Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock.

Blamires, Alcuin

Spiritual marriage, 'in which sexual relations have been remitted by the consent of both parties for reasons of piety' (p. 3), may sound idiosyncratic, and at times its medieval devotees were driven to make odd claims: for instance, an eleventh-century heretic argued that universal recourse to spiritual marriage would not extinguish the human race because 'once humanity was free of corruption it could reproduce itself sinlessly like bees' (p. 96). However, far from proving cranky, Dyan Elliott's subject sweeps us by a fresh route into the heart of central issues in medieval culture from patristic times to the fifteenth century. Indeed, precisely because spiritual marriage is a topic that exists in the interstices of more familiar topics (notably theological, jurisprudent and confessional doctrine on marriage; hagiography and Mariology; the penitential movement; and the development of female spirituality) its exposition can only be accomplished by someone able - as Elliott is - to situate it maturely within these diverse fields.

Her specific evidence, constituting the chronological spine of the discussion, encompasses: famous couples such as Melania and Pinian from early Christian times; hagiographical instances such as St Cecilia and Valerian; chronicled epitomes such as Queen AEthelthryth and Egfrid, Empress Richardis and Charles the Fat; and married female heroines of later vitae, such as Dorothea of Montau. The palm goes to the remarkable union (1299) of the Provencal couple Dauphine and Elzear, whose virginal career had to survive the attentions of relatives resourceful enough to pack them off to a famous doctor for fertility diagnosis.

Elliott distinguishes between marriages where chastity begins (or is attempted) in the nuptial chamber itself, whether as voluntary mutual vow or as unilateral plea, and those where a transition to marital chastity, usually initiated by the wife, is vowed after a phase of sexual relations. Either model could take public or secret form. The book acknowledges that pragmatic motives might sometimes have been present but concentrates less on these than on eliciting gender implications, within a framework of doctrinal exegesis. Elliott emphasizes the Church's uneasy relationship with a phenomenon which was neither commendably solo chastity nor conventionally procreative union. She tracks the evidence in canon law and penitential instruction of a concern to manipulate and supervise this aberration. Her cogent exposition of the intricacies woven by the Church around the vows themselves generates insight into ways in which confessional emphasis on intentionality might encourage wives, when unable to persuade husbands towards chastity, to achieve a kind of autonomy in the matter by secretly vowing not to 'exact' the conjugal debt even while obediently continuing to 'render' it. But Elliott challengingly questions the extent of the autonomy available to women generally through spiritual marriage (or, for that matter, through hypothetical rights in the exercise of the supposedly equitable conjugal debt itself).

This scholarly, thoughtful book presents its subject impressively and makes an important contribution to medieval gender studies.

ALCUIN BLAMIRES Lampeter