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Albrecht
Classen
.
The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making Process. (The New Middle Ages.)
New York
:
Palgrave Macmillan
.
2009
. Pp. x, 222. $69.95.
Ruth Mazo Karras University of Minnesota Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic
The American Historical Review, Volume 114, Issue 1, February 2009, Page 191, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.114.1.191
Published:
01 February 2009
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Ruth Mazo Karras, Albrecht Classen. The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making Process. (The New Middle Ages.) New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2007. Pp. x, 222. $69.95, The American Historical Review, Volume 114, Issue 1, February 2009, Page 191, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.114.1.191
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Another nail in the coffin of the chastity belt should not be necessary. However, like the droit de seigneur, this myth refuses to die. Albrecht Classen's book ought to kill it, but as he points out, people are quite willing to go on believing demonstrably untrue things about contemporary as well as medieval culture.
Classen is most successful at reviewing and rejecting the medieval evidence, especially from literature, that has been adduced for the use of chastity belts. He convincingly argues that literary references to the use of a belt as a marriage gift have nothing to do with a chastity belt (indeed, the common use of this gift in documents of practice supports his argument). References to a man wanting to put his key in a woman's lock are, he rightly claims, most convincing as coded references to sexual intercourse; and references to a man holding the key to a woman's heart need not be directly sexual at all. The belt in Marie de France's Guigemar protects the lady's fidelity by providing a means of identification for the lovers, and in this way functions like the girdle of chastity in ancient literature, which was a symbol of virginity only to be removed by the husband but which did not physically prevent intercourse. The phrase cingulum castitatis in religious texts refers to a symbol as well (and is connected with men rather than women). Texts that do refer to locked devices that prevent vagin*l and anal penetration—particularly Conrad Kyeser's Bellefortis (1405), Giovanni Sercambi's Novelle (ca. 1399–1400), and Hywel o Fuallt ( sixteenth century)—do not, in Classen's persuasive analysis, describe actual practice but are satirical and ironic. Classen successfully debunks the idea that Francesco II of Carrara, duke of Padua (1389-ca 1406), invented the chastity belt.
Issue Section:
REVIEWS OF BOOKS > Europe: Ancient and Medieval
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Albrecht Classen. The Medieval Chastity Belt: A Myth-Making Process. (The New Middle Ages.) New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2007. Pp. x, 222. $69.95 - 24 Hours access
EUR €38.00
GBP £33.00
USD $41.00
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