CHAPTER IX

MIDDLE AGES AND LATER

In the earlier Christian centuries, misogynistic attitudes were markedly

prevalent, especially among the dogmatizing Church Fathers, and despite

the traditions of the _agape_. Clemens and Ambrose, Tertullian and

Athanasius were impassioned and vociferous, both in their oral

denunciations, and in their written invectives against the essentially

evil and malefic nature of woman.

Hence sexual love was anathema to them: and even marriage, grudgingly

conceded but rarely accepted, was an object of horrified scorn. In

consequence, it was not surprising that sexual interests and activities

should go underground, as it were, and that amatory aids and

encouragements likewise developed their secretive hiding places, their

esoteric emporia, their identifiable but undisclosed havens.

The result was that, as the Middle Ages advanced, two basic views

appeared to come into force. Laws that governed the marriage ceremonial

and its consequent domestic involvements and possessive obligations. And

laws that related to love as such, to the _amor naturalis_, as defined

by St. Thomas Aquinas, both in its romantic sense as a kind of amatory

but undefined ideal, and in its sexual implications that reached as far

as adultery, under certain subdued, well-controlled, and unpublicized

circumstances.

All these occasions created a hungry, frantic demand for philtres and

phials and nostrums of all varieties, of all degrees of efficacy. They

bloomed upon the markets, and gave employment and a vast impetus to

quacks and adventurers, to alchemists and beldams, in furnishing the

tantalizing apparatus of love.

* * * * *

One of the most dominant humanists during the Middle Ages was Albertus

Magnus (1193–1280). Of Germanic birth, he was educated in Padua and

Bologna. On account of his encyclopedic knowledge, he was generally

known as the Doctor Universalis.

Professor of theology, scientist, teacher, he achieved, both by his

voluminous writings and his lectures, an almost legendary reputation. In

one of his treatises, _De Secretis Mulierum_, he expounds on feminine

matters and then proceeds to discuss, in his _De Virtutibus Lapidum

Quorundam Libellus_, the virtues and properties of certain precious and

semi-precious stones. In an amatory direction, Albertus Magnus gives

suggestions, as if they were prescriptive and categorically assertive,

on how to win the favor and affection of a person:

Take the stone called Chalcedony. It may be black or red, and is

extracted from the stomach of swallows. Wrap the red stone in a

linen cloth or in calf skin and place it under the left armpit.

Although the philtre that is intended to inspire erotic excitations is

normally a drink, a fluid, Albertus Magnus’ recipe is virtually and in

its ultimate sense a potion. He adds, on a later occasion in the same

text:

If you want to promote love between two people, take the stone

called Echites, by some termed Aquileus—because eagles place it

in their nests. It is purple in color and is found on the sea

shore: sometimes, too, in Persia. And it always contains within

itself another stone that makes a sound when moved. The ancient

philosophers say that this stone, worn suspended on the left

arm, effects love between a man and a woman.

In the thirteenth century, a certain Arnold of Villanova, a physician

who traveled widely throughout Europe and in Africa, was reputed to be a

powerful karcist, believed to have occult contacts and interests. He

dabbled, also, in alchemy, and, as legend rumored, was proficient in

actual transmutations. In his medical practice he relied largely on

herbal concoctions, on magic formulas, on amatory potions prepared

according to traditional prescriptions.

Potions and love philtres pervaded all life, at all levels, throughout

the middle centuries. Peasant and pilgrim resorted to aged creatures who

were reputed to possess cryptic formulas, hidden resources transmitted

to them orally by their forbears. Even in the Eucharistic rite the

_poculum amatorium_ made its contorted intrusion. In the Eucharistic

rite, the wafer often became an ingredient in love potions and acquired

a particularly efficacious renown.

Most dealings in love devices, secret formulas, erotic phials, were

nameless, both the client and the practitioners remaining unknown by

name to each other. Until the practitioner became so assertive, so

prosperous and so much in demand that people flocked from remote

regions, from distant cities, from foreign countries, to acquire the

ultimate elixir. Count Alessandro Cagliostro was shrewd and unscrupulous

enough to profit by such conditions. He was an Italian alchemist,

magician, and hermetic, but basically his qualifications and capacities

were at least dubious. What was not at all dubious was his facility in

outwitting all Europe, in amassing great wealth from gullible clients,

in escaping, on all but the ultimate occasion, from merited penalties.

His original name was Giuseppe Balsamo, and his restless life extended

from 1745 to 1795.

In the heyday of his quackery he became both known and notorious

throughout Europe. He was _persona gratissima_ among the most

distinguished social circles and families. With the aid of his wife

Lorenza Feliccani he amassed enormous wealth by the sale of alchemical

compounds, magic elixirs, and love potions. Scandals followed his

movements and implicated him in fantastic incidents, salacious episodes.

Hence, for security or secrecy, he was constantly changing his abode. In

his last years, he suffered imprisonment, in the fortress of San Leo.

And with his death, the legends proliferated and multiplied. Strange

feats were recorded of him. Mystic phenomena appeared at his potent

will. According to such traditions, he was a necromancer, having

exorcised a dead woman. At a public banquet he invoked the dead spirits

of Diderot and Voltaire. And he was the founder of a secret organization

known as The Egyptian Lodge, where goetic practices and sorcery were

attempted and consummated.

Cagliostro had a kind of counterpart in the arcane arts. Catherine La

Voisin was a notorious French fortune-teller, as well as a reputed

witch. For the most part, she was a dispenser of love philtres, and

plied her sinister trade in low and high circles. In this capacity she

was intimately associated with the obscene and erotic operations of

Madame de Montespan. Madame de Montespan, mistress of King Louis XIV of

France, reached a point where her amatory offerings no longer aroused

the King. Steps had to be taken, urgently and effectively, to recover

that affection. With the aid of Catherine La Voisin, she concocted love

philtres. She participated in magical rites, in amatory Masses, and even

in child sacrifice, to gain her passionate purpose. In this sinister

machination she enlisted the support of a notorious Abbé Guibourg. His

scatological and lascivious activities in this respect brought about his

arrest, and his summary execution.

The love-potion, then, could be, potentially, a tremendously evil force,

a malefic and fatal weapon, an instrument of ruin and death. But usually

the potion was associated with soft and luxurious dalliance, with

amorous whisperings, with marital exchanges and sophisticated deceits.

So it was in Italy in particular. In the sixteenth century, many

Jewesses dabbled in love potions and amatory charms. They practiced

their skill in Rome itself, and acquired an established reputation as

purveyors of these physiological stimuli. Ferdinand Gregorovius, who

produced a monumental history of Rome, declares that Jewish women brewed

love philtres in the dark of the night, for their languishing customers,

the ladies of Rome.

Lippold, a Jewish financier of the Elector Joachim II of Brandenburg,

who also belongs in the sixteenth century, was accused, among other

charges based on magic practices, of dispensing recipes for the

concoction of love philtres. He was brutally tortured: then executed in

Berlin.

The medieval era was a period of absorption of the past, with occasional

tentative gropings and some experimentation in new directions. In the

erotic sphere, the Middle Ages adopted this antique heritage, at times

moulded and modified it, and sometimes made use of it in new contexts.

Thus there was in use an aromatic herb called popularly Sweet Flag. This

was the plant known anciently as acorus calamus, that the Romans

believed to be endowed with erotic stimulus. It was appropriately known

to them by the alternate name of the plant of Venus.

* * * * *

In their tenebrous laboratories, equipped with weird paraphernalia, lit

by the glow of furnace fire, the experimenting alchemists busied

themselves with their apparatus. On tables and benches stood, in

confused array, retorts of fantastic shape, flasks and tubes, alembics

and phials containing strange viscous multi-colored fluids, fungus

growths, particles of obscene matter, unnameable secretions. Some

liquids, under the influence of tiny flames, hissed and spluttered with

cunning animation. All these brews were undergoing action by fire and

intermingling of chemicals, were being forced into mutations and

directions for horrendous ends: and, dominantly among these objectives,

was the illusive mutation into gold, but also the discovery of the

source of being, the elixir of life, the rejuvenating creative essence

that would promote youthfulness and vigor, passion and potency.

* * * * *

The medieval occultist and the alchemist did not always remain, as

tradition believed, secluded in their own ivory tower, or rather in

their laboratories. In many senses, they were decided realists, and they

made profitable use of their knowledge and experimentations in the

direction of astrological horoscopes, fortune-telling, and the

preparation of philtres. There was, particularly, a potion in great

demand among amorous but disappointed swains of every degree and rank.

It was, according to general hearsay, a beverage whose basic ingredient

was gold. The preparation was consumed daily, over a space of time, as a

kind of amatory potable gold.

Many types of potions were resorted to in the Middle Ages. Some acted as

physiological excitants, but involved great circumspection in securing

the ingredients. These ingredients were often organic fragments: hair of

the beloved one obtained surreptitiously. Or nail parings. Or a shred

torn from an intimately worn garment. Such items were then burned, and,

when reduced to ashes, mixed with wine and used as a philtre.

In other cases, all sorts of putatively effective concoctions, never of

course analyzed as to the contents by the passionate pursuer, were

involved. They were freely sold in the market towns of medieval Europe,

in battlemented castles, in remote hamlets. They were brought as elixirs

by returning travelers from distant countries, and were eagerly

purchased in the ports and capitals of the continent. Especially when

these travelers reinforced their importations with tales and anecdotes

that testified to the amazing virtues of their brews.

* * * * *

The Elizabethan Age is noted for its tremendous intellectual

productivity, for its relish in living, its adventurous ways on the high

seas, in exploration, in colonization, in discovery. In the drama, in

the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, of Marlowe and Ford and Ben Jonson

and Thomas Dekker, the social and erotic phases of this tumultuous era

play no mean or insignificant role. In palace and hut, in court and

manor, the primary motif was love, in all its tantalizing

manifestations. Love pervaded all. And the instruments for promoting

love were all important, transcending domesticity and tranquillity,

honor and ethics. The secretive drug, the rare pill, the poculum

amatorium, the brew distilled by the wizened alchemist, the imported

philtre, the dramatic potion are all made contributory to the

furtherance of love and lust, to erotic subjugation, conquest, and

mastery.

The corpus of Shakespearean plays, as an instance, contains a number of

allusions to concoctions relating to amorous experiences. In _A

Midsummer Night’s Dream_, Act 3, Scene 2, Oberon, King of the Fairies,

addresses Puck:

This falls out better than I could devise.

But hast thou yet latched the Athenian’s eyes

With the love-juice, as I did bid thee do?

Puck: I took him sleeping—that is finished too— And the Athenian

woman by his side; That, when he waked, of force she must be

eyed.

Later, in the same play, another reference of the same kind appears:

Oberon: What hast thou done? thou hast mistaken quite,

and laid the love-juice on some true-love’s sight.

Of thy misprision must perforce ensue

Some true love turned, and not a false-turned true.

Further on, in the same act, Lysander, in love with Hermia, addresses

her thus:

Lysander: Thy love! out, tawny Tartar, out!

Out, loathed med’cine! O, hated potion, hence!

In _The Winters Tale_, Act 1, Scene 2, Camillo, Lord of Sicilia,

addresses Leontes, King of Sicilia:

Camillo: Say, my lord,

I could do this, and that with no rash potion,

But with a ling’ring dram, that should not work

Maliciously like poison: but I cannot

Believe this crack to be in my dread mistress

(So sovereignly being honorable!)

T’have loved the ...

In _The Merry Wives of Windsor_, Act 3, Scene 1, the Host says to Caius:

Shall I lose my doctor? no; he gives me the potions and the

motions.

In _Pericles_, Act 1, Scene 2, Pericles addresses Helicanus:

Thou speak’st like a physician, Helicanus,

That ministers a potion unto me

That thou would’st tremble to receive thyself.

In Part 1, Henry IV, Act 5, Scene 3, the Prince of Wales speaks:

The insulting hand of Douglas over you,

Which would have been as speedy in your end

As all the poisonous potions in the world.

And again, in Part 2, Act 1, Scene 1, Morton declares:

And they did fight with queasiness, constrain’d,

As men drink potions.

In these previously cited instances, in the Shakespearean contexts, it

is evident that the term potion had often a malefic connotation,

implying venom and destruction in its use. But it was equally a term of

amatory and sensual significance, associated largely with physiological

refreshment.

In _Dr. Faustus_, Christopher Marlowe’s drama, the protagonist,

passionately eager to embrace all knowledge that offers power, that is,

the thaumaturgic and necromantic skills, exclaims:

’Tis magic, magic that hath ravished me.

He then proceeds, after his pact with Mephistopheles, to demand the

implementation of the conditions. He is aroused erotically, and

commands:

let me have a wife,

The fairest maid in Germany;

For I am wanton and lascivious,

And cannot live without a wife

Mephistopheles, virtually a pander, suggesting provocative amatory

delights, promises:

Tut, Faustus,

Marriage is but a ceremonial toy;

And if thou lovest me, think no more of it.

I’ll cull thee out the fairest courtesans,

And bring them every morning to thy bed;

She whom thine eye shall like, thy heart shall have,

Be she as chaste as was Penelope,

And as wise as Saba, or as beautiful

As was bright Lucifer before his fall.

In a later scene, Robin the Ostler appears with one of Dr. Faustus’

grimoires:

Robin: Oh, this is admirable! here I ha’ stolen one of Doctor

Faustus’ conjuring books, and i’ faith I mean to search some

circles for my own use. Now will I make all the maidens in our

parish dance at my pleasure, stark-naked before me; and so by

that means I shall see more than e’er I felt or saw yet.

Enter Rafe calling Robin.

Rafe: Robin, prithee, come away; there’s a gentleman tarries to

have his horse, and he would have his things rubbed and made

clean: he keeps such a chafing with my mistress about it; and

she has sent me to look thee out. Prithee, come away.

Robin: Keep out, keep out, or else you are blown up; you are

dismembered, Rafe: keep out, for I am about a roaring piece of

work.

Rafe: Come, what dost thou with that same book? Thou cans’t not

read.

Robin: Yes, my master and mistress shall find that I can read,

he for his forehead, she for her private study; she’s born to

bear with me, or else my art fails.

Rafe: Why, Robin, what book is that?

Robin: What book! Why, the most intolerable book for conjuring

that e’er was invented by any brimstone devil.

Rafe: Can’st thou conjure with it?

Robin: I can do all these things easily with it; first, I can

make thee drunk with ippocras at any tavern in Europe for

nothing; that’s one of my conjuring works.

Rafe: Our Master Parson says that’s nothing.

Robin: True, Rafe; and more, Rafe, if thou hast any mind to Nan

Spit, our kitchenmaid, then turn her and wind her to thy own use

as often as thou wilt, and at midnight.

Rafe: O brave Robin, shall I have Nan Spit, and to mine own use?

* * * * *

Frequently consulted on erotic difficulties were the ubiquitous witches

who flourished in the Middle Ages throughout the European continent. In

the literature of these middle centuries their amatory brews are used in

a variety of passionate situations, to inspire love, to divert it into

strange channels, and, sometimes, to crush it. On occasion the repulsive

and abhorrent ingredients, both animal and human, are noted with a land

of macabre relish. But the urgent suppliant, bent on his lustful

self-appointed mission, rarely hesitated on that account. On the

contrary, the rare or obscene nature of the brew was like an added spurt

to his frantic libido: and the more distasteful the composition, the

more intense the lustfulness that was so inspired.

It was not unusual for the philtres and preparations to contain animal

testes, genitalia, human excremental matter, even fragments and shreds

of human corpses, torn from graveyards and charnel-houses.

An extreme type of potion, administered in febrile cases, was actual

blood, drunk by both man and woman.

* * * * *

The Middle Ages, particularly the eleventh century, was noted for its

loose morality, its amorous diversions, its disregard of the old rigid

domestic or social prohibitions and restraints. Achievement followed on

desire, and sensuous and sensual whims met with ready acquiescence.

Returning warriors, home from the Crusades in Palestine, or the

campaigns in Spain, had, during the course of their embattled

activities, come in contact with disturbing exotic women, so different,

in both physical appearance and temperament, from the wives and women

they had left in the châteaux and manors. These exotic women were

brought back by the returning victors as captives. Once returned, the

warriors looked back with something of nostalgia to their colorful days

in foreign regions and in novel circumstances. Hence the captive women

became a kind of live substitute for such meditations. The women

consoled the warriors with murmurous love songs of their own country,

sorrowful and prideful and exotic. And often the wives of these lords of

the manor were unpleasantly surprised when these strange women were

invited to domesticity as concubines. So that the medieval nobility

became, in the course of time, a complicated series of relationships,

tainted with harlotries and illegitimacies.

In these libidinous and licentious conditions, when exhaustion or age

began to make perceptible appearance, amatory aids were sought, and

philtres and brews were hopefully measured out by the furtive creatures,

male and female, peripatetic vendors, sorceresses, quacks and

occultists, who were always equipped, always prepared, to supply the

passionate clamor.

* * * * *

The medieval passion for love aroused complications. Particularly, it

aroused jealousy in the husband himself, however gallant or wayward he

might be. Lovers or husbands, discovering the indiscretions and

sportiveness of a mistress, a concubine, or a wife, exacted the utmost

and not rarely the most barbaric penalties. A wife was compelled to eat

her dead lover’s heart. Another wife was forced to congregate with

lepers because her conduct enraged her lawful spouse. One husband served

up the heart of the slain adulterer in the form of a stew for his wife.

Yet the husband appeared to be exempt from any penalties inflicted for

divergent amorous experiences in which he himself might be involved. For

the man was dominant. The husband was equated with the ineluctable law.

And the husband imposed that law upon his womankind. The male might

consequently indulge with more than a fair chance of impunity in

adultery, fornication, excessive lust.

And when these excitements seemed ultimately to approach physiological

impairment, there was always the nostrum, and the extended hand of the

aged crone, offering her mystic potion, her amatory panacea.

* * * * *

The permutations of amatory complications in the social frame of the

Middle Ages, involving peasant and noble, troubadour and harlot,

occasional damsels, poets, mistresses and concubines, resulted sometimes

in a frantic movement toward chastity. Renunciation of carnal delights,

of the amor naturalis that implied physical and sensual love only,

became a pose, then a principle, then a habit, however, at times, it

might be infringed or dishonored.

Chastity belts were devised by departing warriors to enforce continence

upon their wives. Chastity tests, ingeniously contrived, became popular

experiments in sexual restraints. It was the vogue, and the vogue became

mores. Just as Tristan and Yseult slept with a naked sword between them.

And in excessive cases there was the weird but apparently effective

device, for propagation purposes only, of the chemise cagoule.

And always, in the wake of these temporary waves of contrition or

repentance, there followed, as a consequence of plague, violence,

political unrest, banditry and war, a terrifying unleashing of all human

inhibitions, a bacchanalian orgy of prolonged lechery and debauchery,

reminiscent of Thucydides’ dramatic account of the Athenian plague

during the Peloponnesian War.

In the aftermath of these lecheries there arose perplexities,

complications in erotic directions, incapacity through perversions and

excesses: and a consequent hungry, voracious quest for remedial

measures: drugs and drinks devised by itinerant traders, nostrums

compounded by wily serfs and jongleurs, alchemical elixirs distilled in

secret dens by putative adepts.

* * * * *

Women, in an amatory sense, were far from neglected in the Middle Ages.

Many handbooks appeared that offered hints and guidance on dress,

deportment, osculation and its limitations, social behavior,

cleanliness, bathing and washing.

And if the object of the woman’s passion was preoccupied elsewhere, or

hesitant, or indifferent to her insistence or her personal charms, there

was always recourse to the potion, by means of which she could have her

way.

* * * * *

In France, in the Middle Ages, prostitution was so rampant and seeped

into the life of the people and the nobility to such an alarming extent

that the pious King Saint Louis, who flourished in the thirteenth

century, promulgated a series of stringent decrees against prostitutes.

Yet Paris was notoriously populated with prostitutes. They practiced

their occupation day and night, except on sacred days, in the most

obscure rendez-vous, in inns and bath houses and cellars. François

Villon, the poet of the brothel, and one of the chief sources for these

days, casts a lurid but realistic light on this phase of the medieval

scene.

Philtres were a common commodity in these circumstances, in spite of the

spread of disease. For le mal de Naples, as it was virtuously called in

France, but which the Italians as virtuously termed le mal français, was

ravaging Europe. The disease, to give it its modern name, was syphilis.

* * * * *

Although the Middle Ages were intimately familiar with love and lust in

all its lawful as well as its secretive phases, the amatory state itself

occasioned such temperamental and physiological and characterial changes

in the aspirant or the postulant that the question arose: Was love

itself worth while?

This question was specifically asked by Andreas Capellanus, who belongs

in the thirteenth century. He produced a handbook on the Art of Courtly

Love, in which he listed rules, and gave directions, in connection with

the conduct of the lover who is involved in a spiritual passion for the

knight’s wife, the queen, or a mistress of a manor.

Yet Andreas Capellanus also gives a sober, solemn warning against the

ill effects of love, for of all disastrous results, it makes men old

with untimely rapidity. Women, then, the source of this malefic

consequence, should be shunned. They are avaricious. They are ruthless.

They are faithless. They are dishonorable. This invective recalls a

remarkably similar assault on women and their ways, the thunderous,

condemnatory, bitter satire on women by the Roman satirist Juvenal.

* * * * *

In the Middle Ages amatory broths were in such demand that the most

obscure, the most nauseating, and sometimes actually venomous items were

indiscriminately compounded into philtres. Intimate human secretions,

blood, animal semen and other discharges, formed the fluid basis for the

incorporation of genitalia of animals, macerated sparrow brains, and

analogous animal matter.

Such concoctions were designed to correct physiological disorders and

natural weaknesses and defects in the person so affected.

* * * * *

One of the most significant treatises on love, applicable in its

essential features to every age, although produced in the Middle Ages,

is _Le Roman de la Rose_. It is an erotic allegory, begun in 1240 by

Guillaume de Lorris, and completed in 1280 by Jean de Meun: a remote

partnership that was nevertheless so effective as to make the book

continuously popular for several centuries.

There are numberless precepts and suggestions regarding the material

phases of love: personal appearance, social accomplishments, and in a

more general way the requisite mode of behavior for the amatory

suppliant. Above all, insistence is on giving free rein to passion and

on indulging in every conceivable variety of erotic voluptuousness and

sensual pleasure. And women, the treatise reminds one, are essentially

as free as men in this respect. So that, when the passions subside and

require increased fuel, the potion could be sought equally by men and

women.

* * * * *

The philtre appears in imaginative literature no less than in actuality.

The Wagnerian opera based on the Tristan and Yseult legend presents a

heroine who is far from the submissive and dutiful medieval female,

subservient to her amorous lord and master. She is highly selfish in her

ways, and her love for Tristan is conditioned by the administration of a

love-potion.

* * * * *

Medieval mortality distinguished between conjugal love and sexual love

that extended, on the part of both husband and wife, beyond the domestic

frontiers. Hence in many instances an insistent lover would resort to

some provocative potion in order to bring the amatory objective into

submission.

* * * * *

One of the most ravishing women in all history was Diane de Poitiers,

who for some three decades was the mistress of the French king Henri II.

Her beauty remained untarnished far beyond the usually allotted span.

She was imitated by every woman: in her manner of walking, her hair

styles, her general behavior. All society, all France was at her feet as

the unattainable ideal woman. And she remained so long after her death.

Those who were particularly inquisitive about Diane de Poitiers’ method

of prolonged beauty, whispered, and general gossip supported the belief,

that the continuance of her appealing and attractive charms was due to

certain potent love philtres that she had regularly used.

Before her death, Diane de Poitiers revealed what was evidently the

composition of the potion. Every morning, she declared, she had been in

the habit of drinking a liquid consisting of molten gold and certain

unrevealed drugs that had been recommended by alchemists.

* * * * *

It is curious to discover that sensual and sexual voluptuousness and

amorous contests, whether accepted according to traditional principles

or forbidden and experienced secretly, could find a vociferous,

articulate opponent. Yet in 1599 such an attack on loose morality and

licentious freedom was published under the title of _Antidote for Love,

with a lengthy Discourse on the Nature and Causes thereof, together with

the most singular Remedies for the Prevention and Cure of Amorous

Passions_. The author was a Frenchman, a certain Dr. Jean Aubery.

* * * * *

To stimulate genital vigor, the French in the Middle Ages advocated, as

a complement to physiological activity, verbal love making. Oral

caresses, endearing diminutives, the poetic battery of language that was

so familiar to the ancient poets, to Alciphron and Theocritus, to

Plautus, to Catullus, to Horace, came into popular use again. One

chronicler devotes himself to some extent to this phase of amorous

conquest. He recommends erotic murmurings, whisperings, coaxings,

endearments. And without question such recommendations were generally

reinforced with anatomical and sexual terms, obscene and scatological

references, that strengthened the lascivious gestures and contortions of

the participants. Similarly, in Spain and in Italy perfumes began to

acquire their amatory appeal and value, and added their subtle

allurements and insinuations to a potion, or to an erotic phial.

* * * * *

_Le Tableau de l’Amour Conjugal_ was a kind of amatory encyclopedia,

first published in 1696. The author was a Frenchman, a Dr. Nicolas

Venette. In addition to a great deal of matter on amatory subjects, the

effects of excesses, the causes of the validity of marriage, continence

and debauchery, there were also discussions on physiological conditions,

sexual relations, theories on the humors, on male and female

temperaments and peculiarities.

In respect of stimulants, Dr. Venette recommended, among other arousing

potions, crocodile kidneys. These were to be dried, then pounded into a

powder, to which was added sweet wine. The result, according to Dr.

Venette, was amazingly effective.

* * * * *

In eighteenth century France, _la vie galante_ had grown to such

proportions socially that many clubs were established, devoted

exclusively and fantastically to licentious erotic practices, to the

dissemination of amatory gossip and tales of well-known personalities,

prominent in contemporary life, who were addicted, orgiastically and

with abandonment, to amorous mores. There were even publications that

published spicy titbits about such characters, without disguise of name

or circumstance.

* * * * *

Among such clubs were La Société Joyeuse, Les Sunamites, La Paroisse,

and Les Aphrodites. One group, called Les Restauratrices, used the

methods and manipulations and stimulating potions and drugs that are so

vividly described in Petronius’ Roman novel of the _Satyricon_. It was

evident, then, that Les Restauratrices served men who had degenerated

physiologically through age or extreme excesses.

These clubs recognized no amatory restraints whatever. They indulged in

invented, ingenious permutations of amorous exercises, both privately

and publicly, and even held competitions to decide the superior potency

of members. The frequenters were ranked, in regard to prestige and

distinction, according to the numerical extent of their encounters.

* * * * *

Birds and game were commonly used in amatory tonics. The medieval

grimoires and manuals are packed with references to preparations that

involve all parts of the bird as ingredients for erotic compounds. The

philosopher and occultist Albertus Magnus, as an instance, who wrote on

a vast number of allied subjects, prescribes, in one of his treatises,

the brains of partridge, calcined into powder form, and steeped in red

wine, as a prospective aid to vigor.

* * * * *

The licentious courts of France often experimented and used whatever

lotion, concoction, or substance might prove effective in stimulating

waning or exhausted capacities in the members of the court, both male

and female. This quest grew to frantic and insidious proportions, for

the entire court was tainted with perversions, sexual excesses, and

exploratory monstrosities. For this purpose, then, ambergris, which is

an ash-colored substance secreted in the intestines of the sperm whale,

was used as a coating for chocolates, which were in the nature of

titbits designed to arouse the courtiers, lechers, and gallants. As a

perfume, ambergris was intended to provoke, through osphresiological

channels, sensual attraction. Madame du Barry notoriously used ambergris

as a means of ensuring Louis XV’s amatory interest.

* * * * *

Early chroniclers, herbalists, and compilers of miscellaneous knowledge

often refer to tonics, pastilles, and compounds as amatory specifics,

but provokingly do not name them. Thus in the Geneanthropoeia, virtually

a textbook on anatomy and sexology, produced in 1642 by an Italian

professor of medicine named Johannes Benedict Sinibaldus, there is

reference to a plant indigenous to the Atlas Mountains in North Africa.

This plant was reputedly of great erotic virtue. The difficulty lies in

its identification.

Allusion is similarly and frequently made to certain trees, shrubs, and

herbs of India that have analogous properties.

* * * * *

The eighteenth century in Europe became an age of debauchery and

gluttony. It was the age of licentious drama, of lewd poetry, of

unbridled lusts, of the overthrow of all moral and social restraints.

This was the situation notably in England, and in France.

It is known now, almost axiomatically, that foods, particularly meats

and game, stimulate sensual desires. Hence, when there was an excess of

sexual diversion, indiscriminate and pervasive through all classes of

society as a result of over indulgence in food and equally in drink,

there was correspondingly a resultant physiological reaction, a

weariness and incapacity and expenditure of energy that clamored for

renewal, for stimulants, brews and philtres to remedy this parlous

situation.

Similarly, in the Orient, from Arabia to Japan, in the South Seas no

less than in Africa, the basic sustenance is not animal flesh, but a

diet that is largely though not exclusively vegetarian.

Such a diet does not encourage erotic tendencies. In consequence, in the

East as well as in the West but for quite divergent reasons, there grew

up, through the centuries, corpora and manuals of prescriptions,

contrivances, suggestions, and a diversity of aids conducive to amatory

functions. In essence, the development was along the lines of an entire

aphrodisiac laboratory.

* * * * *

Every conceivable substance, every presumed juice or blossom or spice

was worthy of a trial, of being tested for its impact on procreative

activity. So with borax. Refined and compounded into a beverage, borax

was, in the seventeenth century, reputed to pervade the entire organic

frame, and to produce highly favorable physiological reactions in the

genital areas.

At the same time, borax was considered extremely dangerous in the view

of practicing physicians, and its use was urgently deprecated, on

account of its concomitant poisonous effects.

* * * * *

The seventeenth century was the century of the French King, Louis XIV,

Le Roi Soleil. And his reign and personal life, and the society that

encircled his court, were an incessant round of lavish gaiety, gross and

scatological obscenities, and the most flagrant immoralities. Among

other infamous episodes that marked this period were the machinations of

Louis’ mistress, Madame de Montespan. She was involved, according to

contemporary records, in poisoning one rival mistress and attempting the

elimination of another by the same means. But chiefly Madame de

Montespan is remembered for her febrile associations with sorceresses,

reputed witches, whom she consulted for help in retaining King Louis’

affection. The principal aide and accomplice in these furtive and

insidious operations was Catherine La Voison, a professed witch, a

poisoner, a dealer in love-potions. It was from La Voisin that Madame de

Montespan secured amatory charms and philtres.

In the issue, Madame de Montespan lost her intimate status with the

King, while La Voisin was burned alive in Paris.

* * * * *

In the seventeenth century there appears in France The Great Almanach of

Love. It contained directions for arousing sensual feelings. It

suggested music and songs, sonnets and madrigals. But it also

recommended, as more earthy enticements, meals that included a dish of

beans, turkey, and sweets. These items were virtually love philtres.

* * * * *

An old medieval custom, that lasted until well into this century in

Europe, was in the nature of a nuptial love-potion.

After a wedding feast, members of the village community set water to

boil in a pot. Into the pot were thrown, in addition to pepper, garlic,

and salt—which are essentially aphrodisiac in character—,less appetizing

contributions, such as spiders’ webs and soot. The entire compound was

stirred into an unsavory mixture, but both the bride and the groom were

required to take at least a mouthful.

In essence, this brew was designed to arouse excitations on the part of

the bridal pair, just as Plutarch refers to the bride nibbling fruit

before retiring to bed.

* * * * *

In place of actual potions, the Middle Ages at times used what were

essentially visual erotic stimulants. These were lewd pictures and

drawings that were in great vogue, extensively so in the reign of King

François I. Many among the French nobility made private collections of

such provocative and scatological sketches that produced, in some cases,

marked inflammatory erotic reactions. In certain country châteaux, also,

stained glass windows depicted salacious episodes, libidinous postures

and embraces, just as the caves of Ajanta in India portrayed amatory

contortions in which human and animal performers were involved.

* * * * *

The subject of erotic practices, including perversions, abnormalities,

flagellation, as well as philtres and amatory brews, was not limited to

professional physicians. Many demonographers, including Martin Delrio,

mentioned erotic techniques in their discussions and investigations of

witchcraft and the furtive operations of occultists. In 1520 there was

published a Latin text entitled _Fustigationes_, which involves

references to love philtres. The author was a certain Grillandus, a

Florentine and also a member of the Inquisition at Arezzo.

Through the centuries, there were sporadic appearances of pamphlets and

miscellaneous pieces that had reference to amatory aids. For instance,

_Le Jardin d’Amour_, published in 1798 by a certain Tansillo or

Tanzillo.

Every century, every country, every religious sect, had its own

monstrous obscenities, its peculiar orgiastic ceremonials, its gross and

bestial manifestations, and its most unhallowed erotic permutations.

Some of these phenomena were of a seclusive nature, confined to

initiates only. Others, more liberated or more daring, were associated

with royal courts, or temple worship, or even conventual life. Erotic

acts, bestial performances, tribadism and fellatio and every other

abnormality were all depicted in caves and church windows, woven in

tapestries, or represented in ornamental furniture, etched in books,

moulded in statuary.

The Middle Ages, in particular, were the milieu, but of course not

exclusively so, of political cataclysms and internecine wars, of plagues

and intrigues and famine, of splendor and tournaments, jousts and

crusades, and also of servitude and witchcraft, gluttony and debauchery,

monastic life and religious reforms, art and poetry and lewdness.

All through the ages, notably during these middle eras, this dichotomy

was prevalent and manifest. And pervading and transcending all civic

conditions, all national issues, was the erotic life of the teeming,

inarticulate populace and the highly literate and cultured minorities:

wanton prelates and easy princesses, libidinous serving maids and poetic

gallants, romantic crusaders, lechers, perverts.

The history of these times is packed with religious lusts, with worship

of the genitalia, with female devotees of Priapus, with amatory

flagellations and erotic feasts, with sexuality rampant in full public

view, with chastity belts and barbarous contraptions. The Latin

chronicles and the Latin satirical writings, the Wandering Scholars’

songs and the anecdotes and tales that amused these centuries are filled

with abhorrent nudist practices, with adultery and incest, with

prostitution and unholy commerce of holy devotees, with rape and sodomy.

We hear of the most unbridled, the most shameless doings from the

chronicles of Godefroy and of Froissart, of Benevente and Grecourt. We

read of obscene banquets under kingly sponsorship, of brothels under

royal patronage, of public gymnastic performances of harlots, of the

debaucheries of monks and canons and students, adventurers and

courtiers. We read of a monastery dedicated to prostitution, of parades

of harlots, of foul sexual privileges exercised by the lords of the

manor, of the ius primae noctis and the droit de cuisse, and, in short,

of an array, colossal in bulk and unspeakable in content, of every

conceivable erotic fact.

* * * * *

Through the ages, the knowledge of sexual and amatory artifices,

contraptions, inducements grew and multiplied in such variety, through

legend and experiment, through the accretions of poetic myths and

hearsay, that a voluminous corpus was achieved. It comprehended

incantations and fantasies, rare prescriptions, crude operative

techniques, formulas and incisions, superstitions and alchemical

products, astrological cryptograms and Satanic supplications that were

all assumed to be effective in guarding or in increasing amatory

potency.

* * * * *

Sexual procedures of all types and at varying levels were particularly

prevalent in the Middle Ages. In addition, the clergy, according to the

testimony of contemporary songs and monastic chronicles and incidental

references in drama and satire and history, were not altogether immune

to such diversions. To promote asceticism, therefore, to diminish carnal

lusts, various plants and drugs and other medicaments were employed in

monasteries to produce the desired anaphrodisiac condition. Agnus

castus, for example, which is now identified with the chaste-tree or

Abraham’s balm, was credited with having decided cooling effects and

eliminating physiological urgencies.

* * * * *

An ingenious device that resulted in stifling the amatory advances of a

king is related in Boccaccio’s _Decameron_: The Fifth Story of the First

Day. King Phillippe of France, learning of the beauty of the Marchioness

of Monferrato, journeys to her domain, in the absence of the Marquis. He

is invited to a banquet:

The ordinance of the repast and of the viands she reserved to

herself alone and having forthright caused collect as many hens

as were in the country, she bade her cooks dress various dishes

of these alone for the royal table.

The king came at the appointed time and was received by the lady

with great honor and rejoicing. When he beheld her, she seemed

to him fair and noble and well-bred beyond that which he had

conceived from the courtier’s words, whereat he marvelled

exceedingly and commended her amain, waxing so much the hotter

in his desire as he found the lady over-passing his foregone

conceit of her. After he had taken somewhat of rest in chambers

adorned to the utmost with all that pertaineth to the

entertainment of such a king, the dinner hour being come, the

king and the marchioness seated themselves at one table, whilst

the rest, according to their quality, were honorably entertained

at others. The king, being served with many dishes in

succession, as well as with wines of the best and costliest, and

to boot gazing with delight the while upon the lovely

marchioness, was mightily pleased with his entertainment; but,

after awhile, as the viands followed one upon another, he began

somewhat to marvel, perceiving that, for all the diversity of

the dishes, they were nevertheless of nought other than hens,

and this although he knew the part where he was to be such as

should abound in game of various kinds and although he had, by

advising the lady in advance of his coming, given her time to

send a-hunting. However, much as he might marvel at this, he

chose not to take occasion of engaging her in parley thereof,

otherwise than in the matter of her hens, and accordingly,

turning to her with a merry air, ‘Madam,’ quoth he, ‘are hens

only born in these parts, without ever a cock?’ The marchioness,

who understood the king’s question excellent well, herseeming

God had vouchsafed her, according to her wish, an oportune

occasion of discovering her mind, turned to him and answered

boldly, ‘Nay, my lord; but women, albeit in apparel and

dignities they may differ somewhat from others, are natheless

all of the same fashion here as elsewhere.’

The King, hearing this, right well apprehended the meaning of

the banquet of hens and the virtue hidden in her speech and

perceived that words would be wasted upon such a lady, and that

violence was out of the question; wherefore, even as he had

ill-advisedly taken fire for her, so now it behoved him sagely,

for his own honor’s sake, stifle his ill-conceived passion.

* * * * *

The medieval love poem, usually sung to an accompaniment on the lyre or

other musical instrument, was often, in spite of its superficially

innocuous tone, full of amatory innuendoes and erotic provocations. The

love song, in fact, was virtually an amatory philtre intended to set the

listener afire, or to inspire the object of the implicit passion with an

equal fervor, or to divert a passion in the direction of the songster.

The concluding story of the fifth day, in Boccaccio’s Decameron,

contains a song of this nature:

O Love, the amorous light

That beameth from yon fair one’s lovely eyes

Hath made me thine and hers in servant-guise.

The splendor of her lovely eyes, it wrought

That first thy flames were kindled in my breast,

Passing thereto through mine;

Yea, and thy virtue first unto my thought

Her visage fair it was made manifest,

Which picturing, I twine

And lay before her shrine

All virtues, that to her I sacrifice,

Become the new occasion of my sighs.

Thus, dear my lord, thy vassal am I grown

And of thy might obediently await

Grace for my lowliness;

Yet wot I not if wholly there be known

The high desire that in my breast thou’st set

And my sheer faith, no less,

Of her who doth possess

My heart so that from none beneath the skies,

Save her alone, peace would I take or prize.

Wherefore I pray thee, sweet my lord and sire,

Discover it to her and cause her taste

Some scantling of thy heat

To-me-ward,—for thou seest that in the fire,

Loving, I languish and for torment waste

By inches at her feet,—

And eke in season meet

Commend me to her favor on such wise

As I would plead for thee, should need arise.

A similar song, from the maiden’s viewpoint, appears at the close of the

last story on the sixth day:

Then Pamfilo having, at his commandment, set up a dance, the

king turned to Elisa and said courteously to her, “Fair damsel,

thou hast today done me the honor of the crown and I purpose

this evening to do thee that of the song; wherefore look thou

sing such an one as most liketh thee.” Elisa answered, smiling,

that she would well and with dulcet voice began on this wise:

Love, from thy clutches could I but win free,

Hardly, methinks, again

Shall any other hook take hold on me.

I entered in thy wars a youngling maid,

Thinking thy strife was utmost peace and sweet,

And all my weapons on the ground I laid,

As one secure, undoubting of defeat;

But thou, false tyrant, with rapacious heat,

Didst fall on me amain

With all the grapnels of thine armory.

Then, wound about and fettered with thy chains,

To him, who for my death in evil hour

Was born, thou gav’st me, bounden, full of pains

And bitter tears; and syne within his power

He hath me and his rule’s so harsh and dour

No sighs can move the swain

Nor all my wasting plaints to set me free.

My prayers, the wild winds bear them all away;

He hearkeneth unto none and none will hear;

Wherefore each hour my torment waxeth aye;

I cannot die, albeit life irks me drear.

Ah, Lord, have pity on my heavy cheer;

Do that I seek in vain

And give him bounden in thy chains to me.

An this thou wilt not, at the least undo

The bonds erewhen of hope that knitted were;

Alack, O Lord, thereof to thee I sue,

For, an thou do it, yet to waxen fair

Again I trust, as was my use whilere,

And being quit of pain

Myself with white flowers and with red besee.

Elisa ended her song with a very plaintive sigh, and albeit all

marvelled at the words thereof, yet was there none who might

conceive what it was that caused her sing thus. But the king,

who was in a merry mood, calling for Tindaro, bade him bring out

his bagpipes, to the sound whereof he let dance many dances.

Another song, sung by Pamfilo, who represents Boccaccio himself, refers

to the author’s amours with the Princess Maria of Naples—Fiammetta.

The song occurs at the end of the eighth day:

At last, the queen, to ensue the fashion of her predecessors,

commanded Pamfilo to sing a song, notwithstanding those which

sundry of the company had already sung of their free will; and

he readily began thus:

Such is thy pleasure, Love

And such the allegresse I feel thereby

That happy, burning in thy fire, am I.

The abounding gladness in my heart that glows,

For the high joy and dear

Whereto thou hast me led,

Unable to contain there, overflows

And in my face’s cheer

Displays my happihead: for being enamoured

In such a worship-worthy place and high

Makes eath to me the burning I aby.

I cannot with my finger what I feel

Limn, Love, nor do I know

By bliss in song to vent;

Nay, though I knew it, needs must I conceal,

For, once divulged, I trow

’Twould turn to dreariment.

Yet am I so content,

All speech were halt and feeble, did I try

The least thereof with words to signify.

Who might conceive it that these arms of mine

Should anywise attain

Whereas I’ve held them aye,

Or that my face should reach so fair a shrine

As that, of favor fain

And grace, I’ve won to? Nay,

Such fortune ne’er a day

Believed me were; whence all afire am I,

Hiding the source of my liesse thereby.

This was the end of Pamfilo’s song, whereto albeit it had been

completely responded of all, there was none but noted the words thereof

with more attent solicitude than pertained unto him, studying to divine

that which, as he sang, it behoved him to keep hidden from them; and

although sundry went imagining various things, nevertheless none

happened upon the truth of the case.

* * * * *

At the end of the ninth day, Neifile sings:

Supper at an end, they arose to the wonted dances, and after they had

sung a thousand canzonets, more diverting of words than masterly of

music, the king bade Neifile sing one in her own name; whereupon, with

clear and blithesome voice, she cheerfully and without delay began thus:

A youngling maid am I and full of glee,

Am fain to carol in the new-blown May,

Love and sweet thoughts-a-mercy, blithe and free.

I go about the meads, considering

The vermeil flowers and golden and the white,

Roses thorn-set and lilies snowy-bright,

And one and all I fare a-likening

Unto his face who hath with love-liking

Ta’en and will hold me ever, having aye

None other wish than as his pleasures be;

Whereof when one I find me that doth show,

Unto my seeming, likest him, full fain

I cull and kiss and talk with it amain

And all my heart to it, as best I know,

Discover, with its store of wish and woe;

Then it with others in a wreath I lay,

Bound with my hair so golden-bright of blee.

Ay, and that pleasure which the eye doth prove,

By nature, of the flower’s view, like delight

Doth give me as I saw the very wight

Who hath inflamed me of his dulcet love,

And what its scent thereover and above

Worketh in me, no words indeed can say;

But sighs thereof bear witness true for me,

The which from out my bosom day nor night

Ne’er, as with other ladies, fierce and wild,

Storm up; nay, thence they issue warm and mild

And straight betake them to my loved one’s sight,

Who, hearing, moveth of himself, delight

To give me; ay, and when I’m like to say

“Ah come, lest I despair,” still cometh he.

Again, on the tenth day, Fiammetta sings:

If love came but withouten jealousy,

I know no lady born

So blithe as I were, whosoe’er she be.

If gladsome youthfulness

In a fair lover might content a maid,

Virtue and worth discreet,

Valiance or gentilesse,

wit and sweet speech and fashions all arrayed

In pleasantness complete,

Certes. I’m she for whose behoof these meet

In one; for, love-o’erborne,

All these in him who is my hope I see.

But for that I perceive

That other women are as wise as I,

I tremble for affright

And tending to believe

The worst, in others the desire espy

Of him who steals my spright;

Thus this that is my good and chief delight

Enforceth me, forlorn,

Sigh sore and live in dole and misery.

If I knew fealty such

In him my lord as I know merit there,

I were not jealous, I;

But here is seen so much

Lovers to tempt, how true they be soe’er,

I hold all false; whereby

I’m all disconsolate and fain would die,

Of each with doubting torn

Who eyes him, lest she bear him off from me.

Be, then, each lady prayed

By God that she in this be not intent

’Gainst me to do amiss;

For sure, if any maid

Should or with words or becks or blandishment

My detriment in this

Seek or procure and if I know’t, ywis,

Be all my charms forsworn

But I will make her rue it bitterly.

Scattered throughout the Decameron, there are other erotic songs too. At

the end of the first day:

Emilia amorously warbled the following song:

I burn for mine own charms with such a fire,

Methinketh that I ne’er

Of other love shall reck or have desire

Whene’er I mirror me, I see therein

That good which still contenteth heart and spright;

Nor fortune new nor thought of old can win

To dispossess me of such dear delight.

What other object, then, could fill my sight,

Enough of pleasance e’er

To kindle in my breast a new desire?

This good flees not, what time soe’er I’m fain

Afresh to view it for my solacement;

Nay, at my pleasure, ever and again

With such a grace it doth itself present

Speech cannot tell it nor its full intent

Be known of mortal e’er,

Except indeed he burn with like desire.

And I, grown more enamoured every hour,

The straitlier fixed mine eyes upon it be,

Give all myself and yield me to its power,

E’en tasting now of that it promised me,

And greater joyance yet I hope to see,

Of such a strain as ne’er

Was proven here below of love-desire.

At the end of the second day, the ditty following was sung by Pampinea:

What lady aye should sing, and if not I,

Who’m blest with all for which a maid can sigh.

Come then, O love, thou source of all my weal,

All hope and every issue glad and bright

Sing ye awhile yfere

Of sighs nor bitter pains I erst did feel,

That now but sweeten to me thy delight,

Nay, but of that fire clear,

Wherein I, burning, live in joy and cheer,

And as my God, thy name do magnify.

Thou settest, Love, before these eyes of mine

Whenas thy fire I entered the first day,

A youngling so beseen

with valor, worth and loveliness divine,

That never might one find a goodlier, nay,

Nor yet his match, I ween.

So sore I burnt for him I still must e’en

Sing, blithe, of him with thee, my lord most high.

And that in him which crowneth my liesse

Is that I please him, as he pleaseth me,

Thanks to Love debonair;

Thus in this world my wish I do possess

And in the next I trust at peace to be,

Through that fast faith I bear

To him; sure God, who seeth this, will ne’er

The kingdom of His bliss to us deny.

At the end of the third day, Lauretta began thus:

No maid disconsolate hath cause as I, alack!

Who sigh for love in vain, to mourn her fate.

He who moves heaven and all the stars in air

made me for His delight

Lovesome and sprightly, kind and debonair,

E’en here below to give each lofty spright

Some inkling of that fair

That still in heaven abideth in His sight;

But erring men’s unright,

Ill knowing me, my worth

Accepted not, nay, with dispraise did bate.

Erst was there one who held me dear and fain

Took me, a youngling maid,

Into his arms and thought and heart and brain,

Caught fire at my sweet eyes; yea, time, unstayed

Of aught, that flits amain

And lightly, all to wooing me he laid.

I, courteous, nought gainsaid

And held him worthy me;

But now, woe’s me, of him

I’m desolate.

Then unto me there did himself present

A youngling proud and haught,

Renowning him for valorous and gent;

He took and holds me and with erring thought

To jealousy is bent;

Whence I, alack! nigh to despair am wrought,

As knowing myself,—brought

Into this world for good

Of many an one,—engrossed of one sole mate.

The luckless hour I curse, in very deed,

When I, alas! said yea,

Vesture to change,—so fair in that dusk wede

I was and glad, whereas in this more gay

A weary life I lead,

Far less than erst held honest, welaway!

Ah, dolorous bridal day,

Would God I had been dead

Or e’er I proved thee in such ill estate!

O lover dear, with whom well pleased was I

Whilere past all that be,—

Who now before Him sittest in the sky

Who fashioned us,—have pity upon me

Who cannot, though I die,

Forget thee for another; cause me see

The flame that kindled thee

For me lives yet unquenched

And my recall up thither impetrate.

At the end of the fourth day Filostrato sang:

Weeping, I demonstrate

How sore with reason doth my heart complain

Of love betrayed and plighted faith in vain.

Love, whenas first there was of thee imprest

Thereon her image for whose sake I sigh,

Sans hope of succour aye,

So full of virtue didst thou her pourtray,

That every torment light accounted I

That through thee to my breast,

Grown full of drear unrest

And dole, might come; but now, alack! I’m fain

To own my error, not withouten pain.

Yea, of the cheat first was I made aware,

Seeing myself of her forsaken sheer,

In whom I hoped alone;

For, when I deemed myself most fairly grown

Into her favor and her servant dear,

Without her thought or care

Of my to-come despair,

I found she had another’s merit ta’en

To heart and put me from her with disdain.

Whenas I knew me banished from my stead,

Straight in my heart a dolorous plaint there grew,

That yet therein hath power,

And oft I curse the day and eke the hour

When first her lovesome visage met my view,

Graced with high goodlihead;

And more enamoured

Than eye, my soul keeps up its dying strain,

Faith, ardor, hope, blaspheming still amain.

How void my misery is of all relief

Thou may’st e’en feel, so sore I call thee, sire,

With voice all full of woe;

Ay, and I tell thee that it irks me so

That death for lesser torment I desire.

Come, death, then; sheer the sheaf

Of this my life of grief

And with thy stroke my madness eke assain;

Go where I may, less dire will be my bane.

No other way than death is left my spright,

Ay, and none other solace for my dole;

Then give it me straightway,

Love; put an end withal to my dismay;

Ah, do it; since fate’s spite

Hath robbed me of delight;

Gladden thou her, lord, with my death, love-slain,

As thou hast cheered her with another swain.

My song, though none to learn thee lend an ear,

I reck the less thereof, indeed, that none

Could sing thee even as I;

One only charge I give thee, ere I die,

That thou find love and unto him alone

Show fully how undear

This bitter life and drear

Is to me, craving of his might he deign

Some better harborage I may attain.

Weeping I demonstrate

How sore with reason doth my heart complain

Of love betrayed and plighted faith in vain.

At the conclusion of the last story on the seventh day Filomena sings:

Alack, my life forlorn!

Will’t ever chance I may once more regain

Th’estate whence sorry fortune hath me torn?

Certes, I know not, such a wish of fire

I carry in my thought

To find me where, alas! I was whilere.

O dear my treasure, thou my sole desire,

That holdst my heart distraught,

Tell it me, thou; for whom I know nor dare

To ask it otherwhere.

Ah, dear my lord, oh, cause me hope again,

So I may comfort me my spright wayworn.

What was the charm I cannot rightly tell

That kindled in me such

A flame of love that rest nor day nor night

I find; for, by some strong unwonted spell,

Hearing and touch

And seeing each new fires in me did light,

Wherein I burn outright;

Nor other than thyself can soothe my pain

Nor call my senses back, by love o’erborne.

O tell me if and when, then, it shall be

That I shall find thee e’er

Whereas I kissed those eyes that did me slay.

O dear my good, my soul, ah, tell it me,

When thou wilt come back there,

And saying “Quickly,” comfort my dismay

Somedele. Short be the stay

until thou come, and long mayst thou remain!

I’m so love-struck, I reck not of men’s scorn.

If once again I chance to hold thee aye,

I will not be so fond

As erst I was to suffer thee to fly;

Nay, fast I’ll hold thee, hap of it what may,

And having thee in bond,

Of thy sweet mouth by lust I’ll satisfy.

Now of nought else will I

Discourse. Quick, to thy bosom come me strain;

The sheer thought bids me sing like lark at morn.

* * * * *

Rabelais (1490–1553), in his _Gargantua and Pantagruel_, incorporates

into his fantastic and satirical novel contemporary views and personal

attitudes on a large variety of subjects—religious and cosmological,

literary, metaphysical, and theological. Among the topics and

discussions propounded by some of his odd characters is the problem of

amatory stimuli:

When I say, quoth Rondibilis, that wine abateth lust, my meaning

is, wine immoderately taken; for by intemperance proceeding from

the excessive drinking of strong liquor, there is brought upon

the body of such a swill-down bouser, a chilliness in the blood,

a slackening in the sinews, a dissipation of the generative

seed, a numbness and hebetation of the senses, with a perversive

wryness and convulsion of the muscles; all of which are great

lets and impediments to the act of generation. Hence it is, that

Bacchus, the god of bibbers, tipplers, and drunkards, is most

commonly painted beardless, and clad in a woman’s habit, as a

person altogether effeminate, or like a libbed eunuch. Wine,

nevertheless, taken moderately, worketh quite contrary effects,

as is implied by the old proverb, which saith,—That Venus takes

cold, when not accompanied with Ceres and Bacchus.

On another point in erotic investigations, Rabelais continues:

The fervency of Lust is abated by certain drugs, plants, herbs,

and roots, which make the taker cold, maleficiated, unfit for,

and unable to perform the act of generation; as hath been often

experimented in the water-lily, Heraclea, Agnus Castus,

willow-twigs, hemp-stalks, wood-bine, honey-suckle, tamarisk,

chaste-tree, mandrake, bennet, keck-bugloss, the skin of a

hippopotamus, and many other such, which, by convenient doses

proportioned to the peccant humor and constitution of the

patient, being duly and seasonably received within the body,

what by their elementary virtues on the one side, and peculiar

properties on the other,—do either benumb, mortify, and

beclumpse with cold the prolific semence, or scatter and

disperse the spirits, which ought to have gone along with, and

conducted sperm to the places destinated and appointed for its

reception,—or lastly, shut up, stop, and obstruct the ways,

passages, and conduits through which the seed should have been

expelled, evacuated, and ejected. We have nevertheless of those

ingredients, which, being of a contrary operation, heat the

blood, bend the nerves, unite the spirits, quicken the senses,

strengthen the muscles, and thereby rouse up, provoke, excite,

and enable a man to the vigorous accomplishment of the feat of

amorous dalliance.

Obstructions to such dalliance are now discussed:

The ardor of lechery is very much subdued and check’d by

frequent labor and continual toiling. For by painful exercises

and laborious working, so great a dissolution is brought upon

the whole body, that the blood, which runneth alongst the

channels of the veins thereof, for the nourishment and

alimentation of each of its members, hath neither time, leisure,

nor power to afford the seminal resudation, or superfluity of

the third concoction, which nature most carefully reserves for

the conservation of the individual, whose preservation she more

heedfully regardeth than the propagation of the species, and the

multiplication of human land.

[Illustration:

Metropolitan Museum of Art

EVE

_by Rodin_

]

[Illustration:

Metropolitan Museum of Art

ETERNAL SPRINGTIME

_by Rodin_

]

On the other part, in opposition and repugnancy hereto, the

philosophers say, That idleness is the mother of luxury. When it

was asked Ovid, why Aegisthus became an adulterer? he made no

other answer but this, Because he was idle. Who were able to rid

the world of loitering and laziness might easily frustrate and

disappoint Cupid of all his designs, aims, engines, and devices,

and so disable and appal him that his bow, quiver, and darts

should from thenceforth be a mere needless load and burthen to

him, for that it could not lie in his power to strike, or wound

any of either sex, with all the arms he had.

Again:

The tickling pricks of incontinency are blunted by an eager

study; for from thence proceedeth an incredible resolution of

the spirits, that oftentimes there do not remain so many behind

as may suffice to push and thrust forwards the generative

resudation to the places thereto appropriated, and there withal

inflate the cavernous nerve, whose office is to ejaculate the

moisture for the propagation of human progeny.

* * * * *

The English herbalist John Gerarde, who wrote a Herbal that was

published in 1633, suggests a stimulating drink composed of juniper

berries steeped in water. The juniper shrub itself was used medicinally,

in cordials, and as an element in philtres.

* * * * *

The medieval writer Andreas Cisalpinus states that the tree called

gossypion produced a juice that aided amatory efforts.

* * * * *

Emblica honey was, in the opinion of the thirteenth century Arab

philosopher Avicenna, endowed with venereal virtues.

* * * * *

A plant that is native to both North and South Africa produces as an

exudation a gum resin called euphorbium, which was considered in the

thirteenth century an invigorating agent.

* * * * *

The medieval philosopher Albertus Magnus mentions a stone called

aquileus or echites, that is found near the Mediterranean littoral and

in Persia, in eagles’ nests. This stone contains a smaller one that has

an amatory character.

* * * * *

_Babio_, a twelfth century Latin comedy, presents the priest Babio

himself apostrophizing women: Oh! What a guilty thing is a woman! The

worst thing on earth. A seducer. There is no guile in the world that is

missing in her. There is no evil so wicked as a long sequence of evils.

Nobody considers the perils of a snake that has long been kept crushed.

My wife is a thief. My slave is my guard. It’s a case of trouble and

trickery. She is a she-wolf. He’s a lion. She holds me, while he fetters

me. She casts me to the ground, he crushes me. She presses on me, he

strikes me. She kills me, he crunches me.

* * * * *

In the medieval centuries the gum resin known as scammony, native to the

Middle East, was suggested as a stimulus when mixed with honey.

* * * * *

A medieval potion that had Oriental ingredients was the following

compound: Amber, aloes, musk, powdered together and soaked in spirits of

wine. Heated in sand, then filtered, distilled, and hermetically sealed.

The prescription required from three to five drops, taken in a broth.

* * * * *

In a number of twelfth century Latin comedies, particularly _De Nuntio

Sagaci_, The Wily Messenger, nubile age is presented as in itself a

strong amatory provocation. The messenger says.

Nubere tempus erat: iuveni tua forma placebat.

This was the theme of the medieval students, so vociferously and

consistently proclaimed in the Carmina Burana:

Iam aetas invaluit,

Iam umor incubuit,

Iam virgo maturuit,

Iam tumescunt ubera,

Iam frustra complacuit

Nisi fiant cetera.

Again, the same view is determinedly expressed:

Si puer cum puellula,

Moraretur in cellula,

Felix coniunctio.

Amore sucrescente,

Pariter et medio

Avulso procul taedio,

Fit ludus ineffabilis

Membris, lacertis, labiis.

* * * * *

_Baucis et Traso_, a Latin comedy belonging in the twelfth century,

presents the methods used in the Middle Ages for the amatory enticements

of the male. These methods, however, have never differed in essence:

whether in the fifth century in Athens, in the second B.C. in Rome, or

in contemporary days.

Baucis, who knows where her interests lie, urged by the hope of gain,

acts as a counsellor to the maiden Glycerium. She summons Glycerium,

adorns her, pays her little attentions. She shapes the girl’s lips,

draws her cheeks down, skilfully refreshes her beauty, gives her a wide

brow, spreads out her hair in flowing tresses, makes her neck glow,

makes shoulders narrow, lengthens her nails, makes her hands look

shorter. With a needle, she shapes her arms, puts a girdle on her to

produce an effect of slenderness. Baucis teaches her what she must do,

how, and with whom.

And so Glycerium strolls up and down the streets, glances around, looks

for lovers. In some cases, she encourages hope by her words, just as she

herself has confidence in her guile. She gives warnings, invitations,

asks them to observe her beautiful eyes. She promises them affection,

delights, wine, food. They will have with this maiden conversation and

intimacies, kisses and the final consummation itself.

Baucis gives the girl imaginary names. Sometimes she is called

Glycerium, and again Philomena, as the whim takes her. By means of such

changes of name she multiplies her gains.

Lovers come flocking in rivalry, some searching for Glycerium, others

for Philomena.

While she regales the young men with her words, while she gives them a

vain hope and meanwhile acquires monies, Thraso comes upon her.

Thraso’s glory is drink. His stomach is his god. Venus is his ever-ready

companion. Baucis catches sight of him and, overjoyed, she approaches:

Baucis: O soldier, nurseling of Cupid, love’s honor, what is it

you desire? Where are you off to? What fires inflame you? If you

need a maiden, I have one at home. A flower, the true fruit of

love. She has a maidenly glow, she shines with every adornment

of beauty.

Thraso: Baucis, let me see her.

Baucis: She is asleep and I can’t waken her. She is delicate and

a delicate girl needs much sleep. If she stays awake too long,

she is sick. If she sleeps badly, she suffers.

Thraso burns up with restrained passion. He groans and pleads. He gives

his gold ring to Baucis. Baucis relents. He buys provisions at the

market and follows her home.

Suddenly, Baucis vanishes. All her talk, all her manoeuvers have been

designed merely to tantalize his libidinous urgencies, to bring him

suppliantly into her clutches. Thraso is left lamenting:

Thraso: O woman, noxious flame, gnawing wound, enemy to

friendship. Woman, the sum of evil. Woman, deserving of death.

Woman, who produces the seeds of putrefaction, who produces

death. Foul procuress, monstrous in appearance, the image of the

Chimera.

Later on, Thraso approaches Glycerium herself, but she refuses his

advances. She is too young and inexperienced, she pleads:

Sum rudis in Venerem nec adhuc mea nubilis aetas:

Intemerata manet dos mea virginea.

Non novi quid amor, quid amoris sentiat ictus.

Officium Veneris horreo, siste preces.

* * * * *

In Jay Fletchers play _The Wild-Goose Chase_, there is mention of amber,

a reputed amatory provocative. Mirabel, one of the leading characters,

is offering a portrait of women:

Mirabel: Only the wenches are not for my diet;

They are too lean and thin, their embraces brawn-fallen.

Give me the plump Venetian, fat and lusty,

That meets me soft and supple; smiles upon me,

As if a cup of full wine leap’d to kiss me,

These slight things I affect not.

Pinac: They are ill-built;

Pin-buttocked, like your dainty Barbaries,

And weak i’ the pasterns; they’ll endure no hardness.

Mirabel: There’s nothing good or handsome bred amongst us;

Till we are travell’d, and live abroad, we are coxcombs.

Ye talk of France—a slight unseason’d country,

Abundance of gross food, which makes us blockheads.

We are fair set out indeed, and so are fore-horses:—

Men say, we are great courtiers,—men abuse us;

We are wise, and valiant too,—non credo, signor;

Our women the best linguists,—they are parrots;

O’ this side the Alps they are nothing but mere drolleries.

Ha! Roma la Santa, Italy for my money!

Their policies, their customs, their frugalities,

Their courtesies so open, yet so reserv’d too,

As, when you think y’are known best, ye are a stranger.

Their very pick-teeth speak more than we do.

And season of more salt.

Pinac: ’Tis a brave country;

Not pester’d with your stubborn precise puppies,

That turn all useful and allow’d contentments

To scabs and scruples—hang ’em, capon-worshippers.

Belleur: I like that freedom well, and like their women too,

And would fain do as others do; but I am so bashful,

So naturally an ass! Look ye, I can look upon ’em,

And very willingly I go to see ’em,

(There’s no man willinger), and I can kiss ’em,

And make a shift—

Mirabel: But, if they chance to flout ye,

Or say, “Ye are too bold! Fie, sir, remember!

I pray, sit farther off—”

Belleur:’Tis true—I am humbled,

I am gone; I confess ingenuously, I am silenced;

The spirit of amber cannot force me answer.

* * * * *

In Ben Jonson’s _The Alchemist_, there is reference to a means of

securing amatory and rejuvenating capacity. Sir Epicure Mammon tries to

impose his alchemical beliefs on Surly:

Mammon: I assure you,

He that has once the flower of the sun,

The perfect ruby, which we call elixir,

Not only can do that, but by its virtue,

Can confer honor, love, respect, long life;

Give safety, valor, yea, and victory,

To whom he will. In eight and twenty days,

I’ll make an old man of fourscore, a child.

Surly: No doubt; he’s that already.

Mammon: Nay, I mean,

Restore his years, renew him, like an eagle,

To the fifth age; make him get sons and daughters,

Young giants; as our philosophers have done,

The ancient patriarchs, afore the flood,

But taking, once a week, on a knife’s point,

The quantity of a grain of mustard of it;

Become stout Marses, and beget young Cupids.

Surly: The decay’d vestals of Pickt-hatch would thank you,

That keep the fire alive there.

Mammon: ’Tis the secret

Of nature naturiz’d ’gainst all infections,

Cures all diseases coming of all causes;

A month’s grief in a day, a year’s in twelve;

And, of what age soever, in a month.

Past all the doses of your drugging doctors.

I’ll undertake, withal, to fright the plague

Out o’ the kingdom in three months.

Surly: And I’ll

Be bound, the players shall sing your praises then,

Without their poets.

Mammon: Sir, I’ll do it. Meantime,

I’ll give away so much unto my man,

Shall serve th’ whole city with preservative

weekly; each house his dose, and at the rate—

Surly: As he that built the Water-work does with water?

Mammon: You are incredulous.

Surly: Faith, I have a humor,

I would not willingly be gull’d. Your stone

Cannot transmute me.

Mammon: Pertinax Surly,

Will you believe antiquity? Records?

I’ll show you a book where Moses, and his sister,

And Solomon have written of the art;

Ay, and a treatise penn’d by Adam—

Surly: How!

Mammon: Of the philosopher’s stone, and in High Dutch.

Surly: Did Adam write, sir, in High Dutch?

Mammon: He did;

Which proves it was the primitive tongue.

Surly: What paper?

Mammon: On cedar board.

Surly: O that, indeed, they say,

Will last ’gainst worms.

Mammon: ’Tis like your English wood

’Gainst cobwebs. I have a piece of Jason’s fleece too,

which was no other than a book of alchemy,

Writ in large sheepskin, a good fat ram-vellum.

Such was Pythagoras’ thigh, Pandora’s tub,

And all that fable of Medea’s charms,

The manner of our work; the bulls, our furnace,

Still breathing fire; our argent-vive, the dragon:

The dragon’s teeth, mercury sublimate,

That keeps the whiteness, hardness, and the biting;

And they are gather’d into Jason’s helm,

Th’alembic, and then sow’d in Mars his field.

And thence sublim’d so often, that they’re fix’d.

Both this, th’ Hesperian garden, Cadmus’ story,

Jove’s shower, the boom of Midas, Argus’ eyes,

Boccace his Demogorgon, thousands more,

All abstract riddles of our stone.—How now!

In another scene, amatory potency is expressed in lavish rhetorical

imagery:

Mammon: Do we succeed? Is our day come? And holds it?

Face: The evening will set red upon you, sir;

You have color for it, crimson: the red ferment

Has done his office; three hours hence prepare you

To see projection.

Mammon: Pertinax, my Surly,

Again I say to thee, aloud, BE RICH.

This day thou shalt have ingots; and tomorrow

Give lords th’affront.—Is it, my Zephyrus, right?

Blushes the bolt’s-head?

Face: Like a wench with child, sir,

That were but now discover’d to her master.

Mammon: Excellent witty Lungs!—My only care is

Where to get stuff enough now, to project on;

This town will not half serve me.

Face: No, sir? Buy the covering off o’ churches.

Mammon: That’s true.

Face: Yes.

Let ’em stand bare, as do their auditory;

Or cap ’em new with shingles.

Mammon: No, good thatch:

Thatch will lie upo’ the rafters, Lungs.

Lungs, I will manumit thee from the furnace;

I will restore thee thy complexion, Puff,

Lost in the embers; and repair this brain,

Hurt wi’ the fumes o’ the metals.

Face: I have blown, sir,

Hard, for your worship; thrown by many a coal,

When ’twas not beech; weigh’d those I put in, just

To keep your heat still even. These blear’d eyes

Have wak’d to read your several colors, sir,

Of the pale citron, the green lion, the crow,

The peacock’s tail, the plumed swan.

Mammon: And lastly,

Thou hast descried the flower, the sanguis agni?

Face: Yes, sir.

Mammon: Where’s master?

Face: At’s prayers, sir, he;

Good man, he’s doing his devotions

For the success.

Mammon: Lungs, I will set a period

To all thy labors; thou shalt be the master

Of my seraglio.

Face: Good, sir.

Mammon: But do you hear?

I’ll geld you, Lungs.

Face: Yes, sir.

Mammon: For I do mean

To have a list of wives and concubines

Equal with Solomon, who had the stone

Alike with me; and I will make me a back

with the elixir, that shall be as tough

As Hercules, to encounter fifty a night.—

Thou’rt sure thou saw’st it blood?

Face: Both blood and spirit, sir.

Mammon: I will have all my beds blown up, not stuft;

Down is too hard: and then, mine oval room

Fill’d with such pictures as Tiberius took

From Elephantis, and dull Aretine

But coldly imitated. Then, my glasses

Cut in more subtle angles, to disperse

And multiply the figures, as I walk

Named between my succubae. My mists

I’ll have of perfume, vapor’d ’bout the room,

To lose ourselves in; and my baths, like pits

To fall into; from whence we will come forth,

And roll us dry in gossamer and roses.—

Is it arrived at ruby?—Where I spy

A wealthy citizen, or a rich lawyer,

Have a sublim’d pure wife, unto that fellow

I’ll send a thousand pound to be my cuckold.

Face: And I shall carry it?