Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome

By Katherine Harvey Author Interviews, Early Modern, LGBTQ

Same-sex couples in the early modern period claimed marriage in their own particular ways.

Sex and the Devil: An Interview with Laura Stokes

By Mackenzie Cooley Author Interviews, Early Modern, Religion and Sexuality

‘The witch is a witch not only because she magically devours, destroys, or rides wolves, but also because she has sex with the devil.’

Witchcraft Confessions and Sexual Fantasies during the English Civil War

By Scott Eaton Early Modern

In their confessions at the East Anglian witch trials, accused women combined their understanding of the devil with sexual fantasies.

Sores, Scorn and Stigma? Suffering Syphilis in Early Modern Germany

By Mona OBrien Early Modern, Medicine and the Body

The ‘French disease’ erupted in Europe in 1495.

“She was both Poxt and Clapt together”: Confessions of Sexual Secrets in Eighteenth-Century Venereal Cases

By Olivia Weisser Early Modern, Medicine and the Body

Sexual secrets were nothing new in the 1700s, but confessing them to a doctor became surprisingly common.

The Origins of Sex: An Interview With Faramerz Dabhoiwala

By Katherine Harvey Author Interviews, Early Modern

Dabhoiwala traces the transformation of western approaches to sexuality during the Enlightenment.

Bestiality in a Time of Smallpox

By Rob Boddice Early Modern, Medicine and the Body

At the turn of the 19th century, opponents of Edward Jenner’s method for preventing smallpox likened vaccination to bestiality.