History of Prostitution In Medieval Period

1. Prepared by: Jaylyn B. Geronimo.
BSED 3-F (SS)

2. • Prostitution thrived in the Middle Ages, whether it was
approved by the Church or not. In larger towns,
prostitutes could practice their trade in anonymity and
it was regarded as an honest and essential profession.
• For a time, the Church actually approved of
prostitution. Ironically, the practice was regarded as a
way of preventing adultery and homosexuality on a
larger scale, so it was viewed a necessary evil. St.
Thomas Aquinas, one of the sterner theologians,
wrote: “If prostitution were to be suppressed, careless
lusts would overthrow society.”

3. • The most respectable prostitutes worked in
brothels, or “stews.” Most villages had one. In
some villages, prostitutes had to identify
themselves by particular pieces of clothing, such
as a veil with a yellow stripe. Women who
practiced outside of a brothel were often
exposed to the harsher elements of society. Some
were imprisoned, tortured or mutilated.
• A brothel was an establishment where a number
of prostitutes gathered to work, and sometimes
live.

4. • Easy women" could be procured in
the countryside and in most urban centers,
at fairs and weddings, in brothels, in public
baths, and on street corners.
Countless laws, ordinances, and regulations
governing the practice of prostitution stand as
proof of its ubiquity.

5. • There
were public and private prostitutes, streetwalk
ers and cloistered prostitutes. Some plied
their trade in a single location for their
entire careers; others moved from village to
village, following caravans of merchants or
going from fair to fair.

6. • The Medieval Church certainly viewed
fornication as a mortal sin-and people may
remember Chaucer's Summoner, always on
the quest for 'bawdy women'-though, in
practice, the clerical authorities took a fairly
liberal approach when it came to the whole
question of enforcement.
• This involved acceptance of licensed brothels
as a 'necessary evil'.

7. Reasons why women became
prostitutes:
• In one study of prostitutes in Dijon between
1440 and 1540, out of 77 cases, only 11
entered the profession by choice. Of the
remaining women, some were prostituted
by relatives or godparents. Poverty drove
many women to prostitution, as
did family conflict and estrangement.

8. • A woman who was disgraced for one reason
or another might find prostitution to be the
only means available for her to make a living.
• Twenty-one women in the Dijon study were
forced to become prostitutes after being
disgraced by rape. In some locales, simply
pulling a woman's head covering off of her
head was enough to declare her a whore.

9. Reformers:
• Thomas of Chobham was prepared to allow
that the closure of such establishments might
lead to even greater offenses.
• St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the greatest of
the Church Fathers, took the same pragmatic
view, saying that "If you do away with harlots,
the world will be consumed with lust."

10. • For Thomas Aquinas prostitution was likened
to a sewer in a palace; take it away and the
building would fill with pollution. As Thomas
viewed it, a world without prostitutes was a
world full of sodomites, by far the greatest
offense!

11. Decision:
• So, for both Church and State, the message
was disapproval but acceptance. The
Reformers brought disapproval and
suppression, part of a more general attack of
the lax moral standards of the old Catholic
world. Prostitution survived, of course, but
under increasingly adverse conditions.

12. Restrictions on Prostitution
• Restrictions on prostitution varied widely by
location, but a few common threads exist.
Prostitutes could not work during Lent or
during mass. They had to wear some
outer sign of their trade; sometimes this
simply meant not wearing the coif that
distinguished respectable women from
whores, and sometimes it meant wearing a
kind of sash.

13. • Only unmarried men and men "of age"
could legally use the services of a prostitute,
although you can be sure there
were exceptions. Interestingly, in some places,
one prostitute could entertain several men at
once, but one man could not have more than
one prostitute at once.

14. • The most common restriction on prostitutes
was that of geography. Cities and towns tried
to restrict the practice of prostitution to
certain areas; in London, for example,
prostitutes had to stay in bathhouses on the
"other side" of the Thames (the south side, to
which all disreputable people were restricted.)

15. Things that happened after working as
a prostitute
• Prostitutes didn't age well, and once they were in
their thirties, they had to find another way to
make money. Some continued in the trade,
becoming madams of brothels or managers
of bathhouses.
• A few reformed and became nuns or
entered institutions for repentant prostitutes.
• Others fell into extreme poverty and a life
of transience, begging and stealing for a living.
• But the most common way for a prostitute to
move on with her life was to marry.

16. • Thirty-ish prostitutes were still young enough
to be marriageable, and prostitution did not
carry the same stigma then as it does today in
most of the world.
• Oftentimes, local charities would even raise
a dowry for a prostitute.

17. References:
• http://everything2.com/title/Prostitution+in+
Medieval+Europe
• http://anatheimp.blogspot.com/2009/09/pros
titution-in-middle-ages.html
• http://www.illinoismedieval.org/ems/VOL13/
dever.html
• http://www.oddee.com/item_96646.aspx