Medieval Sex: For Procreation Only?

Accusations of Lesbianism are adjacent to those of transvestitism in the medieval mind, and what we would now define as transgenderism. The most famous of these led St Joan of Arc to the stake in Rouen in 1431. This execution, overtly political as it was, was based on Joan dressing as a man after having previously confessed to heresy, in part by wearing men's clothing. If a convicted or confessed heretic relapsed into their heresy they were potentially subject to execution, as happened in this case.

Various laws regarding dress were enacted during the Middle Ages, and were mostly based on restricting better dress to those of a higher class. Such laws are known as Sumptuary Laws. An example of an early law defining dress based on gender, however, is known from Iceland, where it was grounds for divorce for a woman to wear breeches and a man to wear a shirt that opened to the nipple (such a shirt would be worn by breastfeeding women).

Legal cases surrounding transgenderism include the well-known accusations against John Rykener, who was also known as Eleanor. John/Eleanor engaged in sexual relations with both men and women and was, it appears, pimped out by their employer, Elizabeth Brouderer, who employed them as an apprentice embroiderer. All that survives of John/Eleanor's life is the report of an interrogation after they were arrested for having sex with a man in a London churchyard in 1394. The report of the interrogation contains biographical details of John/Eleanor's life, introduction to homosexual sex, and introduction to cross-dressing by Elizabeth Brouderer. It is not known if they were prosecuted -- sex workers generally weren't, but those engaging in sodomy often were. It is very possible that Elizabeth Brouderer was prosecuted for procuring.

More drastically, the case of Margarida Borras ended in an execution which took place in Valencia in 1460. Margarida was born Miquel, but took on female identity. Arrested, they were tortured and then hanged.

One recent piece of archaeological evidence for transgenderism comes from Finland. An excavation in Hattula discovered a grave from c.1300 in which the individual was interred with two swords but was probably wearing female attire. It has been speculated that the grave was that of a woman warrior, or was in fact a man and a woman interred together. However, recent DNA testing indicates that only one individual, a man, was interred. It has been speculated that the man had Klinefelter syndrome, in which an extra chromosome in a man causes him to manifest female biological attributes. And yet, the man was clearly respected enough to be given a rich burial.

So far, this survey of the medieval attitude to sex has focussed on the negative, and this is largely because the medieval mind generally operated within a very defined set of beliefs surrounding the creation of the world, and the place of all people within a strict, unchanging hierarchy. However, it was possible to step outside these limitations, particularly in literature and entertainment.

The most famous of the medieval entertainers were the troubadours, essentially singer-songwriters. This cultural movement began in the late 11th Century in southern France, a region then known as Occitane. This region comprised the modern Languedoc and parts of the Basque region. Culturally, this region was not yet 'France', although it grudgingly acknowledged the (distant) overlordship of the Kings of France. The origins of the troubadours in this region are disputed, with influences perhaps coming from the Arab world (this was the age of the Crusades, and half of neighbouring Spain was under Muslim rule). Other interpretations have linked the origins of the troubadours to the regeneration of piety in Christianity, the Roman poetry of Ovid, and the effects of feudalism in medieval society.

The first man who achieved fame as a troubadour was a senior noble, Duke William IX of Aquitaine, who composed under the pen name Guilhem de Peitieus. The troubadours achieved rapid popularity across, and then beyond Occitane, with others springing up across Europe. In Germany they were known as minesangers, whilst in England they were called minstrels. The troubadours, who were originally noble but were increasingly drawn from the richer commoners, sang songs of many subjects, both secular and religious, but were best known for their romantic songs of adultery.

The adulterous songs of the troubadours were closely linked to growth of chivalry and its focus on 'courtly love', an ethos of a man (or very, very occasionally a woman) fixating on a woman and then, by stages, getting her into bed. In some cases, the fixation would go no further than unrequited devotion from afar, but there was a whole genre of songs known as alba (morning songs), effectively telling of the need for a lover to get his codpiece on because the husband is coming home.

Of course, the most famous medieval story of adultery is that of Lancelot and Guinevere. That this story is not outright condemnatory is an immediate indicator that there was nuance to the medieval understanding of adultery (and it is interesting, too, that the original marriage between Arthur and Guinevere is a love match, rather than an arranged marriage). However, we must be clear that Lancelot and Guinevere's affair is not condoned, and in fact causes immense pain to them as individuals, and is one of the root causes of the downfall of Arthur and his realm.

Courtly love and the troubadours can, as a whole, be seen as the foundation of our modern concept of romantic love as opposed to the arranged marriages which had been the norm since time immemorial. But the voices were still male. This changed, however, during the High Middle Ages. Firstly, there were also female troubadours, known as trobairitz (trying saying that after a couple of beers...), all of whom were noble. Little of their work survives, mostly written in a more 'accessible' low-cultural style. One piece which does survive is a love song addressed to another woman. And as the period drew on women were increasingly able to write their own books.

Perhaps the best-known woman author of the Middle Ages was the Italian, Christine de Pisan. Her most famous work was The Book of the City of Ladies (completed by 1405), in which she argues that women are valuable participants in society and should be educated. She also wrote The Treasure of the City of Ladies. However, before we get carried away with ideas of proto-feminism, she argued that women should always be cheerful to their husbands and defer to them if they want to be well-regarded.

Female characters also acquired more nuance during the Middle Ages. Guinevere, noted above, is little more than an empty vessel bar her affair with Lancelot: she has no inner voice, little agency, no desires or actions other than those that relate to Arthur and then Lancelot. By the time of Chaucer (c.1343 -- 1400) this has changed. In his most famous work, the Canterbury Tales, he creates a formidable woman, the Wife of Bath.

The Wife of Bath, who Chaucer spent considerable creative energies on, has been married five times, runs her own business, and has some very forthright opinions which indicate that she is both literate and well-read. She may, or may not be called Alyson, and she argues that women should have agency and should not be looked down on for having married multiple times. The tale she tells to her fellow pilgrims also has, as its moral, that women should have agency in making the decision of who to spend their lives with, but once they have that they will be faithful -- provided their men are faithful, too. The Wife of Bath finishes with a prayer that women be given young, submissive husbands.

So far, we have seen that the Church sought to control the debate around sexuality (and largely succeeded) -- women were, in general, subservient to men. There were exceptions, however, and it may be that there were similar exceptions stretching back into antiquity but with our paucity of sources we are unable to identify them. Indeed, we may state with confidence that relationships were always subject to two opposing factors: public display and private practice. In a patriarchal society the public display of a marriage will more likely conform to expectations than the private practice, which may differ more from societal expectation but, as it is conducted in private, disappears from history.

That doesn't mean, however, that privately women always had more freedom and leeway than in public -- quite the contrary: private practice probably conformed to societal expectation more than differed from it. But, the possibility of difference in private has always existed, and in a certain percentage of relationships at any given time it will be the reality. In our time, for example, whilst monogamy is the societal expectation probably followed by most people, even if in the breach rather than in the observance, a sizeable minority indulge in more or less discreet swinging.

The Church was also able to successfully inculcate an abhorrence of same sex relationships that has yet to completely dissipate, arguing that it was against the laws of God and nature. It was also able to enforce gender conformity for similar reasons as noted in the thumbnail sketch, given above, of the logic of accusation equals proof in heresy trials. Thus, the perfect God created people within his perfect universe with a certain gender, and questioning this implied criticism of God's perfection, i.e. God can't make a mistake and questioning gender implies that God was in error -- an impossibility, and therefore a heresy.

However, the all-pervasive power of the Church was not to last, and the problems it encountered came largely from itself. As noted above the Church underwent a spiritual renewal towards the end of the Early Middle Ages, culminating in the Crusades and the expansion of monastic life following extensive reform. However, as with all such renewals the energy finally went out of the process, and corruption replaced it. Starting even before the Black Death a growing sense of anti-clericalism was evident in northern Europe, and the Plague only accelerated that. This was hardly minimised by a growing movement towards luxury within the Church, and it was an easy criticism for poorer laypeople that the Church was becoming a hypocritical organisation.

One particular issue that was evident in the criticism was a clerical rejection of chastity. It was increasingly a given that monks and nuns in allied houses were prone to sexual relationships. These were sometimes noted in records, but more often simply assumed by urban laypeople. Along with the increasing wealth seen in church architecture and decoration, vestments, and the patronage of the first Renaissance Masters by Churchmen who rivalled princes in wealth (a sizeable proportion of which came from the donations of ordinary people), scandalous stories of monks and bishops, nuns and cardinals all having sex, either with each other or with sex workers, led inexorably to Martin Luther's 95 Theses being nailed to the church doors in Wittenburg.

Of course, the corruption in the Church, including the number of scandals involving sex, only slowly diminished its wider cultural influence even after the Protestant reformation. Indeed, it was arguably only in the latter part of the 20th Century that Europe finally moved on from the sexual attitudes the Church had instilled in the masses during the Middle Ages, some sooner than others. Thus oral sex was accepted far sooner than anal sex, and 'straightforward' homosexuality sooner than gender non-conformity or pansexuality, controversies surrounding which are playing out to this day.

There is a wealth of literature available for readers who are interested in further investigating the Middle Ages. Recent works by, in particular Alison Weir and Ian Mortimer can give a sense of the period, however there is a multitude of more specific works connected to the Church, the law, anti-clericalism, the Inquisition, daily life in urban and rural environments, art and culture, the Renaissance masters, etc. In fact, there is simply too much material to mention here.