Bernard of Clairvaux – a contemporary of Abelard’s, and an abbot of such formidable sanctity that he had ended up both a saint and a Doctor of the Church – had lamented the sheer tempestuousness of male sexual need. ‘To be always with a woman and not to have sexual relations with her is more difficult than to raise the dead.’14 The entire point of the chastity to which monks like Bernard had pledged themselves was that it was not easy. It obliged them to fit their desires with bit and rein, and serve as models of self-control. Not every man, of course, had the fortitude to live as a monk; but
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