The most detailed discussion, verging on the salacious, of the degree to which sexual contact is permissible, gave rise to the name “theologiens mammillaires,” because some of them—Benzi, for example, and Rousselot—sanctioned “tatti mammillari” (mammillary palpation). This doctrine was condemned by Pope Benedict XIV., which proves that the Catholic Church as such has not invariably sanctioned these things.
In the “Golden Key” (“Llave de Oro”) of Antonio Maria Claret, the Archbishop of Cuba, in Debreyne’s “Moechialogie,” in the writings on moral theology of Liguori, Dens, and J. C. Saettler, in the “Diaconales,” widely diffused in France, and in many similar works, all possible sexual problems which have come before the confessional, or possibly might come there, have been thoroughly discussed—even the most improbable and impossible. Coitus interruptus, irrigatio vaginæ post coitum, pollutions (nocturnal seminal emissions), bestiality, necrophilia, figuræ Veneris (positions in which coitus is effected), procuration, various kinds of caresses, conjugal onanism, abortion, varieties of masturbation, pæderasty, intercourse with a statue (!), psychical onanism, pædication, etc.—all have been subjected to a subtle critical theological analysis. In a sense, these writings are really valuable mines for the study of psychopathia sexualis. Later we shall have frequently to touch on the religious etiology of the individual sexual aberrations.
From the preceding discussion it appears quite clearly that the relations between religion and the vita sexualis are to be regarded as general anthropological phenomena, and not as peculiarities arising by chance, the accidental results of beliefs, time, or race. The modern physician, jurist, and criminal anthropologist must therefore pay the most careful attention to the religious factor in the normal and abnormal sexual life of mankind, if he wishes to arrive at an unprejudiced and undisturbed knowledge of sexual anomalies. Havelock Ellis has also laid stress on the leading significance of religious sexual perceptions. He proved that small oscillations of erotic feelings accompany all religious perceptions, and that in some circumstances the erotic feelings overwhelm the religious perceptions.[68] We still meet with sexual excesses under the cloak of religion, as occurred recently (1905) in Holland, and (1901) in England. In the English instance young girls were initiated into the most horrible forms of unchastity in the religious association founded by the American Horos and his wife, and known by the name of “Theocratic Unity.”[69]
Friedrich Schlegel, as Rudolf von Gottschall remarks, proclaimed in his “Lucinde” the new evangel of the future, in which voluptuousness—as during the time of Astarte—is to form a part of religious ritual. The reawakened tendency of our own day towards romantic modes of perception would certainly seem to involve the danger of a renewal and strengthening of religio-sexual ideas.
For as long as the feelings of love carry with them an inexpressible, overwhelming force, like that of religious perceptions, the intimate association between religion and sexuality will persist both in a good and a bad sense. An elderly physician, who in his interesting book detailed the experiences derived from forty years of practice,[70] made very apposite remarks regarding this religious sexualism. According to him, unbounded piety is “often no more than a sexual symptom,” proceeding from deprivation of love or satiety of love, the latter reminding us of the saying “Young whore, old devotee.” Moreover, this is true alike of man and woman. Piety dependent upon deprivation of love can often be cured by “castor, cold douches, or a well-arranged marriage with a robust, energetic man,” who drives away for ever the “heavenly bridegroom.”[71]
The religious perception is a completely general yearning, and the same is the case with the associated sexual feelings. The boundless everlasting impulsion which both contain does not admit of any individualization. For this reason, the religio-sexual perceptions can play only a subordinate part in the individual love of the future; they constitute only the first step in the history of the idealization of the sexual impulse, and of its spiritualization to form love.
In the romance “Scipio Cicala,” by Rehfues, the Neapolitan abbess calls out “I love love,” after she has gone through the enumeration of all the phases of passionate love towards God. The modern man, however, says to the woman, and the woman says to the man, “I love you”; the general religious love has capitulated to the individual love.
This is clearly the direction taken by “the way of the spirit” in love, which we shall now pursue further.
[33] Cf. F. von Andrian, “Some Results of Modern Ethnology,” in “Correspondenzblatt der deutschen Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie, und Urgeschichte” (1894, No. 8, p. 71).