Penitentialists were worried about it and much, much more--and
they're pre-12th century. See Ludwig Bieler, The Irish Penitentials
(Dublin, 1963) or McNeill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance
(New York, 1938). The most useful analysis of the penitenials, IMHO,
is Pierre Payer's Sex and the Penitentials: The Development of a
Sexual Code, 550-1150 (Toronto, 1984).
Maeve
>Can anybody tell me a little about the date, authorship, and provenance of
>the Compline hymn "Te Lucis Ante Terminum"? Any sources to check out?
>
>On a related problem (the hymn worries about "noctium phantasmata . . . ne
>polluantur corpora") is anyone on the list aware of medieval (preferably
>pre- 12th century) discussion of nocturnal pollution? I'm making in a
>point in an article that on the whole, monastic authors of the middle
>Middle Ages didn't worry much about bodily pollution, as much as theorists
>and practitioners of some other religions might--the glaring exception to
>this observation being the problem of "noctium phantasmata". (Were
>medieval monastics indeed worried about this at all, or is this a concern
>of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries?)
>
>Someone might, of course, tell me I'm all washed up (no pun intended) on
>this -- please do, if you're inclined.
>
>
>__________________________________
>Patrick J. Nugent
>Earlham College
>Richmond, Indiana 47374 USA
>
>(765) 983-1413
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>__________________________________
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