1. Sexual behaviour and social control in Moldavia and Walachia (15th - 18th centuries)
For a long period, the Church had the monopole on the sexuality-related discourse. Some historians emphasized that Christianity has had a nearly obsessive fixation on the dynamics of sexual desire. Whether through repression, spiritualization, or regulation, Christianity has made the body and its passions central to what it means to be human and “saved.” Starting with the 14th century, in Western Europe there has been a laicization of the social control of sexuality, augmented in the 16th century, but the foundation of the civil laws to regulate sexuality was represented by ideas taken over from the canon law. In the Orthodox space, the Church also associated the secular power to the discourse, given that the monarch was a “defender of Orthodoxy,” too. The research will underline the way in which the civil and canon law (Pravila ritorului Lucaci, Codicele Voroneţean, Pravila de la Govora, Îndreptarea legii [1652], Cartea românească de învăţătură [1646], Pravilniceasca condică [1780], Codul penal [1783]) determine the norms for the sexual behaviour within the Romanian pre-modern society. However, as Jean–Louis Flandrin underlined, the civil and canon law only provide an abstract idea on certain social aspects; this is why one should consult the documents emitted by the laic and ecclesiastic courts of law, thus reaching a perfect combination between abstract and reality. The judiciary documents within different courts are in the archive funds of Iaşi and Bucharest and in the collection of manuscripts belonging to the Romanian Academy Library. Though they cannot draw the entire picture of the historical reality, the documents present diverse cases and attitudes regarding the sexual behaviour of certain individuals. For the bigger picture, we will analyze the references to sexuality within theological writings in the Romanian space, especially written by metropolitans of Moldavia and Walachia (Varlaam, Antim Ivireanu, Iacov Putneanu, Grigore, and Cozma). Another important research direction is the sexual behaviour of the clergy. The Catholic Church imposed celibacy and idealized the model of Adam before committing the sin, which means a total rejection of sexuality. On the contrary, the Orthodox Church imposed the marriage on the secular clergy, which also meant establishing norms on the sexual behaviour of the clergy. Things are different for the monastic clergy, as chastity is the essential condition in their case; the situation is similar to that within the Catholic Church. Nonetheless, though the Church idealized virginity and the rejection of sexuality, the homosexual relationships between monks and bishops were a serious issue. The situation also concerns the Romanian society, an aspect illustrated by certain legal documents and by the severe punishments applied to some bishops, such as burning at the stake. Though the real cause of the execution is not openly stated, the civil law shows that this punishment was reserved to severe sodomy cases. The discretion regarding these cases will represent a research subject, given the strong connection with the political–religious discourse.
2. Sexuality and Power in Moldavia and Walachia (15th - 18th centuries)
For Michel Foucault, sex is one of the four leaning pillars for the analytical history of power. Sexual behaviour, it seems, could play a central role in the political rhetoric of medieval power struggles. The renovating tendency of the political history – expressed within the past decades – has given a growing importance to the aspects regarding sexuality. As for the Romanian society, we propose to investigate certain directions that the previous researches did not study. A first direction targets the control that the prince exerts upon the nobility by regulating the matrimony. Dimitrie Cantemir noted that the prince carefully supervised the matrimonial relations between the families of boyars; no marriage could occur without his consent. This strict control encumbered the formation of strong clans and the perpetuation of a spirit of the land-owning elite. In this sense, we will analyze the cases where the prince forced the boyars to marry women coming from modest families – within the prince’s service – as consequence of alleged sexual offences; this included those families within the nobility. Another important aspect is the relation between sexuality and the power discourse. We have in view the elucidation of an ambiguity, created by using certain sexuality-related themes – taken from the religious discourse – and potentially vulgar sexual words and phrases within the power discourse. Another important issue is the sexuality of the prince. We will study here the discrepancy between the model of the Christian prince proposed by the Church and the actual sexual behaviour of the prince, often opposed to this model. There were cases when the princes married the fourth time, though the canons limited them to three, or bigamy cases, to which the clergy opposed slightly or at all. There is a similar attitude concerning the prince’s mistresses; it is hard to identify their status because the sources do not refer to them. Nonetheless, the presence of bastards at the court and their association with the throne indicate that the prince’s affairs were well known and tolerated, including by the higher clergy. The clergymen had firm views on the morality of principles mainly retrospectively, in what we may call the power delegitimation discourse. The immoral sexual behaviour justifies why a prince lost the power; we find interesting the association between this type of behaviour and the accusations of heresy and apostasy after some cases of converting to Islam (princes Iliaş Rareş and Mihnea the Bad).
3. The discourse on sexuality between tradition and modernity
In the last decades of the 18th century, the Romanian society went through a transformation process, by gradually abandoning the traditional civilization and by adapting to the western modernity. In this context, people talked about a moral crisis of the Romanian society, including from the perspective of social behaviour and of the discourse on sexuality. In this sense, our research will study the change in women’s status and their presence in the public space. By adopting a new dressing code and a new behavioural model, women became – in the opinion of certain contemporaries in the favour of a traditional lifestyle – the determining factor of the moral crisis. Another aspect refers to the divorce between State and Church – specific to the transformations brought by modernity – from the perspective of the discourse on sexuality. The Church – strongly anchored in tradition and conservatism – maintains the restrictive position towards sexuality, while the State tries to abrogate the pecuniary and punitive measures meant to limit the freedom of the individual. Let us mention only the so-called gloaba pântecelui (“fornication fee”), a tax on the sins of the flesh, annulled and then reinstated, because of the important incomes for both institutions. At the same time, in the first Romanian modernity, the Church tries to adjust to the times and to transmit important messages through the press. Vestitorul Besericesc (1840–1841) and Predicatorul Ecleziastic (1857) are just two of the journals through which a discourse is imposed. Women and feminine education become the stakes of this discourse because they are seen as solutions for the moral crisis. While the modern State is more preoccupied with the health state of the “nation,” with the ebullient and “contagious” sexuality that threatens more and more counties with syphilis. The Archives of the Ministry of Interior and the Sanitary Direction keep important information on the new discourse of the modern State involved in finding medical rather than moral solutions. A series of projects meant to “legitimate” the necessity of prostitution have been emerging. Moreover, from this moment on, the discourses of the two powers defend different values.
