Medieval women were considered weak, soft, sensual, and fickle if not frivolous. Even today, we hear an echo in the disparagement of Kamala Harris

Around 600, Isidore of Seville wrote an encyclopaediac account of the world. These “Etymologies” became the most widespread work in medieval libraries next to the bible. That is to say, if you lived in a learned community in an Abbey with a decent library, a copy of the Etymologies might be consulted whenever you were unsure about the nature and the proper order of things.

Hence, it is of utmost importance to consider what Isidore wrote about the nature of women and their proper place in creation. We may presume that any number of students, teachers, or common prelates would consult this text whenever they were unsure how to grasp the proper nature of any matter.

Consequently, it is worth noting that, according to Isidore, women were fundamentally weaker than men. The reason was – he writes – because they were expected to yield to the strength and power of men. “Evidently this is so lest, if women were to resist, lust should drive men to seek out something else or throw themselves upon the male sex” (Etymologies, Book XI, ii,19). Conveniently then, Isidore notes that women were “said to be more libidinous than males, both in human beings and in animals. Whence among the ancients excessive love was called feminine (femineus)” (Book XI, ii, 24). Soft, willing, pliable, lustful – and ready to fulfil their part of the obligation to beget and foster the heirs of the paterfamilias. Thus, of the four things important to consider when choosing a wife – the beauty, the family, the wealth and the character of the woman – beauty came first. Procreation was the point, vessel the appointed role. Hence, there was no room for adulterous behaviour or lack of willingness.

Apparently, women might not always be expected to live up to these expectations. Perhaps because they were ”fickle”? Hence, Isidore wrote that women had to be ”repressed by the authority of men” because they were by nature often ”deceived by the fickleness of their minds”. Consequently, Isidore reported that ”the ancients wanted their unwed women, even those of mature age, to live in guardianship, on account of their fickle minds.” (Book XI.ii.23-24)

Writing about women as vessels, Isidore obviously revealed his pre-Christian classical Roman heritage. Something which he also noted when writing about marriage.

As opposed to the heavily debated issues concerning the formation of early monasteries and convents in Late Antiquity, Isidore was markedly silent about the sexual continence expected of virtuous Christian athletes following Paul. Such abstemious lifeworlds were early on popularised by novellas such as the Acts of Paul and Thecla, written at the end of the second century, in which Thecla vehemently rejected a planned marriage, instead dressing up like a man to preach and convert, a “virile woman” or “heroic maiden”. More often, though, virgins opting out of the marriage market were hastily classified as matrons (married to Christ). In Milan, St Ambrose – the spiritual father of St Augustine – even conducted a consecration of a virgin that was shaped as a secular marriage ritual.

However, into this chastity war, Augustine threw a granite in the form of his final treatise. “On the Good of Marriages”, Augustine described marriages as a Godly sanctioned “true and friendly union of the one ruling, the other obeying”. The evidence might be found in Genesis, wrote Agustine, referring to Eve being created physically as subordinate (an argument which Isidore later recounted). Hence, even women professing to chastity might not escape the obligation to let the husband rule the roost, thought Augustine – and with him Isidore. Although Augustine –reading St Paul – acknowledged that men and women were equally created in the Image of God, he nevertheless bought into the natural philosophy of the Greeks (Aristotle and Galen). Isidore, however, disregarded this spiritual qualification and wholeheartedly contented himself with stressing the more crude physical facts – that women, arguably, are the “weaker” sex in terms of “muscles”, which they then explored as a proxy for “willpower” and “sexual drive”.
Flip Floppers marketed as part of the Kamala Harris campaign
Pace the caveat of Augustine, Isidore set the tone for the Christian discourse on women as passive, sly and fickle creatures – in need of coercion and control.

It has been debated to what extent the matter grew worse after the 10th and 11th centuries when the Church came to comprehensively focus on what was considered the pollution of the Eucharist taking place when married clerics celebrated the Mass.

Unfortunately, this disparagement led to a general denigration of the idea of marriage per se until the new natural philosophical thinking in the later 12th century came to regard the (re)creation of the natural world as the fountain of a blissful paradisical life. Given this, marriage and matrimony were once again considered viable and dignified institutions, albeit the argument for male physical and intellectual subjugation of women was kept intact until the 21st century. To a large extent, this thinking was fostered by the rediscovery of the work of Aristotle in the 12th century, inspiring Thomas Aquinas to “rethink” Augustine of Hippo. Now, women were not even to be considered equal in the eyes of God, only defective in terms of their contribution to the reproduction of the next generation. According to Aristotle, the woman’s contribution to procreation was providing nothing but a home for the photos. Only the male provided the creative power and the “clay” – the semen. It was not until the 17th century that the sperm and the ovum were discovered. And it took until 1827, before the findings were accepted scientifically. Even today, the reproductive rights of women are brittle and the centre of political violence. Who should have thought a presidential election in the USA might be decided on the merits of women’s rights to their own bodies?

Even today, women are considered both physically and morally inferior – fickle or wavering, wrote Isidore. A Flip-flopper, as Trump has claimed Kamela Harris to be.

SOURCE:

Gender and The Christian Traditions
By Dyan Elliott.

Medicine and Natural Philosophy: Naturalistic
Traditions
Katharine Park

In: The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe.
Edited by Judith Bennett and Ruth Karras. Oxford 2013

 

Etymologies of Isidore of Seville.
Transl. By Stephen A. Barney et al.
Cambridge 2010