Love, Sex & Marriage in the Middle Ages

This updated edition collects an extensive range of evidence for how people in the European Middle Ages thought about the emotional state of love, the physical act of sex, and the social institution of marriage.
Included are extracts from literary and theological works, medical and legal writings, conduct books, chronicles, and letters. These texts discuss married couples who are not having sex, and unmarried ones who are. We encounter marriages for creating alliances, marriages for love, and promises of marriage made in the hope of obtaining sex. Learned texts discuss the etymology of sexual terms and the medical causes of difficulties in conceiving. There are accounts of clandestine marriages, sexual violence, the madness of love-melancholy, and much more. By drawing on diverse voices and presenting less accessible material, this sourcebook provides a nuanced view of how medieval people thought about these subjects and questions the similarities and differences between their perspectives and our own.
With an expanded range of texts, wider geographical scope, suggestions for further reading, and updated explanatory material to reflect changes in scholarship in over two decades, this edition is an invaluable resource for students interested in sexuality, gender, and relationships in the Middle Ages.

Conor McCarthy is Director of Philanthropy at the National Library of Australia. He holds a PhD from Trinity College, Dublin. His publications include Marriage in Medieval England: Law, Literature and Practice (2004), Seamus Heaney and Medieval Poetry (2008), and Outlaws and Spies: Legal Exclusion in Law and Literature (2020).