THE MENSTRUATION
Chapter Overview
Not much has changed in 600-plus years. As women continue to bleed from their vaginas once a month and men continue to be freaked out by it, history repeats itself. Ladies on their periods are still a mystery to men, who fear mood swings, irrational behavior, and they certainly fear the blood itself. That wonderful place where men used to go for frolic and fornication turns into a raging, foul mess for a few days or longer each month. The vagina, once their friend, is now a repulsive foe.
Women will agree that menstruating is gross, painful, and inconvenient, but it is also comforting and familiar and downright feminine. Menstruation is a reminder of our femininity and fertility. Menstruation is a monthly ordeal that strengthens the bonds of sisterhood. The shared female experience is foreign to men. Even today, as much as they may be able to sympathize, men cannot empathize. The unknown is prime breeding ground for misinformation, as was the case in the Middle Ages, therefore spawning wild speculation and pseudo-scientific half-truths that dominated the long-standing patriarchal view of women and menstruation.
The following sections offer insight into the medieval mindset about menstruation, which includes a mixture of mysticism and medicine, while providing us with terrific examples of just how fearsome a bleeding woman was to the male-dominated medieval society.
Menstrual Myths and Misconceptions: The Mystique of Aunt Flo and Other Oddities
“Hypatia, rebuffing an importunate lover by spreading a great bundle of her menstruous rags… before him; saying, you men that do so admire at the Elegant shape, and Nitourous Complexion of Women’s upper parts, behold now… the constitution of their lower, the object of all you Lascivious Loves; what a filthy, nasty, detestable sight is here.”
Women are odd, odd creatures. Women bleed without being cut, and women do it regularly. Blood, which the warrior/hunter man associates with injury and death, takes on a paradoxical quality in women. Menstrual blood means life, though this was a concept not widely known in medieval times. Menstrual blood was also thought to have an evil, magical quality. Let us not forget where the blood comes from–the vagina, already a place of both intrigue and repulsion. It is no wonder that the men of antiquity were fearful of menstrual blood and, as with many other aspects of life, their fear combined with suspicion and ignorance.
As a result, menstrual blood became the subject of myths and legends which, of course, did nothing to clarify the issue and advance scientific and medical inquiry. The resulting folklore, stories and legends, in fact, served only to perpetuate the idea that womanly blood was contaminated and laden with evil properties, thus reinforcing the wide held belief that all females should be handled with suspicion and kept in a subservient role.
Certainly much of the patriarchal attitude lingering throughout the Middle Ages can be traced back to the writings of Pliny the Elder in the first century. For a man who never married nor fathered children (in other words, he probably never actually saw a vagina), he claimed to have a deep understanding of the inner workings of women. His studies and findings, as crazy as they seem today, were viewed as scientific fact for hundreds of years. This includes his belief that menstrual blood was an extremely powerful substance. Pliny wrote:
“Contact with [menstrual blood] turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seed in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees fall off, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air; to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison.”
The resourceful Pliny even proposed harnessing the poisonous power of Aunt Flo for good. He suggested that menstruating women stroll around the farmers’ field stark naked, using their evil, bloody vibes to kill off worms, beetles, mice, and moths. What a concept! Menses as an all-natural pesticide! Pliny claimed to have studied ancient writings in which plagues of insects were banished by hordes of bleeding women, an army of Aunt Flos, who did nothing more than walk through the streets with their skirts hiked up to their waists, freeing the magical and deadly menstrual vapors to do their bidding. Yet no source has been found to substantiate Pliny’s ideas.
A menstruating woman was blamed for cases of medieval Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). It was thought that a menstruating woman could poison a sleeping infant with just her mere proximity, the evil vapors exuding from her very being. Menstrual blood was thought to be corrosive in nature; therefore menses would eat through a man’s penis if he were tempted to engage in some hanky-panky at an inappropriate time of the month. His lust would have to run pretty rampant to risk losing “manhood” by bedding a bleeder. If that wasn’t enough of a reason for monthly abstinence, a man could remind himself of other potential consequences. A popularly held belief was that if a couple had sex while the woman was on her period, the resulting child would be “puny and red-headed”. A ginger child? (Oh, the horror!)
For the Christian world, which included Medieval England, a woman’s monthly flow was viewed as a form of punishment for feminine wickedness. The biblical account of Eve’s disobedience of God’s command in the Garden of Eden includes the consequence of monthly bleeding for all of Eve’s sisters. Ladies should not seek to stop their monthly flow or relieve any uncomfortable cramps as it was God’s will that women suffer for Eve’s fall from grace (no Pamperin or Midol for her!). In other words, women should just man up. As menstruation was linked to penance for evil and naughtiness during this time period, it was not understood to be a necessity for fertility. (This, they figured out later.)
It is natural, then, that the Church has some tips for dealing with the monthly visitor, yet none of these tips were aimed at providing comfort for the menstruating woman. These rules were, in fact, androcentric and misogynistic. For example, unclean menstruating women could not receive Holy Communion during that time of the month. Specific rules can be found in Leviticus 15:19-30 in which a bleeding damsel is dubbed unclean for seven days. Anyone or anything that she touches will also be unclean during this period–including her husband–who is discouraged from performing his husbandly duties until she is ceremonially cleansed.
After her flow has stopped, the woman is to bring the priest two pigeons or doves which will be sacrificed in her name, cleansing her from her discharge and from the sins of Eve. Two birds were good enough to last about a month, until the whole ordeal started all over again. Random thought: Throughout her childbearing years, the average woman was responsible for the untimely deaths of hundreds of innocent birds. (Seems cruel and unnecessary to us.)
Medieval medical lore concerned itself not only with the existence and quality of menstrual discharge but the quantity of it as well. Too much or too little monthly flow was to blame for a range of problems. An overabundance of blood, for example, could drown a man’s seed and lead to stillborn babies and malformed fetuses. Too light or missed periods could cause a woman to become too masculine and manly. We are not sure if this is a medieval euphemism for a transgendered or lesbian person but unfortunately, in the past, it was seen as quite a pressing problem.
Numerous medical texts of the Middle Ages devoted pages to remedies that could bring on menstrual bleeding, but then again, these could also be viewed as euphemisms for drug-induced abortions. Anyhow, women were encouraged to drink a variety of concoctions such as rue, savin and hyssop, figs, garlic seeds, St. John’s wort, myrrh, Shepard’s purse, or Bishop’s weed. If that didn’t work, these same ingredients could be made into a pessary and inserted into the vagina. Pessaries could also be made using saffron and hazelnuts. With all of these, very specific directions were carefully outlined to ensure success. Rue, for example, could be safely consumed in the evening but could be deadly if drank in the morning. (So much for the “it’s five o’clock somewhere” philosophy.)