Impurity, Accessing the Sacred, and Approximating
Angels: A Christian Comparison
Examinations of medieval northern European Christian communities in recent works by Rob Meens, Charles de Miramon, and other scholars reveal significant parallels to Jewish trends with regard to longstanding attitudes toward menstrual blood and male impurity. The question of whether it is appropriate for impure men and menstruating women to enter a church and participate in religious rituals—and particularly to approach the altar during Mass—has been debated by Christian theologians since late antiquity.116 In Christian writings as in Jewish sources, male and female impurity are often treated as two aspects of a single topic. The opinion attributed to Gregory the Great (540–604) that pronounced sexual relations and church attendance to be permissible during times of impurity reached northern Europe through eighth-century compositions by the Venerable Bede (673–735):
Apart from childbirth, women are forbidden from intercourse with their husbands during their ordinary periods…. Nevertheless a woman must not be prohibited from entering a church during her usual periods, for this natural overflowing cannot be reckoned a crime: and so it is not fair that she should be deprived from entering the church for that which she suffers unwillingly…. A woman ought not to be forbidden to receive the mystery of the Holy Communion at these times. If out of deep reverence she does not venture to receive it that is praiseworthy. Let women make up their own minds117 and if they do not venture to approach the sacrament of the body and the blood of the Lord when in their periods, they are to be praised for their right thinking: but when as the results of the habits of a religious life, they are carried away by the love of the same mystery, they are not to be prevented, as we said before…. A man who had intercourse with his wife ought not enter the church unless he has washed himself, and even when washed he ought not to enter immediately…. A man then who, after intercourse with his wife has washed, is able to receive the mystery of the Holy Communion, since it is lawful for him, according to what has been said, to enter the church.118
The similarity between these teachings attributed to Gregory and Rashi’s instructions, despite the centuries that divided them, is unmistakable. Both state that while pious menstruants were not required to refrain from public religious observances, their strict behavior was laudable. Moreover, the practice recommended for impure men—washing before entering the church—is based on a shared biblical foundation.119 Despite Gregory’s rejection of women remaining outside the church during their menstrual cycles, Christian communities maintained this practice for centuries. As Pierre Payer has remarked: “This is another example of Gregory’s response to Augustine having little effect on the subsequent tradition in the medieval Church.”120 Gregory the Great’s opinion was eventually accepted, but not until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.121
During the High Middle Ages, Christian authorities and leaders in northern European dissuaded menstruants from approaching the altar.122 For example, in his manual De institutione laicali, Jonah of Orléans (d. 844) praised women who refrained from going to church during their menstrual cycles, declaring a clean body and pure thoughts as prerequisites for entering church and participating in Mass. Jonah’s discussion reveals that adherence to this custom depended on the women themselves and local norms. Burchard of Worms (d. 1025), in his manual The Corrector, prohibited post-partum women from entering church,123 whereas he permitted menstruants to enter church but forbade their participation in Mass. With respect to impure men, these same authorities recommended that they wash prior to entering church and attending Mass.
C. Colt Anderson has recently outlined the centrality that themes of impurity and fear of pollution hold in instructions for medieval clergy and laity.124 It is noteworthy that these discussions took place in the same regions where we have seen Jews debating them. Although Christian authorities arrived at conclusions that differed from those reached by their Jewish counterparts, the resonance between the discourses conducted by these two sets of religious leaders is significant.
Gratian (mid-twelfth century) was instrumental in promoting change when he adopted Gregory the Great’s opinion and declared that women could attend church and participate fully in Mass during menstruation.125 However, some thirteenth-century texts still caution that menstruants should not approach the altar.126 Miramon has argued that during the thirteenth century it became more commonplace for menstruating women to receive communion, whereas limitations on access was transferred to post-partum purity. After childbirth, women were still required to wait several weeks before they could enter the church and undergo a purification ritual that marked their return to the community.127 This focus on impurity in relation to childbirth allowed women who would not have children, namely members of female religious orders, to participate in Mass without interruptions caused by their menstrual cycles.
In the case of Christian men, especially religious leadership, Dyan Elliott’s Fallen Bodies and other recent studies have outlined the heightened fear of male impurity among medieval priests and other religious authorities.128 During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, after the sanctification of male celibacy during the Gregorian Reform, the subject of nocturnal emissions was elevated in importance as theologians deliberated on matters of clerical purity.129 Analogous to the Jewish sources examined earlier, although these issues had been discussed among Church leaders since late antiquity, the medieval preoccupation with impurity prompted a remarkable shift in discourse.130 As Elliott has shown, the greatest attention was directed toward those who had taken vows of celibacy. The perils of impurity at Mass and among the clergy were of paramount concern.131 Concerns for male impurity dominated this literature, which is hardly surprising since the authors were members of a celibate clerical elite that viewed sexuality with great anxiety.132
The attempts to remedy this danger took two principal forms. The first was a concerted effort to divert responsibility for nocturnal emissions from the clerics themselves. Demons, often disguised as women, were blamed for such occurrences. Elliott has argued that, as a result, women, femininity, and especially menstruants were depicted in negative terms, as menaces lurking in the shadows, ready to sully unsuspecting men. A second strategy for contending with the mounting fear of impurity advocated confession at the earliest opportunity after an incident occurred. The sin of a cleric who repented for his nocturnal emission was easily forgiven.133
Not only did impurity and access to the sacred represent core themes in Christian thought during the High Middle Ages; so, too, did ideas about purity and angels. As R. N. Swanson has noted, the desire to distance the clergy from physical impurity was rooted in the belief that priests should be “angels incarnate” or as close to angels as was humanly attainable. This underscored the impetus for priests to strive to resemble angels, in juxtaposition to women who were merely human.134 As Jacqueline Murray has argued, the belief that men could more readily attain a sexless soul dominated twelfth- and thirteenth-century thinking. As in Judaism, angels in Christianity were believed to be asexual; therefore men were better positioned to approximate them.135
Jews, Christians, and Bodily Purity
The different threads presented in this chapter weave a medieval tapestry in which purity and impurity, in general and especially in sacred venues, are depicted as key concerns for Jewish and Christian societies. Each religious community discussed these subjects in light of earlier debates within their respective traditions. These communities articulated commonly held understandings of impurities using shared language, albeit from distinct perspectives.