HIST 223 Medieval Europe: History Illuminated: Chastity Belts: Sic et Non?

Kidzworld.com tells us that medieval women were forced to wear chastity belts. Cracked.com reports it as an act of “medieval crotch warfare.” And don’t get me started on Mel Brooks (soon to be reviewed on this blog). But were chastity belts medieval devices used to control women and preserve virginity? Virginity was highly prized in the Middle Ages, but no female was walking around with a chain and lock on her privy parts! Consider how this popular notion of the Middle Ages shapes our ideas of the medieval past . . . yet this idea is wholly invented. Even though Pope Joan and chivalric King Arthur are also invented ideas, at least they had the decency to emerge pre-1400.

Actual devices apparently were worn in the nineteenth century, though I am no expert. Voltaire wrote The Padlock in 1724, and encyclopedias contained entries on the chastity belt, linking them to medieval barbarism, of course. French literature idealized stories about jealous husbands who had duplicate keys made as a baudy romp through the ridiculous. In a show of misogyny, Johann Zedler, writing in the 1700s tells us that even though husbands required chastity belts, their wives could escape them by “changing their posture” (not sure how that works!). Museums have taken some of those more modern devices and put them on display in Nuremberg, Cluny, and other locations, as if they were medieval devices. If you go to Venice, visit the chastity belt at the Doge's palace. But this is invented history, and more respectable museums have recently removed some of them, although “Torture Museums” hot on the tourist trail wave them as happy flags of enticement to pay an extortionist admission (as you can imagine, profits are much higher with so-called medieval chastity belts). The useful link below asks us to consider how museums not only record and preserve artifacts but also sometimes invent history.

But there is some truth too. The idea of a rope, or girdle of chastity did feature in medieval theological treatises. Alcuin of York (ie., Charlemagne’s best buddy) wrote: “Divest me of my past sins, protect me from presently imminent ones, fortify me against future ones. Provide me with due abstinence from food and drink, a chastity belt, purity of heart and lips, grant me patience, forbearance, good will, modesty, spiritual joy and total contempt of the world"; however, these are used as ideological symbolism, rather than actual artifacts. The earliest visual image of a chastity belt dates to 1405, and resides in Florence, Italy. Evidently Florentines were linked to the chastity belt in early modern references. Sketched into a book that Kondrad Keyser authored about medieval weapons, he includes the chastity belt as another weapon. Since it is roughly drawn and includes ironic comments, it has been viewed by historians as a kind of gag in the middle of a serious book. Other images include woodcuts from Germany during the Reformation era when commentary about women was often quite negative (this is the time of the witch-hunts, not the Middle Ages, Monty Pythons!). It's possible some were gag gifts as well; we simply don't have examples to date to the period we are studying. Definitely leave this class knowing that one’s virginity was important; that even men might ask to wear the rope of chastity in their fight against demons, desire, and women; and that the idea may have emerged in literature and art in a commentary on women’s sexuality, but there were not actual locks, keys, and iron that a medieval woman wore under her clothing. So don't spend too much time burdening yourself with medieval torture devices especially designed for women, but on the other hand why is it that only women wear engagement rings?