of his plays; Kynaston and Coventry were among others similarly treated. Brawls in theatres were commonplace, and a man might be run through for jostling another in the press. But this violence was not a peculiarity of the Court, it was part of the tenor of the times: even Oxford dons would black one another`s eyes. In the Moorfields, the weavers would fight a pitched battle with the butchers until the butchers, fleeing, were driven to remove and conceal their aprons, while the weavers strode victoriously about crying "A hundred pounds for a butcher". Even the Inns of Court were the scene of riots, and the Lord Mayor, invited there for dinner, found himself besieged in a room. (28). </div> <bR> <div> Our bowdlerized history books give but a poor impression of the cruelty which was still natural to an age which had tortured so many witches. The taste is best conveyed by quoting not impulsive and individual acts of violence, but a deliberate court decision, the sentence pronounced on the five judges who condemned Charles I to death: </div> <bR> <div> "You shall go from hence to the place from whence you came, and from that place shall be drawn upon a hurdle to the place of execution, and there shall hang by the neck till you are half dead, and shall be cut down alive, and your privy members cut off before your face and thrown into the fire, your belly ripped up and your bowels burnt, your head to be severed from your body, your body shall be divided into four quarters, and disposed as His Majesty shall think fit." </div> <div> By the eighteenth century, this violence had become so widespread that men scarcely dared venture on the streets at night: in Kensington and Hampstead bells were rung when parties were about to set out for the city under armed guard, so that all who wished to make the hazardous journey might join them. "The impunity with which outrages were committed in the ill-lit and ill-guarded streets of London during the first half of the eighteenth century can now hardly be realized", says Lecky "In 1712 a club of young men of the higher classes, who assumed the name of Mohocks, were accustomed nightly to sally out drunk into the streets to hunt the passers-by and to subject them in mere wantonness to the most atrocious outrages. One of their favorite amusements, called `tipping the lion`, was to squeeze the nose of their victim flat upon his face and to bore out his eyes with their fingers. Among them were the `sweaters` who formed a circle round their prisoner and pricked him with their swords till he sank exhausted to the ground, the `dancing masters` so-called from their skill in making men caper by thrusting swords into their legs, the tumblers, whose favorite amusement was to set women on their heads and commit various indecencies and barbarities of the limbs that were exposed. Maid servants, as they opened their masters` doors, were waylaid, beaten and their faces cut. Matrons enclosed in barrels were rolled down the steep and stony incline of Snow Hill. Watchmen were beaten unmercifully and their noses slit. Country gentlemen went to the theatre as if in time of war, accompanied by their armed retainers. A Bishop`s son was said to be one of the gang and a baronet was among those who were arrested."</div> <bR> <div> Just as in Italy, the ever present possibility of insult an injury made it essential to resent the smallest slight for fear that it might be followed by some worse imposition, and, also as in Italy, this produced an institutionalized pattern in the form of duel. Once created, the duel could itself be used as a means expressing aggression. It would be interesting, for instance, to know more of the private resentments of John Reresby, who, while dining at a neighbor`s house, quarreled with the fiance of his host`s daughter, and threw his wine in his face. Besought by his fiancee not to throw away his life in a duel, the young man swallowed the insult; and Reresby records the incident with satisfaction, evidently feeling that he emerges well from it. </div> <bR> <div> The second, and perhaps the most significant, strain in the sexuality of the period seems to have-been a fear of impotence We might suspect this from the emergence of Don Juanism for the obsessive repetition of seduction generally derives from need to prove one`s potency. Not infrequently, it became quite explicit: for instance, in 1732, the Hon. Mrs. Weld sought dissolution of her marriage (marriages could be dissolved by Act of Parliament) on the grounds of her husband`s impotence which he admitted. He said, "as often as he attempted to have Carnal Knowledge of his wife, a Pain struck him across the Belly which so contracted his Privy Parts, as to put him in much Torment, and obliged him to desist from further Caresses". Thus it was clearly impotence of psychological origin. Moreover, when one reads the closing chapters of "Clarissa Harlowe" it is difficult to escape the impression that the duel was a symbolic method of proving potency. The hair-trigger sensitivity of the gallant, and his especial concern with his sister`s honor, point to fears of impotence and incest such as we should expect to find where mother fixations were heavily repressed. </div> <bR> <div> One of the most extraordinary literary judgments ever made is that Richardson was a moralist. Both "Clarissa Harlowe", and the "Letters from Pamela", are endlessly prolonged accounts, characteristically obsessive, of the seduction and degradation of girls, which could only have been written by a man for whom such events had a dreadful fascination. Not only is Clarissa, rejected by her family, placed in a brothel (the obvious fantasy for anyone who feels that women are whores - and we have seen the Oedipal origins of such a feeling) and eventually driven to her death, but, for good measure, we are shown Lovelace`s friend, Belmont, seducing a girl with the aid of drugs and abandoning her. The story almost exactly parallels that of a recent highly successful novel, except that in this case the seducer is not presented as being a gentleman, and the psychic impotence which motivates him is frankly stated. </div> <bR> <div> The themes of violence and impotence run through the sexual life of the period in a horrid counterpoint, and ever more repellent steps are necessary to evoke some shadow of the vanished potency. Where the Restoration poet had hoped that Phyllis would be kind, the Georgian gallant ruthlessly seduced girls, if necessary using narcotics for the purpose, and left them to their fate. It was considered especially important that the girl should be a virgin. This is a demand which differs in an important respect from the demand of a man that his intended wife should be a virgin, and it occurred with such frequency that Bloch has spoken of the period as one of "defloration mania". To deflower a woman is a method of expressing one`s resentment of her sex: and how important the sadistic element was is shown by a work like "The Battle of Venus" (1760) which dwells on the charm of the victims struggles and cries of pain.</div> <bR> <div> <I>The Medieval Sexual Ideal</I></div> <bR> <div> This ideal was a highly consistent one and was embodied in a most elaborate code of regulations. The Christian code was based, quite simply, upon the conviction that the sexual act was to be avoided like the plague, except for the bare minimum necessary to keep the race in existence. Even when performed for this purpose it remained a regrettable necessity. Those who could were exhorted to avoid it entirely, even if married. For those incapable of such heroic self-denial there was a great spider`s web of regulations whose over-riding purpose was to make the sexual act as joyless as possible and to restrict its performance to the minimum - that is, to restrict it exclusively to the function of procreation. It was not actually the sexual act which was damnable, but the pleasure derived from it - and this pleasure remained damnable even when the act was performed for the purpose of procreation, a notion which reached its crudest expression with the invention of the chemise carouse, a sort of heavy nightshirt, with a suitably placed hole, through which a husband could impregnate his wife while avoiding any other contact. The belief that even within marriages the sexual act should not be performed for pleasure, still persists to the present day, more especially in the Catholic Church, where it remains official doctrine; it was publicly reasserted by the Popes once again, recently.</div> <div> Not only the pleasure of the sexual act was held sinful, but also the sensation of desire for a person of the opposite sex even when unconsummated. Since the love of a man for a woman was held to be simply desire, this led to the incontrovertible proposition that no man should love his wife. In fact Peter Lombard maintained, in his apologetic De excusatione coitus, that for a man to love his wife too ardently is a sin worse than adultery.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> **** My thoughts :  Since contraception is against the church, then sex could and would lead to more children per family.  Just as priests and nuns can not marry, because that also would mean families.  It's a simple matter of economics.  Families require MONEY.  The more children per earning  household, the less income potential for the church.  Therefore, priests and nuns should not marry.  And then make sex a sin.  In this way you can control the earning potential of the church. Am I wrong?  If I were wrong, and sex were a sin, and lead to damnation, then the majority of priests and nuns who do it amongst themselves for pleasure are damned.  And YES, they are doing it for pleasure, because you can not reproduce with homosexuality, child molestation, etc., etc. So then why else do it, except for pleasure.  </div> <bR> <bR> <div> "Omnis ardentior amator propriae uxoris adulter est." </div> <bR> <div> It was about the eighth century that the Church began to develop the enormously strict system which ruled in the Middle Ages. A series of "penitential books" began to appear which explored the subject of sex in all its details; every misdeed was described and elaborated at length, and penalties were prescribed for each. </div> <bR> <div> This code comprised three main propositions. First all, who could were urged to attempt the ideal of complete celibacy while for those with priestly functions it was obligatory. In this direction the mediaeval Church could scarcely go further than had the early fathers. Jovinian had been excommunicated for daring to deny, what St. Augustine had asserted, that virginity was a better state than marriage. St. Jerome tolerated marriage simply because it provided the world with potential virgins. But by an extraordinary twist of the imagination, the idea evolved that virgins were the brides of Christ. Hence it followed that anyone who seduced a virgin was not committing fornication but the more serious crime of adultery, and what is more, adultery at the expense of Christ. The outraged deity was therefore entitled to the revenge which tradition always accorded to a husband in such a position. How literally this fantastic doctrine was held can be shown by a quotation from Cyprian: "If a husband come and see his wife lying with another man, is he not indignant and maddened ? . . . How indignant and angered then must Christ our Lord and Judge be, when He sees a virgin, dedicated to Himself, and consecrated to His holiness, lying with a man.... she who has been guilty of this crime is an adulteress, not against a husband, but Christ." Evidently the saint saw nothing ludicrous in the premise that the son of God would feel exactly the emotions of outraged property sense which would be felt by the most boorish of human beings. </div> <bR> <div> Once given that virginity was a good, the principle was, as usual, extended far beyond the sexual act, as we see, for instance, in the case of the virgin Gorgonia, who "with all her body and members there of. . . bruised and broken most grievously" yet refused the attentions of a doctor because her modesty forbade her to be seen or touched by a man; and was rewarded by God with a miraculous cure.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> Since virginity was a good, it was good for wives to deny themselves to their husbands, and since doubtless many of them were suffering from the shock of a painful initiation as well as the conflicts of conscience, many of them did so. Whether this increased the sum total of chastity seems doubtful, since many husbands were driven to vice in consequence, to the point where the Church felt obliged to intervene. </div> <bR> <div> The second step was to place an absolute ban on all forms of sexual activity other than intercourse between married persons, carried out with the object of procreating. In some penitential fornication was declared a worse sin than murder. In the penitential of Theodore and Bede the penance imposed for simple fornication was one year, but the penalty was increased according to the frequency of the act and the age and discretion of the parties. Adultery was more serious than fornication with an unmarried person, and sexual connection with a monk or a nun more serious still, while if a member of the clergy fornicated with a monk or nun, Dunstan`s penalty was ten years fast, with perpetual lamentation and abstention from meat. Later, the seducer of a nun was denied burial in consecrated ground. But it was not the sexual act alone which was tabooed. Attempting to fornicate, kissing, even thinking of fornication were forbidden and called for penalties: in the last case, the penance was forty days. Nor was it the intention alone which made the crime. Involuntary nocturnal pollution's were a sin the offender must rise at once and sing seven penitential psalms, with a further thirty in the morning. If the pollution occurred when he had fallen asleep in church, he must sing the whole Psalter.</div> <bR> <div> The penitentials also devoted a disproportionately large amount of their space to prescribing penalties for homosexuality and for bestiality, but the sin upon which the greatest stress of all was laid was masturbation. In the five comparatively short mediaeval penitential codes, there are twenty-two paragraphs dealing with various degrees of sodomy and bestiality, and no fewer than twenty-five dealing with masturbation on the part of laymen, to say nothing of others dealing separately with masturbation on the part of the clergy.(172) According to Aquinas, it was a greater sin than fornication. This is particularly significant, for we now know that the belief that sexual pleasure is wicked springs primarily from parental taboos on infantile masturbation; the fact that the punishment is given when the child is too young to under stand its significance, and when masturbation is the only means by which he can afford himself pleasure by his own unaided efforts, results in a fear of pleasure becoming embedded in the unconscious, and being generalized until it becomes a fear of pleasure in all its forms. No doubt the Church realized, even if unconsciously, that the maintenance of its system of repression was ultimately founded on the willingness of parents to frown on infantile masturbation, and, therefore, concentrated a great deal of attention on the matter. </div> <bR> <div> This interpretation would not hold water if it could be shown that the Church, while condemning sexual pleasure welcomed alternative forms of physical enjoyment. But it is easy to show that this is not the case. Porphyry, as early as the third century set the tone by condemning pleasure in all its forms. "Horse racing, the theatre, dancing, marriage and mutton chops were equally accursed; those who indulged in them were servants not of God but of the Devil.``</div> <div> Augustine called him the most learned of all the philosophers and established this doctrine upon a formal basis. </div> <bR> <div> Of the existence of such prohibitions, most people have some dim appreciation, since they are still maintained, if with diminished strength, in many quarters today. What is less generally realized is the extensive nature of the attempt which was made to limit and control the sexual act when performed within the marital relationship. Thus the sexual act must be performed in only one position, and numerous penalties were prescribed for using variants, the approach "more canino" - which was held to afford the most pleasure being regarded with especial horror and calling for seven years of penance. Confessors were required to ask specifically about these and every other possibility, and the manuals with which they were later supplied contain questions concerning every imaginable variant of the sexual act: in the present condition of the laws against obscenity it would be inadvisable to quote them here.</div> <div> Not content with this, the Church proceeded to cut down the number of days per annum upon which even married couples might legitimately perform the sexual act. First, it was made illegal on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, which effectively removed the equivalent of five months in the year. Then it was made illegal for forty days before Easter and forty days before Christmas, and for three days before attending communion (and there were regulations requiring frequent attendance at communion). It was also forbidden from the time of conception to forty days after parturition. It was, of course forbidden during any penance.</div> <bR> <div> Such were the ideas from which European sexual ideals have been principally derived. As we shall see, both the general conception of sex as sinful, and many specific prohibitions and enactments, survived almost unmutilated until modern times and still affect our conduct today. Nevertheless it would be giving a false impression to suggest that the Church prepared these codes with the businesslike and ruthless detachment of a Russian commissary. Rather is it the case they were thrown together in a passion of despairing guilt . The picture we get is of a number of individual figures, like Augustine or Aquinas, Damiani or Bernard, tormented by the virtual certainty of damnation for all who so much thought of sexual pleasure, desperately striving to build dam against the rising tides of sensuality, in a frantic attempt to save people from the results of their own folly. Never mind the justifications, never mind the cruelty and injustice, if only this frightful disaster can be prevented. </div> <bR> <div> Only real desperation is enough to explain the ruthlessness with which the Church repeatedly distorted and even falsified the Biblical record in order to produce justification for its laws. For such extreme asceticism is not enjoined by the Bible, and certainly not by the New Testament. As Lecky shows, "The Fathers laid down as a distinct proposition that pious frauds were justifiable and even laudable", and he adds, "immediately, all ecclesiastical literature became tainted with a spirit of the most unblushing mendacity."</div> <bR> <div> The Church claimed that this stringent taboo on sex had been proclaimed by St. Paul, but in point of fact, although Paul had gone much further than anyone before him in the direction of discountenancing sexual activity, he did not get nearly as far as this. In view of the vast edifice of repressive legislation erected on this tiny base, it is worth giving Paul`s actual words, well known as the quotation is: </div> <bR> <div> It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. For I would that all men were even as myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn. Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment. If thou marry thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry she hath not sinned...</div> <div> In this passage we can see the expression of a belief in the general desirability of sexual continence, but also the quite distinct recognition that continence is a "gift of God" which many do not have, and a specific assertion that it is not sinful to marry, and that the purpose of marriage is to avoid fornication; this can only mean that it is to provide a legal alternative. Nowadays the Pauline view is expressed by saying that the purpose of marriage is "the relief of concupiscence" while the extreme mediaeval view is expressed by saying that the sole purpose of marriage is procreation. </div> <div> Paul also made it clear that he was not propounding the official teaching of Christ, but was simply giving his personal opinion in reply to a number of questions which had been put to him by the Church at Corinth.</div> <div> Attaching, as it did, such importance to preventing masturbation, the Church sought a Biblical justification, and had no hesitation in twisting the facts to its purpose. Genesis xxxviii refers to Onan`s seed falling upon the ground and his subsequently being put to death. The idea was established - and is still widely believed - that this passage refers to masturbation, and the word onanism has come to be used as a synonym for it. Actually, it refers to the practice of `coitus interruptus`; and the reason why Onan was put to death was that he had violated the law of the levirate, by which a man must provide his deceased brother`s wife with offspring. Even the Catholic writer Canon A. de Smet, in his book Betrothment and Marriage, admits this: </div> <bR> <div> "From the text and context, however, it would seem that the blame of the sacred writer applies directly to the wrongful frustration of the law of the levitate, intended by Onan, rather than the spilling of the seed." </div> <div> It was as part of its comprehensive attempt to make the sexual act as difficult as possible that the Church devised laws against the practice of abortion. Neither Romans, Jews nod Greeks had opposed abortion, but Tertullian, following an inaccurate translation of Exodus xxi. 22, which refers to punishing a man who injures a pregnant woman, but which appeared to prescribe punishment for injuring the foetus, gave currency to the idea that the Bible held abortion to be a crime. He devoted much ingenuity to determining when the foetus became animate, and decided that it was after forty days in the case of males, eighty in the case of females. (Modern English law is even more absurd, for it does not stay the execution of pregnant women until the fourth month of pregnancy, yet may prosecute for abortion before that time.) Jerome, though knew Latin, perpetuated the error. Though the error has long since been exposed, the Church still maintains this position, and it has become incorporated in the law of the state which beautifully demonstrates that moral laws are not really derived from Biblical authority, but that Biblical authority is sought to justify regulations which, because of unconscious prejudices, seem `natural` and right. </div> <bR> <div> Still more drastically, the Church revamped the story of the Fall to support its general position on sex. The doctrine was gradually propagated that the reason for Adam`s expulsion from the garden of Eden was that he had performed the sexual act, or at least had acquired sexual knowledge. The temptation with the apple became the symbol of a sexual temptation, and Eve, the temptress, was specifically a sexual temptress. As at embroidery on this it was asserted (and is still widely remembered) that menstruation represented a curse imposed on women in punishment for Eve`s part in this seduction. But a single reading of the Book of Genesis is enough to show that this is not what was asserted. It contains, as a matter of fact, two versions of the Fall. In the first (Genesis iii), Adam eats of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and it is for acquiring this knowledge that he is expelled. In the second (Genesis vi), certain angels have intercourse with humans, teach them the arts and sciences, and are expelled from heaven. This is the story of which Milton made use: and it is the version to which Christ makes a passing reference. Both stories concern the acquisition of knowledge by men and are versions of the Prometheus myth - Lucifer, the light-bringer, is an exact analogue of Prometheus who steals fire from the Gods.</div> <bR> <div> That the Church`s fear of sex was exaggerated and obsessive will already be clear: but, more than this, it was fundamentally superstitious. It preserved the primitive magical belief in the power of sex to contaminate. It was for this reason that married couples must not only abstain from intercourse for three nights after their marriage - the so-called Tobias nights - but having once performed the sexual act, must not enter a church for thirty days after, and then only on condition of doing forty days penance and bringing an offering. Some of the magical precautions taken at and after the wedding, including the blessing of the bride bed, have already been described. Theodore further extended this principle of contamination when he ruled (what had been previously denied) that it was a sin for a menstruating woman to enter a church, and imposed a penance for infraction of this rule. For the same reason, a woman who had borne a baby had to be ceremonially purified before she could be re-admitted to communion. These primitive superstitions derived from pre-Christian Jewry. There can hardly be any better example of the extraordinary persistence of the past than the fact that to this very day the Church maintains in its rites this pagan purification ceremony, under the name of the Churching of Women. Indeed, it carried such ideas much further than had the Jews, as we shall shortly see.</div> <div> It was, of course, because of the magical character of the sex act that it automatically converted spousal to marriage, and this was why marriages of children could be declared void if copulation had not taken place. Furthermore, if two person within the prohibited degrees married each other, copulation turned this into a marriage which, though illegal, was valid and which the Church then had formally to annul. The modern practice of treating such a marriage as automatically void dates only from the reign of William IV. </div> <bR> <div> Still more eloquent of the superstitious nature of the Church approach to sex are its regulations concerning incestuous marriage. Many peoples, though by no means all, have regarded it as incestuous to marry a parent or a sibling. The Christian Saxons had regarded it as incestuous to marry first cousin, arguing that since marriage makes man and wife "one flesh" to marry a deceased husband`s cousin is incestuous. But in the eleventh century the Church became increasing obsessed with incest fears and extended the ban to second and finally to third cousins. (It was later reduced.) But this was not all. So strongly was the principle of sympathetic contagion embedded, so intense were the fears of incest, that godfather and godmothers were included in the ban; next, even the relations of the priests who had baptized or confirmed a person finally, even two persons who had stood sponsor to the same child might not marry each other! </div> <bR> <div> No doubt, in some small villages, these regulations must sometimes have eliminated every available candidate and condemned people to celibacy in just the same way as do the complicated exogamic regulations of the Australian black-fellow. </div> <bR> <div> In addition, no Christian could validly marry a Jew or the follower of any other religion. Indeed, copulation with a Jew was regarded as a form of bestiality, and incurred the same penances. In this there is a certain irony, since it was from the Jews that the Christians derived their laws against bestiality. Marriage with a heretic, however, though illicit, was not invalid until the Council of Trent tightened up ecclesiastical laws in the Counter-Reformation. </div> <bR> <div> It might be thought that this lengthy catalogue of prohibitions would have exhausted the list of attempts which zealots made to complicate and hinder the performance of the sexual act, but there is yet one more to record. They argued that no one might marry for a second time, even if the first partner had died, a doctrine which was alleged to be supported by the Pauline text saying that a man who puts away his wife and marries another commits adultery; though Paul had made it clear that this referred to putting away a living wife. It was also as part of this program, and not from ethical considerations, that the mediaeval Church set its face against polygamy. The Jews, of course, had been polygamous, and the early Christian fathers - unlike the Greeks and Romans - did not object to it. Even the strict Augustine thought it was permissible to take a second wife if the first were barren, and many early English and Irish kings lived in open polygamy.</div> <bR> <div> The proposition that the sexual act had power to contaminate was difficult to reconcile with the fact the Christ, who had been born of a woman, was without sin. To claim descent from the union between a woman and a god was a standard way of claiming semi-divine status in the classical world, and it was in accordance with this principle that the Jewish Messiah was expected to be born of such a union. The Christians adapted this to their ends by claiming that He had been born of a "virgin", that is, without performance of the contaminating sexual act, though in classical myth, of course, there was no such reservation. But even this degree of antisepsis was insufficient and the further idea was propagated that Christ had been born without contact with "the parts of shame" (as the Germans still call them) by emerging through the breast or navel. So widely was this believed that Ratramnus wrote a long, controversial book to prove that He had been born through the sexual organs in the normal way. (A pendant issue was the question whether Christ was divine from the moment of conception or only from some later point in intra-uterine life: this, too, persisted to modern times, and was only settled in 1856.) Others, who found it difficult to believe that even God could impregnate the Blessed Mary without her losing her virginity developed the idea that she was impregnated through the ear, by the Archangel Gabriel, or by God Himself. An Arab physician declares, "Nafkhae is the name of that particular form of air or vapor which the angel Gabriel is said to have blown or caused to pass from his coat sleeve into the windpipe of Mary, the mother of Jesus, for the purpose of impregnation."In some early paintings the Holy Ghost, in the form of a dove, is seen descending at great speed with the divine sperm in its bill; in others the seminal words are seen passing through a lily, on their way from Gabriel`s mouth to Mary`s ear, in order to remove any impurities; in one early carving, they came direct from God`s mouth through a tube which led under her skirts.</div> <bR> <div> <I>Sex Denied</I></div> <bR> <div> IN imagination, the Victorian era appears to me in the guise displayed in the paintings of Frith: a world of top-hatted men and parasol`d women moving like dolls beneath the traceries of the new cast-iron architecture. But it is a world like Grand Central Station. Ornate at ground level, the dirt and fumes are tucked out of sight in caverns below. Somewhere beneath the level on which paterfamilias moves with assured dignity, followed by his brood, is a second and more somber plane, peopled by a race whose duty is to emerge occasionally to provide variegated crowds, such as those which fill "Derby Day". Only by applying the microscope of Dickens does one discover that each of the units in these crowds is a living individual, each with its own hopes, its own sensibility, its own amour of attitude and its own despair. </div> <bR> <div> With this picture, as vivid and unreal as a magic-lantern slide, goes a stereotype of Victorian rectitude, harshness and prudery in the civilized overworld, and of carnivorous exploitation, serpentine deception and bovine suffering in the shades beneath. </div> <bR> <div> The reality, of course, is far more complicated. I cannot hope, in a single chapter, to bring out more than a few points. To begin with, the period with which we are concerned is not the England of the Great Exhibition and the rising population pressures, but something a good deal earlier. The patrist reaction started about 1760; by 1860 the swing-back was already under way. Furthermore it was a reaction led, not by the orthodox Church, but by the Wesleyans who were outside it, and the orthodox Church frequently protested against the extremes which they advocated. Clearly an increasing number of persons was becoming sympathetic to these reformist ideas, for the Wesleyans worked largely through reform societies; but it is also true that they succeeded in imposing their views on people to a considerable extent, for we find frequent protests, constant complaint that the young ignore the rules of behavior, and even adults who do not hesitate to ignore the taboos, up to a point. As early as 1814 a writer complains, "I observe with grief and astonishment that marriage has dwindled into a state of temporary convenience to be continued or dissolved at pleasure.``</div> <bR> <div> What is perhaps not realized is the severity of the Evangelical ideal, and its extensive "kill-joy" character. The three great objects to which the reform societies devoted themselves were, officially, the improvement of Sunday observance, the abolition of prostitution and the reduction of blasphemy. But since the term prostitution was enlarged in practice to cover all extra-marital sexual experience, and the term blasphemy, most kinds of statements which patrists found objectionable, and since to regulate Sunday enjoyment, in a period when men worked upwards of twelve hours a day, six days a week, was equivalent to regulating all enjoyment, the program was all embracing. George Burden`s Sermon on Lawful Amusements ( 1804) laid down that Christians must refrain from all amusement on Sunday, including traveling and paying visits. Hannah More added that a stroll in the public gardens on Sunday evening or attendance at a sacred concert were to be condemned, and that to tell the maid to say one was not in, when one was, was a sin. </div> <bR> <div> In fact, one of the astonishing features of this Evangelical morality was the lack of proportion it displayed. It condemned such classic offences as adultery and prostitution, to be sure, but it regarded a host of minor pleasures as scarcely less reprehensible. The "Evangelical Barometer" reproduced by Quinlan places all the principal virtues and sins of the day in fifteen grades, seven above zero and seven below. In the fourth grade below zero we find drunkenness paired with theatre-going; in the fifth, novel reading equated with neglect of private prayer. In the sixth grade, reserved for the most heinous sins short of total perdition, we find adultery grouped with parties of pleasure on the Lord`s day. Nor was this lack of proportion wholly confined to the Evangelicals; the grotesque extremes to which it was carried are illustrated by the fact that in I798 the Bishop of Durham solemnly assured the House of Lords that the French, having despaired of conquering England by force of arms, had conceived the deliberate and subtle plan of undermining her morals, and for this purpose had sent over a number of ballet dancers</div> <bR> <div> The Evangelical campaign, though undoubtedly based on sexual anxieties, as I shall seek to show, took the form not merely of a campaign against sexual indulgence, nor even of a campaign against all forms of pleasure; it had the character, rather, of an attack on all spontaneity of impulse. And to a considerable extent, people accepted the new standard. Places of resort, such as Vauxhall Gardens, the Apollo Gardens and the Temple of Flora closed for lack of support. Theatres were deserted. Men gave up archery, wrestling and football for such restrained and solitary activities as breeding pigeons. No one played practical jokes any more. Christian names went out of use except between members of the same family. But perhaps the flavor of this fear of spontaneity can be conveyed even better by saying that Dr. Johnson`s famous 3 a.m. excursion with Langton and Beauclerk ("What, is it you, you dogs!" he said when suddenly aroused, "I`ll have a frisk with you") was regarded as a most improper and undignified incident. Gravity of demeanor was as essential for children as for adults. Robinson Crusoe was regarded as quite unsuitable reading for children - since, as Maria Edgeworth said, it might have the dangerous effect of inspiring young readers with a taste for adventure. How to inspire a suitably solemn attitude in the young is demonstrated in "The Fairchild Family" (1818), in which on three occasions the children are taken to see the dead or dying, so as to provide an occasion for suitable reflections upon corruption and mortality. </div> <bR> <div> But if this general condemnation of pleasure reminds us of the Puritans, there were also aspects of Evangelical morality which seem almost medieval. I am thinking particularly of the tendency to see in every misfortune the direct manifestation of divine displeasure and even the inevitable consequence of departing from the law. Not only was the death of individuals interpreted as God`s punishment for their evil deeds, but political and economic ills were attributed not to defects of government or to poor harvests, but to the immorality of men`s behavior. </div> <bR> <div> "To the decline of religion and morality our national difficulties must both directly and indirectly, be chiefly ascribed", said Wilberforce in his Practical View (1797). Bowdler, similarly, blamed corruption in private life in his "Reform or Ruin". The Evangelicals were latter-day prophets, telling of the Lord`s forthcoming vengeance upon his stiff-necked people. </div> <bR> <div> Like Calvin, the Evangelicals insisted upon a completely literal and fundamentalist interpretation of Holy Writ, a fundamentalism which was to bring them into headfirst collision with the scientists, when the ideas of evolution and fossil geology were put forward, and into still more acute embarrassment when the higher criticism of Biblical texts was developed. Naturally, the idea of original sin also reappeared. Hannah More praised the dictum that children should be taught that they are "naturally depraved creatures" and parents willingly followed the suggestion. But nothing illustrates the common psychological origins of medieval and Victorian patrism more vividly than the bitter battles which were fought to prevent the use of anesthetics in childbirth. The patrist`s resentment of women finds a convenient rationalization in the proposition that the pains of childbirth are God`s punishment for the sin of Eve. Simpson`s use of chloroform, in 1847, to relieve these pains forced that resentment into the open. Since it is so easy to delude ourselves that these beliefs belong to the remote and almost barbaric past, and to pretend that opposition to new techniques was a product of medieval superstition and ignorance, which could never occur in an age of science among educated persons, it is worth recalling the facts in more detail. </div> <bR> <div> The Church at once protested on the grounds that to relieve the pains of childbirth was in defiance of religion, since the Bible had said that woman should bring forth her young in sorrow. Just as blatantly as in the Middle Ages, some pro-ponents resorted to lies and misrepresentation: thus one tract gave a highly colored description of a birth taking place in the midst of an undignified orgy of chloroform intoxication and contrasted it with the "natural dignity" of a birth without anesthetics. Simpson counterattacked on the Church`s own ground, pointing out that God had thrown Adam into a deep sleep when extracting Eve from his side, and was thus the first anesthetist. He reminded people that the Church had opposed the introduction of winnowing machines on the grounds that "winds were raised by God alone, and it was irreligious in man to attempt to raise wind . . . by efforts of his own"; that it had opposed proposals to build a Panama canal on the grounds that man should not attempt to improve what the Creator had ordained - in this case a boundary between the Pacific and the Atlantic; and that it had objected to the use of forks, declaring it to be "an insult to Providence not to touch our meat with our fingers". Such arguments, he pointed out, could be applied equally to anything which man had contrived - the wearing of hats, or the use of public transport.</div> <div> The Evangelical campaign, though undoubtedly based on sexual anxieties, as I shall seek to show, took the form not merely of a campaign against sexual indulgence, nor even of a campaign against all forms of pleasure; it had the character, rather, of an attack on all spontaneity of impulse. And to a considerable extent, people accepted the new standard. Places of resort, such as Vauxhall Gardens, the Apollo Gardens and the Temple of Flora closed for lack of support. Theatres were deserted. Men gave up archery, wrestling and football for such restrained and solitary activities as breeding pigeons. No one played practical jokes any more. Christian names went out of use except between members of the same family. But perhaps the flavor of this fear of spontaneity can be conveyed even better by saying that Dr. Johnson`s famous 3 a.m. excursion with Langton and Beauclerk ("What, is it you, you dogs!" he said when suddenly aroused, "I`ll have a frisk with you") was regarded as a most improper and undignified incident. Gravity of demeanor was as essential for children as for adults. Robinson Crusoe was regarded as quite unsuitable reading for children - since, as Maria Edgeworth said, it might have the dangerous effect of inspiring young readers with a taste for adventure. How to inspire a suitably solemn attitude in the young is demonstrated in "The Fairchild Family" (1818), in which on three occasions the children are taken to see the dead or dying, so as to provide an occasion for suitable reflections upon corruption and mortality. </div> <bR> <div> But if this general condemnation of pleasure reminds us of the Puritans, there were also aspects of Evangelical morality which seem almost medieval. I am thinking particularly of the tendency to see in every misfortune the direct manifestation of divine displeasure and even the inevitable consequence of departing from the law. Not only was the death of individuals interpreted as God`s punishment for their evil deeds, but political and economic ills were attributed not to defects of government or to poor harvests, but to the immorality of men`s behavior. </div> <bR> <div> "To the decline of religion and morality our national difficulties must both directly and indirectly, be chiefly ascribed", said Wilberforce in his Practical View (1797). Bowdler, similarly, blamed corruption in private life in his "Reform or Ruin". The Evangelicals were latter-day prophets, telling of the Lord`s forthcoming vengeance upon his stiff-necked people. </div> <bR> <div> Like Calvin, the Evangelicals insisted upon a completely literal and fundamentalist interpretation of Holy Writ, a fundamentalism which was to bring them into headfirst collision with the scientists, when the ideas of evolution and fossil geology were put forward, and into still more acute embarrassment when the higher criticism of Biblical texts was developed. Naturally, the idea of original sin also reappeared. Hannah More praised the dictum that children should be taught that they are "naturally depraved creatures" and parents willingly followed the suggestion. But nothing illustrates the common psychological origins of medieval and Victorian patrism more vividly than the bitter battles which were fought to prevent the use of anesthetics in childbirth. The patrist`s resentment of women finds a convenient rationalization in the proposition that the pains of childbirth are God`s punishment for the sin of Eve. Simpson`s use of chloroform, in 1847, to relieve these pains forced that resentment into the open. Since it is so easy to delude ourselves that these beliefs belong to the remote and almost barbaric past, and to pretend that opposition to new techniques was a product of medieval superstition and ignorance, which could never occur in an age of science among educated persons, it is worth recalling the facts in more detail.</div> <bR> <div> The Church at once protested on the grounds that to relieve the pains of childbirth was in defiance of religion, since the Bible had said that woman should bring forth her young in sorrow. Just as blatantly as in the Middle Ages, some pro-ponents resorted to lies and misrepresentation: thus one tract gave a highly colored description of a birth taking place in the midst of an undignified orgy of chloroform intoxication and contrasted it with the "natural dignity" of a birth without anesthetics. Simpson counterattacked on the Church`s own ground, pointing out that God had thrown Adam into a deep sleep when extracting Eve from his side, and was thus the first anesthetist. He reminded people that the Church had opposed the introduction of winnowing machines on the grounds that "winds were raised by God alone, and it was irreligious in man to attempt to raise wind . . . by efforts of his own"; that it had opposed proposals to build a Panama canal on the grounds that man should not attempt to improve what the Creator had ordained - in this case a boundary between the Pacific and the Atlantic; and that it had objected to the use of forks, declaring it to be "an insult to Providence not to touch our meat with our fingers". Such arguments, he pointed out, could be applied equally to anything which man had contrived - the wearing of hats, or the use of public transport.</div> <div> Fortunately, England was at this time governed by a queen, not a king: Victoria, who had experienced the pains of six deliveries without anesthetic, in 1853 decided to try chloroform, and this broke the back of the resistance. </div> <bR> <div> It was also characteristic that the new movement of reform should lay stress on circumscribing the movements of women and on subordinating them to the male. As was soon made clear in such books as "The Duties of the Female Sex"(1805), women`s status was returned to medieval level: submission, modesty and hard work were her lot, with visiting the poor for relaxation. Mary Wollstonecraft`s Rights of Women, appearing in the midst of such a trend, aroused a scandal: even so worldly a figure as Walpole referred to her as a "hyena in skirts". The Ladies Magazine published a case-study of four girls who had, it asserted, been perverted by reading this work: one of them not only rode to hounds but even groomed her own horse, while another - oh, horror! - introduced into her conversation quotations from the classics. </div> <bR> <div> But the Victorian attitude to women was different in some important respects from the medieval. Where the medievals had regarded woman as the source of sin, the Victorians regarded her as pure and sexless. There was, at the same time, a difference in their attitude to sex itself. The Victorians, if mistakenly, regarded themselves as more civilized than the men of the preceding century: it was with only a trace of irony that a writer in the "Gentleman`s Magazine" could say: </div> <bR> <div> "We are every day becoming more delicate, and, without doubt, at the same time more virtuous; and shall, I am confident, become the most refined and polite people in the world."</div> <div> That was in 1791; and fifty years later the conviction of moral superiority was even stronger. But the sexual act was not refined, it was not even dignified. Animals must rut, but man - noble, grave, rational should be able to procreate without descending to such uncivilized contortions. In short, the Victorian saw sex not so much as something sinful, but as something bestial, something disgusting. Besides which, conceiving himself as rational, he distrusted an activity which was so evidently not under rational control. </div> <div> But to say that the Victorian thought sex bestial does not explain why he should pretend that women were incapable of sexual feeling. As we have seen, the father identifier feels a conflict in respect of his mother - he feels that she has betrayed him sexually by her relationship with his father. The medieval patrist met this by decomposition: he presupposed a completely pure ideal mother, who had never had sexual relations (the fact that Mary had other children besides Jesus was conveniently forgotten) and urged all women to a like purity. But while he urged women to purity, he felt women were inherently wicked. He wanted them to be virgins but believed them to be courtesans. The Victorian patrist felt the same conflict, but was no longer disposed to solve it by postulating a divine Virgin: he was therefore compelled to divide the female sex into two categories: "good" women who had no taste for sex, and "bad" women who had. No more telling remark can be found than W. Acton`s assertion - ant remember it was not a hyperbole but a cold statement of supposed fact, made in a scientific work, "The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs" - that it was a "vile aspersion" to say that women were capable of sexual feeling. </div> <bR> <div> The reformers did not, as a rule, succeed in getting Parliament to provide legal sanctions against the matters which they criticized, frequently because of their extremist character. Thus in 1800 and again in 1856 and 1857, attempts were made to have Parliament impose the death penalty for adultery, but the motions were defeated. The reformers did, however, succeed in securing the passage of an Act banning marriage with a deceased wife`s sister - a measure which was not repealed until 1907. No doubt they would have attempted to revive use of the ecclesiastical courts, but ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the laity had been finally destroyed in 1788 when an Act was passed preventing ecclesiastical action against incontinence. Nevertheless, on two occasions attempts were made to act against adultery by "presentment". The authorities, however, showed themselves reluctant to challenge the civil power, and both cases were dropped. Probably the last occasion on which the ecclesiastical courts attempted to impose the traditional penance of appearing in church in a white sheet was in 1833, when a court imposed it on a woman who had offended against the Deceased Wife`s Sister Act: but a medical certificate that this would endanger the woman`s health was submitted, and the matter was allowed to drop.</div> <div> On the other hand, the private societies for the suppression of vice multiplied and brought numerous prosecutions. As early as 1757 a Society for the Reformation of Manners was founded with Wesleyan support. Five years later it was driven into bankruptcy when convicted of employing false testimony (echoes of medieval mendacity!) but in that five years it had brought more than 10,000 prosecutions. In 1789 the Proclamation Society was founded to give effect to the royal Proclamation against Vice: in 1803 it set up a Society for the Suppression of Vice. Other reformist societies included the Association for Securing a Better Observance of Sunday, the Society for the Prevention of Female Prostitution, and the Religious Tract Society, which by 1844 was distributing the prodigious number of 15 million tracts a year. </div> <bR> <div> The declared object of the Proclamation Society (which numbered on its board a duke, both archbishops and seventeen bishops) was to suppress "licentious publications", but, as usual, the attempt was made to suppress all free speech on matters which the patrists found unacceptable. Its offspring, the Society for the Suppression of Vice, was used to prosecute "The Republican", a paper defending free speech and a free press. Tom Paine was obliged to flee the country on the publication of his "Rights of Man" (and had in turn to flee from France to America, where his "Age of Reason" was no better received). The Society, however, prosecuted and succeeded in having imprisoned a bookseller who had continued to sell his works. In 1820 a so-called Constitutional Association was formed to prosecute "seditious works". Among the works it thought seditious, and against which it successfully brought prosecutions, were Palmer`s "Principles of Nature" and Shelley`s "Oedipus Tyrannus" and "Queen Mab". Murray, Byron`s publisher, was so afraid of its activities that he hesitated to print the first two cantos of Don Juan.(194) But this gang of intolerant patrists - it included the Duke of Wellington, six bishops and twenty peers - went so much further than public opinion would allow even in that age of reaction, that after only three years it had to suspend operations. The State, too, began to act against free speech, raising the tax on newspapers to 4d., at which figure it remained until 1855. The political character of the tax was made abundantly clear by its extension in 1819 to political magazines.</div> <bR> <div> <I>The School of Christ</I></div> <bR> <div> The Protestant movement started on the Continent, and before discussing English Puritanism, it will be desirable to consider Calvinism - for though it was Luther who set the schismatic movement in train, and though the Church which he set up still endures, yet it was Calvin who provided the most clear-cut exemplification of the extreme patriarch character of the movement. Furthermore, it was Calvin who most closely influenced Britain - perhaps by a sympathetic attraction. Luther`s movement, though conservative in nature, was not so fanatic or so guilt ridden as Calvin`s, and it was to the latter that the British divines, fleeing from the Catholic Mary, gravitated. </div> <bR> <div> The basis of Calvinism in father-identification needs little stressing. We find it in the marked authoritarianism of the movement, in its depression of the status of women, and even in such characteristic details as a fervent belief in witchcraft: extreme Protestants persisted in this belief long after the rest of Europe had abandoned it: Wesley, for instance, was a firm believer in witchcraft. The stress placed by Calvinism on authority is quite striking. Not only did Calvin stress divine authority, but all paternal authority was sacrosanct. In Geneva a child was beheaded for striking its father: in Scotland, too, severe penalties were prescribed for any child who defied its father. If there was anything worse than to defy a father`s authority, it was to defy Calvin`s. Special penalties were prescribed for addressing Calvin as Calvin, and not as Mr. Calvin. Citizens who commented unfavorably on his sermons were punished by three days on bread and water. Gruet, who criticized Calvin`s doctrine and who had written "nonsense" in the margin of one of his books, was beheaded for treason and blasphemy. Berthelieu, who challenged the right of the Consistory to excommunicate, was beheaded, with several of his supporters. Calvin betrayed the tolerant Servetus to the Inquisition in France, and covered his part in so doing by a lie. Servetus, having escaped, came to Geneva hoping to discuss his differences with Calvin, only to be seized, tried without benefit of legal aid and burnt, on Calvin`s express instructions. (Before ever the trial opened, he gave orders that Servetus was not to leave Geneva alive.) As Castellio commented: "If thou, Christ, dost these things or commandest them to be done, what is left for the Devil ?" </div> <bR> <div> As always in patriarchal systems, Calvinism was fanatically against intellectual freedom. Calvin himself said that he submitted his mind "bound and fettered" in obedience to God, and he expected a similar subservience from others. Not only Servetus and Cruet, but many others who dared to query the official teaching were condemned and imprisoned or killed; and since Church and State were one, to hold the wrong opinion was not only heresy but treason. Inevitably, Calvinists depressed the status of women. What seemed to them especially outrageous was that women should, in some places, be heads of state. It was unfortunate that Knox`s First Blast of tax Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women should have coincided with the accession of Elizabeth. The letters to Somerset in which he tries to retrieve the position make amusing reading: but it was too late, and the second Blast was never sounded. The Calvinists excluded, of course, all adoration of the Virgin Mary, and it is symptomatic of the new movement that in some places Protestants broke or mutilated statues of the Virgin - actions which in Paris evoked day-long processions of expiation on the part of the orthodox. </div> <bR> <div> As a matter of fact, Calvinism went so far in the direction of a patriarchy that it abandoned the mediaeval Church`s view that virginity was a good, stressed the desirability of having a large family, and seemed on the verge of restoring polygamy. This loss of interest in the idea of virginity, coupled with a rejection of the idea of meditation and the erection of work into a virtue led to the abandonment of the life of the cloister, which still further depressed the status of the unmarried woman. Calvin, to be sure, never licensed polygamy, but Luther agreed to the bigamous marriage of Philip of Hesse; and on a few occasions when the number of women available greatly exceeded the number of men, Protestant bodies actually legalized polygamy. Thus the Frankish Diet legalized bigamy to restore the ravages of the Thirty Years War.</div> <bR> <div> Stevenson, in his portrait of Knox, draws attention to the somewhat Biblical character of his domestic arrangements. Knox, who was twice married, was also the cause of scandal with at least two other women. Having given rise to some talk by the closeness of his association with a Mrs. Bowes (a married woman, living with her husband) Knox suddenly married her daughter, and retired to Geneva with both ladies, despite the protests of Mr. Bowes. The little group was soon joined by a Mrs. Locke, for whom Knox professed a respectful affection, and by her daughter and maid, to the extreme annoyance of Mr. Locke. Stevenson draws a delightful picture of Knox proceeding to worship on the Sabbath, accompanied at a respectful distance by the five Women, like some Biblical patriarch with his wives and concubines. This was not, as a matter of fact, the full extent of Knox`s interests, for he also maintained a warm friendship with a Mrs. Adamson. It was quite characteristic that, having caused two wives to leave the sides of their husbands, he should write bitterly attacking a Mrs. Barron for having left her own husband. </div> <bR> <div> One of the several interesting features of Calvinism, which differentiate it from the doctrines of the Middle Ages, and bring it nearer to the doctrines of the early Christian fathers, was a tendency to generalize feelings of guilt to cover every conceivable form of pleasure. Where mediaeval writers tended to dwell specifically upon sex and to pursue the subject into all its aspects, the Calvinists did not dwell on the perversions, but devoted their ingenuity to the minutest regulation of daily life. </div> <bR> <div> The guilt ridden character of Calvin`s doctrine emerges clearly in the Institutes, the great work in which he sought to embody the principles of the new Church. Quoting with approval Christ`s words "The world shall rejoice, but ye shall weep and lament", he asks: "Do not our innumerable and daily transgressions deserve more severe and grievous chastisements than those which his clemency inflicts on us ? Is it not highly reasonable that our flesh should be subdued, and as it were accustomed to the yoke, lest it should break out, according to its propensities, into lawless excesses ?" It no longer needs a psychologist to tell us what the forbidden excess was, from which men had to be restrained, "the licentiousness of the flesh, which unless it be rigidly restrained, transgresses every bound." </div> <bR> <div> The whole document is of rich psychological interest, and provides a classic demonstration of the power of the legal mind to arrive at the wished-for conclusion, starting from whatever premise. Calvin attached the highest importance to the Bible, but found no difficulty in making those texts which seem to preach the enjoyment of God`s gifts support his own preferences for self-mortification. The early Jews believed strongly that one should enjoy the pleasures of life, including those of sex (see Deuteronomy xxi. 10-14) and some teachers held that at the last day one would have to account to God for every pleasure one had failed to enjoy. But Calvin, after conceding that God has put various things into the world for men to enjoy, such as flowers, colors, gold and silver, and so on, demands: "Where is the gratitude towards God for clothing if on account of our sumptuous apparel, we admire ourselves and despise others ?" By a similar line of reasoning, every other blessing is to be rejected because it might lead to undesirable behavior, until we finally arrive at the conclusion that "they that have wives should be as though they had none" - the original doctrine of Paul. </div> <bR> <div> This method of argument is still popular today, to be sure - a recent example being the Report of the Royal Commission on Population Trends, which, after considering a great many reasons why Britain is likely to find it impossible to support its present population, concludes that, since no one can be quite sure that these reasons will operate, every effort should be made to maintain the population at the present figure.</div> <div> So terrible were the forces of guilt and destructiveness animating Calvin, that he not only revived Augustine`s doctrine of pre-destination but carried it to an even more fearful extreme, and resolutely condemned to eternal torment, not only all babies which died before baptism, but all persons in non-Christian countries - including, of course, all persons living prior to the time of Christ. As Troeltsch points out, the doctrine of predestination is one which effectively precludes the operation of divine love and mercy: psychologically it is the reaction of one who, having been treated with cruelty, reacts by deciding to suppress his own instincts of tenderness. Under Calvin`s rule, midwives took to baptizing sickly infants as soon as they were born, to save them from this frightful fate; Calvin promptly put a stop to the practice, assuaging his conscience with the claim that God, in his justice, would not let anyone die unbaptized who really deserved to be saved. The practice of giving immediate baptism to sickly babies prevails in England to this day. </div> <bR> <div> It is therefore quite in keeping that Calvin constructed at Geneva probably the strictest theocratic society ever devised and treated with savage severity all those who held views opposed to his own. In this heaven, not only were fornication and adultery proscribed but even the mildest forms of spontaneity. The Registers reveal that bridesmaids were arrested for decorating a bride too gaily. People were punished for dancing, spending time in taverns, eating fish on Good Friday, having their fortunes told, objecting when the priest christened their child by a different name from the one they had chosen, arranging a marriage between persons of disparate ages, singing songs against Calvin, and much besides. Pierre Ami, one of those responsible for bringing Calvin to Geneva, was imprisoned for dancing with his wife at a betrothal; his wife later had to flee the country. </div> <bR> <div> Attendance at church on Sundays and on Wednesdays was compulsory, and the police went through streets, shops and homes to see if anyone was evading his duty. On the other hand, it was a punishable offence to go to church except at the hour of service. Grant observes: ".... the dress of citizens, male and female, the mode of dressing the hair, the dishes served on ordinary days and on festivals, the jokes in the streets, the character of private entertainments - all were enquired into, and what seemed wrong was censured and punished." Such was the Genevan Utopia, which the admiring Knox called "the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on earth since the days of the Apostles". </div> <bR> <div> To impose such standards, Calvin had to resort, naturally, to wholesale violence, torture and execution: 150 of those who disagreed were committed to the flames in sixty years. Not for nothing had he been called by his schoolmates "The Accusative". </div> <bR> <div> The second remarkable feature of Calvinism - and this is true, to some extent of Protestantism generally - was the unprecedented importance it attached to the spoken and written word. It was the very basis of Calvin`s teaching that the Bible constituted the unimpeachable source of all doctrine: it was referred to as the Word of God. The Bible itself came to be conceived as invested with an extraordinary sacredness: it became, it has even been said, a sacrament, taking precedence over the Eucharist, which was only celebrated in commemoration of it. Our practice of swearing on the Bible derives from this. Notably, the Principle of the infallibility of the Bible was substituted for the principle of the infallibility of-the Pope It was characteristic of the loveless, legalistic Calvin that he should make a system of symbols - a book - the center of his system, rather than the persons and actions those symbols represented. It was a retreat from life. </div> <bR> <div> No doubt it was part of this strange preoccupation with the importance of words that extraordinary importance was accorded to the sermon. The Protestants - in England equally - believed that in the sermon they had found the answer to all ecclesiastical problems. In Geneva, seventeen sermons were given every week, two on each weekday and five on Sunday, and attendance at all was compulsory.</div> <div> It seems tempting to link with this phenomenon the Puritan preoccupation with the propriety of other forms of words, such as novels and plays, and the "profane songs" already mentioned. Moreover, as we shall see, when the puritan movement finally became dominant in England, it steadily began to built up, for the first time in history, a system of laws against making certain types of statements. These statements were called "obscene" - that is, objectionable: what the Puritans chiefly found obscene was, of course, any direct reference to sexual matters. </div> <bR> <div> The psychology of these Puritan reformers is particularly interesting, and it would be of great interest to make full, scale psychological studies of some of them. Calvin, for instance, was subject to violent fits of anger. He suffered from chronic indigestion and in due course developed stomach ulcers. Today, his drive, ruthlessness ant obsessive attentiveness to detail might have made him a successful businessman. He seems to have had a special preoccupation with the idea of adultery, and introduced references to it in almost every matter he discussed. Since repression always stimulates what it sets out to repress, one is not surprised to learn that his sister-in-law was taken in adultery in I557 and that his daughter suffered a like fate five years later. </div> <bR> <div> Unfortunately, we know very little of Calvin`s earliest youth, and not much about his private feelings. On the other hand, there is a great deal of information available about Luther, who recorded his thoughts and feelings in great detail. For instance, we can detect signs of megalomania in the hints which he often dropped that he was of noble origin. Once he traced his ancestry back to Julius Caesar`s entourage. At his funeral, the speaker of the oration had no hesitation in describing him as descended from Lothair. </div> <bR> <div> Luther`s dominating characteristic seems to have been an intense fear of the paternal figure. He tells us how fearfully, as a boy, he studied a stained glass window in the parish church depicting Jesus the Judge, a figure with a fierce countenance bearing a flaming sword. When, after his admission as priest, he first had to officiate at Mass, he was frightened almost to incapability. This is easily intelligible when we learn that his father, a miner, used to beat him so severely that he ran away from home; his schoolmaster was equally harsh. His mother was scarcely less severe and once beat him until blood flowed, for eating a nut which he had found upon the table. Hence we might expect Luther to have formed the impression that, if God was severe, the Virgin Mary was scarcely less clement. It is therefore interesting that he made St. Anne his patroness, for her function was to intercede with the Virgin, to induce her to intercede with Jesus, whose role was to intercede with the Father. Like the Pope, God could not be approached direct. Once, when Luther was walking along, a clap of thunder sounded from a clear sky. So taut were his nerves that he fell to the ground in terror, crying "Save me, save me, dear St. Anne", and subsequently joined the order of Augustine Eremites, an order which venerated St. Anne. (20) </div> <bR> <div> Despite his own rejection of the Catholic hierarchy, his outlook was profoundly authoritarian. "An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons", he said, and when the peasants rose demanding that villeinage should end, he was horrified. He accepted to the hilt the propriety of using force placing absolute power in the hands of the civil authorities and encouraging them by saying, "No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be bloody." </div> <bR> <div> Luther`s psychology is chiefly interesting, however, in that it provided some confirmation of the general psychological analysis which has been made of the puritan type of personality. One of the most noticeable characteristics of a certain type of puritan is an obsessive fear of dirt: we have all met the woman who combines with a strict and uncharitable morality an almost surgical desire for cleanliness. It was the commonness of this combination which gave rise to the aphorism about cleanliness being next to godliness, but the more percipient pointed out that the dislike of dirt in the literal sense seemed to go with an extreme interest in dirt in the moral sense. This type of person is always the first to know of a neighbor`s mis-step and to criticize it. Custance`s observation that, in the depressive phase of his insanity, a fear of dirt was associated with a feeling of remoteness from God is also relevant here.</div> <div> But this is not an isolated observation. Psychiatrists have long recognized among their patients a characteristic distortion of personality in which there is an extreme interest in productive and retentive activities, and which is also frequently marked by some degree of cruelty or sadism. The origins of this distortion have been analyzed in detail and these special interests have been found to be a substitute for, or a sublimation of, a childish preoccupation with excretory matters, for which reason this personality pattern is described as the "anal" type. (This brief summary is hardly fair, for this classification is based on an elaborate and generally accepted theory of how personality is formed, which can be tested in various ways and forms the basis of most psychoanalytical work.) </div> <bR> <div> The suggestion that the great tide of productive and accumulative capitalism which rose during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was due to an increase in the anal elements in character is far from new: but the point is one which has never, I think, been investigated historically. There is, in fact, room for a full-scale study of the relations between Puritanism and these anal attitudes from earliest times. </div> <bR> <div> Such a history would undoubtedly reveal a strong contrast between the uninhibited matrist treatment of scatological matters and the shamefaced taboos and obsessive preoccupations of puritans. Rabelais, for instance, treats scatological matters with gusto. Camden notes that at least one manor was held of the king, not by the conventional rent of a rose, payable at midsummer, but by serjeantry, a thing which is quite inconceivable today. This was the case at Hemingston, "wherein Baldwin le Petteur (observe the name) held land by serjeantry (thus an ancient book expresses it) for he was obliged every Christmas Day to perform before our Lord the King or England, one saltus, one sufflatus and one bumbulus; or, as it is read in another place, he held it by a saltus, a sufflus and a pettus - that is (if I apprehend it aright), he was to dance, make a noise with his cheeks, and let a rousing fart. Such" - adds Camden benignly - "was the plain, jolly mirth of those days." It is against this background that we have to set the fact that Luther received his great moment of enlightenment - the moment when he perceived that man`s salvation depends not upon his achievements but upon his faith - when he was sitting upon the privy. This is the celebrated `Turmerlebnis`. Luther was continuously constipated, itself typical of excessive cerebral control, and it was in one of his prolonged sojourns in the Temple of Cloacina that he had his vision of the Devil.  Melancthon describes one of Luther`s affrays with the Fiend in the following words, which had better remain in Latin: </div> <bR> <div> "Hoc dicto, victus Daemon, indignabundus secumque murmurans abiit, eliso crepitu, non exiguo, cujus fussimen tetri odoris dies aliquot redolebat hypocaustum."</div> <div> The tradition that the Devil was accompanied by an evil smell is of great antiquity, and it did not take much imagination to attribute this to his crepitations. Schurig devotes a whole article to the subject in his "Chylologia". Luther, however, breaks new ground by recounting in his "Table Talk" how a lady put the devil to flight by this very means. Since the association of aggressive and sadistic impulses with anal fixation is one of the best established facts in psychology, Luther`s anecdote may well, like any other myth, be indicative of a change in the unconscious preoccupations of the myth-maker. </div> <div> Finally, it is significant that the Puritans also extended their taboos on the making of verbal references to sexual matters to cover excretory matters also. Since this taboo is still with us today, if slightly weakened, it is easy to think this association natural. In point of fact, the sense of repulsion from faeces is by no means inborn, as anyone who observes children knows. (Similarly, those tribes which regard it as shameful to be seen eating also explain this as being self-evident.)</div> <div> It may also be the case that the patrists` new anal pre-occupations help to account for their special sensitiveness to words. Psychologists have noted certain parallels between excretion and speech: words may be used to defile and smear, that is, to express an aggression which is fundamentally excremental. Too little is known to push these speculations further, but the field is one which would richly repay research. </div> <bR> <div> In England, of course, the patrist revolt did not lead to schism and, except for a short time during the Common- wealth, patrist codes were not enforced. Even when small groups abandoned the struggle and emigrated to Holland or America they still continued to regard themselves as members of the English Church. In Scotland, however, Knox succeeded in imposing the Calvinist system, and the Genevan pattern was reproduced almost exactly. </div> <bR> <div> English Puritanism, as it came to be called, thus had a frustrated character. Nevertheless, it displays the main characteristics which we have already noted: the extreme generalizing of the sense of guilt to cover the mildest forms of spontaneity, and the immense pre-occupation with symbols. Throughout the sixteenth century, the Puritans dissipated much of their energy in doctrinal discussions, such as whether wooden tables should replace stone altars and whether they should be placed in the Centrex of the church or at the east end. The great issue upon which Elizabeth and the Puritans fought or so long was the question of how the clergy should be dressed. Elizabeth, who had conceded every major demand raised by the Injunctions which were designed to strip English churches of matrist influences, yet insisted upon one thing - that the clergy should continue to wear cap and vestments as in Edward`s time - and stood obstinately upon this decision despite every pressure. The clergy were equally obstinate in refusing, and scores sacrificed their livings rather than conform.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>