The Fires of Lust: Sex in the Middle Ages

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Stain that surviving record with occasionally virulent misogyny and to what extent the complicated and contradictory picture that emerges reflects the real experiences of people has to be in doubt. Fara Dabhoiwala, author of The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution ‘A lively and readable account rooted in a deep knowledge of the scholarly literature on sexuality in medieval western Europe. The book is then split into different topics, explaining each one by drawing on details from real life cases and incidents drawn from legal and church records and chroniclers and so on in a simple fashion, very often with little extra interpretation or influence of her own personal thoughts.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. I never thought there would be so many records around sex and sexual misconduct from the middle ages. Katherine Harvey does a good job at dismantling modern misconceptions and stereotypes, and has a real eye for vivid anecdotes, such as using surnames—Simon Fukkebotere, William Smallfuk, and Roger Fuckbythenavele to name but a few—to show how the English verb 'to fuck' shifted in meaning from 'to strike or beat' to its modern meaning by the fifteenth century. What all of these individuals had in common, besides their sexual transgressions, was a genuine contrition for their sins.

Some of it the content is bleak, of course; the chapters focusing on sex work and sexual violence, in particular, make for difficult reading. A late 15th-century Londoner, Margery Sheppard, clearly articulated the restriction: “I will do as my father will have me; I will never have none against my father’s will. There were some moments, like referring to Harvey Weinstein as Harry, that held it back from 5 star. The book begins by putting the subject of sex into context of the wider world of the time period, which I think is one of the best things this book did; it’s a lot easier to understand some of the topics under discussion when you have a better idea of how they viewed sex and relationships in general.

Like us, our forebears were troubled by sexual violence, but they also shared our tendency to handle it badly’. The strengths and weaknesses of the book can be summed up by the fact that ‘sex in literature’ is covered in 6 pages. A distinction was also made between a woman who had sex for pleasure and ones who did so for financial need and desperation. Really hope the author does more work for us general readers covering this period and its less well known subjects like Heresy etc. Everyone was forced to conform to restrictive rules about who they could have sex with, in what way, how often, and even when, and could be harshly punished for getting it wrong.

There was a strong desire to separate the Virgin from not only the indignities of sexual intercourse, but the related contaminations of the female body, so that it was widely believed that the birth of Christ was free from pain and from the polluting effects of afterbirth. Nor can it explore why explicit sexual content was acceptable in some genres and almost completely absent from others, even when those genres were being used by the same audience, or whether the absence of sex in situations where we might expect it to occur means it wasn’t occurring, or it was taken for granted that the audience would understand what was happening. Her message is, depending on your perspective, reassuring: “then” is not all that different from “now” — when it comes to sex, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. For example, the book briefly cite evidence from Siete Partidas without definition or introduction or context about the text. Learned, fun and full of surprises - a fascinating, wide-ranging guide to medieval sexual attitudes and experiences.

Although Mary was pre-eminent among the medieval virgin-saints, she had numerous popular counterparts, notably the Virgin Martyrs.These Roman girls were the heroines of highly formulaic tales in which they converted to Christianity against the wishes of their pagan families and died in defence of their faith and their virginity, often after undergoing extreme physical and mental trials. As far as same-gender relationships are concerned, they were forbidden and could be punished by death. According to The Golden Legend, she was ‘a woman who gave her body to pleasure’, until she met Jesus.

The medieval Magdalene was a composite of several biblical Marys and bore little resemblance to the woman depicted in the Gospels. I especially recommend to any one attempting to understand the complex gender roles of the Middle Ages. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.Would recommend for anyone wanting some fun (please note not always fun - sometimes shocking, saddening and disturbing) historical reading. an expansive, accessible and highly engaging account of what we do – and don't – know about western European sexual culture in the Middle Ages. An Englishman named John Rykener in the late 14th century sometimes went by the name Eleanor, lived as a woman for long periods, and had sex with men and women, including priests and nuns.