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Chapter Seven
of Backgrounds to Chaucer, Peter
G. Beidler, Lehigh University
7. Rape and Prostitution
Accurate statistics about rape in the modern age are almost
impossible to come by, if only because few agree about what constitutes
rape and because few rapes are reported. Accurate statistics
about rape in Chaucer's time are even more difficult to come
by because the few records that were kept are often lost, rotted,
or eaten by worms. Still, we do have some information about rape
in Chaucer's time. Records available for the French city of Dijon,
for example, suggest that there were at least two rapes a month;
that most of these were gang rapes done by two or more men; that
the men were mostly between the ages of 18 and 24; and that the
punishment for rape tended to be less severe than for other crimes,
such as stealing.
Other scattered records broaden the base of information, but
the total picture remains fuzzy. London records for 1380 show,
for example, that Chaucer himself, then around age 40, was released
by one Cecelia Chaumpagne from the charge of raptus. Because
the matter was settled out of court we don't know quite what
this case was all about, but there is no reason why it could
not have involved sexual rape. There is evidence of rape in the
literary record as well, as when the young knight in the Wife
of Bath's Tale takes "by verray force" (3 888)
the maidenhead of a young woman. For his crime he is condemned
to death, but he is permitted to save his life by going on a
quest to discover what women desire.
The point here is that rape did take place in medieval times.
People knew about it and were concerned about it. They punished
the offending rapists, though usually not severely unless the
crime was repeated. They also institutionalized prostitution
as a form of rape control. In an age when economic and social
conditions were such that few men married before the age of 24
(women tended to marry at a younger age), those who managed the
cities openly recognized the need to protect their wives and
daughters by providing for regulated and organized prostitution.
Indeed, the city leaders often set aside a specific part of town--usually
away from the center but not too far away--for prostitution.
They licensed certain specific buildings, taverns, or bath houses,
and they stipulated the kinds of women who could be prostitutes
in these establishments.
Although some women engaged in a private practice of prostitution,
most of the records are for the public or officially licensed
brothels. The regulated prostitutes were single or widowed, and
they were almost all "foreign"--that is, not from the
city they worked in. Part of the idea, after all, was to protect
the local women from rape and less violent forms of shameful
behavior. Young women were brought in to serve the unmarried
men and widowers of the community--though of course married men
might and did with care avail themselves of the services of these
women as well. In France and England Flemish women were particularly
popular as prostitutes, partly because they were from far away,
partly because they were known to have a special appeal to men
as well as eager skills as prostitutes.
It was important that the prostitutes be attractive. After
all, if the purpose of prostitution was to protect the
wives and women of the town from the lasciviousness of its men,
then the prostitutes needed to be beautiful, or else the men
would ignore them and turn their attentions to local women. Besides,
the more beautiful the woman, the less sinful it was for a man
to fornicate with her. The logic went something like this: the
more beautiful a woman the more she aroused sexual passion in
a man. That arousal, and the gratification that followed it,
caused a man to sin. It was considered less sinful for a man
to have sex with a beautiful woman because the sin was really
her fault, not his. She had, after all, enticed him with her
beauty. Some medieval moralists believed that the more difficult
a sin was to resist, the less should be the penance for it. That
kind of thinking, of course, sometimes led men to think lightly
of rape. It was to some extent the victim's fault, particularly
if she were beautiful.
One wonders how the local citizens felt about having prostitutes
in their midst. It appears that, though they had some concerns,
the townspeople were by and large in favor of prostitutes as
the lesser of several evils. One thirteenth-century commentator
drew an analogy between public women and public sewers. No one
really wants either one around, of course, but if you take them
away the whole place, not just a particularly rank corner of
it, gets contaminated. It is better to have the filth concentrated
and regulated than to have it uncontrolled and befouling the
whole town.
Not only did the prostitutes draw the lightning bolts of the
young men away from the respectable women of the town, but they
also helped men avoid three sins often considered worse than
fornication with women--masturbation, sodomy, and chastity.
Everyone knew that masturbation took place, but unlike fornication
with women, it was a "sin against nature." While a
natural sin like fornication with a woman was considered a lower-order
sin and could be absolved by a parish priest, masturbation, because
it was unnatural, could in some areas be absolved only by bishops
or their lieutenants. Around 1300 the Archbishop of Sens wrote
of sins against nature that "the first branch is when man
or woman by him or herself, alone and aware of the fact and awake,
falls into the filth of sin." Some theologians even considered
masturbation to be a form of sodomy.
Homosexuality was considered to be the worst of the sexual
sins, mostly because it was "against nature," but also
because, like masturbation, it contributed to the depopulation
of the world by redirecting the impulses that would populate
it.
As for chastity, was that really considered a sin? Increasingly,
it was. As repeated waves of the plague carried off large segments
of the Christian population at a time when infidel populations--the
Turks and the Arabs, for example--seemed to be thriving, there
was increased concern that Christian men and women should obey
God's injunction to go forth and multiply. Men who were chaste
were not doing their duty. Prostitution, then, was seen to serve
the good purposes of society and the church by keeping young
men from the sins of masturbation and sodomy, and by keeping
them from developing habits of chastity that would further depopulate
the Christian nations. Indeed, houses of prostitution were seen
as something like training grounds for young men, helping them
to develop their "natural" impulses and inclinations
so that, when they did marry, they knew how to pay the "debt"
they owed to their wives and to society by providing children.
Did the clergy approve of prostitution? That is really three
questions: did the clergy approve prostitution for other men,
did they approve of prostitutes themselves, and did they avail
themselves of the services of prostitutes? The answer to the
first question is that, while there was some disagreement, by
Chaucer's time the clergy tended to accept, if not exactly encourage,
the practice of prostitution. They tended to think that, while
fornication for any purpose but the procreation of children was
a sin, they also knew that it was a lesser, because "natural,"
sin, committed in response to certain needs and instincts placed
in man by God. The clergy tended either not to stand in the way
of prostitution or quietly to support the city fathers in their
policies about prostitution. For those men of the church who,
like the summoner in Chaucer's Friar's Tale, wanted for
whatever reason to seek out sinners, the very fact that the practice
of prostitution concentrated sinners in certain locations tended
to make their jobs easier.
Did clergymen approve of the prostitutes? It seems that most
members of the clergy were less cynical than that evil summoner.
While they had some moral reservations about the practice of
prostitution, the Bible provided them with the example of Mary
Magdalene, and they found themselves officially forgiving prostitutes.
They sometimes allowed prostitutes to be buried in church grounds,
and they usually accepted alms from them. The moral position
of prostitutes was uncertain. Those who enjoyed their trade were
usually considered beyond forgiveness, but those who plied their
trade because it was the only way they could support themselves
were more easily forgiven. Of course, there was always the hope
that the prostitutes would repent. Pope Innocent III even stated
that it was a great act of Christian charity for a man to take
a former prostitute as a wife, thus helping to save her soul
by taking her forever out of the brothel.
The answer to the third question--whether members of the clergy
visited prostitutes as customers--is complicated by the fact
that most older clergymen had taken, and most younger ones intended
to take, vows of celibacy. Such vows notwithstanding, some clergymen
were not celibate. Literary works of the period, particularly
the fabliaux, routinely show members of the clergy engaging in
sexual activities--Malyn's grandfather in the Reeve's Tale,
for example. Sometimes they paid for sex in these stories--the
monk in the Shipman's Tale, for example. The historical
record confirms such activities. The records of the city of Dijon,
for example, show that members of the clergy made up some 20
per cent of the clientele of the places of prostitution.
There appears not to have been widespread moral outrage at
the dealings between prostitutes and clergymen. Townspeople tended
to be amused at clergymen who frequented the brothels, but there
is little evidence that they were terribly upset by them. Men
of the clergy were, after all, men. Their fornicating with women
was a sin, yes, but a "natural" sin, and perhaps more
acceptable than the masturbation or the sodomy that might be
its unnatural alternative. Besides, it was better for such clergymen
to go to prostitutes than to tempt the daughters and wives to
whom, by the nature of their profession, they had such ready
and intimate access. If given a choice between having their clergymen
go to prostitutes or accost the pretty young women of the town,
most men would far prefer the former. Chaucer shows a number
of clergymen engaging in lechery with other men's wives. Surely
the husbands of those wives would have preferred meeting their
spiritual fathers in the local bath houses to surprising them
in their wives' beds.
Indeed, even in the fourteenth century there were some theologians
who were wondering whether it might not be better for men of
the clergy to be permitted to marry. It was evident that many
of them were not capable of honoring their vows of chastity.
Although the church hierarchy resisted such thinking, they were
aware of the problems and felt that it was better for clerics
to fornicate occasionally with public prostitutes than to keep
a concubine, to lead their female parishioners astray, to commit
rape, or to engage in "unnatural" acts.
Prostitution, while less prevalent in England than in France,
was nevertheless a fact of life in Chaucer's world. Not everyone
talked about it, but almost everyone knew about it. In the Friar's
Tale the Friar tells us that the summoner in the tale "hadde
alwey bawdes redy to his hond" (3 1339) and that he sometimes
had the "wenches at his retenue" (3 1355) tell him
the names of the men "that lay by hem" (3 1358) so
that he could summon them into the ecclesiastical court. Some
of Chaucer's readers have wondered whether there may be a shadow
of prostitution hanging over the Shipman's Tale, in which
the wife of the merchant of St. Denis sells sexual favors to
a monk for 100 francs, but surely it is going too far to suggest
that the Wife of Bath shared certain characteristics with public
women.
Or is it?
Primary source: Jacques Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution,
1984 (translated by Lydia G. Cochrane, Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell,
1988).
Chapter Seven of Backgrounds
to Chaucer, Peter G. Beidler, Lehigh University |
