Sex and sexuality were matters of intense importance in medieval religion, culture, and society, though only in recent decades have they received much serious study. In their daily lives, medieval people, especially from the beginning of the 13th century, were subject to sexual regulation from Catholic clergy, civic authorities, members of their families, and indeed, the dictates of their own consciences.
Before that time it is harder to establish how much of an effect official strictures on sex and worries about concupiscence and the immortal soul had on medieval laypeople, though anti-erotic discourse had always been part of the lives of monks, nuns, priests, and other clergy.
Furthermore, official and ideologically imposed anxieties were not always adhered to either by laypeople or clergy and did not prevent sexual themes from gaining widespread frank discussion and representation in all manner of written genres and visual arts.
Before the development of modern pornography in the 18th century and after, sexual imagery was deployed variously for entertainment, moral instruction, recrimination, political defamation, or propaganda.
The medieval sexual world was in many respects profoundly different from the modern, despite superficial resemblances.
