Dear Mr Nugent: it seems to me that the admirable Sarah Hamilton has given
you what you need. For myself, I was puzzled why you needed pre-XIIth
century references. Great though some of the earlier people were, their
remains are often rather poor about detailed matters, such as that of
nocturnal pollution. It in fact seems to me that wet dreams etc. are
natural human manifestations, and I'd doubt that the religious of any age
were exempt from them and the problems of will and willfulness they imply.
In an earlier posting, I cited some references and reinsert them here.
And doubtless one could run back from Peter d'Ailly to earlier traditions.
Here is that letter to Dr. Karen Jolly kn Hawaii
"See also Celestiniana, ed. Arsenio Frugoni in Istituto storico italiano
per il medio evo, studi storici, fasc. 6-7 in 1954 p. 62 about Peter of
Murrone's dream that he was mounting the steps toward a high palace-like
monastery with his ass and "ille malus asellus cepit turpiter de corpore
eicere stercus, quasi manducasset herbas teneras." The Trinity appears to
his abashed self saying "ascende. Quare non ascendis? Pro eo quod asellus
facit consuetudinem suam? Quid tibi? Ascende." This concerns the saint's
wet dreams and is introduced by "Item alio tempore accidit ei multa
temptatio, quod facere deberet quando et accideret pollutio, si eodem die
celebraret an non."
The matter was of importance to the clergy because no less a person than
Peter d'Ailly in his Vita Coelestini in the Monumenta coelestiana
(Paderborn 1921) ed. F. Z. Seppelt, pp. 156-57 discourses on the four
reasons for nocturna pollucio at some length and cites the above case."
John Mundy
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