Misogyny in the mediterranean medieval philosophy: An analysis of st. Augustine's Arguments and expressions regarding female sex through feminist literary criticism

Defining misogyny, one of our era's biggest problems, discovering its history's missing pieces, and detecting in which circumstances and to what degree it appears in the works of especially leading figures would provide us with the necessary data for us to solve this problem. For this purpose, in our research St. Augustine's corpus, one of the leading figures of the Mediterranean Middle Ages, is examined by the perspective of misogyny, and the provided results are evaluated by comparing them with all his era's characteristic elements. Thus, a small piece in the accounts of history but a huge piece in respect to its effect is presented with its details in the history of misogyny. This study consists of four main sections: The first section where an account is presented concerning Christianity and Christian philosophy, women and misogyny, the necessary information is demonstrated in order to clarify the subject and a theory is offered based on present misogyny theories; second section where St. Augustine's corpus is evaluated by feminist literary criticism after the phases of coding, theme identification, and categorization and where all data is presented regarding this topic; third section where these data are re-examined and discussed within every aspect—religion, philosophy, medicine, culture—of St. Augustine's life and era that has a forming effect; and finally a conclusion section where St. Augustine's place in the history of misogyny and his contribution to misogyny are discussed in the light of all provided data, and their evaluation. At the end of the research, it is clear that St. Augustine has a misogynistic approach to the matters of the sexes, even though he presents pro-women ideas and arguments on some topics to the degree of not contradicting Sacred Scripture and Jesus while accepting the common prejudices of his era. His approach becomes a pragmatist one in cases that could be defined as pro-women. It is necessary to find the problem, define it, and examine it thoroughly before taking action in order to solve this very problem. This study defines and examines misogyny as a problem thoroughly. However, misogyny is a problem that has a huge scope both historically and geographically. Yet, in this study whole written arguments of only one of the leading figures of the Mediterranean Middle Ages. For the purpose of putting forward the misogynistic past of the Mediterranean Middle Ages, our methods should be applied to the works of all leading figures and all scopes of their society and era.