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 ...
Yes. I read that, another good book is “The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium”
I enjoyed the observation that one of the things that would be jarring to a 21st Century person would be the lack of noise pollution.
That is one of those things that, the more you dwell on it, the more you realize how pervasive the presence of sound is today, sound that isn’t the wind blowing through the trees or even an occasional water wheel.
The story says they think the fish story was made up, as in never happened.
And that’s how Mrs. Baird got her start. The rest is history.
Layered up in dough??
Those guys liked chubbos?
Taking an occasional shower might have worked if they tried it
Winner!
Regards,
Unless it was the other way around. š
Reminds me of a friend who went to France and was completely turned off of bread after observing French workmen in sweaty shirts going home with a baguette under their arm.
Historians love to make sh** up. I questioned one about an item...She said it makes it more interesting. When I hear historians...I expect the truth. If you’re making it up...it’s called a “lie”.
and to this day it’s still all about the dough...
Actually there are craft beer recipes where vaginal natural yeasts is used to make the beer. I remember one being “real Blonde beer.”
Kneady women, not unique to Middle Ages.
Best part of this post are the comments.
Voodoo believing women from New Orleans to Rio to Barranquilla and Santo Domingo to Lagos and Lusaka put mense blood in meats and sauces to control their men
So they believe
I was married to one
She is on my homepage see if you can pick her out...lol
Thank goodness they finally realized the power of bacon.
Or just travel to a third world country today.
Since sex was the primary entertainment of the middle ages I doubt the veracity of this article.
“They use bidetsā¦we donāt.”
They invented it, but not all Europeans own one. The French even fell out of love with the bidet for a couple of decades:
https://www.connexionfrance.com/article/Practical/Property/Make-sense-of-The-French-bidet
When I last worked in Europe for a good stretch of time (granted this was in 2001) there were no bidets in my two-floor penthouse apartment in Florence, nor in my apartment in Paris. None of the homes I visited in Germany that year had one either.
I think much of journalism, history and science writing are attempts at taking the one case in a million and making it appear commonplace.
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