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

by William W. Sanger

There were, however, in some southern provinces, severe laws against prostitution, although some of the penalties seem to have been framed as much with the view of stimulating as of repressing the passions. In one or two cities we find accounts of prostitutes 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 classes at least, was exercised by the institution of chivalry. It was of the essence of that institution 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 lustrum spent in sighs and hopes, the charmer condescended to reward his fidelity with a gracious smile. It is evident that sexual 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.

If, on the other hand, we glance at the literature which flourished in France during the period of the revival of learning, we can not but infer that the morals of the people at large were not pure. During the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, the standard reading of the educated classes among the French was the celebrated Roman de 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 insulting and cynical.[176] They were uniformly depicted as being restrained only by legal difficulties from giving way to the loosest passions; and all men, in like manner, were painted as seducers, adulterers, and violators of young girls. Such was the reading of the best society in France. The Roman de la Rose was to them what Shakspeare is to us.

Nor was it alone of its kind. Of the works which that age has bequeathed to us, nearly all are tainted with the same grossness of language and pruriency of idea. All, or nearly all, breathe the air of the brothel. It was rather a matter of boasting than of shame with the authors. Villon and Regnier seem to plume themselves on their familiarity with scenes of debauch, and their extensive 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 the stage to disseminate their lewd compositions. Though it was still unusual, or even unlawful, for women to appear on the stage in their time, the boys who played female parts were well drilled to the business, and the performances which delighted the towns and villages of France fell but little short, in point of grossness, of the theatrical enormities of the imperial era at Rome.

One may form some idea of the popularity of erotic literature at this period in France from the amazing vocabulary of erotic terms which is gathered from the works of Rabelais, Beroald de Verville, Regnier, 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 synonyms might have been compiled without embracing all of them. Monsieur Dufour, in his conscientious work, fills a couple of pages with the mere words that were employed to express the act of fornication.

Many events likewise indicate a loose state of morals. The history of the incubes and succubes, filling some space in every treatise on demonology, is a most curious feature of the morals of the day. The existence of demons who made a practice of assailing the virtue of girls and boys was admitted by some of the fathers of the Church,[177] who quoted the words of Genesis in support of the singular doctrine. They were of two kinds: incubi, from the Latin incubare, male demons who assailed the chastity of girls; and succubæ, 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 succubæ. For one boy who confessed that a female demon had attacked him in his sleep, and compelled him to minister to her sensuality, there were a score of girls who furnished very tolerable evidence of having yielded their virginity to creatures of the male gender, who, they were satisfied, could be none other than devils. The ecclesiastical writers of the period have preserved a number of scandalous stories of the kind, which were so well credited that Pope Innocent VIII. felt impelled to issue a bull on the subject, and provide the faithful with an efficacious formula of exorcism.

Females, most of whom appeared to be nuns, confessed that they had been subject to the scandalous visits of the demons for long periods of time, and that neither fasting, nor prayer, nor spiritual exercise could release them from the hated plague. Some girls were brought to admit 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 their monstrous proportions, rendered their society a severe affliction, independently of the sin. It was noticed that the women, married or single, who applied to the ecclesiastical authorities for relief from this curious form of torment were almost invariably young and pretty.

In the year 1637 a public discussion took place at Paris on the question, Whether there exist succubæ and incubi, and whether they can procreate their species? The discussion was long and elaborate. It was conducted by a body of learned doctors, in presence of a large audience, composed 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 endeavored to conceal their intercourse with lovers by attributing to them a devilish character, the public was not convinced, and the incubi were not left without believers. The laws still pronounced the penalty of death against all persons, male or female, who had commerce with demons.

Another practice which was brought to a close about the same time was entitled “Le sabat des sorciers,” the witches’ vigil. It appears that, at the earliest times of which we have any record, the inhabitants of France and Germany were in the habit of frequenting nocturnal assemblies in which witchcraft was believed or pretended to occupy a prominent place. In the thirteenth century they were denounced by Pope Gregory IX.,[180] who was satisfied that the devil had to do with them, and that their prime object 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 the witches and their proselytes; that songs and dances followed next in order, and that the whole performance was closed with a scene of promiscuous debauchery.[181] The Inquisition took the matter in hand, and obtained affidavits from several females averring that they had had commerce with demons on these occasions, and relating with singular crudity the peculiar sensations they experienced.[182] On the strength of this evidence prosecutions were instituted, and many persons were condemned and executed.

It has been usual in modern times to regard the persecution of the witches as a proof of the barbarous intolerance of the ancient Church; but, in truth, a careful examination of the evidence leaves no room for doubting that witchcraft was only the cloak of real vices. Most of the persons who were burned in France as sorcerers had really used the popular belief in magic to hide their own debaucheries, and had succeeded in depraving 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 turned the simplicity of the village girls to account in very many instances, and richly earned the severe penalty that was inflicted upon them by the arm of the Church. The vigil, or sabat, disappears from history during the sixteenth century. That it had been for some time before its extinction a haunt of debauchees and a fertile source of prostitution, the writers on demonology and the old chroniclers establish incontrovertibly.