The Church Father St Augustine (354-430) had already stated that in sexual relations there should always be the hope of fertilization. And in the past at least that was only possible with a stiff penis and normal testicles. ‘Go forth and multiply,’ as it says in Genesis. Well, impotent men were incapable of that and hence were violating the sacrament of marriage — it was as simple as that. From the thirteenth century onwards, following Augustine, ecclesiastical law considered it more or less a mortal sin if impotent and hence infertile men turned out to have entered into marriage. The same applied to eunuchs and hermaphrodites and men with undescended testicles, who for that reason could be indicted by an ecclesiastical court.
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During the trial the defendants in any case had to prove that they possessed a normal sexual apparatus, and a jury composed of theologians, doctors and midwives had to assess it. From the trial proceedings it is clear that where necessary the jurors even spent the night at the defendant’s bedside in order to be able to judge any nocturnal erections occurring. The pompous rituals surrounding these trials indirectly confirmed the power of the Catholic Church. Originally there was a degree of discretion, but during the course of the sixteenth century the church authorities made the leap from mental to actual voyeurism. Not only was a demonstration of the erect member required, but its ‘elasticity and natural movement’ must be demonstrated. Sometimes the jury even demanded ‘a proof of ejaculation’. Naturally this was eventually no longer sufficient and the married couple had to make love in the presence of the jury, the so-called congress.
The treatment of eunuchs and hermaphrodites also showed that for the church there was a taboo on pleasure. Though eunuchs could not ejaculate, some of them could manage a quite satisfactory erection, so that their wives were by no means always unsatisfied. But after 1587, irrespective of the wishes of the partners, these marriages had to be annulled by decree of Pope Sixtus v. This gruesome pope could not bear to think that these men should sleep in the same bed as their wives instead of living chastely together. He wrote about this in a letter to the papal nuncio in Spain, who was also bishop of Navarre. According to Sixtus, the eunuchs had consorted with women ‘with filthy lewdness’ and ‘impure enbraces’ and even presumed to have a right to marry. In the pope’s eyes the fact that the women knew of this ‘defect’ made the offence all the more grave. Sixtus was taking to its logical conclusion both Augustine and Thomas Aquinas’ view of procreation as the primal and true goal of marriage.
In Greek mythology Hermaphroditus was the son of the gods Hermes and Aphrodite. On one of his journeys the nymph Salmacis falls in love with him because of his great physical beauty. She tries to seduce him, but fails. When he goes for a swim in a cool lake, believing himself alone, Salmacis dives in after him, and embraces and kisses him. She prays to the gods that she may be united with him. Her prayer is answered, and they become one flesh.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries French society was caught up in a furious public debate on the differences between men and women. In his book Damning the Innocent the French historian Pierre Darmon states that there was a certain envy of the supposedly unbridled sex lives of deviants. From the sixteenth century onwards hermaphrodites — who during the Middle Ages were sometimes burned alive and were regarded as children of Satan — received an apparently milder treatment. They were examined by doctors and midwives, who subsequently stated publicly which sex was applicable. In doubtful cases the person involved was allowed to choose for himself/herself, but then had to abide by that choice for the rest of his/her life. Leaving one’s sexual role open or occasionally switching identities, as the mood took one, as Marie/Marin le Marcis tried to do, was unforgivable fraud. This hermaphrodite chambermaid fell in love with a fellow maid, decided it was more useful to go through life as a man from then on and married her, with her full consent. To their astonishment the happy young pair were immediately detained, imprisoned and brought before the court. The experts unanimously accused them of fraud and, inevitably, sodomy and obscenity. ‘If one of the jury had not ventured to feel Marin’s private parts — and felt something masculine — the poor
man would have been burnt alive and his wife flogged in the market place and afterwards banished.’ As it was things turned out differently: Marin was reprieved, but was condemned to live as a woman.