Sex, health, and sacrament. Sexual relationships and women’s health in the Middle Ages

Abstract

Studying erotic female experience in the Middle Ages is constrained by sources. Conceptions about women’s sexual desire, pleasure, and health came, primarily, from sources written by men. This paper analyzes the constructions which were made by physicians and theologians about the sexuality of women who had the right to enjoy it, the married woman, and those who had sex forbidden: the nuns. Physicians, on the one hand, received the female seed theory according to which women needed sexual relationships in order to keep their health. But, on the other hand, Catholic Church was involved in the process of control of the celibacy. So there were two points of view about women’s needs for sexual pleasure. Theologians concluded recognizing the need of sexual pleasure for women, but estrange results was given: Physicians adapted their therapies to the specific nun’s sexual needs, and midwives had the responsibility to perform the therapeutically orgasm. Married women, however, had no right to choose their male sexual partner.