Female Orgasm As Described By A Learned Nun
Scholars of the western canon of letters all seem to agree: the earliest surviving description of the female orgasm is by one Hildegard of Bingen, writing in her medical treatise Causae et Cureae, sometime between 1152 and 1158:
Cum enim femina cum masculo delectatur, tunc calor cerebri eius cum delectatione illud tangit, et gustum delectationis illius in se trahit, et sic virile semen in eam effunditur. Et cum semen in loco suo ceciderit, tunc ille vehementer calor de cerebro eius descendens attrahit ad se semen et tenet illud…
That’s not the complete passage, which is surprisingly hard to find for a non-scholar like myself. English translations are easier:
When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain, which brings with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight during the act and summons forth the emission of the man’s seed. And when the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and holds it, and soon the woman’s sexual organs contract, and all the parts that are ready to open up during the time of menstruation now close, in the same way as a strong man can hold something enclosed in his fist.
One well might wonder how a nun as chaste as Hildigarde is widely believed to have been knew so much about orgasms. Whatever the answer to that, it seems clear to me that she was writing with a goal of normalizing them as part of women’s sexual and reproductive health. Her further implication
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One can only speculate, but she does appear to be writing from experience.
Perhaps some later, more disappointing sexual encounters persuaded her to take a vow of celibacy?
Or, given the general lack of options for most in the 12th century, life as a nun was relatively appealing, even if it does come with some restrictions.
The treatise is not on Bibliotheca Augustana but the 1903 Teubner by Paul Kaiser is on the Internet Archive. It looks like page 104 de conceptu but page 76 de mulieris delectation would be worth skimming.
Thanks, Vagan. I got as far as the 1903 Teubner on the Archive, but not being a classical scholar — and my high school Latin being emphatically not up to the task! — that’s where I crapped out.
Has anyone ever tried “Would you like to go back to my room to parse Hildegarde of Bingen?” It worked for Abelard and Heloise!
A few notes on the 1967 German film about the birth control pill:
*The Golden Pill* is a German educational film about the birth control pill. Federal Republic of Germany, 1967: The film captures the mood of a society undergoing profound change, including in sexuality. The story centers on three high school girls who are discovering their sexuality and are confronted with the prudishness of the adults around them. As a result, the senior girls begin to organize themselves, draft a questionnaire that is distributed to the student body, and ultimately campaign for unrestricted access to the birth control pill, even for young, unmarried women. In the end, however, everything remains the same: The students pass their high school graduation exams, and the school board simply files this case of “rebellion” away. A voice-over sounds, pointing to global overpopulation and unwanted pregnancies among students as arguments in favor of contraception.