Numerous mentions can be found in medical journals of the time of the use of chastity belt-like devices to prevent masturbation in female children and adolescents, as well as women. įrom the 18th century until the 1930s, masturbation was widely regarded as harmful in Western medicine. Many contemporary historians accept that these alleged "artifacts" date from the 19th century, and are thus inauthentic. Most have been removed from public display to avoid any further embarrassment because the authenticity of these belts as medieval devices has since been called into question.
There are other such belts at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg and the British Museum in London. The other-said to have been worn by Anne of Austria-is a hinged pair of plates held about the waist by metal straps, featuring intricately etched figures of Adam and Eve. The first, a simple velvet-covered hoop and plate of iron, was supposedly worn by Catherine de' Medici. Two belts have been exhibited at the Musée de Cluny in Paris. The belt itself, along with most of the rest of Pachinger's collection, has been lost. Pachinger, however, could not find any record of the woman's burial in the town archives. The woman was reportedly buried in the 16th century. In 1889, a leather-and-iron belt was found by Anton Pachinger-a German collector of antiquities-in Linz, Austria, in a grave on a skeleton of a young woman. Polidoro argues that Kyeser's references are meant to be humorous or ironic, and that Dingwall's accounts of the use of chastity belts by a few rich men in the 16th and 17th centuries to ensure the faithfulness of their often much younger wives should be treated critically, because of the absence of actual artefacts of this nature from the historical period in question, and his lack of access to more detailed contemporary historical records. The Bellifortis account is not supported by any additional concrete evidence or corroborating documents. The book includes a drawing that is accompanied by the Latin text: "Est florentinarum hoc bracile dominarum ferreum et durum ab antea sic reseratum." ("These are hard iron breeches of Florentine women which are closed at the front.") The belt in this drawing is described by Dingwall as "both clumsy and heavy", having "little in common with the later models which served the same use". The first detailed actual mention of what could be interpreted as "chastity belts" in the West is in Konrad Kyeser von Eichstätt's Bellifortis (1405), which describes the military technology of the era. Gregory the Great, Alcuin of York, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Nicholas Gorranus all made passing references to "chastity belts" within their exhortatory and public discourses, but meant this in a figurative or metaphorical sense within their historical context. Uninterrupted long-term wear could have caused genitourinary infection, abrasive wounds, sepsis and eventual death. Renaissance chastity belts were said to have had padded linings (to prevent large areas of metal from coming into direct prolonged contact with the skin), and these had to be changed fairly frequently, so that such belts were not practical for uninterrupted long-term wear. Research into the history of the chastity belt suggests that they were not used until the 16th century, and then only rather rarely they first became widely available in the form of 19th-century anti-masturbation medical devices. However, there is no credible evidence that chastity belts existed before the 15th century (over a century after the last Middle Eastern Crusade), and their main period of apparent use falls within the Renaissance rather than the Middle Ages. When the knight left for the Holy Lands on the Crusades, his Lady would wear a chastity belt to preserve her faithfulness to him. (Claimed to be 16th–17th century.)Īccording to modern myths, the chastity belt was used as an anti-temptation device during the Crusades.
Venetian female chastity belt on display in the Doge's palace.
0 kommentar(er)
