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I have often wondered if the emphasis on female virginity had to do with Medieval aesthetics and their function to channel the divine - or otherwise. Basically, the criterion insisting on intactness would explain why female virginity was prized, and why fallen women and jews were vilified. Moreover, since the image of what you see was supposed to lodge in your soul and there ennoble or demean it, people who LOOKED intact, but actually weren't, were walking disaster areas! Somewhere (in two different places, and long ago) I read that a married woman was considered still intact because her husband had the rest of her completeness, and that St Kentigern pronounced a rape victim an honorary virgin because it wasn't her fault that she was no longer intact and therefore no longer beautiful. Pippin Pippin Michelli, Ph.D Assistant Professor of Art History, St Olaf College http://www.stolaf.edu/people/michelli/index4.html -----Original Message----- From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thursday, August 05, 1999 1:32 PM Subject: Re: FEAST 5 August However, I have not noticed > any male saints referred to as "virgin" and surely some of them > qualified. Does anyone have any insights other than the obvious one > that females were defined in terms of their social usefulness as breeders? > What about St Alexis, whose vita was included in the psalter made (or adapted) for Christina of Markyate as an example to her (i.e. the St Albans Psalter)? (I couldn't find him in Butler) Cheers, Jim Bugslag %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%