A JOURNAL OF ACADEMIC WRITING VOLUME 8

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The Curious Case
of Humour and
Whoredom:
The Concept of ‘Necessary’
Prostitution as it Pertains to the
Social, Religious, and Sexual
Lives of ‘Common Women’ in
Medieval England
La‘akea Yoshida
History 356
Chivalry, courtly love, and knights in shining armor are
products of the medieval imagination; Arthurian tales of love,
and quests to attain that love, are strange shifts in the social
norm compared to the true nature of medieval society. The
lives of medieval women were difficult and demanding. They
were servants, mothers, cooks, and responsible for the care
of the home, nothing like their courtly counterparts who
graced the pages of medieval scribes. Nonetheless, there was
a group of women who did live in a world apart, a world
separate from the social expectations of their society: the
prostitutes. While “common women” in medieval England
lived as outcasts of the Western Church and were viewed as
problems in their civic societies, remarkably, they were able to
move openly in traditional male spaces as essential members
of both communities. Their status as sinful, but essential
members of medieval English society was due largely in part to
acceptance of the humours, theories that stated that the body
was kept in balance by bodily substances and their release.
The Church acknowledged the need for sexual release even
though many people did not have any “moral” means of sexual
expression. Therefore, prostitution existed as a service to the
curious contradiction of the humours. Common women were
religiously condemned and socially shunned for sexual deviancy,
but public acceptance of the humours enabled prostitutes to
exist within male dominated spaces in medieval English towns
as an ironic necessity, as the challengers of virginity and the
unlikely protectors of female chastity.
In tales of courtly love, according to Dr. Derek Brewer,
women are “regarded as dominant, in contrast to women’s
normally inferior social position, the aspiring lover her
servant.” 1 Indeed, women were subservient members of
society and the most sexually oppressed, but not every woman
conformed to the model set by the Church and courtly
myth. The whore existed as a member of medieval English
society, yet, as a member slightly separated from it. Their
disconnection from the expectations of the western Church
challenged accepted ideas of morality in a Europe where the
Church served as the beacon of moral stability for most people.
Nevertheless, the Church could not control widespread beliefs
that sexuality was acceptable as part of the natural order.
Thanks to the acceptance of ancient medical theories, sexuality
was condemned but viewed as necessary. In turn, whores were
condemned and considered necessary as well.
Medieval sexuality was, by our modern world-view, unique
because ideas and opinions relating to sexuality were both
medically and religiously influenced. Practitioners of medieval
medicine reasoned that substances called humours governed the
body, and were responsible for maintaining balance. Because
the body could not be studied by autopsy (which was illegal,
except in very rare occasions), the Greek theory of humours
offered an explanation of how the body functioned. 2 Since
these substances were considered to be controlling forces behind
the human body, physicians believed sex was vitally important
to releasing a “dangerous buildup of the ‘seminal humour’
in men.” 3 Church authorities reluctantly agreed that sexual
desire was part of natural law and although these laws were
“universally shared,” Church officials condemned sexuality
because “sexual desire could lead to sin—and usually did.” 4
Although church officials differed in their acceptance of sex as
either good, or evil, there was a distinctly common opinion of
women’s sexuality: women were considered sexually ravenous
creatures and were held to higher standards of sexual morality
because they were “so susceptible to sexual temptations, great
care had to be taken to confine their sexual activities within
a properly structured marriage relationship.” 5 The humours
1 Derek Brewer, “Chivalry,” in A Companion to Chaucer, ed. Peter Brown
(Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 61.
2 The theory of the humours was developed because of stringent laws
pertaining working with the human body. “In predominantly Christian
Europe, the body was seen as sacred in many ways, and to mutilate a
human body through dissection was not only disrespectful, but also
sacrilegious. Therefore, dissections were only rarely performed—perhaps
once or twice a year at the larger medical academies—and physicians’
knowledge of the human body was limited to gross anatomy. This is where
natural philosophy came in; what physicians could not observe, they had
to infer.” N.M. Heckle, “Sex, Society, and Medieval Women.” http://
www.library.rochester.edu/camelot/medsex/text.htm.
3 Heckle, “Sex, Society, and Medieval Women.”
4 James A. Brundage. “Prostitution in the Medieval Canon Law.” Signs,
Vol. 1, no. 4 (Summer, 1976): 831.
5 Brundage, “Prostitution in the Medieval Canon Law,” 832.
HOHONU Volume 8 2010 - 43