The History of Prostitution Part 6

THE EARLY CHRISTIAN ERA.

Christian Teachers preach Chast.i.ty.--Horrible Punishment of Christian Virgins.--Persecution of Women.--Conversion of Prost.i.tutes.--The Gnostics.--The Ascetics.--Conventual Life.--Opinion of the Fathers on Prost.i.tution.--Tax on Prost.i.tutes.--Punishment of Prost.i.tutes under the Greek Emperors.

Perhaps the most marked originality of the Christian doctrine was the stress it laid on chast.i.ty. It has been well remarked that even the most austere of the pagan moralists recommended chast.i.ty on _economical_ grounds alone. The apostles exacted it as a moral and religious duty. They preached against lewdness as fervently as against heathenism. Not one of the epistles contained in the New Testament but inveighs, in the strongest language, against the vices cla.s.sed under the generic head of luxury. Nor can it be doubted that, under divine Providence, the obvious merit of this feature in the new religion exercised a large influence in rallying the better cla.s.s of minds to its support.

From the first, the Christian communities made a just boast of the purity of their morals. Their adversaries met them on this ground at great disadvantage. It was notorious that the college of Vestals had been sustained with great difficulty. Latterly, it had been found necessary to supply vacancies with children, and even under these circ.u.mstances, the number of Vestals buried alive bore but a very small proportion to the number who had incurred this dread penalty. Nor could it be denied that the chast.i.ty of the Roman virgins was, at best, but partial, the purest among them being accustomed to unchaste language and unchaste sights. The Christian congregations, on the contrary, contained numbers of virgins who had devoted themselves to celibacy for the love of Christ. They were modest in their dress, decorous in their manners, chaste in their speech.[145] They refused to attend the theatres; lived frugally and temperately; allowed no dancers at their banquets; used no perfumes, and abstained generally from every practice which could endanger their rigorous continence.[146] Marriage among the Christians was a holy inst.i.tution, whose sole end was the procreation of children. It was not to be used, as was the case too often among the heathen, as a cloak for immoralities. Christ, they said, permitted marriage, but did not permit luxury.[147] The early fathers imposed severe penitences on fornication, adultery, and other varieties of sensuality.

Persecution aided the Church in the great work of purifying public morals, by forcing it to keep in view the Christian distinction between moral and physical guilt. At what time it became usual to condemn Christian virgins to the brothel it is difficult to discover. The practice may have arisen from the hideous custom which enjoined the violation of Roman maidens before execution, if the existence of such a custom can be a.s.sumed on the authority of so loose a chronicler as Suetonius.[148] However this be, this horrible refinement of brutality was in use in the time of Marcus Aurelius.[149] Virgins were seized and required to sacrifice to idols.

Refusing, they were dragged, often naked, through the streets to a brothel, and there abandoned to the lubricity of the populace. The piety of the early Christians prompted the belief that on many conspicuous occasions the Almighty had interfered to protect his chosen children in this dire calamity.[150] St. Agnes, having refused to sacrifice to Vesta, was said to have been stripped naked by the order of the prefect; but, no sooner had her garments fallen, than her hair grew miraculously, and enveloped her as in a shroud. Dragged to the brothel, a wonderful light shone from her body, and the by-standers, appalled at the sight, instead of offering her violence, fell at her knees, till, at last, the prefect's son, bolder and more reckless than the others, advanced to consummate her sentence, and was struck dead at her feet by a thunderbolt.[151]

Theodora, a n.o.ble lady of Alexandria, was equally undaunted and equally faithful to her creed. The judge allowed her three days to deliberate, warning her of the consequences of obstinacy. She was firm, and was led into a house of prost.i.tution. There, in the midst of debauched persons of both s.e.xes, she prayed to G.o.d for help, and the sight of the half-naked virgin bent in fervent prayer struck awe into the minds of the people. At last a soldier declared that he would fulfill the judgment. Thrust into a cell with Theodora, he confessed that he was a Christian, dressed her in his clothes, and enabled her to escape. He was seized and executed; but the Christian virgin, refusing to purchase her safety at such a price, gave herself up, and died with him.[152] Similar stories are contained in several of the Christian fathers.[153]

There is, unhappily, no reason to doubt that in many instances the brutal mandate of the pagan judges was rigorously executed, and that the faith of many Christian virgins was a.s.sailed through the channel of their virtue.

This appears to have been frequently the case during the persecution of Diocletian, when we hear of Christian women being suspended naked by one foot, and tortured in other savage and infernal ways. The practice led to the clear enunciation of the important doctrine of moral chast.i.ty, already stated by Christ himself in the Gospel. The Romans could not conceive a chaste soul in a body that had endured pollution, and hence for Lucretia there was no resource but the poniard. It was left for St. Augustin, St.

Jerome, and the other fathers, to a.s.sert boldly that the crime lay in the intention and not in the act; that a chaste heart might inhabit a body which brutal force had soiled; and that the Christian virgins whom an infamous judge had sentenced to the brothel were none the less acceptable servants of G.o.d.[154]

The only retaliation attempted by the early Christians was the conversion of prost.i.tutes. The works of the fathers contain many narratives of remarkable conversions of this character, and a learned Jesuit once compiled a voluminous work on the subject. The Egyptian Mary was the type of the cla.s.s. She confessed to Zosimus that she had spent seventeen years in the practice of prost.i.tution at Alexandria. Her heart being opened, she took s.h.i.+p for Jerusalem, paid her pa.s.sage by exercising her calling on board, and expiated her sins by a life of penitence in the woods of Judaea. She lived, the legend said, forty-seven years in the woods, naked and alone, without seeing a man. A chapel was built at Paris during the Middle Ages in her honor. The painted windows, representing her in the exercise of her calling on s.h.i.+pboard, were in existence at a very late period.[155]

In revenge for the victories of the Christians, the pagans accused them of committing the grossest immoralities. For many centuries the early Christian congregations met under circ.u.mstances of great difficulty, in secret hiding-places, in catacombs. Their religious rites were performed mysteriously. Lights were often extinguished to foil the object of spies and informers. These peculiarities served as the pretext for many obvious calumnies. It was commonly believed, even by men of the calibre of Tacitus, that the Christian rites bore strong resemblances to those rites of Isis which, at an early period of Roman history, had created such alarm and horror at Rome. Nor were these calumnies confined to the heathen. In the third and fourth centuries, when sectarian rivalries menaced the destruction of the Church, similar accusations were freely bandied. That they were wholly unfounded in every case seems difficult to believe, in the face of the clear statements of such writers as Epiphanes. What the precise doctrines of the various sects called Adamites, Cainites, Nicolaites, and some subdivisions of Gnostics, may have been, it were perhaps superfluous now to inquire; but it seems not unreasonable to suppose that, in some instances, men of depraved instincts may have availed themselves of the cloak of Christianity to conceal the gratification of sensual habits; or, on the other hand, that minds in a state of religious exaltation may have stumbled upon impurities in the search for the state of nature. In comparatively late times we have seen, in America as well as Savoy, a few persons of weak minds give way to religious enthusiasm in a manner that warred with public decency. Similar aberrations may have been more frequent during the seething era which preceded the establishment of Christianity, and prost.i.tution, in some shape or other, may have again become a religious rite in certain deluded or knavish sects. Nor was it unnatural, unjust though it certainly was, for the heathen to charge Christianity at large with the vices of those of its followers who wors.h.i.+ped in a state of nudity, and accompanied prayer with promiscuous intercourse.[156]

Even in the bosom of the true Church practices would break out from time to time which jarred sadly with the moral theory of the Apostles. Many persons of both s.e.xes, under the influence of religious enthusiasm, sought relief for their troubled souls in solitude, and unwisely attempted to mortify the flesh by practices which too often sharpened the appet.i.tes.

One only needs to read the eloquent effusions of St. Jerome to become satisfied that the course of life adopted by many early Christian recluses, of both s.e.xes, must have led unwittingly to moral aberrations.

Young men and young women, devoting themselves to a life of seclusion in the woods, living like wild beasts, without clothing and without shame, would naturally revive the system of religious prost.i.tution in a more or less modified shape. On the other hand, in many parts of Europe, Christian churches thought it not unsafe to accept the legacies of the heathen religions in the shapes of idols, forms, and ceremonies. Saints succeeded to the honors of G.o.ds; dances in honor of Venus became dances in honor of the Virgin; statues which were originally intended to represent heathen deities were saved from destruction by being adopted as fair representations of Christian saints. Until very recent times there existed, in various parts of Europe, statues of Priapus, under the name of some saint, retaining the indecency of the idol, and a.s.sociated with the belief of some simple women that the image possessed the power a.s.signed it in mythology. In processions, during the third and fourth centuries, sacred virgins were seen to wear round their necks the obscene symbol of the old wors.h.i.+p, and in places the holy bread retained the shape of the Roman _coliphia_ and _siligines_. St. John Chrysostom complains that in places he designates, women were baptized in a state of nature, without even being permitted to veil their s.e.x.[157] A majority of Christian teachers, unwilling to deprive the ma.s.ses of a superst.i.tious convenience afforded them by paganism, allowed them to pray to certain saints not only for fertility, but for the removal of impotence from husbands and lovers.[158]

To these immoral features must be added occasional instances of looseness in conventual life. The preamble of various edicts in France and elsewhere leaves no room to doubt that, in several instances, immoral persons had a.s.sumed the religious garb, and collected themselves together in religious communities for the purpose of gratifying sensuality.

These were the aids Christianity afforded to prost.i.tution in its various forms. They are a mere trifle in comparison with the obstacles it threw in its way. Independently of the effect produced by the moral teaching of St.

Paul and the Apostles, the rising power of the Church was vigorously exerted to modify the legislation both of the Eastern and Western empires on the subject of s.e.xual depravities.

The fathers did not uniformly proscribe prost.i.tution. Saint Augustin said, "Suppress prost.i.tution, and capricious l.u.s.ts will overthrow society."[159]

Jerome recognized prost.i.tution, and argued that, as Mary Magdalene had been saved, so might any prost.i.tute who repented.[160] The canons of the apostles excluded from the ministry all persons who were convicted of having commerce with prost.i.tutes, and excommunicated those who were guilty of rape, but they pa.s.sed no general sentence on prost.i.tutes.[161] But the apostolic const.i.tution branded as sinful any s.e.xual intercourse _quae non adhibetur ad generationem filiorum sed tota ad voluptatem spectat_.[162]

The same principle is a.s.serted in various pa.s.sages of the work; wine being denounced as a provocation to impurity, and the faithful are warned against the society of lewd persons (_scortatores_). The Council of Elvira p.r.o.nounced the penalty of excommunication against bawds and prost.i.tutes, but it expressly commanded priests to receive at the communion-table prost.i.tutes who had married Christians.[163] St. Augustin conceived that no church should admit prost.i.tutes to the altar till they had abandoned the calling.[164] A similar doctrine was expressed by the Council of Toledo. At a later period, as we advance in mediaeval history, we find the councils recognizing prost.i.tution, and prost.i.tutes as a cla.s.s. In 1431, at the Council of Basle, a holy father presented a paper on the subject of prost.i.tution, in which it was implied to be the only safeguard of good morals. A century later, the Council of Milan took especial pains to identify prost.i.tutes as a cla.s.s. They were to wear a distinctive dress, with no ornaments of gold, silver, or silk; to reside in places expressly designated by the bishops, at a distance from cathedrals; to avoid taverns and hostelries. The execution of the decree was intrusted to the bishops and the civil magistrates.[165]

The _vectigal_ or tax paid by all persons subsisting by prost.i.tution was exacted by the emperors, from Caligula to Theodosius. It was usually collected every five years. Zosimus accuses Constantine of having enlarged and remodeled the tax, but apparently without foundation. The early Christians made it a subject of reproach to the emperors.[166] In consequence of their a.s.saults, Theodosius abandoned that portion of the law which laid a tax on bawds, leaving the tax on prost.i.tutes. The latter was levied as rigorously as ever. A contemporary writer describes the imperial agents hunting for prost.i.tutes in taverns and houses of prost.i.tution, and forcing them to purchase, by payment of the tax, the right of pursuing their calling.[167] At length, in the fifth century, prost.i.tution and the tax on prost.i.tutes, or _chrysarguron_, were formally abolished by the Emperor Anastasius I., and the records and rolls of the collectors burned. It is said that some time afterward, the emperor gave out that he had repented of what he had done, and desired to see the _chrysarguron_ re-established. The announcement gave great joy to the debauchees, and numbers of persons prepared to avail themselves of the re-enactment of the law. The emperor let it be known that he desired to have matters placed, so far as could be, on their old footing, and would therefore desire to collect as many as possible of the old rolls and records. They were gathered together at all parts, and laid at the imperial feet. Notice was then given to the people to meet at the circus on a given day; when they were all a.s.sembled, the whole collection of doc.u.ments was burned, amid the frantic applause of the populace.[168]

It has been a.s.serted, however, that the _chrysarguron_ was revived subsequently, and was levied under Justinian. That legislator altered the old Roman laws regarding prost.i.tution, and relieved prost.i.tutes from the ineffaceable ban of infamy which the republican jurisprudence had laid on them. He permitted the marriage of citizens with prost.i.tutes, and encouraged it by his example. His own wife, the Empress Theodora, had been a ballet-dancer and a prost.i.tute. When she attained the imperial dignity, her first thought was of her old companions. She built a magnificent palace-prison on the south sh.o.r.e of the Bosphorus, and in one night caused five hundred prost.i.tutes in Constantinople to be seized and conveyed thither. They were kindly treated; their every wish was gratified; but no man entered their asylum. The experiment was a complete failure. Most of the girls committed suicide in their despair, and the remainder soon died of _ennui_ and vexation.

Theodosius had laid heavy penalties on brothel-keepers;[169] Justinian reiterated them, and increased their weight. The seizure and prost.i.tution of a girl he punished with death. He who connived at the prost.i.tution of females was to be expelled from the city where he lived, and any person harboring him was to be fined one hundred gold pieces. Whatever legislation could effect to uproot the system of procurers and public prost.i.tution, Justinian did;[170] but his laws contain no trace of any harsh policy toward prost.i.tutes. Those unfortunate creatures he regarded with an indulgent humanity, which, for the sake of human nature, one may perhaps ascribe to the kindly sympathy of the empress.

CHAPTER VI.

FRANCE.--HISTORY DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.

Morals in Gaul.--Gynecea.--Capitulary of Charlemagne.--Morals in the Middle Ages.--Edict of 1254.--Decree of 1358, re-establis.h.i.+ng Prost.i.tution.--Roi des Ribauds.--Ordinance of Philip abolis.h.i.+ng Prost.i.tution.--Sumptuary Laws.--Punishment of Procuresses.-- Templars.--The Provinces.--Prohibition in the North.--Licensed Brothels at Toulouse, Montpellier, and Avignon.--Penalties South.-- Effect of Chivalry.--Literature.--Erotic Vocabulary.--Incubes and Succubes.--Sorcery.--The Sabat.--Flagellants.--Adamites.--Jour des Innocents.--Wedding Ceremonies.--Preachers of the Day.

The Roman accounts of the Gauls represent them as leading virtuous lives.

_Severa matrimonia_ is the expression of the historian. This would appear to apply more particularly to the women than the men. As is usually the case among semi-civilized nations, the Gauls, Germans, Franks, and most of the aboriginal nations of Northern Europe imposed upon the women obligations of chast.i.ty which they did not always accept for themselves.

Adultery, and, in certain cases, fornication, they punished capitally; but, if the early ecclesiastical writers are to be believed, these rude warriors were addicted to coa.r.s.e 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 females were concerned, there is no doubt the Roman writers judged correctly. Whether the severity of the climate tempered the ardor of northern sensuality, or the harshness of the law kept the pa.s.sions in check, the female population of Gaul, from the time of the Roman conquest for at least two or three centuries, was undoubtedly virtuous.

Prost.i.tution was comparatively unknown. An old law or usage directed that prost.i.tutes should be stoned, but we do not hear of this law being carried into effect.

Simultaneously with the consolidation of the kingdom of the Franks, we note that concubinage was an established inst.i.tution, recognized by the law and sanctioned by the Church. All the Frank chiefs who could afford the luxury kept harems, or, as they were called in that day, _gynecea_, peopled by young 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 defined, but still whose condition was not necessarily disreputable. How the people lived we are not so well qualified to say, but no doubt prost.i.tution prevailed to some extent among them, though in all probability the public morals were purer than they became toward the tenth and eleventh centuries.

Perhaps the first authentic legislative notice of prost.i.tution in France is to be found in the Capitularies of Charlemagne. That monarch, who seems to have seen no mischief in the system of _gynecea_, was severe upon common prost.i.tution. He directed vulgar prost.i.tutes to be scourged, and a like penalty to be inflicted on all who harbored them, kept houses of debauch, or lent their a.s.sistance to prost.i.tutes or debauchees. In other words, Charlemagne treated the same act as a crime among the poor, and as an excusable habit among the rich.

Our information regarding society in the Middle Ages is necessarily obscure and scanty, but we have enough to learn that immorality prevailed to an alarming degree during the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Probably the rich men who had their _gynecea_ were the most virtuous cla.s.s in the nation. Most of the kings set an example of loose intercourse with the ladies of the court. The armies of the time were noted for the ravages they committed among the female population of the countries where they were quartered. Both of these cla.s.ses seem to have yielded 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 hospitality to well-proportioned strangers, etc., etc. These obscene works of art formerly enc.u.mbered the doors, windows, arches, and niches of many of the finest Gothic cathedrals in France. Modesty has lately insisted on their removal, but many of the works themselves have been rescued from destruction by the zeal of antiquaries, and it is believed some have still escaped the iconoclastic hand of the modern Church. When such was the condition of the clergy, and such the notoriety of that condition, it would be unjustifiable to expect purity of morals among the people.

Louis VIII. made an effort to regulate prost.i.tution. It proved fruitless, and it was left to the next king of the same name, Louis IX., to make the first serious endeavor to check the progress of the evil in France. His edict, which dates from 1254, directed that all prost.i.tutes, and persons making a living indirectly out of prost.i.tution, such as brothel-keepers and procurers, should be forthwith exiled from the kingdom. It was partially put in force. A large number of unfortunate females were seized, and imprisoned 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 prost.i.tutes, and exiled many more, others arose to take their places. _A clandestine traffic succeeded to the former open debauchery_, and in the dark the evils of the disease were necessarily aggravated. More than that, as has usually been the case when prost.i.tution has been violently and suddenly suppressed, the number of virtuous women became less, and corruption invaded the family circle. Tradesmen complained that since the pa.s.sage of the ordinance they found it impossible to guard the virtue of their wives and daughters against the enterprises of the military and the students.

At last, complaints of the evil effects of the ordinance became so general and so pressing that, after a lapse of two years, it was repealed. A new royal decree re-established prost.i.tution under rules which, though not particularly enlightened or humane, still placed it on a sounder footing than it had occupied before the royal attention had been directed to the subject. Prost.i.tutes were forbidden to live in certain parts of the city of Paris, were not allowed to wear jewelry or fine stuffs, and were placed under the direct supervision of a police magistrate, whose official or popular t.i.tle was _Le roi des ribauds_ (the king of ribaldry). The duties of this officer appear to have been a.n.a.logous to those of the Roman aediles who had charge of prost.i.tution. 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 maintenance of the office of _Roi des ribauds_ that it was usually filled by reckless, depraved men, who discharged its duties more in view of their private interests and the gratification of their sensuality than from regard to the public morals. Instances of gross tyranny were proved against them, and, in the absence of evidence to show that their appointment had been beneficial to the public, but little regret was felt when the office was abolished by Francis I.

To return to Louis IX. In his old age he repented of what he had done, and returned to the spirit of his early ordinance. In his instructions to his son and successor, he adjured him to remove from his country the shameful stain of prost.i.tution, and indicated plainly enough that the best mode of attaining that end would be by re-enacting the ordinance of 1254. Philip dutifully fulfilled his father's request. Prost.i.tution 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 legislative act in more modern times, Philip's ordinance was too obviously at variance with public policy and popular sentiment to be carried into effect. It was quietly allowed to remain a dead letter, and, with probably few exceptions, the prost.i.tutes of Paris pursued their calling unmolested.

A few years afterward, its nullification was authoritatively sanctioned by fresh sumptuary laws. A royal edict directed courtesans to wear a shoulder-knot of a particular color as a badge of their calling. The whole force of the government was rallied to enforce this rule, and also those which had been enacted by Louis IX. The records of the court contain innumerable reports of the arrests of prost.i.tutes for violating these enactments. When they had taken up their abode in a prohibited street, they were imprisoned and dislodged; when their offense was wearing unlawful garments or jewelry, the forbidden objects 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 cla.s.s escaped with a fine. There are records of cases in which the procuress was exposed naked to the insults of the mob for a whole day, and toward evening the hair on her body was burned off with a flaming torch. Others again were chased through the city in a state of nudity, and pelted with stones. These barbarous penalties appear to have been very much to the taste of the people. Procuresses have always been an odious cla.s.s, and it is not surprising to find that the punishment of a notorious wretch of the cla.s.s was observed as a joyous holiday by the populace of the French capital. On the other hand, the prost.i.tutes themselves were often subjects of public sympathy.

Peculiar reasons operated at this period to produce a favorable sentiment with regard to prost.i.tutes. The horrible depravities of the Templars were becoming known. Society was horror-struck at the symptom of a revival of the worst vice of the ancients. There have been, as is known, ingenious and eloquent efforts made, in comparatively recent times, to throw a veil over the corruptions of the Templars, and to prove that they fell victims to royal jealousy, but the argument is not sustained by the facts.

Doc.u.ments 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 monstrous propensities. That this was the opinion which prevailed in Paris at the time of the outburst which finally led to the suppression of the order, there is no room to question. It is easy to understand how the horror such discoveries must have awakened would lead men to entertain more lenient views with regard to a vice which had at least the merit of being in conformity with natural instinct.

Thus far of Paris only. During the Middle Ages, as is well known, most of the provinces of France were self-governing communities, which administered their own affairs, and received no police regulations from the crown. A complete examination of the subject throughout France would therefore involve as many histories as there were provinces. Our s.p.a.ce, of course, forbids any thing of the kind, and we can only glance at leading divisions.

Most of the northern people had adopted, partly from the old Germanic const.i.tutions and partly from the Roman law, severe provisions against prost.i.tution, but they were nowhere, apparently, put in force.

Occasionally a notorious brothel-keeper or professional procuress was severely punished, but prost.i.tutes were rarely molested. In the north and west of France, indeed, toleration was obviously the natural 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 seigneur to levy toll upon prost.i.tutes exercising their calling within the limits of his jurisdiction. Some old t.i.tles and records refer to this practice. One sets down the tax paid by each prost.i.tute at four _deniers_ to the seigneur. Others intimate that the tax may be paid in money or in kind, at the option of the seigneur. In many seigniories this singular tax was regarded with the contempt it deserved.

In the south of France we meet with a different spectacle. There prost.i.tution had long been a deeply-seated feature of society. The warm pa.s.sions of the southerners required a vent, and, in the absence of some safety-valve, it was obvious to all that the ungovernable l.u.s.ts of the men would soon kindle the inflammable pa.s.sions of the dark southern women.

Public houses of prost.i.tution were therefore established in three of the largest cities of the south--Toulouse, Avignon, and Montpellier.

That of Toulouse was established by royal charter, which declared that the profits of the enterprise should be shared equally by the city and the University. The building appropriated for the purpose was large and commodious, bearing the name of the _Grand Abbaye_. In it were lodged not only the resident prost.i.tutes 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, and that the fees exacted from the customers were divided between the two public bodies to which the enterprise was granted. They were obliged to wear white scarfs and white ribbons or cords on one of their arms, as a badge of their calling.

When the unfortunate monarch Charles VI. visited Toulouse, the prost.i.tutes of the Abbaye met him in a body, and presented an address. The king received them graciously, and promised to grant them whatever largess they should request. They begged to be released from the duty of wearing the white badges, and the king, faithful to his promise, granted the boon. A royal declaration specially exempted them from the old rule.[171] But the people of Toulouse, no doubt irritated by the want of some distinguis.h.i.+ng mark between their wives and daughters and the "foolish women," by common consent mobbed the prost.i.tutes who availed themselves of the king's ordinance. None of them could venture to appear in public without being liable to insult, and even bodily injury. Resolutely bent on carrying their point, the women 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 pet.i.tion was presented to him by the _capitones_, praying that he would take such steps as his wisdom might seem fit to mediate between the prost.i.tutes and the people, and restore to the Abbaye its former prosperity. The king acted with energy. He denounced the a.s.sailants of the prost.i.tutes 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 royal arms any more than they did the "foolish women." On the contrary, a.s.saults on the Abbaye became more numerous than ever. The prost.i.tutes complained incessantly of having suffered violence at the hands of wild youths who refused to pay for their pleasures; and the civic authorities proving incompetent to check the disorder, the prost.i.tutes found themselves compelled to seek refuge in a new part of the city, where, it is to be presumed, they enlisted adequate support among their own individual acquaintances. For a hundred years they inhabited their new domicil in peace and quiet. The University then dislodging them in order to occupy the spot, the city built them a new abbaye beyond the precincts of the respectable wards. It was called the _Chateau vert_, and its fame and profits equaled that of the old abbaye.

About the middle of the sixteenth century the city yielded to the scruples of some moralists of the day, and ceded the revenues of the Chateau vert to the hospitals; but the grant being made on condition that the hospitals should receive and cure all females attacked by venereal disease, it was found, after six years' trial, that it cost more than it yielded. The hospitals surrendered 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 prost.i.tution 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 this course, founded on the scenes of immorality he had himself witnessed in the suburbs, and the country in the neighborhood of Toulouse; but the city authorities adhered to their opinion, and contented themselves with arresting some of the most shameless of the free prost.i.tutes.[173] From that time forth, prost.i.tution at Toulouse was subject to the same rules as in the rest of France.

The history of prost.i.tution at Montpellier was a.n.a.logous. At an early period, the monopoly which the crown had granted to the city being farmed out to individuals, 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 speculator of the day, but the holders of the monopoly prosecuted him, and obtained a perpetual injunction restraining him from lodging or harboring prost.i.tutes.

At Avignon prost.i.tution was legalized by Jane of Naples just before the cession of the city to the Pope. The ordinance establis.h.i.+ng a public brothel seems to have been drawn with care, and, though doubts have lately been thrown on its authenticity, they are not so well founded as to justify its rejection. Prost.i.tutes 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 to examine the girls, and confine separately all who seemed infected. No Jew was allowed to enter the brothel on any pretext.

Its doors were to be closed on saints' days, and special regulations guarded against the prevalence of scenes of riot and disorder.[174]

This ordinance seems to have remained in force during the whole occupation of Avignon by the Popes, and its penalties were occasionally inflicted 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 to Christendom. Petrarch complains that it was far more depraved than old Rome, and a popular proverb confirms, at least in part, his opinion.[175]

There were, however, in some southern provinces, severe laws against prost.i.tution, although some of the penalties seem to have been framed as much with the view of stimulating as of repressing the pa.s.sions. In one or two cities we find accounts of prost.i.tutes and their customers being 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 the water's side. There she was thrust into an iron cage, in which she was forced to kneel. When the cage door was closed, she was thrown into the river, and allowed to remain under water long enough to produce temporary suffocation. This shocking punishment was repeated several times.

A potent influence over the morals of the southern people, the higher cla.s.ses at least, was exercised by the inst.i.tution of chivalry. It was of the essence of that inst.i.tution to promote spiritual at the expense of sensual gratification. The chevalier adored his mistress in secret for years, without even 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 l.u.s.trum spent in sighs and hopes, the charmer condescended to reward his fidelity with a gracious smile. It is evident that s.e.xual intercourse must have been rare among people who set so high a value on the merest compliments and slightest tokens of affection; nor can there be any question but the effect of chivalry was to impart a high tone to the feelings and language of society, and to soften the manners of all who came within its influence.