[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

There may be more truth to that than most people know. Going back to the beginning of the Reformation period (maybe even earlier) one of the most popular themes in pornographic novels was French convents. From what I understand (I haven't read the material for obvious reasons), well-endowed fishermen being shipwrecked and taken in was a particularly popular "thematic element."

Haywood's Fantomina makes a subtle reference to the idea of convents being hotbeds of perversion at the end of the novel when the protagonist is sent away to a continental nunnery. I've sometimes wondered if Shakespeare's "Get thee to a nunnery" is also a reference, but I've read that "nunnery" was also slang for a common brothel, so who knows.

[grey_whiskers]

I’m reminded of Boccacio’s Decameron (1353!) —
from the deaf gardener at the convent, to “putting the devil back into hell” to the Mother Superior caught with her lover’s underwear on her head by mistake...