Description Medieval clerics believed that original sin had rendered their "Fallen bodies" vulnerable to corrupting impulses--particularly those of a sexual nature.
About the Author Dyan Elliott is Associate Professor of History and Adjunct of Religious Studies and Women\'s Studies at Indiana University..
She shows how this dynamic ultimately resulted in the progressive conflation of the female and the demonic, setting the stage for the future persecution of witches.
Dyan Elliott contends that the Western clergy\'s efforts to contain sexual instincts--and often the very thought and image of woman--precipitated uncanny returns of the repressed.
When church doctrine definitively denied the physicality of demons, the female body remained as the prime material presence of sin.
Over time, the clergy\'s conceptions of womanhood became radically polarized: the Virgin Mary was accorded ever greater honor, while real, corporeal women were progressively denigrated.
To maintain their purity, celibate clerics combated the stain of nocturnal emissions; married clerics expelled their wives onto the streets and out of the historical record; an exemplum depicting a married couple having sex in church was told and retold; and the specter of the demonic lover further stigmatized women\'s sexuality.
Drawing on a variety of canonical and other sources, Fallen Bodies examines a wide-ranging set of issues generated by fears of pollution, sexuality, and demonology.
They feared that their corporeal frailty left them susceptible to demonic forces bent on penetrating and polluting their bodies and souls.
Description Medieval clerics believed that original sin had rendered their "Fallen bodies" vulnerable to corrupting impulses--particularly those of a sexual nature
