Who Paints the Lion?

Many of us can recall our high school English class reading Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, arguably one of the most important literary works of the Middle Ages. In this work, the proto-feminist Wife of Bath mentions a well-known fable of the time in which a man and a lion consider a painting depicting a man killing a lion. The lion observes that, had a member of his own species painted the picture, the outcome would be different; it would have shown a lion defeating a man.
Just as the artist naturally paints himself in the dominant role as the victor, the documentarians of history favor their own kind. We know that the recorders of medieval history had one key commonality – all were sans vagina. The Middle Ages, as with all of human history, was a time of great inequality between the genders, when the balance of power favored those with a penis. Men, as the bookkeepers of history, overlooked and/or minimized the role of women, choosing instead to highlight their own accomplishments.

The Medieval Vagina is an attempt to, like the lion in the fable, reconstitute the bits of evidence that remains about women, gender roles, sexuality, power, equality, and the vagina to textually paint a picture that is quite different from the one painted by medieval men as they recorded histories. In a warped sense, one could say that The Medieval Vagina offers a view of an historical time period through the vaginal lens, with a comical twist.

Songs About V

In 1803, a collection of medieval-era songs were found in German monastery. What is remarkable about these bawdy ballads is that they digress from appropriately classical melodies fit for all audiences, to lewd and vulgar lyrics that rival many of today's rap and pop songs. Prior to these songs, acts of sexual intercourse were written about in a dry and blunt way, but in this collection, the anonymous authors jazzed up these sexual encounters, including such memorable lines as "My virginity makes me frisky". One song is a satire of Ovid's famous manuals on love-making techniques and is a first-person narrative account of a ten-hour long sexual romp with Venus, the goddess of love. Hubba Hubba!

Known as the Carmina Burana, it is believed that these songs, with their primary focus on drinking, sex, and dodging fate, were written by the Goliards, a group of monks who rebelled against the oppressive authority of the church. The Goliards lived by the "you-only-live-once" philosophy long before the YOLO acronym gained its current popularity. In fact, the Goliards were defrocked in 1300 because they were more interested in eating, drinking, and making merry than they were in reading scripture and praying. Sounds like the medieval version of frat boys! 

Interested in learning more about bawdy medieval ballads? Look for Medieval Vagina: A Hysterical and Historical Perspective of all Things Vaginal During the Middle Ages coming soon.

Lady Frances Howard

While writing the Medieval Vagina, I researched numerous fascinating medieval women and was amused, entertained, and inspired by their stories. One such woman, Lady Frances Howard, remains one of my favorites. Perhaps it is because she was a woman who wasn't afraid to go after what she wanted. Perhaps it was because she had a delicious evil streak. It could also be that I admire her luck (she escaped the gallows after a murder conviction, but that is another story). Lady Frances could rival any Game of Thrones character to be sure.

Lady Frances was married as a child to a son of a politically connected family but the youngsters were kept apart until they had reached sexual maturity. Problem was, by this time Lady Frances had fallen in love with someone else. Not just fallen in love…she was sleeping with guy. So once she was reunited with her childhood husband, she had a big, big problem. She was no longer a virgin. She sought a divorce from the husband, claiming that he suffered from erectile dysfunction and therefore, couldn't perform his husbandly duties.

The courts ordered a hymen inspection to prove that Lady Frances was, indeed, still a virgin. Because ten midwives and two court-appointed representatives would be present at the hymen inspection, Lady Frances demanded a veil over her face to preserve her modesty. Rumors exploded that the vagina being examined was not Lady Frances at all, but a stand-in hired by the defrocked Lady to cover up her philandering ways. A witty courtesan pens a clever ditty about the incident:

This Dame was inspected but Fraud interjected
A maid of more perfection
Whom the midwives did handles whilest the knight held the candle
O there was a clear inspection.

You could learn more about Lady Frances' story in the Medieval Vagina: A Hysterical and Historical Perspective of all Things Vaginal During the Middle Ages coming soon.