386 Reviews

Now and again the author is baffled needlessly, and it may be useful to suggest
solutions to several of his aporiae. (1) He argues at some length (pp. 81-84) that
Dante's eternal, incorruptible heavens cannot be perfect once they cease to move at the
end of the world; but he has missed Dante's explicit assertion, supported by reasons,
that any heaven "has no need of motion for its perfection" (Ep. 13.26). (2) On page 86
he finds that Dante has contradicted himself in Convivio 2.4 by first distinguishing
between motor angels, who have an active ministry, and nonmotor angels, "che sola-
mente vivano speculando" (§ 11), and then later asserting that all the angels do in fact
contemplate (§ 13). I think Dante's point is that, while all angels live by speculating, not
all of them live for speculating, and consequently the motor angels possess a lower
grade of beatitude and perfection (cf. § 9) than those "whose life is absolute specula-
tion." (3) When Bemrose "cannot see any way of proving to what extent Dante saw
these particular legends as containing truth" (p. 164), he has overlooked the
significance of the fact that the ones in question are embodied as exempla in sculptures
that are supernatural artifacts placed in purgatory by God's will (Purg. 10.33, 99;
12.22-23, 64—69), and hence it would seem that these legends can be regarded as a
species of divine revelation.
Although this could have been a better book, it still is a good one with which I am in
basic agreement. Bemrose cultivates old fields rather than breaking new ground, but
he may have sown some seeds for future research as well. Almost inadvertently Bem-
rose has given us convincing new reasons for believing that astrology plays a larger
part in Dante's world view than in that of any previous Christian philosopher. Preoc-
cupied as he is with Dante's use of classical mythology, the author seems unaware of
the accumulating evidence for Dante's less obvious but equally extensive use of as-
trological sources, as documented by Rudolf Palgen (1940), Georg Rabuse (1958), and
Robert Durling (1975). If the search for the Neoplatonic sources of Dante's cosmology
is to be pressed beyond Bemrose's inconclusive achievement, the most promising un-
quarried vein will surely be found in the voluminous astrological works of Michael
Scot, Guido Bonatti, Pietro d'Abano, and their Arabic and Jewish predecessors.

RICHARD KAY
University of Kansas

VERN L. BULLOUGH and JAMES BRUNDAGE, Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church.
Buffalo: Prometheus, 1982. Pp. xii, 289. 122.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper).
WHEN JAMES BRUNDAGE observes, "The medieval Church's enthusiasm for sexual ex-
pression was . . . apt to be less than overwhelming," he breaks no new ground. What is
new in this book, however, is the relentless way in which its authors attempt "to give
accurate information about sex practices" as they existed in the Middle Ages. In seven
chapters Vern Bullough covers such varied topics as prostitution, transvestism,
homosexuality, and the sin against nature, after which Brundage contributes six more
on canon law views on concubinage and marriage, adultery and fornication, rape and
seduction, prostitution again, and the problem of impotence. Lastly, other authors
provide five additional chapters on chaste marriage and clerical celibacy (Jo Ann
McNamara); sexual irregularities in medieval Scandinavia (Grethe Jacobson); the mar-
riage of Mary and Joseph in the twelfth-century ideology of marriage (Penny S. Gold);
sex in the fabliaux (Sidney E. Berger); and human sexuality in later medieval scientific
writings (Helen Rodnite Lemay).
 Reviews 387
It looks, then, as though there were few questions about sex these authors were
afraid to ask, but it seems less clear whether their answers will provide readers with
everything they always wanted to know. Sex is at best an elusive subject, and in the
present instance the difficulties inherent in treating it with detached thoroughness are
compounded by the nature of the sources used. Because both Bullough and Brundage
rely heavily on penitentials and legal codes, their presentations can become little more
than catalogs of presumed sexual aberrations and of the penalties to be visited upon
their perpetrators. Curiously, too, the problem intensifies as one moves down through
the centuries. As Bullough points out, the writers of early penitentials "regarded
themselves as preparing handbooks for the physicians of the soul," and like their
medical counterparts they were fully prepared to go into clinical detail. By the later
Middle Ages, however, discussion became more generalized as authors "also began to
be concerned that specific descriptions of sexual activity might well encourage the
penitents to discover activities that they had not known before." As a result, the details
of most sexual practices remain surprisingly vague. Bullough can, for example, docu-
ment the increasing extent to which confessors railed against sodomy and "the sin
against nature," but he can go little further in his analysis because the sources used
seldom define such terms while at the same time they make it clear that something
more than anal intercourse is intended.
Even so, the details presented can often lead to questions that remain unanswered,
questions the resolution of which would go far to increasing our understanding of
medieval attitudes toward sexuality. When one finds that brothels in Avignon had to
close only on Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter, inevitably one wonders why
Christmas and Pentecost escaped the ban. Similarly, when one considers the different
treatment accorded illegitimacy and adultery in such similar countries as Iceland,
Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, one is led to ask not just about differing sexual mores,
but also about the extent to which they were shaped as much by economic and demo-
graphic factors as by religion. Lastly (though this scarcely exhausts the list), if the
church came to insist on the missionary position for all procreative endeavors, one
wants to know why it decided to shun all other possibilities, among them those of the
classical heritage that was in other respects so deeply admired.
Nevertheless, to pose such questions is clearly to exceed Bullough and Brundage's
intent, which was no more than to write a book that "only begins to examine sexual
activity in the medieval period." This they have done, and if, in so doing, they have left
vast reaches for others to explore, that, too, was their intent. One hopes, therefore,
that others will soon follow their lead, building on the foundations they have so firmly
established.

CHARLES T. WOOD
Dartmouth College