The Open/Closed Body

Medieval theologians formulated and perpetuated sexist views through complicated constructions of gendered moral character, building on their conceptualization of the soul and its role in sin. This section will delve deeper into the physiological rationalizations for women’s inherent sinfulness.

Women’s propensity towards sin was explained due to their bodily difference from men. Nancy Caciola dissected popular treatises on women that perpetuated misogynistic beliefs using humoral theory. She argued that due to beliefs in the difference between male and female physiognomy, women were classified as more impressionable and thus more susceptible to demonic influences and possession. (1) Medieval thinkers sorted women into “colder” humeral complexions, which caused “melancholic” and “phlegmatic” temperaments, while men were noted to have a “hotter” complexion, resulting in “choleric” and “sanguine” temperaments. Caciola explained that eventually medieval scholars conflated the temperaments and complexions with constructions of gender, so “colder” temperaments became coded as female, and “hotter” as male. (2) Women having these “colder” temperaments were seen as having a more permeable nature and a predictor for “moral instability.” (3) Caciola wrote “the open/sealed duality is inscribed upon the body not only as a matter of gender but as a result of the individual’s moral status…the normatively male body type is aligned with inviolacy and virtue; the normatively female, with transgression and sin.” (4) While men’s closed, hot bodies made them, at a base level, more morally “good,” women were aligned with inherently sinful tendencies that would be harder for them to resist. As noted in another section, women’s colder bodies also correlated to their placement to the northside of churches.

Men and women were both believed to have been created with their souls in the image of God; however, only adult men existed as reflections of Christ, whose physical male body they shared. (5) Christ’s body as the bringer of redemption and salvation gave men a more positive association with the divine, as women’s physical bodies were distanced from the male. (6) Men’s bodies were also given positive representation in the male Adam, who was typologically connected with Christ. On the other hand, women were associated with the sinful, temptuous Eve, who had been connected with the devil. (7) Eve, and the female body associated with her, becomes an extension of the devil, almost existing in his image rather than God’s. (8) Not being created within the physical image of God and lacking the internal heat afforded to men, women’s physical bodies were defenseless and open for demonic possession and influence. If women were already presumed to be predisposed to sin and transgression, Taddeo di Bartolo was consistent with cultural norms in ensuring that the implicit warning message of the Last Judgment demonstrates moral admonition to women especially.

(1) Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 130.

(2) Caciola, 144.

(3) Caciola, 144.

(4) Caciola, 157.

(5) For example, priests would state “this is my body” during the performance of the Eucharist.

(6) Caciola, 127.

(7) Caciola, 137.

(8) Medieval Italians viewed Eve’s body ambivalently. While her body did hold connotations of sin and temptation, there was also a prevalent Marian typology embedded within the figure of Eve. See Kim E. Butler, “The Immaculate Body in the Sistine Ceiling,” Art History 32, no. 2 (2009): 250-289. Butler describes the body of Adam and Eve as typological precedents for Christ and Mary (Butler, 259).