The 'frankness' of fifteenth-century people about the body and its functions has often been observed; if you believe human nature is to be fallen from grace, and irredeemably flawed, then there is no reason to be discreet or fastidious about its natural properties. It might be useful, even beneficial, to exploit or parody them.Related posts:
“I do not think altogether the worse of a book for having survived the author a generation or two. I have more confidence in the dead than the living.” — Hazlitt
13 May 2016
Fifteenth-Century People
Peter Ackroyd, The Life of Thomas More (London: Vintage, 1999), pp. 33-34: