Posted on 04/22/2022 8:06:35 PM PDT by Trillian
When we think of people who lived in the Middle Ages, it is usually the crushing poverty and high infant mortality that stand out.
But now a historian of the medieval period has revealed something less well-known: the ploys that women used to get their other halves into bed.
Speaking on a new podcast, Dr Eleanor Janega said that one bizarre method involved wives kneading dough on their naked bodies before baking it to turn it into bread and then serving it to their husbands.
Some medieval women also believed that honey was an aphrodisiac and would smother it 'all over' their bodies before putting it 'in things' and then serving the foods to their other halves.
The historian also quoted from a bizarre 'penitential guide' - questions priests asked members of their congregation to get them to admit their sins - to highlight an even more obscure aphrodisiac.
Written by 10th century bishop Burchard of Worms, it described how 'some women' would put a 'live fish' in their vagina before 'waiting until it is dead' and then cooking it and serving it to their husband.
However, she said the bishop's claims that women actually used the method were 'probably made up'.
Dr Janega was speaking on new History Hit podcast Betwixt the Sheets.
The expert is the author of new book the Middle Ages: A Graphic History, which was published last year.
Speaking of the popular aphrodisiacs, she told host Kate Lister: 'There are a lot of options here, and interestingly a lot of them have to do with eating.
'A lot of the time what it will be is introducing ways of getting your husband to kind of eat something that has been in contact with your body.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I do not want to know where they got the yeast to make that bread.
Thus was born the yeast infection.
I’d rather slather honey all over my body than ‘smother’ it...
Brings a new meaning to “hot buns”
Read (or listen) to Wm Manchester’s The World Only Lit by Fire if you want to be shocked about the Middle Ages and how things were for people
-PJ
Eww, especially when bathing was an option in those days.
“Thus was born the yeast infection”
Um no
which was first, the yeast or the bread?
Aren’t you sweet ... clover honey?
You apparently didn’t read the excerpt.
Did you see the claim about fish?
Ohhhhh...
They still need dough and lots of it 🤪
A couple of years back I heard something about Gwyneth Paltrow using her own vaginal yeast to make a candle, making naked body bread seems like it would be right up her alley. I checked the Goop website, doesn’t appear to be any vagina bread recipes on there, yet.
Cutting back on gluten was a no-no.
‘Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed.....”
Hat tip to Kinky Friedman.
Honey is actually mild disinfectant. High sugar content dries out microbes. It also has hydrogen peroxide.
Did they get a rise out of it?
I don’t know who this “historian” is but I am fairly certain that the woman did NOT insert a fish, dead, alive, or anything in between inside of her!
I read an account, years ago from an internet page from a medical journal.
The page was titled “rectal foreign bodies “. A man decided to stick a frozen fish up his butt to get “pleasure”.Well guess what? It THAWED OUT.
He found he couldn’t get said fish out because the fins wouldn’t allow him to.
The spines wanted to dig in to his anal canal as the fins opened up.And that prompted a 911 call to the local EMT’s. They found him sitting on the toilet crying as he told them what happened.
It had to be removed surgically.
That whole piece has to be a put-on.🙄
I kind of like wildflower...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.