• 8 Medieval Hypocrisies

    By Bizzy Coy

  • 1. Plague doctors wear beak-like masks stuffed with pleasant-smelling herbs to tend the sick, yet I place a beak-like mask atop my nethers ONE TIME, purely in jest, and my Beatrice refuses to bed me.

     

    2. Lord Exclarby uses leeches daily to regain a healthy constitution, yet when I place leeches across my member to increase its engorgement, the fishmonger chases me from the market.

     

    3. The townsfolk defecate in the streets and think nothing of it, yet I mention that I become aroused by the odour of our dog’s wretched leavings and suddenly nobody will pass me the mead.

     

    4. The local monks spend hours painting illuminated manuscripts and are considered the holiest of men, yet when I scratch a realistic spindle-and-giblets into the wooden pew, I am kicked out of church?!

     

    5. The wandering balladeer sings bawdy tunes about rolling amidst the hay and he is applauded by everyone in the fiefdom, yet I mount a single hay bale and Crispian the Farmer threatens to slice off my offending organ with his thresher.

     

    6. The King may take any wench he pleases and do any number of filthy things to her and he is lauded as a conquering hero, yet I pleasure myself quietly whilst watching my neighbor boil mutton through the window and now everyone calls me The Mutton Bugger.

     

    7. Father Grimmel sells papal indulgences for admission into Heaven, yet when I sell indulgences for admission into my Barn of Sensual Horrors, he reports me to the Bishop.

     

    8. Dardolph the Soothsayer predicts that one day many years in the future, there shall be a magickal glowing portal through which any serf, however lowly, may gratify the most craven desire of his loins—yet when I ask if there shall be a magickal glowing portal to view witches having a glop-fight in the moat, he tells me that nobody would watch such a thing, much less enjoy it, and he locks me in the stocks as punishment for my salaciousness, yet being locked in the stocks only further arouses my salaciousness, so perhaps medieval lyfe is not so hypocritical after all.