The Early Church, which set up the ideal of virginity, raised the status of women but represented the 'work of generation' as a regrettable activity below the notice of God's elect.
Nowhere does the Old Testament point to chastity as an ideal; man's duty is to be fruitful and replenish the earth. The obsession with virginity stems from Saint Paul. 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman,' he says. 'Nevertheless, to avoid fornication let every man have his own wife and let every woman have her own husband.' It is a reluctant concession, the only justification being that 'it is better to marry than to burn'.
Later saints, like Jerome and Augustine, continued to belittle marriage, but they had to concede it was necessary-if only to keep up the supply of virgins. It was unfortunate, the Early Fathers may have thought, that the Almighty had not devised some less sensual way of replenishing the earth, some method which did not, by its compulsive fascination, distract man's mind from spiritual things. He had given woman the priceless gift of chastity but at the same time had lent her a If corrupting enchantment which even vile, shapeless clothes and unkempt hair could not conceal. There were some who held that desire, not the sexual act itself, was the sin. Hence it was unthinkable that the preparation for the act should be considered as art or recreation. There was no room for erotic fancy. In short, the Early Church tolerated marriage, but drew the line at courtship.
In consequence, the saints led tormented lives. Saint Abraham, contracted into marriage by his parents, fled on the last day of a long marriage feast and walled himself into a tower, leaving enough room for food to be passed in. Female saints fled their bridegrooms too. Sometimes devout couples successfully combined virginity with marriage, living together-like Saint Elzear and his bride-happily and continently. Those who permitted themselves marital intimacies vowed to take no more delight in them than could be helped, making sure that their partners derived no pleasure either. So the intercourse of the devout tended to become, in Bertrand Russell's phrase, 'brutal and harsh, like drinking under Prohibition'.
Christianity-this kind of Christianity-was an exacting discipline for an ignorant and turbulent world, still clinging to the more congenial practices of 'pious times, ere priestcraft did begin'. Sadly, through the Dark Ages, the saintly writers noted how women sought to woo men from God, displaying their sex appeal even at Communion. The 'modern girl' of the fourth century, as pictured by Saint Jerome, is one who flaunts abroad and with 'furtive and sidelong glances' entices gangs of youths to follow her, The very ruffling of her clothes is designed to make men look round. Her breasts are tied up, her waist is pulled in. 'Her upper garment sometimes falls and sometimes tarries to show her naked shoulders, and as if she would not be seen she covers that in all haste which voluntarily she showed'-rather like an actress on television.
The ascetic ideal proved all but impossible. Down the slow centuries even the Church became riddled with lechery. If priests took an uncomplicated view of sex, still more so, it may be supposed, did swineherds. Perhaps the vulgar, in their amours, showed each other more consideration than did the holy. It would be ridiculous to suppose that all love-making in the Dark Ages was on an animal level, that there was never sentiment and tenderness between man and maid. But courtship in the modern sense had not yet begun.
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