The History of Prostitution: Its Extent, Causes, and Effects throughout the World

by William W. Sanger

Peculiar reasons operated at this period to produce a favorable sentiment with regard to prostitutes. 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. 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 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 space, 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 constitutions and partly from the Roman law, severe provisions against prostitution, but they were nowhere, apparently, put in force. Occasionally a notorious brothel-keeper or professional procuress was severely punished, but prostitutes 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 prostitutes exercising their calling within the limits of his jurisdiction. Some old titles and records refer to this practice. One sets down the tax paid by each prostitute 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 prostitution had long been a deeply-seated feature of society. The warm passions of the southerners 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 of the dark southern women. Public houses of prostitution 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 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, 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 prostitutes 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 distinguishing mark between their wives and daughters and the “foolish women,” by common consent mobbed the prostitutes 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 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 royal arms any more than they did the “foolish women.” On the contrary, assaults on the Abbaye became more numerous than ever. The prostitutes 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 prostitutes 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 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 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 prostitutes.[173] From that time forth, prostitution at Toulouse was subject to the same rules as in the rest of France.

The history of prostitution at Montpellier was analogous. 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 prostitutes.

At Avignon prostitution was legalized by Jane of Naples just before the cession of the city to the Pope. The ordinance establishing 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. 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 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]