The Middle Ages were a historical period marked by the religious domination of the Catholic Church in Western Europe, creating rigid forms of behavior for the women, seeking to guarantee the maintenance of their feminine virtues, such as virginity, while at the same time releasing the sexual practices of the men. Thus, despite the religious rigidity, prostitution was tolerated within certain parameters, to prevent cases of rape from becoming bigger than they already were. Paid sex thus became an escape valve for male libido.
At the end of the Roman Empire, adherents of Christianity faced prostitution through the conversion of women. According to Lujo Basserman, in his book History of Prostitution - A Cultural Interpretation, when Christians managed to convert a Roman courtesan into a religious, the Romans took revenge killing a Christian, or even dragging them naked through the streets before leaving them in a house of prostitution. Some prostitutes became Catholic saints like Mary of Egypt.
An example of an attempt to end prostitution was carried out by Luís IX, the São Luís, who edited a decree in 1254 expelling prostitutes from French towns and villages, still confiscating their assets. The problems that such a measure would have caused can be imagined when we learn that two years later, in 1256, he changed the order, stating that prostitutes should living away from honorable people and places, confining them to specific places on the outskirts of cities, showing that it was difficult to eliminate the practice of selling the body feminine.
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What the medievals pointed out as the virtue of women was the necessary element for the realization of marriages, since women were considered “public” or “pure”. Many of them, after the rape, fell into prostitution. However, there was the institutionalization of the practice of prostitution between the 14th and 15th centuries. According to historian Jacques Rossiaud, in his book Prostitution in the Middle Ages, there were four levels of prostitution in medieval France: the public houses (controlled by the state), the baths, the private brothels and the autonomous whores.
In addition, the women's age group indicated the stages they had gone through. Around the age of 17, the prostitutes worked in the streets, and after the age of 20, they became toilet maids, selling themselves in these places to the regulars. Around the age of 28, they became pensioners in brothels. After that age, when the beauty of youth had been lost, some prostitutes became pimps in brothels and a few married, the majority retreating to convents created to house sinful women and sorry.
* Image credits: Nickolay Stanev and Shutterstock.com
By Tales Pinto
Graduated in History
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
PINTO, Tales of the Saints. "History of Medieval Prostitution"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/historiag/historia-prostituicao-medieval.htm. Accessed on June 27, 2021.
