Medieval lore also offers tips for women to “cheat” the sieve test. One needed only to coat the inside of the sieve with lanoline to make it watertight. If the ability to hold her fluid was a hallmark of a good little virgin, the passing of water in general — urine, tears, water — all seemed to point to a wicked woman.
The metaphor extended, as metaphors are wont to do, to include not only actual fluid, but verbal fluid as well. A talkative, gossipy woman became synonymous with loose morals; after all, if she easily opened one orifice, she would open them all. Again, we are reminded of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, who rambles on and on in her lengthy Prologue before she even gets around to telling her tale.
This chapter touches on several different ways in which virginity status was verified, as well as ways clever maidens cheated the test. There is one other means by which the virginity test could be defrauded and this concerns the test’s administrator instead of the testee. In the overwhelming number of cases, midwives or matrons were called upon to authenticate virginity status. Sympathetic proctors, in an empowering show of medieval sisterhood, doctored the results to protect their fellow woman. Talk about girl-power!
It seems fitting to us that medieval women would band together to protect one another from the paternal wrath of the dominant gender, especially when reminded why these virginity tests were administered. It would have made sense for women to support each other, but in medieval times, society dictated that fathers and husbands knew best and exercised this power over their daughters, sisters, and wives. Clearly, ascertaining virginity was more about control and ownership, than with equality and ideals.
Born-Again Virgins
“I was to ask my confessor to let me wear my white clothes again, for he had made me give them up.”
Virginity in the Middle Ages was a valuable commodity, but alas, it was not a renewable resource. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. St. Jerome remarked on this in his famous Letter to Eustochium: “Although God is able to do anything, he cannot raise a virgin after she has been defiled.” His mere words, however, did not dissuade women, either those conscious of the economic value of virginity or ones attempting to erase a bad decision or two, from trying to resurrect this commodity.
Much like virginity testing, virginity restoration had one stiletto in the medical world and the other in the realm of mysticism and spirituality. Actual potions and remedies for restoring virginity were detailed in ancient and medieval texts, such as the Hebrew Book of Women’s Love. One recipe called for one to “take myrtle leaves and boil them well with water until only a third part remains; then, take nettles without prickles and boil them in this water until a third remains. She must wash her secret parts with this water in the morning and at bedtime, up to nine days” to reinstate virginity status. The Book of Women’s Love includes another quickie virginity-restoring concoction, in case one needed immediate results. The passage from this book read, “take nutmeg and grind it to a powder; put it in that place and virginity will be restored immediately”. Nutmeg. Who knew?
Several literary references exist claiming that alum, or alum water, could shrink the vaginal opening, giving the illusion of regained virginity. Alum, for you non-chemistry majors, is a chemical compound of hydrated potassium aluminum sulfate, which probably means absolutely nothing to you unless you were said chemistry major. For us layfolks, alum is used in the pickling process, to tan leathers, and to help set the dye in woolen textiles. Medically, alum was also used as an astringent because it could shrink skin, specifically vaginal skin, leading to its use as a vagi-tightener.
In the 1684 play, Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery, which has been attributed to John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester, it is written that a “cunt wash’t with alum makes a whore a maid.” John Baptista Porta, known as the “professor of secrets”, wrote in his most famous work, the 1558 Natural Magick, about alum, “a woman deflowered made a virgin again.” Ovid, in 1684, commented that “water impregnated with alum, or other astringents used by old experienced traders, to counterfeit virginity” and Samuel Pepys, in 1620, noted alum as “a water that can restore a Maydenhead that’s vanish’t”. No more eloquent reference to alum water as a virginity restoration than that of the medieval satirist Thomas Brown who wrote in his Letters From the Dead to the Living, published in 1702, about a young girl who “too prodigally distributed les derniers faveurs… had so strangely dilated the gates du citadel d’amour, that one might have marched a regiment of dragoons through them… with half a dozen drops of my Aqua Styptica Hymenealis, I so contracted all the avenues of the aforesaid citadel that the Yorkshire knight that married her spent above a hundred small-short against the walls, and bombarded the fortress full forenight before he could enter it.”
All this fancy talk and references to a “fortress of love” simply means that there was once a young woman with a loose vagina. So loose was her vagina, in fact, that an army could march through. But after using an alum water restorative, this same young lady had such a tight vagina that it took her knightly husband two weeks to penetrate her. (Sounds like this poor girl over-dosed on the alum water.)
Virginity could also be reclaimed by fumigation. This method was particularly unpleasant, as the fumigator contained heated steam (Ouch!) and the unpleasant substance used in the smelling pots caused patients to gag and vomit. All and all, it made for an awkward afternoon. But women left feeling virginal, albeit with second-degree burns and a queasy stomach.
Even more awkward was the use of perfumed resin, suppositories, and rings that were inserted into the vagina of medieval women. These devices acted like a surrogate hymen, giving resistance during sexual penetration and thus, tricking the partner into thinking he was screwing a virgo intacta. We don’t know about you, but we see a big potential for embarrassment with this idea. Can you say awkward?
Other virginity restoration techniques concerned the spiritual realm rather than the physical. In the Penitential of Finnian, written in the early years of the Middle Ages (525-550), a penance is offered as a way to reclaim absent virginity. This is also a lengthy process, for “She must live for six years on bread and water and in the seventh year, she shall be joined to the alter; and them we say her crown can be restored and she may don a white robe and be pronounced a virgin.” Gives new meaning to the phrase “seven year itch”.
The color white, long a symbol of cleanliness and purity, was reserved for virgins only during the Middle Ages, and served as an outward representation of their chastity and virgo intacta. A married woman with children who desires to wear the virginal white was considered a heretic.
Such was the case with Margery Kempe, who lived somewhere between 1373 and 1440, and penned what is thought to be the first female autobiographical work, now coined The Book of Margery Kempe. Margery was a bit of a religious zealot and nut case who, although she was married and birthed fourteen kids, mourned incessantly for her lost virginity, believing the propaganda of the day that God preferred virgins and that chastity led to the kingdom of Heaven.