干旱区生态环境知识资源中心(Arid): Augustine and female homoeroticism in the early Middle Ages: A Foucaultian idea-historical interpretation

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DOI	10.4102/hts.v77i4.6880
	Augustine and female homoeroticism in the early Middle Ages: A Foucaultian idea-historical interpretation
	Beukes, Johann
通讯作者	Beukes, J (corresponding author), Univ Free State, Fac Humanities, Dept Philosophy & Class, Bloemfontein, South Africa.
来源期刊	HTS TEOLOGIESE STUDIES-THEOLOGICAL STUDIES
ISSN	0259-9422
EISSN	2072-8050
出版年	2021
卷号	77 期号:4
英文摘要	Taking his reading of Romans 1:26-27 and Genesis 19 as its hermeneutical key, an idea-historical interpretation of the views of the Western church father Augustine of Hippo (354-430) on female homoeroticism is presented in this article. The accentuation of French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) on the overall significance of Augustine in the Western history of sexuality, in his posthumous Histoire de la sexualite 4 (Les aveux de la chair, under editorship of Frederic Gros, 2018), is used to contextualise Augustine's views on sexual desire as the 'form of the will', here positioned specifically within a female homoerotic context. Drawing on the substantial studies of John Boswell (in 1980) and Bernadette Brooten (in 1996), which, although relatively dated, are still without equal in Medieval research, the article subsequently explores Augustine's views on intimate relations between women, both in monasteries and in secular society. It is shown that intimate relations between women must have transpired in fifth-century monasteries and that female homoeroticism was for the next two centuries dealt with with restraint rather than with forms of exclusion and punishment, despite the negative portrayals of same-sex relations by some of Augustine's patristic contemporaries (particularly John Chrysostom [ca.347-407]), yet precisely on the basis of Augustine's understated approach. Although Augustine renounced homoerotic relations as a form of 'unnatural' (for him, expressly, all 'non-procreative') sex, he dealt with the incidence of female same-sex relations with understatement. Given his general authority in the early Middle Ages, one effect of Augustine's non-homophobic approach was that female homoeroticism was de facto bypassed as a 'moral problem' in the fifth and sixth centuries, until handbooks of penance, that prohibited all forms of same- sex relations, started circulating at the end of the sixth century. Contribution: This article contributes to the ongoing study of Medieval female sexuality, and particularly of female homoeroticism in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, by exploring Augustine's views on same-sex relations between women around the early fifth century, while concurrently contributing to ongoing analyses of Michel Foucault's interpretation of the church and desert fathers in the (edited) fourth volume of Histoire de la sexualite (Les aveux de la chair), published in 2018.
英文关键词	Augustine of Hippo John Boswell Bernadette Brooten Peter Brown John Chrysostom female homoeroticism in the early Middle Ages 'female sodomy' Michel Foucault Frederic Gros Histoire de la sexualite 4 (Les aveux de la chair).
类型	Article
语种	其他
收录类别	AHCI
WOS记录号	WOS:000722410900001
WOS类目	Religion
WOS研究方向	Religion
资源类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.177/qdio/handle/2XILL650/374195
作者单位	[Beukes, Johann] Univ Free State, Fac Humanities, Dept Philosophy & Class, Bloemfontein, South Africa
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Beukes, Johann. Augustine and female homoeroticism in the early Middle Ages: A Foucaultian idea-historical interpretation[J],2021,77(4).
APA	Beukes, Johann.(2021).Augustine and female homoeroticism in the early Middle Ages: A Foucaultian idea-historical interpretation.HTS TEOLOGIESE STUDIES-THEOLOGICAL STUDIES,77(4).
MLA	Beukes, Johann."Augustine and female homoeroticism in the early Middle Ages: A Foucaultian idea-historical interpretation".HTS TEOLOGIESE STUDIES-THEOLOGICAL STUDIES 77.4(2021).

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