The exciting idea that everyone was just rolling around in late medieval Italy is wrong, according to historian Marlisa den Hartog. She won the annual Volkskrant IISH thesis prize for her research into sexuality in late medieval Italy.
“Everything is about sex, except sex itself, which is about power.” Marlisa den Hartog (history, Leiden University) quotes this famous quote from Oscar Wilde in her thesis. Social relations, relations between the sexes, the maintenance of the family through reproduction:all too important to let people mess around for fun. How societies dealt with sexuality says a lot about what the most important ideological norms and values have been, according to Den Hartog.
A reason for her to examine this history in her thesis The pleasure that is taken in bed. Perceptions of sexual desire and sexual identity in Italy, 1450-1500 . “The sexual identity of different groups in society says something about the balance of power in a society. Moreover, the research into this holds up a mirror to our own society.”
Den Hartog is this year's winner of the Volkskrant-IISH Thesis Prize for History. She has read a lot of juicy literature for this. Were those medieval people really such loose balls? No, according to Den Hartog. These are mainly stereotypes that we stuck on later:“The image of a society in which everything is possible in the sexual field is based mainly on literary examples, full of affairs between priests and lay people, queens and moors. When you look closer, you see that these stories are surrounded by a strict moralistic judgment of the authors. Moreover, it does not correspond to the picture that emerges from theological, medical and philosophical texts.”
Five authors
Den Hartog used the same methodology as J.W. Baldwin in his The Language of Sex. Five Voices from Northern France around 1200. Baldwin sketches a picture of sexuality around the year 1200 and gives the floor to five contemporary authors of different genres. In her case, Den Hartog looks at Italy between 1450 and 1500 and her 'five voices' consist of authors of a theological and a medical work, a chivalric novel, an Italian novella and a Neoplatonic (philosophical) treatise.
“These five authors reflect the views of the intellectual elite. These are university professors, courtiers and theologians. To what extent their views were representative of those of the rest of the population, of course, remains a mystery. Some texts, such as a confessional manual, also ended up with the 'common man' through the intermediary of the priest, for the rest of the texts it is more difficult. For example, there are court records of sexual misconduct cases in which witnesses are quoted. These are only scarce and location specific, so I didn't use them."
At first sight, the way in which the various authors spoke about sexuality and how they judged sexual relations appear to be very different. Den Hartog explains:“In the first place this had to do with the choice of words of the authors and the genre for which they wrote. A theologian who writes a confessional handbook, of course, writes differently about sex than one who writes a chivalric novel for the court. But when I compared all these views, it turned out that all authors also have many things in common. They agreed on the most important rule of male sexual behavior:rationality and moderation. Incidentally, these two characteristics were missing – according to almost all authors – in women.”
Womanizer or chaste intellectual
The aim of the thesis was to map how people thought about sexual identity and sexual desire in this period and whether there was a difference with France around 1200. And there was. Den Hartog saw a striking change in the role of the woman. Around 1200 it was thought that both men and women had to desire each other during sex in order to reproduce. Later in time, that picture changed. The male's share of reproduction had increased compared to the female, so that they were no longer equal. In addition, sexual desire was still necessary for the man, but women did not necessarily have to have fun getting pregnant.
But the men didn't have it easy either, explains Den Hartog. “The code of conduct for women in the sexual field was clear:women had to be monogamous and chaste. This emphasizes every author in any source, be it a chivalric novel or a theological text. For men it was more complicated, they had to navigate between two pitfalls, as it were. In chivalric romances and novellas, the image clearly emerges that masculinity was determined by potency, by the frequency with which one had sex, and the number of sex partners. Impotence was ridiculed.”
“At the same time, theological texts emphasize the sinfulness of extramarital sex and medical texts emphasize the harmfulness of excessive sexual behavior. Philosophical tracts even view sexuality as something to be avoided in order to attain spiritual perfection. Most importantly, however, men should always keep their wits about them and not get carried away by sexual desires. In doing so, they jeopardized their honor and reputation. Men always had to judge what was best for their reputation:that of a womanizer or that of a celibate intellectual.”
Insatiable temptress
Den Hartog's research showed that four of the five authors wrote negatively about sex, with the exception of courtly love. “The chivalric novel I researched, the Orlando Innamorato by Matteo Maria Boiardo, differed markedly from the other four sources in two respects. First, sexuality was not presented as something sinful or harmful and should be avoided as much as possible. Rather, it was something romantic, a source of intimacy between two lovers that brought them closer and took their relationship to the next level.”
“Second, in the chivalric novel, women are not presented as insatiable temptresses who dove into bed with everyone. They were individuals who made their own personal decisions about sexual relations and sex partners, just like men. Boiardo wrote his text for the elite at court, which included women. In addition, Boiardo himself repeatedly emphasized that the women of his own time were much more chaste.”
What struck her was the extent to which strict theological morality had permeated almost all sources. “The author of a large collection of novellas could not resist lamenting the sinfulness of all women and the clergy in general, before and after each licentious story about, say, a priest and a tailor's wife. The author of a scientific anatomical treatise called anal sex not only something that was harmful to health, but also something that went against 'the divine majesty'."