Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T07:13:09.094Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

3 - Sexual Austerity

Stephen Garton
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
Get access

Summary

According to the first-century BCE Roman geographer Strabo, the annual religious festival at Canopus in Roman Egypt was marked by singing, dancing, devotional duties and sexual licentiousness. There may have been many Greek and Roman philosophers, religious authorities and doctors who warned of the perils of sexual excess, counselling the virtues of moderation, but, as ‘Canoptic life’ suggested, religion and sexual licence were not entirely incompatible. Four hundred years later Christianity had wrought a dramatic shift in the relationship between sex and religion. In the Eastern Church influential founders such as John Chrysostom preached an ideal of Heaven ‘uninflamed by any lustfulness…[in which] there was no desire for sexual intercourse’. In the Western Church, St Augustine, one of Christianity's most important Fathers, preached the doctrine of ‘original sin’, clearly linking sex to ‘man's’ fall from grace. While St Augustine was prepared to sanction marriage as an acceptable relationship, sex within marriage was only permissible for the purposes of procreation.

St Augustine and other early Church Fathers struggled to overcome the clash between their belief in the necessity to transcend bodily desires and the need for sex to perpetuate the Christian flock. While affirming marriage they at the same time espoused chastity as the highest spiritual ideal. For St Augustine, a good Christian loved the ‘woman that God created…while he hates the corruptible and mortal relationship and marital intercourse’.

Type
Chapter
Information
Histories of Sexuality
Antiquity to Sexual Revolution
, pp. 48 - 63
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×