People of those times weren't so prudish and haven't been colonized yet by western postmodernisms. Nowadays, only the very same elites and "intellectuals" who complain about such pairings seem to partake of those kinds of things and give a pass on specific individuals, females, and those of who extol the progressive beliefs/religion and an interesting blindspot for a certain middle eastern religion (WHICH DOES allow it in their text and is practiced to this very day, but the very morally outraged intellectuals themselves either memory hole it or twist themselves into knots not to mention it... stopping conversation either by using the racism card or the minority card for some reason even though they have a massive population and/or are aware their religion is not as a safe target for criticism as their adherents seem to easily default to violence, unlike the punching bag that is Christianity).