The knight who locks his wife in iron before riding to the Crusades is a complete historical illusion. This episode dismantles the medieval chastity belt, starting with the timeline: no credible evidence exists before the 15th century, over a hundred years after the last Middle Eastern crusade. The first blueprint appears in Konrad Kyeser’s 1405 military manual Bellifortis, which historians like Massimo Polidoro and Eric Dingwall read as a satirical joke about the women of Florence, while earlier churchmen used the term purely as a spiritual metaphor.

We then follow the belts into 19th-century museums, where the Musee de Cluny, the British Museum and Nuremberg displayed forgeries attributed to Catherine de Medici and Anne of Austria until metallurgy exposed them as Victorian workshop products. The darker truth is that the 1800s were when real belts were made: patented anti-masturbation devices forced on women and girls until the 1930s, and rape shields worn by factory workers during 12-hour shifts. Finally we examine the modern reclamation in consensual BDSM, a market now dominated by devices for men, and the pop culture persistence from Robin Hood: Men in Tights to Mad Max: Fury Road.

• Why raw iron and padding would cause friction wounds, infection and sepsis within weeks
• How Victorian fascination with a barbaric Middle Ages created demand for fake artifacts
• The vital energy theory behind medical panic over masturbation
• Concealed and barbed workplace belts as tools of self-defense
• How modern materials solved the hygiene problem the Renaissance never could