Medieval Obscenity

This episode contains obscene and sexual language throughout The medieval world was far from prudish, it was positively bawdy. Writers, preachers, and even everyday neighbours used blunt, often hilarious language to talk about sex and the body—not just for laughs, but to make sharp points about morality, hypocrisy, and power. Dr. Eleanor Janega is joined by Prof. Carissa Harris to celebrate Medieval obscenity, from bawdy verse to barbed sermons, explicit language was a tool: it punctured vanity, exposed corruption, and brought lofty ideas down to earth with a thump. Expect double meanings and razor wit. Wordplay was a medieval superpower. More: Sex: The Medieval Rules https://open.spotify.com/episode/04dWeyQsk50eXP0dNNWQrK Gone Medieval is presented by Dr Eleanor Janega. The audio editor is Amy Haddow. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places, to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Janiger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasiapro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 1:20Eleanor Janega?

  Hello, I'm Dr Eleanor Janiger, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were, and how we got here.

• 1:57Eleanor Janega?

  Before we get started today, a word of warning. Our topic is obscenity, and as a result, well, there's rather a lot of it about. The language is very strong, and there's a lot of literature that is specifically about sex. So this might be one for younger listeners to give a miss.

• 2:19Eleanor Janega?

  Ah, the medieval period. A time of religiosity, courtesy, and chivalric poetics. A time before the intrusion of the modern coarseness that we are all so inured to now. This delicate beauty can be found everywhere. Take, for example, this lovely rhyming riddle from a Cambridge Library manuscript.

• 2:45Eleanor Janega?

  "A pasty of red deer cold, and a loaf of bread of a day old, And a cunt of the first here, and a pintle of twenty-one year, Written with a holy nun's hand, is the best thing in all the land."

• 3:04Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, yes, I was being sarcastic. Guilty as charged. Medieval people were as shocking, lively, and downright obscene as any of us now. And in a lot of cases, actually, more so. And to learn all about this tendency towards the filthy, today I am joined by one of my favorite people, Dr. Carissa Harris, a professor of English literature at Temple University in Philadelphia, the author of the amazing book Obscene Pedagogies, and the transcriber of that beautiful piece of poetry that I just read you. Today, we're going to talk about all things obscene and to sort our pintles from our tarses. Carissa, my darling, welcome to Gone Medieval.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  Thank you for having me.

• 3:51Eleanor Janega?

  I am so delighted to have dragged you on. This has been a long time coming and I'm really excited because we get to talk about being naughty and the concept of obscenity in the medieval period. And I think this is a really important thing to talk about because there's this perception of the medieval period as it's somehow more chaste than we are. Everyone is very good and very holy. And I guess that's because we get to hear from the church a lot in the medieval period. But medieval people are actually quite bodied. Would you, is that fair?

• 4:23Speaker 03

  Quite.

• 4:23Eleanor Janega?

  Do you think that's fair?

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Yes, total. I mean, it's funny because they're both quite body and also there are the rules that we imagine being in place, but those things are happening at the same time. So they're body in defiance of these specific rules that are being broadcast by the church. At the same time, the church is breaking these rules in all kinds of ways.

• 4:42Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, the church loves it, don't they? Okay, so I guess a great place for us to start today. We're talking about obscenity in the Middle Ages. I've got a great Bertrand Russell quote off the top of my head, which is that obscenity is whatever happens to offend some ignorant elderly magistrate. But when we talk about obscenity, what is it? What does that mean?

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I mean, what I am specifically obsessed with is sexual obscenity in late medieval England and Scotland. So thinking about, you know, words for sex and genitals that are in some ways taboo or kind of fall outside the lines of what's appropriate in England between like 1200 and let's be generous, let's go late, we can go up to like 1550.

• 5:35Eleanor Janega?

  Love that.

• 5:35Speaker 03

  And Scotland during the same time period. So yeah, it's, and so these are words like, and it's funny because often these words are from Germanic languages. So these are words like pintel and tars. Those are like the most obscene words for penises. So let's bring those back.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Like, how stands your pencil now?

• 5:56Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, oh, wow. I'm gonna start saying that, saying that to the homies when they get into the pub. You know, that's a new form of what's up.

• 6:05Speaker 03

  And then, um, for, you know, for, you know, there's also cunt, as you can imagine, that was a, an obscene term. And then, sweevid, uh, was a, was a word for meaning fucked. So, sweevid, and then also fuck, uh, kind of comes in a little later. Sweeve and fuck coexist for like, a, a golden, uh, century or two, until sweeve kind of drops out of use and fuck takes over as the premier obscene verb. So, yeah, pintel, tars, cunt, sweeve, and then fuck, coming in a little late to the party. Those are the, the obscene terms for sex and genitals, uh, in late medieval England and Scotland.

• 6:45Speaker 03

  And, uh, we know they're, and so it's funny because they're, they're kind of Germanic, they're, or in cunt's case, from Old Norse, Old Icelandic. Uh, they're not coming from French, uh, they're not coming from the language brought over to England in 1066 by William the Conqueror, uh, and all of his people. Uh, these are terms that are kind of, that are, that are more, that are older, um, on English soil, uh, and kind of endure alongside the more, you know, the more appropriate, uh, terms for sex and genitals, and also the terms that have multiple meanings, like hole, which can mean, you know, a hole in the ground, or a hole in someone's body. Uh, or yard, which could mean a stick or a penis. You know, cunt, tars, pintel, sweeve, and fuck all only mean one thing.

• 7:30Eleanor Janega?

  I'm imagining, uh, you know, one of those band shirts that has like the names, the and, and, it's like, pintel, and, and tars, and cunt, and sweeve, and fuck. I'm gonna make you that for your birthday.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  I would wear that with great pride.

• 7:42Eleanor Janega?

  Wonderful, wonderful. Okay, so, but this is an interesting question. Do you think that these are coming to us more from Germanic languages? Because French, at this point, is still kind of the language of the highfalutin, like, you know, it's the language of the court, it's the language of very fancy people, and they are not going around being obscene?

• 8:05Speaker 03

  That's a good question. I mean, I would say the French are doing their own obscene things, like- Friend like, you know, like Anglo, you know, Anglo Norman or English French body comic tales are so obscene, like the English French ones, the French ones that are written and copied in England are more obscene than the comic body tales in the genre that are from, you know, Northern France. So like the, uh, there's one called St. Martin's Three Wishes about, you know, people sprouting, you know, cunts and, and, you know, pincets all over their bodies. Uh, I'm thinking about, you know, they're, they're wildly obscene. It's like three women who like found a prick, you know, a dildo, like some people translate as dildo, but it's actually probably prick. Uh, they find this big dick just like lying on the ground.

• 8:48Eleanor Janega?

  Normal.

• 8:48Speaker 03

  Uh, and they're like, where does this be in, you know, who, who owns this? You know, can we like find its owner and give it back to them? So anyway, so like the French have their own extremely, extremely obscene, you know, comic tales, but those don't seem to filter into kind of more general usage. They seem to be more sequestered with courtly audiences. So there's not a lot of bleed through to, you know, regular people who are not at the court.

• 9:12Eleanor Janega?

  So that's a really important point though, I think, because we've got these ordinary, regular obscene terms that are going around in England. But it's not like the fancy people aren't being obscene.

• 9:23Speaker 03

  Oh, they're being so obscene.

• 9:23Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, it's just that there isn't this overlap in terms of terminology because they've got their own thing going on.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Correct. That is correct.

• 9:32Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, the fancy people are not so fancy now. I see how it is. That's fine. Is it, but when you're looking for obscene things, you're finding them mostly in literature. Is that right? So these are stories that are being passed around and not just passed around, but written down at a point in time.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, you find them in literature in these, you know, short comic tales are usually where you find them, uh, you know, these like little, little like funny stories that people would tell for entertainment, uh, but you also find them in kind of unexpected places. So you find them in poems that are critiquing, uh, friars for their inappropriate sexual behavior. Cause you know, friars aren't sequestered like monks in a monastery. They can roam around and do whatever, you know, basically whatever they want. Uh, and so they're notorious, uh, for their. Unchaste and predatory deeds. And so you have poems that are attacking friars, they're critiquing friars. They're like, oh yeah, the friars go about and fuck the wives of Ely, which is this town in East Anglia, just north of Cambridge. You know, they're fucking the wives of Ely.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  They're going around in a boat because Ely was surrounded by water and weaving men's wives. So that's one poem that's, you know, those written in a Cambridge student's notebook in like the 15th century. So you see them in those places. You know, you see them in places like the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer, of course. There's a lot of obscene terms there, although maybe not as many as we might expect. But there's, you know, there's a good amount. There's like seven sweeps in the Canterbury Tales. And then you also see them in unexpected places. So you don't see these terms, but you see obscene stories in sermons. So, yeah.

• 11:10Eleanor Janega?

  Interesting. I'm reading the wrong sermons, babe, because my sermons are all complaining about, yes, that the friars are having sex with people's wives. That is 100% going on in my sermons, but no one's telling fun stories.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  So, I don't know, maybe you need to read these like Middle English sermon stories.

• 11:27Eleanor Janega?

  Okay, lay one on me. Let's go.

• 11:29Speaker 03

  Okay, so, you know, there's, so there's this great collection that I love so much. It's called the Alphabet of Tales. It's basically a bunch of little stories that preachers are supposed to use in their sermons to illustrate like why certain sins are bad or why certain virtues are good. So my favorite story in the Alphabet of Tales is this story that's meant to illustrate the deadly sin of gluttony often leads to the deadly sin of lechery. Like, okay, you know, you, you know, your appetites, they start, you know, getting, you know, out of control. But this story is about a monk who's carrying this big platter of hot fritters to the dining room to the refectory in his monastery. So he's carrying this platter of fritters. They're so like, you know, golden and delicious and hot. He can't restrain himself and he stops before getting to the dining hall.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  And he pops one into his mouth and just eats it and he gobbles it down right there. He's like, oh, this is so good. But then that tasty little bite moves him to masturbate.

• 12:23Speaker 03

  So then he masturbates right then and there. And you know, before, you know, the fritter leads to this, you know, this episode of masturbation that has never happened before. So therefore gluttony leads to lechery. And I don't know if he ever makes it to the dining hall. I'm not really sure. And then the devil enters into him after that. And I don't, and then the story ends.

• 12:41Eleanor Janega?

  So this is, this is quite interesting because we see this concern all the time in literature across the Middle Ages, like from the church, specifically talking about lechery and lust and saying it does come from gluttony because, oh, if you're enjoying putting some things into your body, what else might you enjoy putting into your body? And so there's this really direct link between gluttony and lust to the point that, you know, today, when we use the term luxury, like luxury means lust. And, you know, we associate it with stuff like, you know, having champagne and caviar or whatever. And I think medieval people would be scandalized because you know what that means. I guess you're going to masturbate outside the refractory.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  Well, yeah. And people also, you know, in sermons, you also, you know, I'm thinking about this sermon collection called Jacob's Well from like, you know, the mid 15th century. And that sermon, you know, the sermon writer is critiquing people who share these like body obscene stories. And they're like, oh yeah, these sinners, their ears hunger greedily to hear stories of japes, of comic bottery. And, you know, and so you hear, you have this idea of, you know, lusting to hear obscenity as their ears hungering greedily. So these kind of braiding together of these appetites, these gluttonous appetites.

• 14:04Eleanor Janega?

  Oh no, he's got me. That's me.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  Do your ears hunger greedily?

• 14:10Eleanor Janega?

  They do, unfortunately. You know, that's just, I've based on my entire career on trying to hear these body tales. But it's interesting because at the same time that they are providing you with these tales, but there's this interesting plausible deniability there. So you're saying, okay, well, here is this incredibly obscene story, but oh, you better not like it. This you should really, you should really not experience this or understand it as good, but I'm still going to tell you the story, right?

• 14:38Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. There's this other story about this. It's really, really popular about this couple who this married couple, they're staying on the grounds of an abbey in some cases. And, you know, they decide to have sex on church property because, you know, they're married, they're allowed, except not on church property. And so they do this on church property and their genitals become fused together. They might no more be brought asunder than dog and bitch that man on wonder. So you can't take them apart any more than you can take apart, you know, a dog and a bitch when they're in, you know, in the heat of passion. And so this, this poor couple is just like stuck together and like, help, help. They start screaming because they realize they can't extricate themselves from each other. And all the monks come running

• 15:20Speaker 03

  and they're like, oh my God, you know, they start praying for them really ferociously. And, you know, and they're like, please pray for us, help, help. And the monks pray for them. And then, you know, they're separated finally. And then, I don't know, they probably like run away in shame. Who knows what happens. But that story too, was really, really popular as illustrating, you know, the, the decree that, you know, you should not have sex on church property because this might happen to you.

• 15:44Eleanor Janega?

  See, I love that because it's like, I'm telling you this story, but I'm shaking my head the whole time to let you know that I think it's bad. Like, I'm only telling you this story to make sure that you don't do this thing that I'm illustrating, which is obviously also slightly comic, right? Because I've also heard versions of this story where, you know, it'll be a couple who, for example, they decide to pop into a church and have sex there in the middle of the day because it's quiet.

• 16:10Speaker 03

  It's a building.

• 16:12Eleanor Janega?

  And they get stuck together. And so in order to unstick them, they have to go on pilgrimage, stuck together to a shrine while all the townspeople point and laugh at them. Right? So it's, there is also this kind of desire to, they're saying that it's bad, but there's a desire to point out that it's also comedic, that it's also funny. So you've got this great way of talking about obscene things, but at the same time, making it clear that you don't agree with them.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, but you're still going to include all these details. You're going to include, you know, this comparison to the dog and bitch that men on wonder. Uh, and that couplet is really interesting. Those two lines, you know, they might not more be brought to thunder than dog and bitch that men on wonder because that actually gets scratched out in one of the manuscripts, uh, that includes this tale. So someone was reading this, um, and we don't know quite when, we know it was before the British Library acquired the manuscript. So it was relatively early. It might've been like late Middle Ages or a modern period. Uh, someone was reading this manuscript. They're like, oh no, that is just too much. Those two lines, the dog and bitch line, that is too much. And they, they scraped them out of the manuscript. Uh, so we can also see traces of people objecting to these materials, even in, uh, religious texts.

• 17:26Eleanor Janega?

  Okay. So it's only going to get you so far. It serves in terms of what is bad or not. All right. Fair enough. I think that's fair enough. Do we have examples also of literature that's not just doing this, you know, telling you that this absurdity is bad? I mean, can you just be obscene for the fun of it?

• 17:43Speaker 03

  Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, one of our favorite poems, a talk of ten wives on their husbands' ware. Uh, that is, I, I love this poem. I love to teach it. Uh, I went all the way to Wales just to see this poem in manuscript and they made me wear these little white gloves like Michael Jackson. Um, and I was like, sure, I'll wear little white gloves, uh, even though you're not actually really, they're probably not the best for manuscripts.

• 18:05Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I was going to say that's, yeah, I thought we were past that now.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  That is the one time I've worn little white gloves in my life, uh, and I was happy to do it because that was the condition under which I could see a talk of ten wives on their husbands' ware. Now it's digitized, so you don't have to wear white gloves. Uh, but yeah, this poem, you know, it's ten women in the ale house and they're like, hey, since we have nothing else to talk about, uh, how about we each tell a tale about our husbands' ware, uh, our husbands' vendable goods, uh, you know, his, the goods that he got on his body. Let's each tell a tale about our husbands' ware, uh, and see which one is the worthiest to take the prize. So like, you know, like whose husband has the best ware. Let's each, you know, go around and everyone share. Um, except then it turns to this contest of whose husbands is the worst. Uh, and they're,

• 18:51Speaker 03

  they're like, oh yeah, well, you know, his is like, you know, like, like a maggot and like, oh, his is like a sorry bird sitting on two rotten eggs. You know, his is a pintle of fair length, but it may not rise. And they just get more and more obscene, you know, as they go around. And so each woman has like a stanza or two, you know, to kind of detail how terrible her husband's wear is, using all kinds of obscene detail. All these pindles and tarses, you know, are flying around throughout the poem. And, you know, and then it's over and then the, you know, and then the person who copies it writes amen at the end.

• 19:25Eleanor Janega?

  You know, so true, so true, bestie. But I, I think that this one, you know, similarly, I'm obsessed with this poem since you introduced me to it. But I think it's so interesting because it says so much, not just about what is obscene, but what people think women are doing in their spare time. They're like, you know what? When women get together, the thing that they want to do is talk about their husbands' junk and make fun of it. And it's, it's so interesting because these women are kind of presented and like, yeah, obviously it's a humorous story. It's a way of telling a bunch of funny dick jokes. And I gotta say, the dick jokes out of sight, you know, just banger after banger, hit after hit in, in, in this. But it's interesting because this idea is that women don't have anything else to talk

• 20:10Eleanor Janega?

  about other than, than junk. And if you leave them alone, if you leave women alone for five minutes, they're going to start talking about your penis. And so it's really interesting because in theory, this is a story about a bunch of women, but it's very clearly, in my opinion, you know, written by men because they're like, oh, this is what, this is what women are like. Like, are they?

• 20:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. And these anxieties of like, if you leave them alone, you know, they, this is, they'll, they'll start kind of, you know, humiliating you and like sharing all of your most private things and like laughing about your penis with all these other women. And they'll, and that they relish in making fun of your junk. And it's funny because at the beginning, they're, you know, the, the first wife is like, since we have no other song to sing us among, tale shall we tell of our husbands' wares. Like, we have nothing else to talk about amongst ourselves, except for this. So like, why not? So yes, this anxiety that like, once you leave women alone, especially when they're drinking, and there's these references throughout the poem to them asking for more wine, for them kind of like, you know, you know, crossing their legs, sitting on the bench, you know,

• 21:13Speaker 03

  in the ale house, you know, all these references that remind us that they are in an ale house drinking to great excess while they are doing this. So also anxieties around women, not just hanging out with each other, but also drinking together in particular.

• 21:24Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, because I've seen some studies of this that suggest that part of what we see when we have these particular obscene stories is that it's also expressing this idea of worry about women taking part in public life, essentially. And taking a part in increasingly commoditized drinking culture, you know, because it's not that medieval people aren't drinking before this, obviously they are, but there's a lot more going to the pub, whereas before it used to be a little bit more hanging out in your house drinking, yeah?

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, you know, like after, I always tell my students, like after the Black Death, everyone just drank a lot because like, what else, how else do you respond to something like that? It's just like, start drinking, you know? I was like, I would too. And then COVID happened and I was like, ooh.

• 22:08Eleanor Janega?

  Probably, yeah, we're gonna stop telling that story to the students, yeah?

• 22:13Speaker 03

  I know, I was like, oh, never mind. But yeah, I mean, after the Black Death in the mid, you know, in England, happening in the mid 14th century, you have this explosion of alehouse culture in the towns and cities. And you have people like leaving the countryside, moving to towns and cities for work, this growth of these urban centers, and people then going to the alehouse as a place to hang out, as this is form of community. And with that, you have this explosion of all these poems about what people do at the alehouse and the kinds of conversations they have there and the kinds of speech, of body speech that happens in alehouses.

• 22:50Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, it's interesting. I suppose that we still kind of have this concept, don't we, of the bar story?

• 22:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:56Eleanor Janega?

  And there is an implied obscenity to that, or at least just, you know, some kind of idea of it as being fabulous or unbelievable, or certainly inappropriate, right? Like, we've kept that idea.

• 23:07Speaker 03

  Yes, the people, you know, once their tongues are loosened by alcohol, that then they, you know, they get real body, they get kind of relaxed, inappropriate, they start sharing all these secrets and kind of trying to let up each other and make each other laugh. So there's have all that bound up in this kind of emerging alehouse culture that you have, starting in the later 14th century.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasia pro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.

• 24:18Speaker 04

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• 25:02Eleanor Janega?

  So when we have literature from these ale house stories, is it usually women who are telling these obscene stories? Or do we sometimes see it come from men as well?

• 25:12Speaker 03

  That is a good question. Usually, it's women. There's a couple poems about men at the ale house who are checking out the fine wenches around them and being like, oh, yeah, like, let's judge which, let's deem or judge which of these wenches is the finest. But you don't have the specific telling of these obscene stories by men in groups in ale houses like you do with women in groups in ale houses. So with men, it's more of like, oh, is this winch hotter? Or is this winch hotter? And women are like, oh, yeah, you know, like, his penis may not serve me. His pental is not good enough. And so there's a difference, I would say. Say and kind of how men and women are represented as talking about about sex among themselves in the alehouse.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  Women are way more explicit and also like much, you know, much more scathing in their assessments of, you know, men's genitals.

• 26:01Eleanor Janega?

  I'm so obsessed with this because it's just the perfect medieval thing, right? Because women, women are the sexualized gender in the medieval period.

• 26:08Speaker 03

  Obviously.

• 26:09Eleanor Janega?

  We're the sexual aggressors. We're the ones who go out and do sexual things and are thinking about sexual things and just being so massively and overwhelmingly horny that, you know, we have to be kept an eye on. But these aren't actual real women. These are literary constructs that you've made up and and then you're like you, it's inventing a woman to get mad at, which I find really funny.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  Yes. And so then you can be like, oh, you know, and then at the end of these poems, sometimes you have the, you know, this male narrator budding in. And often these poems too, I didn't mention, are framed by this fiction of this eavesdropping man who's like, oh yeah, I was at the alehouse and this is what I heard. And I, you know, I heard all these women. They didn't realize I was sitting so close to them and I heard everything they said. I'm going to report it to you. So this idea that the women, you know, are not meant, you know, that these fictional women who you've kind of created in order to get mad at are, you're the talking among themselves and they need a man sitting nearby to expose what they're talking about so that other men can be outraged with them.

• 27:13Eleanor Janega?

  Hmm. See, this is interesting too, right? Because we've got these, these alehouse stories, which, which I love. And to me, this is literature, right?

• 27:22Speaker 03

  It is.

• 27:22Eleanor Janega?

  It is, obviously. But there is also, you know, this corollary to it. Because one of the things that people kind of used to say more often about, for example, Chaucer, is they would say, oh, well, you know, he's kind of telling stories of the everyman or telling stories like the everyman, but from this courtly place. And, you know, come on, like, are you're going to tell me that Chaucer's works are not obscene because like, buddy, they are getting into the nitty gritty.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, Chaucer was, you know, Chaucer is funny because he has some tales that are really courtly, you know, they're about like, you're like knights and maidens and damsels and all of that. He has a sermon in the Canterbury Tales, the Parson's Tale, which people don't usually read, although there's a really great bit in it about men wearing inappropriately tight pants that I highly recommend.

• 28:11Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, okay.

• 28:13Speaker 03

  But then he also writes these really, really body stories, you know, in this, you know, in the, the genre of the Old French Fabule, or this like short obscene comic tale. He has those that are also really well known, like the one where, you know, this man's like making out with this woman's high in quarters. You have one's about weaving and, you know, and all, all that stuff. And so Chaucer's, you know, the wife of Bath, you know, kind of, you know, sharing all about all of her, you know, her distinguished pedigree of, you know, all the men she has, you know, known since her youth. And so you, you know, with someone like Chaucer, you have, you know, you, you have his respectable tales that in some way kind of elevate his reputation and make his body tales able to be packaged in

• 28:56Speaker 03

  some ways with them. And so I think that that's, you know, one of the reasons why he's able to get away, I would say with, you know, the, the obscenity with using Sveva seven times, which is like unprecedented. There's like one other poem that uses Sveva as much as, as Chaucer does in the Canterbury Tales. And that's like this obscene impotence poem. They also loved impotence poetry. That's a whole other thing. But, but with Chaucer, you have his, you know, his, his courtly stories kind of working to elevate his reputation and making his obscene stories in some ways be able to travel with them in various manuscripts.

• 29:28Eleanor Janega?

  That, that's interesting because we do have these Chaucerian obscenities that are, you know, being ventriloquized through men, you know, like the Miller's Tale, for example. So it's like, there's men telling these obscene stories. But when we're supposed to have a lifelike idea of obscenity, it gets put in the mouth of a woman who is the wife of Bath, right? So it's like, if you, so it's okay to sort of. Have the fiction and have the narrative body story. But if you're saying, here's, here's a little something about life. Uh, by the way, I love to swiv, then, then you have to write it in the mouth of a woman, right?

• 30:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So you have these men kind of using these obscene stories to bond with each other. Uh, you know, you have the Miller telling a story that, you know, that's obscene about, you know, a fictional reef. And then you have, or a fictional carpenter, uh, which the reef is by trade. And then the reef is like, oh, like, okay, I'm going to tell obscene story about a Miller, uh, you know, with swiv in it. And so you have these men kind of using these obscene stories to both bond with each other and also to attack each other and one up each other. So you have this kind of thing with the men going on and what, you know, telling obscene stories. But again, these, you know, you have these obscenities embedded, like you say, in the narrative. Whereas the Wackabats, like, I'm going to tell you about my life, all of it. You're going back to, you know, all the husbands, husbands at church store, I've had five, you're not even counting all my company in youth. Uh, and so you have

• 30:48Speaker 03

  her, when she's talking about her own life, uh, it, of course, it's in the mouth of a woman, uh, kind of sharing her own personal sexual history.

• 30:56Eleanor Janega?

  Hmm. And I guess that that, this really cleaves with the things when we have the, the, the ten wives story earlier.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 31:03Eleanor Janega?

  Where, again, if you, if it needs to be a real life thing, then a woman is doing it and a woman is oversharing about her personal life. But men can just make up stories and that's fine. And then that's cute. And we're just doing a little obscene story here. But again, I can't stress how much this is all just a bunch of men doing it. There's, there's no women who are writing this down.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  I know. It's the men who are copying this, who are sharing these stories or crafting these stories. But yes, this, this idea of women oversharing really inappropriately, and they overshare through obscenity.

• 31:33Eleanor Janega?

  Hmm. Hmm. Okay. All right. Well, guilty as charged, but you know, that's fine.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 31:38Eleanor Janega?

  Uh, okay. Can we back up? And can you tell me a little bit more about these impotence poems? Because, uh, wow, bring them back. Bring back this important genre of literature.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  So there are all these poems that are voiced by men. Uh, and in some cases, it's voiced by these, like, old men who are lamenting their, you know, their youthful virility, uh, and kind of talking about all of the things that they did with their pentals and tarsas back when they could use them in the ways that they wanted to use them. And so they get really kind of lurid and graphic about all of their past sexual deeds. Uh, and they're, these are also framed as a warning to young men now. Cause there was this idea, you know, that men had like a finite amount of like sexual. Energy or juice in their bodies.

• 32:20Eleanor Janega?

  Uh huh.

• 32:20Speaker 03

  And once they expended all of that, there was none left. Uh, so you couldn't, you know, once you spent all of your virility uh in your youth, you couldn't have anymore when you were older. And so you had to be judicious in how you expended it over the course of your life, or else you'd be a sad, impotent old man who could do nothing but tell obscene stories. So there's all of these, you know, kind of obscene tales about men uh kind of talking about their pentals, you know, early lives and being like, hey, you know, all you lovers take heed of me, for I was once as lusty as ye, um, and now look at me.

• 32:54Eleanor Janega?

  Hmm, I love the idea of, you know, writing an autobiography of your junk. That's really great to me. But we, we see this all the time, though, in, in medical texts as well, because, you know, in philosophical or medical texts, we'll see people, you know, reiterate this idea, there, there's only so much sexual virility specifically that men have. For women, it, it's kind of unlimited.

• 33:17Speaker 03

  Limitless.

• 33:18Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, it could keep going, baby, which is part of the reason why you can tell that they're the horny gender. Thank you very much. Uh, but there, this also kind of translates into a worry about having too much sex with your wife, because she will become more masculine by having sex with you, and you will become more feminine, and then somehow you end up like the woman in the relationship. Uh, yeah.

• 33:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. And also that she'll ruin you then for future partners, because she will continue. So there's this, there's this one poem that's voiced by this sad man who's like, you know, I, you know, I, I please my lady, I pleasured my lady for seven years and more, uh, but then she used everything that I had, and now she has found someone else lusty and full of strength in labor good at length. And so there's this warning to other men, like, hey, watch out, make sure your lover doesn't take all of your sexual uh energy during the relationship, because then she'll discard you once she's used you, and then she'll move on to the next, you know, new broom, uh, is, you know, they say, like, new broom sweepeth clean, as many men saying is, and so like, she's gonna, she's gonna want that new broom, because it sweeps more clean than, you know, than like us old discarded brooms.

• 34:26Eleanor Janega?

  You know, so I guess now it's illegal for women to have hobbies. Fine. Okay. But but also bring back that saying, I love this. You know, saying that to anyone, like any of my friends who get broken up with from now on. Fantastic, fantastic news. I though think that this is a really interesting point, too, because there is also sometimes this worry in especially late medieval culture about sexual relationships with women. And then if you have sex with them and then you dump her, there's this worry that she's going to like magic your penis so that it won't work anymore. So there are all of these worries that men are constantly writing about specifically about their junk and whether or not it works.

• 35:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, and there's a lot of, and when you you can read all this vulnerability in there. This kind of, you know, this vulnerability, this fear that women have kind of undue power over their bodies, over their sexual presence, and also their sexual futures, that women can, you know, can do all these things either kind of magically or just by like, you know, taking all of their sexual energy from them, you know, all their sexual juice and kind of draining them dry. And so, you know, you can read a lot of anxiety about about what women might say about them, and also this vulnerability about what women might do to their bodies and how women might might kind of compromise or inhibit how they can have sex in the future with other people. And so it's it's interesting because it's really sad. It's really sad in some ways.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  You know, this this kind of overwhelming sense of vulnerability and disempowerment at, you know, at women's hands and bodies.

• 36:21Speaker 01

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• 36:55Speaker 04

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• 37:39Eleanor Janega?

  It's interesting too, because this sort of expresses a legal vulnerability as well, doesn't it?

• 37:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 37:44Eleanor Janega?

  Because that's the only reason that a woman can really ask for a divorce is in cases of impotence on the part of their husband.

• 37:51Speaker 03

  Yes, and these are these trials, these impotence trials, in which women are like, hey, I'm seeking an annulment of my marriage because my husband cannot fulfill his marital duties to me by having sex with me. And the court's like, okay, so we got to prove that, right? And the woman's like, yeah, you got to prove it. So how do they prove it? What they do, these are wild cases, they are wild. What they do is they will sometimes have these groups of neighbors and friends who take turns trying to see if they can induce an erection on the part of the poor man in question. Sometimes they'll hire sex workers to try all their best sex worker tricks. They'll give the man some like, you know, like spiced wines and like the little spices,

• 38:35Speaker 03

  little medieval Viagra spices, I guess. Some like little delicacies, some like, maybe some white bread, I don't know.

• 38:44Speaker 03

  White bread, buns. They'll give him some foods and drinks and condiments that were thought to increase virility. They'll put him near a hot fire and then they'll either bring in their finest local sex workers to like try all their tricks one by one. Or sometimes his friends and neighbors will be like, I tried it and like I wasn't able to do anything. So it's really, really, these trial, I'm serious, these trial transcripts, these testimonies are are just wild and outrageous. And they, they, they, they speak to a familiarity that medieval people had with each other's bodies that seems kind of unthinkable to us today. With people, you know, neighbors, you know, trying to, you know, get their other neighbors hard and be like, oh, did this work?

• 39:28Speaker 03

  Did it not work? You know, it's, would you do that today? Most people would probably not.

• 39:32Eleanor Janega?

  No, no.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  And testify about it in church court. So the church is, you know, because they have to get an annulment from the church. So the church is the institution that is, you know, sanctioning and facilitating these impotence trials, which perhaps is the most wild part about it. I don't know. It's the, you know, the impotence trials, they're really something I cannot recommend them enough.

• 39:53Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. Well, see, and this is one thing that is quite interesting because, you know, to a certain extent, I'm making fun of all these anonymous male authors who are like, yeah, women just sit around and talk about their husbands junk. That's what happens. But we certainly know from some of these impotence trials that, for example, if a man is found to have difficulty getting it up in these circumstances, like, which I can't imagine why, like, just like all of your neighbors are staring at you and you're going to get divorced if you, if you can't make it happen. I don't know why he wouldn't be able to perform in these circumstances. But for example, especially when you bring in the fancy sex workers and they're like, no, it's no good. They then berate the man.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:32Eleanor Janega?

  And like this enters the court register of them saying, you no good, dirty dog. You lied to this woman. You wasted the best years of her life. And they will like shame you and tell you that you're a bad person.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:46Eleanor Janega?

  On the one hand, yeah, it's ridiculous that these obscenity tales exist, but they are expressing a real worry that men have.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. And again, this vulnerability kind of associated, you know, by putting, you know, such importance on their pentals and tarsas and how they work and what they do. You have, you know, you, these women be like, you know, you useless excuse for a man. You know, it just kind of, you know, they, they try all their little tricks and then they don't work and then they just, you know, shame him and humiliate him. And yeah, and then report this in court so that he gets to be re-humiliated in court by having these recounted and written down for all posterity for, you know, for us to, to read and cackle at today.

• 41:27Eleanor Janega?

  I'm like 100% partaking in this, like this poor man. I'm like hundreds of years later, I'm like, oh, good God. Although, to be fair, I want to shout out to, to this dude in question. They shouldn't have done anything like that.

• 41:39Speaker 03

  No.

• 41:40Eleanor Janega?

  It's not a fair trial. It's not. But, okay. So here are some of the most famous obscene tales. Do you have any favorites that I have not drawn out of you thus far?

• 41:56Speaker 03

  So what I really love are obscenities in these defamation case, like legal cases. Those are a whole other category. And so, you know, in the Middle Ages, you could take someone to court who called you a whore and be like, you know, because that impacted your standing in your local community. If, you know, if your neighbor calls you a whore because she didn't like that you like threw out your dirty water in front of her house, then other people will think you're a whore. It might impact your chances of marriage. It might make your husband think that you're cheating on him. And it might bring, you know, it might kind of get you in front of church court as a result of these local rumors. So people took insults, obscene insults, very, very, very seriously. And they're kind of legally actionable.

• 42:40Speaker 03

  So I love these because they kind of give a window into the things that medieval people thought were really offensive and, and let us kind of see how obscenity worked socially. There's this one case that I was looking at actually, like a week, you know, last week in London. And it's not super obscene, but it's funny anyway, or I thought it was entertaining anyway. This one woman, you know, it's in Latin, so it wasn't as fun as like the English ones. This woman sues this other woman. She's like, oh, this woman Margaret, she called me a whore and she also said that I stole her herbs. And I was like, not the herbs.

• 43:11Eleanor Janega?

  Not the herbs, no, girl, no.

• 43:13Speaker 03

  But, you know, you have really, really colorful ones. And so you have. This one woman is like, "You're a bitch. Yay, worse than a bitch." Or, "Worse than a bitch."

• 43:24Eleanor Janega?

  No.

• 43:24Speaker 03

  Or you have these two women kind of attacking this other woman. And what do they say? They call her a "common whore," a "pencil in, pencil out whore," a "friars whore," a "monks whore," and a "priest's whore." All of these. And so you have these cases where you're like, "Okay, pencil in, pencil out whore." Like, that is a work of art.

• 43:47Eleanor Janega?

  Wow. I mean, these women were cooking. What can I say? But you, you put me on to, I think it's kind of, it's possibly 16th century. There's a woodblock cut about a case of obscenity like this where there were these two women brawling in the street in London. And they're like beating each other up and calling each other whores and being like, "Come out here and I'll batter your head." And the thing of it that I think is really interesting is that everyone agrees that this is very bad and naughty. And this is the sort of thing that ends you up in court. But people are like, "Quick, make a woodblock print." We're gonna, we're gonna circulate this because there is still this admission that it's kind of funny, too.

• 44:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, that there's this kind of public spectacle in having these, because these also happen, you know, kind of what made them legally actionable is they happened in public. They happened in the street. They happened at the marketplace. You know, sometimes they're accompanied by like, you know, one woman like hitting the other with a salmon. There's, there's this one Scottish case where a woman hits another woman in the face with a salmon to accompany her obscene insults. And so you have these cases that are public, you know, in front of people in the marketplace, in the streets, with it are, I would assume, entertaining for people. And it at least gave people something to talk about for a very long time and continue to, I guess. But the obscenity is kind of part of that. And then the obscenity enters the court record and then gets to be repeated again

• 45:11Speaker 03

  in church court in front of these men, you know, adjudicating and writing things down who are part of the Catholic Church.

• 45:18Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, this is an interesting one, right? Because... We are using this as a form of entertainment, but it also is kind of telling us about where the limits of society lie. So, yes, these are obscene things. These are legally actionable things. These are things that are riding right on the limitation of what the public can accept. But at the same time, the public is really eager to learn about them or tell these stories or to make that woodblock cutting, right? Because of that specific tension, right?

• 45:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, and they reveal, you know, kind of the content of these insults reveals a lot about kind of what people assumed. Your example, you know, you have the priests whore, monks whore, friars whore. You have these kinds of anxieties or stereotypes, not stereotypes, they're actually not stereotypes, about predatory clergy or clergy who totally do not observe their vows of clerical celibacy and are just having sex with people even if they're not supposed to be having sex with anyone. But you have, you have that. You have in Scotland, starting after syphilis becomes, kind of starts spreading in Scotland, you have, you know, and syphilis in Scotland at this time was called the glengore. And to be syphilitic was to be glengory.

• 46:36Speaker 03

  And so you start seeing glengorrit or glengory or glengore showing up in these obscene disputes. So you have this one case where someone calls someone else a glengory bitch or a syphilitic bitch. And so you can like track these things that are happening, you know, in a public health front by seeing how glengorrit or glengory syphilitic shows up in these various combinations of fantastical insults.

• 47:04Eleanor Janega?

  See, but they got me because I'm laughing so hard at the idea of calling someone a syphilitic bitch. You know, that's, I'm sorry, it's good stuff, guys.

• 47:14Eleanor Janega?

  We're just, we're not making insults like they used to.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  No.

• 47:17Eleanor Janega?

  It's so cutting, but to the point where it's so obscene. Like, I'm laughing because it's just so over the top as to become comical, right? It's so incredibly cutting and incisive that I can only laugh because I'm like, what is going on, you know?

• 47:34Speaker 03

  I know, and that they're between people who know each other, who live with you, who live next door to each other or near each other, who do business together, who have to, you know, it's like, you have to borrow some grain from this person. You have to buy this other thing from this person. So these are people whose everyday lives are intimately intertwined, calling each other these scathing, outrageous, obscene things. And I think that kind of interpersonal dimension, too, is something that makes them so objectionable as well. The fact that these are kind of between neighbors, between people who do business together on a daily basis, people whose kids know each other, play together, that kind of a thing.

• 48:13Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I mean, it's a small-town life at the time, so you can understand why these things then end up in court, because really, if this sort of word gets around, that is your reputation absolutely done for, you know? If everyone's going around calling you a syphilitic bitch, how do you come back from that?

• 48:31Speaker 03

  How do you come back from that?

• 48:35Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, God. You know, fundamentally, girls, more than how do you come back from that? I'm like, how do we top that? So I think we gotta just

• 48:44Speaker 03

  I know.

• 48:45Eleanor Janega?

  just haul it in. I know. Carissa, you are the light of my life. This is one of the most important literature phenomenons that has ever existed. Thank you so much for coming on to talk about it.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  I mean, thank you for letting me talk about one of my favorite things. This is great.

• 49:02Eleanor Janega?

  Thanks once again to Carissa for joining me, and thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. If you were interested in obscenity, why not check out our past episode on medieval sex? It's somehow slightly less filthy.

• 49:17Eleanor Janega?

  Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film, The Medieval Apocalypse, released weekly, and ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts, and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. As businesses scale, success depends on how well knowledge is captured, shared, and kept up to date. Camtasia Pro turns teams' expertise into engaging training, onboarding, and documentation. No professional editing experience required. With the industry's best screen recording, video editing, and AI-powered workflows, you can train faster and boost operational efficiency. Get over $100 off your first year at camtasiapro.com and start building a smarter way to educate customers, onboard employees, and ensure valuable expertise is shared across teams.