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. Although these commonalities were specific to Christian Europe in the Middle Ages, they were grounded in antique Judaism. While Jews and Christians continued to debate and discuss menstrual impurity and seminal emissions, contrasting approaches and developments emerged: within medieval Jewish culture, menstruation and its correlated impurity became ever more central, whereas male impurity as well as the relationship between men and angels became a focus of Christian discussions.
It is noteworthy that the geographic scope of the trends and practices analyzed here can only partially be pieced together. While this chapter opens with a source that originated in northern France, the overwhelming majority of the evidence for Jewish practice comes from Germany. Despite this relatively sparse textual evidence, pronouncements concerning the importance of menstrual purity have been attested in contemporaneous writings by French Jews.136
An illustration of the Jewish emphasis on menstrual purity can be seen in Sefer Rokeah. Its author, Eleazar of Worms, introduced the section on niddah with a benediction: “Blessed are you, God of Israel, from this world to the next world, who has sanctified us with his commandments, separating us from impurity and cautioning us to beware of menstruants and (their) discharge.”137 This blessing was not recited liturgically or in relation to any practice. Rather, Eleazar of Worms used it as a rhetorical device in his writing to underscore the gravity of the topics being presented.138 His decision to highlight the significance of menstrual purity in Jewish tradition and in his community, while simultaneously dividing those who adhered to these observances from those who didn’t, mirrored popular sentiment among medieval Jews.
As noted, research by contemporary scholars—including Shaye Cohen, Alexandra Cuffel, Judith Baskin, and David Biale—have demonstrated the bond that tied observance of the laws of menstrual purity to Jewish identity in medieval Europe.139 During the High Middle Ages, scrupulous adherence to menstrual purity came to be understood as a major tenet of the Jewish covenant with God. This principle is reflected in the medieval Jewish response to the classic question: If circumcision, an exclusively male ritual, is the defining sign of the covenant in Judaism, how do Jewish females qualify as members of the covenant? Medieval Jewish scholars departed from the traditional answer—that Jewish women belong to the covenant by association with the men in their families—by providing this novel response: “Since God commanded males (to be circumcised) but not females, we may deduce that God commanded that the covenant be sealed at the locus of masculinity, and the blood of menstruation that women observe so they can inform their husbands of the onset of their menstrual cycles is the equivalent of the blood of circumcision.”140
This idea is stated in similar terms in Sefer Nizzahon Vetus, whose author explains that although Jewish women are not circumcised, they “are accepted [in the covenant] because they watch themselves and carefully observe the prohibitions connected with menstrual blood.”141 These sources suggest that the observance of menstrual purity was vital for Jewish communal identity.
In this vein, many modern scholars have presented medieval Jewish menstrual observances as so unique to Jewish religious culture that it precludes contextualization in a broad European cultural framework except as a symbol of Jewish-Christian difference. To the contrary, this chapter situates Jewish approaches to impurity—menstrual and otherwise—within the surrounding Christian society. From that perspective, the medieval Jewish focus on menstrual impurity may have emerged as a counterweight to the medieval Christian concerns about male impurity.142
I am neither positing that Christian discussions of these issues represent the sole impetus for Jewish preoccupation with them nor that Jewish concerns were primary motivating factors in Christian deliberations. Prior to this encounter in Ashkenaz, both Judaism and Christianity had well-established traditions regarding impurity in the sancta that originated in Leviticus and developed according to their respective trajectories over the centuries. I am suggesting, however, that medieval Jewish ideas and practices were reinforced by contact with Christians and knowledge of their customs. Jews and Christians lived in close proximity and Jewish households often
