Sex and Society in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Legal writers throughout this period continued to treat sex as a social problem and to take a dim view of physical beauty and sensual pleasure. As a proverb current in the period put it: “Beautiful women end up in the brothel and handsome men on the gallows.”[1836] Lechery attacked both body and soul, according to St.
John Fisher (ca. 1459-1535), and sexual orgasm, the end result of “the fyl- thy lust of the Hesshe,” robbed men of vital energy and exposed them to dangers both moral and physical. “Physycyens saye,” according to Fisher, “that a man taketh more hurtc by the effusyon of a Iytell sede than by shedynge of ten tymes so moche blode.”[1837] Moreover, as Nicholas of Plowe (writing between 1427 and 1438) reminded his readers, Aristotle had warned that coitus robbed both men and women of the use of reason, subverted the intellect, and weakened the mind by draining away its strength.[1838]These warnings did little to change behavior. People stubbornly continued to chase after sexual pleasure with undiminished energy, despite (or perhaps because of) plague, war, political upheaval, and social turmoil. In Venice, for example, there was no decrease in the total number of sex crimes during the plague years, even though more than one-third of the city’s inhabitants perished in the epidemic. This may well indicate that one of the reactions to the plague in Venice—and perhaps elsewhere as well—was to cause authorities to hunt out and prosecute sexual offenders more vigorously than they had previously, on the theory that sexual licentiousness had brought the disaster on the community. This conclusion is reinforced by other evidence showing that sex crimes were more harshly punished in the years immediately following the plague than in earlier decades.[1839] It is also possible that people terrified by the mysterious epidemic and fearful that they, like their neighbors, might fall victim to it, sought relief, consolation, and pleasure in sex, legal or illegal, to ward off their terror.
And indeed the poor, the deprived and the disadvantaged, as another peasant proverb noted, had no better relief from their troubles than venery.[1840]Many towns and cities in the post-plague years adopted new statutes restricting sexual activities and discouraging illicit sexual adventures. A Perugia statute dating from before 1400, for example, forbade men between the ages of fifteen and forty to stand around the city’s churches on Sundays and feast days in order to admire the women attending services. It imposed heavy fines on any man who dared to insinuate himself into portions of the church reserved for female worshippers.[1841] The age specification in the Perugia statute reflects a belief, articulated more explicitly in a Rieti statute, that although men of all ages are inclined to sexual wickedness, young men are particularly likely to commit these offenses and must be more strictly monitored and curbed than the rest of the population.[1842] A statute of Reggio Emilia attempted to restrain men of every age from making verbal approaches to women on the streets, from touching them, following them through the city, or standing around outside their houses. The statute made these actions criminal offenses, punishable by a £10 fine.[1843] Lucca similarly imposed fines on men over the age of eighteen who infiltrated parties and celebrations held by women or tried to engage women in conversation or to joke with them.[1844] Statutes such as these reflect both popular beliefs and the teachings of theologians and canonists on the dangers of familiarity between the sexes, and enacted into law the warnings of moralists against kisses, embraces, “dishonest touching,” or even the exchange of soulful glances between men and women.[1845]
Statutes from this period also show the influence of popular ideas about differences in sex drive between men and women. The widely held belief that women are sexually more voracious than men, that they desire intercourse more ardently and enjoy it more, and that in consequence their sexual behavior requires stricter supervision than that of men, is mirrored in a Belluno statute of 1428 which stipulated that no women over the age of twenty ought to be presumed to be a virgin unless her chastity could be proved, at least by circumstantial evidence.[1846]
The experience of the criminal courts of the period supported the belief that age and gender largely determined the incidence of sexual misconduct. Criminal court records also show, however, that social status was an important element in determining who committed—or at least who was charged with committing—sex offenses.
An analysis of the Venetian criminal records of this period shows that the nobility of the Republic appeared as sex offenders out of all proportion to their numbers. The nobility accounted for between three and seven percent of the Venetian population, but were charged with twenty-one percent of the sex crimes during the period examined. This astonishing disproportion can presumably be accounted for in part by the assumption that the nobility were more likely than others to be charged because, as well-known figures, they were easy to identify and apprehend. It may also be that their wealth made it more profitable for authorities to levy fines against them. Probably, too, the high incidence of noble sex offenders reflects marriage patterns among the nobility, who tended to marry later in life than members of other social groups.16Not only were men of certain ages and social groups more likely to be accused of sex crimes, but also certain places seem to have been favored venues for “the foule and fylthy pleasure of the body.”17 Sexual offenses most commonly occurred in the victim s home, which is perhaps not unexpected, given that women of all classes tended to spend most of their lives in their homes. Other places, however, appear frequently in the criminal records as the scene of sex offenses—empty houses, convents, jails, even a ducal palace. Boats seem to have been much favored, again for obvious reasons, by Venetian rapists, many of whom were boatmen by occupation.18 But no one and no place was entirely safe for those who wished to avoid sexual assault or sexual temptation. We have frequent references to illicit copulation in churches and cemeteries. The city fathers of Perugia felt it necessary to enact a statute specifically forbidding women to have sex with the city’s lepers.19
Although municipal statutes, customary law, and the canons all prescribed heavy penalties for sexual transgressions, practice was considerably milder than statutory language would suggest.
Certainly the canonical courts treated the usual run of sexual offenses rather lightly—considerably less harshly than offenses against ecclesiastical institutions and church property.20This leniency in practice was all the more notable because of the widespread belief during this period that loose sexual habits were the peculiar traits of heretics, who were thought to look with indifference or even approval on all types of sexual indulgence. The sectarians known as the Men of Intelligence, and the associated group of Brethren of the Free Spirit, were particularly notorious for sexual exploits with the women associated with their movements. Inquisitors elicited from members of these groups confessions of a wide range of sexual aberrations. Buggery, sodomy, incest, adultery, and indiscriminate fornication were, according to informants, commonplace among the heretics, who considered these activities no sin at all but natural enjoyment of the pleasures of paradise. Although aberrant sex routinely appeared among the charges against heretics, the Church courts dealt with these matters surprisingly lightly.21 It is
lfiRuggiero, “Sexual Criminality,” pp. 28-29, BoundariesofEros, pp. 13-14. 17Fisher, Sermon on Ps. 38, ed. Mayer, p. 64.
18Ruggicro, “Sexual Criminality,” pp. 27—28.
19Perugia, Statuta 3.91, fol. 34vb-35ra. The statute may have been envisioned as a public health measure to prevent the spread of the disease and was probably intended to apply primarily to prostitutes.
20May, Geistliche Gerichtsbarkeit, p. 224; Rossiaud, “Prostitution, Youth, and Society,” p. 8; Ruggiero, Boundaries of Γ'.rι>s, pp. 20 (Table 1), 52 (Table 2), 94 (Table 5).
21Lerner, Heresy of the Free Spirit, pp. 109, 137; Michcl De Waha, “Note sur Γusage de moyens Contraceptifs a Bruxelles au debut du XVe siecle,” Annales de la Societe beige (Fhistoire des hδpitaux 13 (1975) 10, 20; Ruggiero, Boundaries of Eros, pp. 143-44. questionable, of course, whether heretics were anything like as addicted to irregular sex as authorities said they were. Confessions of prisoners held by the inquisition need to be treated with great skepticism, since accused persons commonly tell interrogators whatever they believe the interrogators want to hear.