URL originale : https://books.openedition.org/cvz/19742
On the Enduring Impurity of Menstrual Blood and Semen
Leviticus 15 in William of Auvergne’s De Legibus
p. 191-208
Texte intégral
Leviticus 15: ritual impurity and ritual remedy at the center
1Leviticus, the ancient Hebrew code of sacrifice, priesthood, purity, and sanctification, is at the center of the Law of Moses*. And at the center of Leviticus is chapter 15, in which the collection of purity laws concludes with Moses and Aaron being told about the impurity of genital discharges: emissions of semen and other discharges from the penis, discharges of menstrual blood and other bloody discharges from the vagina, as well as the ritual purifications for each. In summary form, the basic impurities and purifications described in Leviticus 15 look like this1:

2That Leviticus is a highly structured work is evident throughout. The balanced symmetry of Leviticus 15 is a notable case in point2. Its structure is chiastic with respect to the gender of the genital discharge, its normality or abnormality, and its remedy. So the placement of chapter 15 at the center of Leviticus, and chapter 15’s role as the culmination of the purity laws (chap. 10-15), is certainly no accident. The central placement of this teaching on genital discharges is indicative, I think, of its theoretical importance for the authors of Leviticus.
3Other impurities of Leviticus are particular: they are either not found in humans at all, except by transmission (impurities, for example, of animals, foods, fabrics, and houses); or they are found in humans in accidental, potentially avoidable, and limited ways (impurities, for example, associated with afflictions of the skin, contact with the dead, and contact with impure objects or people).
4But the two central impurities of Leviticus 15 are human and universal: every woman, at some point, discharges menstrual blood; every man, at some point, discharges semen. Their relation to sexuality —and recall that the impurity associated with sex (specifically with the emission of semen during sex), an impurity binding men and women simultaneously in the same impure condition, is at the very center of the center of Leviticus— puts them at the center of human experience.
5The impurity associated with childbirth (in Leviticus 12, 1-8, but intrinsically linked to 15, by virtue of its emphasis on the impurity of blood flow in childbirth), is particular in that it only applies to women, but is universal in that the birth of every single human necessitates impurity, that impurity marks the human condition at beginning of every life. For the birth of a male child, Leviticus 12 requires a 40-day period of purification, for the birth of a female child, an 80-day period of purification; both are followed by the sacrifice of a yearling lamb and a pigeon or turtledove, though, in the case of penury, two turtle doves or two pigeons can be substituted.
6The universality and sexuality of the teachings in Leviticus 15, their concern with matters related to human reproduction, all human reproduction, link the center of Leviticus, the center of the Law of Moses, to the beginning of the Law, the first chapter of Genesis, in which the story of God’s creation culminates in the simultaneous creation of man and woman, and the imposition of the first divine command, the command to reproduce3. That human reproduction is of primary importance for the authors of the Law of Moses is also evident across the long series of stories in which the patriarchs and matriarchs of Genesis triumph, sometimes with great audacity, sometimes at great cost, over the challenge of infertility. It is evident here, too, in the insistence on a universal need for sex-related rites of purification, all as prelude, narratively speaking, to the great Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16.
Some battlegrounds of blood and semen
7Just as Leviticus 15 is at the center of the Law of Moses, so the impurity of menstrual blood and semen discussed in that chapter is at the center of a number of cultural conflicts within Christianity and between Judaism and Christianity.
In Christianity
8Conflicts about the correct response to menstrual blood and to semen in Christianity encapsulate broader and, at the same time, more fundamental conflicts about the place of the Law of Moses in Christianity; about the relative value of literal and spiritual interpretation of the Law; about the relative significance of ritual and moral impurity; about, even, the reality of ritual impurity. Ultimately, conflicts about the impurity of menstrual blood and semen within Christianity are conflicts about Christian identity, about what beliefs and practices ought to be defined as «Jewish» (and thus rejected) and what beliefs and practices ought to be defined as «Christian» (and thus accepted).
9I mention, here, evidence for two such conflicts, independent but equally involved, both of which testify, not only to localized moments of disagreement and debate, but, in the textual traditions they generated —copies, summaries, translations— their ability to perpetuate long-term, even centuries-long, interest and concern.
10The Didascalia Apostolorum provides an early, influential case in point. This collection of moral, pastoral, and doctrinal pronouncements, teachings attributed to the Apostles, was written in Greek (now extant only in fragments), probably in the early 3rd century. A Syriac version, perhaps from the early 4th century, survives nearly complete; a Latin translation of the late 4th century survives in part4.
11In the final chapter of the Syriac version, the author, writing as a convert from Judaism to other converts from Judaism5, addresses Christians who believe themselves rendered impure by menstruation, the emission of semen, and sexual intercourse6. There is, in particular, a lengthy refutation of women who believe that they are impure and devoid of the Holy Spirit during the levitical seven-day period of menstruation, that they should thus abstain «from prayer and from the Scriptures and the eucharist» for seven days, and that they should be purified by bathing at the end of seven days7. The author repeatedly condemns the idea that any kind of impurity follows from genital discharges, and so condemns too the practice of ritual bathing after menstruation, the emission of semen, or sex, and the practice of avoiding church-related activities until purified8. Such beliefs and observances are described as an «abrogation of baptism», a renewal of «offenses and former sins», a return to «the idolatry of the calf», and, ultimately, an affirmation of «the curse against our Savior» and a means of self-condemnation9.
12In its reading of the Law of Moses, the Didascalia distinguishes a first law (the ten commandments) from a second law (everything that follows after «the people made the calf and worshipped idols»)10. The final chapter begins with this distinction, a distinction already introduced with some force early in the second chapter11, and its corollary («The Law therefore is indissoluble, but the second legislation is temporary, and is dissoluble»), which then give shape to all that follows, as the author works through arguments against the observance, among Christians, of circumcision, sacrifices and offerings, distinctions between clean and unclean foods, the holy days, and the Sabbath. The long condemnation, then, of Christian observances inspired by the teaching in Leviticus 15 on the impurity of genital discharges represents the rhetorical culmination of a broader condemnation, across the final chapter, of any Christian observance of the elements of the «second legislation», which is itself the culmination of a pointed anti-Jewish theme running through the work. The second chapter, for example, warns Christians to read the Law of Moses carefully, and to
abstain from the commands and prohibitions that are therein so that you may not lead yourself astray and bind yourself with the bonds of heavy burdens which may not be loosed12.
13The twenty-third chapter (on heresies and schisms), while it refuses to name any heresies13, treats God’s abandonment of the Jews at length («through their evil works they have fallen into his [Satan’s] hand»)14, and, in the very last line, condemns Christians who observe dietary restrictions and circumcision15.
14In early 8th-century England, Bede (673-735) recorded, in Book I of his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, an exchange of questions and answers between Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604) and Pope Gregory I (590-604). This set of questions (dated 601) circulated independently under the title Libellus Responsionum. The collection was used by Bede, first in his Prose Life of St. Cuthbert (721) and later in his Ecclesiastical History (731), and was widely copied after his time; it survives, as a work separate from the Ecclesiastical History, in more than 130 manuscripts16. The eighth and ninth questions, the last of the set, address concerns about impurity associated with childbirth, menstruation, sex, and the emission of semen17: «All these things the ignorant English people need to know18». Gregory’s responses are more nuanced and less polemical than the pronouncements issued by the author of the Didascalia. He cites the authority of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and allows for some pastoral latitude and variation in practice, but consistently emphasizes the supremacy of moral considerations in answering questions about sex-related purity.
15In the eighth question, Augustine asks, among other things, how soon after childbirth a mother can be admitted to the church, and whether a menstruating women is allowed to enter a church or «receive the sacrament of holy communion». Gregory’s reply is clear: women may enter church and receive communion immediately after birth and during menstruation. If, however, a woman chooses «out of deep reverence» not to receive communion during menstruation, then she ought to be praised for her choice19.
Let women make up their own minds and if they do not venture to approach the sacrament of the Body and Blood of the Lord when in their periods, they are to be praised for their right thinking: but when as the result of the habits of a religious life, they are carried away by the love of the same mystery, they are not to be prevented20.
16This last observation, because it depends on the idea that judgment of an action —to receive or not to receive— ought to be based on the intention of the woman choosing, prompts Gregory to invoke a series of Paul-inspired distinctions: the Old Testament versus the New Testament, outward deeds versus inward thoughts, ritual pollution versus moral pollution, law versus gospel21. This is Gregory’s single, forceful reminder to Augustine that even a nuanced response to practical questions about impurities associated with genital discharges must maintain a strict separation between attitudes distinguished as Jewish and Christian.
17Whether a woman can rightly exercise a similar choice by observing the levitically mandated (Leviticus 12, 4-5) period of purification after childbirth is not made explicit, though the rationale for a menstruating woman rightly abstaining from communion —that involuntary «pollution» or «infirmity» is a reminder of the divine punishment for the first sin of humankind— applies equally, according to Gregory’s own assessment, in the case of childbirth22. And Gregory does invoke observance of the levitical period of purification when determining how long after childbirth a husband and wife should abstain from sex —this, in cases in which the woman does not nurse her child. In cases in which the mother nurses the child, he says that the couple should abstain until the child is weaned. He also affirms, in this context, that
women are forbidden from intercourse with their husbands during their ordinary periods: so much so that the sacred law condemned to death anyone who approached a menstruous woman23,
thus showing he readily accepts the literal application of at least one levitical command about sexual purity.
18Augustine raises two other concerns about specifically male sexual impurity. In the eighth question, Augustine asks whether a man who has had sex with his wife should be allowed to enter a church or approach communion before he has washed. In the ninth, he asks whether any man can receive communion —or, if a priest, «celebrate the holy mysteries»— after a dream-induced emission of semen. To the first, Gregory responds that he
ought not to enter the church unless he has washed himself; and even when washed he ought not to enter immediately24.
19He cites Leviticus 15, 16 as justification for his view, though he insists that the application of the command be understood «spiritually» in this case, meaning that the performance of ritual washing, real as it is, symbolizes the quenching of sinful desire inevitably associated with sex25. With respect to the second concern, Gregory’s treatment is shaped entirely by moral considerations26.
20For the author of the Didascalia, then, the teachings of Leviticus 15 on impurity and purification, like all the other seemingly non-moral commands of the Law (that is, the «second law»), are to be entirely abandoned by Christians —to do otherwise would be to embrace a self-defeating, essentially anti-Christian heresy. For Gregory, on the other hand, there are circumstances in which a partial observance of Leviticus 15 can be legitimate, even mandatory, though such observance must be informed by the belief that the literal teachings of Leviticus 15 symbolize deeper moral teachings about sinfulness associated with sexual activity. The kinds of cultural conflict within Christianity about the interpretation and application of ritual impurity laws derived from Leviticus — conflicts encapsulated in the Didascalia and Libellus Responsionum— are evident also in the long history of Christian commentaries on Leviticus, in penitential literature, and in canon law up to the time of William of Auvergne in the early 13th century27.
In Judaism
21There is much discussion in ancient and medieval Jewish commentary about impurity associated with genital discharges, but there is little disagreement about fundamental ideas. Jewish commentators on Leviticus 15 accept the reality of impurity associated with menstrual blood and semen, and the necessity of purification28. There is, to put it simply, no conflict in the history of ancient and medieval Jewish thought about the impurity of genital discharges akin to the conflict evident in ancient and medieval Christian thought29.
22Instead, medieval Jewish polemicists use perceived Christian indifference to impurity, especially the impurity associated with menstrual blood, semen, sexual intercourse, and childbirth, as an occasional weapon in the ideological conflict with Christianity. In Jewish anti-Christian polemic, one finds accusations of menstrual impurity used against Christians in at least three important ways. First, God would never consent to be born from a woman, because of the impurities associated with a woman’s sexual organs and with birth30. Second, Jesus was born from a woman and, thus, was diminished by exposure to menstrual impurity31. Lastly, Christians are wantonly impure, because they have sex during menstruation32.
A Bishop’s battles in De legibus
23William of Auvergne was a canon of the cathedral chapter in Paris by 1223, held a chair of theology in the university by 1225, and was made Bishop of Paris in 1228, a position he held until his death in 1249. During his long career in Paris, William demonstrated notable political influence, wide intellectual interests, and an appetite for ideological contest. William was personally selected for the episcopacy by Pope Gregory IX; he was a close advisor to King Louis IX and Louis’ mother, Blanche of Castile; and he was a supporter of the mendicants in Paris, notably in their nascent role as masters at the University of Paris. In 1240, he participated in the first official investigation of the Talmud, which led to its condemnation and, in 1242 or 1243, its first burning33.
24William wrote as many as twenty-four separate works, not including his sermons34. His masterwork was the seven-part Magisterium divinale ac sapientiale, a series of linked philosophical-theological treatises written over a two-decade period (ca. 1220 – ca. 1240)35. De legibus, which is the second and much longer section of a single treatise, De fide et legibus36, integrates a number theoretical issues in the study of law and religion, including the relation between natural and revealed law, the relation between law and virtue, and the distinction between literal and spiritual interpretation of the Bible. Fundamentally, however, De legibus is about the Law of Moses, its nature and purpose in ancient Judaism and in Christianity; the Law of Moses is introduced straightaway, just after some general remarks about the nature of faith. The many other issues raised in De legibus, including William’s battles against abuses of spiritual interpretation of the Bible and against Muḥammad and his law, are introduced in relation to the Law of Moses37.
25In the large middle part of the treatise (chap. 2-15), where William addresses the Law of Moses directly, there are separate chapters on sacrifice, circumcision, the Sabbath, festivals, and various commands about purification and holiness. In this section, Leviticus, not surprisingly, appears everywhere, and, though William does not follow Leviticus chapter by chapter as the author of a commentary would, he devotes an entire chapter to the purity commands of Leviticus 15.
26William’s sustained engagement with Leviticus in the De legibus is best explained by his long, relentless, and repetitive assault on idolatry (past and present), an objective that gives shape to the work as a whole38. The introduction to De legibus, for example, begins by reviewing (in narrative order) the basic elements of the Law of Moses, all of which William thinks contribute to the divinely inspired assault on idolatry. The account of the creation itself, William thinks, was intended by Moses as the first argument against idolatry39. When William asks (also in chap. 1) why 613 commands were given to the Hebrew people, he lists the elimination of idolatry as the second of three reasons:
The second reason was the execrable manifold idolatry, for the elimination of which the law, in large part, aimed, and this chiefly in all the commands which seem absurd, and seem to have nothing useful for those keeping them40.
27The five chapters of De legibus (chap. 23-27) explicitly devoted to the description and refutation of idolatry frequently invoke the role of the Law of Moses in past wars against idolatry. And when, in chapter 28, William’s treatment of idolatry passes from description to destruction, he discusses «rites», both Jewish and Christian, as the principle weapon in the arsenal41.
The law is the letter: nothing useless, nothing absurd
28William’s interest, then, in promoting the Law of Moses is inseparably linked to his concern about the battle against idolatry. For William, the importance of the literal sense of the Law of Moses in Christianity is not merely defensible, but paramount: it is the battle against idolatry that explains the literal sense, and it is the literal sense that reinforces the battle against idolatry. This is the case he tries to make in every one of his discussions of Leviticus, including his chapter on Leviticus 15. The various non-literal senses of the Law of Moses have only secondary value, when they have any value at all42.
29William frequently pauses in De legibus to emphasize or re-emphasize the value of the Law of Moses understood according to the literal sense. When, for example, William reviews the miracles by which Moses’ authority was confirmed, he concludes:
Therefore, it is clear from all these considerations that the law of Moses was authored and established and elevated by God. That is why there is nothing in it that is useless, nothing pointless, nothing absurd. Therefore, there is nothing in it, whether command or prohibition, whether law or story, that does not have a rational explanation and sufficient reason, whether secret or manifest43.
30He makes the same point at the very start of chapter 2, before he launches into his reasons for the commands in Leviticus about sacrifices and the tabernacle:
There is nothing in the whole law that does not have a rational explanation, whether command, or prohibition or story. It is clear that there is nothing absurd, nothing irrational in it, and this is shown clearly in many places, since the things shown contain either something honest or useful44.
31One of his chief objectives, explicitly and frequently repeated, in his discussion of various specific mandates is to show that even the most absurd-seeming commands of the law are not at all absurd45.
32William’s defense of the value of the letter of the law is extraordinary, as Beryl Smalley indicated in her comparison of William to Ralph of Flaix, a mid 12th- century Benedictine monk, who wrote an influential commentary on Leviticus in twenty books46. Where William wanted to demonstrate the value of a literal interpretation of Leviticus, even its superiority to spiritual interpretations, in part by demonstrating that nothing in Leviticus is absurd according to the letter, Ralph of Flaix wanted to demonstrate that a literal interpretation of Leviticus was of no use whatsoever precisely because so many of its commands could be shown to be absurd according to the letter47.
33Ralph of Flaix was not the only influential 12th-century author dismissive of the literal value of Leviticus. Rupert of Deutz (ca. 1079-1129/1130), for example, when commenting on Leviticus 15 in his De sancta trinitate, defines the flow of semen and of menstrual blood as nothing other than the «uncontrolled muttering of the mouth, the loquacity of the loosened tongue»48. In the Glossa Ordinaria, menstrual flow is the «corruption of idolatry», or «superfluous speech», or «vice», or «a false doctrine», but never blood49.
34But William’s treatise on the literal sense of Leviticus, extraordinary as it is, was not unprecedented. In the Guide for the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) provided a model for William’s interpretation of Leviticus as a rationally explicable response to idolatry. William’s indebtedness to Maimonides is evident in his overall method, as well as many particulars50. It is also worth noting that the language with which William praises every command of the Law of Moses understood according to the letter —nothing useless, nothing absurd— seems to echo Peter Abelard’s praise of the same in Abelard’s Commentary on Romans51.
Realities of ritual impurity
35Interpretation of Leviticus 15 among Christian authors is, as noted above (pp. 193-199), a significant marker of attitudes towards literal interpretation, towards impurity and purification, and towards what beliefs and practices are to be defined as «Jewish» and thereby excluded from Christianity. Many Christian authors can see no justification whatsoever for a literal understanding of the laws of menstrual blood and semen impurity in Leviticus 15. They reject the very notion of such impurity; the only impurity that matters is moral impurity, and there is no moral impurity in matters, like these, over which one has no control: abnormal discharges of vagina and penis, menstruation, involuntary emissions of semen (with some exceptions), and childbirth52.
36William of Auvergne is fully conversant with arguments of this kind. He emphasizes the value of reading Leviticus 15, like all of Leviticus, according to the literal sense. He argues, generally speaking, that all the commands of the Law of Moses, including its purity commands, are rational and useful. Does he, then, believe in the reality of ritual impurity, specifically the reality of impurity associated with menstrual blood and semen? At the conclusion of chapter 5, William mentions three of the five kinds of impurity —the discharge of semen, sexual intercourse, and the discharge of menstrual blood— established in Leviticus 15 (see pp. 191-192). His elaboration of the subject in chapter 6 focuses on menstrual blood, and it is mainly on the basis of his discussion of that single issue that we have to assess his reading of the whole of Leviticus 15.
37William begins by appealing to the historical context, and suggests a merely practical purpose in teaching that menstrual blood is impure. Menstrual impurity according to this argument appears more a matter of political calculation than divine revelation.
A menstruating woman, then, was considered impure, according to certain writers, on the basis of the custom and law of the people of the Sabeans, who so reviled women during the time of menstruation, that they believed that women were not able to be purified except by fire. And, because of this, their clothes and all that they had touched during the time of menstruation was burned. And indeed because this rite had so grown in Egypt and the promised land, the Jewish people were not able to be entirely turned from it, and therefore the Lawgiver did about this matter what he was able to do among such a stiff-necked people, changing and at the same time mitigating the rite, which he was not able tear out by the root. Therefore, he judged them impure, which indeed had to be done on account of the established custom, but established that they and those things which they touched be cleaned with a washing of water, by which he drew many away from the old custom53.
38And yet it is clear, in two ways, that William wants to distance himself from this position. First, he attributes it to «certain» writers, a typical distancing move for him. And, second, when he later enumerates his reasons for the command, he does not include this one, enumerating six reasons, where there should be seven, if he had intended to make this reason one of his.
39No, his main reason —the first in his numbered list of six— is the threat of idolatry, specifically, moon worship.
But it is not to be doubted that many were drawn through this impurity to the idolatry by which the moon was worshipped, since menstrual flow was credited to the cycle of the moon, and so they referred this impurity to the moon. And because of this, they learned that the moon, which was the cause of pollution and impurity, should not be worshipped. And it could happen that menstruating women united themselves more boldly with other women in ceremonies to the moon, thinking themselves by this very state more worthy of sacred things of this sort, because the moon operated more evidently in the menstruating women during that time. And it could also happen —and here we believe on the basis of those things, which we read about idolatry— that a menstruating woman was sometimes sacrificed to it, and that the menstrual blood was repeatedly offered in sacrifices to it. For the moon was often worshipped avidly by women54.
40William returns to the threat of idolatry in presenting a fifth reason for the impurity of menstrual blood:
Fifth is the dignity of blood, which the Lord wanted always to establish in the mind of the children of Israel in detestation of idolatry55.
41It is not entirely clear what kind of idolatry William has in mind in this relatively short statement of his point; and there is a certain paradox in William’s explaining the impurity of one kind of blood, menstrual blood, by appealing to the dignity of blood, but it is consistent with his first reason in its stated concern about menstrual blood being used for idolatrous purposes.
42William’s second and sixth reasons appeal to natural explanations for the levitical teaching on the impurity of menstrual blood: in the second, that the command is intended to inhibit sex during menstruation, because a fetus generated by such sex will be corrupted by the menstrual blood; in the sixth, that menstrual blood is poisonous56. William’s appeal to these linked natural explanations suggests that he saw the possibility of a natural impurity in menstrual blood that helped explain its ritual impurity —one important way of acknowledging the reality of such impurity.
43Witchcraft follows science. In William’s third reason for the command, he notes that menstrual blood can be used by sorcerers (malefici) to perform wonders, suggesting a different kind of poisonous power parallel to the natural one57.
44Fourth in William’s list is the threat posed by women’s menstruation to the «dignity and honor of the tabernacle», the «most abominable pollution that could have happened to the tabernacle58». William does not elaborate, but this short comment further raises the possibility that he viewed menstrual blood as intrinsically impure.
45Semen gets rather short shrift in comparison to William’s discussion of menstruation. He simply notes that the «dignity of the camps and of the tabernacle» depended on purification for emission of semen, because seminal fluid is intrinsically filthy and is associated with the abomination of Venus idolatry, «in which the very seed of human generation was mixed with sacrifices59».
46So menstrual blood, in William’s catalogue of six reasons for its levitical impurity, is intrinsically poisonous, can be used for sorcery, dishonors the tabernacle, and is conducive to two kinds of idolatry (worship of the moon and other blood offerings). All of this amounts to a nearly conclusive case that William was convinced —and intended to convince his readers— of the reality of menstrual impurity (and associated impurities, including semen impurity). Where other authors on this or similar subjects will carefully separate the moral from non-moral teachings of the Law, in order to explain why some commands apply for a time and some for all time, and some are profitably read literally and others only or mainly spiritually, William seems to collapse the ritual and the moral. Ritual impurity reflects the possibility of moral impurity, at least with respect to idolatry.
Rites of purification in Christianity
47William, then, clearly articulated his conviction about the primacy of the letter, as well as the reality of ritual impurity (at least in the case of Leviticus 15), but did he also think that the laws of ritual impurity and purification, so important in ancient Judaism, still had a place in Christianity, even contemporary Christianity, when understood according to the letter? This is a difficult question, a crucial question —one that for many Christians across the period that I have considered (from the 3rd to the 13th century) went to the heart of Christian identity— and one that for William, perhaps, cannot be answered definitively.
48One must consider, first of all, William’s statement, conventional in every respect, that where the Law of Moses was incomplete, the Gospel teaching is complete. The point is made several pages into chapter 1, following a brief comment on Matthew 5, 1760.
49There is also the fact that William explicitly condemns the continued observance in Christianity of certain practices commanded in the Law of Moses. Observance of the Sabbath, for example, among contemporary Christians is likened to idolatry among ancient Jews61. A similar point is made about the practice of circumcision among Christians62. William also explicitly condemns the idea that Christians ought to observe the animal sacrifices of the Law of Moses63.
50Aside from the Sabbath, circumcision, and sacrifices —observances which were in the 12th and early 13th centuries everywhere associated with the heresy of «judaizing»— however, William explicitly defends the view, at several key points in his detailed examination of the Law of Moses, that most of the commands of the Law ought to be maintained in Christianity. In chapter 14, where William recapitulates the «universal reason» for all the commands of the Law of Moses —that is, the war against idolatry and the preparation of Israel for her marriage to God— he grounds the point in the present in order to clarify the past.
Since in this time in which the heavenly abyss of wisdom has broken open […] since in this time, I say, in which the people are said to be taught by God, similar precepts and prohibitions are done justly and rationally among us on account of similar reasons, how much more in that new people nourished on unhealthy idolatry64.
51Lastly, in his conclusion to the section of the treatise on specific commands of the Law, just before his critique of non-literal interpretation, William also notes the continuation of ancient Jewish laws in contemporary Christianity:
It should be clear and convincing to you that those things which seem to be absurd in the Law are to be understood according to the letter, and that there are just and rational reasons for its commands and its prohibitions, and that in past times the simplicity and ignorance of the people, and the near presence of idolatries required precepts and prohibitions of this sort. Let us also demonstrate to you that the greater part of those continue even among us, as, for example, commands against the observance of superstitions, which we enumerated above65.
52And, most importantly, idolatry, for William, is not just a concern of the past; it is very much alive in the present. William constantly reminds his readers of the persistence of idolatry in his own world, even among Christians — contemporary idolatries that are sometimes analogous, sometimes identical to ancient idolatries. William asks his readers to contemplate multiple robust remnants:
killing certain animals in the midst of copulation or killing a mother bird incubating her eggs bestows fertility and good fortune;
finding a needle or a coin is very lucky;
the first piglet or puppy in a litter should be disposed of as an offering to a presiding spirit;
nighttime spirits visit houses and enter vessels of food and drink, and such vessels must be refilled and left uncovered after use, so as not to offend the spirits and bring misfortune to the house;
burning pigs to strengthen an agreement or pact;
making marks and figures in bodies, carts, and metal things;
worshipping rumblings of the stomach and of the sky;
worshipping statues and believing that there are propitious days for making them;
worshipping celestial armies;
worshipping fire and believing that it heals, and that passing through fire provides protection against harm;
worshipping Lucifer in the form of black cats or of toads, and kissing the mouth of the toad or under the tail of the cat66.
53And to William’s catalogue of still-thriving practices must be added the almost equally large catalogue of books that preserve and teach and perpetuate idolatries. William mentions, generally, the «books of the sorcerers67», as well as specific books and authors: De anulis septem planetarum; Miglodorus; Cocograecus; Mercurius Trismegistus; Liber Secretus; and the Speculum68. William’s knowledge of these idolatrous books is personal:
We remember having examined all these things in the books of the mages and sorcerers during our adolescence69.
54Idolatry, like curiosity, is, for William, universal, universally pernicious, and ineradicable:
And still idolatry is among all the peoples, either in its head or in its branches, or in its remnants. And what is more horrifying, it still cannot be exterminated by fire or sword or other means70.
55The ever present problem of idolatry, even in an ostensibly Christian world, ensures an abiding place for the literal observance, in some form, of many commands of Leviticus.
56And, so, there are many good reasons to think that William thinks the impurities and rites of purification in Leviticus 15 are to be taken seriously by Christians. To return, once more, to his discussion of the reasons for the impurity of menstrual blood in chapter 6, William concludes with the following unqualified warning:
Therefore it is clear that both for the health of souls and the health of bodies and the health of newborns, or fetuses, and for the sacrament of marriage itself, it is counseled through the law that menstruating women are impure up to the time of their purification71.
57And it is not difficult to see this present-tense evaluation of the teaching in Leviticus 15 being applied to present-day Christians. «Jewish» rites are made «Christian» rites in 13th-century Paris, by a bishop convinced that the universal, timeless threat of idolatry has occasioned universal, timeless remedies. Though William does not explicitly counsel washing, an active rite of purification, he does counsel letting a specified period of time pass, a passive rite of purification.
William of Auvergne’s Leviticus and the inversion of anti-jewish polemic
58De legibus represents one 13th-century appropriation of Leviticus as an essentially Christian text, without recourse to, in fact, with the explicit curtailment of, spiritualizing interpretations. In William’s view, the commands, including many of the ritual commands, of Leviticus are retained in Christianity in a translated form. And this, William thinks, is for good reason. The Law, including Leviticus, then as now, is at least highly salutary, perhaps necessary, in the universal, ongoing battle against idolatry.
59William’s inspiration for this point was, in part, Moses Maimonides’Guide of the Perplexed, but William thought it necessary to surpass, in some respects, Maimonides himself in the defense of a literal interpretation of the Law of Moses. William’s intent was to outdo the Jews in their own literalism. In De legibus, he cast the Jews as intellectual wanderers, lost, under the influence of Islam, to a rationalism that makes a literal reading of the Law of Moses look absurd; their rejection of the literal sense then makes them all the more susceptible to idolatry. William, in chapter 1, reflecting on the biblical injunctions to meditate on the Law, condemns the Jews for having abandoned meditation on the Law because of its apparent absurdity:
But afterwards they mingled with the Chaldeans (or Babylonians) and the Arab peoples and they embroiled themselves in the study of their philosophy and followed the opinions of the philosophers, not knowing how or believing that they could defend the faith of Abraham and their Law against the challenges and arguments of those others. And it is because of this that they became erring heretics in the Law and in the faith of Abraham himself, especially after the reign of the Saracens was spread over their lands. And, consequently, many of them believed in the eternity of the world and other errors of Aristotle. So it is that not many true Jews are found among those who lingered among the philosophers — that is, Jews who are not Saracens in some part of their belief, or who shared in Aristotelian errors in the land of the Saracens. Indeed, the apparent absurdity or uselessness of so many of the commands gave a compelling pretext for apostasies of this kind. For as long as they appeared to them absurd and useless —with no reason for either what they commanded or forbade, and no use in observing them— it was not surprising if they withdrew from them, and if they cast them aside as pointless burdens72.
60William’s charge considered against the history of medieval Jewish biblical commentary and Jewish ritual practice is, of course, itself absurd. But the point here is not that William can provide any kind of insight into Jewish attitudes towards the Law, but that William is promoting a striking inversion, limited though it may be, of conventional anti-Jewish polemical categories, in which the imagined Jew is typically the benighted literalist, the reader who cannot pierce the veil of the Law or, in another common image, can chew only its husk. For William, in his meditation on the letter of Leviticus, and its immense value in the great contest against idolatry, the Christian becomes the literalist, the non-rationalist and claims the ancient remedy; the Jew becomes the rationalist, and so abandons his own treasure.
Notes de bas de page
1 For a modern English translation, I have used The New Oxford Annotated Bible. But compare the translation (and commentary) in The Anchor Bible: Leviticus 1-16, ed. and trans. by J. Milgrom, pp. 902-904.
2 Ibid., pp. 904-905 on the structural symmetry of Leviticus 15.
3 Genesis 1, 28. For interpretations of this verse in medieval Judaism and Christianity, see J. Cohen, «Be Fertile and Increase».
4 The Didascalia, ed. and trans. by A. Voöbus. On these three versions and their approximate dates, see t. I, vol. 402 (176), pp. 23-30. On the impurity of genital discharges in the Syriac Didascalia, see C. E. Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity, pp. 166-188; E. Marienberg, Niddah, pp. 91-92.
5 See, for example, The Didascalia, ed. and trans. by A. Voöbus, t. II, vol. 408 (180), p. 230, l. 12-13; p. 231, l. 16; p. 233, l. 12-13. All references are to Voöbus’ English translation; quotations are from the same.
6 The Didascalia, ed. and trans. by A. Voöbus, t. II, vol. 408 (180), p. 238, l. 6-8 and p. 245, l. 7-9.
7 Ibid., pp. 239-242 for the focused refutation of menstrual impurity; quotation p. 239, l. 7-8.
8 Ibid., p. 245, l. 7-11.
9 Ibid., p. 242, l. 20-23 and p. 238, l. 9-10.
10 Ibid., pp. 224-225.
11 Ibid., t. I, vol. 402 (176), p. 15.
12 Ibid., p. 15, l. 6-26; quotation l. 8-10.
13 Ibid., t. II, vol. 408 (180), p. 208, l. 5-6.
14 Ibid., pp. 208-211.
15 Ibid., p. 213, l. 14-17.
16 On the Libellus Responsionum, see P. Meyvaert, «Bede’s Text»; R. Meens, «Ritual Purity»; Id., «Questioning Ritual Purity».
17 Beda el Venerable, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, Book I, chap. xxvii, pp. 89-103.
18 Ibid., pp. 88-89.
19 Ibid., pp. 92-93.
20 Ibid., pp. 92-95.
21 Ibid., pp. 94-95.
22 Ibid., pp. 90-95?
23 Ibid., pp. 90-93, with reference to Leviticus 20,18.
24 Ibid., pp. 94-95.
25 Ibid., pp. 94-95 and 98-99.
26 Ibid., pp. 98-103.
27 The point is made cogently in A. Firey, «The Letter of the Law», p. 205. On the Carolingian commentators, also see E. Marienberg, Niddah, pp. 122-124. R. Meens, «Ritual Purity» and Id., «Questioning Ritual Purity», reviews the history of Christian attitudes towards impurity associated with genital discharges and childbirth in penitentials and canon law from the 7th to the 12th century. For other studies of the treatment of impurity associated with genital discharge and sexual intercourse in penitential literature and canon law, see J. L. Flandrin, Un temps pour embrasser; P. J. Payer, Sex and the Penitentials; J. A.Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society; P. M. Rieder, On the Purification of Women.
28 See, for example, Rashi’s influential and unproblematic commentary on Leviticus 12,1-8 and 15, 1-33 in Rashi, Rashi ‘al ha-Torah, pp. 136-139 and 178-190.
29 This point is made in C. E. Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity and E. Marienberg, Niddah.
30 See, for example, J. Kimhi, The Book of the Covenant, p. 36. A similar point is attributed by Odo of Tournai to the Jewish character, Leo, invented for his anti-Jewish polemical dialogue (Odón de Cambrai, On Original Sin and A Disputation with the Jew, p. 95).
31 See the references to Jesus as the «bastard son of a menstruating and wanton mother» in The Jews and the Crusaders, p. 32 (The Chronicle of Solomon bar Simson).
32 See The Jewish-Christian Debate, p. 224 (Eng. trans.).
33 N. Valois, Guillaume d’Auvergne, a judicious and carefully documented work, remains the only detailed study of William’s life. On William and his works, also see F. Morenzoni and J. Y. Tiliette (eds.), Autour de Guillaume d’Auvergne. For a recent short biography, see S. E. Murphy, «William of Auvergne». On the condemnation of the Talmud, see G. Dahan (ed.), Le brûlement du Talmud à Paris.
34 F. Morenzoni and J. Y. Tilliette (eds.), Autour de Guillaume d’Auvergne, pp. 375-399.
35 He sometimes calls the work by other names, including the Theologica philosophia. On the composition and structure of the work, see G. Corti, «Le sette parte».
36 All references are to the 1674 edition of De legibus in Guillermo de Auvernia, Opera Omnia, vol. 1, col. 1-102 (hereafter De legibus). All translations of William’s works are my own. In the 1674 edition, De fide is 17 pages, De legibus is 85 pages. That they are two parts of a single treatise is stated explicitly in chap. xxiv, p. 67, col. 2.
37 On biblical interpretation, see, for example, De legibus, the introduction to chap. xvi, p. 47, col. 1B; on Muḥammad, see ibid., chap. xviii, p. 49, col. 2B. On William’s treatment of Islam in De legibus, see S. E. Murphy, «William of Auvergne».
38 William’s concern with idolatry in the work is remarked in B. Smalley, «William of Auvergne»; see, for example, pp. 33-34. The same is briefly noted in L. Smith, «William of Auvergne and the Law», p. 133.
39 De legibus, chap. i, p. 19, col. 1D.
40 Ibid., p. 24, col. 1.
41 Ibid., chap. xxviii, p. 94, col. 1E.
42 Seechap. xvi-xvii of Delegibus for his critical discussion of abuses in spiritual interpretation. See also B. Smalley, «William of Auvergne», pp. 37-43, and L. Smith, «William of Auvergne and the Law», pp. 133-137.
43 De legibus, chap. i, p. 25, col. 1.
44 Ibid., chap. ii, p. 29, col. 1.
45 See ibid., chap. xiv, p. 45, col. 1; chap. xiv, p. 46, col. 1; chap. xv, p. 46, col. 2; chap. xviii, p. 49, col. 2; see also chap. iv, p. 34, col. 2F-G.
46 See B. Smalley, «Ralph of Flaix»; the direct comparison is in B. Smalley, «William of Auvergne», where Ralph is discussed on pp. 13-15. B. Smalley, «Ralph of Flaix», p. 35, describes Ralph’s work as «the standard commentary on Leviticus up to the mid-13th century at least».
47 Ralph, according to his introduction, was motivated to write the commentary out of concern that members of the monastery were growing susceptible to «Jewish» arguments against Christianity made on the basis of Christian failure to observe the Law given by God to Moses. This is one important example of the way in which arguments against Jews, «judaizing», and literal interpretation of the Bible were wound together in 12th- and 13th-century concerns about other Christians becoming too ideologically «Jewish». This subject is explored in S. E. Murphy, «Concern about Judaizing».
48 Rupert de Deutz, De sancta trinitate, p. 890.
49 Glossa Ordinaria, Leviticus 15, in Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria.
50 See, for example, Maimónides, The Guide, part 3, chap. xxviii, p. 513 (that even seemingly non-moral commands have a moral purpose); part 3, chap. xxix, p. 518 (that many seemingly inexplicable commands are commands against idolatry and that every command against idolatry is useful); part 3, chap. xxxi, pp. 523-524 (that there is a reason for every one of the 613 commands); part 3, chap. xxxvii, p. 542 (that it is the main purpose of the Law to abolish idolatry). B. Smalley, «William of Auvergne», pp. 23-26 and 30-31 discusses William’s indebtedness to Maimonides.
51 Peter Abélard, Commentaria in epistolam, p. 200, l. 430-436. This and related passages are discussed in S. E. Murphy, «“The Law was Given for the Sake of Life”, see especially p. 301.
52 The character of the Philosopher in Peter Abelard’s Collationes provides one crisp 12th-century statement of this view, a view about which Abelard himself has some doubts. See Peter Abélard, Collationes, pp. 70-75. And on the difference between Abelard and his Philosopher, see, for example, S. E. Murphy, «“The Law was Given for the Sake of Life”«, pp. 285-291.
53 De legibus, chap. vi, p. 36, col. 2. Compare Maimónides, The Guide, part 3, chap. xlvii, p. 595 on Sabean attitudes towards menstruating women; William’s account differs in a number of details — Maimonides, for example, does not mention the practice of burning the woman’s clothes, but does mention the practice of burning anything upon which the woman stepped.
54 De legibus, chap. vi, p. 36, col. 2F-G.
55 Ibid., p. 36, col. 2H.
56 Ibid., p. 36, col. 2G-H. Isidore of Seville (d. 636), in a widely cited passage from the Etymologies, lists multiple dangerous and astonishing effects of menstrual blood. Isidoro de Sevilla, Etimologías, pp. 868-870. For a short introduction to ancient Greek and Roman writers on the dangers (and uses) of menstrual blood, see R. Parker, Miasma, pp. 101-103. Similarly, The Anchor Bible: Leviticus 1-16, ed. and trans. by J. Milgrom, p. 948, quotes Nahmanides’ (1194-1270) warning about menstruating women: «their breath is harmful, their gaze is detrimental».
57 De legibus, chap. vi, p. 36, col. 2G.
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid., col. 2H.
60 Ibid., chap. i, p. 22, col. 1D-2A.
61 Ibid., chap. xiv, p. 46, col. 1F.
62 Ibid., chap. xxvii, p. 90, col. 1F; and see chap. iii, p. 33, col. 2F.
63 Ibid., chap. xxviii, p. 97, col. 1D-2A.
64 Ibid., chap. xiv, p. 46, col. 1E.
65 Ibid., p. 46, col. 2E (emphasis is mine).
66 For the items on this list, see, respectively ibid., chap. iv, p. 35, col. 1D, col. 2A and p. 36, col. 1E; chap. vi, p. 37, col. 1C; chap. vii, p. 38, col. 1E; chap. xiv, p. 45, col. 2B; chap. xxiii, p. 65, col. 2D, p. 66, col. 1E and col. 2F-H; chap. xxiv, p. 76, col. 1E; chap. xxvi, p. 82, col. 1E and p. 83, col. 1D.
67 Ibid., chap. ii, p. 31, col. 1C and chap. iv, p. 35, col. 1D. Compare the similar point in Maimónides, The Guide, part 3, chap. xxix, pp. 520-521.
68 These are mentioned, respectively, at De legibus, chap. vii, p. 38, col. 1F (for the first two items); chap. xiii, p. 44, col. 1G; chap. xxiii, p. 66, col. 2F and chap. xxv, p. 77, col. 2D; chap. xxiv, p. 70, col. 1F (for the last two items).
69 Ibid., chap. xxv, p. 78, col. 1F.
70 Ibid., chap. xxiv, p. 68, col. 1H-2E.
71 Ibid., chap. vi, p. 36, col. 2H (emphasis is mine).
72 Ibid., chap. i, p. 24, col. 2E-F.
Notes de fin
* Initial research for this chapter was generously supported by a 2009-2010 grant of professional leave from Western Washington University and a 2009-2010 fellowship from the Institut d’Études avancées de Nantes, France. It is a pleasure to thank the organizers of the symposium, «Ritus Infidelium» (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 24-26 March 2010), and the many participants who commented on an early, brief version of the argument; and I am most grateful, as always, to Claudia Eisen Murphy for her comments on the penultimate version.
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