that ironmonger with death did he ever presume to carry about such merchandise; so much so that he was afraid and returned no more and threw away all the rest, and no more heard of. Wherein he was wise, for it were enough to lose half the world, for want of any body to people it, through such bridles, clasps and fastenings of nature abominable and detestable and enemies to human multiplication."
The troubadour Guillaume de Machault speaks of a key given to him by Agnes of Navarre; this key was obviosuly intended to unlock a girdle of chastity. Nicolas Chorier, in his erotic Dialogues of Luisa Sigea (Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1890), mentions the apparatus. Although the existence of such girdles has often been denied, "the presence of many undoubted speciments in several of the most important museums of Europe," says Dr. Jacobus X—— (Ethnology of the Sitxth Sense), "places their authenticity beyond all doubt. This custom existed more particularly during the time of the Crusades,…… but a very curious instance is mentioned as having occurred as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, for it is recorded that the advocate Feydeau pleaded before the supreme court of Montpellier on behalf of a woman who accused her husband of making her undergo this shameful treatment (Petition against the introduction of padlocks or girdles of chastity, Montpellier, 1750.)"
All this only goes to show that virginity and chastity are two very different things, and that the latter was obviously of more account than the former in the eyes of mediæval man. Much the same obtains to-day. To a certain extent we seek
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