In medieval and early modern societies, sexualities were perceived, described, and encountered in a variety of ways, some but not all of them familiar to us. This volume emphasises the localities and temporalities of sexuality, the visibility and invisibility of sexual desires, as well as the intersections of sexuality and moral offences between the thirteenth and eighteenth centuries. The chapters that follow touch upon a series of related issues: how perceptions of sexuality changed over time and in relation to other types of change; how love, desire, and a range of other emotions related to people's sexual identities and behaviours; how sexuality and perceptions of it were connected to religion, law, ethnicity, and other cultural forms. Some of the essays invite us to consider the ways in which intersections of fiction and academic research can deepen our understanding of sexualities as conceptualised and practised many centuries ago. Throughout the volume, we return to the fact that in many societies, certain forms of sex were crimes, including sex before marriage, adultery, sodomy, and incest. Yet even these were not legally or culturally understood in precisely the same way in all parts of Europe during these several centuries. We are invited to consider, therefore, in what ways and why certain sexual acts were defined as crimes and how such cases were handled in court, the extent to which people shared the concerns of legislators, churchmen, and jurists, as well as to interrogate our assumptions about what form a historicised category of ‘desire’ might take.

When we speak of ‘desire’, we may refer to sexual practices or fantasies. ‘Desire’ might also be understood to be a constituent element of sexual identity. At particular historiographical moments and in certain traditions, the distinction between acts and identities has been central to how historians and other scholars interested in past sexualities have constituted both their approach and their object of study. But ‘desire’ might be conceived as more or other than this. Edward Shorter described his history of sexual desire as a history ‘of longing, of what people yearn to do in their heart of hearts’. Yet what types of source (no matter how individual or rich and however brilliant our analysis) can provide us with evidence of what medieval and early modern people yearned for in their heart of hearts?