IMPURITY. - From Latin impuritas, the state of being impure, it is one of the terms used to indicate the vice against purity (v.). In general it consists in mixture with a less perfect thing: therefore man renders himself impure when he subjects himself to creatures, loving them inordinately, which happens in every sin. One can therefore say that i. is the opaque part found in every action contaminated by sin, but in a specific sense it is used to denote the sins contrary to the sixth commandment, and is therefore synonymous with lust (v.).

Legal i. or uncleanness, in the Old Testament, is the state of one who has contracted legal stain. It was caused by the use, contact or proximity, according to the case, of impure things such as tombs and certain foods (Num. 19:11-22; Lev. 11), by leprosy (ibid. 13-14) and by certain phenomena having to do with human generation (ibid. 12 and 15). It had varying duration and extent and deprived the one contaminated of the right to participate publicly in worship and sometimes in social life. It ceased with the ritual purifications, different according to the kinds and described in the passages cited.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: H. Lesère, Impureté légale, in DB, III, coll. 858-61; I. Schuster-G. B. Holzammer, Manuale di storia biblica, Turin 1939, pp. 338-40, 730.

Giuseppe Pistoni

@incollection{ec6_impurita, author = {Pistoni, Giuseppe}, title = {Impurità}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VI}, pages = {1732--1733}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/impurita} }

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Impurity

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