Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Medieval Sex

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

*WARNING this episode includes explicit language and adult themes*What were your medieval ancestors getting up to in the bedroom? Join sex historian Kate Lister, Betwixt the Sheets, to find out.Medievalist and George Michael super-fan Dr Eleanor Janega is on the podcast to chat all things aphrodisiacs, sex diaries and religious rules.Hear about bizarre fertility treatments involving actual fish in places they should never go, medieval chat up lines, and much, much more.You can watch Kate and Eleanor on screen together in History Hit's documentary, Medieval Pleasures here.Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Annie Coloe.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.This podcast includes music by Epidemic Sounds and archive clips from The Princess Bride 1987, Angela MacNamara's Sex Education for Girls 1980. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. In that case, I challenge you to a battle of wits. For the princess, to the death, I accept. Lovemaking just means making each other feel loved. Sex. It's been a thing for a while. In fact, one study found that the planet's first act of sex happened around a whopping 385 million years ago,

in a Scottish lake between two prehistoric fish. So yep, that means that medieval people were getting it on as well, and it wasn't all chastity belts and damsels in distress either. I'm Kate Lister, and thanks for joining me betwixt the sheets, to find out what sex was really like in the Middle Ages. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.

I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, sorry. Social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful dam. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. Hi there, I'm Kate Lister, sex historian and historical harlot, and thank you for joining me Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society.

Before we begin, please know, perhaps unsurprisingly, there will be some adult themes and explicit words in this episode. I think I'd disappoint you if there wasn't. The poet Philip Larkin famously declared that sex was invented in Britain in 1960s. but I can exclusively reveal to you today that this is in fact not true. People have been having it off for centuries. Today I'm joined by medievalist and George Michael Superfan, Dr. Eleanor Yenega, to talk about the sexual habits of our medieval ancestors.

But before we find out, I want to know what the great British public think of when they hear the words medieval and sex. So I sent my producers, Charlotte and Sophie, out and about to ask strangers what they thought. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Ooh, um, vigorously, is that an answer? Probably a lot and without contraceptive. Oh no, that's a lie. I've seen leather condoms. Uh, missionary?

Doing it outside, maybe, or like being watched, maybe. Because there wasn't any other entertainment. That's really bad to say, but yeah. I can imagine they're actually quite loose. I reckon. I reckon they got it on, maybe in groups. So there's a lot of different answers there, and I think that we could conclude with some confidence

that we don't know anything about medieval sex, but I know somebody who does. And so to help clear up our misconceptions about sex in the middle ages, here's Eleanor. So welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. Eleanor Janega, how are you? I'm great. Thank you for having me, Kate. I'm so excited to have you here.

The dream team. The dream team writes. You are an expert on medieval sexuality, sexual practices, and all things medieval and mucky, basically. That's right. My joke about this is that my specialties are medieval sex and medieval apocalypticism because the only things that matter are sex and death. And biscuits. And calm. Is anyone working on that?

Surely. There's multiple people work on food, so biscuits must be in there somewhere. Someone's going to be. They must be. One of the things that you spend a lot of time doing online and in your work is dispelling myths about the medieval period. And I think most periods in history have been revised and they're viewed by a modern audience in a certain way that isn't necessarily true. But I think the medieval is a particular victim of this. because we all think we know what we mean by medieval and most of the time it's nonsense, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, it's interesting because, you know, one of the things that you come across most often

when you hear people use the word medieval is they mean it as a pejorative. So whenever medieval comes into the public consciousness, it necessarily means bad or retrograde and there's this really misplaced idea that, you know, the world was going really well. And then the Roman Empire fell and then things were bad for, you know, well, it would be a thousand years. But most people don't even know that.

It's quite interesting because the ideas about what medieval history are are often misplaced. You know, I'll see people talking about how they think a period of medieval history was bad. And then you find out they're talking about the 17th century. Yes. And it has nothing to do. It has nothing to do with us, you know. So it's quite interesting because, you know, when we use the word medieval, you know, it's a short hand. kind of mean after the quote unquote fall of Western Rome in 476 up to question mark,

you know, 1,500. That's a good guess. Like if you say, yeah. I mean, it's a thousand years of history, isn't it? That's like the first things. When people are saying medieval, that is quite a chunk of time. And somebody wouldn't be describing you if they were referring to a time period from a thousand years ago. So it's a huge chunk. And the other thing is that people walking around at that time, they did not think of themselves as being in the middle. It's not like the Middle Ages are here. Hurrah. Exactly. Exactly. That's, that didn't happen. Yeah. And, you know, it's also, I mean, there's a million things that we could say about like, did Rome fall? What does that even mean? You know, question mark. But yeah, it's, nobody woke up and said, oh, wow, I guess that

we're medieval now and we've got a completely different way of looking at the world. And I think, especially when it comes to sex, it's really interesting because people make these assumptions because quite rightly, You know, one of the hallmarks of the medieval period is the kind of like hegemony of the Catholic Church, right? So like the Catholic Church has this dominant force in lives. But it doesn't mean what people think it means. Like everyone seems to like really take the church very seriously and at their word. And when the church says things like, oh, you should only have sex or the purposes of procreation when you're married, then we have a tendency to go, oh yeah, and everybody listened to that. And it's kind of like the weird doctors tell us today to eat five portions of fruit and veg and yet I had chocolate for breakfast.

It's like, yeah, the guidance is there, but it doesn't mean that people actually listen to it. Exactly. And so, you know, you have to understand that one of the problems that we have with medieval period is it's a long time ago and it's a really long period of time. So we don't always have great sources for everything just because, you know, 1700 years ago is a long time, right? But one of the things that kind of comes out of this is things that do survive are from contiguous cultural monuments, right? you get a lot of stuff left over from the church. So the things that we have are the church being like, don't do that, don't do that. And, you know, one of the things that you kind of learn to do with that, if what you're interested in is sex, is you learn, okay,

so this is like a hostile witness, right? So if the church is saying you shouldn't do these things, what that means is people are doing these things and the church wants them to knock it off, right? So you can't go, oh, well, the church said not to do this so then everyone stopped doing it. What you have to say is, oh, the church wants people not to do this. that means a bunch of people were at it, right?

And that's the difference. So the church is saying, thou shalt not, and everyone else is saying, we shall, pal. Exactly. And, you know, it's also really difficult, right? Because when you're dealing with sex, people aren't like, oh, I'm going to write down every single aspect of my sex life, especially in a world where not everyone is necessarily literate.

And by that, I mean, kind of like reading and writing in Latin, because most things are Latin. No one's going to be like, here's my fuck diary. And I'm going to, like, pass this down to my name. niece. Like, I hope that she, you know, like, I'm going to leave that in my will and, like, I'm going to leave, like, my erotic escapades out there. Like, you know, these are not the sort of things that survive. And it's not the sort of thing that people, even now, necessarily write down, right? So you have to be aware of the fact that the way people think about sex, even now,

it's not the sort of thing that you would necessarily kind of, like, record in great detail and pass down. And granted, that's changing, especially kind of like as a result of the, quote, unquote, sexual revolution. But, you know, sex is something that you have to kind of squint to see in the historical record. Nice. Only if it's being done properly. Mm-hmm. But so, oh, there's a snapshot into my private life. Now. One of the sort of the misconceptions about the middle ages, or at least a really persistent one, is when it comes to sex, is this idea, like, for example, if you were going to bed with somebody and their review on you was, well, that was medieval. That, like you said, that doesn't sound like a compliment, that doesn't sound like, oh, hello, we had a great time.

And we have this persistent belief that either they weren't having sex in the middle ages, which is obviously not true, or that it was really repressive and very much don't do that. It was chastasy belts. It was fainting damsels. This is a really persistent belief. And certainly you and the other medievalists are doing your absolute damnedest to prove, they were a bunch of mucky buggers. They absolutely were.

Yeah. And it's interesting because, so in the first place, Chastity Belt, that's a fun one to talk about, because those aren't medieval. There's something that Victorian people came up with and were like, I bet medieval people were using this. And it's like, well, that's interesting that you're thinking about that and good for you. Good to know where your head is. Yeah, exactly. And it's interesting because really, one of the things that I think is most different and most interesting and what we can kind of learn about sex from people in the medieval period. When you see the church talking about sex, they're like, please have procreative marital sex.

and that's the only kind of sex that you ought to have. And so for them, there's this real focus on having, for example, like, penis in vagina sex. That's what they want you to do. And ideally they want you to put the penis in the vagina. Yeah, they want you to put the penis in the vagina. And they want you to do it as quickly as possible with, like, just enough pleasure to orgasm on both sides because... But not too much. Not too much. Exactly.

So it's like, there's this idea that women also need to orgasm because there is the kind of prevailing theory of conception. The ancient world. See, I think that we should go back and just say that one more time. The medieval people really valued women getting their rocks off. That was important to them. It's very important because they think that otherwise you're not going to conceive. All right, that's a bit off. But still, I'm with the sentiment.

Yeah, that's a bit off. We don't like it. We like one half. The prevailing idea about conception in both the ancient world, like this is ancient, it comes from Galenic theories of reproduction, is what's called the two seed theory. And that is, well, men's sperm is one of the things that you need in order to make babies.

And they're like, oh, so women must also have sperm, right? And so the idea is that women also ejaculate, but internally during sex, and then the two seeds mixed together and then, ba-da-boom, baby, right? There's another way of thinking about this that Aristotle is a proponent of what he calls the one-seed theory.

And he's like, no, women are just kind of like the dirt. And you just... Oh, this is starting well. Okay, go on Aristotle. Yeah, Aristotle, like a guy not to... ask about sex famously. Someone didn't call him back, bloody yeah. Yeah, exactly, right. He's like, so he just thinks that women are essentially like the ground you put seeds in. Like the womb just kind of, you put sperm in there and it grows, right? But most people don't think that's true. Most people think

it's two seeds. And I just want to, again, highlight the point that this is ancient thinking. It's not like the Romans were going around being like, well, no, actually, the Ova releases. And then, you know, like they didn't know that either, just to be clear. So there's this real emphasis on the fact that you have to have both parties in a marital heterosexual cis-sex orgasm. And interestingly, I feel like we've really kind of taken on board the church's idea that what counts a sex, like real sex is this penis and vagina sex, and that's what's real. Medieval people aren't very interested in that. What medieval people are quite interested in doing is literally anything else, which is

sodomy, right? So the church classes any form of sex that cannot result in. procreation as sodomy. So it's not just what we would call like gay sex. Oh, I'm glad that you cleared that one up. I was like, medieval people are going to fifth base. That's just, wow, okay. And there is, you know, you'll see people talk about degrees of sodomy also. So if people are, for example, wanting to be like down on what we would call gay men, they'll say that there's degrees of sodomy. And the first one is what you and I would call masturbation. And they're like, okay, well, that's one thing. And then it's, right, hands up,

everyone who's just learned they're a sodomite. Yeah, exactly. You're like, everyone pretty much is a sodomite by the church's definition. The second one is mutual masturbation, that's sodomy. Then it's interfemoral sex. There's a lot of interest in interfemoral sex in the medieval period. There's a lot of just... What's interfemoral sex?

You put a dick between legs. Hello, right, okay. I'd call that a miss, but they're... Yes, exactly so. But they're like, you know, if you kind of like have fricative sex there, interfemeral, that was big for them, and they're really quite into that. And then it's like anal sex is the last. thing after that. So they haven't even got four bases. They've got seven or eight. Yeah. Yeah, they've got

tons, right? And so there are all these things that the church is like, oh, please knock this off. And medieval people are like, no, I'm absolutely desperate to give a hand job, right? Like, for them, this is really big. And, you know, you'll see physicians as well as the church talking about, for example, men who masturbate women, right? There's a famous medical text, which refers to it as how the quote unquote, indiscreet, like raise pleasure for women. And so, you, there's a real, real interest in doing all these things that... God bless indiscreet men. I know. We love them, right?

And these are the things that the church is like, please, just, oh, my God, stop, like, going down on each other. Like, stop having interfemoral sex. You've got to knock this off. And medieval people are like, I absolutely won't. This is my favorite thing. I want to do this. And weirdly, we've now kind of, like, internalized the church's teachings about sex so that we tend to think about sex as being specifically penetrative and specifically, like, oh, the old. only thing that counts, like, right? It's what a home run is. Yeah, that it's somehow like the

small print that if you didn't actually have the penetrative sex, then you haven't had proper sex. Then you haven't had sex. Is that because of pregnancy? Why this kind of emphasis on everything but? Yeah, I mean, I do think that we kind of have taken the church at their word, right? Like, the only kind that counts is the one that they want you to do. And I do think that there is a tendency that people to say, oh, well, that's because that's the thing that gets you pregnant. And sex is really for pregnancy. But I don't buy that sex is quote unquote. for pregnancy, because if sex is for pregnancy, then why is it that the great majority of time people are having it? It doesn't result in babies. You know, I think that there is that there, but,

you know, culturally, it's quite interesting because we tend to medicalize sex now. And we say, oh, yeah, well, it's specifically for procreation. But we're parroting the same things that the church says. And we just put a scientific veneer on it, right? We just go, oh, oh, it's science. You know, this is biology and this sort of thing. I think it's quite interesting where we think that we're much more enlightened than a medieval people. And one of the reasons that we do it is we're like, oh, well, we're not getting ground down by the Catholic Church all the time. And it's like, well, then why are you parroting?

But we still have a very rigid idea of exactly what counts of sex. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So speaking of medical sources, one of the things that you can use to try and sort of get a hold of what was happening between, betwixt the sheets of the medieval household, is a medical text that sometimes survive. And one of the things that I found particularly fascinating are the aphrodisiacs and the kind of the science behind it.

Because now, I'm sure you'll have loads of examples where they sound completely bonkers, but there's usually a logic. The logic is flawed, but there is a straggled route to kind of what they're trying to do there. So if I was a medieval woman, if my husband's libido is on the blink,

and if I want to kind of rev things up and have him rub me between the thighs, that's what we want. What would I do? What would recommend? So there are a lot of, of options here. And interestingly, a lot of them have to do with eating. Oh, I like this. This is good. Okay. If you can't get laid, you can have a sandwich. A lot of the time, what it will be is kind of introducing ways of getting

your husband to kind of eat something that's been in contact with your body. So you'll see quite often there will be a thing where it's like, when you're making bread, you need the kind of dough on your body, taking bread and kneading it down one's naked body and then baking it. Or similarly, putting honey all over one's body and then kind of like taking the honey off and putting the honey in things. And honey plays a really large role in terms of aphrodisiacs and stuff. Quite benign ones will be things like, well, take rose petals and grind them and put them, you know, with honey and then serve that to people. And so there's this kind of idea of a sweetness being an aphrodisiac. So that would be like a quite benign one and like no one's going to get mad at you for that.

people will get mad at you for rubbing honey all over your body and scraping it off and feeding it to your husband. I just got an image of medieval women just walking around with bits of toilet roll stuck to them because they couldn't get the honey off. I get it. Yeah, I mean, think about that because then you've got to like, it's going to be a logistical nightmare in the first place. And then, you know, you also have things that, you know,

a lot of this is magical. They're like magical thinking. You'll see really complicated versions of this. So it'll be like, oh, well, you should carve. an image of your beloved out of hyacinth, which is kind of like somebody's precious stone, and then put like the heart of hoopie with that and then put it in honey and like put it in a tree and that one thing. But I've dug out for you an example of an aphrodisiac, and this comes to us from the Decretum of Bucard of Worms. So this is a ninth century and he's a bishop,

and he's written a penitential guide, which is essentially a how-to book for priests to ask the people who come to them for confession. Here, what have you been doing? like what are you up to? So if they don't confess things right away, you can start asking them questions and see if they'll say that they've done this. But here's one for women, and here's a nice little aphrodisiac for you. Have you done what some women are want to do? They take a live fish and put it in their vagina, keeping it there for a while until it is dead. Then they cook or roast it and give it to their husbands to eat, doing this in order to make the men be more ardent in their love for them. If you have, you should do two years of penance on the appointed fast days.

of anything that would kill your passion faster than finding your beloved with a fish finger between a leg. The thing that's interesting about this too is, right, so this is, again, like what I mean about hostile witnesses and how you have to be, like, really careful. Because it's like, so here's a dude, and, you know, he's a bishop. And, like, to be fair, a lot of members of the clergy are having sex, just, like, absolutely scads of them. But he's a bishop.

And in theory, these men are meant to be celibate. And when you see things like this, you're like, yeah, you're like, yeah, you're, really don't have sex. Right? Like, you know, definitely. You've never met a woman. Yeah, because the idea that a woman would take a live fish and be like, well, this is what I'm doing now. Like, I'm going to just, like, in that goes.

And then I'll just wait until it's dead, cook it and feed it to my husband. Like, so this is probably made up, right? This is probably not real. Oh, I hope so. Yeah. I really hope so. And at the same time, you know, you'll see him ask women questions where we're like, oh, right, well, that probably definitely exists because he'll be like asking them, like,

have you made a dildo and have you used that? And you're like, okay, well, that probably exists because people still do that now. I think that you would be very hard pressed to find a woman who's taken a life fish, put it in her vagina, suffocated it, and then put it to her husband. Right. So my favorite aphrodisiac that I've seen, though, which I think is quite funny, is they are like, are you, do you swallow your husband's come in order to get him to love you, to, like, increase his ardor?

So it's like, as an aphrodisiac. To make him love you, because presumably, if you've managed to get that, there's no problem in the sex bit. So I think it's quite funny. because they're all like, oh, yeah, so you do that, and then he's like even hotter for you, right? The thing is, it's interesting because I think that you'll note a lot of the things that I've brought up here

are all specifically, like, women aiming at men. And there's kind of a reason for this, and that's because, you know, women are considered in the medieval period to be the ones who are extremely up for it. I love this. This is such a misconception about the medieval period, is that they believed, and you'll be able to tell me as well, I think that it goes back even further than the medieval period,

but there was this persistent belief that women were the horny ones. They were horny as hell. They were almost out of control with it, this raging libido, whereas men were much more measured and in control. That's right. So it's like there is this idea because, again, you know, within Christian cosmology, but actually it's not even Christian. Like this also goes back, the Romans think this, the Greeks think this.

They think of sex as being illogical. This is what all of the dudes will kind of tend to say. And like sex itself is almost, dangerous because it's like if you like sex too much, then you'll pursue that to kind of the detriment of everything else. So like to be an ideal Roman citizen, for example, you need to just be having sex again exactly the right amount and just like trying to have airs. And if you have more sex, you're presumed to be becoming feminized. So like the very act of sex itself is like feminizing because women like sex more. And this is, you know, straight across

the ancient and medieval period into the modern period, early, modern people will also say this. It's very modern to think that women aren't interested in sex. So as a result, when you see stuff for Aphrodisiacs, when you see things that are kind of about increasing libido, they're generally aimed at men. So it's more like, well, you know, the idea that a woman is like, well, my husband's not having enough sex with me or my lover isn't having enough sex with me. And what I want to do is peak his interest because obviously, because I'm a woman, I'm up for it. I want to have all the sex. And so I'm looking for ways to enhance that. And that's a really interesting and I think instructive difference because overall, I think that we now tend to see sex as this really masculine thing.

And the great majority of recorded human history, at least in the global north, it was exactly the opposite. It was considered that women are the ones who are obsessed with sex. Being obsessed with sex is bad and women are all the bad things. And weaker and more about the bodily passions. I'm sure that I've read somewhere that it was also about the fact that women, they don't have to stop when they orgasm, whereas with men, like, it's called the male refactory period, and whereas there's a kind of, like, they didn't know that at the time, but there's like a crash, and then it's kind of sleepy time. Is that something that you've?

There is a very famous kind of a meditation on this that says, well, why is that that women are so interested in continuing to have sex? And it's, women are likened to wet wood. So it's that it takes wet wood longer to catch on fire, but when it does, it burns, is the argument here. So you don't... I don't know if that's true. I don't know enough about wood. No. I don't know that that's true at all, but this is something that they say. And so the idea then is that stays inflamed much longer. And so this is a great cause for suspicion about women. There is a Baccio quote about this, which is, whereas one rooster is sufficient to satisfy

10 hens, 10 men would be hard pressed to satisfy one woman. And so there's this real suspicion, right. It's like, well, if, right, as the church wants you to do, or as, you know, the Roman Senate wants you to do, sex is just for, you know, procreation, why, when that's done, when all these things have happened, are you still interested, right? And so, again, there's a twisted logic, but you can kind of see the strangle thinking around that one. You're listening to Betwixt the Sheets, more medieval sex talk after this short break. There's lots there that's about an aphrodisiac to perk. you fell her up. What about an anaprodisiac, which is like to cool the libido, were they

kind of recommended to women? Like, if you were spending far too much time on the medieval equivalent of Porn Hub, porn by tapestry, I can only assume. I'm sure it does, right? How would you calm yourself down? So a big way of doing this is engaging with humoral theory. So again, Galenic, again, ancient people thought it, medieval people thought it, modern people thought it up until we discovered that germs exist. So, you know, like, you'd be as likely to hear this in the 18th century as you would in the medieval period, to be clear. But they have this idea that bodies are composed of four humors. So they've got a balance of blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Those things have to be kind of kept in balance. And there are also, accordingly,

things are either hot, dry, cold, or wet, and they all match up with various things. And so one of the things that makes women interested in sex is that they are cold and wet, whereas men are conceived of as being hot and dry. And so women are interested in sex because it warms them up. So like a thing that would like kind of warm you up would be having sex. It's like the fricative nature of sex. This is good to know with rising heating bills. Exactly. Right. Yeah. They say, okay, well, one of the reasons women are so interested in sex is that they're just trying to get warm, okay, like because they're cold and wet. And obviously they want to be more like men. And this can go into weird, at the sexist places where it's like, they're kind of like trying to steal your essence and be more masculine.

But so one of the things that you can kind of do with this, if women are perceived of as being too sexually interested, is that diet can then be brought in to try to increase their heat. Diet and like dietetic are a really, really big deal for medieval people. And well, everyone who believes in kind of humoral theory. You could be asked to eat things with more spices. So, you know, kind of like up the amount of cinnamon you're eating or something like that. or stick more to red meats and have less fish. So if there's a way of kind of boosting your natural heat,

that's seen as taking the edge off of it. What we're kind of picking up from this is that medieval people were not squeamish about sex. It wasn't something that was, I mean, all right, they weren't necessarily rutting in the streets, but it was much more open and part of their culture than people like to imagine that it was. Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, there's less of an idea of privacy in the medieval world,

in the first place, you know, a lot of time people live in one-room homes. Or even if you were a king or queen, a lot of the time... You're not private, are you? The reason that beds of rich people have curtains in the medieval period is like, that's the tent that you close off and then that gives you a little bit more privacy. So people are a lot more accustomed to being in rooms where other people are having sex. People are more accustomed to nudity as a result, you know, because they're in rooms with other people all the time.

And they're... And they had public bathing, didn't they? Like, you just go and have a bath with your mates. Exactly, exactly. So, you know, for them, this is kind of like, you know, a wonderful thing and that's like quite social. So they're a lot less prudish than us in a lot of ways, actually. Because, you know, if you or I were in a room and see what people were getting it on and you're just trying to sleep. Now you'd be like, what the fuck, man, like, knock that off. But for them, that's completely part for the course. Because where are you going to go, I suppose? That's the thing. And so interestingly, one of the places that people go is churches. Oh, of course. Of course.

Yeah, because so churches, you know, are, they're a building that you can walk into, and, you know, for the majority of the time, nobody's in there. And so there'll be all these kind of, like, dire warnings about how you shouldn't be going into churches to have sex. And one of the things that people are threatened with, and this is a miracle that gets brought up is that, you know, they'll be like, oh, a couple came in here and they had sex and they got stuck together because the saint whose relics were in the church was so displeased by them having sex. So, like, their punishment was that they had to go on like a shame parade to, uh, to... The literal walk of shame. Yeah, so like naked, stuck together. They had to go... Stuck together.

They had to, like, go on pilgrimage to the saint's shrine, like, elsewhere. No, they didn't. Yeah, and then everyone along the way is like, ha-ha, you're stuck together for having sex. And, like, everyone, like, pointed at them and laughed. That actually is a medical condition because a friend of mine who is a sex worker, it's called something like penis captivist or something like that's where the vagina muscles clamp down and it happened to her when she was seeing a client net to go at the hospital that's where she met his wife so that's it's it's not it wasn't quite a go on a pilgrimage but it wasn't a million miles away

so these oh my god so they're aware that that happens right but they say it's a curse from a saint and their local community will then point and laugh and like that's quite funny for them I mean, I can't deny there's some human. So much sympathy. Yeah, exactly. So I think it's really, because you know, you get so excited about going like, no, no, no, medieval people. Like, they knew good sex and they were really into different types of sex. But we need to be careful that we don't kind of paint it as a utopia because what would it be like if you were growing up as a gay person in 14th century Britain?

Like, how would you have understood that? How would you? It's an interesting one because they don't have a conception of being gay. like we do. So there's no idea that like no one's heterosexual and no one's homosexual. All you've got are things you do. So sexuality isn't something that you are. It's the acts that you engage in. And so if you're gay, what we would call gay, your problem there is that all the kinds of sex that you're going to have. And again, like, you know, I'm talking about cis people here. Trans people definitely existed in the medieval period. But all the kinds of sex that you as two cis gay guys can get down on is

going to be sodomy because nobody's getting pregnant, right? And so you are not considered to be gay, you are considered a sodomite because that's the sort of sex that you have. Now, to be fair, a married couple can be sodomites because like the minute you go down on your husband, you've done sodomy, right? So, or if you engage in, you know, all the same behaviors that gay people engage in. The fun stuff. Yeah, heterosexual people do them too. Yeah. So it's sort of like there is more, it depends on who you're asking and when. Sometimes there's more of an emphasis on kind of like anti-gay thinking and that ebbs and it flows. You know, certain people will be like really suspiciously down on a homosexual activity where you're like, hmm, really? But at the same time,

we see plenty of evidence of gay relationships like across time. So for example, quite famously, Alcuin of York, who was Charlemagne's personal secretary and really involved in the Ely-Lingian Renaissance, like a really big scholar. He wrote lots of love poetry to, like, all of his male students. We have letters that he wrote to a bishop where he talks about how he wishes that he could teleport, like, well, I mean, teleport. Like, he wishes that he could appear in front of the bishop and then kiss him all over and kiss every single finger in tow.

I love this. There's now this really, like, a different history with historians who engage with that stuff, who up until quite recently would be there going, no, look, you just don't understand. That's just what friends did, all right? It doesn't mean that they're gay. It was just completely normal. No, they were so gay. They were gay with big neon flashing pink light.

That's how gay they were. They're incredibly gay. Yeah. It's interesting because, like, you find a lot of the time, so, for example, great records that we'll have of, like, people doing gay things often come from nunneries and monasteries. Because, again, everybody in there is literate, and they write things down,

and they'll write little letters to each other, especially because monks and nuns sometimes, like, change monasteries. Like, you might get moved from one place to another. And then we have like their love poems. We have kind of like saucy notes that they write back and forth. And we also know that it's a problem because sometimes like a lot of gay stuff will be going on. And then someone will come in and they'll say, oh, we have this place has got to get reformed. You've got to knock it off.

So like we'll have a new abbess come in to a nunnery, for example. And there's like them going, you are not allowed to call other nuns, my little bird. You may not refer to other nuns as my little girl. You may not sleep naked in each other's beds. And like, so, you know, no one is to trim their nails in this nunnery. Exactly. And so you'll come in and there'll be these big reforming movements. And it kind of like goes in cycles. So sometimes monasteries and nunneries, they will be, it seems like, you know, if you're gay, that's the place to go.

Like if you... That makes sense. On the whole, that's probably going to be the easiest for you. But then there'll be like big reforming endeavors to kind of like try to break it all. So, you know, these people are definitely there. But the way that they see themselves isn't as gay. Yeah, there was no concept. you wouldn't come out as gay as you are now, as in like, this is something that you are.

This is an identity. Yeah. This is, yeah, so this is just something that you do. I just like to have sex with men. Interesting. And there was, was it Edward the Hussert, who had a lot of suspiciously close favorites? Yeah, I think it's, yeah, I'm pretty sure Edward III has tons of close favorites. You get it all the time in, like, from religious dudes.

Like, you rhymed to kind of think about that. I think even James the first, like getting into the modern period, he, I think, which is interesting because he's always like constantly trying to like witch hunt and things like that. And it's like, sir, calm down. So a little closer to home, I think. So if you were gay, straight, bisexual, whatever you were, one of the things that I'm endlessly fascinated about is like, well, how do you go about this back in the middle ages? Because, you know, they don't have Tinder.

They don't, like, hookup culture is clearly there, but it's much hard. How do you meet people? How did you date people? How would you seduce somebody? Like what would be a medieval chatup line that wouldn't have you paraded through the streets attached to your partner on a pilgrimage? So it's funny because we kind of have

some medieval chaturbanes. Now, whether or not these are accurate, that's another story. But we've got this great source, which is called de amore or on love, or we call it sometimes the art of courtly love. That's written by this guy, Andreas Capulanis,

and either it is parody courtly love culture or it's accurately portraying courtly love culture. And fundamentally it doesn't really matter either way to us. Because if you're parodying it, then that means this is going on enough that people can make fun of it and everybody knows that you're making fun of it, right? Like we still do that now, like chat up line, did it hurt when you fell from heaven? That one is that was obviously used it sometime, but we kind of take the piss out of it now. Yeah.

So there's one that's really similar to that. And it's in the art of courtly love. and this is my favorite, which is, I believe it's, when the maker made you, he left nothing unthought of. Oh, now that's smooth. That blooms are hitting the floor. That's quite a... Should we go find a church?

Right, exactly. So it's, obviously, chat up lines kind of exist because we have some that are written down now, whether or not they work, I don't know. But these things certainly exist, and there is this interest, right, in hitting on each other. So that's more for people who are at court. and we know that they do a lot of flirting

and in particular, you know, they're sitting around and they've got more time on their hands. So it's like the work that noble people are doing is less onerous than that, which the majority of the population peasants are doing. So they're kind of like sitting around at court, embroidering and like looking at the other hot people like, hmm, all day long.

Around about this time of year, this stuff sort of comes to a head because now it is also a falconing season. This is going to get weird now. Okay, right. Yeah, it's going to get weird. Yeah. So they simply love to hawk and falcon.

Rich people in the medieval period, they like to have their little falcon, and they like to go out, and they like to catch a pheasant, you know, or a rabbit or whatever with their bird. That's very fun for them. It's a sport that women also are able to participate in, and women often have their own, like, little falcons. And so a really hot thing to do is to go out falconing because everybody goes falconing. Oh, this is like the disco, the kind of, okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So everyone rides out and you bring your little falcon and you're like, I know, I know, I know, you know. And it's quite interesting because we've got this, there's an art trope, which is called the labors of the months or the labors of the year. And it shows the things that people are meant to do in every month. So for example, like July is like making hay. In November, you're fattening up hogs for the slaughter. But May can be two things. It can either be just straight up courting. So it'll like have some dude with his head in a way. woman's lap, like a singing her song on a lute, or it can be... It's been on that day. Yeah, right? They try it, don't they? It's like some dude with a ukulele and you're like, oh, no. And then the other one is hawking. And they're sort of like interchangeable because it's like the reason that you would go hawking

is to meet people. For the average individual, middle people actually travel more than one would think. Like people have this tendency to say, oh, they just live in these tiny little villages and they know five people. And sure, they live in tiny little villages and there's sort of five people around. But medieval people move around a lot. They go to market. They have to take things to the city.

They go on pilgrimage a lot. And even average people go on pilgrimage a lot. So, you know, maybe you're not going to be able to ever go on pilgrimage to Rome, which is kind of like the biggie or Jerusalem. But, you know, if you are an English peasant, you'll probably go to Canterbury, you know, or something like that. And there's a real attitude towards being on pilgrimage. That it's very much what happens on tour stays on tour.

And there's kind of a couple of reasons for that. Like, one of the reasons is that when you are on pilgrimage, you are under plenary indulgence. So it's like anything that you do, it's just like written off. So it doesn't matter. Like you can shag wherever you want. And like it's not even going to be a theological problem. You know, if you die right now, you're good as far as God is concerned, right?

So there's a ton of shagging that happens on pilgrimage. And we see this. We've got this. Some of my favorite things from the medieval period is we have these pilgrim badges that are, they're kind of from the low countries. So like what is now the Netherlands in Belgium? And they're made of pewter. And we're not exactly sure what they're about.

Like, they might just be funny. Some people are like, oh, this is about fertility. I don't buy it. I think that they're definitely funny, but I think they're also kind of like a thing that one wears to signal that they are up for it. And the reason that I say this is because a lot of them are just like genitals. My favorite one is there's a picture of a vulva and she's wearing a crown. She's being carried on a litter by three little penises with legs and tails.

Wow. And like, she's the queen. Or you'll have like women pulling dicks out of the grubes. ground like they're carrots. There's a woman wheeling up dick in a wheelbarrow. There'll be people having sex underneath a tree that's covered in dicks. I mean, this would definitely convey, if you're wearing a badge that's just a massive vulva and penises. Not that I want to say what someone is wearing invites, you know, certain behaviour, but that is certainly putting something out there. Yeah, it's sort of like flagging something up.

And this is another way where medieval people are less prudish than we are, because you can buy replicas of these. And, you know, I've thought long and hard about it, and someday I might, you know. But we have a much harder time being like, here's a vulva. I'm wearing that as jewelry, right? But they're like, yeah, this is something I'm doing. I'm on pilgrimage. You wouldn't go to work with a giant fanny t-shirt, would you?

Or like a dick hat. But then the medieval people would just like, yeah. Yeah, why not? Of course I've got a pair of tips for a badge. That makes perfect sense. I'm going to wear this to the church. I'm going to have to hit up Etsy now to try and see. I'm going to push myself, challenge myself.

Yeah, people make some really excellent replicas out there. So that's fantastic. But yeah, you know, they're a great way to meet new people is to kind of just go out and, you know, meet new people go on trips. They definitely do that. We know that also they kind of like dates in terms of like going to fairs and things. So like going to the ale fair, that's like a nice date. The tournaments in town, like people go to tournaments just to flirt.

There's a lot of like hand ringing and worry. about the amount of flirting that goes down at tournaments. It's like, oh, well, is this strictly all right? And so there are people kind of like meeting and doing these things. And in those situations, you know, it's much more likely, for example, for people to engage in public sex afterwards because, again, where are you going to go? I think that's something that we don't often appreciate. It's just how much the sex would have been outdoors somewhere

because you need to find somewhere to go. You can't go back home because you live in a hovel that's shared. Yeah, it's like, or like say you are, for example, like a maid. servant. Say you live in London. Like, you're not taking a dude back to your boss's house, right? Like, that's not how it works. So, you know, there's a lot more outdoor sex generally. Eleanor, I could, honestly, I could listen to you talk about this forever and ever, but I can't because now I have to go and Google vulva badges. And I need to go to the market to see if they've got any live fish. But before you go, where can people find out more about you? I know that you're

doing a series for history hits. Yeah. So my medieval play. Pleasures, a television series on history hits. So it's great. We've got one on sex, one on alcohol, and one on sports. You'll be unsurprised to learn that all three are linked. But it's been great. And I believe that you are in one of those episodes, Ms. Kate. I do. I do crop up. Yes. Check that out coming up. And then other words, you can see my blog, which is going hyphen medieval.com. Or you can find me on Twitter where I'm mostly just, you know, chatting bollocks, which is at going medieval. Absolutely. I never, ever, ever buy bread from this one. But thank you so much for talking to me today. Eleanor, you are a legend. Thanks so much for having me, Kate. Thank you. So that's it for today. Thank you so much to my guest, Eleanor Yenega. And to you for joining me Betwixt the Sheets for our very first episode. If you enjoyed this, please make sure to like with you and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We've got episodes on Voodoo, The History of Boob Jobs, Queen Victoria's Indulgent Eating Habits.

and a whole episode on the evolution of sexy shoes coming your way. Join me again Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast includes music by Epidemic Sounds.