"Larga é a porta que aprofunda no inferno": o poder eclesiástico, o controle do corpo e a conduta sexual do clero no epistolário de Pedro Damião (século XI)

Abstract

Despite being present since the early times of Christianity, the ideal of sexual abstinence hadn’t been widely imposed as a canonical rule to the members of the Church until the 11th century. Often were the exhortations of Patristic representants in defense of the continence of the religious since the roles they would perform as intermediaries between God and the humanity demanded virtues intrinsic to the role model of spirit purity and abnegation of the flesh. Still, a myriad of incontinent cleric – those who were married, in concubinage or unrestrained to libido impulses, with both men and women – integrated the religious, political, and social fabric of the Latin Christianity. The dawn of the second millennium, however, was stage of important transformations within the scope of doctrinal provisions of Christian orthodoxy, favoring the blooming and spread of renovation movements and reformation of the Roman Ecclesia, initiatives which came both from secular powers and ecclesiastics. Beyond the meteoric political ascension of the Church, the reflections and debates aroused by the reformer circles redefined several aspects related to the control of the body and sexuality of central medieval men and women. It was in this context marked by the efforts of cleric moralization and sacralization – circumscribed by historiography to the Papal Reform concept –, in which acted Peter Damian (1007-1072), an Italian abbot and cardinal-bishop, considered one of the precursors of multiple reform movements which, gradually, were agglutinated to the Roman Curia. His writings, in special, his epistolary work, are important sources for the study of the transformations that lasted throughout the eleventh century ecclesiastical doctrine. During his trajectory as Prior of the hermitage of Fonte Avellana and cardinal in charge of the episcopate of Ostia, Peter Damian acted in different secular and clerical environments, stablished contact and connections with representatives of both powers, severely fought what he considered moral deviations among his contemporaries and aimed at severely promoting his disciplinary project for the members of the Church. In an attempt to investigate his influence and contribution to the efforts of redefining the norms of body and sexuality control in Central Middle Age, we have guided our focus to the discursive rhetoric utilized by the Italian cleric through some of its booklets, like Liber Gomorrhianus(or “Book of Gomorrah”), dedicated to report, fight and punish the moral corruption that would spread among the members of the cleric – the most vile and abominable among the urges of the flesh: the practice of sodomy. Together with other of his treaties, like the booklets De caelibatu sacerdotum and Contra intemperantes clericos, both versed on the condemnation of the cleric marriage, or even the famous Liber Gratissimus, dedicated to fight simony, it shows the different nuances of Peter Damian’s exacerbated rigorism towards his colleagues’ moral conduct. Assisted by the methodological support of Content Analysis and using, as theoretical foundation, the Discursive Field and the concepts of identity, alterity, and deviance, we have aimed at comprehending how Peter Damian and the social subjects with whom he conversed favored the resurgence of body use control in medieval time.