Theories and references to female semen in Medieval Greek Literature

Abstract

This paper deals with the controversy between those who affirmed the existence of female semen and those who denied it within the medieval Greek literature. From the seventh century until the late Middle Ages there was a clear interest in the matter. The three most important authors of our work have been Michael of Ephesus, Theophilus Protospatarius and Joannes medicus. We owe the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae the computerization of the texts of all the authors used, as well as many others in which we have not found anything related to our objective. Certainly, the already large number of authors and texts of the Middle Ages collected in this extraordinary lexical and computerized tool will be expanded considerably in the near future, so it can be said that this work offers a provisional state of the matter on the aforementioned controversy and shows the way to future researchers.