From a medieval mural
Image from here. “Workers restoring a medieval communal fount … in the Tuscan town of Massa Marittima discovered a curious mural hidden behind a whitewash layer. It depicts a tree heavily laden with … phalluses under which eight or nine women stand in various poses and large black birds fly. Experts think the fresco dates to 1265 …. The experts who carried out the restoration have been accused of sanitising the mural by scrubbing out or altering some of the testicles, which hang from the tree’s branches along with around 25 phalluses. “Many parts of the work seem to have been arbitrarily repainted,” said Gabriele Galeotti, a town councillor who has called for an investigation after seeing the finished work.”
More about that Tuscan mural: “We have an image of two women who appear to be locked in serious combat over one of these phalluses, so this supposed fertility symbol that ought to bring life and goodness is in fact bringing strife to the people fighting over it. More importantly, there is a woman on the left side of the mural … standing quite demurely, until you realise that she’s being sodomised by one of these phalluses. You can’t get pregnant by sodomy – it’s the ultimate in non-fertility.”
“Medieval Obscenities examines the complex and contentious role of the obscene … in medieval culture from late antiquity through to the end of the Middle Ages …. The essays examine topics as diverse as Norse defecation taboos, the Anglo-Saxon sexual idiom, sheela-na-gigs, impotence in the church courts, bare ecclesiastical bottoms, rude sounds and dirty words, as well as the modern reception and representation of the medieval obscene.”
A course in medieval sexuality: “I am trying to offer “samplings” of four inter-related things …: 1) how sex and sexuality are treated in medieval texts (literary and otherwise), in both “official” and more subversive registers; 2) how sex and sexuality in the Middle Ages are analyzed in contemporary medieval scholarship; 3) how sex and sexuality are historicized in contemporary critical sexuality studies; and 4) how sexuality and sexual identity have been taken up by some contemporary artists.” Here’s the syllabus.
“Albrecht Classen argues in his recent monograph that the chastity belt is nothing more than a myth that has been propagated throughout the centuries. To prove his point, Classen meticulously retraces the making of this myth by carefully reading the relevant secondary literature dealing with the chastity belt literature that dates from the eighteenth century onward.”
Scene from 'Up the Chastity Belt' (1971)
“Gerald [of Wales] sexualizes this bond between the Irish and their culturally revered beasts, insisting that through coitus with their livestock Irishmen had engendered numerous man-animal hybrids, Hibernian minotaurs. … Gerald also wrote of a woman who had sex with a lion and another who lay with a goat. So great was his distaste for the subject that he even illustrated the bestial encounters in prurient detail.”
Tony Perrottet on the Vatican’s pornographic bathroom: “Like his peers, Bibbiena was entranced by the ribald pagan imagery that was being unearthed in Imperial Roman ruins. He asked his friend Raphael to decorate his lodgings in the fashionable classical style, complete with naked nymphs being spied upon by lusting satyrs, with no anatomical detail hidden. Subsequent residents of the Vatican Palace were unimpressed.”
Speaking of the Vatican … “Weltbild publishing group is co-owned by 12 German dioceses which have now agreed to sell their share in the profitable enterprise as soon as possible. They decided on the move because Weltbild’s book range includes steamy pulp novels with titles like Boarding School for Sluts and The Lawyer’s Whore.“
“By the late Middle Ages, chaste marriage had emerged as an attractive model for pious laypeople who, for whatever reason (including an arranged marriage), had been unable to take up a formal religious occupation. Perhaps the most notorious example was that of the married mystic Margery Kempe, who basically bought off her husband by agreeing to cover his (considerable) financial debts if he would discharge her ‘marriage debt’ and agree to stop having sex with her.”
“One was the burial of a female, with which archaeologists found a bag of 17 dice. It was prohibited for women to play dice in the Medieval era, so … she may have been a prostitute, buried with a symbol of immorality. The other burial … may have been that of a witch. … Seven curved nails, each about 4cm long, were found in her mouth. In addition, 13 more nails were found in an outline around her body, which the archaeologists suggest reflect her being nailed to the ground by her clothing.”
“Zika discusses the relationship between vessels, like cauldrons, and women’s sexual organs. Women’s sexuality was associated with unruliness and destruction, so it was sufficient merely to depict sexualized women; there was no need to additionally picture them engaged in malevolent acts to signify witchcraft, so powerfully depicted for example in Hans Baldung Grien, A Group of Witches (1514) or his Weather Witches (1523).”
"Witches' Sabbath" by Luis Ricardo Falero
Hildegard of Bingen’s 12th-century description of orgasm: “When a woman is making love with a man, a sense of heat in her brain, which brings forth with it sensual delight, communicates the taste of that delight during the act and summons forth the emission of the man’s seed. And when the seed has fallen into its place, that vehement heat descending from her brain draws the seed to itself and holds it.”
“The inquisitional register of Jacques Fournier from the years 1318-1325 … reaches far beyond the topic of heresy. It encompasses various details about the common life, including sexuality and sexual morals. This case study reconsiders the normdeviation model on the basis of four Fournier’s trials dealing with sexual morals: that of Beatrix of Lagleize, Peter Vidal, Arnold of Verniolles, and Grazida Lizier. Sexual morals of these four people are certainly very different from the morals required by Jacques Fournier.“
“In 1700 Abbé Jacques Boileau, a Parisian canon and doctor of theology at the Sorbonne, published a vigorous critique of the practice of religious self-flagellation. Titled Historia flagellantium, the treatise railed against the pagan origins of voluntary flogging, its lack of biblical precedent, and especially its ability to “awaken unchaste movements” in the body.”
“St. John [of the Cross], like other mystics such as St. Theresa of Avila, used the language of courtly love to describe his relationship with Christ. He also discussed, with rare candor, the sexual stimulation of prayer, the fact that mystics experience sexual arousal during prayer. With the male Christ of course, this amounts to a homoeroticism of prayer.”
