Wimples and codpieces at the ready, a new medieval-ish romp has arrived to satiate our love of the historical shag fest. Netflix’s new dark comedy series The Decameron tells the story of sex in the time of the plague. It sounds bleak but – as the series isn’t scared to illustrate – it turns out there is a lot of fun to be had in a time of pestilence. Set in Italy in the year of our lord 1348, it sees a ragtag group of Italian nobles decide to try dodge the Black Death by hauling up in a countryside villa, and by all having as much sex as possible in whatever time they have left. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?
And they did! The Decameron may have all the historical authenticity of an Ann Summers-serving wench outfit, but when it comes to people letting loose during the plague, they are bang on the money. The Italian historian Matteo Villani (1283-1363) had hoped the great pestilence would leave his fellow countrymen “better, humble, virtuous and Catholic”, but instead found only a nation who “rushed headlong into lust”. Things had become so bad by 1393 that a papal official threatened to excommunicate anyone caught dancing, fighting, playing, or committing “unseemly acts” in the cemeteries of Champfleur, France.
Historical humping is all the rage on the silver screen. Whether it’s pseudo-medieval incestuous shenanigans in House of the Dragon, a spot of buggery in Mary and George, or some light fingering in Regency drama Bridgerton, our love for what my grandmother affectionately called the “bodice ripper” is as strong as ever. And The Decameron certainly answers the call; bodices are ripped, codpieces are loosened, and faces are sat on. It’s all tremendously good fun. But when it comes to the sex itself, is any of it historically accurate? Does it even matter if it’s not?
Series like The Decameron and Bridgerton have never claimed to be documentaries, but they do use real history as a plot point, which opens up conversations around what else is accurate, especially the more raucous stuff. For historians of sex and sexuality like me, this is a wonderful, fabulous thing, because we get to talk about all the truly bonkers things our ancestors did to get their rocks off. And it’s always far more bizarre than anything you can see on screen.
First things first, obviously people in the past were having sex. You and I and everyone else is the living, breathing proof of that. But what kind of sex were they having? Did they have kinky sex in the Renaissance? Did they know about scissoring in the Stone Age?
It’s very easy to think of the past as a place where the only sex anyone was having was what might politely be called “functional”. A world where the mere sight of an ankle could cause a fainting fit, where anything other than the missionary position was grounds for excommunication. Series like The Decameron can seem very modern because they are showing it as largely for fun, rather than for making babies. There is some lovely gay sex, a dash of lesbian loving, a bit of slap and tickle, and some rather risqué cunnilingus.
I get asked all the time if this kind of sex was being enjoyed in the days of yore, and I am very pleased to say that yes it most certainly was. Our belief that people of the past didn’t enjoy sex as much as we do today is more about confirming our own sense of sexual empowerment than it is about historical accuracy. We like to think of the past as a place of prudish repression because it makes us look better in comparison. That’s not to say that the past was some kind of sexual utopia. Far from it. But, despite what Philip Larkin wrote, sex was not invented in 1963.
Let’s take the man-on-man action to start with. The Decameron is set outside the medieval city of Florence, a city with such a reputation for “sodomy” that even as far away as Germany, to be a “Florenzer” meant you were gay. In 1432, the citizens of Florence were so alarmed by their reputation that they founded the Office of the Night, a specialised magistracy whose only job was finding and punishing men who had sex with men, and boy did they find a lot of them.
Historically, women who have sex with women have not attracted the same levels of attention from the law as gay men did. This is largely because it was men making the laws and they simply could not understand how two women could have “proper” sex without a penis. But none of this means that women have not been dining at the bean feast since time immemorial. Nor does it mean that lesbian sex was immune to punitive legal punishment.
One of the earliest records we have of a woman being brought to trial for a crime so terrible the authorities had no name for it was Katherina Hetzeldorfer, who was drowned in the river Seine in 1477. Katherina stood accused of seducing several women by pretending to be a man. The records give us a lot of detail about the kind of sex that was going on.
“And she also says thereafter that she made an instrument with a red piece of leather, at the front filled with cotton, and a wooden stick stuck into it, and made a hole through the wooden stick, put a string through, and tied it round; and therewith she had her roguery with the two women and her who is supposed to be her sister.”
Poor Katherina was found guilty and executed, but her story tells us a great deal about lesbian history, and the fact that they were using homemade strap-ons. I told you they were kinky.
And speaking of kinky, was anyone practising BDSM back in the day? Well, given that the oldest depiction of spanking is on a fresco on the wall of an Italian tomb, dating to around 490 BCE, I would have to say yes. The fresco on the so-called “Tomb of the Whipping” shows a woman being spit roasted by two men and spanked/flogged at the same time.
And what of cunnilingus? Given the fact that this particular sex act is all about female pleasure, it seems almost incompatible with our ideas of the past as a misogynistic hellscape (which, to be fair, it often was.) But, again, you would be very wrong to assume we’ve only been dining at the Y since the sexual revolution of the 60s.
There are images of cunnilingus on the frescoes at the Roman city of Pompeii, for goodness’ sake. The Old Irish Penitential is a medieval index of various sin and dates to the late eighth and early ninth century. Among the various penances is this offence: “Anyone who performs the fornication of the lips penance for four years if it is their first time but if it is usually their custom seven.” The lips in question are not those on the face.
We shouldn’t really be surprised that our ancestors were every bit as saucy as we are today. Of course they were. What is truly remarkable is that anyone wanted to get anywhere near anybody else during the Black Death. I doubt very much if it was the sick who were getting their rocks off, they were far too busy dying horribly. But for the survivors, it seems this cataclysmic event did put them in the mood. After all, nothing will change your mind about sexual morality like the threat of impending death.
‘The Decameron’ is on Netflix now