SEXIS WRONG

love for you? If you have done this, you should do penance for
seven years on the legitimate holy days.
Live Fish and Childbirth
Have you done what certain women are accustomed to do?
They take a live fish and place it in their afterbirth and hold it
there until it dies, and then after boiling and roasting it, they
give it to their husbands to eat in the hope that they will burn
all the more with love for them. If you have done this, you
shall do penance for two years on the legitimate holy days.
Bread and Buttocks
Have you done what certain women are accustomed
to do? They prostrate themselves
face-down and uncover their buttocks, then
they order that bread be prepared on their naked
buttocks; when its baked, they give it to
their husbands to eat so they will burn more for love of them.
If you have done this, you shall do penance for two years on
legitimate holy days.
Menstrual Blood
Have you done what certain women are accustomed to do?
They take their menstrual blood and mix it into food or drink
and give it to their husbands to eat or drink so that they might
be more attentive to them. If you have done this, you shall do
penance for five years on legitimate holy days.
Selective Impotency Spell
Have you done what some adulterous women are accustomed
to do? When they first find out that their lovers want
to take legitimate wives, they then by some trick of magic
extinguish the man’s lust, so that they are impotent and cannot
consummate their marriage with their legitimate wives. If
you have done this or taught others to do this, you should do
penance for forty days on bread and water.
Aphrodisiac Loaf?
Have you done what certain women are accustomed to do?
They take off their clothes and smear honey all over their naked
body and then lay down their honey-drenched body onto
some wheat scattered upon a linen on the ground; they then
roll around a lot this way and that, and then carefully collect all
the grains of wheat which stick to their wet body, and place
them in a mill and make the mill go backwards against the sun
They prostrate themselves facedown
and uncover their buttocks,
then they order that bread be
prepared on their naked buttocks.
and grind it to flour; and they make bread from the flour and
then give it to their husbands to eat that they may become
feeble and waste away. If you have done this, you shall do
penance for forty days on bread and water.
—BURCHARD OF WORMS
Over the years, the nature of penance changed
away from being exclusively prayer and fasting.
Many of Europe’s glorious medieval cathedrals
were built by peasants sweating off their sins
through public works. And for the rich, gaining
absolution became easier. By the mid-1200s,
churchmen with the pope’s blessing were selling
“indulgences.” A sinner with a bankroll could
try out a smorgasbord of Burchard’s sins and, if
caught, simply buy forgiveness and another shot
at heaven.
BURCHARD’S MEDIEVAL SEXUAL MENU 329