The "Good Ol' Days" weren't so good.

Great Debates
41

Although others have discussed IzzyR’s remarks in relation to my own, I would like to continue the discussion by doing the same for myself.

It depends on where you mark off adulthood. Even if there were virtually no unmarried people over the age of 14, it would prove my point elegantly. If women and men quickly remarried after the death of a spouse, a common event in a society without adequate medical knowledge, they would continue to pass the disease on. If they are still within breeding age, they would pass the disease on congenitally. So now HIV spreads to multiple families due to one married individual.

It seems to me that your vision of the Middle Ages is naive. Would you like to believe that everyone was heterosexual, those who were unmarried were chaste, and those who were married were faithful? Do you think the social pressure that caused today’s so-called sexual liberation was not based in some existing social reality?

The Middle Ages were extremely cosmopolitan. The Victorian imagination, which dominated medieval scholarship until relatively recently, has fashioned the period in its own self-image. Delve a little bit into the texts and see for yourself.

For starters, try the Lais of Marie de France. They are short, self-contained poetic vignettes of surpassing skill and subtlety. Virtually all of them are about unmarried love or adultery. For later literature, try the Decameron of Boccaccio. And when you are done, as someone mentioned above, be shocked at the Canterbury Tales.

If you are interested in prurient monastic literature, you don’t have to go farther than the Vita Sancti Antoni. by the bishop Athanasius. When the devil grows tired of tempting Saint Anthony with women, he tries little boys…with more success! And there’s also the Apothegmata Patrum, the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, many of whom were “brigands,” or homosexual prostitutes. Of course, this is early literature. Let’s try some later material.

The Causae et Curae of Hildegard von Bingen, one of the greatest mystics of the 12th century, talks in detail about the male and female orgasm, even going so far as to describe the pleasure of vaginal secretions. All this from a chaste abbess given to the church when she was perhaps 7 or 8. The stories about Edward II are rampant in medieval English historiography. He was unnaturally close to two of his syncophants, Hugh le Despenser and Piers Gaveston. It was widely known, so we think, that he was a homosexual.

Amazingly enough, he suffered much less opprobium for his behavior than a homosexual leader would in this great era.

You can’t say because you simply don’t know. So you prefer to oversimplify to insult my knowledge and intelligence.

It is immoral to have intercourse on the Sabbath. Most Saints’ Days are also out. It is immoral to have intercourse when a woman has her period. It is immoral to have intercourse on Whitsunday. Or on sanctified ground. Or during the daylight hours. The rules go on and on.

Political marriages that span large geographic areas between aristocratic families. This is a sure way to infect the entire aristocracy all over Europe with HIV.

But population was lower. Enough people die in Africa in one year of AIDS to decimate the European Middle Ages. It simply doesn’t require as much mobility to make a significant impact on population. Look at the Black Plague, IzzR. Though not sexually transmitted, if so few people were traveling, it would have had almost no impact.

MR

42

I think it’s beyond obvious that you don’t know much about the Middle Ages.

Until the 1300’s, homosexuality was considered a ‘minor’ sin by the Church; the punishment for clergy who committed homosexual acts was less penance than for clergy who went out hunting. England had three openly homo/bi-sexual monarchs, France had four (one of whom successfully petitioned the Church to have his lover appointed as a Bishop). Read “Lies, Myths & Legends of World History” and you’ll understand that disgust/persecution with/of homosexuality and with/of adultery and fornication is a very recent development in human history.
As for my original comment regarding AIDS destroying humanity had it appeared in the Middle Ages- I will agree that the methods by which AIDS is passed would not be as common (such as IV drug use, though I believe Izzy is completely wrong about their being more homosexual activity today than in the Middle Ages), and we certainly aren’t talking about a disaster that wipes the world out in five days. But the people of the Middle Ages would be so unable to both understand the disease and to understand how to prevent it that- combined with its mortality- it’d certainly run a great deal more rampant than it does today.
As for Heath’s list:

*As a clumsy oaf, I prefer plastic bottles for Coke. Would you like to see my scars from shattered glass bottles?
*The worst school massacre occurred in the late '20’s in Oklahoma.
*Oil is still in just about as high a supply. What’s screwing us is that there’s so much more demand for the stuff.

43

John Corrado:

I guess that kind of sums it up, doesn’t it? I think your assertions are rediculous, you evidently think mine are, perhaps more evidence is needed.

Maeglin

As AIDS is a fatal desease, and would have been more so in the Middle Ages when there would have been no treatments at all for it, the spread of it requires that an infected person infect other, non-infected people in a relatively short time frame. Merely remarrying would not cut it. the spouse would get infected and die and that would be the end of it. Unless you have a constant chain of people dying and their spouses remarrying it would not spread far.

Not everyone. But a whole lot more than today.

Of course. but even you acknowledge that “today’s so-called sexual liberation” has not been present as every time of history. Obviously social pressure may differ in their impact in different eras.

This points to the problem with scholarship such as yours. You are studying a small group of people i.e. writers (and readers) of medieval literature, and extrapolating to the general population which was rural, poorly educated (meaning not into the literature that you describe) and relatively immobile.

Beyond this, I don’t think many of the examples that you cite show any evidence of promiscuity or homosexuality at all. I think it’s only by comparison with the completely sexless image you may have created that you find them prurient. Most of what you show is that literature discusses the topic of homosexuality (or infidelity), not that these were approved of. You could probably just as easily “prove” that robbery and murder were widely practiced and condoned, by pointing to similar such literature.

I’m not sure what you meant to bring out with the stuff about orgasms.

I don’t know about the Edward II stuff. but you seem to suggest some doubt on the subject. Are you sure this is not part of the recent trend towards revisionist history, making everyone and his brother into retroactive homosexuals?

No need to get insulted. You have misinterpreted my words.

I meant that while there may have been many laws that were confusing and comlicated, and which may have not been widely followed as you say, this does not mean that you can say, as you have, that by extension no rules were followed. There were undoubtedly other rules which were simpler and upon which greater importance was placed. These were likely widely followed. this is common in any system of rules.

The black plague was, by comparison to AIDS, a very easy desease to contract. Thus it required alot less mobility to spread. Plus, my impression is that it was spread by rats, which were about as mobile then as they are now.

Supposedly the guy who got the AIDS virus going big time (known as “patient zero”) was a guy by the name of Getan(?) Dugas. This guy was a gay airline steward who slept with people whereever he went, and really got the ball rolling.

I’m not saying that the disease would not have spread without this particular guy, or even without someone like this guy. But it’s the type of lifestyle which this guy represented the extreme of, that fosters the spread of this disease.

44

IzzyR

No, AIDS is not a fatal disease. Since it appears that you have not had basic health education in this regard, please allow me to explain.

An individual can contract HIV from sexual intercourse. Human Immunodeficiency Virus. This disease has a potentially vast incubation period. Between the time of contraction, it can develop into First Stage AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) in anywhere between one month and ten years of time. With a deficient immune system, an AIDS carrier can die of an attending infection at any point in time later. AIDS patients can survive for years without medicine and without diagnosis.

I believe this undermines your above contention.

I say it once and I will say it again. This is extremely naive, and proceeds more from the Victorian element’s influence on our popular imagination than from any reality.

I said “so-called” because I was using your words. But you are missing the point entirely.

The issue is not one of social pressure, it is one of behavior. Just because their was less social pressure for sexual freedom in no way corresponds to the frequency of this behavior. It sure seemed that sexual liberalism was more prevalent during the period of sexual liberation, but this is largely due to the dissemination of knowledge about this kind of behavior.

You are really funny, IzzyR. I always find it amusing that people as knee-jerk conservative as you try to use standard liberal scholastic critiques. Which in this case are completely inana.

[ul]
[li]I am not using rarefied literary works or the lives of great men to extrapolate anything. Their purposes were purely illustrative. In your zeal to criticize me, perhaps that has been overlooked.[/li][li]A poorly-educated rural class is just as less likely to be aware of the writings of the elite who prohibit certain kinds of sexual behavior. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.[/li][li]Where there is lack of elite literature, folk tales often about. You might be surprised to know that the canon of Arthurian mythology, which was massivly popular from Wales to eastern Germany, pivots on the illicit love between Tristan and Isolde and Lancelot and Guinevere.[/li][li]Often priests were ill-equipped to deal with confessions of a prurient nature. In the early Middle Ages they relied on penitential manuals, written by higher priests, which proscribed the number of fast days and hail marys necessary to expiate sins. Contained in these little correctores are sexual acts that will curl your ears. Their punishments are minimal.[/li][li]Read any Paris town vs. gown law in the 12th century. I don’t think I have to say any more.[/li][/ul]

Like John Corrado says, you still appear to know very little about the Middle Ages and are clinging to the version supplied by the popular imagination.

I am only revisionist in that I think that the popular version of historical periods tells us more about our own biases than about the periods themselves. You have given me no evidence to the contrary.

Now you are trying to peg me into an extreme position. I will never contend that no one, at no time, under any circumstances followed any of the rules. All I am arguing is that the sheer existence of these rules does not in any way imply their observance: in fact, it implies the reverse.

The consensus is that it arrived from the east via rats, but spread thence by humans.

Which is not to say that it cannot be spread by other means. I have heard some weird stories about this Dugas fellow, btw.

MR

45

Maeglin,

It does? Let me simplify it for you with a story, as you seem to be having some dificulty with the abstract concept. Guy gets married at twenty. He has contracted, or subsequently contracts AIDS. At 35, he dies. His wife, who has caught it from him a few years back marries another 35 year old guy. She dies at 45. The husband marries another 42 year old woman. Seven years later he dies. At this point the new wife is 49. As you can see it will only go on until the last carrier dies while single. An extraordinarily common occurence.

In other words societal pressure has no impact on people’s behaviour? When you say things as silly as this, it undermines whatever credibility you might otherwise have in areas in which you claim to have expertise.

All this unpleasantness, and you still fail to make a coherent point? To repeat “You could probably just as easily “prove” that robbery and murder were widely practiced and condoned, by pointing to similar such literature.”

46

It is always the best of times.
It is always the worst of times.

47

Guinastasia wrote:

And if that’s not reason enough to call them “the good old days,” I don’t know what is! :wink:

48

John Corrado wrote:

Funny, I didn’t know the Old Testament was a “very recent development in human history”…

49

Again you have forgotten the importance of congenital HIV. How about the precociously young childbearing age? Oh, and how about the utter lack of birth control? A girl could catch HIV at 13, have five kids with one husband, remarry ar 20, have another three kids with another man, and then die of unknown causes. That leaves one adult male and 8 children who potentially carry HIV.

You are the one who said it, not me. As for my credibility and expertise, they speak for themselves. Let’s return to what I said.

I stand by this statement. This does not mean that regardless of the sexual pressure, people still practiced unrestricted promiscuous sex. You cannot paint me into this corner.

A society can be perfectly content to have a law in place yet violate it routinely. There is no overwhelming movement to change or abolish speed limit laws, yet people vioate them routinely, especially if there is little chance anyone will be hurt or they will get caught. The Twelve Tables, the source of Roman law, demands that the punishment for virtually every crime was death. Naturally, this law was ignored in virtually every criminal case, even those of vi, or armed hostility against the state. The Magna Carta served as royal toilet paper practically until the Glorious Revolution of 1689.

My point is clear. Lack of social opposition to a law does not in any way indicate that it is being abided. Call it silly, but reread the posts again. Who is citing historical sources? And who is not? If you want me to believe a thing you say, kindly provide more evidence than your introspections on what the Middle Ages must have been like for the average peasant. I’m just not buying it.

Repeating something does not make it any less idiotic, IzzyR.

First, I find it hard to believe that you are not understanding my coherent arguments. I doubt that lurkers and other posters are having the same problem. Let’s try to make a little table.

IzzyR’s Argument
[ul]
[li]There was less sex in the Middle Ages.[/li][li]AIDS would not have caused much damage[/li][/ul]
Am I the only one who requires more evidence than IzzyR’s vision of the Middle Ages provides?

Maeglin’s Arguments
[ul]
[li]The Middle Ages was a more sexually cosmopolitan time than most people believe.[/li][li]We know this from a reading of many sources, especially those neglected in previous study of the period.[/li][li]Since full-blown AIDS can take years before it kills its carrier, it is likely that given that sexual practices often diverge significantly from sexual attitudes, it is likely that AIDS would have been a serious problem in the Middle Ages.[/li][/ul]

As to your repeated quote about murderers and robbers. This is completely inane. It is not difficult to prove that murder and robbery were relatively widely practiced. I can recommend some works of medieval historiography that would do nicely. For starters, read the Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis. We have every reason to believe that he can speak with real knowledge of the disastrously unlawful conditions in early 12th century Normandy, for he was living in the thick of it. It is hard not to find historical writing which ignores murder and theft, both practiced by thugs and by the aristocracy. So what’s your point?

As for it being condoned, that is another matter. The punishments for murder and robbery both in medieval pentientials and in medieval common law (especially the laws of England and France, which are very well preserved) are significantly more intense than the punishments for any kind of sexual offense. Furthermore, works of medieval literature and historiography deal with sexual matters in a much more ambiguous tone than they do with violent crime. I’d suggest again that you read Marie de France’s Lais. Even village birth and death rolls, admirably preserved especially in England, reveal a certain degree of promiscuity, especially among unmarried men.

You may argue that these are not useful criterua of social tolerances. But if laws, literature, and actual records don’t convince you, I don’t think anything will.

I am not trying to get you to believe that everyone was having as much promiscuous sex as they are today. The simple lack of effective birth control was often a deterrent enough. Likely a much more powerful deterrent than any social pressure. However, you have yet to offer a shred of proof, historical or otherwise, that the medieval people were as restricted in their sexuality as you would have us believe.

You could spare us all unpleasantness if you would only show us the proof. Or at least an argument.

MR

50

tracer said

The Old Testament also says that if you don’t like the smell coming out of your neighbor’s house, you have the right to kill him.

A large chunk of the Old Testament has simply never been observed. Not until relatively recently.

MR

51

I’m thinking I may transfer this to a new thread, but let’s see how this hijaack goes.

Interesting you should bring this up. The wife and I were reading a quote that speculated that OT prohibitions on homosexuality as an abomination were a 5thBCE(?) invention (really have to get my book) by the rise in power of a strictly monotheistic priestly caste to eliminate practices existant in the worship of most gods of the time.

Sorta the same as God forbidding the planting of groves of trees around his alters…

Anyway, we got to thinking, and realised that in cultures not exposed to this Judaic tradition, homosexuality was not an evil practice that could get you killed.

Those cultures we could think of off the top of our head and knew a bit about were: Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Roman, Indian.

All these accepted homosexuality. It was only the spread of Judeo-Muslem-Christian beliefs that marks our “natural” aversion to it.

I’m not saying all those cultures were bisexual, just that while the majority were probably straight and had no interest in homosexuality, they didn’t stone those who were homosexual, either…

52

I understand that, before air conditioning became common, the British Foreign Service classified Washington D.C. as a sub-tropical post.

53

Actually, by that same book (LM&L of World History), the Greeks and Romans did develop an aversion to homosexuality, but that was because they associated the practice with the idle and jaded aristocracy, and no good ‘democrat’ would do such things.

I’ll try to find my copy of the book when I get home from work tonight so I can post the relevant sections.

54

You know what really frosts my weenie? The people who rhapsodize about how wonderful things were 30 or 60 years ago are EXACTLY THE SAME ONES who tell their children and grandchildren, “You kids don’t know how good you’ve got it today!”

55

Well, that’s pretty easy to explain. Life was tougher back then, but because suffering builds character (any father will tell you that), people were better.

Therefore, kids today have it far too easy and don’t have any character; conversely, while things were tough back then, at least people were good and kind and never stole or talked back.

56

The Greeks and Romans had interesting homosexual practices. It was most unRoman to be a passive homosexual. No Roman aristocrat would ever admit it if he took it up the ass. And there was no penetration in “normal” Greek homosexual intercourse. There is a special word for this practice which I forgot, but it involves rubbing the penis in between the inner thighs of the lover.

Yup, those Greeks had it down to a science.

MR

57

Maeglin

I don’t think congenital HIV is a major factor in the spread of AIDS.

What then are you saying and why are you saying it? What I said in my first post to this thread was that “There was a whole lot less promiscuity and mobility back in the Middle Ages”. Are you denying this? At first it seemed that you were. You said “There is not necessarily any correlation between theology and sexual practice” (emphasis mine). Than the previous “in no way corresponds” statement. Sounds to me at least that you are saying that sexual practices of the Middle Ages can be treated without consideration of the impact of religious and social pressure, to which they do not necessarily have any correlation and in no way correspond. Now I see you backing off slightly, hurling invective as you retreat. You now won’t “be painted into a corner” and claim only that “The Middle Ages was a more sexually cosmopolitan time than most people believe”. And “I am not trying to get you to believe that everyone was having as much promiscuous sex as they are today.”

So which is it? Were the masses in the Middle Ages as sexualy promiscuous as they are today? Was the homosexual lifestyle as common? If you say yes, we’ve nothing to discuss. If you acknowledge some difference, as you seem to be doing, than we’re part of the way there.

Absolutely true. But to say that a law was routinely ignored requires evidence, which you acknowledged in your opening staement to be lacking. To say without evidence that we can merely suppose arbitrarily that these laws and religious dicta were routinely ignored, is the result of stupidity or an agenda. In your case, obviously the latter.

Bottom line is that there is overwhelming evidence, some of which has been helpfully supplied by you here, that promiscuous sex and homosexuality were regarded as evil by the religious and social codes that the vast majority of people in those times believed in. You are saying, without any evidence, that in spite of this, those people acted much as they would have were it not for those codes. Rediculous.

Was it as widely practiced as homosexuality and sex are today? This is what you’re trying to prove about sex. My point is that you are “proving” your vision about the sexual habits of Middle Agers from methods that, if applied to murder, would give results that even you would reject. Obviously alot of literature deals with matters that are not widely practiced. Some of it, in particular seems to specifically regard it as evil, as in having the Devil tempt St. Anthony with little boys, or the penances for crimes. So I don’t think you’ve done anything beyond toss around a bunch of esoteric names.

How restricted would I have you believe? All I’ve said is a lot less than today.

Huh? In the interests of establishing your veracity with regard to your other claims about Medieval literature, please show where you took this from.

58

Yes, it was Gaetan Dugas. Interesting that you bring him up; I think that his case (and Typhoid Mary’s) illustrate part of the argument against yours. Both Dugas and Mary were members of a persecuted minority who were told by medical professionals that they, even though they were not at all sick themselves, were spreading a horrible illness, and that they must make drastic changes in their lifestyle to avoid spreading this illness. Neither patient was very compliant.* Why would they be? They did not feel sick, and why should they trust these govt doctors who were insisting that they were?

Of course, neither disease started with these patients. Typhoid has been around for years (although not always called Typhoid,) and HIV has been dated to blood samples taken in 1959. But both of these patients lived after germ theory (Dugas after very modern medicine.) Do you think that people in the Middle Ages, aristocracy, lower-class, church, or scientist (such as they were) would ever associate their illness with something as basic to them as their sex life? Especially when their virgin children were also infected? This is the age of humeurs, not vaccines. I’ll even assume that some Church authorities make the connection, or assume one (G-d’s punishment of sin.) Do you think that the secular authorities, who were often at odds with the Church, would give up their sex lives just on their say so (did Dugas give up his at the say so of the homophobic govt? Or Malone her livelihood?)

*(I have less information about Dugas, some of this is from memory of my wonderful History of Medicine class.)

59

I don’t know if anyone has pointed it out in the Medieval posts of this threat /I started getting cross-eyed trying to read them all/ but there were just a few problems.

For one, no matter what you read, most of the ‘adults’ were young and had the maturity of a kid. That’s why they went charging off of heroic crusades, looking for damsels in distress, treating each other like crap and squabbling over honor and such. Most had practical education, like how to sheer a sheep, gut a deer, start a fire, use a sword, ride a horse and shoot a bow, but they couldn’t read and couldn’t count very well, if at all Education was not wide spread.

They stunk too. Smelled. Reeked. Had odure! They bathed about once a month. Less in winter when it was a pain to get hot water into a tub. Soap was not a big thing back then. Around about then, scented powders, make-up and perfumes were being used by the very well off, but still being developed.

If you bought food at an Inn, your cook probably had the meat hanging for a day, swatted now and then to get the files off. He or she probably took a dump and might have rinsed their hands, but probably not. Clothing was washed, and bleached with milk. They did that by dipping the garment in raw milk, then letting it dry in the sun.

Can you imagine sitting down to eat a great slab of pork ribs, boiled spuds, a round of fire baked bread, and a great flagon of thin beer /the flagon usually wood or leather, rinsed but never washed, used by scores of people before you/ among a dozen or so other men in a crowded, dark, lantern lit room, with a big fire going, dirt floor and few windows? The smell would be remarkable.

Plus, you could get stabbed by someone who was irritated by your looks and he’d never get arrested. The medical treatment back then was essentially sew one up with regular thread or cauterize with a hot poker, nothing sterile and not much actually clean. Poultices and herbs were used, and hopefully due to your dirty life you had managed to build up a mass of antibodies because you essentially got to heal on your own.

Surgery was done with no anesthetic. Some folks, big ones, held you down, a well used leather bit was shoved in your yap and the doctor just started slicing away as fast as he could. Then they stitched you up with string from the inside out. Hopefully, you passed out long before then.

This pain filled form of life did not make for the very sympathetic average citizen. One could die from an abscessed tooth.

In cities, they dumped their chamber pots into the streets, which was why eventually a few things happened.
A. Wide brimmed hats.
B. Covered walk ways
C. Boot scrapers
D. The center of the street was formed into a shallow ditch to channel the effluent and rain water out of town.

Dumps were usually right on the edge of town because most people walked or rode in small donkey drawn carts. In bigger places, like castles, a toilet was a hole in the stone floor, leading to either a great pit below, an underground cavern or right into the same river they drank from. No seats. Squat and go.

The gallant knight in shining armor probably could be smelled from a block away and the lady in beautiful, silken dress would more than likely reek enough to make a modern man step back a few yards.

Men and women were armed. Men and women would unhesitatingly kill you if they felt the need. In some big cities, the Lord of the castle had a daily patrol go out and pick up the dead bodies in alleys, on the streets and in front of Inns, hopefully before they stank. Some were buried, some were dumped in the river to become someone else’s problem down stream and a few wound up in the dumps.

Ah, yes, the good old days, when men were men and women were glad of it.

60

Have I at some point suggested anything to do with your post? Perhaps in some past life…