Sexuality in the Middle ages
James Mansfield
HR: Works Cited_____________________________
A reoccurring and central theme in the Canterbury tales, is that of women’s rolls in society. This appears to be a general , overarching topic and the work emphasizes women’s sexuality specifically. Both the “Millers Tale” as well as the “Wife of Bath Tale” have sexual crimes or misconduct as central plot themes. In such a conservative Christian society, it was jarring for me to see such open sexuality in a work from the 14th Century. Sex was quite the taboo to discuss even just 60 years ago, let alone 600. To have such blatant sexuality in a work from middle ages was quite mind boggling. This inspired me to research what sexuality truly was like in Chaucer’s time and how open people were in such a seemingly conservative Christian society. How were instances of adultery, rape, and pre-marital sex handled at the time and more importantly how often were they discussed in period literature.
To begin understanding sex in the middle ages, first it is paramount to understand the societal hierarchy’s of the time. In feudal Europe, society was broken up into numerous castes. (9) Peasants took the place of the lowest caste, merchants and tradesmen were somewhere in the middle, then followed by knights, then nobles, and finally royalty.(10)(21) Additionally men had far more societal power than women. These societal distinctions played a roll in every aspect of daily interaction, including sex.
In all of these interactions the church played a pivotal administrative roll.(32) The catholic church enacted a type of law called cannon law, where people were incriminated based off of the popes biblical interpretations. Sex was one of the many aspects of life which was controlled by the church(33). If one was having sex outside of marriage there were two legal classifications under cannon law: adultery and fornication.(33) The former referring to having sex while married with someone who isn’t your spouse, and the later, having premarital sex in general.
Over time the rigidity of cannon law fluctuated, but generally adultery was worse than fornication. Adultery, not only was breaking the vows of marriage, but was also opening up the possibility of a wife bearing an heir to her husband which wasn’t really his. (62) Women almost always faced worse repercussions then men for adultery because of this. In-fact, men guilty of adultery were often not punished at all, or if found guilty forced to pay a nominal fine to the church, where as women could face punishments as severe as death. Fornication very rarely garnered a punishment as severe as adultery. No “legal” marital vows were being broken, and if a child was conceived, the sinning lovers often were forced into marriage by the church. Surprisingly both were rather common the later more so than the former in medieval society.
Marriage and relationships amongst commoners is extraordinarily different than that of nobility. Commoners, speaking broadly, had far more marital liberty than that of a noble. (62-63) One of the few liberty’s a peasant possessed was a general freedom in choosing a spouse, there was no land to be gained, so marriage as nobles had far more familial pressure surrounding marriage.(63) Marriage for the upper class and royalty was almost always for either political or economic purposes. Likewise adultery was more accepted in the higher echelons of society than the lower. Naturally the rich were able to get away with more, and exploited this.
As far as literature, concerning such themes, they were relatively common place. The church condemned most sexually themed works, unless the blatantly condemned sexual promiscuity. It is sensible that people have always been fascinated with sex and taboo material. Sex was just a prominent in medieval culture as it is today.
Sources:
Daily life in Chaucers England by Jeffrey, L. Forgeng and Will Mclean
Background knowledge