Did people do blowjobs in the medieval times?

by BIGDICKRZ
BRIStoneman

Yes! Although the Church was not in favour of it, since it went against the 'natural purpose' of sex.

The Eleventh Century penitential known as the Scriftboc in Cotton Junius 121 contains the following penance:

X02.04.01 Whoever releases seed into the mouth is to fast 7 winters.

You might think that's a particularly harsh penalty, and it's significantly more than those for sleeping with your slave (although that also carried secular consequences), and it's on par with the penance suggested for bestiality, although far less than that for incest.

It's interesting to note that there's no spiritual opprobrium for the (implied) woman actually performing the act; ostensibly the Church doesn't care what you get up to on the road to sex, it just wants you to get there. The penance is specifically for the man careless enough to blow his load before the main performance, so to speak.

sunagainstgold

We have a great earlier thread on oral sex before the modern era, with multiple great answers, if you're interested!

Here's my contribution:

~~

As far as I know, in western/european society, its relatively new (as in, over the past 1000 years or so).

Classical Latin is an exquisitely particular language when it comes to sexual practices. It has these two great little verbs, irrumare and fellare. They mean, respectively, "to face-fuck" and "to be face-fucked."

The key thing to remember about sex in ancient Rome and its heir, medieval Europe, is how closely sexual and gender roles were intertwined. Sex, as Ruth Mazo Karras points out, was something that one person did to another. Normatively, it should be a man doing it to a woman. It would be deeply taboo for a man to be face-fucked, that is, to perform oral sex on another man because of the gender role inversion. (This is outside the eventual Christian prohibition on sex contra naturam, that is, that does not lead to the possibility of reproduction).

The most famous demonstration of this is the opening and closing lines of Catullus' Carmina 16, the favorite of Latin students everywhere:

Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo

[...] qui me ex versiculus meis putastis

quod sunt molliculi parum pudicum

[...] Vos, quod milia multa basiorum

legistis, male me marem putatis?

Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo

I will fuck you in the ass and face-fuck you,

[...] you who think, because of the fact that

my poems are sensitive, I have no virtue

[...] You, because you have read my many kisses (sweet poems),

You think me a poor excuse for a man?

I will fuck you in the ass and face-fuck you.