Discuss the place of the Church in the development of medieval ideas of sexuality and marriage

Abstract

European people were deeply accustomed to a secular and traditional running of questions such as marriage and sexuality. The Church proposed new values and ideas about these issues which were often very far removed from former codes of ethics. Medieval ideals of marriage and sexuality were the outcome of these two competing influences. What were exactly these two conflicting influences ? In what extent did the Church model manage to overcome the lay model ?