Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe

Forside
University of Chicago Press, 15. feb. 2009 - 698 sider
This monumental study of medieval law and sexual conduct explores the origin and develpment of the Christian church's sex law and the systems of belief upon which that law rested. Focusing on the Church's own legal system of canon law, James A. Brundage offers a comprehensive history of legal doctrines–covering the millennium from A.D. 500 to 1500–concerning a wide variety of sexual behavior, including marital sex, adultery, homosexuality, concubinage, prostitution, masturbation, and incest. His survey makes strikingly clear how the system of sexual control in a world we have half-forgotten has shaped the world in which we live today. The regulation of marriage and divorce as we know it today, together with the outlawing of bigamy and polygamy and the imposition of criminal sanctions on such activities as sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus, and bestiality, are all based in large measure upon ideas and beliefs about sexual morality that became law in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages.

"Brundage's book is consistently learned, enormously useful, and frequently entertaining. It is the best we have on the relationships between theological norms, legal principles, and sexual practice."—Peter Iver Kaufman, Church History
 

Innhold

Introduction
1
1 Law and Sex in the Ancient World
10
2 Sex and the Law in Judaism and Early Christianity
51
3 Sex and the Law in the Christian Empire from Constantine to Justinian
77
4 Law and Sex in Early Medieval Europe Sixth to Eleventh Centuries
124
11761140
176
6 Sex and Marriage in the Decretum of Gratian
229
7 Sexual Behavior and the Early Decretists from Paucapalea to Huguccio 11401190
256
10 Sex Marriage and the Law from the Black Death to the Reformation 13481517
487
From the NinetyFive Theses to Tamesti 15171563
551
Recapitulation Reflections and Conclusions
576
Tables
597
Marriage Law and the Economic Interests of the Medieval Church
606
Survivals of Medieval Sex Law in the United States and Western World
608
List of Manuscripts Cited
619
Select Secondary References
621

8 Marriage and Sex in Canon Law from Alexander III to the Liber Extra
325
9 Sex Marriage and the Legal Commentators 12341348
417
Index
635
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Vanlige uttrykk og setninger

Populære avsnitt

Side 6 - I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition. It is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there any thing that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed.

Om forfatteren (2009)

James A. Brundage is the Ahmanson-Murphy Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and Law at the University of Kansas. He is the author of nine books, including The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: Canonists, Civilians, and Courts, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

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