Prostitution in Medieval Society

Prostitution in Medieval Society PDF Author: Leah Lydia Otis
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226640345
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
"Prostitution in Medieval Society, a monograph about Languedoc between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, is also much more than that: it is a compelling narrative about the social construction of sexuality." – Catharine R. Stimpson

Prostitution in Medieval Society

Prostitution in Medieval Society PDF Author: Leah Lydia Otis
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226640345
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Prostitution in Medieval Society, a monograph about Languedoc between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, is also much more than that: it is a compelling narrative about the social construction of sexuality." – Catharine R. Stimpson

Medieval Prostitution

Medieval Prostitution PDF Author: Jacques Rossiaud
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631199922
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
In fifteenth-century France, public prostitution was condoned by all sectors of society. Clerics and municipal officials not only tolerated prostitution, but were often its principal beneficiaries, owning and frequenting brothels quite openly. The explanation of this remarkable state of affairs is just one aspect of Jacques Rossiaud's vivid reconstruction of a part of medieval society that has previously received little attention. Drawing upon extensive research in medieval archives, the author shows that most fifteenth-century Frenchwomen could expect a life of constant subjugation to male desire. Rape, for instance, was common and considered only a minor crime. He then considers whether public prostitution might paradoxically have been seen by the secular and religious authorities as a means of social control, and of preserving marital stability: the virtue of wives and daughters was best protected by the existence of public brothels, where sexual urges could be satisfied without adultery or rape. Jacques Rossiaud also describes the social background of the prostitutes, brothel-keepers, pimps, and their clientele, providing a vivid overview of the context in which medieval prostitution existed. Medieval Prostitution will be of interest to medieval historians, as well as to students of the history of the family and sexuality.

Common Women

Common Women PDF Author: Ruth Mazo Karras
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195062426
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
"Common women" in medieval England were prostitutes, whose distinguishing feature was not that they took money for sex but that they belonged to all men in common. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England tells the stories of these women's lives: their entrance into the trade because of poor job and marriage prospects or because of seduction or rape; their experiences as street-walkers, brothel workers or the medieval equivalent of call girls; their customers, from poor apprentices to priests to wealthy foreign merchants; and their relations with those among whom they lived. Through a sensitive use of a wide variety of imaginative and didactic texts, Ruth Karras shows that while prostitutes as individuals were marginalized within medieval culture, prostitution as an institution was central to the medieval understanding of what it meant to be a woman. This important work will be of interest to scholars and students of history, women's studies, and the history of sexuality.

Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany

Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany PDF Author: Jamie Page
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192607561
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Prostitution played an important part in structuring gender relations in medieval Germany. Prostitutes were often viewed as an example of the extreme female sinfulness which all women risked falling into, yet their social role was also seen as vital to the unmarried men for whom they provided a sexual outlet. Prostitution and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany is the first full-length study of medieval prostitution to focus primarily on how gender discourse shaped the lives of prostitutes themselves. Based on three legal case studies from the late medieval Empire, Prostitutes and Subjectivity in Late Medieval Germany examines constructions of subjectivity between 1400 and 1500. This period saw the rapid rise of tolerated prostitution across much of western Europe and the emergence of the public brothel as a central institution in the regulation of social order, followed by its equally rapid suppression from the early 1500s. By analysing how individuals interacted with cultural discourses surrounding the body, sexuality, and sin, the book explores how the concepts which defined prostitution in the Middle Ages shaped individual lives, and how individuals were able - or not - to exert agency, both within the circumstances of their own lives, and in response to official attempts to regulate sexual behaviour.

Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe

Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe PDF Author: James A. Brundage
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226077896
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 714

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Book Description
This monumental study of medieval law and sexual conduct explores the origin and develpment of the Christian church's sex law and the systems of belief upon which that law rested. Focusing on the Church's own legal system of canon law, James A. Brundage offers a comprehensive history of legal doctrines–covering the millennium from A.D. 500 to 1500–concerning a wide variety of sexual behavior, including marital sex, adultery, homosexuality, concubinage, prostitution, masturbation, and incest. His survey makes strikingly clear how the system of sexual control in a world we have half-forgotten has shaped the world in which we live today. The regulation of marriage and divorce as we know it today, together with the outlawing of bigamy and polygamy and the imposition of criminal sanctions on such activities as sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus, and bestiality, are all based in large measure upon ideas and beliefs about sexual morality that became law in Christian Europe in the Middle Ages. "Brundage's book is consistently learned, enormously useful, and frequently entertaining. It is the best we have on the relationships between theological norms, legal principles, and sexual practice."—Peter Iver Kaufman, Church History

Human Trafficking in Medieval Europe

Human Trafficking in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Christopher Paolella
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9048551552
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Human trafficking has become a global concern over the last 20 years, but its violence has terrorized and traumatized its victims and survivors for millennia. This study examines the deep history of human trafficking from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period. It traces the evolution of trafficking patterns: the growth and decline of trafficking routes, the ever-changing relationships between traffickers and authorities, and it examines the underlying causes that lead to vulnerability and thus to exploitation. As the reader will discover, the conditions that lead to human trafficking in the modern world, such as poverty, attitudes of entitlement, corruption, and violence, have a long and storied past. When we understand that past, we can better anticipate human trafficking's future, and then we are better able to fight it.

Same Bodies, Different Women

Same Bodies, Different Women PDF Author: Christopher Mielke
Publisher: Trivent Publishing
ISBN: 6158122238
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
This volume is a collection of essays focusing on marginalized women mostly in Central and Eastern Europe from around 1350 to 1650. "Other" women are discussed in three different categories: women whose religious practices put them on the social margins, "common women" who are in society but not of society because they are in the sex trade, and women whose occupations were reason enough to shunt them. In order to fill a gap in gender history for countries east of the Rhine River, the studies included present how official city-funded brothels in medieval Austria worked, how a princess' disability affected her life as Byzantine empress, how one unmarried Transylvanian woman who got pregnant dealt with being the center of a court case, and how enslaved women in medieval Hungary were treated as sexual property. The hope with this volume is that it will show the many interdisciplinary ways that women on the margins can be studied in this region, and to diminish the taboo of discussing this topic to begin with.

Prostitution in the Eastern Mediterranean World

Prostitution in the Eastern Mediterranean World PDF Author: Gary Leiser
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781786730862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
What did commercialized sex really amount to in the ancient and medieval Eastern Mediterranean? This groundbreaking book challenges many stereotypical views about the historical practice of prostitution. Based on twenty years' research, and organized by region, it charts the history of sex for sale in those chief centres of the late antique and medieval East, whether in Arabia, Egypt, Syria or Anatolia. Ranging extensively from 300 CE to 1500 (or from the reign of Theodosius to the early Ottoman period), Gary Leiser meticulously examines the available sources and argues for a reappraisal of the so-called oldest profession. He suggests that it was never prohibited; that there was remarkable continuity between Christian and Muslim rule; and that prostitution was institutionalized as a 'service industry' at various times. Indicating that sex work in the East had its own distinctive character and meanings (for example, that it was taxed from the time of Caligula onwards and that prostitutes were expected to retain tax receipts), the book brings continually fresh insights to a controversial subject.

Women and Prostitution

Women and Prostitution PDF Author: Vern L. Bullough
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
In this time of heated debate over pornography in general and prostitution in particular, Vern and Bonnie Bullough present a fascinating look at the social and historical context of the "world's oldest profession." Women and Prostitution is a panorama of the forms and practices prostitution has assumed in many cultures over many centuries. Based on the assumption that one cannot understand prostitution without first understanding the role of women in society, this volume is the first comprehensive treatment of the historical, sociological, and anthropological background of prosititution. The authors expose the inextricable interweaving of scores of cultural dilemmas: women as property, pornography and the fear of sexuality, religion and promiscuity, sex and social class, and the control of venereal disease. Women and Prostitution conveys the tragedy and humor, the fortitude and cunning, the veniality and generosity, the real and counterfeit sensuality, and the hypocrisy and pathos that surround the lives of prostitutes. The beautiful, the powerful, the talented, and the most outrageous are here: Lais, Tamar, Pompadour, Du Barry, Emma Hamilton, Lola Montez and Calamity Jane. But in addition to these tales of the illustrious, these pages are filled with the experiences of the anonymous and the abused. Women and Prostitution is important reading for feminists, police, religious leaders, civil libertarians, the general public, and prostitutes themselves. All will benefit from this useful, sympathetic and illuminating book.

Sexuality in Medieval Europe

Sexuality in Medieval Europe PDF Author: Ruth Mazo Karras
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000859274
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Now in its fourth edition, Sexuality in Medieval Europe provides a lively account of a society whose attitudes toward sexuality both were ancestral to, and differed from, contemporary ones. The volume is structured not by types of sexual interactions or deviance, but to reflect the difference in gendered experiences when sex is seen as an act one person does to another. Sexual activity, within and outside of marriage, as well as sexual inactivity, had different meanings based on gender, social status, religious affiliation, and more. This book considers these iterations of medieval sexuality in its effort to show there was no single medieval attitude towards sexuality. With an emphasis on Christian Western Europe over the entire course of the Middle Ages, it also includes comparative material on neighboring cultures at the time. Alongside being reworked for further clarity and readability, the fourth edition offers substantial new material on trans scholarship and methodological attempts to recoup a trans past; changes in the treatment of sex work and its terminology; and new material on Byzantine and Muslim culture. Sexuality in Medieval Europe is an essential resource for all those who study medieval history, medieval culture, and the history of sexuality in Europe.