Sex And Alcohol In The Middle Ages
read summary →TITLE: Sex and Alcohol in the Middle Ages | Full Series with Eleanor Janega CHANNEL: History Hit DATE: 2026-03-19
You might think of the medieval period as reserved and puritanical, but actually medieval people had very different and more relaxed attitudes towards obscenity and sex than we do. As a result, in this episode, be prepared to hear a few harsh words and shocking truths.
When you think about the Tower of London and the medieval period more generally, pleasure probably isn’t the first thing you think about. There’s a couple reasons for this. First, we’re taught that the Middle Ages is an unrelentingly grim time. Nothing but plagues, wars, and the church hiding under your bed to make sure that you don’t have too much fun. And secondly, it’s true that the church didn’t want you to have a lot of fun. And a lot of the sources that survive to us from the medieval period specifically come from the Catholic Church. If you as a clergy member have to devote your life to piety and aestheticism, you’re probably not going to be encouraging your flock to have a lot of fun.
In this series, we’ll be uncovering the sumptuous world of medieval pleasure. From sex to booze to sport, we’ll look at how people in the Middle Ages enjoyed themselves and sometimes each other. Starting with everyone’s favorite subject, sex.
To start our exploration of medieval sex, I’ve headed to York because it was one of the most important cities in medieval England, rivaled only in size by London. York is a great place to understand what people were getting up to because well with this many people around someone was having sex. Because the Middle Ages is so long ago — I mean the latest part is about 700 years in the past — it’s really easy for us to forget that they were normal people too.
We’re here in the shambles in York which is a great way to get a physical idea about the world of medieval pleasure. This would have been a thriving area of commerce, fun, booze, all kinds of options about how to have a fun time. I met up with Dr. Kate Lister, an expert in the history of sex, to talk to her about where we might find clues about sex in medieval streets. One street in particular stands out as a testament to what people would get up to when looking for some fun.
So Kate, you’ve taken me here to Grape Lane, and that is a kind of secret about what used to happen here, right? Grape Lane is a contraction of Gropecunt Lane, which this street was originally recorded as. So are there other kind of similar names? Yeah. There are grape lanes all over Britain. There was definitely one in Southwark, but there’s also a record of Cock Lane, Horsemount, Sitdown Hoe was one that’s recorded as well. Medieval people didn’t mess around when it came to naming your streets because you needed to know where to go. In the medieval period, you get all these literal names about what you can buy there, like Milk Street, Poultry Street, and Grape Street.
We tend to think about sex work as being this really modern invention, and not only is it quite a medieval institution, but it’s really out in the open. It was as much a part of York as the minster and the cobbled streets, and that’s true throughout the medieval world. They regulated it and controlled it usually by zoning, which is what the names were about. So it was restricted to certain areas but it was certainly very prevalent, very visible. Whereas in our modern society it’s kind of like this sort of open secret that’s kind of hidden away. We certainly don’t have streets named after it.
How are attitudes towards sex different in the medieval period? Just like our own time, there’s not one distinct attitude. There’s many, but you would probably be surprised if you were to go back in time to just how open and everyday this was. And I think the answer for that is because how are you going to make your money? It’s a deeply patriarchal world. What job are you going to go into where you can make some serious money? It’s really, really limited. And that doesn’t mean that everybody turned to being on the game, but it was an option that you can make a lot of money in a short amount of time and everybody knew about it.
The authorities are going to tolerate it, but they need to be able to identify the people selling sex to differentiate them from “good people.” So you get all kinds of sumptuary laws and rulings — normally things like they have to wear red or striped hoods. Different things in different cities. Some were white and yellow, some were black, some were purple. In Vienna they had to wear bells. They would literally be jangling as they approached. But even that — as horrendous as it was that they were kind of marked out this way — that often sort of became like a symbol of who they were. The Viennese sex workers were required to wear all this stuff and then they kind of made it kitsch and sexy, had these sort of great big platform stiletto shoe things, and then it became something that the highborn ladies started to imitate them.
So as ever they are trendsetters. This is a great way to look at what ordinary women can do in cities because you can’t just go into a trade and if you’re a poor girl from off of the farm and you want to come to the big city, this is one of the ways into a really lucrative career. There aren’t a lot of options. You could become a nun. You could marry. That was really your goal as a woman — when you wanted money you’d have to marry it, which is sex work one man at a time really.
It’s so frustrating because we don’t have the financial records of these women left to us. It’s always like whispers and hints and stories. But there was a lot of money to be made. The redemption arc that you see in a lot of medieval saints is testament to that. They generally don’t start by going “she was on the game and absolutely hated it.” It’s generally like “she had a really great shoe collection and then she found Christ.”
That kind of busts one of the big myths about the medieval period which is that people don’t bathe. They did bathe. Let’s just put that one to bed. They were as conscious of smelling bad as you or I. They just didn’t have the means to be having showers, hot showers every single day. But they worked around that by having public bathing and mixed communal bathing as well. That should also help to dispel the idea that they’re quite prudish because you just go into town and have a bath with your mates.
At the heart of that is the sex workers because that’s a really great place to find clients. You can actually see that embedded in the language. A slang term for sex workers in the 14th century was “lavender” — that comes from the lavender that was used to fragrance the laundry houses and also the bath houses. And “the stews” which was another name for the brothel — that’s linked directly to the bathhouse as well. You’d go and stew in the water and it became known as a brothel.
Armed with the most refined chat-up lines that Courtly Love has to offer, Kate tried out medieval pickup lines on York’s unsuspecting suitors. “When the divine being made you, he left nothing undone.” “You must know that many days ago I was smitten with the arrow of your love and that I tried with all my might to conceal the wound.” “To tell you the truth, I am an ambassador sent to you from the court of love.”
The Catholic Church quite literally towered over medieval cities like York. And it served as a constant physical reminder to everyone about how they should live their life in public and in private. For medieval Christians, sex was a moral tightrope. Of course, everybody had to have sex — that’s how you get children. But the church had long been of the opinion that any sex for anything other than procreation was a no.
The church’s position is that the only time sex is acceptable is between two married people for procreative purposes. And on top of that, there’s a lot of other rules. No sex on Saturdays and Sundays in case you’re too turned on during mass. Only have sex in the missionary position because anything else subverts the natural relationship between men and women. Don’t get fully naked during sex because it’s just too exciting. In short, during sex, you should be trying to have the least amount of fun possible. The thing about all these rules — nobody really listened to them.
Some of the oldest conceptions about this date to St. Augustine at the end of the antique period. He thinks very deeply about sex a lot of the time because he had a bunch of it before he joined the clergy himself. In the Garden of Eden, you would have simply decided now is the moment for conception and it would happen. You got a baby. And you wouldn’t feel anything about that at all. It wouldn’t feel sexy. You wouldn’t feel lustful. It wouldn’t be pleasurable. You would only be doing it in order to have a kid. Fast forward to post the fall of man and everyone is actually turned on when they want to have sex and that’s the thing that makes it sinful. It’s absolutely fine to have a baby. The problem is liking the actual act of sex too much.
In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas then ranks sex in terms of how sinful it is. Sex is more sinful if it is more illogical. The most logical sex is sex between two married people who specifically want a baby. Nothing sinful about that. But it can become sinful if you’re too turned on in the process. Thomas Aquinas warns you that you shouldn’t have too many lascivious kisses. You shouldn’t be groping your partner too much. Ideally, you don’t actually get naked and you wear some clothing during sex. Things like manual sex or oral sex are technically sodomy. Sodomy is defined as any type of sex that cannot result in procreation. And it doesn’t matter who is doing it. If it can’t lead to a baby, then it’s sinful. What is sinful about sex? Purely pleasure.
But not even the clergy always followed their own rules about sex. Some of my favorite references come from 14th century Prague. There’s a great document called the archdeaconate protocol where the church goes door-to-door to every church and asks parishioners, do you have any problems? And a lot of the parishioners say that they have problems specifically with sex and their priests. We’ve got priests who are living openly with concubines. There’s one priest who is operating a brothel out of his own house that includes about four different women. There’s a priest who sees a sex worker very regularly. And when he’s confronted about it by the church, he says, “Well, yes, I see a sex worker, but I always pay her right away and make her leave immediately after.”
But probably my very favorite priest from Prague is one who gets caught in a brothel and wants to run away before he gets arrested. So he lights out of the house completely naked and runs down the streets of Prague where all his parishioners see him. Imagine you’re getting a lecture from the pulpit on a Sunday about all the sex you shouldn’t be having and you’re getting it from the guy who you saw naked last night.
Privacy would be a really rare commodity. Sex was almost a public affair in the Middle Ages. One of my favorite documents from the medieval period that talks about sex comes from a penitential — a guidebook for priests to ask people in confession. It’s written by Burchard of Worms, a bishop from the 8th century. He says that you should ask women, “Have you ever made an object in the shape and size to match your carnal desire? And have you ever taken the object, fastened it about your waist, and used it on another woman?”
Actual sexual objects or apparatuses left over from the medieval period are extremely rare. But we do have medieval images of sex — in medieval manuscripts, especially in the marginalia. This is a really holy book. And here is a picture of women putting penises in a tree. We also have surviving pilgrim badges. One favorite is a vulva that is wearing a crown and she is being carried on a little litter by three phalluses who all have little legs and a tail.
You might be having a lot of sex when you’re on pilgrimage because you’re under plenary indulgence. So any sins that you’re doing, such as having sex, will be forgiven. Or it might mean that people are hoping to cure something like impotence or they’re really hoping for fertility.
In 1394, a woman named Eleanor Rykener, a sex worker, is caught on Cheapside with a client named John Bickley. The court record reveals something interesting about Eleanor. She had originally been called John Rykener at birth, but had been living as a woman for years. She knew about the ins and outs of commercial sex because that’s how she made her living. And it wasn’t really a problem that she was what we would call trans or that she was a sex worker. The only thing she was in trouble for was having sex in the wrong place.
Even now we associate four poster beds with romance and sex. In a king’s bed chamber, you wouldn’t just expect to find the king and queen. There would often be servants, courtiers going in and out. If you wanted to actually have sex and you wanted some privacy, you’d close the bed curtains.
Bedding ceremonies varied across Europe. In England, a priest would bless the bed. Then there would be a big party. The groomsmen and bridesmaids would put the couple into the bed and begin throwing stockings at each other — if you hit the king or queen with your stocking, that meant you would be the next person to marry. Then the king and queen would close the bed curtains and consummate the marriage, which was absolutely essential for a marriage to be considered legitimate.
Courtly love takes place almost exclusively between married women and the unmarried men in the court’s retinue. Part of that was finding ways to have sex that wouldn’t endanger their marriages. So the payoff of courtly love is usually non-procreative types of sex. In Arthurian legend, Guinevere and Lancelot accidentally bring down Camelot when they have procreative sex.
Medieval people loved smut. One of my favorite stories is The Miller’s Tale from Chaucer. It’s a really convoluted farce of a young woman trying to have sex with someone who isn’t her husband. And it ends with a fart joke. In a lot of ways we’ve come really far backward from being able to have those sorts of conversations openly. We don’t have public communal bathing. We don’t have sex in the same room as other people. We don’t go to a highbrow dinner party and tell pubic hair jokes.
PART 2: ALCOHOL
It’s no secret that medieval people drank a lot. We have made a lot of myths about why medieval people drink so much and all of them tend to conform to our own biases about the medieval period. But in actuality, the reason that people drank in the medieval period is they liked it.
What did medieval Europeans drink? Probably the most popular is ale. And I say ale specifically because beer doesn’t actually come in until the late medieval period. It’s not until hops are added to ale that something becomes beer. They also drink a lot of wine — your wine consumption varies with where you live in Europe. They also occasionally drink mead. In certain places like the West Country, you might also drink cider or perry. Conspicuously absent from this list are harder forms of alcohol — especially here in England, you won’t see that come in until about the 17th century with the introduction of gin.
Perhaps the most iconic drinking establishment is the Humble Pub. At the Old Mitre pub in London, pub expert Pete Brown explains: We didn’t start calling them pubs until about the 17th-18th century. Before then there were three entirely separate types of establishment. Taverns which mainly sell wine, going back to the Romans. Inns which originally grew out of monasteries, catering to travelers on pilgrimages. And the most important one — the ale house. People used to brew at home like they used to bake at home. Some people were just better at it. Those people would start selling it. When you had a fresh batch of ale ready, you would put an ale stake up outside your house. These started off as brooms and then became more elaborate. They started stretching into the street and falling off and killing people. So the authorities demanded painted signs instead. Because the population were illiterate, these signs would be highly recognizable things — the Pope’s Head, then after Henry’s split from Rome, the King’s Head, symbols of heraldry like the White Hart, the Red Rose. This is where all pub names come from.
Beer was such an important fact of life. In towns and cities where the water sources were polluted, beer was safer than water. Sometimes people think that the only reason anybody drinks beer in the Middle Ages is that the water is polluted, but that’s been disproved. There were nice lovely streams in the Middle Ages. But not in the middle of London. That was the toilet.
Women who brewed bad ale faced collective punishment — they’d have to go sit in a chair outside their house and everyone would go by mocking them. That was the literal punishment because it’s so embarrassing to have made a really bad batch of ale.
At Wildcard Brewery, expert brewer Jagger Weiss explains the differences between medieval and modern beer. The four main ingredients in modern beer are yeast, water, malted barley, and hops. Hops didn’t come into brewing until around the late 15th century. Previously you would use herbs found out and about. The color would be quite dark and murky brown — the technology to make light pale malt didn’t come until considerably later. Beer likely would have soured quite quickly without hops’ antibacterial properties. You would get variations in recipe from house to house depending on what herbs grew locally — nettle, mugwort, heather, rosemary, thyme. The ABV would typically be between 3-5%. The first running would produce the stronger, more expensive beer. The last running would produce a very low ABV “small beer” you could drink while working.
In the Chester miracle plays, Christ comes back down to earth and pardons all these criminals except the brewer who served short pints — they get sent to hell.
The pint goes all the way back to Magna Carta in 1215. Article 32 states there should be a single measure for ale throughout the kingdom. There’s a story that pint tankards had a system of pegs inside, so you were only meant to drink down to the next peg in one swig. If you wanted to teach someone a lesson, you’d take them down a peg or two.
At feasts, you’d have wine imported from overseas and casks of ale. You’re never going to have one or the other, especially at a party. People might drink to prove they can afford it. You might drink as part of religious sacraments. Monks and nuns would start in the morning with a small beer and work their way up through the day. Working in the brewery was seen as a form of prayer — all the work they do is for the glory of God.
Queen Elizabeth had a particular reputation for enjoying her beer. One quote says her beer was so strong that not any man could touch it.
In the wine cellars at Hampton Court Palace, food historian Richard Fitch explains royal wine culture. On an English king’s table — foreign wine. It’s all about the status of being able to import. The further something comes from, the more it costs. People were being supplied somewhere around 2 to 3 gallons a day as their allowance. Once the cask has been opened, it has to be drunk — they can’t be made airtight. When the monarch changes or Henry VIII’s various wives change, they convert the conduits for water supply to wine supply for the cities.
The 1521 Field of the Cloth of Gold meeting between Henry VIII and Francis I featured the great wine fountain. The painting captures the downside of drink too — puking and fighting aren’t far from the boozing.
PART 3: SPORT
Jousting is probably one of the first things that we think about when we think about the Middle Ages. Not everyone is allowed to participate in tournaments — you have to be from the knightly classes, meaning the nobility or higher. However, you might be in the stands enjoying a beer, having a flirt, and just enjoying a bit of a match.
At the Royal Armouries in Leeds, jouster Andy Dean explains medieval armor. Italian armor has more metal, smoother surfaces that deflect nicely. It’s not as heavy as people think, but it changes your center of balance. Everything you do out of armor, you should be able to do in armor. Battle armors differed from ceremonial ones. Tournament armor was reinforced on the left side where you’d take the hit of the lance, with space on the right for couching your lance. It became ridiculous how specialized — purely for jousting, with limited flexibility, designed purely to go sprinting down the tilt and get smacked by a lance at a combined speed of about 50 mph.
By the end of the medieval period, jousting became less about dehorsing and more about rules and complex point scoring. Points for shattering a lance, hitting the visor, or persevering longest. Tournaments were about making alliances — you wanted to look impressive to those who matter, the ones jingling their jewelry rather than clapping their hands.
Crossbow guilds offered an alternative martial sport for the relatively wealthy — merchants and the medieval middle class who couldn’t participate in tournaments. They estimate around seven years to get decent with a long bow, but the crossbow is a very easy weapon to master. Because it does all the hard work for you, you can take your time to find your target.
Real tennis originated as a street game played by townsfolk. It was actually banned because no one was doing any work anymore. The monks played it and were banned because they weren’t dedicated to their duties. The scoring system — 15, 30, 40 — is believed to be based on a currency denomination based around the number 60. At Hampton Court’s tennis court built by Charles I in 1629, there’s a picture of Henry VIII on the wall — if you hit him, you get a point. Anne Boleyn was watching a game of tennis when she was escorted off to the Tower.
Hawking and falconry were important aspects of hunting and fun. The gyrfalcon was the royal bird — the largest species of falcon in the world, requiring a 2-3 year expedition to the Arctic at immense cost. The peregrine was for general nobility. The lanner falcon was for lesser nobility — its name comes from an old French word meaning “coward” due to its ambush hunting style. The merlin was the classic medieval ladies’ hunting bird — a miniature version of a peregrine.
Hawks are woodland birds — you can’t see the hunt half the time, which makes for a rubbish spectator sport. Falcons are open country hunters, bird catchers — you get this high, thrilling, fast chase. That’s the sporting element. Falconry hunting parties were very common amongst nobility and royalty. To the medieval mind, the wild was a stage, a theater in which unexpected things could happen.
The medieval world was a place of pleasure and one where if we know where to look, we can see our own desires reflected back at us. Whether it’s sex, booze, or sports, medieval people held exactly the same interests that we do. The only reason we don’t think about the medieval world as a place where people were enjoying themselves is because of how we want to think about our own world. We like to think about the Middle Ages as a gray and dour place because it means that we are the only people who are really truly enjoying ourselves.