The Bridling of Desire: Views of Sex in the Later Middle Ages

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

In this short work, Pierre Payer has made an impressive attempt to
explain to late–20th-century laypeople what medieval church scholars
believed and preached about sex. The task is not easy. As Payer points
out, the concept of human sexuality for its own sake is a recent
mindset. Medieval thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Peter Lombard, and
Albert the Great never considered sexuality except within larger
contexts.

Payer, therefore, spends much of his time distilling sex out of 12th-
and 13th-century essays on sin, temperance, paradise, chastity, and
marriage. Could Adam experience an erection in Paradise? If he could,
would he be able to enjoy an orgasm? Topics like these were the centre
of much 12th- and 13th-century ecclesiastical scribbling.

The medieval scholars, in turn, based their conclusions on the ancient
writings of Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, and the Bible. Payer explores
each major argument. The result is neither a riveting nor an effortless
read. The rewards, however, are there if a layperson wants to begin to
understand the modern Catholic Church’s inflexible stands on celibacy,
birth control, marriage, and sin. Fortunately, each chapter ends with a
brief and clear summary that goes a long way to clearing the theological
fog.