Alexandra Cuffel's Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic explores the conceptions of bodily filth and ritual pollution, especially regarding the female body, in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim texts. Chronologically her study stretches from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, focusing on the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Cuffel's primary argument is that a group of shared beliefs and values about the body existed among Jews, Christians, Muslims, and, early on, Greco-Roman Pagans, and that they used similar tactics to degrade the "other". By evoking impurity and bodily filth these religions created "theological and emotional obstacles between themselves and those with whom they disagreed" (47). Often, Christians and Muslims used this imagery to convince their followers to join in holy war. The Jews, a minority religion, used similar tactics that often endangered themselves and their entire local community, yet still demonstrated their own superiority. This study, in part, seeks to answer the basic questions concerning the "function of polemic in each group" (5). Despite addressing the broader conceptions of disease and ritual cleanliness, Cuffel never strays far from her central focus, the perceptions of the female body, especially of the womb and menstrual blood. She seeks to understand why women's bodies, more than men's, were associated with "dirt, waste, and rot" thus constructing "'female' as a negative ontological category in relation to the spiritual world" (26).
Gendering Disgust is divided into two parts. Part I begins by briefly establishing the Greek and Roman groundwork regarding the human body, shaped by Pliny and Aristotle, and then traces these developments in Late Antiquity. She addresses the influential Galenic and Aristotelian medical schema that "automatically distances women from the divine" (27) and argues that late antiquity saw attitudes towards the "body, gender, and religious deviance first coalesce to form a particular form of polemic shared" by Christians, Pagans, and Jews (11). Having establishing this groundwork, Cuffel then concentrates on the Jewish and Pagan polemics that sought to degrade Christians by pointing out the problem of placing Jesus in a "filthy" womb, and the Christian responses. Likewise, Jesus' need to eat, defecate, and urinate were seen as indicators that Jesus was not Divine (78). Also, Cuffel analyses the Christian polemics against the newly formed Islamic religion. Christians argued that Muhammad and his followers sought physical rewards and insisted that Muhammad's heaven was a "licentious, obscene place" (76).
Part II addresses the use of impurity in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim invective from twelfth-, thirteenth-, and early-fourteenth-century Europe. With the growing medieval Christian piety based on Christ's humanity and the status of Virgin Mary, the "filthy" womb of the Virgin Mother was an increasingly egregious point of attack (108). As Jewish polemic increasingly attacked the doctrine of incarnation, Christians responded by formulating a theology of Mary's body that "set her flesh above the corruptible impurity characterizing" human existence (109). In addition, Cuffel argues that the twelfth-century saw an increase in the number of scholars from all three religions translating each other's primary religious texts and medical texts in order to construct more persuasive polemics (96-97).
The last chapter of Part II shifts to the field of visual art. Although Cuffel's central focus is on the "filth" of the female body, she also examines the ways in which religious writers used animal imagery to "remind viewers of moral tales and relatively complex theological ideas" (198). For example, Christians often associated farm animals with the Jews to emphasize their "servile" status. Jews similarly depicted Christians as swine, "the most impure of all creatures" and long associated with dirt, disease, and heresy (224). Cuffel links this section with her arguments on the female body. She suggests that these visual traditions often tied "one's opponent to a filthy animal served to feminize him because of women's strong association with dirt and impurity" (200).
Alexandra Cuffel gathers together a diverse and wide-ranging collection of Pagan, Muslim, Christian, and Jewish primary source material in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and vernacular languages to support her arguments. These include medical texts, Bible moralisée, poetry, chronicles, biblical commentaries, and other religious texts. Cuffel also extensively utilizes the visual arts, including stained glass windows, church wall carvings, and manuscript illustrations. This is a pioneering work, in part because Cuffel's knowledge of Hebrew, Latin, and Arabic allow her to bring together religious texts that had often only been individually studied before.
Alexandra Cuffel's Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic succeeds in tackling a difficult subject, both in its chronology and content. Many sections of her book address subject material long ignored by historians either due to lack of translated sources (perceptions of the body in medieval Islamic religious polemic) or historiographic, political, and social forces (Jewish anti-Christian polemic) (2). Cuffel's central argument that the "filth" of the female body was an integral part of the religious polemic between Pagans, Jews, Christians, and Muslims and Cuffel is intelligent and focused. Overall, Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic is an audacious, scholarly, and engaging analysis.
Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
