Inside The Medieval Mind SEX 2/4 2008 04 24 (BBC 4)

Inside The Medieval Mind SEX 2/4 2008 04 24 (BBC 4) 550 MByte 58 minutes XviD http://www.open2.net/medievalmind/sex.html The four-part series, co-produced by The Open University, will explore the mindset and lifestyle of medieval citizens and will reveal what motivated people who lived between 800AD and 1400AD and what beliefs we share with our ancestors. Each hour-long episode, titled Knowledge, Sex, Belief, and Power, will focus on a different aspect of medieval life and will be a snapshot of life through all levels of the social hierarchy from the lowliest peasant to the highest Lord. In Sex, we unearth remarkable evidence of the complex passions of medieval men and women. On the one hand, there was a down-to-earth approach you might expect in a peasant society; on the other was an obsessive abhorrence of desire grounded in religious fervour. Professor Robert Bartlett explores the subject using medieval sources, and quotes some of the questions the 11th century Church recommended priests to ask their parishioners: "Have you committed fornication with your step-mother, your sister-in-law, your son?s fiancée, your mother?" Medieval knowledge about sexual difference was rudimentary and governed by a misogyny rooted in the Bible. Eve was the cause of original sin for tempting Adam in the Garden of Eden. An early church father had this to say to women: "The curse God pronounced on your sex weighs still upon the world. You are guilty ? you must bear its hardships. You are the Devil?s gateway". The Church preached hatred of the flesh and promoted the cult of virginity. Robert tells of the compelling story of Christina of Markyate who defied her parents and her husband to maintain her chastity. And yet it was the medieval world that gave birth to the modern concept of romantic love. 12th century troubadours began to sing songs of love to women who were to be adored. For the upper classes at least, the rules of love were reinvented in lengthy treatises, the heroes and heroines of love celebrated in poems: Lancelot and Guinevere, Tristan and Iseult. Robert tells the tragic story of the real life lovers Abelard and Héloise ? Abelard the great scholar, Héloise the niece of a canon at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Their love letters from the 12th century are astonishing in their frankness, passion and willingness to break conventions. Up, retrack- shunster For the entire series, as available:

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toonman361 (2009-10-23)

Thanks.