Recent scholarship has challenged the idea of a medieval double standard whereby men were not punished for adultery. It remains true, however, that elite men often had fairly free rein as long as they stayed away from the wives and daughters of their social equals. The example of King David and the way he became the archetype of the Biblical repentant sinner demonstrates the complexities of masculine sexual sin. Christianity makes the sin that occasioned the writing of the Psalms a predominantly sexual one (in contrast to Judaism and Islam) and provided a model of contrition without opprobrium.

Ruth Karras is distinguished teaching professor of history at the University of Minnesota. As of September 2018 she will be Lecky Professor of History at Trinity College Dublin. In spring 2018 she is a visiting fellow at the St. Andrews Institute for Medieval Studies. She is the author of five books, most recently the third edition of her Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others. Her book Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages (2012) was awarded the Joan Kelly Prize by the American Historical Association. She has co-edited three volumes of essays, most recently Entangled Histories: Knowledge, Authority, and Jewish Culture in the Thirteenth Century, with Elisheva Baumgarten and Katelyn Mesler, as well as the Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, with Judith M. Bennett. She is second vice-president of the Medieval Academy of America and serves on the editorial board of the American Historical Review. She is a past president of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians.

Free and open to the public.

This event is part of the Thursday Series of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.