Chaste Bodies, Salacious Thoughts
Dyan Elliott
At the centre of clerical vocation was conundrum balancing clergy’s commitment to chastity with many aspects their professional training and responsibilities that either tacitly or overtly concerned sex. On a pedagogical level, there were pagan authors, like sexually savvy Ovid, who at cornerstone acquisition letters. But biblical tradition, theology, ascetical literature also treated sexuality sexual temptation very explicitly. Such concerns loom even larger on practical level. The clergy had always assumed responsibility monitoring lay mortality. explicit nature pastoral obligations would increase exponentially when Church established hegemony over marriage made auricular confession mandatory for laity in high Middle Ages. This chapter provides an overview different kinds sources lend insight into this, times, fraught aspect vocation.
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