Melancholia and the Lovesick Rapist in Medieval Iberian Literature

Abstract This article investigates the intersection between the medical condition of lovesickness and the social phenomenon of rape. While rape in medieval culture has been studied through the disciplinary lens of gender studies, theology, sociology, and legal theory, the influence of medical epistemology on these reprehensible acts of violence has been overlooked. The advent of the branch of knowledge known as medical humanities allows us to fill in this gap by looking into the clinical treatises that circulated widely in medieval Europe and served as curricula in medieval universities. This article argues that because intercourse with the beloved was recommended as therapy for lovesickness in the medical texts on the disease, such texts did more than inform physicians and natural philosophers about the causes, effects, and treatments for this dangerous condition, but helped normalize the hypersexuality of melancholic, lovesick men and, in so doing, provided hermeneutic tools for defending and justifying sexual aggressions. Under these circumstances, women’s bodies were perceived and treated as mere medicinal objects for healing men’s sickness and saving men’s lives.