An interesting combination of cute and scholarly. Author Rosalie Gilbert has perused an amazing number of medieval sources to come up with information about women’s sex lives, then presented them in amusing fashion, including hypothetical dialogs between women and men. Of course, some of the observations are not amusing at all; Gilbert cites the case of Mary de Bohun, who died in childbirth in 1394 at age 22. It was her sixth pregnancy.

There are various instructions for things like faking virginity, arousing your husband, avoiding arousing your husband, male and female aphrodisiacs (Gilbert cautions against trying any of the recipes yourself as they often involve things that a fairly toxic, such as the male contraceptive made of hemlock), etc. Of some interest was Gilbert’s account of Burchard of Worms, who wrote a manual for priests taking confessions, including questions they were supposed to ask women to determine if they were having illicit sex. For example:

Have you taken off your clothes, smeared honey all over your naked body, and rolled in wheat spread on a sheet? Then ground it in a mill turned opposite the direction of the sun, baked it into bread, and given it to your husband to eat? If so, 40 days on bread and water.

One wonders how often this happened.

More than a few of Gilbert’s examples come from the village of Montaillou in France, which I’ve run across before (Montaillou). In Montaillou, a skillful inquisitor (Jaques Fournier, later Pope Benedict XII) persuaded the men and women of the town to confess details of their sex lives, which turn out to belie the myth of the Middle Ages as a time of prudery. The place was pretty wild.

Worth a read; sometimes pretty funny, sometimes pretty sad. Contemporary illustrations, some which are pretty racy. A reference list, and an index to all the women mentioned, but no footnotes or general index. ( )

This was fun and delightful.
This should be titled The Very Secret Sex Lives of European Medieval Women.
This was funny and while including a section on intersex folks chooses not to address transgender folks.
However as much of the resdearch for this was not academically sourced the author probably never ran into such examples with the research sited.
Only the pictures have references. The facts aren't referenced at the end of each chapter. Or anywhere specifically really.
At the end of the book are general references which includes SCA as a source.
I don't consider this a seriously researched book but it is funny and fun. ( )