What medieval attitudes tell us about our evolving views of sex

In the illuminating and entertaining weblog Going Medieval, Eleanor Janega, a medievalist on the London School of Economics, upends prevalent misconceptions about medieval Europe. These misunderstandings embody that individuals didn’t bathe (they did) and that these had been the Dark Ages*. Her new ebook, The Once and Future Sex, is subtitled “Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society,” and that is precisely what she does—if by “going medieval” you plan the popular culture that means of “dismembering in a barbaric manner” which, regardless of her protestations, you most likely do.

Her fundamental thrust, within the weblog and within the ebook, is that it is easy and handy for us to ascertain medieval instances as being backward in each manner as a result of that makes fashionable instances appear all that rather more spectacular. But not solely is that this improper, it is harmful. Just as a result of life is unquestionably higher for girls now than it was then, that doesn’t imply our present place in society is perfect or in some way destined. It’s not.

Progress didn’t proceed in a straight arrow from dangerous instances then to good instances now. Maintaining that issues had been horrible then deludes us into considering that they should be at their pinnacle now. Janega lays out this argument within the introduction after which spends the majority of the textual content citing proof to bolster it.

Blame the Greeks

The first chapter describes how medieval Europeans obtained their concepts about girls, sex, magnificence, and… nicely, usually all the things from the Greeks. Greeks seen males because the default people; girls had been seen spiritually as fallen males (Plato) and bodily as inside-out males (Galen). Then Christianity and its doctrine of Original Sin got here alongside, which didn’t precisely induce males to see girls in a extra favorable mild.

“Augustine’s message was that even when a man disobeyed God, it was probably because a woman had convinced him to do so,” she notes. Men wrote down these concepts about girls after which spent centuries educating them to different males in universities and monasteries, the place there have been definitively No Girls Allowed.

(Nuns had been permitted to learn, research, and assume, and the surviving information of girls who did so, like Hildegard of Bingen [1098–1179] and Christine de Pizan [1364–c.1430], counsel that they didn’t view their very own natures fairly like males did. But educated girls had been uncommon, and surviving writings by or about them are rarer nonetheless.)

Then there’s a chapter on magnificence requirements for girls, which mandated golden tresses, milky-white pores and skin, and rosy cheeks. The adjectives had been lifted straight from Dares Phrygius, a recent of Homer’s who purportedly witnessed the Trojan War, they usually’ve remained unchanged till… mainly now. Then, as now, girls had been presupposed to naturally have this look; God forbid they put any time, cash, or effort into it. (Quite actually—utilizing make-up was thought of among the many gravest of sins).

Medieval males did like a potbelly on their girls, although. This is the other of immediately’s desire for chiseled abs, however each options denote the identical trait: wealth. Medieval girls sporting potbellies clearly had sufficient to eat, and immediately’s flat-bellied girls clearly have sufficient leisure time to work out.