The Problematization of Nocturnal Emissions in Early Christian Syria, Egypt, and Gaul

The question of whether men who have had a nocturnal emission should commune or not provided a rare occasion for early Christian authors to use the male—rather than female—body to reflect on the purity of the individual Christian and the identity of the church. Examination of evidence from Syria, Egypt, and Gaul, dating to the third through fifth centuries, reveals that, as the church grew, the anxieties that male leaders expressed about emissions became increasingly internalized, both in social and personal terms. Changing modes of self-definition produced increasingly meticulous modes of problematization in Christian analyses of wet dreams, but not necessarily more or less stringent teachings on the subject.