In these libidinous and licentious conditions, when exhaustion or age began to make perceptible appearance, amatory aids were sought, and philtres and brews were hopefully measured out by the furtive creatures, male and female, peripatetic vendors, sorceresses, quacks and occultists, who were always equipped, always prepared, to supply the passionate clamor. * * * * * The medieval passion for love aroused complications. Particularly, it aroused jealousy in the husband himself, however gallant or wayward he might be. Lovers or husbands, discovering the indiscretions and sportiveness of a mistress, a concubine, or a wife, exacted the utmost and not rarely the most barbaric penalties. A wife was compelled to eat her dead lover’s heart. Another wife was forced to congregate with lepers because her conduct enraged her lawful spouse. One husband served up the heart of the slain adulterer in the form of a stew for his wife. Yet the husband appeared to be exempt from any penalties inflicted for divergent amorous experiences in which he himself might be involved. For the man was dominant. The husband was equated with the ineluctable law. And the husband imposed that law upon his womankind. The male might consequently indulge with more than a fair chance of impunity in adultery, fornication, excessive lust. And when these excitements seemed ultimately to approach physiological impairment, there was always the nostrum, and the extended hand of the aged crone, offering her mystic potion, her amatory panacea. * * * * * The permutations of amatory complications in the social frame of the Middle Ages, involving peasant and noble, troubadour and harlot, occasional damsels, poets, mistresses and concubines, resulted sometimes in a frantic movement toward chastity. Renunciation of carnal delights, of the amor naturalis that implied physical and sensual love only, became a pose, then a principle, then a habit, however, at times, it might be infringed or dishonored. Chastity belts were devised by departing warriors to enforce continence upon their wives. Chastity tests, ingeniously contrived, became popular experiments in sexual restraints. It was the vogue, and the vogue became mores. Just as Tristan and Yseult slept with a naked sword between them. And in excessive cases there was the weird but apparently effective device, for propagation purposes only, of the chemise cagoule. And always, in the wake of these temporary waves of contrition or repentance, there followed, as a consequence of plague, violence, political unrest, banditry and war, a terrifying unleashing of all human inhibitions, a bacchanalian orgy of prolonged lechery and debauchery, reminiscent of Thucydides’ dramatic account of the Athenian plague during the Peloponnesian War.