Sex, dissidence and damnation : minority groups in the Middle Ages
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Sex, dissidence and damnation : minority groups in the Middle Ages
Routledge, 1990
Available at 24 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references
Description and Table of Contents
Description
For the potentates of medieval Europe (of both Church and State) dissent struck at the roots of their ordered settled world. To allow a single heretic or free spirit to escape just punishment would, they believed, doom the whole structure of society to decay and dissolution. So dissent was extirpated, first by reason, then by argument, and then with increasing savagery. Dissent was to be removed from the face of the Earth by fire and the sword, by strangulation and the ultimate refinements of torture. But why was the danger felt to be so great and so immediate, from a small minority of mostly poor and powerless individuals? Jeffrey Richards has looked at the persecuted lives of heretics, witches, Jews, prostitutes, lepers and homosexuals, and discovered a common motive for their sufferings. The chief link is sexual abberance. The Church sought to tighten and regulate even the most intimate details of human life, but without much success. Tacitly, unofficial sexual practices were tolerated. But progressively, deviance was seen as having a malign influence not just in an individual life, but in the world at large.
At a time when the Second Coming was expected, men and women were expected to lead godly lives - anything less was an outrage. And as the power structures of society solidified, the deviants became convenient scapegoats. The rise of Islam, the spread of disease, especially the Black Death, were laid at their door. They became the scapegoats for a fearful world. Jeffrey Richards charts the shifting perceptions of sex, dissidence and damnation throughout the Middle Ages, and enables readers to form their own judgements.
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