Did any Romans or Greeks actively resist the adoption of Christian sexual norms?

by [deleted]

[deleted]

PeddaKondappa2

No, because "Christian sexual norms" as we think of them were actually Roman sexual norms. Jesus hardly even talks about sex in the New Testament (he spends a lot more time talking about how loving money/wealth is evil), and given that historical non-Catholic and non-Protestant Christian communities outside of the West (such as in Ethiopia) do not have the exact same sexual norms as Christian Europeans historically did, I'm not sure if there are even such a thing as "Christian sexual norms" in some universal, trans-civilizational sense. The area under the religious jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church certainly had a rather well-defined set of sexual norms, but these norms had a deeper root in pre-Christian sexual norms rather than in Christianity itself.

There seems to be a general idea that the ancient Roman world was "sexually liberal" and that the subsequent medieval Christian world was "sexually conservative." I have no clue where this idea comes from, but it is totally wrong. The Roman world was actually renowned for its sexual modesty, and sexual honor was of paramount importance for Romans, especially for the more respectable elites. It's true that we hear tales of rampant hedonism and debauchery in some historical narratives, but the reason for that is precisely because such behavior was viewed as disgusting and immoral; as a modern analogy, it would be like accusing the U.S. Congress of being full of pedophiles and sex offenders as a way of discrediting them. Even before the advent of Christianity, the institution of marriage in the Roman world was a strictly monogamous relationship between husband and wife (polygamy was not considered acceptable, in stark contrast to King Solomon's many wives and concubines described in the Old Testament), and adultery and promiscuity were condemned (cf. Cicero's accusation in 60 BC that Memmius had committed adultery with the wife of Lucullus). The Roman concept of masculinity demanded that a man take action against sexual impropriety, which included punishing his wife if need be; a man who refused to take such action would be derided as a leno ("cuckold"). Husbands were seen as the natural guardians of their wives, and the latter were expected to be obedient to the former; in AD 21, Aulus Caecina Severus' proposal in the Senate that the wives of Roman governors should be barred from accompanying their husbands on overseas assignments was rejected by Messalinus on the basis that Roman women should not be left alone without male guardians. Roman views on homosexuality were also generally negative, with the passive male viewed with particular contempt as a mollis (meaning "effeminate" or "pliant"), though perhaps not as severe as those of their Germanic counterparts to the north who routinely prescribed death for acts of sodomy.

When the Romans adopted Christianity, all of these sexual norms didn't just disappear. Rather, Christianity adapted itself to the set of pre-existing sexual norms, and actually further propagated them with the Christianization of pagan peoples like the Slavs (which could be seen as an extension of Romanization).