is a joke, nothing else, as the context and the monstrosity of the
metal cage indicate. This joke obviously appealed to a number of
satirical writers and artists in the following centuries, who fully
understood the great value of the chastity belt for their own purposes
to entertain their audiences. Indeed, the literary examples that I
could uncover consistently belong to the genre of satire, while the
chastity belt never appears in serious texts or art works. No author of
sermon literature, of penitentiary texts, or didactic and legal writers