Los fuegos de la lujuria: Una historia del sexo en la Edad Media

by Katherine Harvey, Joan Eloi Roca (Translator)

Una apasionante historia de la sexualidad medieval Nuestra idea del sexo medieval está llena de mitos, desde el cinturón de castidad hasta el derecho de pernada. En Los fuegos de la lujuria, Katherine Harvey, historiadora y medievalista, construye, a partir de una exquisita atención a las fuentes documentales, un rico y fascinante panorama del sexo en la Edad Media. Así, algunos hombres decidían castrarse para no ir al infierno, y no todos los monasterios eran un remanso de abstinencia. Para las Siete Partidas de Alfonso X el Sabio, el incesto iba más allá de los lazos de sangre, y el Parlamento de París condenó a una cerda a las llamas por haber incitado supuestamente a prácticas zoofílicas. Otros aspectos del sexo medieval nos resultan familiares. ¿Estaban tan mal vistas las relaciones antes del matrimonio? ¿Cómo se afrontaban las violaciones y los abusos infantiles? ¿Eran las mujeres sujetos meramente pasivos? ¿Qué consideración recibían las relaciones homosexuales? ¿Existían los individuos no binarios en la Edad Media? Al explorar su vida sexual, Katherine Harvey devuelve la voz a la gente común ―y no tan común― de la Edad Media y nos permite conocer algunas de sus experiencias más personales. Los fuegos de la lujuria es un viaje íntimo y magnífico a una Edad Media desconocida.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Historical, Medieval History, Sexuality, Medieval, Audiobook

349 pages, Hardcover

Published May 15, 2023

Reviews

[Leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cover of the book is amusing and oddly cute
I think it's my 4th or 5th book about the sexlife in middle ages or near that time. Rather funny I found so many altough it's an interesting subject. The book felt very much each own and it didn't take away my enjoyment or curiousnes from having read other books. Funny at times, sad and infuriating at times but more that bad ideas and treatment still exist very much today. But also shows that sexualitys and gender identitys is far from a new thing.

[Joachim · Rating 4 out of 5]

History is written by the victors, but not so for the history of sex: most of what we know of sex in the middle ages comes from court records in which sexual crimes are judged, and medieval literature, which is filled with sexual innuendos. This means we get an image of extreme violence and idealised stereotypes, respectively, and rarely get a glimpse into what “regular sex” would have been like. Also of importance are the vast amount of treatises written by clerics, but to what degree these sexual prescriptions written by nerds in monasteries were known by the regular populace, let alone how often they were respected, is hard to know.

The truth about sex in the middle ages is complex, contradictory, and greatly varied by region and individuals, so the author argues, backed up by many court records and other documents. On display are men who were burnt to death for rape, men who received nothing more but a small fine for rape, women who got impregnated by demons who collected the wasted seed of masturbators, and everything weird and wonderful, normal and shocking you can think of in between (everything, that is, except for oral sex). The information can get slightly repetitive, but, after all, repetitio est mater studiorum.

Sex is, of course, pretty interesting. Being the most fundamental biological goal, studying it is bound to reveal a good deal about the mores and thoughts of its practitioners. It’s also plain exciting to read about, Ô animals of lust and licentiousness that we are!

All in all a fun and erudite book.

[Belinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't one of those non-fiction books that everyone will enjoy. The narration is dry, the value comes entirely from the many, many, many historical sources referenced throughout, so an interest in history - of the middle ages, or sex, or both - is a must for this. The author's personality doesn't come through much, which is perfect for me. And honestly, I highly recommend it.

Each of the chapters is very clear and well-defined, and there is very little repetition - a personal pet peeve of mine that books like this are sometimes prone to. For such a short book, it covers a wide range of topics in surprising detail. It's extremely well-researched, with descriptions richly evoking life in the middle ages. Anybody going into this with a notion of the middle ages as "The Dark Ages" will hopefully begin to realise how misinformed they were.

Overall, a solid, well-researched, informative and entertaining read.

[Señora · Rating 3 out of 5]

Empezaba bien pero...

Me da mucha rabia que toda la sensibilidad que ha mostrado tener en sus conclusiones no se haya visto reflejada en todo el libro.

Está claro que la autora se ha documentado mucho, tanto que puede tomarse como un compendio de situaciones sobre el sexo en fuentes judiciales de la Edad Media. Pero he echado en falta mucho análisis y contexto histórico, también porque vengo de una buenísima profesora y soy muy exigente.

El libro se lee fácil pero cuesta avanzar por los bandazos que va dando pese a compartimentarlo por temas y por la gran cantidad de ejemplos que da, ralentizando el ritmo de lectura.

Por último, es curioso cómo en los agradecimientos salen bibliotecas inglesas pero la mayoría de sus ejemplos son de Castilla, Francia, Florencia...

[Ginny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un libro muy ameno y completo. Perfecto para desmentir los mitos tan extendidos sobre la Edad Media.

[Craig Thomson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely interesting. Strange to see how much has changed over the last 500-600 years, but also how much has stayed the same.

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

A look at sex, gender, sexuality and healthcare in medieval times. Truly fascinating.

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, informative, and well-written book. The style of the writing is engaging – it takes the subject matter and makes it fun, whilst still treating some of the very serious subject matter with the sensitivity it deserves. Katherine Harvey knows when to pull back from treating the content lightly, and the result is very effective.

The book begins by putting the subject of sex into context of the wider world of the time period, which I think is one of the best things this book did; it’s a lot easier to understand some of the topics under discussion when you have a better idea of how they viewed sex and relationships in general. The book is then split into different topics, explaining each one by drawing on details from real life cases and incidents drawn from legal and church records and chroniclers and so on in a simple fashion, very often with little extra interpretation or influence of her own personal thoughts. This allows the reader to make some judgements of their own, whilst still offering some suggestions and context where it is needed.

Some of it the content is bleak, of course; the chapters focusing on sex work and sexual violence, in particular, make for difficult reading. I appreciate that Harvey did not sensationalise any of these topics, keeping descriptions of these events brief and non-graphic.

I did feel the structure of the book weakened as the book went on - mainly with the final chapter before the conclusion, which focuses on sex in culture. This is an interesting topic but I think it would have been better placed earlier in the book, before the reader gets to the more serious topics. Some of the topics it discussed helped put history into context, another reason I think it would have been better placed earlier.

Overall, though, the book is solid. It covers its chosen topic in an engaging fashion, presenting facts with little embellishment or external opinion, and does not seek to sensationalise the darker side of the subject of sex. I feel like I learned something from it, particularly regarding misconceptions of how people in this time period viewed sex and relationships, and I was entertained whilst reading it. I would warn anyone looking at this book to check content warnings below before proceeding as it does contain some heavy, dark subjects.

Content Warnings: References throughout to violence, executions, torture, public punishments, public humiliation, intimate partner violence, murder, murder of a spouse, homophobia, misogyny, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, war crimes, war, sexual violence, sexual assault, rape, gang rape, wartime rape, pedophilia, child sexual abuse, child prostitution, child marriage, forced prostitution, incest, bestiality.

[Luna González Gago · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me ha gustado mucho. No es fácil hacer ameno un libro que se basa sobre todo en documentos jurídicos de distintos países, para intentar dibujar un mapa general de una percepción sobre el sexo medieval, que además abarca varios siglos (del XI al XV si mi memoria no me falla).
También me ha gustado la manera de ir al detalle contemplando no solo lo esperable en un libro de estas características, sino cosas tan concretas como el lenguaje, la consideración de la pederastia, la prostitución, lo que hoy en día llamamos personas del colectivo, la magia y la medicina.

Le pongo cuatro estrellas y no la quinta, porque a pesar del ingente trabajo documental que tiene y que se nota que está, la edición de España no tiene una sola referencia a esos estudios, es decir, tiene los números de llamada pero no llevan a ninguna referencia. Tampoco hay bibliografía, solo índice onomástico. Me pasé el primer capítulo intentando ver si estaban en otra parte del libro o en algún apéndice, pero sin éxito y leer así es bastante incómodo, porque aparte de ver los números sin sentido, me habría encantado por mi propio interés conocer sus fuentes más allá de las que ella cita proactivamente. No sé si esto pasa también en las ediciones de otros países, pero en esta es un poco decepcionante 🫤

[Brandie Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like that this was relatively short. Lots of interesting stuff here.

[Liván · Rating 4 out of 5]

La Edad Media es sin lugar a dudas una de las épocas más interesantes de la historia de nuestra humanidad, colorida y misteriosa, por lo que un libro entero sobre la naturaleza del sexo en aquellos tiempos sonó excelente para mí, que soy un cautivado por la cultura medieval. Lo busqué de inmediato y lo consumí.
Me encantó la estructura de este libro, con un ritmo explicativo bastante gustoso de leer, además de una suma atención al detalle y el rescate de historias reales, ilustrativas de la manera en que los ciudadanos medievales vivían el ardor carnal que todos encontramos en el camino. Ciertamente es un libro con una perspectiva muy contemporánea, y no lo oculta, más bien lo admite y lo evalúa, pues se toma el tiempo de dejar en claro que nuestras perspectivas de la edad medieval están siempre sesgadas por la forma en la que coexistimos actualmente con las ideas, incluyendo el sexo y la sexualidad. Es así que toma la suficiente distancia para examinar como un voyerista paciente algunos incidentes como la prostitución, la masturbación, el homoerotismo, la creencia del sexo con demonios y mucho más; absolutamente interesante, por lo que leer resulta súper entretenido.
Ciertamente concluyo, como la autora, que vivimos hoy en una eterna confusión sobre el sexo al igual que los medievales, pero también me llevo la fascinante contemplación de una época en la que, a diferencia de nosotros, el cuerpo existió como creativa vasija del misticismo, un puente que hizo incluso al sexo algo espiritual, algo imaginativo. Lecciones pueden salir de esto.

[Anya · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last chapter, sex in culture, is the best:

“The husbands in these stories are fools, but they are far from or the stupidest men in medieval literature. That title may well be held by Lacarise, the husband in a Dutch tale of adultery, whose wife, Machtelt, and her priestly lover manage to convince him that he is dead. They then wrap him in a shroud, through which he sees them having sex. When Lacarise protests, the priest reminds him that corpses are supposed to lie still with their eyes shut, and the simple-minded man obeys. "The husband in 'The Peekabo Priest' is equally gullible. In this fabliau, a priest looks through a keyhole and sees a peasant couple eating a meal. But he claims he can see them having sex; if the husband doesn't believe him, he should go outside and see for himself. Locking himself in with the wife, the priest lays her over the table and has sex with her. When the man objects, the priest insists that he is experiencing the same illusion - and the husband believes him”

[Haley Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched, so not as dense as it could be. Medieval folks, they're just like us.

[Nadia Zeemeeuw · Rating 3 out of 5]

It reads more like the collection of amusing stories than a proper research on a topic. But it was interesting enough to finish.

[Joana Morais · Rating 4 out of 5]

”A gentleman’s wife gives birth on their wedding night. He exclaims: ‘If she does that each time I do it how am I possibly going to feed this household?’”

We love to think we’re so far removed from the Middle Ages, it’s always a shock to see how similar our worlds really are.

[Natthew Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn’t ready for the tapestries.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Getting the lust smacked out of you by the Virgin Mary is kind of kinky... Incredibly interesting book.

[Victoria Guild · Rating 5 out of 5]

Primary sources presented with lots of important context!! Very very interesting, very well researched, and overall extremely enjoyable.

[Sathwik · Rating 2 out of 5]

A well-researched and detailed examination of the heterogenous thoughts, beliefs and practices surrounding sex in the Middle Ages. However, at times its detail is overwhelming, with a barrage of a names and dates that seemingly have little importance to the overall narrative. When it does provide significant names or dates, it provides little context and inconsistently. For example, the book briefly cite evidence from Siete Partidas without definition or introduction or context about the text. Only in later citations does it inconsistently provide some information about the text and its importance. The readability suffers as a consequence of a lack of conscientiousness about selectively deciding what details further a narrative and what are simply superfluous. Furthermore, the book is largely geographically restricted to western Europe with little to be said about the Middle East, Byzantium, or much at all about the regions outside of that.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusing, but very loose collection. The examples cited go from early to late middle ages, from Spain to Norway, basically wherever a citation was available.

[Liam Guilar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an entertaining and engaging overview of a vast subject. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of the topic and Harvey moves effortlessly round her varied sources. The bibliography points readers towards more detailed studies.

The book is sad and unintentionally funny, sometimes verging on the horrific, and vastly informative. It also confronts the fashionable stereotypes of the middle age and though she uses the ‘us/them’ vocabulary, the theme of the book is ‘similar but different’. It’s almost a refrain which crops up in the last sentence of some of the chapters:
‘More broadly, however, the sex trade had changed little since the Middle Ages’
‘Like us, our forebears were troubled by sexual violence, but they also shared our tendency to handle it badly’. (p.201)
‘Perhaps we can conclude [the chapter on sex in culture] only that, when it came to sex, medieval people were as confusing-and confused-as we are’. (p.225)

The governing themes are that generally attitudes to sex where shaped by the Catholic Church, and by Galenic medicine. Sex was something men did to women, preferably during marriage, though female pleasure was important because without it conception couldn’t occur.

The book does move beyond the fictional stereotypes. Harvey is careful to balance her story: Christian Europeans ‘othered’ non-Christians, believing preposterous stories about their bodies and sexuality, but Jews and Muslims did the same to Christians. Each tried to keep the other two away.

She’s also good on the way she balances her sources. Because there was a law about something, detailing the relevant penalty doesn’t mean the punishment was always, or even usually, carried out.

She’s also admirably wary of reading medieval behaviour in contemporary terms. or falling into the trap of believing an absence of evidence for some behaviours and attitudes means they didn’t happen.

Harvey is also very aware of the limitations imposed on her by the surviving evidence.. The book is a general overview of a period that lasted a thousand years and geographically took in most of what is now Western Europe. Her book deals mainly with the years 1100 to 1500, leaving out the first five hundred years of the Middle Ages with the evidence tending to privilege the later part of her period. It’s still worth remembering the people at the end of this shortened timespan were as distant from those at the start of it as we are from them. The available evidence blurs any geographical or temporal distinctions. Because Harvey has to ‘go where the evidence is’ distinctions between countries are lost.

The obvious problem haunting such a discussion is how accurately the sex lives of ordinary people can ever be recovered. The modern survey, which asks a hundred people questions about their sex lives and then converts their answers into globalising statements about ‘the majority of people’ is just as unreliable as the medieval evidence.

It’s an obvious but confronting thought that uncountable millions of people have lived and died without leaving the slightest trace. We can sometimes reconstruct their general material culture, but how they understood and experienced their lives is lost.

As Harvey writes, there must have been many happily married couples who enjoyed sex, and there must have been numerous priests and monks and nuns who lived comfortably with their vows of chastity and celibacy. But what survives in the record is aberration: when a law is broken and someone appears in court. Theoretical writings, which can seem very strange to us, were often written by literate men and women who had chosen celibacy as a way of life and were hardly going to write about the joys of the sexual experiences they were denying themselves. By modern standards, medical knowledge, which Harvey is good at explaining, seems as bizarre as the love potions she describes. Stain that surviving record with occasionally virulent misogyny and to what extent the complicated and contradictory picture that emerges reflects the real experiences of people has to be in doubt.

The strengths and weaknesses of the book can be summed up by the fact that ‘sex in literature’ is covered in 6 pages. 500 years: in what is now Britain alone that’s literature in at least 6 languages. In English alone that covers everything from the earliest Middle English to Malory. As an overview the section zips over this vast field, tending to focus on the more well-known ribald and obscene examples. In the space available it cannot achieve any kind of subtlety. Nor can it explore why explicit sexual content was acceptable in some genres and almost completely absent from others, even when those genres were being used by the same audience, or whether the absence of sex in situations where we might expect it to occur means it wasn’t occurring, or it was taken for granted that the audience would understand what was happening.

As an over view, and a starting point, it’s an excellent book aimed at an interested reader.

[Clau · Rating 4 out of 5]

O libro encantoume PERO a edición necesita mellorar bastante. Se vas adxuntar fotos para darlle máis brilli brilli ao que se está contando estaría ben que non fose en blanco e negro dunha calidad que deixa bastante que desear. Nalgunhas fotos nin podes apreciar ben os detalles, e non é agradable ter un manchón gris no medio da página. De verdad, eu para eso prefiro non ter nada. Eso si, a monja recolectando piroliñas do árbol que non me falte <3

Despois están as correccións, xa que hai bastantes fallos: Zarazoga, yy, de del, porlos, SPero...unha lecturita antes de levalo á imprenta non estaría mal.

A edición que teño eu é en tapa dura (22,90€), e a de tapa blanda é solo 2€ máis barata??? Que si, que si comparamos co resto de precios desta editorial é bastante "asequible", pero estanse pasando un montón. Xa me extrañou que esta a fixeran en tapa dura a este precio, porque por ejemplo hai un libro que fala de compositores que está ao magnífico precio de 89,95€. É unha pena porque teñen libros moi interesantes, pero parece ser que poñelos ao alcance de todos é algo que non teñen pensado facer.

Ahora, sabendo os sablazos que meten cos libros, estaría ben que invertiran un pouco máis nas edicións: unhas fotitas a color, unhas correccións...

Ao final quédaste cun sabor agridulce e non é en si polo contenido do libro. Pero bueno, como decía o influyente reformador italiano Pedro Damián: "Al imponer vuestra mano, desciende el Espíritu Santo; con esta mano tocáis los genitales de las putas."

E para quitar as malas vibes desta reseña, hai xente que ten malos días, como un miembro do círculo de Ratisbona na década de 1490:
"Italiano lameculos de mierda,
[...] haragán borracho,
flácido chupapollas catamito [pasivo] y masturbador."

Este último poema recórdame ao Pedicabo ego...e ponme contenta. Encántame cando se lle quita a seriedad toda a tempos pasados ;-)

[Cass · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book humanizes medieval citizens in a way that fiction can often fail to do. As Harvey mentions in the beginning of her book, programs such as Game of Thrones make out individuals of the past to be inhumane with sexual violence running rampant when the reality of the situation is much more complicated. As she emphasizes, most people probably had insignificant sex lives. There are passionate stories and horrible ones but the infatuation with the Middle Ages as a period so far and almost subhuman compared to our own allows us the pleasure of not recognizing our own flaws: something Harvey forces us to confront. Are we that different than those alive during the Middle Ages?

Harvey explores the idea of sex in the Middle Ages in a nuanced way, as she should. It’s a constant battle between “this, but also this, and maybe that, but not always this.” Wouldn’t it be easy if everything were black and white? But the reality is: it isn’t! Every story and contradiction adds to the understanding of the complicated thing that is medieval sex history.

This book is great for those interested in history but especially those who pursue it academically with so many citations, references and a vast bibliography that can inspire anyone to look further into a history that is often not discussed in the classroom. I could not put this book down. It’s one of those that has brought me so many answers but more questions of where to go further. As I mentioned earlier, it humanizes medieval citizens, allowing us to understand their thought processes in a way beyond “this: bad. that: good” to introduce us to one of the most private histories. I especially recommend to any one attempting to understand the complex gender roles of the Middle Ages. If Harvey decided to explore this topic further, I would be the first in line to buy it!

[Jackie Jung · Rating 3 out of 5]

A better title for this book would have been “Sex Crimes and their Punishments in Medieval Europe.” Contrary to what the blurbs state, this is not a fun romp through medieval people’s sex lives or a “guide to what occurs betwixt the sheets of the medieval bedroom.” (Did they use sheets? Did they have bedrooms? We don’t learn anything about this.)

What this book is, is a mostly snappily-written, accessible synthesis of the Anglophone scholarship on medieval civic and ecclesiastical laws regulating people’s sexual behavior, and the court reports about offenses. So we learn a ton about what counted as offenses by people accused or convicted of sex crimes, and about their punishments. If breezy anecdotes about cases of rape, adultery (real or imagined), more rape, child abuse, incest, forced or unwanted pregnancy leading to abortion, impotence, racist accusations of other religions being impure, sexual assaults, and more rape — and the stonings, burnings, castrations, beatings, brandings, nose-cuttings, etc that resulted — seem funny, zesty, “weird and wonderful” (as one of the blurbers put it) to you, then you’ll “enjoy” this book.

There really is a lot to learn here! Harvey has done her homework and presented the materials well, at least until the final chapter on “culture” where she seems uncomfortable dealing with the art historical materials. My gripe is really with the marketing of this book as zesty good fun. It’s like if you took the transcript from the Diddy trial (wrapping up as i finished the book) as funny, high-spirited evidence of “modern people’s” sex lives. Do NOT take the advice of the “Erotic Review
and give this to your significant other as a “brilliant Christmas book”!!! If your lover gets aroused by these mostly tragic reports of people’s lives and bodies ruined by their illicit sexual desires and conflicts, it might be grounds for a breakup.

[verbava · Rating 5 out of 5]

ретельне й добре написане узагальнення досліджень про середньовічний секс, у якого на обкладинці живе одна з моїх улюблених магрінальних мініатюр (ця походить із юридичного збірника й уміщена між самим текстом і коментарями до нього), а в списку літератури — просто скарбниця тематичної науки.

гарві дуже дбайливо (і регулярно) нагадує, що матеріал для наукових досліджень — це чи ідеалізовані уявлення про те, як має бути (це, наприклад, стосується теологічних поглядів на секс), чи стабільно проблемні моменти (які вигулькують у пенітенціаріях, медичних посібниках, монастирських уставах і так далі), чи виразні девіації, які стаються так рідко, що скандалізують усю спільноту й десятиліттями живуть у плітках. у судових реєстрах зберігаються яскраві нотатки про процеси над мужоложцями або знахарками, які насилають імпотенцію, але за довгі століття існування відповідних законів таких процесів трапляється по кілька штук. а звичайний повсякденний секс дуже рідко потрапляє в писані джерела, тож нам трохи бракує його для врівноваженої картини. і тільки імена штибу джон фокатут (на наші гроші іван усеграй, чи що) або чудеса про жінку, що зачала із іншою жінкою, підказують, що середньовічне сексуальне життя було таки веселіше й розкутіше, ніж на перший погляд.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is very different to the other similar book I read recently, Been There, Done That. Where that book was humourous and broad, this one is more serious (though no less interesting), and a much narrower scope. It focuses on the laws, customs, and habits of human sex in Western Europe during the medieval era.

Even narrowed down there's a lot to cover, with lots of research and sources to back it up. Unfortunately, as with a lot of cultural history, there's not a lot of primary sources on what people actually did, they didn't tend to write about their daily sex lives, but a lot can be inferred from what people were told not to do, and what ended up in court.

And of course religion plays a large part in everything done in those times, leading to issues that still exist today. This isn't an explicit book, but an honest, detailed look at a fundamental part of Western history during a key phase. And at the end it really shows how little humanity has changed. Worth a read.

[devon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which I read immediately after finishing Dr Eleanor Janega's "The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women's Roles In Society," and which compliments Harvey's book nicely. Harvey offers a more detailed look and explanation into sex work, sexual violence and same-sex relationships between women than that of Dr Janega (understandable, since Janega is covering more ground on women generally) and does so in a way that's beginner friendly. Furthermore, she talks also about male sex work and same-sex male relationships, and explains the case of John/Eleanor Rykener in better depth than most of what I've read and heard about them so far. Overall it's a brilliant and pretty thorough introduction to sex and attitudes towards it in the Middle Ages. I strongly recommend it to anybody interested in this topic!

[Nynke Bruins · Rating 5 out of 5]

“If a couple had sex during a storm, this could apparently kill the seed, preventing conception, or weaken it. One woman who conceived under such circumstances supposedly gave birth to a toad.” :)!

If we can learn a lesson from studying sex and sexuality in medieval Europe, it is certainly not that we are inherently superior to our distant ancestors. Indeed, even in comparing contemporary sexual behaviour to that of our forebears, we are doing nothing new.

[Anya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a VERY good overview on the topic for anyone interested in an introduction to medieval sex and sexuality. Lacking in some analysis in a few places but can’t really judge that given the audience and length! Covers the basics and has some really fun anecdotes. Bibliography is 10/10 for further reading.

[Stella · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great introduction to sex, marriage, and popular culture in the Middle Ages. It is well written and easy to read. One drawback, is that I would have liked it to go into more detail on certain topics, a big gap in the book (in my opinion) is the lack of discuss on child birth and birthing practices. Otherwise, it’s a great book and I highly recommend!