Oddly, I knew this! My favorite customer when I managed a small independent bookstore was a woman named Ada who was in her 90s. Ada would call us and special order incredible books that no one had ever heard of - she'd order hundreds and hundreds of dollars at a time.

And one of the books was specifically about "naughty" and joking drawings on medieval manuscripts.

I miss Ada, she used to lend me the best books of poetry. A really, really smart and lovely woman.

Now I'm off to more thoroughly look through the link.

When Jason and I saw the Gutenburg Bibles at the Morgan Library we sniggered at what appeared to be the word 'cunt' in the manuscript. Everybody else seemed to take the library very seriously though. Giggling at rude words was not approved of.

When I was in grad school there was a medieval literature professor at VCU who was engaged in a pet project that involved finding the earliest written use of the phrase "breaking wind" to mean "fart."

*enters thread.
breaks wind.
leaves thread.*

I think anyone who's ever looked into them knows.