Theories about medieval gender did not originate in their own time period. These ideas about medieval gender were inherited from the classical world. In this post, we will look at Aristotle Galen and Isidore of Seville and explore how their ideas influenced medieval notions of gender.
As with its ideas about the writing of history, so the medieval world largely inherited ideas about gender from the Classical age. From Greek and Roman writers and thinkers. Two influential classical authorities on this subject will be examined first – Aristotle and Galen.
Aristotle
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. He wrote on a wider range of subjects, such as metaphysics, biology, logic and philosophy.
He developed various arguments on the subjugation of women based on biology and his ideas were developed throughout the classical period and the Middle Ages.[1] Aristotle advocated that the male represented the most successful actualization of reproduction, whereas females were born as a matter of necessity, to continue the reproductive cycle.[2] He believed that the presence of sufficient heat determined a male child and the lack of heat, a daughter.[3]
Aristotle argued that whereas males provided the ‘form’ the active and defining essence of reproduction, women as the passive recipients of the male seed, provided only ‘matter’ out of which the offspring will develop.[4] Aristotle claimed that the inferiority of women in the reproductive process also corresponded to their devaluation in other aspects, such as wisdom and virtue, thus women are in every respect inferior to the male.[5]
Galen
Galen (131-217 A.D.) had a background in medicine but was also interested in philosophy. He was perceived as the authority on medicine until the seventeenth century. His ideas about the human body were incredibly influential in the medieval period and were unchallenged during this period.
Galen was responsible for the ‘one-sex’ theory: a belief that females were inverted men.[6] Both Galen and Aristotle, held that due to a lack of heat, females, as a deformity, were less perfect than males and therefore should be subordinate to males.[7] Thus biological difference becomes the justification for a patriarchal social hierarchy for both Aristotle and Galen. Another element of biological difference was female softness compared to male strength.
Isidore of Seville
Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae, published on his death in 636 provides a representative and influential discussion. He wrote: ‘A man (vir) is so called, because in him resides greater power (vis) than in a woman – hence also strength (virtus) received its name’.[8] And so adjectives which derive from ‘vir’, such as ‘virtus’ and ‘viriliter’ have strong associations with masculinity. As E. L’Estrange and A. More put it: ‘Linguistically, man or vir was named for his virtus or manly strength’.[9] Therefore the term vir is not a collective term for men, such as homines rather the term suggests an individual had displayed manly qualities.
Isidore went on to say ‘the word woman (mulier) comes from softness’.[10] He also held that women had to be weaker than men in order that they could not repel men sexually; any rejection, he believed, could lead men to seek sexual pleasure from other men.[11]
Gender as Binary
Similarly to Isidore medieval clerical writers commonly discussed the nature of men and women in terms of binary oppositions.[12] These opposites complimented each other if each sex remained within their prescribed gender role, with men in the position of social, political and economic superiority. These views, which circulated among an educated readership in the middle ages, were the basis of the argument that males were superior to females and that therefore women should submit themselves to the rule and authority of men.
We know more about academic and clerical definitions of gender than popular ones because these were written down and have survived to the present day. These gender definitions are used as a point of reference in order to explore gendered expectations and practices. However, it is difficult to assess how far down the social scale these scholarly and ecclesiastical ideas permeated, and how these ideas influenced the behaviours of men and women within society, so an element of conjecture is often required.[13]
Conclusion
These ideas about gender, inherited from the ancient world and the early medieval period became the basis upon which society functioned. Gender was perceived as a binary. Men and women were polar opposites. Women were weaker than men biologically and this theory was then translated into language itself.
[1] J. Cadden, ‘Western Medicine and Natural Philosophy’, in V.L. Bullough, and J.A. Brundage, (eds.), Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, (New York, 2000), pp. 51-80.
[2] J. Cadden, The Meaning of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages, Medicine, Science and Culture, (Cambridge, 1998), p. 24.
[3] P. Allen, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 BC- AD 1250, (Michigan, 1997), p. 97.
[4] J. Cadden, The Meaning of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages, Medicine, Science and Culture, p. 24.
[5] P. Allen, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 BC- AD 1250, p. 83.
[6] J. Murray, ‘Hiding Behind the Universal Man, Male Sexuality in the Middle Ages’, p. 127.
[7] J. Cadden, The Meaning of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages, Medicine, Science and Culture, p. 24; P. Allen, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 BC- AD 1250, p. 98.
[8] Isiodre of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, p. 242.
[9] E. L’Estrange and A. More, ‘Representing Medieval Genders and Sexualities in Europe, Construction, Transformation, and Subversion, 600-1530’,in E. L’Estrange and A. More (eds.) Representing Medieval Genders and Sexualities in Europe, Construction, Transformation, and Subversion, 600-1530, (Cornwall, 2011), p. 6.
[10] Isiodre of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, p. 242.
[11] Ibid, p. 242; V.L. Bullough, ‘On Being Male in the Middle Ages’, p. 33.
[12] J. Murray, ‘Thinking about Gender’, in J. Carpenter and S. MacLean (eds.), Power of the Weak, Studies on Medieval Women, (Illinois, 1995), p. 2.
[13] K. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, pp. 5-6.
