It is essential that the act of prost.i.tution should be habitually performed with "various persons." A woman who gains her living by being mistress to a man, to whom she is faithful, is not a prost.i.tute, although she often becomes one afterwards, and may have been one before. The exact point at which a woman begins to be a prost.i.tute is a question of considerable importance in countries in which prost.i.tutes are subject to registration. Thus in Berlin, not long ago, a girl who was mistress to a rich cavalry officer and supported by him, during the illness of the officer accidentally met a man whom she had formerly known, and once or twice invited him to see her, receiving from him presents in money. This somehow came to the knowledge of the police, and she was arrested and sentenced to one day"s imprisonment as an unregistered prost.i.tute. On appeal, however, the sentence was annulled. Liszt, in his Strafrecht, lays it down that a girl who obtains whole or part of her income from "fixed relationships" is not practicing unchast.i.ty for gain in the sense of the German law (Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Jahrgang 1, Heft 9, p. 345).
It is not altogether easy to explain the origin of the systematized professional prost.i.tution with the existence of which we are familiar in civilization. The amateur kind of prost.i.tution which has sometimes been noted among primitive peoples-the fact, that is, that a man may give a woman a present in seeking to persuade her to allow him to have intercourse with her-is really not prost.i.tution as we understand it. The present in such a case is merely part of a kind of courtship leading to a temporary relationship. The woman more or less retains her social position and is not forced to make an avocation of selling herself because henceforth no other career is possible to her. When Cook came to New Zealand his men found that the women were not impregnable, "but the terms and manner of compliance were as decent as those in marriage among us," and according "to their notions the agreement was as innocent." The consent of the woman"s friends was necessary, and when the preliminaries were settled it was also necessary to treat this "Juliet of a night" with "the same delicacy as is here required with the wife for life, and the lover who presumed to take any liberties by which this was violated was sure to be disappointed."[127] In some of the Melanesian Islands, it is said that women would sometimes become prost.i.tutes, or on account of their bad conduct be forced to become prost.i.tutes for a time; they were not, however, particularly despised, and when they had in this way acc.u.mulated a certain amount of property they could marry well, after which it would not be proper to refer to their former career.[128]
When prost.i.tution first arises among a primitive people it sometimes happens that little or no stigma is attached to it for the reason that the community has not yet become accustomed to attach any special value to the presence of virginity. Schurtz quotes from the old Arabic geographer Al-Bekri some interesting remarks about the Slavs: "The women of the Slavs, after they have married, are faithful to their husbands. If, however, a young girl falls in love with a man she goes to him and satisfies her pa.s.sion. And if a man marries and finds his wife a virgin he says to her: "If you were worth anything men would have loved you, and you would have chosen one who would have taken away your virginity." Then he drives her away and renounces her." It is a feeling of this kind which, among some peoples, leads a girl to be proud of the presents she has received from her lovers and to preserve them as a dowry for her marriage, knowing that her value will thus be still further heightened. Even among the Southern Slavs of modern Europe, who have preserved much of the primitive s.e.xual freedom, this freedom, as Krauss, who has minutely studied the manners and customs of these peoples, declares, is fundamentally different from vice, licentiousness, or immodesty.[129]
Prost.i.tution tends to arise, as Schurtz has pointed out, in every society in which early marriage is difficult and intercourse outside marriage is socially disapproved. "Venal women everywhere appear as soon as the free s.e.xual intercourse of young people is repressed, without the necessary consequences being impeded by unusually early marriages."[130] The repression of s.e.xual intimacies outside marriage is a phenomenon of civilization, but it is not itself by any means a measure of a people"s general level, and may, therefore, begin to appear at an early period. But it is important to remember that the primitive and rudimentary forms of prost.i.tution, when they occur, are merely temporary, and frequently-though not invariably-involve no degrading influence on the woman in public estimation, sometimes indeed increasing her value as a wife. The woman who sells herself for money purely as a professional matter, without any thought of love or pa.s.sion, and who, by virtue of her profession, belongs to a pariah cla.s.s definitely and rigidly excluded from the main body of her s.e.x, is a phenomenon which can seldom be found except in developed civilization. It is altogether incorrect to speak of prost.i.tutes as a mere survival from primitive times.
On the whole, while among savages s.e.xual relationships are sometimes free before marriage, as well as on the occasion of special festivals, they are rarely truly promiscuous and still more rarely venal. When savage women nowadays sell themselves, or are sold by their husbands, it has usually been found that we are concerned with the contamination of European civilization.
The definite ways in which professional prost.i.tution may arise are no doubt many.[131] We may a.s.sent to the general principle, laid down by Schurtz, that whenever the free union of young people is impeded under conditions in which early marriage is also difficult prost.i.tution must certainly arise. There are, however, different ways in which this principle may take shape. So far as our western civilization is concerned-the civilization, that is to say, which has its cradle in the Mediterranean basin-it would seem that the origin of prost.i.tution is to be found primarily in a religious custom, religion, the great conserver of social traditions, preserving in a transformed shape a primitive freedom that was pa.s.sing out of general social life.[132] The typical example is that recorded by Herodotus, in the fifth century before Christ, at the temple of Mylitta, the Babylonian Venus, where every woman once in her life had to come and give herself to the first stranger who threw a coin in her lap, in worship of the G.o.ddess. The money could not be refused, however small the amount, but it was given as an offertory to the temple, and the woman, having followed the man and thus made oblation to Mylitta, returned home and lived chastely ever afterwards.[133] Very similar customs existed in other parts of Western Asia, in North Africa, in Cyprus and other islands of the Eastern Mediterranean, and also in Greece, where the Temple of Aphrodite on the fort at Corinth possessed over a thousand hierodules, dedicated to the service of the G.o.ddess, from time to time, as Strabo states, by those who desired to make thank-offering for mercies vouchsafed to them. Pindar refers to the hospitable young Corinthian women ministrants whose thoughts often turn towards Ourania Aphrodite[134] in whose temple they burned incense; and Athenaeus mentions the importance that was attached to the prayers of the Corinthian prost.i.tutes in any national calamity.[135]
We seem here to be in the presence, not merely of a religiously preserved survival of a greater s.e.xual freedom formerly existing,[136] but of a specialized and ritualized development of that primitive cult of the generative forces of Nature which involves the belief that all natural fruitfulness is a.s.sociated with, and promoted by, acts of human s.e.xual intercourse which thus acquire a religious significance. At a later stage acts of s.e.xual intercourse having a religious significance become specialized and localized in temples, and by a rational transition of ideas it becomes believed that such acts of s.e.xual intercourse in the service of the G.o.d, or with persons devoted to the G.o.d"s service, brought benefits to the individual who performed them, more especially, if a woman, by insuring her fertility. Among primitive peoples generally this conception is embodied mainly in seasonal festivals, but among the peoples of Western Asia who had ceased to be primitive, and among whom traditional priestly and hieratic influences had acquired very great influence, the earlier generative cult had thus, it seems probable, naturally changed its form in becoming attached to the temples.[137]
The theory that religious prost.i.tution developed, as a general rule, out of the belief that the generative activity of human beings possessed a mysterious and sacred influence in promoting the fertility of Nature generally seems to have been first set forth by Mannhardt in his Antike Wald- und Feldkulte (pp. 283 et seq.). It is supported by Dr. F. S. Krauss ("Beischlafausubung als Kulthandlung," Anthropophyteia, vol. iii, p. 20), who refers to the significant fact that in Baruch"s time, at a period long anterior to Herodotus, sacred prost.i.tution took place under the trees. Dr. J. G. Frazer has more especially developed this conception of the origin of sacred prost.i.tution in his Adonis, Attis, Osiris. He thus summarizes his lengthy discussion: "We may conclude that a great Mother G.o.ddess, the personification of all the reproductive energies of nature, was worshipped under different names, but with a substantial similarity of myth and ritual by many peoples of western Asia; that a.s.sociated with her was a lover, or rather series of lovers, divine yet mortal, with whom she mated year by year, their commerce being deemed essential to the propagation of animals and plants, each in their several kind; and further, that the fabulous union of the divine pair was simulated, and, as it were, multiplied on earth by the real, though temporary, union of the human s.e.xes at the sanctuary of the G.o.ddess for the sake of thereby ensuring the fruitfulness of the ground and the increase of man and beast. In course of time, as the inst.i.tution of individual marriage grew in favor, and the old communism fell more and more into discredit, the revival of the ancient practice, even for a single occasion in a woman"s life, became ever more repugnant to the moral sense of the people, and accordingly they resorted to various expedients for evading in practice the obligation which they still acknowledged in theory.... But while the majority of women thus contrived to observe the form of religion without sacrificing their virtue, it was still thought necessary to the general welfare that a certain number of them should discharge the old obligation in the old way. These became prost.i.tutes, either for life or for a term of years, at one of the temples: dedicated to the service of religion, they were invested with a sacred character, and their vocation, far from being deemed infamous, was probably long regarded by the laity as an exercise of more than common virtue, and rewarded with a tribute of mixed wonder, reverence, and pity, not unlike that which in some parts of the world is still paid to women who seek to honor their Creator in a different way by renouncing the natural functions of their s.e.x and the tenderest relations of humanity" (J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, 1907, pp. 23 et seq.).
It is difficult to resist the conclusion that this theory represents the central and primitive idea which led to the development of sacred prost.i.tution. It seems equally clear, however, that as time went on, and especially as temple cults developed and priestly influence increased, this fundamental and primitive idea tended to become modified, and even transformed. The primitive conception became specialized in the belief that religious benefits, and especially the gift of fruitfulness, were gained by the worshipper, who thus sought the G.o.ddess"s favor by an act of unchast.i.ty which might be presumed to be agreeable to an unchaste deity. The rite of Mylitta, as described by Herodotus, was a late development of this kind in an ancient civilization, and the benefit sought was evidently for the worshipper herself. This has been pointed out by Dr. Westermarck, who remarks that the words spoken to the woman by her partner as he gives her the coin-"May the G.o.ddess be auspicious to thee!"-themselves indicate that the object of the act was to insure her fertility, and he refers also to the fact that strangers frequently had a semi-supernatural character, and their benefits a specially efficacious character (Westermarck, Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. ii, p. 446). It may be added that the rite of Mylitta thus became a.n.a.logous with another Mediterranean rite, in which the act of simulating intercourse with the representative of a G.o.d, or his image, ensured a woman"s fertility. This is the rite practiced by the Egyptians of Mendes, in which a woman went through the ceremony of simulated intercourse with the sacred goat, regarded as the representative of a deity of Pan-like character (Herodotus, Bk. ii, Ch. XLVI; and see Dulaure, Des Divinites Generatrices, Ch. II; cf. vol. v of these Studies, "Erotic Symbolism," Sect. IV). This rite was maintained by Roman women, in connection with the statues of Priapus, to a very much later date, and St. Augustine mentions how Roman matrons placed the young bride on the erect member of Priapus (De Civitate Dei, Bk. iii, Ch. IX). The idea evidently running through this whole group of phenomena is that the deity, or the representative or even mere image of the deity, is able, through a real or simulated act of intercourse, to confer on the worshipper a portion of its own exalted generative activity.
At a later period, in Corinth, prost.i.tutes were still the priestesses of Venus, more or less loosely attached to her temples, and so long as that was the case they enjoyed a considerable degree of esteem. At this stage, however, we realize that religious prost.i.tution was developing a utilitarian side. These temples flourished chiefly in sea-coast towns, in islands, in large cities to which many strangers and sailors came. The priestesses of Cyprus burnt incense on her altars and invoked her sacred aid, but at the same time Pindar addresses them as "young girls who welcome all strangers and give them hospitality." Side by side with the religious significance of the act of generation the needs of men far from home were already beginning to be definitely recognized. The Babylonian woman had gone to the temple of Mylitta to fulfil a personal religious duty; the Corinthian priestess had begun to act as an avowed minister to the s.e.xual needs of men in strange cities.
The custom which Herodotus noted in Lydia of young girls prost.i.tuting themselves in order to acquire a marriage portion which they may dispose of as they think fit (Bk. I, Ch. 93) may very well have developed (as Frazer also believes) out of religious prost.i.tution; we can indeed trace its evolution in Cyprus where eventually, at the period when Justinian visited the island, the money given by strangers to the women was no longer placed on the altar but put into a chest to form marriage-portions for them. It is a custom to be found in j.a.pan and various other parts of the world, notably among the Ouled-Nail of Algeria,[138] and is not necessarily always based on religious prost.i.tution; but it obviously cannot exist except among peoples who see nothing very derogatory in free s.e.xual intercourse for the purpose of obtaining money, so that the custom of Mylitta furnished a natural basis for it.[139]
As a more spiritual conception of religion developed, and as the growth of civilization tended to deprive s.e.xual intercourse of its sacred halo, religious prost.i.tution in Greece was slowly abolished, though on the coasts of Asia Minor both religious prost.i.tution and prost.i.tution for the purpose of obtaining a marriage portion persisted to the time of Constantine, who put an end to these ancient customs.[140] Superst.i.tion was on the side of the old religious prost.i.tution; it was believed that women who had never sacrificed to Aphrodite became consumed by l.u.s.t, and according to the legend recorded by Ovid-a legend which seems to point to a certain antagonism between sacred and secular prost.i.tution-this was the case with the women who first became public prost.i.tutes. The decay of religious prost.i.tution, doubtless combined with the cravings always born of the growth of civilization, led up to the first establishment, attributed by legend to Solon, of a public brothel, a purely secular establishment for a purely secular end: the safeguarding of the virtue of the general population and the increase of the public revenue. With that inst.i.tution the evolution of prost.i.tution, and of the modern marriage system of which it forms part, was completed. The Athenian dikterion is the modern brothel; the dikteriade is the modern state-regulated prost.i.tute. The free hetairae, indeed, subsequently arose, educated women having no taint of the dikterion, but they likewise had no official part in public worship.[141] The primitive conception of the sanct.i.ty of s.e.xual intercourse in the divine service had been utterly lost.
A fairly typical example of the conditions existing among savages is to be found in the South Sea Island of Rotuma, where "prost.i.tution for money or gifts was quite unknown." Adultery after marriage was also unknown. But there was great freedom in the formation of s.e.xual relationships before marriage (J. Stanley Gardiner, Journal Anthropological Inst.i.tute, February, 1898, p. 409). Much the same is said of the Bantu Ba mbola of Africa (op. cit., July-December, 1905, p. 410).
Among the early Cymri of Wales, representing a more advanced social stage, prost.i.tution appears to have been not absolutely unknown, but public prost.i.tution was punished by loss of valuable privileges (R. B. Holt, "Marriage Laws and Customs of the Cymri," Journal Anthropological Inst.i.tute, August-November, 1898, pp. 161-163).
Prost.i.tution was practically unknown in Burmah, and regarded as shameful before the coming of the English and the example of the modern Hindus. The missionaries have unintentionally, but inevitably, favored the growth of prost.i.tution by condemning free unions (Archives d"Anthropologie Criminelle, November, 1903, p. 720). The English brought prost.i.tution to India. "That was not specially the fault of the English," said a Brahmin to Jules Bois, "it is the crime of your civilization. We have never had prost.i.tutes. I mean by that horrible word the brutalized servants of the gross desire of the pa.s.serby. We had, and we have, castes of singers and dancers who are married to trees-yes, to trees-by touching ceremonies which date from Vedic times; our priests bless them and receive much money from them. They do not refuse themselves to those who love them and please them. Kings have made them rich. They represent all the arts; they are the visible beauty of the universe" (Jules Bois, Visions de l"Inde, p. 55).
Religious prost.i.tutes, it may be added, "the servants of the G.o.d," are connected with temples in Southern India and the Deccan. They are devoted to their sacred calling from their earliest years, and it is their chief business to dance before the image of the G.o.d, to whom they are married (though in Upper India professional dancing girls are married to inanimate objects), but they are also trained in arousing and a.s.suaging the desires of devotees who come on pilgrimage to the shrine. For the betrothal rites by which, in India, sacred prost.i.tutes are consecrated, see, e.g., A. Van Gennep, Rites de Pa.s.sage, p. 142.
In many parts of Western Asia, where barbarism had reached a high stage of development, prost.i.tution was not unknown, though usually disapproved. The Hebrews knew it, and the historical Biblical references to prost.i.tutes imply little reprobation. Jephtha was the son of a prost.i.tute, brought up with the legitimate children, and the story of Tamar is instructive. But the legal codes were extremely severe on Jewish maidens who became prost.i.tutes (the offense was quite tolerable in strange women), while Hebrew moralists exercised their invectives against prost.i.tution; it is sufficient to refer to a well-known pa.s.sage in the Book of Proverbs (see art. "Harlot," by Cheyne, in the Encyclopaedia Biblica). Mahomed also severely condemned prost.i.tution, though somewhat more tolerant to it in slave women; according to Haleby, however, prost.i.tution was practically unknown in Islam during the first centuries after the Prophet"s time.
The Persian adherents of the somewhat ascetic Zendavesta also knew prost.i.tution, and regarded it with repulsion: "It is the Gahi [the courtesan, as an incarnation of the female demon, Gahi], O Spitama Zarathustra! who mixes in her the seed of the faithful and the unfaithful, of the worshipper of Mazda and the worshipper of the Daevas, of the wicked and the righteous. Her look dries up one-third of the mighty floods that run from the mountains, O Zarathustra; her look withers one-third of the beautiful, golden-hued, growing plants, O Zarathustra; her look withers one-third of the strength of Spenta Armaiti [the earth]; and her touch withers in the faithful one-third of his good thoughts, of his good words, of his good deeds, one-third of his strength, of his victorious power, of his holiness. Verily I say unto thee, O Spitama Zarathustra! such creatures ought to be killed even more than gliding snakes, than howling wolves, than the she-wolf that falls upon the fold, or than the she-frog that falls upon the waters with her thousandfold brood" (Zend-Avesta, the Vendidad, translated by James Darmesteter, Farfad XVIII).
In practice, however, prost.i.tution is well established in the modern East. Thus in the Tartar-Turcoman region houses of prost.i.tution lying outside the paths frequented by Christians have been described by a writer who appears to be well informed ("Orientalische Prost.i.tution," Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, 1907, Bd. ii, Heft 1). These houses are not regarded as immoral or forbidden, but as places in which the visitor will find a woman who gives him for a few hours the illusion of being in his own home, with the pleasure of enjoying her songs, dances, and recitations, and finally her body. Payment is made at the door, and no subsequent question of money arises; the visitor is henceforth among friends, almost as if in his own family. He treats the prost.i.tute almost as if she were his wife, and no indecorum or coa.r.s.eness of speech occurs. "There is no obscenity in the Oriental brothel." At the same time there is no artificial pretence of innocence.
In Eastern Asia, among the peoples of Mongolian stock, especially in China, we find prost.i.tution firmly established and organized on a practical business basis. Prost.i.tution is here accepted and viewed with no serious disfavor, but the prost.i.tute herself is, nevertheless, treated with contempt. Young children are frequently sold to be trained to a life of prost.i.tution, educated accordingly, and kept shut up from the world. Young widows (remarriage being disapproved) frequently also slide into a life of prost.i.tution. Chinese prost.i.tutes often end through opium and the ravages of syphilis (see, e.g., Coltman"s The Chinese, 1900, Ch. VII). In ancient China, it is said prost.i.tutes were a superior cla.s.s and occupied a position somewhat similar to that of the hetairae in Greece. Even in modern China, however, where they are very numerous, and the flower boats, in which in towns by the sea they usually live, very luxurious, it is chiefly for entertainment, according to some writers, that they are resorted to. Tschang Ki Tong, military attache in Paris (as quoted by Ploss and Bartels), describes the flower boat as less a.n.a.logous to a European brothel than to a cafe chantant; the young Chinaman comes here for music, for tea, for agreeable conversation with the flower-maidens, who are by no means necessarily called upon to minister to the l.u.s.t of their visitors.
In j.a.pan, the prost.i.tute"s lot is not so degraded as in China. The greater refinement of j.a.panese civilization allows the prost.i.tute to retain a higher degree of self-respect. She is sometimes regarded with pity, but less often with contempt. She may a.s.sociate openly with men, ultimately be married, even to men of good social cla.s.s, and rank as a respectable woman. "In riding from Tokio to Yokohama, the past winter," Coltman observes (op. cit., p. 113), "I saw a party of four young men and three quite pretty and gaily-painted prost.i.tutes, in the same car, who were having a glorious time. They had two or three bottles of various liquors, oranges, and fancy cakes, and they ate, drank and sang, besides playing jokes on each other and frolicking like so many kittens. You may travel the whole length of the Chinese Empire and never witness such a scene." Yet the history of j.a.panese prost.i.tutes (which has been written in an interesting and well-informed book, The Nightless City, by an English student of sociology who remains anonymous) shows that prost.i.tution in j.a.pan has not only been severely regulated, but very widely looked down upon, and that j.a.panese prost.i.tutes have often had to suffer greatly; they were at one time practically slaves and often treated with much hardship. They are free now, and any condition approaching slavery is strictly prohibited and guarded against. It would seem, however, that the palmiest days of j.a.panese prost.i.tution lay some centuries back. Up to the middle of the eighteenth century j.a.panese prost.i.tutes were highly accomplished in singing, dancing, music, etc. Towards this period, however, they seem to have declined in social consideration and to have ceased to be well educated. Yet even to-day, says Matignon ("La Prost.i.tution au j.a.pon," Archives d"Anthropologie Criminelle, October, 1906), less infamy attaches to prost.i.tution in j.a.pan than in Europe, while at the same time there is less immorality in j.a.pan than in Europe. Though prost.i.tution is organized like the postal or telegraph service, there is also much clandestine prost.i.tution. The prost.i.tution quarters are clean, beautiful and well-kept, but the j.a.panese prost.i.tutes have lost much of their native good taste in costume by trying to imitate European fashions. It was when prost.i.tution began to decline two centuries ago, that the geishas first appeared and were organized in such a way that they should not, if possible, compete as prost.i.tutes with the recognized and licensed inhabitants of the Yoshiwara, as the quarter is called to which prost.i.tutes are confined. The geishas, of course, are not prost.i.tutes, though their virtue may not always be impregnable, and in social position they correspond to actresses in Europe.
In Korea, at all events before Korea fell into the hands of the j.a.panese, it would seem that there was no distinction between the cla.s.s of dancing girls and prost.i.tutes. "Among the courtesans," Angus Hamilton states, "the mental abilities are trained and developed with a view to making them brilliant and entertaining companions. These "leaves of sunlight" are called gisaing, and correspond to the geishas of j.a.pan. Officially, they are attached to a department of government, and are controlled by a bureau of their own, in common with the Court musicians. They are supported from the national treasury, and they are in evidence at official dinners and all palace entertainments. They read and recite; they dance and sing; they become accomplished artists and musicians. They dress with exceptional taste; they move with exceeding grace; they are delicate in appearance, very frail and very human, very tender, sympathetic, and imaginative." But though they are certainly the prettiest women in Korea, move in the highest society, and might become concubines of the Emperor, they are not allowed to marry men of good cla.s.s (Angus Hamilton, Korea, p. 52).
The history of European prost.i.tution, as of so many other modern inst.i.tutions, may properly be said to begin in Rome. Here at the outset we already find that inconsistently mixed att.i.tude towards prost.i.tution which to-day is still preserved. In Greece it was in many respects different. Greece was nearer to the days of religious prost.i.tution, and the sincerity and refinement of Greek civilization made it possible for the better kind of prost.i.tute to exert, and often be worthy to exert, an influence in all departments of life which she has never been able to exercise since, except perhaps occasionally, in a much slighter degree, in France. The course, vigorous, practical Roman was quite ready to tolerate the prost.i.tute, but he was not prepared to carry that toleration to its logical results; he never felt bound to harmonize inconsistent facts of life. Cicero, a moralist of no mean order, without expressing approval of prost.i.tution, yet could not understand how anyone should wish to prohibit youths from commerce with prost.i.tutes, such severity being out of harmony with all the customs of the past or the present.[142] But the superior cla.s.s of Roman prost.i.tutes, the bonae mulieres, had no such dignified position as the Greek hetairae. Their influence was indeed immense, but it was confined, as it is in the case of their European successors to-day, to fashions, customs, and arts. There was always a certain moral rigidity in the Roman which prevented him from yielding far in this direction. He encouraged brothels, but he only entered them with covered head and face concealed in his cloak. In the same way, while he tolerated the prost.i.tute, beyond a certain point he sharply curtailed her privileges. Not only was she deprived of all influence in the higher concerns of life, but she might not even wear the vitta or the stola; she could indeed go almost naked if she pleased, but she must not ape the emblems of the respectable Roman matron.[143]
The rise of Christianity to political power produced on the whole less change of policy than might have been antic.i.p.ated. The Christian rulers had to deal practically as best they might with a very mixed, turbulent, and semi-pagan world. The leading fathers of the Church were inclined to tolerate prost.i.tution for the avoidance of greater evils, and Christian emperors, like their pagan predecessors, were willing to derive a tax from prost.i.tution. The right of prost.i.tution to exist was, however, no longer so unquestionably recognized as in pagan days, and from time to time some vigorous ruler sought to repress prost.i.tution by severe enactments. The younger Theodosius and Valentinian definitely ordained that there should be no more brothels and that anyone giving shelter to a prost.i.tute should be punished. Justinian confirmed that measure and ordered that all panders were to be exiled on pain of death. These enactments were quite vain. But during a thousand years they were repeated again and again in various parts of Europe, and invariably with the same fruitless or worse than fruitless results. Theodoric, king of the Visigoths, punished with death those who promoted prost.i.tution, and Recared, a Catholic king of the same people in the sixth century, prohibited prost.i.tution altogether and ordered that a prost.i.tute, when found, should receive three hundred strokes of the whip and be driven out of the city. Charlemagne, as well as Genserich in Carthage, and later Frederick Barbarossa in Germany, made severe laws against prost.i.tution which were all of no effect, for even if they seemed to be effective for the time the reaction was all the greater afterwards.[144]
It is in France that the most persistent efforts have been made to combat prost.i.tution. Most notable of all were the efforts of the King and Saint, Louis IX. In 1254 St. Louis ordained that prost.i.tutes should be driven out altogether and deprived of all their money and goods, even to their mantles and gowns. In 1256 he repeated this ordinance and in 1269, before setting out for the Crusades, he ordered the destruction of all places of prost.i.tution. The repet.i.tion of those decrees shows how ineffectual they were. They even made matters worse, for prost.i.tutes were forced to mingle with the general population and their influence was thus extended. St. Louis was unable to put down prost.i.tution even in his own camp in the East, and it existed outside his own tent. His legislation, however, was frequently imitated by subsequent rulers of France, even to the middle of the seventeenth century, always with the same ineffectual and worse results. In 1560 an edict of Charles IX abolished brothels, but the number of prost.i.tutes was thereby increased rather than diminished, while many new kinds of brothels appeared in unsuspected shapes and were more dangerous than the more recognized brothels which had been suppressed.[145] In spite of all such legislation, or because of it, there has been no country in which prost.i.tution has played a more conspicuous part.[146]
At Mantua, so great was the repulsion aroused by prost.i.tutes that they were compelled to buy in the markets any fruit or bread that had been soiled by the mere touch of their hands. It was so also in Avignon in 1243. In Catalonia they could not sit at the same table as a lady or a knight or kiss any honorable person.[147] Even in Venice, the paradise of prost.i.tution, numerous and severe regulations were pa.s.sed against it, and it was long before the Venetian rulers resigned themselves to its toleration and regulation.[148]
The last vigorous attempt to uproot prost.i.tution in Europe was that of Maria Theresa at Vienna in the middle of the eighteenth century. Although of such recent date it may be mentioned here because it was mediaeval alike in its conception and methods. Its object indeed, was to suppress not only prost.i.tution, but fornication generally, and the means adopted were fines, imprisonment, whipping and torture. The supposed causes of fornication were also dealt with severely; short dresses were prohibited; billiard rooms and cafes were inspected; no waitresses were allowed, and when discovered, a waitress was liable to be handcuffed and carried off by the police. The Chast.i.ty Commission, under which these measures were rigorously carried out, was, apparently, established in 1751 and was quietly abolished by the Emperor Joseph II, in the early years of his reign. It was the general opinion that this severe legislation was really ineffective, and that it caused much more serious evils than it cured.[149] It is certain in any case that, for a long time past, illegitimacy has been more prevalent in Vienna than in any other great European capital.
Yet the att.i.tude towards prost.i.tutes was always mixed and inconsistent at different places or different times, or even at the same time and place. Dufour has aptly compared their position to that of the mediaeval Jews; they were continually persecuted, ecclesiastically, civilly, and socially, yet all cla.s.ses were glad to have recourse to them and it was impossible to do without them. In some countries, including England in the fourteenth century, a special costume was imposed on prost.i.tutes as a mark of infamy.[150] Yet in many respects no infamy whatever attached to prost.i.tution. High placed officials could claim payment of their expenses incurred in visiting prost.i.tutes when traveling on public business. Prost.i.tution sometimes played an official part in festivities and receptions accorded by great cities to royal guests, and the brothel might form an important part of the city"s hospitality. When the Emperor Sigismund came to Ulm in 1434 the streets were illuminated at such times as he or his suite desired to visit the common brothel. Brothels under munic.i.p.al protection are found in the thirteenth century in Augsburg, in Vienna, in Hamburg.[151] In France the best known abbayes of prost.i.tutes were those of Toulouse and Montpellier.[152] Durkheim is of opinion that in the early middle ages, before this period, free love and marriage were less severely differentiated. It was the rise of the middle cla.s.s, he considers, anxious to protect their wives and daughters, which led to a regulated and publicly recognized attempt to direct debauchery into a separate channel, brought under control.[153] These brothels const.i.tuted a kind of public service, the directors of them being regarded almost as public officials, bound to keep a certain number of prost.i.tutes, to charge according to a fixed tariff, and not to receive into their houses girls belonging to the neighborhood. The inst.i.tutions of this kind lasted for three centuries. It was, in part, perhaps, the impetus of the new Protestant movement, but mainly the terrible devastation produced by the introduction of syphilis from America at the end of the fifteenth century which, as Burckhardt and others have pointed out, led to the decline of the mediaeval brothels.[154]
The superior modern prost.i.tute, the "courtesan" who had no connection with the brothel, seems to have been the outcome of the Renaissance and made her appearance in Italy at the end of the fifteenth century. "Courtesan" or "cortegiana" meant a lady following the court, and the term began at this time to be applied to a superior prost.i.tute observing a certain degree of decorum and restraint.[155] In the papal court of Alexander Borgia the courtesan flourished even when her conduct was not altogether dignified. Burchard, the faithful and unimpeachable chronicler of this court, describes in his diary how, one evening, in October, 1501, the Pope sent for fifty courtesans to be brought to his chamber; after supper, in the presence of Caesar Borgia and his young sister Lucrezia, they danced with the servitors and others who were present, at first clothed, afterwards naked. The candlesticks with lighted candles were then placed upon the floor and chestnuts thrown among them, to be gathered by the women crawling between the candlesticks on their hands and feet. Finally a number of prizes were brought forth to be awarded to those men "qui pluries dictos meretrices carnaliter agnoscerent," the victor in the contest being decided according to the judgment of the spectators.[156] This scene, enacted publicly in the Apostolic palace and serenely set forth by the impartial secretary, is at once a notable episode in the history of modern prost.i.tution and one of the most illuminating ill.u.s.trations we possess of the paganism of the Renaissance.
Before the term "courtesan" came into repute, prost.i.tutes were even in Italy commonly called "sinners," peccatrice. The change, Graf remarks in a very interesting study of the Renaissance prost.i.tute ("Una Cortigiana fra Mille," Attraverso il Cinquecento, pp. 217-351), "reveals a profound alteration in ideas and in life;" a term that suggested infamy gave place to one that suggested approval, and even honor, for the courts of the Renaissance period represented the finest culture of the time. The best of these courtesans seem to have been not altogether unworthy of the honor they received. We can detect this in their letters. There is a chapter on the letters of Renaissance prost.i.tutes, especially those of Camilla de Pisa which are marked by genuine pa.s.sion, in Lothar Schmidt"s Frauenbriefe der Renaissance. The famous Imperia, called by a Pope in the early years of the sixteenth century "n.o.bilissimum Romae scortum," knew Latin and could write Italian verse. Other courtesans knew Italian and Latin poetry by heart, while they were accomplished in music, dancing, and speech. We are reminded of ancient Greece, and Graf, discussing how far the Renaissance courtesans resembled the hetairae, finds a very considerable likeness, especially in culture and influence, though with some differences due to the antagonism between religion and prost.i.tution at the later period.
The most distinguished figure in every respect among the courtesans of that time was certainly Tullia D"Aragona. She was probably the daughter of Cardinal D"Aragona (an illegitimate scion of the Spanish royal family) by a Ferrarese courtesan who became his mistress. Tullia has gained a high reputation by her verse. Her best sonnet is addressed to a youth of twenty, whom she pa.s.sionately loved, but who did not return her love. Her Guerrino Meschino, a translation from the Spanish, is a very pure and chaste work. She was a woman of refined instincts and aspirations, and once at least she abandoned her life of prost.i.tution. She was held in high esteem and respect. When, in 1546, Cosimo, Duke of Florence, ordered all prost.i.tutes to wear a yellow veil or handkerchief as a public badge of their profession, Tullia appealed to the d.u.c.h.ess, a Spanish lady of high character, and received permission to dispense with this badge on account of her "rara scienzia di poesia et filosofia." She dedicated her Rime to the d.u.c.h.ess. Tullia D"Aragona was very beautiful, with yellow hair, and remarkably large and bright eyes, which dominated those who came near her. She was of proud bearing and inspired unusual respect (G. Biagi, "Un" Etera Romana," Nuova Antologia, vol. iv, 1886, pp. 655-711; S. Bongi, Rivista critica della Letteratura Italiana, 1886, IV, p. 186).
Tullia D"Aragona was clearly not a courtesan at heart. Perhaps the most typical example of the Renaissance courtesan at her best is furnished by Veronica Franco, born in 1546 at Venice, of middle cla.s.s family and in early life married to a doctor. Of her also it has been said that, while by profession a prost.i.tute, she was by inclination a poet. But she appears to have been well content with her profession, and never ashamed of it. Her life and character have been studied by Arturo Graf, and more slightly in a little book by Ta.s.sini. She was highly cultured, and knew several languages; she also sang well and played on many instruments. In one of her letters she advises a youth who was madly in love with her that if he wishes to obtain her favors he must leave off importuning her and devote himself tranquilly to study. "You know well," she adds, "that all those who claim to be able to gain my love, and who are extremely dear to me, are strenuous in studious discipline.... If my fortune allowed it I would spend all my time quietly in the academies of virtuous men." The Diotimas and Aspasias of antiquity, as Graf comments, would not have demanded so much of their lovers. In her poems it is possible to trace some of her love histories, and she often shows herself torn by jealousy at the thought that perhaps another woman may approach her beloved. Once she fell in love with an ecclesiastic, possibly a bishop, with whom she had no relationships, and after a long absence, which healed her love, she and he became sincere friends. Once she was visited by Henry III of France, who took away her portrait, while on her part she promised to dedicate a book to him; she so far fulfilled this as to address some sonnets to him and a letter; "neither did the King feel ashamed of his intimacy with the courtesan," remarks Graf, "nor did she suspect that he would feel ashamed of it." When Montaigne pa.s.sed through Venice she sent him a little book of hers, as we learn from his Journal, though they do not appear to have met. Tintoret was one of her many distinguished friends, and she was a strenuous advocate of the high qualities of modern, as compared with ancient, art. Her friendships were affectionate, and she even seems to have had various grand ladies among her friends. She was, however, so far from being ashamed of her profession of courtesan that in one of her poems she affirms she has been taught by Apollo other arts besides those he is usually regarded as teaching:
"Cosi dolce e gustevole divento, Quando mi trovo con persona in letto Da cui amata e gradita mi sento."
In a certain catalogo of the prices of Venetian courtesans Veronica is a.s.signed only 2 scudi for her favors, while the courtesan to whom the catalogue is dedicated is set down at 25 scudi. Graf thinks there may be some mistake or malice here, and an Italian gentleman of the time states that she required not less than 50 scudi from those to whom she was willing to accord what Montaigne called the "negotiation entiere."
In regard to this matter it may be mentioned that, as stated by Bandello, it was the custom for a Venetian prost.i.tute to have six or seven gentlemen at a time as her lovers. Each was ent.i.tled to come to sup and sleep with her on one night of the week, leaving her days free. They paid her so much per month, but she always definitely reserved the right to receive a stranger pa.s.sing through Venice, if she wished, changing the time of her appointment with her lover for the night. The high and special prices which we find recorded are, of course, those demanded from the casual distinguished stranger who came to Venice as, once in the sixteenth century, Montaigne came.
In 1580 (when not more than thirty-four) Veronica confessed to the Holy Office that she had had six children. In the same year she formed the design of founding a home, which should not be a monastery, where prost.i.tutes who wished to abandon their mode of life could find a refuge with their children, if they had any. This seems to have led to the establishment of a Casa del Soccorso. In 1591 she died of fever, reconciled with G.o.d and blessed by many unfortunates. She had a good heart and a sound intellect, and was the last of the great Renaissance courtesans who revived Greek hetairism (Graf, Attraverso il Cinquecento, pp. 217-351). Even in sixteenth century Venice, however, it will be seen, Veronica Franco seems to have been not altogether at peace in the career of a courtesan. She was clearly not adapted for ordinary marriage, yet under the most favorable conditions that the modern world has ever offered it may still be doubted whether a prost.i.tute"s career can offer complete satisfaction to a woman of large heart and brain.
Ninon de Lenclos, who is frequently called "the last of the great courtesans," may seem an exception to the general rule as to the inability of a woman of good heart, high character, and fine intelligence to find satisfaction in a prost.i.tute"s life. But it is a total misconception alike of Ninon de Lenclos"s temperament and her career to regard her as in any true sense a prost.i.tute at all. A knowledge of even the barest outlines of her life ought to prevent such a mistake. Born early in the seventeenth century, she was of good family on both sides; her mother was a woman of severe life, but her father, a gentleman of Touraine, inspired her with his own Epicurean philosophy as well as his love of music. She was extremely well educated. At the age of sixteen or seventeen she had her first lover, the n.o.ble and valiant Gaspard de Coligny; he was followed for half a century by a long succession of other lovers, sometimes more than one at a time; three years was the longest period during which she was faithful to one lover. Her attractions lasted so long that, it is said, three generations of Sevignes were among her lovers. Tallemant des Reaux enables us to study in detail her liaisons.
It is not, however, the abundance of lovers which makes a woman a prost.i.tute, but the nature of her relationships with them. Sainte-Beuve, in an otherwise admirable study of Ninon de Lenclos (Causeries du Lundi, vol. iv), seems to reckon her among the courtesans. But no woman is a prost.i.tute unless she uses men as a source of pecuniary gain. Not only is there no evidence that this was the case with Ninon, but all the evidence excludes such a relationship. "It required much skill," said Voltaire, "and a great deal of love on her part, to induce her to accept presents." Tallemant, indeed, says that she sometimes took money from her lovers, but this statement probably involves nothing beyond what is contained in Voltaire"s remark, and, in any case, Tallemant"s gossip, though usually well-informed, was not always reliable. All are agreed as to her extreme disinterestedness.
When we hear precisely of Ninon de Lenclos in connection with money, it is not as receiving a gift, but only as repaying a debt to an old lover, or restoring a large sum left with her for safe keeping when the owner was exiled. Such incidents are far from suggesting the professional prost.i.tute of any age; they are rather the relationships which might exist between men friends. Ninon de Lenclos"s character was in many respects far from perfect, but she combined many masculine virtues, and especially probity, with a temperament which, on the whole, was certainly feminine; she hated hypocrisy, and she was never influenced by pecuniary considerations. She was, moreover, never reckless, but always retained a certain self-restraint and temperance, even in eating and drinking, and, we are told, she never drank wine. She was, as Sainte-Beuve has remarked, the first to realize that there must be the same virtues for men and for women, and that it is absurd to reduce all feminine virtues to one. "Our s.e.x has been burdened with all the frivolities," she wrote, "and men have reserved to themselves the essential qualities: I have made myself a man." She sometimes dressed as a man when riding (see, e.g., Correspondence Authentique of Ninon de Lenclos, with a good introduction by Emile Colombey). Consciously or not, she represented a new feminine idea at a period when-as we may see in many forgotten novels written by the women of that time-ideas were beginning to emerge in the feminine sphere. She was the first, and doubtless, from one point of view, the most extreme representative of a small and distinguished group of French women among whom Georges Sand is the finest personality.
Thus it is idle to attempt to adorn the history of prost.i.tution with the name of Ninon de Lenclos. A debauched old prost.i.tute would never, like Ninon towards the end of her long life, have been able to retain or to conquer the affection and the esteem of many of the best men and women of her time; even to the austere Saint-Simon it seemed that there reigned in her little court a decorum which the greatest princesses cannot achieve. She was not a prost.i.tute, but a woman of unique personality with a little streak of genius in it. That she was inimitable we need not perhaps greatly regret. In her old age, in 1699, her old friend and former lover, Saint-Evremond, wrote to her, with only a little exaggeration, that there were few princesses and few saints who would not leave their courts and their cloisters to change places with her. "If I had known beforehand what my life would be I would have hanged myself," was her oft-quoted answer. It is, indeed, a solitary phrase that slips in, perhaps as the expression of a momentary mood; one may make too much of it. More truly characteristic is the fine saying in which her Epicurean philosophy seems to stretch out towards Nietzsche: "La joie de l"esprit en marque la force."
The frank acceptance of prost.i.tution by the spiritual or even the temporal power has since the Renaissance become more and more exceptional. The opposite extreme of attempting to uproot prost.i.tution has also in practice been altogether abandoned. Sporadic attempts have indeed been made, here and there, to put down prost.i.tution with a strong hand even in quite modern times. It is now, however, realized that in such a case the remedy is worse than the disease.
In 1860 a Mayor of Portsmouth felt it his duty to attempt to suppress prost.i.tution. "In the early part of his mayoralty," according to a witness before the Select Committee on the Contagious Diseases Acts (p. 393), "there was an order pa.s.sed that every beerhouse-keeper and licensed victualer in the borough known to harbor these women would be dealt with, and probably lose his license. On a given day about three hundred or four hundred of these forlorn outcasts were bundled wholesale into the streets, and they formed up in a large body, many of them with only a shift and a petticoat on, and with a lot of drunken men and boys with a fife and fiddle they paraded the streets for several days. They marched in a body to the workhouse, but for many reasons they were refused admittance.... These women wandered about for two or three days shelterless, and it was felt that the remedy was very much worse than the disease, and the women were allowed to go back to their former places."
Similar experiments have been made even more recently in America. "In Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1891, the houses of prost.i.tutes were closed, the inmates turned out upon the streets, and were refused lodging and even food by the citizens of that place. A wave of popular remonstrance, all over the country, at the outrage on humanity, created a reaction which resulted in a last condition by no means better than the first." In the same year also a similar incident occurred in New York with the same unfortunate results (Isidore Dyer, "The Munic.i.p.al Control of Prost.i.tution in the United States," report presented to the Brussels International Conference in 1899).
There grew up instead the tendency to regulate prost.i.tution, to give it a semi-official toleration which enabled the authorities to exercise a control over it, and to guard as far as possible against its evil by medical and police inspection. The new brothel system differed from the ancient mediaeval houses of prost.i.tution in important respects; it involved a routine of medical inspection and it endeavored to suppress any rivalry by unlicensed prost.i.tutes outside. Bernard Mandeville, the author of the Fable of the Bees, and an acute thinker, was a pioneer in the advocacy of this system. In 1724, in his Modest Defense of Publick Stews, he argues that "the encouraging of public whoring will not only prevent most of the mischievous effects of this vice, but even lessen the quant.i.ty of whoring in general, and reduce it to the narrowest bounds which it can possibly be contained in." He proposed to discourage private prost.i.tution by giving special privileges and immunities to brothels by Act of Parliament. His scheme involved the erection of one hundred brothels in a special quarter of the city, to contain two thousand prost.i.tutes and one hundred matrons of ability and experience with physicians and surgeons, as well as commissioners to oversee the whole. Mandeville was regarded merely as a cynic or worse, and his scheme was ignored or treated with contempt. It was left to the genius of Napoleon, eighty years later, to establish the system of "maisons de tolerance," which had so great an influence over modern European practice during a large part of the last century and even still in its numerous survivals forms the subject of widely divergent opinions.
On the whole, however, it must be said that the system of registering, examining, and regularizing prost.i.tutes now belongs to the past. Many great battles have been fought over this question; the most important is that which raged for many years in England over the Contagious Diseases Acts, and is embodied in the 600 pages of a Report by a Select Committee on these Acts issued in 1882. The majority of the members of the Committee reported favorably to the Acts which were, notwithstanding, repealed in 1886, since which date no serious attempt has been made in England to establish them again.
At the present time, although the old system still stands in many countries with the inert stolidity of established inst.i.tutions, it no longer commands general approval. As Paul and Victor Margueritte have truly stated, in the course of an acute examination of the phenomena of state-regulated prost.i.tution as found in Paris, the system is "barbarous to start with and almost inefficacious as well." The expert is every day more clearly demonstrating its inefficacy while the psychologist and the sociologist are constantly becoming more convinced that it is barbarous.
It can indeed by no means be said that any unanimity has been attained. It is obviously so urgently necessary to combat the flood of disease and misery which proceeds directly from the spread of syphilis and gonorrha, and indirectly from the prost.i.tution which is the chief propagator of these diseases, that we cannot be surprised that many should eagerly catch at any system which seems to promise a palliation of the evils. At the present time, however, it is those best acquainted with the operation of the system of control who have most clearly realized that the supposed palliation is for the most part illusory,[157] and in any case attained at the cost of the artificial production of other evils. In France, where the system of the registration and control of prost.i.tutes has been established for over a century,[158] and where consequently its advantages, if such there are, should be clearly realized, it meets with almost impa.s.sioned opposition from able men belonging to every section of the community. In Germany the opposition to regularized control has long been led by well-equipped experts, headed by Blaschko of Berlin. Precisely the same conclusions are being reached in America. Gottheil, of New York, finds that the munic.i.p.al control of prost.i.tution is "neither successful nor desirable." Heidingsfeld concludes that the regulation and control system in force in Cincinnati has done little good and much harm; under the system among the private patients in his own clinic the proportion of cases of both syphilis and gonorrha has increased; "suppression of prost.i.tutes is impossible and control is impracticable."[159]
It is in Germany that the attempt to regulate prost.i.tution still remains most persistent, with results that in Germany itself are regarded as unfortunate. Thus the German law inflicts a penalty on householders who permit illegitimate s.e.xual intercourse in their houses. This is meant to strike the unlicensed prost.i.tute, but it really encourages prost.i.tution, for a decent youth and girl who decide to form a relationship which later may develop into marriage, and which is not illegal (for extra-marital s.e.xual intercourse per se is not in Germany, as it is by the antiquated laws of several American States, a punishable offense), are subjected to so much trouble and annoyance by the suspicious police that it is much easier for the girl to become a prost.i.tute and put herself under the protection of the police. The law was largely directed against those who live on the profits of prost.i.tution. But in practice it works out differently. The prost.i.tute simply has to pay extravagantly high rents, so that her landlord really lives on the fruits of her trade, while she has to carry on her business with increased activity and on a larger scale in order to cover her heavy expenses (P. Hausmeister, "Zur a.n.a.lyse der Prost.i.tution," Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, vol. ii, 1907, p. 294).
In Italy, opinion on this matter is much divided. The regulation of prost.i.tution has been successively adopted, abandoned, and readopted. In Switzerland, the land of governmental experiments, various plans are tried in different cantons. In some there is no attempt to interfere with prost.i.tution, except under special circ.u.mstances; in others all prost.i.tution, and even fornication generally, is punishable; in Geneva only native prost.i.tutes are permitted to practice; in Zurich, since 1897, prost.i.tution is prohibited, but care is taken to put no difficulties in the path of free s.e.xual relationships which are not for gain. With these different regulations, morals in Switzerland generally are said to be much on the same level as elsewhere (Moreau-Christophe, Du Probleme de la Misere, vol. iii, p. 259). The same conclusion holds good of London. A disinterested observer, Felix Remo (La Vie Galante en Angleterre, 1888, p. 237), concluded that, notwithstanding its free trade in prost.i.tution, its alcoholic excesses, its vices of all kinds, "London is one of the most moral capitals in Europe." The movement towards freedom in this matter has been evidenced in recent years by the abandonment of the system of regulation by Denmark in 1906.
Even the most ardent advocates of the registration of prost.i.tutes recognize that not only is the tendency of civilization opposed rather than favorable to the system, but that in the numerous countries where the system persists registered prost.i.tutes are losing ground in the struggle against clandestine prost.i.tutes. Even in France, the cla.s.sic land of police-controlled prost.i.tutes, the "maisons de tolerance" have long been steadily decreasing in number, by no means because prost.i.tution is decreasing but because low-cla.s.s bra.s.series and small cafes-chantants, which are really unlicensed brothels, are taking their place.[160]