Devil's Gate

“The Devil’s gateway” is Tertullian’s phrase for woman as the supposed passage through which evil entered human life. In the book’s account, it condenses a Christian tradition that casts the female body as a threat to spiritual purity, then turns strikingly into its opposite: the Virgin Mary becomes heaven’s portal, a source of healing and a mediator of compassion. The expression’s importance lies in this reversal, which exposes how the same feminine symbolism can be made to signify both danger and salvation.

Christian Suspicion of the Female Body

The phrase appears within an account of Christianity’s division of body from soul and life from spirit. Original sin makes the body an enemy of the soul, and earthly existence appears marked by corruption. Since woman remains “Other,” the Christian man’s distrust of the flesh is directed especially toward her: the temptations of earth, sex, and the devil are represented as incarnate in woman. The claim that she led Adam to sin therefore makes her more than a participant in a foundational story; it assigns her the symbolic role of an entrance through which sin reaches humanity.

Tertullian’s condemnation makes that role explicit. Addressing woman as the devil’s gateway, he blames her for persuading the man whom the devil had not confronted directly, and connects her to the death of God’s Son. He further prescribes mourning and rags as the proper dress for a woman. In a separate formulation, he calls her a temple built over a sewer. These statements turn a theological accusation into a judgment on women’s very existence and appearance: woman is presented not as an equal participant in embodied life but as its contaminating, culpable emblem.

A Tradition of Repugnance

The surrounding argument shows how the denunciation belongs to a wider Christian suspicion of the feminine body. Augustine expresses horror at the proximity of sexual and excretory organs, while Christian doctrine preserves Christ from the stain of birth through the affirmation of the Virgin’s miraculous birth. Earlier Church Fathers had thought Mary gave birth as other women did, but the view attributed to Ambrose and Augustine prevailed: the Virgin’s womb remained closed. The contrast is telling. Ordinary female embodiment is treated as a source of shame, while the exceptional, protected body of Mary can be made sacred.

The book traces the afterlife of this repugnance beyond theology. Since the Middle Ages, having a body has been treated as an ignominy for woman; even scientific inquiry, it argues, was long hindered by disgust. Linnaeus dismissed the study of women’s genital organs as abominable, and the French doctor Des Laurens wondered how a rational man could be attracted to them. These examples extend the logic behind “the Devil’s gateway”: the female body is framed as an obstacle to reason and spiritual dignity, not simply as a physical fact.

From Gateway to Portal

The account then sets Tertullian’s image against the Virgin’s contrasting symbolic role. Mary is associated with fertility, dew, and the source of life; recurring images place her beside a well, spring, or fountain, and call her the Fountain of Life. She is not represented as a creator, but as the one who nourishes and brings what is hidden in the earth into the light. She tempers passions, restores life, heals, and strengthens. Because life emanates from God, she becomes an intermediary between humanity and life, and between humanity and God.

The reversal is captured in the movement from “the Devil’s gateway” to heaven’s portal. In paintings, the Virgin opens a gate or window onto paradise or raises a ladder from earth toward heaven. She also pleads beside her Son for human salvation; in Last Judgment scenes, she invokes the authority of her motherhood. Her cloak shelters children, her mercy accompanies them through dangers across oceans and battlefields, and the Virgins of the Scales tip the judgment of souls toward the Good. The once-condemned association with womanhood becomes the basis of a role in rescue and intercession.

The Expression’s Contradiction

The two images do not simply cancel each other out. The book presents them as opposing constructions of woman: on one side, a dangerous Other blamed for sin; on the other, a figure of tender generosity who exceeds the strict boundaries of male-ordered society. The Virgin’s gentleness softens a world represented by male gods as governed by destiny, law, reason, and necessity. Her charity offers a counterweight to divine justice, and her knowledge of human contingency gives her favor an unpredictable, humane quality.

“The Devil’s gateway” therefore names more than a hostile insult. It marks the fearful side of a symbolic system that can also elevate woman into a sacred intermediary. Both images assign her meaning in relation to male spiritual needs: she is made the source of temptation or the means of salvation. The sharp reversal from gateway to portal reveals the instability of that symbolism, and how readily the same figure can be cast as the cause of humanity’s fall or its advocate before heaven.