However, a close reading of other passages from thirteenth-century Germany reveals that women were often viewed as an impediment to men becoming like angels. For example, Judah the Pious writes: “He who stops himself108 from looking at women and avoids idle talk with them will surpass the angels who serve God.”109 This passage continues by drawing a contrast between angels, humans who are unable to restrain their tempers, and menstruant women:
And also, a man should avoid looking at an angry individual because (in that moment of anger) a bad angel is present [and encourages the angry one] to take swift revenge and [also at that instant, the bad angel] causes him (the one who gazed upon the other’s angry state) to forget all that he has learned. The same is true for one who looks at a woman who is menstruating whose blood is in her.110
Although this selection from Sefer Hasidim does not deny that women could be like angels, it presents women as an obstacle to the fulfillment of male spirituality. The idea presented by Judel in the fifteenth century takes this understanding a step further by portraying women as categorically incapable of resembling angels.
If this trajectory is examined alongside the changing expectations of menstruants in the synagogue during the High Middle Ages that we mapped out above, the contours of a transition become quite evident. Purity regulations for all women became more stringent while men entered the synagogue without restriction. How can these shifting concepts and practices be elucidated? Prior research has generated two lines of reasoning to explain why women stopped attending synagogue during menstruation. Some scholars have termed the emergence of women’s self-imposed constraints in earlier sources and the widespread adoption of those strict beliefs and practices in later sources as “a natural response.” This position has most recently been articulated by Bitha Har-Shefi, who contends that women were preserving a custom inherited from earlier generations of women that concretizes inherent fears and anxieties related to blood.111 However, as feminist scholarship and cultural studies demonstrate, it is hard to define natural responses, since all rituals are products of the cultural milieu where they develop and are performed. Moreover, characterizing a certain behavior as “natural” cannot explain adaptations over time, since stability rather than dynamism would be expected in such a paradigm.112 Thus our search for catalysts behind the transformations that occurred in medieval Ashkenaz between the generations of Rashi and Judel continues.
Figure 3. Entrance to the Garden of Eden. From Birds’ Head Haggadah. Note that only men are portrayed here. © Israel Museum, Jerusalem. B46.04.0912; 180/057 fol. 33r, detail. Southern Germany, ca. 1300.
A more common explanation has linked these changing practices—with respect to menstruation and male impurity—to increasing familiarity with traditions that originated in late antique Palestine and that spread among Ashkenazic scholars from the twelfth century onward.113 This hypothesis concentrates on the elite strata of halakhic authorities as catalysts for new practices and rulings. While this approach may provide convincing background for restrictions concerning the seven “white days” recommended by leading rabbis, in my opinion it does not clarify the dynamic process that we have documented concerning women’s physical presence in the synagogue.114
I opened this chapter with a passage from Rashi’s circle that attempts to explain a custom whose genesis stems from the agency of women. While it may be argued that the belief that menstruating women should not enter a synagogue was based on esoteric sources that gained currency over time, such as Baraita deNiddah, if those texts were unknown to men in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they were surely inaccessible to the women who chose to express their piety by remaining outside the synagogue during Rashi’s lifetime (or perhaps earlier). It is plausible that the strict behavior initiated by these women was more readily accepted and adapted over time due to a growing conversance with Baraita deNiddah and other ge’onic works. Nevertheless, that influence does not alter the sequence of events that emerges from the sources, relating to a custom that was begun by a self-selected group of women that became commonplace as a result of rabbinic directives.115 At this point, let us turn to the Christian setting in which Ashkenazic Jews lived to contextualize these developments in custom and belief.
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.
