Dan Snow's History Hit - Medieval Sex

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

Warning: this episode contains explicit language.Medieval people weren’t prudish—far from it. Dan is joined by medieval historian Dr Eleanor Janega to explore sex, marriage, and desire in the Middle Ages. They delve into the beliefs around sodomy as “non-procreative sex”; pilgrimages as raucous release valves, raunchy art and love spells. They'll look at sex habits among the different classes, queer lives in monasteries, widows’ freedoms, abortion, STIs, and the risks of childbirth, and what purgatory had in store for the lustful. Along the way, they bust myths from chastity belts to teenage brides. A funny, frank, evidence-packed tour of how people got down—then worried about their souls.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Matthew Wilson and Dougal Patmore.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey friends, it's Nikaela from the podcast Side Hustle Pro. I'm always looking for ways to keep my kids entertained without screens. And the Yoto Mini has been a total lifesaver. My kids started using it right away and haven't stopped since. Hours of stories, music, podcasts, and more. And no screens or ads. Yoto is a screen-free audio player where kids just pop in a card and listen. With hundreds of options for ages 0 to 12, it's the perfect gift they'll go back to again

and again. Hey, folks, just a quick heads up before you jump in. There is some pretty explicit language in this episode, so you may want to rethink, listening to it, with your kids. Hi, everybody, welcome for the show. We're talking medieval sex, courtly love, chivalric, damsels in distress, chastity belts, well, that's the myth, what's the reality? Well, you'll be shocked to learn that most of what we think,

happened in medieval period was in fact invented by those uptight pesky victorians medieval folk were rampant they were having sex in public in churches can you imagine pilgrimages there was sort of unwritten rule of what goes on tour

stays on tour medieval people and this shouldn't come as a huge surprise were having a lot of sex as you would there was also not a lot of other entertainment they were doing in all sorts of ways that you would not believe Now to dispel the myths and tell us exactly how medieval people were getting down to it.

This is important stuff. I'm joined by the one and only Dr. Elnay Yarniga, host of History Hits' Very Own Gone Medieval podcast and card-carrying internet phenomenon. Ella, thanks coming on the show. Dan, it's always a pleasure. People are thinking church, they're thinking finger-wagging, they're not allowed to have sex.

What's going on with the church in this period? Okay, look, there is a little bit of finger wagging. Like, I'm going to be real with you. But fundamentally, you're working a kind of moral tightrope with sex because, yeah, okay, in their opinion, the ideal Christian isn't going to have sex, right? In ideal world, you dedicate yourself to God and you are chased. St. Augustine is really big on this. St. Jerome writes about this. But one of the things that they also say is that, well, you know, God says go forth, multiply, and you have to do that through sex, right?

So sex has to exist. And so the answer for that is obviously marriage. You get married. It's a holy sacrament. And then you can have sex and then you can do all that procreating that needs to happen. And so St. Jerome says about this, I love marriage because it gives me virgins, right? And so it's like a roll of the dice. Maybe your kids will dedicate themselves to God and then they won't have sex. So yeah, ideal world, you wouldn't have sex, but everybody knows that it's going to happen. So there's got to be a legal workaround for that. That's marriage. The legal worker. Yeah. And are you allowed... So you're not allowed to have sex outside marriage? No. Okay.

Of course, the church is going to say you're not allowed to have sex outside of marriage. But, like, why is there... There's some sex cops. They're under your bed. They're going to jump out. I mean, they're in the field. That's where a lot of people are having sex.

No. Like, they're not out behind the tavern. And in practice, what ends up happening is if you go to church and you say, you know, bless me, father, I have sinned. I was shagging the bar wench. They're going to be like, yeah, That's bad. Please don't do that again. And you do get penance for that. But also, if you then marry her, it's kind of okay. Yeah. Yeah. Please donate and repent. Exactly. Okay. So once you're in marriage, you're allowed to enjoy sex and is sex for procreation or are you allowed to like fill your boots?

Oh gosh. It's really, you are not allowed to enjoy sex. I mean, to the point where Thomas Aquinas writes about this. And he says that while you're having sex, you should be avoiding lascivious kisses, right? So the idea here is they understand to, an extent that orgasm is necessary for procreation. So the working idea of women's reproductive systems is the same as it was in ancient Greece, in ancient Rome, which is what we call the two seed theory. So there's an idea that women have semen like men do. And so if men expel semen during orgasm, then so do women, but it happens internally. But it has to be during orgasm? Yes. Well, hang on. We're getting somewhere here. Yeah, right. This is pretty progressive. Mm-hmm. So everybody needs to be orgasming during sex. in order for procreation to take place,

but you're not supposed to take it too far. It's supposed to be like, please just... You're walking a tightrope. It's where you really are. It's like, do not get naked. That's one of the rules. It shouldn't be during daylight. Really?

Yeah. It should be in night, ideally. You should do it as quickly as possible. It's sort of like get in, get out. Ninja. Don't threaten me with a good time. Just like, just straight in there, right? And then there's all these other like knock-on rules, right?

So technically you're not supposed to have sex on a sunday. obvious reasons. You're not supposed to have sex on a Wednesday because Wednesday is the day that you're supposed to go to confession. Same thing for Friday. You're not supposed to have sex on Saturday because the idea of sex is that sex is so sexy that you're going to get really turned on from the fact that you had sex. And then so on Sunday, when you're meant to be in church thinking about the Lord,

you'll just be sitting there being turned on instead. So you'd have a fade in and a fade out. Yeah. So no Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Sunday. Yeah, the weekends out. And no Wednesday. So you got three days. Yeah.

But also there are all these knock on things where it's like, well, definitely no sex during Lent. Lent, of course. That's pretty obvious. I know sex during Advent because you're supposed to be thinking about the end of the world during Advent. So there's all these rules that the church puts out there. But also, we know that nobody's following them because if people really were following them, then there would be no one born in September, right? Like you just would be like, oh, no, well, that was Advent.

It's out, right? So it's fine that they put all these rules out there. But what happens in practice is, you know, I'm allowed to say this because I did 16 years of Catholic school. I don't know if you've met Catholics, but they are having sex outside of wedlock. I'm sorry, please don't send the papacy on me. It's not my fault that this is happening, but it's true. Okay, so that hasn't changed as dramatically you might think. The female orgasm thing's very interesting, right?

So that implies that women, because there's ideas from other periods and cultures that sort of women shouldn't have any sexual urges at all. Yeah, so there's kind of the opposite here, and one of the overlying features of, well, actually, European pre-modern ideas about women, I mean, this holds true up until about the 19th century is if we're talking about gender and sexuality, everyone is like, oh, women, they love it. Okay. Women are just like out for it, women, you cannot stop them. Their horny is all get out. They're the problem, man. They just want to have lots and lots of sex, right? So Boccaccio's got a quote about this in the DeCameran, and he says that one rooster is able to serve as ten hens, but,

10 men would scarcely be able to service one woman. Interesting. So women are just, you know, sex crazed. They're out for it, and they derive a lot of pleasure during sex. And now they need to in order to conceive, absolutely. But everyone's kind of confused about why it is that women like sex so much. Much is written about the fact that women are still interested in having sex even when they're menstruating.

And they're like, well, that is proof that they're just wildly horny because, you know, horses don't do that. Things of this nature. And there is a lot of talking about in humoral theory terms why women are particularly interested in sex. And that's because women are cold and wet and men are hot and dry. And so women are sort of like lizards. So women really want to be heated up.

And sex heats them up for two reasons. One, just through fricative properties. It's like they'll talk about kind of rubbing sticks together. Yeah. That's a bit of a thing. And the other thing is men's semen. because like a men's semen is the most masculine manly man thing that there could possibly be. Sure.

It's hot and dry. So it warms them up. So it warms them up. Okay. And so then it's also said that women derive pleasure twice during sex. They derive pleasure from the men's ejaculation and also their own, which is happening internally. So they're like, so you can understand why women are completely insatiable and attempting to have sex at all times constantly. So the way the medieval people relate to sexuality is that you've just sort of got to

keep an eye on women because you never know what they'll be up to, which is presumably attempting to shag around. We should at this point raise the issue of the chastity bell, though. If that sounds like, that's something they might have turned to, if they're always worried about women shagging everyone, no? No, I'm afraid that this is a Victorian invention. Feverdream. Oh, they love it, don't they?

They're slaggy as all get out. You know, the Victorians, you know, you heard it here first, and I'll wrestle any Victorianist who says otherwise. But this is one of those things that they make up. A lot of times, if you've heard of some particularly gruesome form of medieval torture, whether it is something like the Iron Maiden or indeed the Chastity Belt, a Victorian made that up. Really? So they just love to think about the medieval period as this particularly torturous time.

And also, I think that they think Chastity belts are sexy. So, yeah, unfortunately, for Victorians, no, that's not real. But it's kind of fun to think about how Victorians are weird, I think. we can all agree on that. Is there a class issue here? I was really the Stephens Weig talking about Austrian society, the 19th century and he goes, my sisters, the women I knew

we weren't having sex for marriage, we were really messed up around sex, and we'd take these journeys to the countryside and we'd see like happy peasants clearly shagging away outside wedlock and some would get married and happy, and they would think, hang on, what's going on here? The kind of educated elite of this Austrian empire were really tormented and tortured about sex.

But living cheek by child, people that were just clearly having sex and just seemed reasonably happy. It's not happier. And this is absolutely the case for the medieval period generally. Like, we're talking about of the European population, about 70% of them are peasants, right? And you can tell a peasant, anything you want, there's all these highfalutin ideas, but they're just getting out there and living their lives, right? When we think about marriage in the medieval period, a lot of the time what we're talking about is actually wealthy people, you know, it's kings, it's princes, it's this 0.000,0001% of society.

medieval peasants are shagging around. They are kind of having sex whenever. They're getting married at the kind of normal ages, usually in your early 20s for both men and women. There's none of this. People say, oh, well, people get married at 14 years old in the medieval period. No, they don't. You get married at 14 if you are a princess, and then even then you're not allowed to shag your husband until you're 16 or so. Quite famously, Eleanor of Castile and King Edward got married as teenagers and were shagging at 14. And got separated because Eleanor got knocked up and they were like, no, no, no, no, no, you're going to kill her. And so they got sent to different countries because they were like, please don't do that.

So, you know, there is this kind of understanding that that might be dangerous. That was a love match. Yeah, it was a love match and it's so sweet. But, I mean, yeah, I mean, please do not put on the internet that I was going to underage sex, but, you know, it is one of these things where peasants are kind of doing this handful of things. And then there is a much more sort of tortured thing that's going on in upper class society, which then becomes the literature trope known as courtly love. We talk about Eleanor and Edward because it's like, oh, gosh, wow, a love match.

Because most of these people hate each other. They're like, well, look, we shag because, you know, I'm going to lie back and think of England. So that's what's going to happen here. But most people then are going to want to seek some other kind of sexual outlet. And the way that they do that is through this trope of courtly love, which is kind of like, you know, you sit around, you I, the other rich people who are around. And you're all in arranged marriages. You're all in arranged marriages. So it's all brutal. And, you know, everyone kind of understands it's happening. You write each other, love poetry. A lot of it takes place pretty from

afar where you sit around in pine. Okay. And they love to pine, you know, and it's quite romantic. And it's very romantic. And you, oh, and I've gone off my food and I can. And then when someone is out of town, then you sneak off and you shagg each other really quickly. So they are absolutely having sex outside of wedlock, rather a lot. Kings are just going to shack whoever they want, that's fine. Queen's probably not so much. It's just, there's... Those royal bloodlines are important, right? It's too much at stake, really. But I mean, Duchesses, Marquess's, sure, go for it. Like, you know, help yourself. And if you're married to over the second, you get a pass. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you can do anything that you want, babe, as long as you can stand it. That's

all I'm saying, you know. And of course, they're the people that have left the biggest imprint in the archives and the history books, the literature of the time. So that can skewer. are understanding of this period. Yeah, absolutely. And it is quite interesting because I think now, again, let's talk some trash about the Victorians lightly. You know, I think if you say the word courtly love out loud to people, they will think that this means, oh, like romance, then like eventually marrying someone. And that's not true at all. This is an express way of having extramarital sex and making it really beautiful, right? So peasants don't need all that because they're just

going to do what they're going to do. And also, peasants are going to get married for love. so it just sort of doesn't apply to them in the same way. Interesting. Let's talk about how people had sex. You mentioned peasants. I mean, the domestic spaces are different, right? You're living with families. How does this work?

Is there an accepted time and place? Is there like date night? What goes on? Well, one of the things that happens rather a lot is having sex not in the house. Yeah. There's a lot of shagging in fields. Yeah. Just like absolutely tons of it.

Because you can sort of be guaranteed some privacy. We know that there are also. particular places, kind of like dogging now, where there'll be like woods and stuff that people go. So, for example, in Bristol, they had a bunch of woods that was called fucking woods because they don't care. They're not here to play, right? They're like, yeah, that's the woods that you're fucking. Yeah. That's not be ambiguous. And then so, and that would be the sort of thing. You go out of your house and then you do that there. Now, there are rules to this sort of stuff as well. They're like, I mean, please try to have some kind of model, like go real far into the field.

Don't do it right next to the road. Go into the woods. And then there's rules about things like, please don't go inside churches and have sex there. And there are all these apocryphal stories about so-and-so couples snuck off to have sex in the church because when services aren't on, it's empty and it's dry. And they get stuck together. And then their punishment is they kind of have to go on a pilgrimage. And all the townspeople are like, you were shagging in the church while they're paraded around naked in front of them. It's one of these classic medieval stories about how everyone likes to make fun of people who are shagging.

So you get there, since that's probably something that's going on, people are sneaking into the churches. Exactly. And so these are the things with learning about sex in the medieval period, you have to look at a lot of really hostile witnesses, because most of what's going to come to us is going to come from legal documents or church documents, and they are being like, please stop doing this.

And then you're like, oh, okay, so that's what was going on. Fantastic, right. What about pilgrimage? I think you and I've talked before, and you talked about the study of what happens on the road, stays on the road. Oh, lads, lads, lads, lads. You know, it's like a rugby.

tour. It's like a hens night. It is a fantastic time to do some shagging because you're under plenary indulgence. So that means basically you don't sin while you're on pilgrimage. Really? Yeah, because you're, well, you're, bro, you're on pilgrimage. Yeah, you're, oh, like, go for it. Do whatever you want. Oh, really? God loves that stuff, in fact. Break some skulls. Mm-hmm. It's going to be beautiful, right? And so we know, especially in the later medieval period, in the lowlands, so kind of what is now Belgium and the Netherlands, this, There is the equivalent of, you know how, like, Hens Knights, they'll be going around, like, wearing a little penis hat and things like that.

There are these Pilgrim's badges that they would wear at the time that are completely obscene. So my personal favorite is a vulva that's wearing a little crown that is being cared on a litter by three penises that have legs. Right. Great stuff. And the church is like, look at those saintly relics. Exactly. And they survived us in the hundreds.

Like, there are so many of these things. And they're really cheap. They're made out of pewter. It's the sort of thing that you can buy. And hilariously, originally, some people would be like, well, maybe their fertility charms. And I'm like, girl, please be honest with yourself. So one of the things that is really interesting about that for us is that we can see there that the church is turning a blind eye to a lot of stuff. Because, hey, pilgrim is just great for them, right?

Because you're going to end up at whatever that site is and you're going to pray and you're going to give them a donation. You're going to buy the biggest candle that there is. And that is going to be something that's assured because they are going to feel a little guilty about all the shack. And then they can go, hey, it's fine, you're doing great girl. And it will also mean that people will want to go on further pilgrimages because they had so much fun, right? Wow. What an illusion of religiosity and recreation and sexual freedom?

That's a right, isn't it? So people can leave home, see the world, experience something, but they're on God's time. There's a sort of holy purpose. It's been like kids going on their gap years today and doing a little orphanage work, but whilst having some coming-of-age experiences. Exactly. It is really, really similar. And we see people also kind of decry

Camp, one of my personal enemies. I think she's the worst. And who is she? So she is a late medieval woman from Norfolk. So she hails from what is then bishops Lynn, but is now Kings Lynn. She is a very successful businesswoman, but she wants to be a saint. So she commissions in autobiography about her own life. And the main miracle that she does is like a go around crying and annoying people. And she's like, because I'm just so overcome by how much I love Jesus. And she has this whole weird lie about how when she's on pilgrimage, her fellow pilgrims kick her off pilgrimage because she wants to pray at every meal. And they're like, we want to have sex. Get out of here, lady. And so it's like,

obviously this is an overstatement, right? There probably are plenty of people who are on pilgrimage for the right reasons. But there are a lot of pilgrims who are on there for, I'm not going to call them the wrong reasons. I'm going to call them. They have a different motive. That's right. That's all. Interesting. What about different forms of attraction and sex? What about homosexuality? Yeah, so this is a really interesting one because in the medieval period, they don't have a concept of homosexuality, because they don't have a concept of identity in the way that we do. They wouldn't say that anyone has a sexuality. What they got is action. So you either are what they call a sodomite or you are not. Now, the category of sodomite is incredibly broad because sodomy technically

means any type of sex that you can't get pregnant from. Okay. So if you got two cis dudes who are having sex, that's definitely sodomy because nobody's getting knocked up, right? That's just not going to happen. Same thing with two women, right? But technically, you are a sodomite if you are a married woman and you go down on your husband.

Okay. Because no one's getting pregnant there. So that is sodomy still. Now we tend to use sodomy to mean one thing in particular and specifically to be talking about gay men. But at the time, they're just like non-procreative sex. have her, right? So, sodomy is bad, and sodomy is bad according to Thomas Aquinas because it's illogical, right? If the only logical reason to have sex is to have children, then when you're

doing sodomy, you can't be doing it, and so it's illogical, and that means it's out of alignment with God, all right? Does that stop people from doing it? Absolutely not. You'll be shocked to learn. Can you believe? I mean, Thomas Aquinas, he has a lot to answer for. Ooh, this guy, I mean, and he's thinking about it all the time, too. I mean, my man is, out here thinking about onanism, which is what we would call masturbation, he's out here thinking about whether or not it's sinful. If monks have wet dreams, it's not, just so you know. I know you're worried. It's not. But the thing is that we know a lot about what we would call gay sex, specifically from monks, because monks and nuns are having a lot of it. And they write.

They're all literate. That's the thing about being a monk and a nun. Your job is to write things down. And we've got pretty hot love letters back and forth from people to each other. you know, nuns will get moved to different monasteries, and then they pine. And they were like, I miss all the hot sex we used to have. Every few years, there'll be a crackdown in varying monastic orders where they're like, I swear to God, stop shagging each other. There's this really great ordinance for a nunnery where they're like, you are not allowed to call other nuns, my little bird, get out,

and like you can't sleep in each other's beds, no, and you have to be wearing clothes. And, you know, we see this over and over again happening. And so this tends to be one of these things where we, don't know. Like, is this kind of a, well, you're just in a monastery or a nunnery and you don't see the outside world and you're like, any port in a storm, baby? Or do you end up in a monastery or a nunnery because you're like, you know, I'd really just love to spend all my time with members of the same sex. We don't have a way of knowing, but we do know that a lot of them absolutely are getting it on. You listen to Dan Snow's history. Don't go anywhere. There's more to come.

This episode is brought to you by Speck Savers. Just think about everything your eyes do everyday folks. You're reading. You're working on screens. You're driving in bright sunlight, I wish. You might be squinting at road signs at night. It's a lot. You're trying to decipher medieval handwriting.

Not easy. No wonder your eyes can feel strained and tired sometimes. And that's why it's important to give your eyes the same care and attention you give the rest of your health. At Specsavers, every eye exam includes something really clever called an OCT. scan. I had one of these the other day. It's basically a 3D scan of your eye that lets independent optometrists spot potential eye and health issues early. Sometimes, even before you notice anything yourself. And here's the best part. At Specsavers, they think this technology is so important. It comes with every standard eye exam. So if it's been a while since your last

checkup, book an eye exam with an OCT scan from $99. That's specksavers.ca.c.a. I exams are provided by independent optometrists. Prices may vary by location. Visit specksavers. to learn more. Hey friends, it's Nikaela from the podcast Side Hustle Pro. I'm always looking for ways to keep my kids entertained without screens. And the Yoto Mini has been a total lifesaver. My kids started using it right away and haven't stopped since. Hours of stories, music, podcasts, and more.

And no screens or ads. Yoto is a screen-free audio player where kids just pop in a card and listen, with hundreds of options for, ages zero to 12, it's the perfect gift they'll go back to again and again. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt, and avoid the Poisoners' Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History,

we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and Shinobi spies teach us the, tactics and skills needed, not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. And speaking of writing things now, I'm thinking now about the illustrations on manuscripts and

the art and the board and things. Some of that gets quite raunchy, and that's being done by these monks and sometimes, right? So how is that squared with like fallacies and things like that? What's that doing there? Yeah, so one of the really big art motifs that you will see all the time, and there's some really famous images of it in the Bibliotique Nacional de France. They have this really beautiful Roman de la Rose, which is a smut story, it's courtly love, it's great. In the margins, they have these images of nuns picking fallaces off a tree. And the fallace tree is a couple of things. This is one where we do think that people kind of put it up as a way of saying,

oh, you know, fertility isn't that great. But it's also a joke about how much women just love that D. And they would harvest it if they could. They're trying to bring in those crops. Sweet fruit. Uh-huh, absolutely. And you see these nuns just picking these huge dicks out of a tree. And then...

I suspect that's drawn by men. Yeah, well, we don't know. Well, we don't know. Could have been. Could have been. Could have been. Who knows? And then, you know, eventually one of the nuns goes on to Shagamunk. And then she's leading him around by a little leash around his penis. It's great. And so these are things that are certainly happening. And look, the Romand de la Rose, it's great, but it is, you know, courtly love literature. It is romance literature like anything else now. And so you can have an audience who's going to be like, oh, I would like a very richly illustrated version of that, please. But it's not exactly, you know, as though they're like, please draw us. some dicks in the margins of Moby Dick, right? Like, that's not the same thing. So it is kind of like a fun text, and yes, it is literature for us now, but, I mean, it's a book about shagging. I'm going to be so real with you.

And so if it's a book about shagging, you're allowed to have those kind of illustrations in the margin. Yeah, interesting. So that does imply readers who are relaxed about that, more than our Victorian forebears. Oh, absolutely. 100% I would say that medieval people are more relaxed about sex than Victorians are in any case, yeah.

We might, I guess, talk about the science of reproduction. You've talked about the ejaculation. Menstrual cycles, pregnancy. Was there quite an understanding of how the mechanics works? Yeah, they're pretty good on the mechanics, although, you know, obviously they're not clear yet on the fact that women have eggs, which you need microscopes for that. So it's going to take a really long time. But they're pretty clear on what is going on inside people's bodies. Contrary to popular opinion, medieval people could dissect cadavers. It's not done very often. There is a worry about contagion. They're worried that if you cut someone open, then my asthma is going to come out and they'll kill everyone. But there are laws on the books, for example, in the Holy Roman Empire that all physicians need to be trained on cadavers every once in a while, right? So they know what's going on in there, and they've got lots of illustrated diagrams of this.

And with this, there are some interesting ideas, particularly around menstruations. So the idea, again, comes down to humoral theory. So when you're born as a baby, the idea is across the board, that's the hottest you're ever going to be. Right? So you're born very, very, very hot. and quite wet also. And so age is seen as a process of getting drier and colder over time until when you die of old age, it's essentially you become so cold and dry that, like, that's it, right?

So the idea here is that when little girls are younger, they're quite hot. So they're able to burn off any excess humors that would be malign. But because they've become colder when they're older, they lose that ability. And Menzies is there for your bad humors that you could. wouldn't burn off, so you're just going to have to expel them. And then that can be put a stop to by getting people pregnant. And also, it's kind of like, well, that's just sort of an affluvia, right? They know that you can't get pregnant while you're menstruating. I mean, you can kind of, but it's very difficult. But basic idea of cycles. Yeah, they get that. And their idea

of menopause is that, well, now you become so cold that you can't even expel menses. And so then there's this concern, there's a little bit of concern about older women that they might be poisonous because they have like backed up mencies and there's like a lot written about like don't meet the eyes of older women because they're kind of like basilisks and they can kill you. So it's not great, you know. Yeah, they have pretty chilled out ideas about sex, but I'm not here to tell you this is some kind of like enlightened time where they're like women are great, but they do kind of want to see women pregnant because there is also the idea that wounds are kind of like little animals. Now this is going back to Galen, this is going back to Aristotle and

Plato, any Greek physician would tell you this. And the best way to make sure that women don't end up hysterical is to keep them pregnant. Oh, okay. Because pregnancy pins your uterus in one specific place and it keeps it from going onto your liver or onto your brain and making y'all crazy. All right. So, yeah, I know. I know. Any Aphrodisiacs, speaking of the science of these things. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So if you look in any herbarium, which these are great, these are some of my favorite, favorite medieval books, herbariums, where they have these lush. illustrations of plants and flowers. And they will say, okay, well, here's some ways that you can use these as aphrodisiacs. And aphrodisiacs are kind of like the number one thing that most

plants are for. And there is rather a lot of kind of like seeing any flower that is particularly sweet as an aphrodisiac. So a rose is an aphrodisiac and a violet is an aphrodisiac. There are also love spells. And interestingly, medieval people are a little bit more chilled out about the idea of magic than early modern people are where they freak out and they see witches everywhere. But there's a lot of talking about love spells in penitentials, which are like guidebooks for priests, so this is what you should ask during confession.

And they'll be like, girl, are you baking bread and rubbing it down your naked body to feed to a guy to make him fall in love with you? That's very naughty. Important question. Don't do that. There's also, I've got a bad love spell. according to Bouchard of Verms, who's writing to us in the early medieval periods of 8th century,

women are taking live fishes and inserting them into their vaginas and then feeding them to men in order to make them love them. And now, Dan, I'm going to wager that isn't happening. A, it isn't happening and B, it wouldn't work. I just, I mean, like, what is going on with this? It's very much, you know, sir, again, with hostile witnesses. And with Victorians, right, you will get these things and it's like, where did that come from? And it's just some monk who's never had sex being like, I bet they're ticking that fish.

And you're like, okay, bro. Yeah, maybe like, wow, calm down slightly. I just woof. So there are all these things that in theory you can do, but also the church kind of says one of the reasons you shouldn't be doing it is it doesn't work. And you're kind of fooling yourself and you need to like grow up. God wouldn't let that happen. So it's more enlightened in some ways in terms of. of the act of sex in terms of women's enjoyment of sex,

some of the availability of sex. How do we then just quickly talk about the sexual politics of women, property, power? Is that kind of divorced, or is this connected with how medieval people are having sex? Like, are women allowed to have agency over their lives and their decisions? So this is where things can get kind of weird, because, you know, when we hear, oh, women should orgasm during sex in order for them to get pregnant, this has a kind of corollary that's a real downer. So, for example, in cases of rape, if a woman then ends up pregnant as a result of it, everyone goes, oh.

So she really enjoyed it. Yeah, she actually enjoyed it. Actually, she wanted it, right? There's also the case of with raptus, which is a difficult one to work out. The Latin term is raptus, and we don't necessarily know what that means at any given time. It could be thinking about what we think of as like coercive sex or violent sex. And it could be you ran off with your boyfriend and we're making out. Okay. And you didn't have your father's permission, right?

Because women are very much the property of the men in their lives. And so when Raptus occurs, it is envisioned much less as an offense against the woman and much more as an offense against whatever man owns her. So, for example, in cases of Raptis, a lot of the time the punishment is the man needs to marry the woman. Now, that's kind of fine if you were off shagging your boyfriend against your dad's will. That's great. And you're like, success, outcome achieved. But if this is something violent, then that's really kind of a horrible thing that happens.

And we also see kind of more on the bright side of this. A lot of worry about women who are widows. So, for example, if you are really wealthy, say your husband had been a member of a guild. You're also in the guild now, usually because you can do the same work. Your husband dies. Then that usually means the guild membership transfers onto you. You've got a bunch of money. You're not worried about whatever.

These women start shagging around rather a lot. and everyone's like, oh, yeah, the rich widows. The merry widows. They've hacked them in the evil world, right? Absolutely. And so they're the ones who are just kind of doing whatever it is they want to do. And there's a lot of hand-wringing about what you do about them because there isn't really anything that you can do about them, except like wag your finger.

They've paid their dues. They got married. They did exactly what you were supposed to do. And a lot of the time you're sort of not supposed to get married again. And then again, you know, so there's the foil. I mean, she's just a character in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, But the wife of Bath, very famously, is like, I just keep getting married because every time a husband dies, I want another one because I love to shag. And also, I'm very good with money. And so these are all business acquisitions that I'm having. And that tells us a lot about what the worries about women who are wealthy and quite aware of their own sexuality are. But on the other hand, too, she's kind of like played as quite sweet and people like her in the end. And yeah, technically she's not supposed to be acting that way. But we all love the wife of Bath, don't we? You'll listen to Dan Snow's history hit.

The best is yet to come. Stick with us. Hey friends, it's Nikaela from the podcast Side Hustle Pro. I'm always looking for ways to keep my kids entertained without screens. And the Yoto Mini has been a total lifesaver. My kids started using it right away and haven't stopped since. hours of stories, music, podcasts, and more, and no screens or ads. Yoto is a screen-free audio player where kids just pop in a card and listen.

With hundreds of options for ages zero to 12, it's the perfect gift they'll go back to again and again. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoners' Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into Feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and Shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed, not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories,

listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits. There are new episodes every week And because on the military side of things When I come across women in the medieval world Clearly, you know, they're the property of their husbands It's a misogynistic society, they can't all power on their own right And yet you often find women leading forces during sieges, right? Eleanor McEton, you and I are big fans of, we've got that wonderful woman who's in charge

at Lincoln in 12, 17, Delahaye, and women and princesses, they end up, well, running estates for husbands who are away, they end up fighting. So that's an interesting thing. Yeah, it is very much seen that women can do these things. So women end up on campaign all the time. You know, we have this kind of amorphous term of camp followers, right? And that's usually like your wife, right? Because if you're getting sent off somewhere, it's like, well, who's doing all the cooking around here. These are not professional armies. There are no cooks. There's no one to do the washing up. So women sort of come along with that. And a lot of the time, that means that they also are doing military things, but we just kind of don't talk about it.

And certainly, as you say, you know, the Paston letters, so the very important English family, the Pastons, we have all these letters back and forth to different people. And we have the women saying, I need this many pole axes, I need this many arrows, I need this many crossbow bolts, because we're trying to shore things up around here. So these are women who are very much trusted to run estates to lay siege to be involved in armies, but there's also a little bit of a worry about camp followers with armies. So for example, Joan of Arc, another person that we're both big fans of, she ends up running off a bunch of camp followers from the French armies during the Hundred Years' War because sometimes camp followers are just good old-fashioned sex

workers. Because these girls know a deal when they see you in, you know, and there's a rather There are a lot of dudes around here and they're not all married or their wife isn't with them, so they know how to make some money. And there's some hilarious illustrations of Joan of art being like, get out of here, girls and these very nicely dressed girls being like, oh, and running off, which I find very amazing. What a kill joy. I know. I'm like, boo, Joan.

Okay, so there are widows of merchants and crafts, artisans of nobles. They could exercise power in their own right. So the medieval world was not, we might think, just sort of male-dominated women just hidden inside property, not playing any part. Oh, yeah, absolutely. In fact, I would say that medieval women play huge roles in society in ways that women don't, again, you know, in the Victorian period or in the early modern period, that's when we start to see the kind of retreat of women from public and into the domestic sphere. So in the medieval world, yeah, we're not always going to necessarily know about women, but it's because it's so common for women to be everywhere that everyone doesn't bother to write it down. It's like they assume you know that there's a woman on campaign with this army. Like, what would be the point of talking about it? Listen, and there's a whole... The internet was out there with the spread bet

on when you'd blame bad things on the early modern period. I think we did it. Listen. Let us know everybody. Okay, wow. Let us know everyone what the winnings are. Okay, so what about queerness? Like, you talked about sodomy.

So that's just people having sex, not for pro-Christian. Are people talked about, as we might now call trans or is like gay? Like, is that something it's talked about? Well, yeah, so we know there's a very famous case of what we would now sort of call a trans woman from here in London. Her name is Eleanor Reikner. And Eleanor, we find out about because she's doing sex work in the wrong place. So she's doing sex work kind of over by the Tower of London.

And that is not one of the approved red light areas. You're supposed to be in Southwark or over on Cock Lane or on Grope Cunt Lane. You know, just look. That's which is true. But those are actual true names. Cock Lane's still there. Yeah. So that's fun.

It's in Falstaff, which is cute. But Eleanor gets found shagging a dude in the wrong place And she gets brought before the court And the court's like, girl, what's all this? You know, and she's like, well, here's the tea. I transitioned at this inn in Oxford full of trans girls And, you know, they're the ones who taught me how to dress And this is how I lived my life

And these are the ways that we make ourselves become more feminine She tells the story that she's all in the court proceedings Oh, yeah, yeah. What a treasure trove. And it's absolutely amazing document. And what we can see from it is that she's what we would now call like buy or pan. We're like, she shags women, she shags men, she sags for money, she shags for fun. She does technically, well, more feminine jobs like embroidery, but she also kind of shags

around on the side or does some light theft here and there, you know, anything to kind of get by. And we don't really find out what happens to her, but they're mostly like, you're crazy. That's crazy. And we think they just kind of let her go because they think it's kind of entertaining. So we certainly know that these people are around. And then the other side of this coin is we find lots of what we would now consider to be trans men in monasteries. Right. So it'll be, oh, it turns out Brother John doesn't have the equipment that we expected that he had.

They love that. They're like, this is brilliant. This is like overcoming your femininity in the name of God. This is devoting yourself to Christ. It's better to be like a man. So if you're behaving like a man, that's like brilliant. So they love that stuff. So fair play to the girls.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Oh, interesting. We touched on it a little bit earlier. but the dangers of medieval sex, well, again, this could be a little bit early modern, but like sexually transmitted disease and infection. I mean... It does exist, so we don't have syphilis yet. No, that's... Remind me the period that comes in.

Early modern. When everything was bad. No, but we definitely do know that there are some things that are kind of around the shop. Interestingly, they tend to think of leprosy as possibly in SDI, which it is not. But we do think that people had things that were kind of like, you know, chlamydia now, stuff like that. And there are some interesting. ideas, right? So, for example, people will say of sex workers, well, sex workers are unable to

get pregnant because they don't really like sex, you know, they're doing it for a job. But we also think that maybe sex workers do have a harder time getting pregnant because they might have got STIs. Interesting. That would make that more difficult. Of course, though, it's not impossible, and obviously sex workers did have kids. But there are certainly things out there that you can get, but it's not of the virulence of syphilis, which really messes everybody out when it comes in because no one had ever seen anything like it. Yeah. hideous. And unwanted pregnancy, we talked about the cycle. We talked about Aphrodisiacs, were the things that people could do to try and prevent unwanted pregnancy.

So the major thing that they use are abortifiscence. And very interestingly, the medieval church is pretty chill about abortion. They're kind of like, babe, up until the first trimester, it's a freebie. It's, that's just whatever. And so the big thing that we tend to see, both recommended by midwives and also in herbariums and places like that is drink Penny Royalty. Just get some Penny Royal down you, which works. We definitely know it works. And what's Penny Royal? So Penny Royal is a little herb. It tastes kind of nasty, I would imagine, but it's very easy to grow and it's kind of all around the shop. And you can just take that rude into tea, drink that. And if you drink enough of it, it can induce a miscarriage.

As soon as you feel in the first trimester. Yeah. So if you notice that you've missed a period, you can start chugging that down. And that is kind of like a get out of jail-free car. the church is okay with it. But they're particularly okay with it because the other option a lot of the time, especially for people who are living in poverty, is infanticide. And the downer side is that infanticide

is really, really common in the medieval period. And so the church just does not want that to happen. So they're like, fine, first trimester, just say 10 Hail Marys and probably try not to shag if you... Of course, of course. But if something happens... And again, do you want to guess

when they start cracking down on abortion? Let me think. Give you one. I'll give you one. I'll give you one. Yeah. Uh-huh. It's the early modern period when they started. It was. Interesting. Okay. Interesting. Okay. So, even when you were at high status woman and your husband was super touchy about inheritance and lands and dynasties, you could have sex outside that marriage and be reasonably confident that you are going to bear the right man's children. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know what you're doing in terms of using varying herbs, but also a lot of the time, if you are that high status, you are just going to live. submit yourself to sodomy. That's one of the big things. So you're just like, hey, you know, hand stuff, that's fine. And indeed, the remandal rose, which I talked about earlier,

the romance of the rose, one of the big courtly love books from the time. It can also be read as a metaphor for going down on chicks. Romancing the rose. Okay. Which is, you know, fine, and no one's going to get pregnant from that. No. Plus, it's got the bonus point of being very, very sexy because the church told you not to. Yeah. And they love to do whatever. the church tells them not to do. Like, they simply long for a hand job. It's great. What a different world. Okay, so, and then I guess finally, obviously sex can lead to childbirth, and we should just check in with that. Is that as dangerous as people say? Oh, God, yeah. Okay, fine. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, it's not as though medical professionals don't do everything that they can do at the time. But really,

up until the 20th century, childbirth is just absolutely a killing field. It's something that we don't talk about now because we want more babies in the world and that sort of thing, and we're not trying to freak women. out. But it is very, very dangerous and it is the number one cause of death for women in the medieval period. If you make it through the early years, so one or two, the thing that's going to get you usually is childbirth. But if you make it through that, then you might live a long and happy life and you die in your 70s or 80s. Well, we've got to finish up, obviously, on eternal life. I've got to worry about the soul here. The church would tell you that if you do, lots of the things that you've talked about today, you are in trouble. You're not going to get into

heaven. Yeah, absolutely. And there is a real worry about that. It's not to say that people didn't worry about their souls when they were doing all these things that the church told them not to do. But they are hoping for what we call in the medieval period the good death, right? Which is that you die after you've confessed your sins and you go to the prison and you're like, sorry, I was shagging a whole lot when I was younger. And they go, oh, yeah, no worries, you're fine. You get extreme unction and then you die and, you know, fantastic. You will probably go to heaven. Now, where most people expect they're going to end up if they're somewhat sinful is actually purgatory. Purgatory isn't a place in between heaven and hell. It's hell with a timer. And so we know rather a lot about what lustful people will end up experiencing in purgatory from stuff like hell frescoes in churches. And so there's rather a lot of kind of like sexy, naked people getting spanked by a demon. I mean, you will see, you know, in what is a very ha-ha funny, they think, idea of sodomy, you'll see a lot of dudes getting spit roasted. You see, you know, so you'll get things like that happening.

Now, most of them are going to get out eventually. Okay. The church kind of wants people to be sitting a little bit because you know how you get your relatives out of hell for shagging too much? So Mass is for the soul. Just, you know, kick the church a little bit of money. They'll pray for your horny aunt.

And she'll be let out. The hornie aunt's allowed out of purgatory a little bit quicker for a little donation. Exactly. Like, follow and subscribe. Yeah, 100%. This is what I'm telling all my nieces and nephews. Help.

Yes. We need to reduce my time, poetry. It is a tall order. Yeah. Listen. Thank you very much, Elianaga. If there is a god, there'll be no purgatory for you because you're a legend. Thank you very much.

Dan, thank you so much for having me on to talk about my favorite thing in the world. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's history hit. You know, you could have watched this episode and others on YouTube. That's right. You can peek behind the curtain of how we record this podcast on our YouTube. channel. Very exciting new development here. Just click the link in the show notes and head over to subscribe. New YouTube releases every Friday, friends. Don't miss out. My kids started using it right away and haven't stopped since.

Hours of stories, music, podcasts, and more, and no screens or ads. Yoto is a screen-free audio player where kids just pop in a card and listen. With hundreds of options for ages 0 to 12, it's the perfect gift they'll go back to again and again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.