Medieval Bulgaria, Serbia, Russia
Director of Medieval Studies at Ohio State University looks at 900-1700 AD
This is the first in a series of articles that reviews the book "Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700" by Eve Levin.
Review of Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700
Eve Levin
Cornell University Press 1989
Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700 is a scholarly work about a subject that has consistently been avoided by early historians. Sex, sexual practices, laws governing sex, and beliefs surrounding sexuality had significant clout in the lives of Slavic peoples - specifically, Bulgarians, Serbs, and Russians - when Eastern Orthodoxy was at its height. Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs takes a magnifying glass to this aspect of Slavic life and reveals it through examples gleaned from various historical sources.
Eve Levin, the author, editor of Russian Life and former Director of Medieval Studies at Ohio State University, sets forth two goals in her book. First, she wishes to explore this intriguing topic for the first time. Second, she attempts to investigate the relationships between the teachings of the church and the actual actions of the people following church doctrine.
The book focuses on the years between 900 and 1700 AD for specific purposes. Because Slavs were rather delinquent at adopting Christianity as their faith, it's impossible to examine sexuality in a non-Pagan environment until 900.
After 1700, Peter the Great began his process of westernizing Russia (his first project was founding St. Petersburg), so the strict Eastern Orthodox system began to fall out of favor.
The Orthodox Church saw sexuality as a public, religious matter, rather than a secular, private one. Also absent from their social structure was the idea of romantic love; marriage and sex were essentially the same thing, and sex outside of marriage was taboo.
For more about sexuality in a historical context, read Gerda Wever-Rabhehl's Sex and Desire.
