A closer look
French women in the 16th and 17th centuries could legally drag their husbands into court and demand a divorce on the singular grounds of male impotence. To prove the claim, the couple was literally forced to endure a trial by congress, where heavily robed judges, medical experts, and church officials would stand in a bedroom and watch the husband try to perform his marital duties under extreme pressure. If the man failed to maintain an erection while a panel of grumpy old men stared at him with clipboards, his marriage was dissolved and he was publicly disgraced for the rest of his life. This agonizing legal process was eventually abolished, not because it was recognized as a horrifying violation of privacy, but because the men kept complaining it was too stressful to perform a peep show for the local clergy
