The Fourth Lateran Council under Pope Innocent III reinforced Church teachings on ritual purity, systematizing views of menstruation as a marker of sin and impurity inherited from biblical interpretations of Eve. This influenced confessional practices, marital relations, and women's participation in sacraments, embedding menstrual taboos deeper into Christian European society. Combined with scholasticism (e.g., Albertus Magnus), it portrayed women's bodies as sources of pollution, affecting daily life, midwifery, and social roles across classes.

The Council's doctrines echoed in medieval mystery plays, saints' lives, and theological poetry that depicted women as temptresses or penitents, influencing the symbolic language of sin and redemption in works by Dante and others. This religious framing shaped the subtext of courtly love poetry and later Gothic literature's anxieties around female corporeality. Poets addressing women's conditions in the 19th century, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, pushed against these inherited silences in their explorations of female suffering and agency.