The Complicated Sex Lives of Puritans and Pilgrims

The story about how Thanksgiving started and what it means depends on whom you ask. Maybe what we learned in school isn’t the whole truth, and perhaps the Pilgrims weren’t the people we might think they were. There’s a lot to say about that, but I’m going to tell you about the complicated sex lives of Puritans and Pilgrims.

Source: https://about-history.com/priests-and-their-role-in-the-middle-ages/

Sex education in Medieval Christianity (500 to 1400-1500) was not great. Influential theologians of the time shaped how people understood sexuality. Saint Jerome (347-420) said that “a man who is too passionately in love with his wife is an adulterer,” and this was accepted as common knowledge until the 1500s. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) went as far as saying that a man who sleeps with his wife for pleasure is treating her like a prostitute. According to the Medieval Catholic Church, procreation was the only acceptable end to marital relations. People were encouraged to think about the sexual act before doing it to ensure it wasn’t too pleasurable since that would be sinful. Fun fact, sex on Sundays and holidays and during menstruation, pregnancy, and breastfeeding was particularly sinful.

Before 1450 when the printing press was brought to England, very few people had access to a Bible, and since it was written in Latin, even fewer people could read it. The 1500s are the age of absolute monarchy in Europe. Monarchs had unlimited power and received the right to rule directly from God. In these Medieval times, the church and state were very concerned with policing their members' morality, including sexuality. There was a “no sex until marriage” rule, but there’s no way to know what most people thought about sex. We know that people were taught that sexuality is a sin, that you had to be a virgin until marriage, and that sex is only legitimate for procreation through marriage. But because around 90% of people lived in rural areas, it was uncommon for weddings and births to be registered in church/court records and were challenging to keep track of.

Source: https-//www.fortbendisd.com/cms/lib/TX01917858/Centricity/Domain/4040/BC%20to%20Present%20Fahion%20History

For centuries, the Catholic Church dominated Europe. The church was not just a religion and institution but a way of thinking and life. However, by the early 1530s, the Bible had been translated into English and was available to a larger group of individuals who were literate and could afford one. OOPS! It turns out that some of them felt like the Catholic Church and the monarchs had taken creative liberty in their interpretation of the Bible. The Protestant religions began to emerge in Europe. In 1534, the Church of England was founded after the Pope refused King Henry VIII a marriage annulment. He needed a male heir, didn’t know gender depends on sperm, and therefore needed to remarry; six times.

Fast forward to the early 1600s, and we have other Protestant groups, the Pilgrims and the Puritans, fleeing from the hostile climate towards religious nonconformists in England. Both Puritans and Pilgrims left England because they disagreed with the practices of the Church of England and believed that it still had to eliminate ceremonies and practices not rooted in the Bible. The difference is that Puritans wanted to reform the church, while Pilgrims were separatists. Even though Pilgrims and Puritans had different goals, they both believed that society should behave according to the word and laws of God outlined in the Bible.

Bernard Gribble: Mayflower

The Puritans and Pilgrims settled in New England. It was the year 1620 and Pilgrims arrived and settled in Plymouth, Massachusets. Native Americans welcomed them and taught them how and what to harvest. The details of this story are debatable, but only 53 pilgrims survived the journey and the first harsh winter. So, in 1621, the Pilgrims celebrated the fall harvest (an English tradition) and shared food with the Native Americans. Phew! Full circle back to Thanksgiving!

Both groups of settlers created laws for their colonies based on the Bible. They thought they had been guided to America by God to establish laws based on Biblical teachings: “For the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.” This meant that pre-marital sex, actually, all sex outside of marriage, was still a grave sin. However, sex within the context of marriage was not frowned upon. Sex went from being a necessary evil to being a “gift from God” meant to be enjoyed.

Here are 5 fun facts about the complicated sex lives of Puritans and Pilgrims:

1. Puritans viewed sex inside marriage not as a procreational obligation but as a fundamental right. Husband and wife owed each other the "pang of pleasure." The laws of New Haven, Conn., permitted a wife to divorce an impotent or underperforming husband. James Matlock, a cooper, was accused of denying "conjugal fellowship" to his wife for two years and was excommunicated from his church.
2. Puritan ministers were fond of sexual imagery in their sermons. The most common metaphor for Christ was the "bridegroom" who would "impregnate" his believers. Church services were referred to as the "marriage bed."
3. Estimates of brides who arrived at the altar pregnant range from 30 to 60 percent. Many citizens of the 17th century believed that sex before marriage was not wrong so long as the engagement had been formally announced.
4. Schoolbooks often refer to the "bundling board" _ a plank that separated men and women in the same bed _ as an early American form of birth control. But the same books offer scant details on the practice of bundling without the board, in which colonial parents permitted their daughter and her suitor to share a bed. Overnight accommodation was part of a full day's work compensation. Still, it also limited the guesswork in determining the paternity of a child that would otherwise have been conceived in some neighbor's barn.
5. Sexual deviance, adultery and bestiality were punishable by death. In this regard, history has not overstated the Puritans' official attitudes about sexual transgression.

Let’s celebrate and feel grateful for everyone who participated in the sexual revolution. Slow clap! But let us not forget our responsibility when it comes to sexual education because we still have a long way to go.