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A handy guide to sex in the Middle Ages: The original ‘Just Say No’ campaign
03.27.2015
01:59 pm
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Forget the romance about damsels in distress and knights in shining armor—having sex in Medieval times (that’s the 5th to the 15th century according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica) was definitely a no-no. Well, according to ye olde religious edicts that is.

For example: if it was Sunday, Wednesday, Friday or Saturday then it was a sin to have sex. If it was daylight or you were naked—you weren’t allowed to have sex either. If the wife was menstruating, pregnant or nursing a child—yep, sex was definitely out. As it was during Lent, Advent, Whitsun week, Easter, feast days and fast days. In fact, having sex was only allowed according to the penitentials if you wanted a child and then you could only do it so long as there was no fondling, no lewd kisses, no oral, no strange positions, and even then you could only do it once and you had better not enjoy it.
 
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‘I’m not enjoying this, darling.’ ‘Me neither.’
 
As you can imagine, back in these feudal times finding a place to make out was difficult—accommodation was cramped, often cold and damp and lacked privacy. Out in the fields, or in a hay loft was more suitable, as was inside a church, which as Ruth Mazo Karras notes was:

...safe, dry, and deserted for much of the day, might have been the equivalent of the back seat of a car.

 
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Because of religious belief abstinence had to be observed during the 46 to 62 days of Lent, the four weeks of Advent, and the 40 to 60 days around the Feast of the Pentecost. To help people people find suitable times to have intercourse Penitentials—“books which gave the rules of sex and the penance for breaking them”—were devised by the church. One such book was the Anglo-Saxon Canons of Theodore written around 700AD that included regulations on drunkenness, fornication, theft, perjury, heresy and being twice baptized—o, the horror! Under fornication in chapter two, it contains the following punishments for deviation from the proscribed sex acts:

Whoever fornicates with an effeminate male or with another man or with an animal must fast for 10 years. Elsewhere it says that whoever fornicates with an animal must fast 15 years and sodomites must fast for 7 years….

There was similar rules for pleasuring oneself:

If he defiles himself, he is to abstain from meat for four days. He who desires to fornicate (with) himself and is not able to do so, he must fast for 40 days or 20 days. If he is a boy and does it often, either he is to fast 20 days or one is to whip him….

Women were also threatened with dreadful punishments should they give into the temptation of pleasuring themselves with a homemade, edible or mechanical instrument:

Have you done what certain women are accustomed to do, that is to make some sort of device or implement in the shape of the male member of a size to match your sinful desire? If you have done this, you shall do penance for five years on legitimate holy days.

But there was worse….

Whoever ejaculates seed into the mouth, that is the worst evil. From someone it was judged that they repent this up to the end of their lives.

 
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‘Arms above the bedsheets, please.’
 
It wasn’t just the church who were quick to denounce people doing what comes naturally. Royals, nobles and landowners used their power to influence young lovers. King Phillip IV of France (1268-1314) was known as “Phillip the Fair”—I think we’ll have to think of him fair of skin rather than fair or just. When he discovered some of his favorite knights were having “relations” with his three daughters-in-law arrested on charges of adultery in 1314. He had the men arrested and disemboweled. His daughters-in-law were sent off to a nunnery for their sins.

Interestingly, prostitution thrived during the Middle Ages and was generally ignored by the Church, or at worst considered a necessary evil, as scholar and saint, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) thought:

If prostitution were to be suppressed, careless lusts would overthrow society.

Most towns had a brothel. Prostitutes were recognizable by their dress—a veil and a garment with a bold yellow stripe. Regular customers probably came from the wealthier classes.

This handy little diagram explains the ins and outs (ahem) of what was or was not acceptable—and explains why if you were young, horny and fancied some slap and tickle then you were well and truly screwed.
 
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Via The Medievalists and Oddee.
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.27.2015
01:59 pm
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Cilice: Da Vinci Code-esque Medieval BDSM Gear
10.06.2009
01:49 pm
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Cilice sells gear for modern-day Medieval penitents. Their site reports:

A cilice was originally a garment or undergarment made of coarse cloth or animal hair (a hairshirt). In more recent times the word has come to refer not to a hairshirt, but to a spiked metal belt or chain worn strapped tight around the upper thigh. Many religious orders within the Roman Catholic Church have used the cilice as a form of “corporal mortification,” but in recent years it has become known as a practice of numeraries (celibate lay people) of Opus Dei, a personal prelature of the Roman Catholic Church.

Hand-crafted using traditional materials, our hairshirts, metal chains and goat skin cilice belts, used in some form throughout history as an aid to worship, are available to buy and can be shipped worldwide (Prices shown are inclusive of shipping). Practiced for centuries, use of the cilice has been commonplace in the lives of the saints, for example: St Francis of Assisi, St Thomas More, St Therese of Lisieux, Pope Paul VI, St Padre Pio and Mother Teresa of Calcutta. The motivation behind these voluntary mortifications is to imitate Christ and to join him in his redemptive sacrifice (cf. Matthew 16:24), and they can also be a way to suffer in solidarity with the many poor and deprived people in the world.

The use of the cilice belt or hairshirt must not be undertaken lightly, it is essential that people seek spiritual guidance and instruction before using one.

I think that’s my Christmas shopping list sorted!

(Cilice official website)

(Thanks, Jon Graham!)

Posted by Jason Louv
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10.06.2009
01:49 pm
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