Public morality was carefully guarded under the rule of the Visigoths, only to be tolerated during the Middle Ages, since which time it has been at one time lax, at another severely regulated: at the present day we find it in a strange state of confusion.
In the year 586-601, the king of the Visigoths of Spain forbade prostitution in a most absolute manner under pain of severe punishment.
The daughter and the wife born of free parents, convicted of having delivered themselves over to abandonment, received for the first offence three hundred blows with a stick and were ignominiously driven from the city; a relapse was punished with the same corporal punishment, after which the culprit was handed over to a poor person, who was obliged to employ her in performing the most menial offices. If the parents were convicted of being accomplices and of having participated in the gain derived by their daughter’s prostitution, each one received one hundred blows. The slave who gave herself up publicly to libertinage received three hundred blows, and when she was sent back to her master, her head was shaved, and she was banished from the city or sold in a place from whence she could not return. The master who refused to submit to these stipulations of the law received in public fifty blows with a stick or a whip, and the slave became the property of some poor man pointed out by the king or the judge, under condition of never being seen in the city again. If the master had participated in the debauchery of his slave, that is if he had reaped any profit, he received the same chastisement as the culprit.
This decree, made especially to repress prostitution in the cities, applied equally to women of ill fame who infested the boroughs, the villages, and the country at large.
This was at the commencement of the seventh century, and such were the severities of the laws passed by the king of the barbarians, Recard by name. The power of the Visigoths was broken a hundred years afterwards by the Arabs. The conquered fled to the hilly country, taking refuge in the mountains of the Asturias; but what laws were in force amongst them we do not know—we only know that the manners of the age were shameful. Perpetual wars, the capture and consequent pillage of villages, the license of the soldiery, helped to constitute a state of things not at all favourable for the developement of female chastity. The Christians and the Mussulmans held in captivity the women taken in battle and treated them as slaves.
The Arabs were soon in their turn conquered by the Moors, and, as the struggle was less bloody, the two people mingled and exercised a mutual influence over one another; but the influence of the Arabs was more direct. “The loose manners of the East,” says M. Guardia, “and the luxury ever prevalent amongst orientals, were impalpably engrafted on the austerer habits of the Christians. Chivalry was found to be perfectly compatible with debauchery.” The corruption of manners made rapid strides. Prostitution reappeared in all its forms; nor was it, as amongst the Arabs, hampered by municipal restrictions or fettered by arbitrary and severe legislation.
In the fifteenth century the old regulations were resuscitated, and immorality found itself once more compelled to bow to the dicta of priests. Nevertheless these rigorous measures proved that the remedy was worse than the evil. Secret debauchery took the place of public libertinage, and clandestine prostitution increased accordingly.
In the year 1552, Charles V. promulgated an edict against the keepers of houses of ill fame, considerably augmenting the existing punishments. Four years later this law was confirmed by Philip II.
The sequel, however, proves that laws were powerless against public corruption. Immorality is buoyant and contagious, and never so mischievous as when it is hidden.
The end of the fifteenth century witnessed a reform. Prostitution came to be regarded as a branch of the public administration, and placed under severe laws and precise regulations.