The Basics: Love and Sex

Welcome to The Basics- a series of short articles designed to introduce and explain some of the features of normal life that everyone living in the 12th century would know (plus a few extras for the geeks who think they know all this already). This week, we’re looking at how the men and women of the medieval world experienced romantic affection, from courtly love to casual sex.

In the medieval period, just like today, the church had a lot to say about how people should experience romance. Priests and monks were, of course, meant to be celibate, and when they wrote about these sorts of things, they would often argue vehemently that sex and everything associated with it were sinful by default. Virginity and was considered a semi-sacred ideal for all (particularly women) to aspire to, whilst sex was decried as “that filthy, stinking and wayward deed”, and marriage a flimsy excuse. Monks and nuns were carefully secluded from members of the opposite gender, to try and remove sexual temptation. Some took this anti-sex view so far that they thought non-virgins, even those in faithful marriages, were not able to enter heaven (though most of the church disagreed with this).

Most people, of course, did not share these opinions. They experienced, and acted upon, love and sexual desire just as people do today. The nobility were surrounded by stories of dramatic romance and courtly love, the most popular media of the day, and idealised ‘true love’ almost as much as the church extolled chastity. Many of these stories focus on ‘forbidden love’ between unmarried people, including adultery, and portray it in a positive light. This shows that, in noble circles, it was acceptable and understood that love could transcend church rules about sex and marriage.

Finding love, however, was more complex than it is today. Most commoners would be unlikely to ever travel more than 10 miles from their birthplace, and population density was low. This meant that there were relatively few potential mates to choose from, and also that everyone in your village was going to know about every romantic development in everyone else’s lives (particularly since, in the cramped houses of the 12th century, there was little to no privacy to be had). Wealthier people had more options, but social communities were still small and tightly-constrained by modern standards. Gossip could travel very quickly, and nothing would stay secret for very long.

All this potential for frustrating romantic drama might explain why extramarital sex was considered quite normal at all levels of society. At least one church writer described fornication (sex outside marriage) as “the common vice of almost everybody, that seems quite excusable to many”. At court, high-ranking nobles would often have more illegitimate than legitimate children (King Henry I had at least 24!), and mistresses were often not shamed for having produced children in this way (though their husbands were certainly not best pleased). Legal records suggests that extramarital relations were common in the lower classes too. The king’s court also took with it a healthy population of prostitutes, who were looked after by the king’s doorkeeper. Prostitutes could also be found in the entourage of bishops, showing that the church was far from consistent in its moralising. Prostitution was, however, much rarer outside courts and cities, simply for economic reasons.

Homosexual behaviour is only rarely referenced in writing from Normannis’ period, and never in a positive or accepting light (unlike heterosexual depictions of courtly love, for example). This tells us that there definitely wasn’t the same casual social acceptance towards homosexuality as there was for other ‘sinful’ behaviour. But, although homosexuality was against church law, it wasn’t against secular law, so it was only as illegal as all the extramarital sex that everyone was having anyway. This meant that sodomy (as the church always called it) went largely unpunished, and, despite social stigma, was probably more common than you might think. Noblemen and women were often known to share beds with their peers of the same sex (Henry I probably slept with several knights of his court), and the church perceived sodomy as “so common that scarcely anyone is ashamed of it”. It is worth noting that those who wrote that passage spent almost all of their time around extremely isolated communities of ‘celibate’ men- feel free to draw your own conclusions. The big difference to today, however, is that medieval people didn’t have a concept of sexual identity. An individual wouldn’t think of themselves gay or bisexual, even if they had sex with members of their own gender, because sex was not considered an expression of self like it is today. In those days, ‘sodomy’ was an act, not a person.

Bonus factoid #1: Various church authors tried to reconcile the church doctrine of sex being sinful with its ubiquity in society, and its necessity for producing children. One man who tried was Thomas of Cobham, who classified different sexual acts into different degrees of sinfulness. Most interesting of these is what Cobham considered ‘licit’: sex for babymaking was OK, but so (less obviously) was sex to avoid future fornication. He even gives an oddly specific example: “when someone is going to be in the company of lecherous women and fears he may fall, and so cools himself off beforehand with his own wife”.

Bonus factoid #2: Adultery might have been common in period, but the cuckolded were not prevented from exacting their own revenge. A man called Robert Butler once appeared before King John’s court accused of assault, after had castrated a man (William Wake) he had found sleeping with his wife. After explaining himself to the king, John declared him to be entirely within the kings peace, and restored him to his lands and property.

2 thoughts on “The Basics: Love and Sex

  1. Hi Barny; in 1163 Henry the second passed a large set of laws, one of theses laws what a secular ban on “a certain type of sexual activity” this acted as the thin end of the wedge, as the beginning the state becoming more Independent of the church.

  2. I’ve heard that medieval definitions of incest were far more stringent than today, with someone who’d slept with your relative or who is related by Godparent-hood being out of bounds. How did this work with such small communities? Were matchmakers employed? Also, what about public displays of affection?

    An annulment/adultery case would make a great Shire Court case, if someone could write it

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