Smash hit

This inherent potential for misunderstanding is what distinguishes the history of the kiss from that of most other gestures. It might be argued that it is a matter of indifference whether a hostess greets her guests by kissing them on the mouth, as in Tudor England; by shaking hands, as in mid-20th-century Britain; or by rubbing noses, as in Polynesia. They are all ways of making strangers welcome; and, so long as everyone concerned understands the conventions, it might seem of no consequence which one is employed. But what distinguishes the kiss from so many other multi-purpose gestures is that its sexual nature has always lent a potential ambiguity to its meaning.

The second objection to the notion that the ritual kiss was subverted by the erotic kiss is that it implies that the trend was all in the same direction. In fact, there were periods when the movement was the other way. The early Middle Ages had seen the rise of the kiss, as it came to occupy an unprecedently central position in a wide range of secular and ecclesiastical rituals. The Romans, by contrast, did not employ even the social kiss until the period of the Empire, and then only among the aristocracy.

The social kiss between men seems to have fluctuated according to fashion. The habit among elegant young males at the later Stuart courts of kissing each other has already been mentioned. “Sir, you kiss pleasingly,” says one of them in an early-eighteenth-century play, “I love to kiss a man, in Paris we kiss nothing else.” In the trenches of the First World War, the imminent threat of death could lead to a suspension of normal codes of behaviour and restore the male kiss as a non-sexual symbol of intimacy, while in the late 20th century, it has become commonplace for men on the football field to exchange kisses at moments of triumph.

These developments are part of an altogether larger relaxation of bodily inhibitions which has occurred in the West since the 1960s. The social kiss and hug have returned, much to the embarrassment of middle-aged Britons, who have grown up accustomed to a far greater degree of bodily distance.

The subject also has a medical dimension. For the attitude to kissing can change when breath and saliva are regarded as potential instruments of infection. The Roman Emperor Tiberius (AD14-37) issued a decree banning kissing, because it was believed to be responsible for the spread of an unpleasant fungoid disease called mentagra, which disfigured the faces and bodies of Roman nobles.

Not that the avoidance of bodily contact was always so rational. Some bodily habits, which had been happily tolerated in one age, became wholly unacceptable in another. No one has ever exceeded the Roman epigrammatist Martial (late 1st century AD) in evoking the nauseous experience of having to kiss lips and faces covered with dirt, snot, ulcers and scabs. Thereafter there were many such complaints. The social and physical squeamishness of 18th-century doctors prevented them from adopting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as a respectable medical practice, even though they were aware of its life-saving potentialities. In the same century, authorities on politeness condemned the practice of those who “put their faces so close to yours as to offend you with their breath” as a “horrid and disgustful habit”. When aristocratic Romans of the imperial age took up the practice of kissing friends and clients, they perfumed their breath with myrrh. How far, one wonders, have modern dentistry and breath-sweeteners been a precondition of the return of the social kiss in modern times?

Edited extract from the afterword to The Kiss in History, edited by Karen Harvey (Manchester University Press, £15.99, offer £12.79 plus £2.25 p&p, call 0870 1608080)

Sir Keith Thomas is the author of Religion and the Decline of Magic (Penguin)