Venus Verticordia ("Changer of Hearts"[1] or "Heart-Turner"[2]) was an aspect of the Roman goddess Venus conceived as having the power to convert either virgins or sexually active women from dissolute desire (libido)[3] to sexual virtue (pudicitia).[4] Under this title, Venus was especially cultivated by married women, and on 1 April she was celebrated at the Veneralia festival[5] with public bathing.
The epithet Verticordia derives from the Latin words verto, "turn", and cor, the heart as "the seat of subjective experience and wisdom".[2] The conversion, however, was thought of as occurring in the mind – the mens or "ethical core".[2] Women were thus viewed as having the moral agency necessary for shaping society, albeit in roles differing from men.[2]
Venus Verticordia was one of several goddesses whose new or reinterpreted theology or cult practice was meant to inform the conduct of women as a response to wartime upheaval and social crisis during the Roman Republic. The "turning" or conversion of Venus Verticordia was not meant to suppress sexual desire but to encourage its positive expression in marriage, a purposing of its power for social benefit[6] in a display of personal excellence.[7]
- ^ Staples 1998, p. 104.
- ^ a b c d Langlands 2006, p. 58.
- ^ DiLuzio 2019, p. 7, citing Valerius Maximus 8.15.12, virginum mulierque mens a libidine ad pudicitiam.
- ^ Langlands 2006, p. 50.
- ^ Kiefer 1934, p. 125.
- ^ Kraemer 1992, p. 57.
- ^ Langlands 2006, pp. 37, 58–59.