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

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Given that the medieval period covers the best part of 1000 years, there's a fair amount of sexual myth and beliefs to get through.How kinky were people in those times? Was the chastity belt just a Victorian myth? And did women really put live fish into their vaginas and then feed them to their husbands?All of these questions and more will be answered in today's episode of Betwixt the Sheets, which is from a conversation Kate had with Eleanor Janega recently over on History Hit's Gone Medieval podcast.This podcast was edited by Siobhan Dale and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code BETWIXT. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here. 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. My lovely Matrixers, it's me, Kate Lister, here, once again, as always, to protect you from the absolute filth and nonsense that is going to come your way in the course of this podcast. Honestly, this one is terrible, even by our standards. I think you're used to it by now, but here we go. This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults in an adultery way about a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too.

Now we've got that little lot out of the way. Let's get into it. Why 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 a knob and pushing it. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I'm beautiful time. Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie. Welcome to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex, Scandal in Society.

With me, Kailista. Sometimes we get so lost in our modern understanding of sex, that the different way it has been, not done, that's been pretty consistent, but thought about, conceived, talked about, all of those things, it can be radically different in the past, you know. But not here, betwixters, this is exactly the kind of stuff that gets us up in the mornings. Granted, the medieval period was a solid thousand years of history. So attitudes towards sex change. a lot during that time across Europe, but let me tell you, they were a lot more open, vocal,

and, well, just funny about sex than we might have thought that they were. They loved an op-joke, they really did. Today, we are taking you back to a recent conversation I had with Eleanor Janega on History Hids Gone Medieval podcast to explore the rules, taboos and naughtiness of medieval sex. How kinky were they back then? Was the chastity to put? about an actual thing or was it a myth? Well, I am ready to find out if you are. I'm over the moon to be joined by my fellow history hit presenter, the host of Betwixt the Sheets and my wonderful friend, the amazing Dr. Kate Lister, Kate, how are you? Oh, I'm so pleased to be here talking to you on your podcast. Look at us. I know. I mean, it's usually me over at yours, which is a delight

every time, but I know. We have so much fun. It's going to be a romp, everyone. Sorry about that. I might make it very serious. Oh, no. Okay. Well, you're going to ruin our brand, but that's fine. I am delighted to drag you on here because it proves that I'm not the only one. No. Who's constantly banging on about sex in the Middle Ages. And I think that the reason why this is a fun thing to talk about, other than the fact that I'm obsessed,

is that I think people don't really understand quite how the average person in the Middle Ages thought about sex and sexuality. And I mean, I know that's a big thing to kind of say, but what would you say the prevailing attitudes towards sex were in medieval Europe? It's such a big question, that isn't it? I think the thing that a lot of people forget, and some scholars also forget sometimes, is that like the medieval period was a thousand years of history. That's a long time for attitudes to change. The attitudes we have today are not the same as an attitude that were a thousand years ago. So it really depends where you are in Europe at what point. in the medieval period.

But I think the thing that always surprises people today is that the attitude tend to be a lot more sexually permissive than we assumed that they would be. Or at least if you've looked at Victorian art and chastity belts and swooning damsels and all of this stuff, that's what everyone thinks it's going to be like is going to be incredibly repressive.

And they were actually much more open and vocal and enjoying sex than we think that we do. You've got to be careful, you don't make it sound like some kind of sexual utopia where everyone just had an amazing time for the duration because that wasn't true either, but it might surprise people. The medieval folk were a kinky bunch

and they enjoyed themselves. You hit on something immediately that I love to talk about, which is this idea of medieval people being really kind of repressive from things like, for example, chastity belts, but this is a Victorian myth,

Is it not? It is. Or at least we have never found a medieval chastity belt. Every historian has to hedge their bets always because we might find one. We might find a locked chest from the medieval period that is full of chastity belts and a diary that my husband made me wear a chastity belt when he went on Crusades. And then we'll all have to go, oh, balls. Yeah, all right, it was a thing.

But until that happens, we don't have any evidence of it. It seems it was a Victorian invention. They did a lot of projecting onto the medieval. period about their own ideas of sex and sexuality. And this idea of the women were incredibly pure and virgin all the time and that people didn't have riotous sex, that is largely a Victorian invention. And chastity belts played right into that idea, the idea that men controlled women's sexuality so much they could put a locked belt on them. But we don't have any evidence that happened anywhere, apart from the 19th century, fevered imaginings of what it was

like to be a medieval person. Victorians have so much to answer for. They did a lot of damage, didn't they? Yeah, in my opinion. Okay, but so this is interesting, right? On the one hand, we have this idea of the middle ages being this really repressive time in terms of thoughts of sexuality because of whatever it is that Victorians are doing in their spare time, right?

But then also there is this issue with sources, I would say, right? Because the number one way we hear about sex. in the Middle Ages, and we do hear about it a lot, is actually through this super hostile source, which is the church. So if you only get to like read or think about sexuality coming from some written sources, most of the ones that you're going to get are from the church. And they have these really specific teachings about what sex is and, you know, rules, right, about what it is you're supposed to be doing. Yeah, they do. And as you rightly point out, it's very easy to read through a of the sources you get from the churches. My favourite are the penitentials, those big fat books of

basically guides to sin for priests that if somebody comes in and goes, oh God, I've done something really bad, I've had a lustful thought, then you'd look it up in your penitential and go, write three Hail Mary's. And there's some mad stuff in there. There's some absolutely bonkers sins, like women making dildos out of bread or putting fish in their vaginas to try and seduce husbands and just like, and it's so much fun to read them. And it's very temperate. if you read that to go, oh my God, medieval women were running around with fish in their genitals. But you have to take a big deep breath and be like, well, how, whoa, whoa, one priest has mentioned this and we have no other sourcework for this at all. So all you can say about that is one priest thought that happened.

And religious sources are always going to skew the data because they have their own agenda, always. I think this is a really good point because much like the Victorians in their reverent imaginations about how everyone's running around in a chastity belt, here we have Bushard of Verms, who's the fish vagina magic guy. He's just this one guy, the Bishop of Verms, writes this penitential. And it's one of the surviving sources from the earlier medieval period where we don't have a ton of sources from it just because it's a really, really long time ago. And if you just said, okay, well, here's a snapshot of this is what everyone is thinking about all the time. that's a little too easy, right? I don't think really any women were putting live fishes into their vaginas and feeding them to their husbands. We can't rule it out though, Elida. I don't we... Unfortunately, we can't at this point because of my man here. But it's like, here's a guy, right, who's supposed to be not having sex. And he's just sitting around being like, oh man, women are putting fish into their vaginas. It's like a massive sexual repression fever dream. That's what I, in my less judgy moments, I think that it might be tying into folklore and

superstition and because sometimes you do get odd folkloric beliefs that turn up that you can seduce a man by if you try and bake bread and you need it on your belly or on your buttocks and then you cook it from, that's a folkloric belief that turns up elsewhere. So he might have been tapping into that. But I just can't believe that was common enough practice for it to be like a warning to have to written about by priests. I think that was a bishop issue, more than a woman issue. Maybe the whole bread-needing thing, you know, who amongst us has not considered becoming seduced if someone presents them with a freshly made loaf of bread? It would do it for me,

absolutely. So I'd like slightly squished up and buttock-shaped. I mean, the attention to detail, I would feel very special indeed. I would say that, you know, but you've got on the one hand, your man Bouchard here being completely off as rocked. about these particular things. But the church does like to make rules, right? Like, this is the thing, is the church as an institution, especially when it picks up steam from the 12th century onwards, around Bouchard's time. It's kind of like, yeah, sure, church, I've heard of that. The Pope, that's a guy. And it seems to become increasingly anti-sex and anti-woman, or at least that's what the documents that we have. I have no doubt there are some liberal priests knocking around,

but they never took the time to write us a book about this, so we just don't know what they thought. but it does seem to become, like you get your teachings of St. Jerome, he is like resurrected and this guy who just believed that any sexual thought of temptation at all was sinful, even if it was your own wife. And if he had his way,

no one would have ever had sex ever. But obviously there is a flaw in that particular plan because then you will run out of Christians pretty damn quick. So then they come up with all these mental gymnastics about, well, okay, you can have sex, but you can't enjoy it. Yeah. And if you do enjoy it, now you've committed a sin.

you start to get all these rules and regulations around it. I think someone put it all together once of like when you can actually have sex according to the medieval Christian calendar. And it was like at Tuesday one month at 6pm with your pajamas on and all the lights off. But it was like you couldn't have sex on feast days, on holy days. You couldn't have sex after a woman during menstruation after menstruation. And it goes on and on and on. And it's like, I don't know how we survived as a race if people were actually following that. So I assume that they weren't. I think I know what you're talking to. It's William Brundage. It's like a flow chart. That's the one. And it makes me laugh all the time because, yeah, if you looked at that and said,

okay, so the church is very important in the Middle Ages. And so everyone is really only having sex at times the church wants them to. Well, okay, one of the times you're not supposed to have sex is during Advent. And so that would mean that if everybody listened to what the church was saying, no one in the Middle Ages would have been born in September. No, good point. Well, that clearly didn't happen, right? We still have Virgos and Libras. So I think that that's a really sort of important thing to think about, right?

But I don't know, like I went to Catholic school. And there was, at least in the 90s, this real thing about Catholic school girls and this idea that we were all actually like quite naughty. So everybody kind of knows within a moral context that no one's really listening. No, and we still do that to a certain extent today. don't we? I mean, not everybody follows religious teaching down to the letter. I mean, some people do, but if you're a person of faith, you probably let quite a lot of it slide. People tend not to have an absolutely fanatical, well, some people follow the Bible fanatically, and then you can't do anything.

But you don't even have to be religion, things like health guidelines. I know I'm supposed to be eating five pieces of fruit and veg every day and having eight glasses of water, and yet I had a can of Coke and a Kit Kat for breakfast. So proud of you, babe. And it might be a leap from a Kit Kat to put in a fish in your vagina. but the point still stands. Is it, though, but is it? In many ways, the Kit Kapp Breakfast is the fish in the vagina of our times. Right? I agree with you, which is that I think that many evil people would have been aware of these teachings.

And they would have been aware because they went to church regularly and they would have known about this. So I'd imagine there was a considerable amount of guilt. But when you actually look at all of the rules and all of the fanaticism and all the things you were supposed to do, there's just no way we would have survived as a race if everyone followed it. quite an interesting thing too, is that on the one hand, you've got the church being like, don't you do it, I swear. And what they kind of settle on is like, well, it's all right, as long as you're not having any fun, and you're married, and you're trying to have children. So this is quite interesting because I think it's still the way that we talk about sex largely.

You know, when we teach about sex, for example, to children, we're like, and it's for having babies. And it's like, all right. That is true, isn't it? Is it still very much the sperm goes to find an egg and then we have a baby stuff? That's true. So the children. So the children, Church won that one. I think it's quite interesting. But you have this idea that, okay, I'm going to let you have sex if you're trying to have babies and you're married. But how within the context of marriage do they think about sex? I think that there's this kind of tendency to look at this and being like, okay, well, women are then the property of men entirely when they are married. Is that what we see kind of play out in terms of sexual dynamics? Again, you've got to be careful that you don't make it

sound like it was a feminist utopia at all. But I'm often surprised by how much agency you see in medieval marriages. When you find sources that aren't necessarily from the church, they seem to have a lot of fun with it. And I know that you shouldn't look at Chaucer as documentary. That wouldn't be right at all. It's supposed to be funny. But one of his reoccurring jokes and one of his most richly mined social situations for comedy is marriage, is sex in marriage. He has a real thing about older men and younger wives and older men not being able to satisfy the younger wives and them going and having lots of affairs behind their backs and things like that. But it does seem like that sex is very funny, it's very rich, it's very pleasurable, it's people give in to

temptation. I don't think Chaucer's got a great view of marriage in all of the It doesn't come off particularly well, but it does seem like sex is a lot of fun and sex was just part of marriage. And that was one of the good things about marriage. And it's true that, what was it, like the 90s that marital rape was outlawed in this country. It was really shocking. And so the woman was the husband's property, but that doesn't mean that it was just mass institutionalized sexual assaults forevermore. In fact, who is it? Was it St. Christina, refused to have sex with somebody and they pushed this guy into the room with her and she absolutely refused. Her parents were trying to get her to do it and her husband was trying

to get and she just absolutely wouldn't do it. So even though he has a right to do that, he wasn't able to consummate that marriage. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting thing too because there's this concept called the conjugal debt, which is that when you get married, you kind of owe your spouse sex if it's reasonable. But the thing of it is, is that cuts both ways in the middle ages. We tend to think about sex now and ideas of consent as this is something that men do to women, right? And it's something that men do at women. Medieval people are a lot more likely to be like, women are trying to have that sex. Oh, baby, they really want to have sex. And so actually, part of it is like, well, you've got to put out if your wife wants to and it's a Tuesday

and your pajamas are on and the lights are off. We tend to read that, I think. Oh, this is terrible because it means that husbands can demand things of their wives all the time. And I'm like, well, I mean, yes. But when we take into context Chaucer's stories, for example, and things like that, you know, one of the reasons why these wives are running around behind their husband's back is they want more sex than they're being offered, right? In Chaucer's text, I'd like thinking of like the Miller's tale with Allison with the Miller or the merchant's tale and it's May and January. And January is, it's like 60 and May is 18. And they're having sex. There's quite a visceral description. of where this young girl May is brought to bed, quote, as still as a stone.

That is a kind of like real image of her just sort of lying there. And the expression is like that he laboured from dusk till dawn. It's this real image of this older guy creaking and really wheezing. And there's descriptions of like his neck skin rattling. And it's really visceral. And they are having sex. But May is just lying there just like, what was that? So she is having sex, but it's terrible sex.

So as soon as she gets an opportunity to have sex, with the hunky young squire Damien. She's all over that. In a tree. That's the one that I always bring up to people if they haven't read the Canterbury Tales before because I think people think, oh, it's medieval literature, it's dull.

And I'm like, would you like to hear a story about people having sex in a pear tree? This is also quite an interesting one, right? Because when we talk about the Chaucer stories, right? I think that we kind of think that all medieval marriages are these arranged marriages between unwilling younger women and older men. But is that really the case on the ground, would you say? I mean, arranged marriage was absolutely and certainly a thing, especially where money is involved. And your parents would almost

certainly have quite a lot of say over what you did. But I think it's well, what we kind of have to remember is that marriage in the medieval period was of a much more financially significant importance than it is today, especially if you were a woman because you can't really go and earn your own money. I mean, there are. careers that women go into, and you've written about that very eloquently, but generally they're not going to be enough to support you on your own. Unfortunately, for most of our history in this country, women have needed men, financially needed men. That was the deal. You stayed at home and you raised babies and you can't make enough money on your own. So a marriage was important. It was really important.

So there were arranged marriages, especially when people have got lots of money, because now it's become like a business acquisition and it's more of an alliance and we're going to get this money, you're going to get that money in protection and all these things. Further down the line of just your average Joe peasanty person, it's difficult to say, isn't it? Because they didn't leave us the damn records, which would be extremely useful if any of them had bothered to learn out a right and tell us what the hell was going on. Get it together, 85% of the European population. I'm trying to creep on your marriages. But marrying for love was something that was discussed in the medieval period. It's easy to think of it. It was only transactional. But love is important to them.

You do get descriptions of that of people falling in love off of when they're already married. So it's not like, right, I must be completely business minded. But arranged marriages were definitely an absolutely a thing. They were, but I think you might find that people had a bit more agency in it than we like to think of, because ultimately, if you just go, nope, what are you going to do? I mean, it's just, what are you going to do?

That's a really good point because, I mean, I think even among the classes where arranged marriage is the thing, right? Like, nobility, royalty, you still have these sources where young men are taken by their fathers to meet girls and then the father say, hey, what'd you think about that? A, A, A, and the guys are like, no. And it'll always be for some stupid reason. They'll be like, she liked me too much as one that I saw.

So yeah, too keen and therefore maybe promiscuous was kind of the idea. But I think that that's a really good point is that arranged marriage is certainly a thing, but you kind of still have a yes or no. Right? You still got to get someone in front of the altar who will say, do you take so and so? And maybe they don't. And there were workarounds as well. We've spoken about this before, this idea of kidnapping,

the term raptus or rape, which doesn't quite mean what we think it does today, although it can entail that, but it's basically kidnapping somebody and taking them away from their father. If you're looking at the early Middle Ages, if you're looking at a charge of rape under the laws of like Ethelbert, for example, the punishment for that is for the victim to marry the attacker, which to our modern ears is like, that's awful. Made perfect sense to them, apparently, at the time. So that's bleak, but also that opens up the possibility of, well, if you really did want to get married to someone and your parents had said, nope, you're not marrying him. You can't marry another DJ. That's an awful idea. That you could go, oh, no, he's kidnapped me though. Oh, well,

the law says. It's like there were workarounds. Yeah, that's the thing is there is kind of a way to worm your way in even if your parents say no. And that's the thing too, right? Sources are so interesting about this, because what could just be elopement, if we were kind of describing it, for them, they'll say, oh, that's raptus. So you have to be so careful with when medieval people are telling you about things like this, because they got a whole other way of thinking about it, you know, but... The best solution, if someone has eloped, from a medieval point of view, a medieval parent's point of view,

I guess it's just to make the most of it, because, well, it's done now. They don't really get divorced. I mean, they can sort of, like, wander off, I suppose, and separate. But what are you going to do now this has happened, you know? That's a really good point, too, because you can't really get divorced, you know, unless you're royalty and you get sick of it, and the Pope will say yes, which you won't always do, right? You can't really get divorced.

But that's also why in cases of raptus marriage is kind of brought up, right? Because there's a pretty high premium, would you say, still put on this idea of virginity at marriage? Yeah, specifically the women's virginity. I mean, I'm sure that the guys are mentioned. But I think this has always been this idea of like young lads sew their oats. And the burden of virginity is almost always on the woman. And that is why when you read through medieval law around sexual assaults, It's so awful to our modern eyes, but going back against the laws of Ethelbert, is that if a woman

had been sexually assaulted, the cost for that was literally a cost, is the attacker would have to pay money to either her husband or her father, because it was regarded as a property crime, which again, it sounds horribly brutal, it is horribly brutal, but that's the way they viewed it because if someone has lost their virginity, then they are now devalued in the marriage market, and it's so important to get married because you can't earn your own money, and you can't can't live with your parents for forever and ever and become a crazy spinster person, although I do strongly recommend crazy spinsterdom. It's interesting, right?

Because the laws of Ethelbert definitely say this. So this is in the early medieval period. But when you get to kind of the high and late medieval period, this is still going on. Like Thomas Aquinas writes about this, because his whole thing is, well, if we are going to have sex or sin of any kind, the problem with sin is that sin is illogical. And it's illogical because you shouldn't do something that's going to make God. God mad at you, right? Essentially, I say it would be illogical to make God mad at you. And so when he classifies sexual sin, he talks about Raptis within this. And he says, okay, well, raptus is bad

because you're kind of dishonoring fathers and mothers and things, but you make it go away through the marriage thing where the dishonor that you've done to someone's father or to someone's husband can be remediated financially. You certainly see this in a legal standpoint in the early medieval period, but hundreds of years later, they're still like, yeah, yeah, no, that's true. Just make sure all the men are happy and we'll roll from there. But I guess if they're placing such a high value on a woman being a virgin, in a weird, logical way, it made sense to them of, well, this is the person that's taken her virginity, therefore, this is the person that now has to marry her.

And it's so messed up that this was like underpinning such important laws. But that's what was happening at the time. And I doubt very much that everyone was a virgin when they rocked upon. their wedding day, but the game was to make everyone think that you were. I'll be back with Eleanor after the show break. What do we see happen in cases of extramarital affairs? Because Lord knows there's a lot of them around the shop, aren't there? Yes, that will depend where you are and who you're talking to. So to go back to Chaucer, there doesn't seem to be much consequence for the people having lots of

affairs there, other than we all get a good laugh out of it. But if you look at laws that actually do still survive towards, I think there's some out of Normandy and other places in France and sort of the Nordic countries, especially particularly hostile to women who were found to have committed adultery. And the punishments range from things like having their head shaved and their noses sliced and often being paraded through the streets. There was one, I think it was Normandy in the mid-middle ages and it was the woman would be paraded through the streets of her local town and then it would be up to her husband whether or not he wanted to take her back good lord but then again you know we've got that law that exists we can see it in the sources it doesn't necessarily follow that it was

always implemented again so we're back to that thing of like yeah there was a law and yeah we can look at that and go Jesus that was awful but how often was that implemented how often did that happen but But the punishment can be very, very severe. This is interesting. We definitely see that in late medieval sources in Italy as well. Because it's Italy and the late medieval period, it's much more financialized. So what you'll see is people have to pay if they've had extramarital affairs. I've seen that as well.

I didn't know it was still going on in late Italy. That's interesting. I love that. I love the idea that if you really fancied such and such down the street and you what I'd have a bit on the side. You could maybe save up. Just be like, oh my God, yeah, exactly. Like, how much is it? Is it five pounds for him to give me head? Right, okay, just give me a couple of weeks. Do you accept Klarna? But then, again, with this, you have to pay a lot more for you're a woman than you're a man. If you're a man, it's like, ah, well, boys will be boys, right. But then who's paying it?

That's the thing, because she can't really earn her own money. So who is paying her horn debt? It has to come out of her dowry. Wow. I love that, that like, you'd have to fact a little bit more if she was quite slutty. No, you're absolutely right. But speaking of head and what we would pay for it in the medieval period, I think it's also interesting to kind of talk about sex that doesn't apply to this kind of heteronormative procreative model. Oh, that's interesting.

Do you think there was get out clauses like fingering didn't count? I think actually fingering was worse. Fingering was worse. Yeah, because it's illogical. So if you have sodomy, so the kinds of sex that you can't get pregnant from, that's totally illogical because sex is for procreation. So it's more simple. I can see the twisted logic, I suppose. But I think within that too, when we're talking about sodomy and we're talking about non-procreative sex, that means a whole class of people that we would call our homosexual friends

are kind of like out of luck. Because by definition, if you are cisgender, and gay, there's no way that you're going to be able to have procreative sex, right? But that isn't to say that these people didn't exist, but the concept doesn't really exist, right? It's really tricky, isn't it? Like, when you say that to people, like the concept of homosexuality didn't exist. They always look at you like, you bonkers. I don't mean that people didn't fancy, like, a wide spectrum. Of course, same-sex attraction has always been with us.

But the idea that it was an identity that you would come out, because now sexuality is linked to our identities, it's something that we are. Like, you'd say, I am gay, I've come out as gay. It's like a big thing, and then there's a community around that, and there's an identity and all kinds of stuff that goes on. The idea of that, quote, quote, homosexual, as an actual figure, as a person, as an identity, as someone who acts a certain way, emerges really in the late 19th century. But you've got to be really careful with that, because there is evidence of communities,

and I'm sure that there were communities coming together, how they understood themselves is much harder to try and define. What seems to be the case is that same sex acts and attraction wasn't something that you would come out and say, I am this. It's more something that you would do. You weren't gay, but you would have sex with men. It wasn't who you are. It was something that you did. This is a really interesting point about communities, though, right? Because I know, for example, we've got this testimony from 14th century London on the part of Eleanor Reichner. I think We've chatted about her before, who gets hauled into court because she's doing sex work where she ought not. And it turns out Eleanor is what we would call a trans woman because she had been born John.

And then when they're like, girl, explain yourself. So she's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I transitioned. You know what we would call transition up in Oxford at the inn full of trans women who like hang out and tell you how to become trans and all this stuff. So we know that there are these communities of what we would call queer people, giving knowledge to each other, right? But Eleanor is like, yeah, now I'm a woman, what do you want? But she doesn't really have a concept of her transness, right?

Because that doesn't exist yet. But that isn't to say that she isn't someone who hasn't changed. I find that quite interesting because the community is there, but the concept is not, if that makes sense. Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to language, doesn't it? is it's very easy to forget that in our modern age, how connected we all are with each other, especially with the internet.

So when you reach out and you form communities and you find people like you, and you learn the language and the vocabulary and you can identify each other, it's so important in not only learning about yourself, but in modelling your own behaviour. But what do you do in the 12th century when you can't read and nobody is writing about this stuff?

And we know that people did find people because communities have always come together and existed underground secretly, but it must have been so much harder to do. Like, how do you understand your own sexuality and your own gender identity when there isn't a vocabulary immediately available to you? I think it's so interesting as well because you get this real kind of like dual idea about what people should be doing when they have what we would call gay sex, right? Because on the one hand, the church is like, don't you do it? No, that's very naughty. But then on the other hand, you have sources like, for example, physicians manuals will be like, well, you know how young women get together and jack each other off? And they'll write about that. I'd be like, that's what little girls, they just hang out. And they just do that. And they'll be like, oh, and it's because their humors are building up and they don't really know what they're doing yet. And it's got to get out somehow or it'll suffocate their womb. So, hey, ho, you know, young ladies. And you're kind of like, excuse me? It's said in this

incredibly matter-of-fact way, which to a certain extent makes me find it somewhat plausible. So, for example, when Bouchard is like, are you doing fish vagina magic? Oh, don't do it. Don't do it. That's very condemning. But when physicians are like, oh, yeah, well, you know, that's understandable. And it's a symptom of X medical thing. That, to me, is more believable because it crops up in a lot of different places and it isn't

saying, and that's bad and you need to put a stop to it. what they're saying is that it's a symptom of this sexual malaise. And it's a very interesting one, I suppose, from a modern perspective, because I'm like, I don't know, are they? Yeah. And then sometimes you do get sources, like the discussion that was circulating around, was Edward II. He had like favorites, quote, unquote.

And the people writing about it at the time are clearly suggesting that they are lovers. They refer to each other as wife. People are quite surprised by how close they are and that they're kissing each other. One of his lovers, was it Philip Galveston or one of them? Even when Edward got married, Galveston turns up at the wedding and parades around in purple robes that look better than the brides. And people know this and clock it and register it. And just because they're not saying, yeah, he loves a bit of cock, does Edward the second. It's there and they clearly know enough about same-sex attraction and what's going on to be able to identify it.

People aren't walking around going, oh my God, they're just such good friends. It's like people are suspicious about this and they're not pleased about it. So that, again, with the kind of medical text that you get going on, suggests that people did know. That really shouldn't surprise us. There's too much evidence otherwise, you know? Right, exactly. So it's bad.

It's bad to be gay, according to the church, because you can't have sex in a way that will result in babies, right? So if we're talking about the sort of sex that can result in babies, so, you know, penis and vagina sex just like right up in there. What kind of methods are available, say, if you're having good old-fashioned penis in vagina sex and you don't want to get pregnant? Like, is there such a thing as family planning?

Oh, well, the pull-out method is a time and trusted, but wholly and effectual method, right? I think that the actual research on that suggests it's between 60 and 70% effective. I told my students that I once, and they were like, oh, God, is it really? I said, no, it's not a good thing. Jesus Christ, that's bad. But I suppose that would have been effective. And then also, you know,

penchant of sex isn't always the main event. There's a lot of other stuff that can go on around that. Other sex acts if you didn't want to get pregnant. And bearing in mind that if you do this, you might get pregnant, that puts a lot of concern on let's do some other stuff instead. But medieval contraceptives was prayer, I suppose, was quite a big one. But you get so like nonsense things turning up and some medical text, things like jump up and down after you. you've had sex. But what you have to remember is that medical texts are often guided by the church or in the fact that if they don't tow the line, the church might ban them. So you're not going to find many medical texts that go, I'm going to tell you how to not have a baby because the church

was really big on it. So it would have been word of mouth and oral tradition passed down and you sort of get condom manufacturers, but that's more in the 16th century, 15th century. So I would have put money on the pull-out method being the go-to and probably anal sex as well. Why not? We'll throw that one into. Which is why the church gets so down on all the kinds of sex that aren't PIV.

Where they're like, who's getting pregnant from that? And it's like, well, exactly. And I think it's quite funny because basically the church spends the entire medieval period being like, please, I'm begging you, have penis and vagina sex. Just put it in that hole. That's all we're asking you to do, guys.

And everyone is like, no. I find it really funny because I feel like our culture has now adopted the church's way of thinking about, you know, when we have these conversations about what counts the sex and what's real sex. And like real sex is this penetrative kind of sex. Whereas medieval people are like, oh no, saw that, I want a hand job. It does need to be dismantled this idea that we've got of the only sex that counts is putting a penis into a vagina. Even the fact that we call other sexual acts for play suggests that it's like the warm up act to the main event, which is bonkers really. because most women don't even come through penetrative sex. And yet here we are going, yes, but this is really the only one that counts. The thing is, is if you get pregnant, unless you're actually married and you are trying to have a baby, it's not good. Getting pregnant now is quite like, oh my God, for a lot of people, right?

Unless you're actually trying to have a baby, suddenly finding out you're pregnant is generally, oh shit. Well, what about it? In the medieval period, when the consequences for this are phenomenal, huge. So why would you risk getting pregnant when there are other things on offer? Absolutely. With all of this, we keep talking about what the church wants versus what people are doing. But what about, we've touched on this a little talking about Chaucer,

but when we're talking about pop culture and what ordinary people think about sex, how do we see it crop up? I mean, Chaucer thinks it's funny, right? Chaucer thinks it's really funny and pleasurable. Yeah, like, is that what we see also in things like other forms of art? other bits of medieval literature? They are surprisingly boredy. And again, you've got to be careful because of thousand years of history

and many different peoples within that. But we are often, as a modern audience, quite surprised by how open they are around their sexuality. For example, the Sheila Naguig figurines that crop up on early medieval churches. These little grotesque carvings of a female figure with this huge vulva that she's pulling open. And from whenever they were carved to right now,

people are going, now we don't really know what those do. Why are they there? But whatever it meant to the original people, it was something quite important. But there they go, these huge big vulva-like things on a church. Or they're called Maseri Cods, which is the carvings of medieval church pews. If you look at those, they're often obscene. They're often assholes and willies and bowls and all that stuff. And if you look up into the top of cathedrals, you can often see little grotesques. Like in York Minster, way up in the rafters, there is a little carving of a monkey buggering another monkey. You know, it's funny. Like, people go, oh, well, what does it mean? I think it's funny. But

when we look at something like Chaucon, we've got surviving bawdy songs, and there's one French bard, what's I call, like, The Knight who was a vagina or something utterly bonkers, right? We've all been there. But they seem to get a lot of enjoyment and humour out of sex, and they're not that bothered by it in the way that we might, even their kind of more courtly loves. Like, if you're thinking about the King Arthur myth and Lancelot and Gwenevere, when Mallory's writing about it, rather than condemning Gwenevere for her extramarital affair with Lancelot as the Victorians did, what he has to say is that she was a good lover. And that's like a good thing for him. I don't think he's saying that she was a right goer, but he's sort of like that she enjoyed love

and courtship. So that's quite important to him. And I always think it's fascinating when you think about the actual geographical landscape of people in the medieval period, because we have so much space now that we just take it for granted, we don't even think about it. Like, the idea that you'd have your own room to grow up in, that's so wild. What you'd probably be dealing with is families growing up in one room. And then even if you were, you know, of a poor person and you can go and maybe work in someone else's house or something, you'd be sharing rooms. So you'd see people naked. We're talking about big families here, so they're still having sex with their kids in the room. And these are a group of people that enjoy public bathing. That's quite good fun to them.

So nudity and sex, I think, would have been much more immediate and everyday to them than it would be to us, just because they didn't have the space to try and pretend it wasn't happening. This leads me to my final set of questions I want to ask you about. So if we're looking at these medieval views on sexuality, would you say that we're still being impacted by these things? Are there views of sexuality still coming up in ours? because in some ways they're completely different. Or are we just kind of mediated in what our ideas about this might be by people like the Victorians, by intercessors who kind of got in the way?

I think that the church's teachings cast a long shadow. It's not just the medieval church. They didn't stop after the medieval period. In fact, they really got going with the thou shalt not stuff. And I think that we have as a culture and a people, we have internalized a lot of our teachings, and it's still with us. Point in case the penis and vagina sex,

and the really important one. We still place a lot more value on women's sexuality and chastity than we do on men's. There's still an attitude of boys will be boys, whereas girls, they're just not given the same license that is being dismantled all the time, but I think that is still there. But what I do like is when you find things that we do have in common, like, we still think sex is really funny. I like that. And like, if you look at the monkeys buggering each other in a minster, that's funny.

and Chaucer is still funny and not in a way that Shakespeare is funny where you have to be taught why it's funny in order to be able to get the joke. It's a fart joke. But I do like that about us is we've always laughed at willies and knobs and farts

and that goes right back to as long as we've been doing it. But I think we still have that quite rich medieval sense of borediness. I like that. Yeah, I mean, well at least we do. And of course, we're still putting fish in our vaginas to try and seduce our husbands. Right? Absolutely. Obviously. It's what's made me, the woman I am today and all of my relationships.

It's why all of my relationships are so successful. We're not going to top that. So let's just look there, I suppose. Kate, it's been such a pleasure to hang out with you as always. Thank you so much for coming along. Any time, it has been my absolute pleasure. Thank you for Liz Digger. so much to Eleanor for having me. I have so much fun whenever I talk to her. And if you like what you've heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you

get your podcasts. And if you'd like us to explore a subject, or perhaps you just wanted to say howdy-dudy, you can now email us at betwixt at history hit.com. We have got episodes on everything from Hellish Nell to Hitler's sex life, all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Chavonne Dale and produced by Stuart Beckles. The senior producer was Charlotte Long Join me again betwixt the sheets, the history of sex scandal in society, a podcast by History Hit.