Other aids to prostitution were obtained from the very ranks of the Church. During the Middle Ages numbers of strange sects appeared, many of which relied for success on the favor they allowed to sensuality. At the present day it is not easy to determine what proportion of the stories that are in print respecting many of these sects were the fruit of sectarian jealousy on the part of their rivals; some of them were doubtless calumniated, but there are others about whose character and practices there is no room for controversy. The Flagellants, for instance, who counted eight hundred thousand proselytes in France in the fourteenth century, were unquestionably depraved. They marched in procession, men and women together, through the cities of France, each member of the society using the whip freely on the bare back of the person before him; and at night they assembled in country places, and proceeded to more serious flagellations. The opinion of learned persons ascribed erotic effects to these flagellations, it being said, apparently with truth, that when the flagellants had excited their senses by their discipline, they gave way to frantic debauchery. However this be, it is plain that the spectacle of naked men and women marching in procession and scourging one another can not but have been provocative of prostitution.[184]
Another similar sect was the Adamites, who argued that nudity was the law of nature, and that clothes were an abomination in the sight of God. It is said that, at first, the Adamites insisted on nudity only during their religious exercises, and that their proselytes stripped themselves within the place of worship; but one, Picard, who became a leading authority in the sect, took the ground that their principles should be carried out boldly in the face of the world. He and his followers, male and female, accordingly appeared in the streets in the costume in which they were born. The Inquisition very properly laid hands on them, punished some, and exiled the others.[185]
Again: if we pass from individual accidents to the state of society at large, we shall find many features that can not have been aids to virtue. Allusion has already been made to the obscene character of much of the early poetry of France, and to the excessive grossness of those works especially which obtained, and perhaps deserved, the widest popularity. Many of the customs of the day were equally adverse to sound morals. To cite one by way of example: On the Jour des Innocents, which fell on the 28th of December, men were allowed to invade the bed-chambers of girls, and, if they could find them in bed, to administer the chastisement which used to be common in schools. Hence arose the proverbial expression, Donner les innocents à quelqu’un, which meant to birch a person on the bare skin. No doubt the old chroniclers were justified in saying that when the girl was worth the trouble, the invader of the chamber was not satisfied with inflicting a chastisement.[186]
Marriages were attended with ceremonies far grosser than any that were practiced in Rome. It was not only decorous, it was fashionable, both for men and women, to spy out the bed-chamber of the newly-wedded couple, and the fortunate man or girl who had contrived to see the interior of the room through a chink in the wall or a hole in the door was loudly applauded when the result of his or her discoveries was made known.[187] The invention of bridal chambers is therefore not original in America, as some have supposed.
Strange to say, neither the lewdness of the poets nor the grossness of the social habits of the times strikes one as more singular than the tone of the sermons which were delivered in Paris at the same period. One of the most famous preachers of the day was Maillard, who rose to eminence under Louis XI. His sermons on the luxury and corruptions of the times were very popular. We find him cursing the “burgesses” who, for the sake of gain, let their houses to prostitutes: “Vultis vivere de posterioribus meretricum,” he cries, indignantly. He denounces with extraordinary virulence the “crimes of impudicity which are committed in churches,” and which “the pillars and nave would denounce, if they had eyes and a voice.” He did not spare his congregation. Turning fiercely to the women who sat before him, he apostrophized them: “Dicatis, vos, mulieres, posuistis, posuistis filias ad peccandum? vos, mulieres, per vestros traitus impudiæ, provocastis alios ad peccandum? Et vos, maquerellæ, quid dicitis?” He thunders against this latter class, the procuresses, who ought, he says, to be burned at the stake, especially when, as is often the case, they are both the mothers and the venders of their daughters. Words fail him to denounce the intercourse of abandoned women with ecclesiastics; he invokes the divine wrath upon those of his congregation quæ dant corpus curialibus, monachis, presbyteris. Both he and other famous preachers of the day pronounced maledictions upon lewd convents, which some of them say are mere seraglios for the bishops and monks, where every abomination is practiced.
It was estimated that at this time, say the fifteenth century, when Paris was comparatively a small city, it contained five to six thousand prostitutes, who were said by an Italian to be far more beautiful and attractive than any prostitutes he had seen elsewhere.
CHAPTER VII.
FRANCE.—HISTORY FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO LOUIS XIII.
The Court.—Louis IX. to Charles V.—Charles VI.—Agnes Sorel.—Louis XI.—Charles VIII.—Louis XII.—Francis I.—La Belle Feronniere.—Henry II.—Diana de Poictiers.—Lewd Books and Pictures.—Catharine of Medicis.—Margaret.—Henry IV.—Mademoiselle de Entragues.—Henry III.—Mignons.—Influence of the Ligue.—Indecency of Dress.—Theatricals.—Ordinance of 1560.—Police Regulations.