Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire

several European cultures during the Middle Ages, mothers collected their daughters’ first menstrual flows, saving them and later mixing them into aphrodisiacs to spark desire in their sons-in-law

THE BELIEF THAT homosexuality could provoke famine, pestilence, and earthquakes remained strong wherever people used the Bible for moral guidance.

In the fifteenth century, the city of Dijon and its surrounding area had a population of less than ten thousand, yet the city supported a public bordello and eighteen private establishments. In Strasbourg, there were fifty-seven brothels in six streets alone.

wives, but barely. Building on Augustine, Pope Gregory the Great (circa 540–604) declared that marital intercourse was blameless only when there was no pleasure involved. By the end of the sixth century, new rules were coming into place to make sure that was the case.

After Paul came Saint Jerome (circa 347–420), who taught that all sexual relations were unclean—even in marriage

THE DOMINANT FIGURE in the first generation of Christian sages was the Apostle Paul, who taught that sexual behavior could be nearly as bad as murder: Homosexuals, masturbators, adulterers, anyone who sought sexual satisfaction for its own sake were, he said, to be barred from the kingdom of God

Jesus Christ said much about love, but precious little about sex. Although his own life was relatively chaste by local standards, the fine points of sexual behavior were not his main concerns. He made no statements on carnal relations between the unmarried or homosexuals, he was tolerant of prostitutes, and he was less harsh toward adulterers than the Jews had been. But Jesus the man did not last long in this world, and soon his word was taken up by others.

Their insistence on the conflict between the body (which craves sex) and the spirit (which sex destroys) would be a point of historical interest, nothing more

Christian doctrine announced that the body was an object of horror, and that the soul could be saved only through rejection of the flesh

Flora was a successful courtesan who had left a pot of money on her death to finance games and celebrations in her honor. The Senate, uncomfortable with an event built around a prostitute, tried to dress up the celebrations with respectability by recasting Flora as a fertility goddess associated with flowers