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mic distance. In no area is this more true than in the study of sexuality – our attitude towards our own sexual natures and the moral and ethical problems it gives rise to. The extremely demanding and authoritarian teachings of the church on the subject of marriage, and the concomitant issue of sexual practice outside of marriage, is a significant part of our Christian heritage that is still very potent today; even amongst people and communities that outwardly reject it.

It is this that provokes denunciation from the idealist and the secular historian alike; Edward Gibbon is perfect example of this: “The Enumeration on the whimsical laws, which they most circumstantially imposed on the marriage bed, would force as mile from the young, and a blush from the fair.” In both his attitude and his tone, Gibbon has influenced many more recent historians. Robin Lane Fox, for example, devoted the greater part of chapter of his work Pagans and Christians, to early Christian sexual morality with a“fullness and relish that almost make up for a total lack of sympathy.” He describes virginity, for example, as “nothing but the most selfish of human ideals.” Wolfgang Leech, following on from the work of Gibbon, is also highly critical; stating that asceticism and intolerance are the two main contributions that Christianity has made to European culture.

It is upon this background that the work of Peter Brown has emerged.His essays on early Christian monasticism and his The Body and Society on sexual renunciation in the early church, takes on its full significance. Brown is also one of the aforementioned secular historians that posses no personal loyalty of affiliation to the Christian Church, who will increasingly dominate the study of the subject in the coming years. Brown’s approach, however, is significantly more tolerant than that of Gibbon and his successors. He is not dominated by the moral absolutes of the enlightenment; with its,often open, hostility to traditional Christian morality. For brown,history can be broken down into individuals who had the capacity to make free choices and exercise free will; whilst having a complete understanding of the consequences of their actions.

For Brown, the Kernel of traditional Christian sexual morality was the concern with single-mindedness, or purity of heart; a reorientation of an individuals’ will so that it would cease to serve the warring impulses of man, and respond, instead, to the will of God. Brown goes on to note that it is hardly surprising that the ideal of purity of heart and of virginity became quickly inseparable, and that the leadership of Christian communities became the purview of a small,celibate, religious elite.

These suggestions of early Christian discipline may suggest penitential system that would have been more dominant and dictatorial than the early Church ever actually developed. The rules of early Christian communities; with their broad ranging and unbending condemnation of adultery, fornication and homosexuality, appears to leave little room for flexibility. This inflexibility of the rules can only have had the effect that they could often simply not be applied.

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