According to a common conviction, in the Middle Ages a device appeared that helped a jealous husband to leave his wife for a long time and not fear betrayal. We checked whether this opinion corresponds to modern historical research.

Materials about how “terrible” by today's standards the devices were used by medieval men who did not trust their wives, you can find, for example, on the women's portal WDay.ru, site Fishki.net, in the cognitive magazine "School of Life" And on Pikabu.

The earliest of the known images of the belt of fidelity dates back to the beginning of the 15th century. In 1405, Konrad Kiser in the treatise Bellifortis introduced Readers drawing with the signature: "These are the hard iron trousers of Florentine women who were closed in front." The author did not give more detailed information about this device, and its very description in the text was strange - Bellifortis is dedicated to military affairs, but not issues related to family or sexual life. Popularizer of science of Massimo polydo Turns Attention to the fact that the mention of the fidelity belt in Kizer is satirical: “Even if this device really existed in the 15th century, it was definitely quite rare.” He also emphasizes that not a single copy of such a belt has reached this day.

More professional images of girls who put on a belt of fidelity began to appear in the 16th century. For example, on Hans Behama engraving, it depicts a woman in the company of two men who give her money. Obviously, the heroine of the image is a prostitute, so the belt here plays the role of a “professional tool” rather than a symbol of fidelity (not to mention the fact that the artist could portray him as a metaphor, not a real object). Another example is the drawing of Henry Virrich, on which the girl lying on the bed is dressed in a belt of fidelity and gives the key to the man standing nearby (probably her husband). True, another man with a different key is depicted in the shadow, and on the first hat of the first we see the donkey ears - a symbol of deception and betrayal. So this image, obviously, is satirical.

The oldest of the surviving belts of fidelity date back to an even later period - XVIII and even XIX centuries. Experts of the British Museum Report: “Probably, the vast majority of examples now known were made in the XVIII and XIX centuries as a curiosity for lustful or a joke for tasteless.” Not so long ago, these belts were still exhibited as artifacts, if not the Middle Ages, then the Renaissance era, but later the museums adjusted their descriptions. The curators of the British Museum also pay attention to the fact that similar fakes can be found in other museums of Great Britain and Italy.

Historian Albrecht Classen devoted to the myth of "medieval" belts of fidelity a separate book. In it, he claims that the use of these devices in the Middle Ages is “extremely unlikely”, because there are no corresponding historical evidence, and the very use of the belt for a long time, coupled with the underdevelopment of medieval medicine, would certainly lead to women's health problems. This did not interfere with a bike about fidelity belts become Popular in the time of the Renaissance due to the “perverted nature” of the very idea and its connection with “sexuality, gender relations and the structure of power in the family”.

Supports His colleague Sarah Bond from the University of Aiova. In her opinion, an object that did not exist in reality in the eyes of historians of the 18th and 19th centuries became a symbol of the superiority of civilization over the "dark centuries." Bond, specializing in ancient history, cites an example of ancient Rome, where the brides wore a shut -made belt that her husband later untied, but there were no castles on this subject and he was symbolic in nature. Mentioning the loan belts in the now common sense up to the drawing of the beginning of the 15th century. Modern scientists They think metaphorical.