As the treatments for sexually transmitted diseases were rather unpleasant, most medieval folk sought out preventative measures. As odd as it sounds to us now, the most popular prophylactic was, as quoted in numerous medieval texts, pissing hard. (Please note that we are not being crass. The word piss was a socially and medically accepted term in the Middle Ages. It was only later that we assigned a vulgar, somewhat offensive connotation to it). Pissing hard, or urinating with force, was thought to rid the genitals of the grand pox, and as an added bonus, it could serve as a birth control method.
This is evident in a passage from John Garfield’s series The Wandering Whore, circa 1660. A prostitute noted, “I settled on the Chamber-pot as soon as ever he was off, till I made it whurra, and roar like the Tyde at London Bridge, to the endangering the breaking of my very Twatling-strings with straining backwards; for I know no better way or remedy more safe than pissing presently to prevent the French pox, gonorrhea, the perilous infirmity of Burning, or getting with Childe.” A laughable solution!
We leave you with two interesting points to ponder regarding medieval venereal diseases. First, although sexually transmitted diseases were widespread throughout the Middle Ages, there seemed to be less of a stigma attached to them. Perhaps it was because so many people had them, even respectable people like members of the clergy and the courts. Second, the bulk of the “cures” were aimed at men. It seemed much more important to rid a penis of pox than it was to de-pox-ify a vagina, and that’s just another way that the penis was given preferential treatment over the vagina.
THE CHILDBIRTH
Chapter Overview
Giving birth during the pre-antiseptic Middle Ages was a risky endeavor. Accurate statistics were not compiled during this time period, but scholars estimate that between twenty and thirty-five percent of women died during childbirth or due to complications after giving birth. While women today view pregnancy and childbirth as a magical time full of hope and joy, medieval mothers-to-be were probably fraught with worry, wondering if the day they welcome a new life into the world would also be the day they exited the world. That, coupled with the high infant mortality rates, meant motherhood in the Middle Ages was a drastically different experience than it is today.
In the next few sections, we explore the realm of medieval mothering, from pregnancy through childbirth. We will also discuss medieval methods and attitudes surrounding contraception, a fascinating subject that mixes a pinch of female agency with one part male dominance and two parts religious doctrine.
The Pilclass="underline" Medieval Style
“…she contrived by her foresight and craft, to let her lover enjoy the first fruits of her virginity, to the great delight of both of them, and many a time they took their pleasure together without being ever blown upon by the blasts of evil fortune. And because the accidents and caprices of adverse fate are so great and so horrible — as those wretched ones who from the highest bliss have been cast down into the abyss of misery can bear witness — it happened… that the ill-starred Eugenia found herself with child…”
Sure, children were a commodity of sorts in the medieval era, as someone had to tend the crops and/or inherit the castle. And, infant mortality rates being what they were, the best way for a medieval mama to ensure she had at least one child make it to adulthood (and to care for her in her golden years) was to play the numbers game — have as many babies as possible to increase the odds of at least one surviving. But sometimes, children could be a liability. For peasants in extreme poverty, another child was, quite literally, another mouth to feed. And for promiscuous maidens, preventing pregnancy was necessary to preserve honor and reputation. A curious young girl couldn’t let her parents, her priest, and her neighbors know that she couldn’t keep her vagina to herself. Although she couldn’t run to her nearest Planned Parenthood clinic for The Pill, there were medieval contraception practices and techniques she could try.
Preventing the birth of unwanted babies was a widespread and poorly kept secret during the Middle Ages. For centuries prior, it was a women-only secret, passed down from wise, older women to the next generation. But by the middle of the medieval period, someone blabbed. Suddenly men were in on the secret. We know this because hints, innuendos, and clues about birth control methods and usages are found in medical texts of the time, as well as in the predominantly male-authored literature. Both Chaucer and Dante, for example, suggest a working knowledge of contraceptive practices in their writings, as we will see later.
Dante, Chaucer and their contemporaries were writing at an interesting time in regards to female reproductive freedom, a concept that took 600-plus more years before it really took hold. At the onset of the Middle Ages, the crown and the church both turned a blind eye to birth control practices, including contraceptives, abortion and infanticide, probably because they were using birth control themselves. But the church’s stance on all types of sexual practices and the like grew much stricter as the Middle Ages progressed. There’s nothing like a population-decimating plague to make people question current behavior and God’s wrath. Spearheading this movement was Thomas of Aquinas, a man who was clearly not getting any. His beliefs, which were fully accepted by the throne, the clergy and the masses by the thirteenth century, could be summed up in one sentence: there should be no human interference in procreation; no coitus interruptus.
Let us explain. His view, which went viral, was that sexual intercourse was for the sole purpose of procreation and that anything else — sex for pleasure, masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, homosexual acts, and ANY means of preventing pregnancy — were in direct violation of both God’s will and nature. He went so far as to rank sexual positions from the ones God would rather see to the truly kinky ones (By the way, Thomas gave the missionary style two thumbs up.) Knowing this, Chaucer, Dante and others writers masked references to contraception in their works in ambiguous wording.
Take Chaucer, for example. In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer describes Alisoun, the Wife of Bath, a self-proclaimed slut who was married five times but never bore children, as a woman knowledgeable in “remedies of love”. Other medieval works were more overt. Pre-dating Chaucer is Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron. In one Decameron tale, a clever and horny man pretends to be deaf and dumb to secure work as a gardener at a convent, where he happily obliges the sexually repressed, eager-beaver nuns. One nun frets to another that pregnancy is a looming threat, to which the other replies, “When that happens, we will begin to think about it. There are a thousand ways of keeping it a secret if we ourselves do not speak of it.” In Brantome’s Les Dames Galantes, a sixteenth century French piece, one character is a maiden who is banging an apothecary. The druggist gives the girl “antidotes to guard from becoming pregnant… since it is what girls are most afraid of”. Also in Brantome we find a reference to the “pulling out” method, which dull medical people called “coitus interruptus”. In this story, the fine gentile lady tells her servant lover to “Move around as much as you want… but on your life, have care not to spill anything in there…”