rites and deities maintained their divinity in the mass
psyche despite all o f the Church’s attempts to blacklist
them. Some kings o f England were converted by the
missionaries, only to revert to the old faith when the
missionaries left. Others maintained two altars, one
devoted to Christ, one to the horned god. The peasants
never played politics—they clung to the fertility-magic
beliefs. Until the 10th century, the Church protested
this willful “devil worship” but could do nothing but
issue proclamations, impose penances and fasts, and, o f
course, carry on the unending struggle against nature
and the flesh.
This was a serious business, for the end o f the world
was believed to be imminent. For good Christians, prep
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Woman Hating
arations to depart this earthly abode included renunciation of all hedonistic activities (eating, dancing, fucking, etc. ). St. Simon Stylites, in his attempt to avoid the crime of being human, fled to the desert where he
erected a pillar on which he mortified his flesh for most
of his 72 years. He was tempted throughout by visions
of lascivious women. Indeed, it required starvation,
incessant prayer, and flagellation to be visited by lascivious women in those days and still lead the perfect Christian life.
The extremeness of the Church's ascetic imperatives
invited a reciprocal debauchery. The nobility, when
not out butchering, enforced that most curious of
customs, the
of newly wed peasant women. The Crusaders brought
back spices and syphilis from the East —that summing
up their knowledge of Arab culture. The clergy was
so openly corrupt and sensual that successive popes
were forced to acknowledge it. “By 1102 a church council had to state specifically that priests should be degraded for sodomy and anathematized for 'obstinate sodomy. ' ” 2 Bishops and cardinals were also known to
fuck around: “A typical example is that Bishop o f Toul
. . . whose favorite concubine was his own daughter
by a nun o f Epinal. ' 3 The monasteries and cloisters
were rampant with homosexuality, but nuns and monks
did occasionally get together for heterosexual fucking.
Until the 12th century, there were basically three
kinds of relationship to the Church. There were the
ascetics who fled the cities to roam like beasts in the
wilderness and emulated St. Simon, who made a pig-sty
his home when not on the pillar. The ascetics mortified
Gynocide: The Witches
123
the flesh while awaiting cataclysmic destruction and
