What Sex Was Like in Medieval Times

Since it was important that people have kids, not being able to perform was a major problem. If a guy couldn’t get it up, their members would literally be investigated by the church. In the end, if procreation was impossible, the couple could be separated. 

Yes, self pleasure was also a sin. But sometimes, it just has to be done. There were actually wooden toys in the past, but many people just didn’t have that kind of money. So… they used hard loaves of bread. 

There’s really nothing constructive about anal in the eyes of the church. You can’t make a baby with it, so the only purpose would be for pleasure. Since you cannot under any circumstances enjoy the deed, doing it up the butt is a huge sin.

Like anal, oral was a huge no-no in the eyes of the Lord. In fact, one book called Canons of Theodorepretty much said oral is the worst thing ever: “Whoever ejaculates seed into the mouth, that is the worst evil. From someone it was judged that they repent this up to the end of their lives.”

Despite all of the fuss about the deed being sinful, women who sold their bodies for money were all the rage in the Middle Ages. In fact, their work was seen as a pretty honest and important profession, all things considered. For a while, the Church didn’t really mind sex workers. After all, if they didn’t exist, a lot of men would get real cranky real fast… and back then that meant a body count. Of course, independent women were looked down upon. If you were part of a brothel, however, then you were a productive member of society. 

Since Medieval society dictated that non-virgin women had less spiritual worth, losing your virginity – even to your husband on your wedding night — had to suck. To rectify the situation, they came up with the “morning gift,” which the groom gave the bride to compensate for her loss of her precious hymen.

Doing the same thing in bed, day in and day out, is just going to get boring. So some of the more liberal-thinking theologians decided to give themselves a little existential wiggle room. They ranked five positions from least sinful to most sinful based on how “natural” they were. The ranking was: missionary, side-by-side, sitting, standing, and “a tergo” (doggy). Yeah, apparently God does not like doggy style. 

So back in the old days, coveting thy neighbor’s wife wasn’t totally frowned upon, as long as you didn’t do anything about it. You could even pine after a married woman as long as you didn’t take action. In fact, the situation was so familiar to Medieval people that they invented the concept of “courtly love,” which is basically when a knight falls in love with a married woman and dies for her in a war. Still, the minute that knight hooked up with his forbidden love, he was a sinner. Killing for her was fine, though…

Priests were obligated by the laws of the church to report anyone having premarital sex or cheating on their spouse. There are stories of guys being caught with their pants down who were publicly disemboweled.   

As we know, the church already hated anal… and that was between a man and a woman. If it didn’t result in a baby, it was no good. Since two men or two women getting together can never result in a baby… that’s about as horrible as it got in the eyes of the Medieval church. As a result, homosexuals were burned, hung, and even starved to death when they were discovered.  

In a time when everyone was considered a sinner, virginity made you as pure as you could get. So the longer you remained celibate, the longer you were totally awesome. That mentality has persisted in some forms through to today, since the whole “abstinence first” policy is preached by many modern religious groups.