The History of Prostitution

shing Prostitution.-Sumptuary Laws.-Punishment of Procuresses.-Templars.-The Provinces.-Prohibition in the North.-Licensed Brothels at Toulouse, Montpellier, and Avignon.-Penalties S

y; but, if the early ecclesiastical writers are to be believed, these rude warriors were addicted to coarse debaucheries, in which intoxicating liquors and promiscuous intercourse with females played a prominent part. The feasts which followed victories in the field, or commemorated national anniversaries, bore some resemblance to the Roman commessationes, though, of course, they lacked the refinement and the wit which occasionally strove to redeem those disgraceful banquets. So far as the fema

g girls who ministered to their pleasures. The plan, as it appears, bore some resemblance to that which is at present in use in Turkey and some other Mohammedan countries. The chief had one lawful and proper wife, a sort of sultana valide, and other wives whose matrimonial rights were less clearly d

system of gynecea, was severe upon common prostitution. He directed vulgar prostitutes to be scourged, and a like penalty to be inflicted on all who harbored them, kept houses of d

ielded the palm of debauchery to the clergy. It is a fact well known to antiquaries, though visual evidence of it is becoming scarce, that most of the great works of Gothic architecture which date from this period were profusely adorned with lewd sculptures whose subjects were taken from the religious orders. In one place a monk was represented in carnal connection with a female devotee. In others were seen an abbot engaged with nuns, a naked nun worried by monkeys, youthful penitents undergoing flagellation at the hands of their confessor, lady abbesses offering ho

d or sent across the frontier. Severe punishments were inflicted on those who returned to the city of Paris after their expulsion. A panic seized the customers of brothels, and for a few months public decency was restored. But the inevitable consequences of the arbitrary decree of the king soon began to be felt. Though the officers of justice had forcibly confined in establishments resembling Magdalen hospitals a large proportion of the most notorious prostitutes, and exiled many more, others arose to take their pl

to wear jewelry or fine stuffs, and were placed under the direct supervision of a police magistrate, whose official or popular title was Le roi des ribauds (the king of ribaldry). The duties of this officer appear to have been analogous to those of the Roman ?diles who had charge of prostitution. He was empowered to arrest and confine females who infringed the law, either in their dress, their domicil, or their behavior. It was afterward urged against the mai

attaining that end would be by re-enacting the ordinance of 1254. Philip dutifully fulfilled his father's request. Prostitution was again declared a legal misdemeanor, and a formidable array of penalties was again brought to bear against offending females and their accomplices. But, like many a

ts were seized and sold, the constable apparently sharing the proceeds of the sale. Pimps and procurers were dealt with more severely. As usual, the statute-book contained a variety of conflicting enactments on this subject, and menaced them with all kinds of penalties, from burning alive to fine and imprisonment. It appears beyond a doubt that, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, several notorious procuresses were burned alive at Paris. Others were put in the pillory; were scourged, and had their ears cropped; while many of the richer class escaped with a fine. There are records of cases in whic

s, and to prove that they fell victims to royal jealousy, but the argument is not sustained by the facts. Documents on whose authenticity and credibility no possible suspicion can be cast, establish incontrovertibly that the sect of the Templars was tainted with unnatural vices, and that one of the chief secrets of its maintenance was the facility it afforded to debased men for the gratification of

red their own affairs, and received no police regulations from the crown. A complete examination of the subject throughout France would therefore

tural policy, for we are not led to believe that in that section of country the evil was ever carried to great excess. In Normandy, Brittany, Picardy, and the great northern and western provinces, a virtuous simplicity was the rule of life among the peasants, and even the cities did not present any striking contrast. In many provinces, usage, not fortified by the text of any custom, allowed the seign

required a vent, and, in the absence of some safety-valve, it was obvious to all that the ungovernable lusts of the men would soon kindle the inflammable passions

ame of the Grand Abbaye. In it were lodged not only the resident prostitutes of the city, but any loose women who traveled that way, and desired to exercise their impure calling. It would appear that they received a salary from the city, a

shut themselves up in the Abbaye, and did their best to keep customers at a distance. Their calculation was just; the city and the University soon felt the effects of the diminution of visitors at the Abbaye. The corporation appealed to the king; and when, during the disorders which distracted France at that time, Charles VII. visited Toulouse, a formal petition was presented to him by the capitones, praying that he would take such steps as his wisdom might seem fit to mediate between the prostitutes and the people, and restore to the Abbaye its former prosperity. The king acted with energy. He denounced the assailants of the prostitutes in the severest language, and planted his own royal fleurs de lis over the door of the Abbaye as a protection to the occupants.[172] But the people did not respect the roya

the chateau to the city. It happened, just at this time, that many eminent philosophers and economists were advocating a return to the old ecclesiastical policy of suppressing prostitution altogether. After a discussion which lasted several years, the city of Toulouse adopted these views, and closed the Chateau vert. A magistrate, high in authority, left on record his protest against t

als, fell into the hands of two bankers, in whose family it remained for several generations. During their tenure, a brothel was established in the city by a s

t so well founded as to justify its rejection. Prostitutes were ordered to live in the brothel. They were bound to wear a red shoulder-knot as a badge of their calling. The brothel was to be visited weekly by the bailli and a "barber," the latter of whom was t

on offenders. But if Petrarch and other contemporary writers are to be believed, the city was none the less a refuge for debauchees, and a scandal

forced to walk naked through the streets by way of expiation. In others, the punishment of the iron cage was inflicted on pimps and procuresses. When a procuress had rendered herself particularly obnoxious, she was seized, stripped naked, and dragged in the midst of a great crowd to

ven venturing to breathe her name. For years he carried a scarf or a ribbon in her honor through battle-scenes and dangers of every kind, happy when, after a lustrum spent in sighs and hopes, the charmer condescended to reward his fidelity with a gracious smile. It is evident that sexual intercourse m

e la Rose, a work of remarkable talent, but, at the same time, distinguished by a cynic vein of philosophy and a singular obscenity of language. No portion of that work was wholly free from lewd expressions, and it would be impossible to quote fifty lines of it to-day in a modern language. The doctrine of the author with regard to women was insu

tensive acquaintance among the prostitute class. The best of their works are descriptions of episodes of dissipation; their most lively sketches have prostitutes, or their fortunes, or their diseases, for the themes. They seemed to fancy they were imitating Horace when they borrowed his most odious blemishes. Some of them were actors as well as poets, and used the machinery of th

r, Brantome, and their contemporaries. There was not a form of lewdness for which an appropriate name had not been invented; and as to the ordinary acts and instruments of prostitution, a dictionary of sy

the Latin incubare, male demons who assailed the chastity of girls; and succub?, female demons who robbed boys of their innocence. The old chronicles are full of accounts of the mischievous deeds of these evil spirits. As might be expected, the incubi were more numerous and more enterprising than the succub?. For one boy who confessed that a female demon had attacked him in his sleep, and compelled him to minister to her sensuality, there wer

it a similar intercourse, and were burnt at the stake as partakers of the nature of sorceresses.[178] Married women made similar confessions. They stated that they were able to affirm that intercourse with demons was extremely painful; that their frigid nature, combined with th

osed partly of ladies; and while the judgment of the tribunal appeared to be in the negative, it was not so emphatic as to settle the question.[179] Even a century later, when one of the royal physicians undertook to explode the theory of lewd demons, and to prove that girls had end

ct was the gratification of sensuality. His bull did not attain its object. The witches' meetings were still held, or believed to have been held throughout the fourteenth, fifteenth, and part of the sixteenth centuries. The popular belief was that the persons in league with witches anointed their bodies with magical ointment, bestrode a broom, and were forthwith carried through the air to the place of meeting; that Satan was present at the ceremony in the form of a huge he-goat, and received the homage of

ing large numbers of youth of both sexes. It was stated by a theological writer of the time of Francis I., that in his day there were one hundred thousand persons sold to Satan in France.[183] Allowing for some exaggeration, it must still be inferred from this statement that this form of prostitution had assumed alarming proportions. Nor is there any good reason for doubting but priests and other persons of lewd propensities tu

ere are others about whose character and practices there is no room for controversy. The Flagellants, for instance, who counted eight hundred thousand proselytes in France in the fourteenth century, were unquestionably depraved. They marched in procession, men and women together, through the cities of France, each member of the society using the whip freely on the bare back of the person before him; and at night they assembled in country places

ious exercises, and that their proselytes stripped themselves within the place of worship; but one, Picard, who became a leading authority in the sect, took the ground that their principles should be carried out boldly in the

deserved, the widest popularity. Many of the customs of the day were equally adverse to sound morals. To cite one by way of example: On the Jour des Innocents, which fell on the 28th of December, men were allowed to invade the bed-chambers of girls, and, if they could find them in bed, to administer the chastisement which u

bed-chamber of the newly-wedded couple, and the fortunate man or girl who had contrived to see the interior of the room through a chink in the wall or a hole in the door was

gnantly. He denounces with extraordinary virulence the "crimes of impudicity which are committed in churches," and which "the pillars and nave would denounce, if they had eyes and a voice." He did not spare his congregation. Turning fiercely to the women who sat before him, he apostrophized them: "Dicatis, vos, mulieres, posuistis, posuistis filias ad peccandum? vos, mulieres, per vestros traitus impudi?, provocastis alios ad peccandum? Et vos, maquerell?, quid dicitis?" He thunders against this latter class, the procuresses, wh

ely a small city, it contained five to six thousand prostitutes, who were said by an Ita