This was so different to how the "Fathers" of the Church regarded their own male parts. When I looked into this I found to my surprise that their attitude towards women was shaped by their attitude to their penises! One of the greatest of them, St Augustine, believed that the pursuit of sanctity meant gaining complete control over his own body. The human body, like nature as a whole, had become corrupted through the Fall of Adam and Eve. It, like nature, was now to be subdued and conquered.

St. Augustine was very influential in this matter. Influenced by the Stoics, he had worked hard to gain complete control over his body - but there was one organ which he could not conquer. He incredibly saw its involuntary movements as disobedience. Eventually he worked out this was so. He theorised that God had given men this disobedient organ to remind them that the "original sin" was disobedience. Later others took his theories still further. They asked how, if men could not control the movements of their penis, could a woman give a male an erection? The answer was that she was using magic, enlisting in this the power of the Serpent, of Satan. Augustine wrote his thoughts in his book "On Marriage and Concupiscence".

"When the first man transgressed the law of God, he began to have another law in his members which was repugnant to the law of his mind, and he felt the evil of his own disobedience when he experienced in the disobedience of his flesh a most righteous retribution recoiling on himself... When it must come to man's great function of the procreation of children the members which were expressly created for this purpose will not obey the direction of the will, but lust has to be waited for to set these members in motion, as if it had legal right over them, and sometimes it refuses to act when the mind wills, while often it acts against its will! Must not this bring the blush of shame over the freedom of the human will, that by its contempt of God, its own Commander, it has lost all proper command for itself over its own members? Now, wherein could be found a more fitting demonstration of the just depravation of human nature by reason of its disobedience, than in the disobedience of those parts..?" (Augustine - p32Gos)

Augustine wrote the crucial scriptural interpretations and texts on which the Catholic church today bases its ban on contraception. He concluded by attacking all sexual pleasure by saying: "This lust, then, is not in itself the good of the nuptial institution; but it is obscenity in sinful men, a necessity in procreant parents, the fire of lascivious indulgences, the shame of nuptial pleasures". ch11 "Lust" was only tolerated when it was directed to the continuance of the species "It is impermissible and shameful to have intercourse with one's wife while preventing the conception of children" 85 eu ch 13 In the 20th Century Pope Pius XI would quote Augustine and add that God would pursue "with the highest degree of hatred" all those who practised contraception. (Casti Connubii, 1930)

Augustine lamented that this disobedient and "unseemly member" was celebrated in Roman pagan rites. "the rites of Liber were celebrated with such unrestrained turpitude, that the private parts of a man were worshipped in his honour. Nor was this abomination transacted in secret that some regard at least might be paid to modesty, but was openly and wantonly displayed. For during the festival of Liber this obscene member, placed on a car, was carried with great honour, first over the cross-roads in the country, and then into the city. But in the town of Lavinium a whole month was devoted to Liber alone, during the days of which all the people gave themselves up to the must dissolute conversation, until that member had been carried through the forum and brought to rest in its own place; on which unseemly member it was necessary that the most honourable matron should place a wreath in the presence of all the people". The City of God. Book 7 Ch 21

Some Christians would castrate themselves rather than have their penises disobey. Thus the famous Christian writer Origin who died in 254AD said he followed the example of other Christians when he castrated himself at the age of 18. (Commentary on Mt. 15.3 - see p 51 of Eunuchs.) This was not peculiarly an early Christian concept. In India the Jains taught that men could beneficially achieve the withering up of the male organs by meditation. (p 39)

This belief that the male sex drive was an obstacle to perfection lead pious Christian men into dreadful guilt complexes - and in turn they tried to shift the blame for this onto the influence of women. Tertullian, another major Christian authority, expressed his fear of female power in a letter to women that read in part: "even the grace and beauty you naturally enjoy must be obliterated by concealment and negligence.... it is to be feared, because of the injury and violence it inflicts on the men who admire you." St. Augustine likewise wrote in a letter: "What is the difference whether it is in a wife or mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman." (Letters 243, 10). Hans Kung noted that "Augustine shaped Western Theology and piety more than any other theologian - he became the spiritual father of the medieval paradigm" that would lead to the burning of thousands of women as witches.

St. Augustine would go totally off his head with fury when the pretty woman who might force on him an erection with her magic turned out to be also an hermaphrodite or transsexual - but more about this later.