Posted by Hemant Mehta in Back in the Middle Ages, sex was frowned upon. “Carnal relations,” even with one’s wife, were considered filthy.
Intercourse for procreation was tolerable, the holy fathers begrudgingly admitted, but anyone who indulged in sex because they were in love or seeking physical pleasure was on a fast track to damnation. In fact, this attitude eventually led the Church to legislate on the most intimate details of married life: In 1215, the cleric Johannes Teutonicus was the first to announce that there was only one “natural” coital position — what we today call “the missionary position,” a term that was coined in the 1960s — which was also optimal for conception. Attempting any other position was a mortal sin, Johannes opined, involving exotic and unnecessary forms of stimulation.
This led theologians of the time to consider various non-missionary sexual positions and the penance for each one.
St. Albert The Great helped write a handbook for clerics listing the lengths of punishments — how long you had to live on bread, water, and abstinence — for each type of “pleasure” undertaken.
Let’s play a game.
I’ll list a few positions.
You guess the order of punishment, from mildest to harshest.
- Mutual masturbation
- Coitus in terga — anal sex (with a cleric)
- Semenem in ore — oral sex
- Masturbation (men)
- Coitus retro — rear entry
- Women who use sex toys
- Dorsal sex (woman on top)
All done guessing?
The answers:
| Position | Punishment |
| Masturbation (men) | 10 Days |
| Mutual masturbation | 30 Days |
| Coitus retro — rear entry | 40 Days |
| Women who use sex toys | 1 Year |
| Dorsal sex (woman on top) | 3 Years |
| Coitus in terga — anal sex (with a cleric) | 10 Years |
| Semenem in ore — oral sex | Up to 15 years |
By the way, this quote was particularly creepy:
(Curiously, sodomy at this time was considered no worse if performed with a boy than a woman; it was not until 1533 in England that male-on-male “buggery” became a criminal offense).
(via The Daily Dish)
[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]
Well, there goes the rest of my life!
Totally worth it.
REALLY hope those aren’t retroactive.
I don’t get it. Does this mean theologians just made up various punishments? “Sure, 15 days for pre-marital sex sounds nice, we’ll go with that”
I hope I am reading this wrong…
It better be filthy or else you’re doing it wrong.
Can you imagine a bunch of celibate men sitting around talking, thinking and wringing their hands about all the different kinds of sex? Maybe someone knows a word for the manic sexual obssession that ensues when one denies their own powerful, biological urge for sex and it results in the need to find avenues for expressing that unfulfilled need. That avenue can even be talking about how NOT to have sex.
… the hell?
Well, looks like I’m going to hell. (But we all knew this anyway). It appears I’ll have to eat bread and water until I’m about 137 years old…
Oh that was nice. Women get a longer sentence for having adult fun with themselves or their husbands.
No wonder so many religious women have issues with sex and self-esteem to this day.
It’s interesting that dorsal sex (woman on top) rates a punishment of 3 years, even though it’s face-to-face like the acceptable “missionary position.” It just demonstrates that it’s not about sex it’s about control. The clerics could never accept allowing a woman to be in a position of control even for a few minutes.
You know, the basic attitudes of many Christians haven’t really changed much in the last 793 years.
Man, that’s the truth! Interesting to know the specific historical basis for all the prudery I was raised with.
Hah! I spy a loophole! No punishment for cunning linguists – that is if you translate the Latin literally and keep it to that narrow definition.
The “woman on top” one jumped out at me too, Richard. What a weird thing to have so high on the list. I mean, if your problem is forms of sex that can’t result in conception, “woman on top” intercourse should be at the bottom of the list (or maybe second to bottom, just above rear entry). It may not be the optimal position for conception, but at least it’s possible.
And female masturbation (women who use sex toys) should be lower on the list than male masturbation, since it doesn’t “waste” seed that could otherwise be used for conception.
But of course, as you pointed out, the conception thing is largely a red herring.
If these folks were making the rules today, all procreation would be in-vitro from sperm acquired via hypodermic needle!
I am soooo in trouble.. :0
[...] And yes, this might offend somebody – “back in the Middle Ages, sex was frowned upon. ‘Carnal relations’, even with one’s wife, were considered filthy.” There was even Penance for Sex. [...]
I took a course in college called “Mariage and Sexuality in Medieval Europe.”
I read several of those lists, determining the proper penance for various forms of sexual activity. Some of them I’d never heard of. I remember having to ask the professor in class to explain what some of them were.
hehehe
good times
1533 was the year that Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn, six months before the annulment of his first marriage, and the year that the English Reformation really took off as an excuse to rob the churches of their wealth and beat up the Papists. Mainly to rob them, I think. Henry did have several wars that needed funding.
Perhaps the high number of homosexual monks in the dissolved monasteries had something to do with the change in law. Perhaps it was simply a way to exert the divine authority of kings. It’s horribly unfair no matter what the excuse.
One question though, are the sentences concurrent or consecutive? It makes a big difference.
Of course, in all fairness, back in the Middle Ages the clerics were having as much sex as the rest of the people, if not more, because they had the money. Popes back then were awesome. Sergius III was the the most awesome.
The basic message I am getting from this is that women shouldn’t have orgasms. That doesn’t seem to have changed at all, except for maybe that Christian sex toy store.
And Catholics today will tell you that they never had the kinds of problems with sex that Protestants did!
truly sad. quite hypocritical them thinking they are so “pure” when they sat around and thought up all this stuff
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