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- [00:00]
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- [01:10]
Dan Snow
Had.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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- [02:10]
Dan Snow
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 to the show. We're talking medieval sex, courtly love, chivalric damsels in distress, chastity belts. Well, that's the myth. What's the rarity? 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 a sort of unwritten rule, 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. Elne Jarnegger, host of history hit's very own Gone Medieval podcast and card carrying Internet phenomenon Ella.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Thanks for coming on the show, Dan. It's always a pleasure.
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Dan Snow
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?
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Okay, look, there is a little bit of finger wagging. I'm gonna 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 chaste sex. 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. 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.
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Dan Snow
That's marriage for legal workaround.
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Sponsor/Ad Voice
Yeah.
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Dan Snow
And are you allowed. So you're not allowed to have sex outside marriage?
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
No.
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Dan Snow
Okay.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 gonna 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 gonna 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.
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Dan Snow
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Please donate and repent.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Exactly.
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Dan Snow
Okay, so once you're in marriage, you're allowed to enjoy sex and sex for procreation, or are you allowed to like fill your boots?
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Oh, gosh, it's really. You are not allowed to enjoy sex. I mean, to the point where Thomas Aquinas 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 and 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, than so do women. But it happens internally.
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Dan Snow
But it has to be during orgasm.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Yes.
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Dan Snow
Well, hang on, we're getting somewhere here.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Yeah, right.
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Dan Snow
Pretty progressive.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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, you're walking a tightrope. You really are. It's like, do not get naked. That's one of the rules. It shouldn't be during daylight. Yeah, it should be in night. Ideally you should do it as quickly as possible. It's sort of like, get in, get.
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Dan Snow
Out, ninja, don't threaten me with a good time.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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, 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.
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Dan Snow
And so you'd have a fade in and a Fade out.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Yes.
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Dan Snow
Okay, so no Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
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Sponsor/Ad Voice
Yeah.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
The weekends, Wednesday and when? No, Wednesday. So that 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. And no 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, because 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 I've met across them, 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.
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Dan Snow
Okay, so that hasn't changed as dramatically. You might think the female orgasm thing's very interesting. Right? Yeah. 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.
- [08:01]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 sexual sexuality, everyone is like, oh, women, they love it.
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Dan Snow
Okay.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Women are just like out for it women, you cannot stop them. They're horny as all get out.
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Dan Snow
They're the problem.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
They just want to have lots and lots of sex. Right. So Boccaccio's got a quote about this in the Decameron and he says that one rooster is able to service 10 hens, but 10 men would scarcely be able to service one woman.
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Dan Snow
Interesting.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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. That's a bit of a thing.
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Dan Snow
It gets warm. Yeah.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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. So it's hot and dry. So then.
- [09:35]
Dan Snow
So it warms them up.
- [09:36]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
So it warms them up. 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 that 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.
- [10:04]
Dan Snow
We should, at this point, raise the issue of the chastity belt. That sounds like that's something they might have turned to if they're always worried about women shagging everyone.
- [10:12]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
No, no, I'm afraid that this is. This is a Victorian invention.
- [10:17]
Dan Snow
Fever dream.
- [10:17]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Oh, they love it, don't they? They're slaggy as all get out. You know, 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.
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Dan Snow
I think we can all agree on that. Is there a class issue here? I was reading the other Stefan Zweig talking about, like, Austrian Society, the 19th century, and he goes, my sisters, the women I knew, we weren't having sex before marriage. We were really messed up around sex. And we'd take these journeys through 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, if not happier.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 00,0001% 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 will 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, like, 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.
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Dan Snow
That was a love match.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Yeah, it was. It was a love match. And it's so sweet. But I mean, underage sex, look. Yeah, I mean, please do not put on the Internet that I was 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 torture 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 gonna lie back and think of England. 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.
- [13:24]
Dan Snow
And you're all in arranged marriages.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
You're all in arranged marriages.
- [13:26]
Dan Snow
It's all brutal.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 and pine.
- [13:35]
Dan Snow
Okay.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
And they love to pine. You know, 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 shag each other really quickly. So they are absolutely having sex outside of wedlock rather a lot. Kings are just gonna shag whoever they want. That's fine. Queen's probably not so much.
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Dan Snow
It's just there's those royal bloodlines are important. Right.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
There's too much at stake, really. But, I mean, duchesses, marquesses, sharp, go for it. Like, you know, help yourself.
- [14:04]
Dan Snow
And if you're married to Edward ii, you get a pass.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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?
- [14:13]
Dan Snow
And, of course, they're the people that have left the biggest imprint in the archives, in the history books, the literature of the time. So that can skew our understanding of this period.
- [14:20]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 and 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 gonna do what they're gonna do. Right. And also, peasants are gonna get married for love, so it just sort of doesn't apply to them in the same way.
- [14:49]
Dan Snow
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?
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Well, one of the things that happens rather a lot is having sex not in the house.
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Dan Snow
Yeah.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
There's a lot of shagging in fields.
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Dan Snow
Yeah.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 fucking.
- [15:32]
Dan Snow
Yeah, that's got to be ambiguous.
- [15:33]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Yeah. And then so. And that would be the sort of thing, you go out of your house and then you do that. There's. 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, like, 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.
- [16:15]
Dan Snow
So you get this sense that's probably something that's going on. People are sneaking into the churches.
- [16:18]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Exactly, Ed. 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?
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Dan Snow
What about pilgrimage? I think you and I have talked before and you talked about this idea of what happens on the road stays on the road.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Oh, lads, lads, lads, lads, lads. You know, it's like a rugby tour. It's like a hen's 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.
- [16:58]
Dan Snow
You're on pilgrimage.
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Sponsor/Ad Voice
Yeah.
- [17:00]
Dan Snow
You're old.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Like, go for it. Do whatever you want, really. God loves that stuff.
- [17:04]
Dan Snow
In fact, break some skulls.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
It's gonna 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, there is the equivalent of, you know, how like hen's nights, 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 carried on a litter by three penises that have legs.
- [17:31]
Dan Snow
Right.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Great stuff.
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Dan Snow
And the church is like, look at those saintly relics.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 they're fertility charms. And I'm like, girl, yeah, 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, pilgrimage is great for them, right?
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Dan Snow
Because you're gonna.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 shagging 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?
- [18:23]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Wow.
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Dan Snow
What a. Like a legion of religiosity and recreation and sexual freedom. That's a right, isn't it? You can. 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 a bit like kids going on their gap year day and doing a little orphanage work, but whilst having some coming of age experiences.
- [18:44]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Exactly. It is really, really similar. And we see people also kind of cry. This Marjorie Kemp, one of my personal enemies, I think she's the worst.
- [18:52]
Dan Snow
And who is she?
- [18:53]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
So she is a late medieval woman from Norfolk. So she hails from what is then Bishop's Lynn, but is now King's Lynn. She is a very successful businesswoman, but she wants to be a saint, so she commissions an autobiography about her own life. And the main miracle that she does is, like, 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 wanna have sex. Get outta 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 gonna call them the wrong reasons. I'm gonna call them. They have a different motive.
- [19:40]
Dan Snow
That's right.
- [19:41]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
That's all right.
- [19:42]
Dan Snow
How interesting. What about different forms of attraction and sex? What about homosexuality?
- [19:46]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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.
- [20:09]
Dan Snow
Okay?
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 that time they're just like non procreative sex haver, right? So sodomy's 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.
- [20:57]
Dan Snow
You'll be shocked to learn.
- [20:59]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Can you believe?
- [21:00]
Dan Snow
I mean, Thomas Aquinas, he has a lot to answer for.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 right, 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, and he's 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.
- [22:29]
Dan Snow
You listen to Dan Snows here. History. Don't go anywhere. There's more to come.
- [22:41]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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Dan Snow
But with this camera, everything looks better. Especially me.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
You haven't changed your hair in 15 years. Selfies check, please.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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- [24:51]
Dan Snow
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 phalluses and things like that? What's that doing there?
- [25:05]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 Bibliothatique Nationale de France. They have this really beautiful Roman de la Rose, which is. It's a smut story. It's courtly love. It's great. But in the margins they have these images, images of nuns picking phalluses off a tree. And the phallus 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.
- [25:41]
Dan Snow
Sweet fruit.
- [25:42]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Uh huh, absolutely. And you see these nuns just picking these huge dicks out of a tree.
- [25:46]
Dan Snow
And then I suspect that's drawn by men.
- [25:48]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Yeah. Well, we don't know.
- [25:50]
Dan Snow
Well, we don't know. Could have been, could have been, could have been. Who knows? Who knows?
- [25:52]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
And then, you know, eventually one of the nuns goes on to Shagamonk, 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 Roman 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 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 gonna be so real with you.
- [26:30]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
So, like.
- [26:31]
Dan Snow
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.
- [26:42]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Oh, absolutely. 100%. I would say that medieval people are more relaxed about sex than Victorians are, in any case. Yeah.
- [26:49]
Dan Snow
We might, I guess, talk about the science of reproduction. You've talked about the ejaculation, menstrual cycles, pregnancy. Was there quite understanding of how the mechanics works?
- [26:59]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Yeah, they're pretty good on the mechanics, although, you know, obviously they are 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. You know, contrary to popular opinion, medieval people could dissect cadavers. It's not done very often. There is a worry about contigent. They're worried that if you cut someone open, then miasma is going to come out and they'll kill everyone. But there are laws on the books for examp 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 menstruation. 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, 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 become colder when they're older, they lose that ability. And menses is there for your bad humors that you couldn'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 effluvia, right? They know that you can't get pregnant while you're menstruating. I mean, you can kind of, but it's very difficult. Right.
- [28:34]
Dan Snow
Basic idea of cycles.
- [28:35]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Yeah, they get that. And their idea of menopause is that, well, now you become so cold that you can't even expel menses.
- [28:43]
Dan Snow
Right.
- [28:43]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 back backed up menses. 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 wombs 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 that the best way to make sure that women don't end up hysterical is to keep them pregnant. 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.
- [29:32]
Dan Snow
Any aphrodisiacs speaking of the science of these things?
- [29:35]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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. 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.
- [30:31]
Dan Snow
Important question.
- [30:31]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Don't do that. There's also. I've got a bad love spell. According to Bouchard of Worms, who's writing to us in the early medieval period. So 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.
- [30:57]
Dan Snow
A, it isn't happening, and B, it wouldn't work.
- [30:59]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
I just. I mean, like, what is going on with this?
- [31:02]
Dan Snow
It's just.
- [31:02]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
It's very much, you know. So again, with hostile witnesses and with Victorians, right, you will get these things that 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 taking 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.
- [31:32]
Dan Snow
So it's more enlightened in some ways in terms 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, you know, 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, things like that?
- [31:54]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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. 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.
- [32:11]
Dan Snow
Oh, so she really enjoyed.
- [32:12]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 a out.
- [32:32]
Dan Snow
Okay.
- [32:33]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 raptis 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, 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.
- [33:34]
Dan Snow
The medieval world, right?
- [33:35]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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.
- [33:46]
Dan Snow
They paid their dues, they got married.
- [33:47]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
They did exactly what you're supposed to do.
- [33:49]
Dan Snow
Exactly.
- [33:49]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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, but the wife of Bath very famously is like, I just keep getting married because every time a husband dies, I'm on 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?
- [34:29]
Dan Snow
You listen to Dan Snow's history hit the best is yet to come. Stick with us.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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Dan Snow
You called that a knock knock joke.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
This isn't a joke. Boost Mobile really sends experts to deliver and set up your phone at home or work.
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Dan Snow
Okay.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
It's just that when people say knock.
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Dan Snow
Knock, there's usually a joke to go with it.
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Like I said, this isn't a joke.
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Dan Snow
So the knock knock was just you knocking?
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Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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- [35:50]
Dan Snow
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 in their own right. And yet you often find women leading forces during sieges. Right. Eleanor Aquitaine, you and I are big fans of We've got that wonderful woman who's in charge at Lincoln in 1217 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.
- [36:19]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 passen 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 poleaxes, 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 one, you know, and there's a rather 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 Arc being like, get out of here, girls. And these very nicely dressed girls being like, oh, and running off, which I find very amazing.
- [37:43]
Dan Snow
What a killjoy.
- [37:44]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
I know. I'm like, boo, Joan.
- [37:45]
Dan Snow
Like, okay, so there are widows of merchants and crafts artisans of nobles. They could excise power in their own right. So the medieval world was not, we might think of just male dominated women just hidden inside property, not playing any part.
- [37:59]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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. So, like, what would be the point of talking about it?
- [38:30]
Dan Snow
Listen, 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.
- [38:36]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
And I think we just did it. Listen, let us know, everybody, okay, wow.
- [38:39]
Dan Snow
Let us know, everybody, everyone, what the winnings are. Okay, so. And what about queerness? Like, you talked about sodomy. So that's just people having sex, not for procreation. Are people talked about as we might now call trans or like gay? Like, is that something that's talked about?
- [38:54]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 was Eleanor Reichner. 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 Grobkunt Lane, you know, just look.
- [39:18]
Dan Snow
Which is true, but those are actual.
- [39:20]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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, 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 live my life. And these are the ways that we make ourselves become more feminine. She tells the story that she.
- [39:50]
Dan Snow
And that's all in the court proceedings.
- [39:51]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [39:52]
Dan Snow
What a treasure trove.
- [39:52]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
And it's absolutely amazing document. And what we can see from it is that she's what we would now call like bi or pan, where like, she shags women, she shags men, she shags for money, she shags for fun. She does. 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 like, let her go because they think it's kind of entertaining.
- [40:22]
Dan Snow
Okay.
- [40:22]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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.
- [40:31]
Dan Snow
Right.
- [40:31]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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.
- [40:49]
Dan Snow
So fair play to the girls.
- [40:50]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Oh, yeah, absolutely. How interesting.
- [40:53]
Dan Snow
We touched on it a little bit earlier, but the dangers of medieval sex. Well, again, this could be a little bit early month, but like sexually transmitted disease and infection, I mean, it does exist.
- [41:02]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
So we don't have syphilis yet.
- [41:04]
Dan Snow
No, that's. Remind me, the period that comes in.
- [41:06]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Early modern when everything was bad. No, but we definitely do know that there are some things that are kind of around the shop. And interestingly, they tend to think of leprosy as possibly an sti, 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.
- [41:36]
Dan Snow
Interesting.
- [41:37]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 up when it comes in, because no one had ever seen anything like it.
- [41:53]
Dan Snow
Yeah. Hideous and unwanted pregnancy. We talked about the cycle, we talked about aphrodisiacs. Were there things that people could do to try and prevent unwanted pregnancies?
- [42:04]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
So the major thing that they use are abortive fissions. 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 Royal Tea. Just get some Penny Royal down you. Which works. We definitely know it works.
- [42:28]
Dan Snow
And what's Penny Royal?
- [42:29]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
So Penny Royal is a little herb. 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 ruined tea, drink that, and if you drink enough of it, it can induce as.
- [42:41]
Dan Snow
Soon as you feel in the first trimester.
- [42:42]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 card. 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.
- [43:11]
Dan Snow
But if something happens.
- [43:13]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
And again, do you want to guess when they start cracking down on abortion?
- [43:17]
Dan Snow
Let me think.
- [43:17]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Give you one. I'll give you one.
- [43:20]
Dan Snow
This is the early modern period when they started.
- [43:22]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Interesting.
- [43:22]
Dan Snow
Okay, interesting. Okay. So even when you were a 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.
- [43:38]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 limit yourself to Sodom. That's one of the big things. So you're just like, hey, you know, hand stuff, that's fine. And indeed, the Roman del 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.
- [44:05]
Dan Snow
Okay.
- [44:06]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Romancing the rose.
- [44:07]
Dan Snow
Okay.
- [44:08]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Which is, you know, fine. And no one's going to get pregnant from that.
- [44:10]
Dan Snow
No.
- [44:11]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Plus, it's got the bonus point of being very, very sexy. Because the church told you not to.
- [44:16]
Dan Snow
Yeah.
- [44:16]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
And they love to do whatever the church tells them not to do. Like they simply long for a hand job. It's great.
- [44:22]
Dan Snow
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?
- [44:30]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Oh, God, yeah.
- [44:30]
Dan Snow
Okay, fine.
- [44:31]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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 feat. 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.
- [45:05]
Dan Snow
Well, we've got to finish up, obviously, on eternal life. Gotta worry about the soul here. The church would tell you that if you do lots of things that you've talked about today, you are in trouble. You're not gonna get into heaven.
- [45:16]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
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, you're like, sorry, I was shagging a whole lot when I was younger. And they go, oh, yeah, no worries, you're fine, 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, getting spanked by a demon.
- [46:05]
Dan Snow
Terrible.
- [46:06]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
I mean, you, you will see, you know, in what is a very haha, funny, they think idea of sodomy, you'll see a lot of dudes getting spit roasted.
- [46:16]
Dan Snow
Okay?
- [46:17]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
You see? You know, so you'll get things like that happening. Now, most of them are going to get out eventually.
- [46:22]
Dan Snow
Okay?
- [46:22]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
The, 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 masses 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.
- [46:37]
Dan Snow
Horny aunt's allowed out of purgatory a little bit quicker for a little donation.
- [46:41]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Exactly.
- [46:41]
Dan Snow
Like follow and subscribe.
- [46:42]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Yeah, 100%. This is what I'm telling all my nieces and nephews. Help.
- [46:47]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Yes.
- [46:48]
Dan Snow
Need to reduce my time in purgatory. It is a tall order. Listen, thank you very much Elianna. If there is a God, there'll be no purgatory for you because you're a legend.
- [46:57]
Dr. Elne Jarnegger
Thank you very much Dan. Thank you so much for having me on to talk about my favorite thing in the world.
- [47:05]
Dan Snow
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 every Friday. Friends. Don't miss out.
- [47:36]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [48:07]
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