Medieval people feared that the Black Death was a punishment for sin, and hoped that abstaining from sex could save them.
Author: Katherine Harvey
Like a Virgin? The Medieval Origins of a Modern Debate
A recent Vatican ruling on consecrated virgins has caused controversy, but there are medieval precedents for the new approach.
Carnal Knowledge: Regulating Sex in England, 1470-1600
Sexual behaviour was strictly regulated in late medieval and Tudor England.
Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome
Same-sex couples in the early modern period claimed marriage in their own particular ways.
The Boswell Legacy: Revisiting John Boswell’s Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality
Three historians explore the legacy of John Boswell’s landmark text.
From Shame to Sin: Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity
With the new religion came new attitudes to sexual behaviour and morality
The Pustulent Penis: Searching for STDs in the Centuries before Syphilis
John of Gaunt ‘died of putrefaction of his genitals and body’.
Recent Posts
Out and about with GLF in London, September 1971
‘Behaviour Which Merits a Horrible and Wretched Death’: Sex, Sin and the Black Death in Medieval England
Moral Instruction, Venereal Disease, and Eugenic Manliness during World War I
Following in Vesta’s footsteps! How to name queerness in museums
Reporting Abortions in Post-Conquest New Spain