Yesterday, I watched The Medieval Mind, with Robert Bartlett, where he reviewed the medieval attitude to sex! A few of the, somewhat sexist, ideas expressed follows. You might find some of the programme content interesting and perhaps controversial:
Following the accepted view of the four humours:
Man is Hot and Dry which is Good,
Woman is cool and moist, which is Bad.
As one cleric noted: This fact makes the woman more sexually voracious and possessing of a greater desire for coitus than a man for something foul is drawn to something good!
The event in the Garden of Eden is quoted as proof of the wickedness of woman:
The Devil tricks Eve rather than Adam, attacking human nature where it seemed at its weakest. Eve was Satans bait poison for mens souls! This betrayal was such that it could never be forgiven. The wickedness of woman is greater than all other wickedness!
The proof of this is that the eyes of a woman receive menstrual blood (that unclean, foul and disgusting liquid) during her period the look of a menstruating female could, of itself, cause disease in a man! Women are literally poisonous!
Women in general were treated like property. One instant quoted was that in 1319, King Edward 11 sent the Bishop of Exeter to inspect Philippa of Hainault as a prospective bride for his young son. The bishops report reads much like a property survey: The lady has not uncomely hair, black and brown in colour. Her eyes are blackish brown and her nose is fairly smooth, yet it is no snub nose; her mouth, fairly wide; her lips, somewhat full, particularly the lower lip. Her neck, shoulders and all her body and lower limbs are reasonably well shaped. All her limbs are well set and unmaimed. The damsel will be on St. Johns day next, 9 years. Apparently this description was well received and the marriage went ahead, but some years later.
Naturally, as I'm sure you all know, I do not share these medieval ideas and have always acknowledged women as the fairer and stronger sex!!!!!!!!!
