To Embrace a Sack of Excrement”

Odo of Cluny and the History of an Image

Bibliographic Data

ID10779808
AuthorsChristopher A Jones (0000-0002-8768-9140, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume96
Issue3
Pages662-698
Publication date2021-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSpeculum (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-7134 • E-ISSN: 2040-8072
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/714425
OpenAlexW3174920737
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited15

For all his fame as a monastic reformer, Odo of Cluny (d. 942) is also notorious today for having supposedly said that “to embrace a woman is to embrace a sack of excrement.” The present article explores the history of this misquotation by reexamining Odo’s actual words in the context of his writings and their reception. The antifeminism of his reference to “a sack of excrement” was incidental to Odo’s concerns, among which was a general suspicion of all physical beauty and human reactions to it. Odo’s writings show surprising nuance in both analyzing the problem of beauty and imagining a solution. In a novel reconception of monastic safeguards against the allure of attractive bodies, Odo merged two traditionally separate discourses, one about a particular kind of spiritual vision, the other about a bodily discipline known as custody of the eyes. The subtlety of this attempt was nevertheless lost on most other medieval authors, who, in adopting Odo’s image of the “sack of excrement,” reduced it to the misogynistic insult that has spread in the modern era

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Beauty · Context (archaeology · Literature · Sack · Engineering · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · History · Medieval Literature and History · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

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