What if I told you that the friars, in the Middle Ages, had a very active sex life, if I told you that the vow of abstinence was respected less than the vow of poverty?
But above all, what would you answer me if I told you that Giovanni Boccaccio is also talking to us about it, with the Decameron?
Yes, you read that right, Boccaccio's Decameron, the “boring” one that you study at school ... the truth is that the Decameron is not boring at all, it is instead a work full of irony, in which satire is made, at times even insane, and which, in its short stories, presents numerous scenes of eroticism , scenes that would embarrass even the Marquis de Sade, Bukowsky, d'Annunzio and Pauline Réage… and I'm not exaggerating.
After all, the frame of the work speaks clearly, the protagonists are a group of ten young people, girls and boys, good-looking, in full hormonal explosion, who live isolated in the countryside, without adult supervision. These young people spent their time singing, dancing, playing ... and more.
Most of the hottest short stories have as setting and protagonists, friars, nuns and priests, figures widely present in Boccaccio's world and places that Boccaccio himself usually goes to. After all Boccaccio, for his short stories, draws heavily on the society in which he lives, tells about his world and his time, recounting the customs and giving voice to the "gossip" of the corridor ... and not only.
But I have written too much, and I refer you to the video in which we talk about the sexual life of the Friars in the Middle Ages.
For the record, it should be noted that there were numerous rules that limited and regulated sexual life in the Middle Ages, rules that, if applied, often included very harsh punishments for one or the other party involved.
Adultery was not allowed by law, just as there were numerous rules prohibiting sodomy, a term that included numerous erotic and auto-erotic practices.
However, it is unlikely that sexual scandals erupt before the 15th century and the events are brought to the attention of a judge who, once made aware of the facts, is called upon to execute the law. This is because at the time no one liked the scandals and, when possible, they ended up solving privately or covering up everything.
Boccaccio himself, in his short stories, more often than not, ensures that everything is resolved "without causing damage and without humiliation" with the Abbess who, with the priest's breeches on her head, tells the nuns that it is impossible to resist the pleasures of the flesh, or like the husband of the woman who, having returned home early from a business trip, finding her in bed with his lover, for whom the man had a weakness, decided to join the two and the next day, accompanying the young man, said he did not know if that night it had been of the two "wife or husband" .