The History of Prostitution Part 12

Small as these numbers appear in comparison with the large army of prost.i.tutes exercising their calling at Paris, it is not at all doubtful but the establishment is a useful one. No one can help but concur with M.

Parent-Duchatelet when he observes that, "did it not exist, it would be necessary to create it."

NOTE.--As M. Parent-Duchatelet has written the best, we might almost say the only philosophical work on prost.i.tution extant, it may be useful to subjoin the test of the statute which he proposed to regulate the subject of prost.i.tution.

LAW RELATIVE TO THE REPRESSION OF PROSt.i.tUTION.

_Art. 1._ The duty of repressing prost.i.tution, whether with provocation on the public highway or otherwise, is intrusted at Paris to the Prefect of Police, and in all the other _communes_ of France to the mayors respectively.

_Art. 2._ A discretionary authority over all persons engaged in public prost.i.tution is vested in these functionaries, within the scope of their powers.

_Art. 3._ Shall const.i.tute evidence of public prost.i.tution either, 1st, direct provocation thereto on the public highway; 2d, public notoriety; or, 3d, legal proof adduced after accusation and trial.

_Art. 4._ The Prefect of Police at Paris, and the mayors in the other _communes_, shall make any and all regulations which they may deem suitable for the repression of prost.i.tution, and such regulations shall bear upon all those who encourage prost.i.tution as a trade--lodgers, inn-keepers and tavern-keepers, landlords and tenants.

_Art. 5._ The Dispensary at Paris for the superintendence of women of the town is placed on the same footing as the public health establishments. Other similar dispensaries may be established wherever they are needed.

_Art. 6._ A full report of the proceedings of these dispensaries shall be forwarded annually to the Minister of the Interior.

M. Duchatelet conceived this short law to be adequate for the purpose.

It may be presumed that he took for granted that the mayors of the _communes_ would never attempt to carry out original views of their own on the subject; he doubtless gave them credit for sufficient self-abnegation to adopt, without question, the elaborate and sensible plan which experience has taught the authorities of Paris. How far this a.s.sumption was justifiable appears uncertain, in view of the fact that at Lyons and Strasbourg, the prost.i.tutional system has always differed from that of the capital. In both those cities a tax has been levied on prost.i.tutes till a very late period; at Lyons it was exacted, it is believed, in 1842.

CHAPTER XI.

ITALY.

Decline of Public Morals.--Papal Court.--Nepotism.--John XXII.--s.e.xtus IV.--Alexander VI.--Effect of the Reformation.--Poem of Fracastoro.-- Benvenuto Cellini.--Beatrice Cenci.--Laws of Naples.--Pragmatic Law of 1470.--Court of Prost.i.tutes.--Bull of Clement II.--Prost.i.tution in Lombardy and Piedmont.--Clerical Statute.--Modern Italy.--Laws of Rome.--Public Hospitals.--Lazaroni of Naples.--Italian Manners as depicted by Lord Byron.--Foundling Hospitals.--True Character of Italian People.

Birth-place of modern art and literature, dowered with the fatal heritage of beauty, Italy, in the varied pa.s.sages of her career among the nations, has been as remarkable for the vice and sensuality of her children as she has been eminent for their talents and acquirements.

The heart of the historical student thrills with respectful sympathy over the sorrows and enn.o.bling virtues of her patriots in all ages, or his intellect is captivated with enthusiastic admiration and reverence in considering the monuments of resplendent genius given to mankind by her sons. Let him turn the page, and his soul recoils in disgust and deepest horror from the narrative of corruption the most abandoned, ambition the most unscrupulous, l.u.s.t the most abominable, crime the most tremendous, to which the history of the world scarcely offers a parallel, and which brands the perpetrators with the execration of all succeeding generations.

The most glorious era of the Italian republics immediately preceded their downfall. Like s.h.i.+ning lights, they perished by their own effulgence. The mutual jealousies of Florence, Pisa, Genoa, Lucca, and the numerous independent cities and states, stirred up in them a "n.o.ble and emulous rage" to excel each other in the encouragement they gave to art and letters, and the mighty works produced by their respective citizens. But the same sentiment also roused them to deadlier feuds, and the common field of national patriotism being shut up, they exhausted themselves and each other by desperately-protracted struggles and incredible sacrifices of blood and treasure. Thus they paved the way to the introduction of the foreigner and the mercenary, who completed their ruin; until, in place of the small but ill.u.s.trious republics which formed a diadem of brightest gems, arose a system of petty tyrants, who plunged the country into misery and degradation. These, in turn, were swept away by the strong arm of a despotism which has never since relaxed its grasp of this loveliest country of the earth.

No influence played a more important part in bringing about this catastrophe than that of the court of Rome. By the intrigues of the Roman pontiffs the mutual jealousies of the states were exacerbated and their quarrels fomented. While these results were caused by the political actions of the popes and their advisers, the worst effects were produced upon public manners and morals by their example. The abuses which had established themselves among the Roman hierarchy were the natural consequences of long and undisturbed enjoyment by the clergy of their vast immunities and privileges. The demoralization and dissoluteness which thus existed, and which spread its poison throughout the civilized world, but especially throughout Italy, are attested to posterity by all contemporary writers.

The enormous iniquity which distinguished such men as John XXII., s.e.xtus IV., or Alexander VI., is notorious to all. Although the character of communities is not to be inferred from the actions of exceptional prodigies, either of virtue or vice, it is evident that the system which could place monsters like these in the august positions they filled must have been rotten to the core. The worth of a Leo X. or a Clement VII.

consisted in the absence of the grosser vices rather than in any positive excellence, and the encouragement given by such men to objectionable practices did more to confirm a laxity of morals than the odious and unpardonable offenses of their predecessors.

Some of the political profligacy of the court of Rome, and, through its example, of the other Italian courts, was owing to the system which had sprung up of each pope providing for his family. The term _nepote_ (nephew) was in common use as expressing the relations.h.i.+p which existed between the pope and the individuals selected for advancement. The priests of all denominations had nephews and nieces to provide for, and the abuses covered by the term were objects of the keenest satire. In fact, Innocent VIII. thus provided for eight openly avowed sons and daughters.[215] The pseudo-avuncular obligations of s.e.xtus IV. were also well known. Other popes, whose sins were not in this particular direction, having no sons, adopted a _bona fide_ nephew, and one or two, feeling the want of ties of kindred or family relations.h.i.+p, actually adopted strangers. In one instance, the Donna Olimpia, a niece by marriage, and "a lady of ability and a manly spirit," took the place of a nephew in the court of Innocent X., without any imputation on the character of either pope or niece.[216]

The effect produced by this example in high places, particularly upon the clergy, and through them on the community, can be imagined. By a decree of the Church in the eleventh session of the Lateran Council it appears that the clergy were accustomed to live in a state of public concubinage, nay, more, to allow others to do so for money paid to them by permission.

Dante, in one of his daring flights, compares the papal court to Babylon, and declares it a place deprived of virtue and shame. In the nineteenth canto of the Inferno, Dante, visiting h.e.l.l, finds Nicholas III. there waiting the arrival of Boniface, who again is to be succeeded by Clement.

The Reformation compelled some attention to morals among the clergy, and for a time an earnest endeavor was made at a purification of the Church.

This was one of the chief labors of the famous Council of Trent. That council certainly did repress the abuses among the general clergy, but the law-makers were law-breakers. They could not touch the cardinals, archbishops, or the Pope himself, and thus little radical change was effected among the chief dignitaries.[217]

There are not wanting writers who acquit the Italian national character of blame in the matter, attributing the general corruption partly to the frightful example of foreign invaders. The invasion of Charles VIII., himself a dissolute monarch, with the universal licentiousness of the French troops, did undoubtedly contribute largely to ruin the morals of the people at large, but, to use the words of Machiavelli, "If the papal court were removed to Switzerland, the simplest and most religious people of Europe would, in an incredibly short time, have become utterly depraved by the vicious example of the Italian priesthood."[218]

The ecclesiastics did not confine themselves to licentiousness of conduct.

The clerical writers are charged with a taste for that lowest practice of debased minds, obscenity, in which particular they exceed the lay writers.

Roscoe, an accomplished Italian scholar and a man not given to railing, maintains this allegation.[219] This reminds us of Pope's lines:

"Immodest words admit of no defense, For want of decency is want of sense."

For the limited range of our present subject, history, so profuse of ill.u.s.tration of war, bloodshed, and the personal adventures of men noteworthy by their position or character, is exceedingly chary of materials. In the case of Italy the testimony as to the morals of men in high places is superabundant, and these and the legislative enactments of the period will furnish some of the information of which we are in search.

In the fifteenth century, Charles VIII., in his wars to gain Naples from the Spaniards, drew down unspeakable miseries upon the wretched Italians.

His armies are reputed to have indulged in every excess of unbridled license and rapine; and it was during the siege of Naples that the venereal disease is said to have first made its appearance, although the particulars given of this malady in Chapter IX., under the head of France, show that syphilis existed in Naples two or three years before the siege.

As generally happens with new diseases, whether from fear or ignorance of the means to control them, it was represented that the affliction was of a malignity never since known. Its frightful ravages and disgusting character impressed the minds of men with a belief that it was a new scourge, sent specially as a punishment for the debauchery and prost.i.tution of the period, each party retorting on the other the charge of having introduced it, and styling it _Morbo-Gallico_ or _Mal de Naples_, according to the nation to which they belonged. No cla.s.s seems to have been exempt from it. s.e.xtus della Rovere, nephew of s.e.xtus IV., one of the wealthiest and most dissolute ecclesiastics of the age, was "rotten from his middle to the soles of his feet."[220] Even the haughty and majestic Julius II. would not expose his feet to the obeisance of the faithful, because they were discolored by the Morbus Gallicus:[221] Leo, his accomplished and munificent successor, was said to have owed his elevation to the fact that he was in such a depraved state of body as to render necessary a surgical operation in the Consistorium while the election was proceeding, the cardinals selecting the most sickly candidate for the papal tiara.[222] An unequivocal allusion to the pontiff's pursuits is found in an honorary inscription to Leo X. on his entrance into Florence, of which he was a native.

_Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora: tempora Mavos Olim habuit; nunc sua tempora Pallas habet: Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypra semper erit._ Formerly Venus reigned supreme, then Mars, now Pallas: Mars was, Pallas now is, Venus shall always be.

Cardinals were not ashamed to contend openly for the favors of celebrated courtesans, and Charles VIII., when on his march to Naples, was provided by Ludovico Sforza and his wife Beatrice, his liberal entertainers, with the most beautiful women that could be procured.[223] Charles, indeed, is by some authors a.s.serted to have been actually the first who introduced the venereal disease into Italy.

An eccentric trophy of public license is to be found in the poem of Fracastoro, a physician and accomplished writer--a really elegant production under the t.i.tle of Syphilis. The argument of it is drawn from the sufferings of Syphilus, a shepherd who has been punished by Apollo with a malignant disease for impiety. In this work the author introduces the reader to the inner regions of the earth; to the mines, minerals, and attendant sprites, and explains the discovery of mercury, and its beneficent and healing influences on the invalid, who, once cured, is enjoined to pay his vows to Diana.

In 1520, that turbulent and reprobate artist Benvenuto Cellini, in his autobiography (one of the most spirited representations of national manners extant) gives an account of a syphilitic disease which he contracted from a courtesan. He says little of the mode of cure, but it is evident from the above that the use of mercury was known at a very early period after public attention was generally directed to the disorder.

The excesses of this iron age were not limited to ordinary licentiousness; crimes against nature seem to have been prevalent, and are even alleged to have been a source of revenue. In a collection of papal lives which has fallen under our notice, but which is not very particular in giving its authorities,[224] we find it stated that a memorial was presented to s.e.xtus IV. by certain individuals of the family of the Cardinal of St.

Lucia for an indulgence to commit sodomy, and that the Pope wrote at the bottom of it the usual "_Fiat_."

The case of Beatrice Cenci is better attested. Every one recollects the acc.u.mulated horrors of the story. The father, hating his children, his wife, all mankind, introduces prost.i.tutes to his house, and debauches his daughter Beatrice by force. Through the instrumentality of a bishop she procures him to be murdered, and, with her step-mother, was executed for the crime, the Pope refusing to show any mercy. The Count Cenci had been addicted to unnatural offenses, and had thrice compounded with the papal government for his crimes by paying an enormous sum of money, and the narrator says that the acrimony of the Pope toward the wretched daughter was for having cut off a profitable source of revenue.

In Naples, the laws on the subject of prost.i.tution were extremely severe.

Previous to the thirteenth century, every procuress endeavoring to corrupt innocent females was punished, like an adulteress, by mutilation of her nose. The mother who prost.i.tuted her daughter suffered this punishment until King Frederick absolved such women as trafficked with their children from the pressure of want. The same prince, however, decreed against all who were found guilty of preparing drugs or inflammatory liquors to aid in their designs upon virtuous females, death in case of injuries resulting from their acts, and imprisonment when no serious harm was effected. These laws proved insufficient for their purpose, and toward the end of the fifteenth century profligacy ran riot in Naples. Ruffiani multiplied in its streets, procuring by force or corruption mult.i.tudes of victims to fill the taverns and brothels of the city. Penalties of extreme severity were proclaimed against them. The Ruffiani were ordered to quit the kingdom, and prost.i.tutes were prohibited from harboring such persons among them. Any woman who disobeyed was condemned to be burned in the forehead with an iron, whipped in the most humiliating manner, and exiled.

Under King Roger a charge of seduction was never taken, but William, the successor of that prince, punished with death the crime of rape. The victim, however, was required to prove that she had shrieked aloud, and that she had preferred her complaint within eight days, or that she had been detained by force. When once a woman had prost.i.tuted herself, she had no right to refuse to yield her person to any one.

In Naples, prost.i.tutes, in spite of the law pa.s.sed to confine brothels to particular quarters, established themselves in the most beautiful streets of the city in palatial buildings, and there, with incessant clamor, congregated a horde of thieves, profligates, and vagabonds of every kind, until the chief quarter became uninhabitable. In 1577 they were ordered to quit the street of Catalana within eight days, under pain of the scourge for the women, the galleys for such of the proprietors as were commoners, while simple banishment was declared against the n.o.bles.

One example of good legislation was the pragmatic law of 1470, to protect unfortunate women against the cupidity, the extortions, and the frauds of tavern-keepers and others. Men were in the habit of going into places of amus.e.m.e.nt with single girls, contracting a heavy debt, and then leaving their victims to pay. These were then given the choice of a disgraceful whipping or an engagement in the house. They often consented, and spent the remainder of their days in dependence on their creditors, without ability to liberate themselves. By the new law, masters of taverns were forbidden to give credit to prost.i.tutes for more than a certain sum, and this only to supply them with food and clothing absolutely necessary. If they exceeded this amount they had no means of legal recovery.

The most remarkable feature in Neapolitan legislation on this subject was the establishment at an unknown, but early date, of the Court of Prost.i.tutes. This tribunal, which sat at Naples, had its peculiar const.i.tution, and had jurisdiction over all cases connected with prost.i.tution, blasphemy, and some other infamous offenses. Toward the end of the sixteenth century it had risen to extraordinary power, and was prolific of abuses. It practiced all kinds of exaction and violence, every species of partiality and injustice, and even presumed to promulgate edicts of its own. The judges flung into prison numbers of young girls, whom they compelled to buy their liberty with money, and sometimes even dared to seize women who, though of lax conduct, could not be included in the professional cla.s.s. This was discovered, and led to a reform of the court in 1589. Its powers were strictly defined, and its form of procedure placed under regulation, while the avenues to corruption were narrowed.

The inst.i.tution existed for nearly a hundred years after this.

In Rome, in the eleventh century, a brothel and a church stood side by side, and five hundred years after, under the pontificate of Paul II., prost.i.tutes were numerous. Statutes were enacted, and many precautions taken, which prove the grossness of manners at that epoch. One convicted of selling a girl to infamy was heavily fined, and if he did not pay within ten days had one foot cut off. The n.o.bility and common people alike indulged habitually in all kinds of excess. Tortures, floggings, brandings, banishment, were inflicted on some to terrify others, but with very incomplete success. To carry off and detain a prost.i.tute against her will was punished by amputation of the right hand, imprisonment, flogging, or exile. The rich, however, invariably bought immunity for themselves.

Among the most extraordinary acts of legislation on this subject was the bull of Clement II., who desired to endow the Church with the surplus gains of the brothel. Every person guilty of prost.i.tution was forced, when disposing of her property, either at death or during life, to a.s.sign half of it to a convent. This regulation was easily eluded, and proved utterly inefficacious. A tribunal was also established having jurisdiction over brothels, upon which a tax was laid, continuing in existence until the middle of the sixteenth century. Efforts were made to confine this cla.s.s of dwellings to a particular quarter, but without success.

In some of the Italian states, as in Lombardy, men were forbidden to give prost.i.tutes an asylum. They were prohibited from appearing among honest citizens, and were prevented from purchasing clothes or food, and from borrowing money by the hire of their persons.

After a time, however, a system of licensed brothels, in imitation of the inst.i.tutions founded at Toulouse and Montpellier, was introduced into parts of Italy, and the brothels became very numerous. There was one at Mantua, and Venice was a very sink of prost.i.tution. In 1421, the government enlisted women in this service to guard the virtue of the other cla.s.ses. A matron was placed over them, who governed them, received their gains, and made a monthly division of profit. The names of several women, the most notorious and beautiful of the Venetian courtesans, are preserved by Nicolo Daglioni. A very small sum was paid them by their patrons.

The laws regulating prost.i.tution and prost.i.tutes seem to have had a wonderful similarity throughout Europe. Among other enactments were those regulating clothing, which were at one time promulgated in every state.