Revision Notes for the MRCOG Part 1 1st Edition

Arisudhan Anantharachagan pdf download

https://ebookname.com/product/revision-notes-for-the-mrcog-
part-1-1st-edition-arisudhan-anantharachagan/

Get Instant Ebook Downloads – Browse at https://ebookname.com

Basic Sciences for Obstetrics and Gynaecology Core

https://ebookname.com/product/basic-sciences-for-obstetrics-and-
gynaecology-core-material-for-mrcog-part-1-1st-edition-austin-
ugwumadu/

Essential Revision Notes for MRCP 4th Edition Philip A.

https://ebookname.com/product/essential-revision-notes-for-
mrcp-4th-edition-philip-a-kalra/

My Revision Notes Aqa as Chemistry Rob King

https://ebookname.com/product/my-revision-notes-aqa-as-chemistry-
rob-king/

The Scientific Papers of Sir George Darwin Periodic

https://ebookname.com/product/the-scientific-papers-of-sir-
george-darwin-periodic-orbits-and-miscellaneous-papers-1st-
edition-george-howard-darwin/
Astronomy 1st Edition Andrew Fraknoi

https://ebookname.com/product/astronomy-1st-edition-andrew-
fraknoi/

WCDMA for UMTS 2nd Edition Dr Harri Holma

https://ebookname.com/product/wcdma-for-umts-2nd-edition-dr-
harri-holma/

Project Risk Management Processes Techniques and

https://ebookname.com/product/project-risk-management-processes-
techniques-and-insights-2nd-edition-chris-chapman/

2022 CFA Level I Schweser s Secret Sauce 1st Edition

https://ebookname.com/product/2022-cfa-level-i-schweser-s-secret-
sauce-1st-edition-schwesernotes/

Manufacturing Processes 1st Edition Rajeev Kumar

https://ebookname.com/product/manufacturing-processes-1st-
edition-rajeev-kumar/
Planning Educational Facilities What Educators Need to
Know 3rd edition Glen I. Earthman

https://ebookname.com/product/planning-educational-facilities-
what-educators-need-to-know-3rd-edition-glen-i-earthman/
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
cities a tax has been levied on prostitutes till a very late period; at
Lyons it was exacted, it is believed, in 1842.
 CHAPTER XI.
ITALY.
Decline of Public Morals.—Papal Court.—
Nepotism.—John XXII.—Sextus IV.—
Alexander VI.—Effect of the
Reformation.—Poem of Fracastoro.—
Benvenuto Cellini.—Beatrice Cenci.—
Laws of Naples.—Pragmatic Law of
1470.—Court of Prostitutes.—Bull of
Clement II.—Prostitution in
Lombardy and Piedmont.—Clerical
Statute.—Modern Italy.—Laws of
Rome.—Public Hospitals.—Lazaroni
of Naples.—Italian Manners as
depicted by Lord Byron.—Foundling
Hospitals.—True Character of Italian
People.
Birth-place of modern art and literature, dowered with the fatal
heritage of beauty, Italy, in the varied passages of her career among
the nations, has been as remarkable for the vice and sensuality of
her children as she has been eminent for their talents and
acquirements.
The heart of the historical student thrills with respectful sympathy
over the sorrows and ennobling virtues of her patriots in all ages, or
his intellect is captivated with enthusiastic admiration and reverence
in considering the monuments of resplendent genius given to
mankind by her sons. Let him turn the page, and his soul recoils in
disgust and deepest horror from the narrative of corruption the most
abandoned, ambition the most unscrupulous, lust the most
abominable, crime the most tremendous, to which the history of the
world scarcely offers a parallel, and which brands the perpetrators
with the execration of all succeeding generations.
The most glorious era of the Italian republics immediately preceded
their downfall. Like shining lights, they perished by their own
effulgence. The mutual jealousies of Florence, Pisa, Genoa, Lucca,
and the numerous independent cities and states, stirred up in them
a “noble and emulous rage” to excel each other in the
encouragement they gave to art and letters, and the mighty works
produced by their respective citizens. But the same sentiment also
roused them to deadlier feuds, and the common field of national
patriotism being shut up, they exhausted themselves and each other
by desperately-protracted struggles and incredible sacrifices of blood
and treasure. Thus they paved the way to the introduction of the
foreigner and the mercenary, who completed their ruin; until, in
place of the small but illustrious republics which formed a diadem of
brightest gems, arose a system of petty tyrants, who plunged the
country into misery and degradation. These, in turn, were swept
away by the strong arm of a despotism which has never since
relaxed its grasp of this loveliest country of the earth.
No influence played a more important part in bringing about this
catastrophe than that of the court of Rome. By the intrigues of the
Roman pontiffs the mutual jealousies of the states were exacerbated
and their quarrels fomented. While these results were caused by the
political actions of the popes and their advisers, the worst effects
were produced upon public manners and morals by their example.
The abuses which had established themselves among the Roman
hierarchy were the natural consequences of long and undisturbed
enjoyment by the clergy of their vast immunities and privileges. The
demoralization and dissoluteness which thus existed, and which
spread its poison throughout the civilized world, but especially
throughout Italy, are attested to posterity by all contemporary
writers.
The enormous iniquity which distinguished such men as John XXII.,
Sextus IV., or Alexander VI., is notorious to all. Although the
character of communities is not to be inferred from the actions of
exceptional prodigies, either of virtue or vice, it is evident that the
system which could place monsters like these in the august positions
they filled must have been rotten to the core. The worth of a Leo X.
or a Clement VII. consisted in the absence of the grosser vices
rather than in any positive excellence, and the encouragement given
by such men to objectionable practices did more to confirm a laxity
of morals than the odious and unpardonable offenses of their
predecessors.
Some of the political profligacy of the court of Rome, and, through
its example, of the other Italian courts, was owing to the system
which had sprung up of each pope providing for his family. The term
nepote (nephew) was in common use as expressing the relationship
which existed between the pope and the individuals selected for
advancement. The priests of all denominations had nephews and
nieces to provide for, and the abuses covered by the term were
objects of the keenest satire. In fact, Innocent VIII. thus provided
for eight openly avowed sons and daughters.[215] The pseudo-
avuncular obligations of Sextus IV. were also well known. Other
popes, whose sins were not in this particular direction, having no
sons, adopted a bona fide nephew, and one or two, feeling the want
of ties of kindred or family relationship, actually adopted strangers.
In one instance, the Donna Olimpia, a niece by marriage, and “a
lady of ability and a manly spirit,” took the place of a nephew in the
court of Innocent X., without any imputation on the character of
either pope or niece.[216]
The effect produced by this example in high places, particularly upon
the clergy, and through them on the community, can be imagined.
By a decree of the Church in the eleventh session of the Lateran
Council it appears that the clergy were accustomed to live in a state
of public concubinage, nay, more, to allow others to do so for money
paid to them by permission. Dante, in one of his daring flights,
compares the papal court to Babylon, and declares it a place
deprived of virtue and shame. In the nineteenth canto of the
Inferno, Dante, visiting hell, finds Nicholas III. there waiting the
arrival of Boniface, who again is to be succeeded by Clement.
The Reformation compelled some attention to morals among the
clergy, and for a time an earnest endeavor was made at a
purification of the Church. This was one of the chief labors of the
famous Council of Trent. That council certainly did repress the
abuses among the general clergy, but the law-makers were law-
breakers. They could not touch the cardinals, archbishops, or the
Pope himself, and thus little radical change was effected among the
chief dignitaries.[217]
There are not wanting writers who acquit the Italian national
character of blame in the matter, attributing the general corruption
partly to the frightful example of foreign invaders. The invasion of
Charles VIII., himself a dissolute monarch, with the universal
licentiousness of the French troops, did undoubtedly contribute
largely to ruin the morals of the people at large, but, to use the
words of Machiavelli, “If the papal court were removed to
Switzerland, the simplest and most religious people of Europe would,
in an incredibly short time, have become utterly depraved by the
vicious example of the Italian priesthood.”[218]
The ecclesiastics did not confine themselves to licentiousness of
conduct. The clerical writers are charged with a taste for that lowest
practice of debased minds, obscenity, in which particular they
exceed the lay writers. Roscoe, an accomplished Italian scholar and
a man not given to railing, maintains this allegation.[219] This
reminds us of Pope’s lines:
“Immodest words admit of no defense,
For want of decency is want of sense.”
For the limited range of our present subject, history, so profuse of
illustration of war, bloodshed, and the personal adventures of men
noteworthy by their position or character, is exceedingly chary of
materials. In the case of Italy the testimony as to the morals of men
in high places is superabundant, and these and the legislative
enactments of the period will furnish some of the information of
which we are in search.
In the fifteenth century, Charles VIII., in his wars to gain Naples
from the Spaniards, drew down unspeakable miseries upon the
wretched Italians. His armies are reputed to have indulged in every
excess of unbridled license and rapine; and it was during the siege
of Naples that the venereal disease is said to have first made its
appearance, although the particulars given of this malady in Chapter
IX., under the head of France, show that syphilis existed in Naples
two or three years before the siege. As generally happens with new
diseases, whether from fear or ignorance of the means to control
them, it was represented that the affliction was of a malignity never
since known. Its frightful ravages and disgusting character
impressed the minds of men with a belief that it was a new scourge,
sent specially as a punishment for the debauchery and prostitution
of the period, each party retorting on the other the charge of having
introduced it, and styling it Morbo-Gallico or Mal de Naples,
according to the nation to which they belonged. No class seems to
have been exempt from it. Sextus della Rovere, nephew of Sextus
IV., one of the wealthiest and most dissolute ecclesiastics of the age,
was “rotten from his middle to the soles of his feet.”[220] Even the
haughty and majestic Julius II. would not expose his feet to the
obeisance of the faithful, because they were discolored by the
Morbus Gallicus:[221] Leo, his accomplished and munificent
successor, was said to have owed his elevation to the fact that he
was in such a depraved state of body as to render necessary a
surgical operation in the Consistorium while the election was
proceeding, the cardinals selecting the most sickly candidate for the
papal tiara.[222] An unequivocal allusion to the pontiff’s pursuits is
found in an honorary inscription to Leo X. on his entrance into
Florence, of which he was a native.
 Olim habuit Cypris sua tempora: tempora Mavos
Olim habuit; nunc sua tempora Pallas habet:
Mars fuit; est Pallas; Cypra semper erit.
Formerly Venus reigned supreme, then Mars, now Pallas:
Mars was, Pallas now is, Venus shall always be.
Cardinals were not ashamed to contend openly for the favors of
celebrated courtesans, and Charles VIII., when on his march to
Naples, was provided by Ludovico Sforza and his wife Beatrice, his
liberal entertainers, with the most beautiful women that could be
procured.[223] Charles, indeed, is by some authors asserted to have
been actually the first who introduced the venereal disease into Italy.
An eccentric trophy of public license is to be found in the poem of
Fracastoro, a physician and accomplished writer—a really elegant
production under the title of Syphilis. The argument of it is drawn
from the sufferings of Syphilus, a shepherd who has been punished
by Apollo with a malignant disease for impiety. In this work the
author introduces the reader to the inner regions of the earth; to the
mines, minerals, and attendant sprites, and explains the discovery of
mercury, and its beneficent and healing influences on the invalid,
who, once cured, is enjoined to pay his vows to Diana.
In 1520, that turbulent and reprobate artist Benvenuto Cellini, in his
autobiography (one of the most spirited representations of national
manners extant) gives an account of a syphilitic disease which he
contracted from a courtesan. He says little of the mode of cure, but
it is evident from the above that the use of mercury was known at a
very early period after public attention was generally directed to the
disorder.
The excesses of this iron age were not limited to ordinary
licentiousness; crimes against nature seem to have been prevalent,
and are even alleged to have been a source of revenue. In a
collection of papal lives which has fallen under our notice, but which
is not very particular in giving its authorities,[224] we find it stated
that a memorial was presented to Sextus IV. by certain individuals of
the family of the Cardinal of St. Lucia for an indulgence to commit
sodomy, and that the Pope wrote at the bottom of it the usual “Fiat.”
The case of Beatrice Cenci is better attested. Every one recollects
the accumulated horrors of the story. The father, hating his children,
his wife, all mankind, introduces prostitutes to his house, and
debauches his daughter Beatrice by force. Through the
instrumentality of a bishop she procures him to be murdered, and,
with her step-mother, was executed for the crime, the Pope refusing
to show any mercy. The Count Cenci had been addicted to unnatural
offenses, and had thrice compounded with the papal government for
his crimes by paying an enormous sum of money, and the narrator
says that the acrimony of the Pope toward the wretched daughter
was for having cut off a profitable source of revenue.
In Naples, the laws on the subject of prostitution were extremely
severe. Previous to the thirteenth century, every procuress
endeavoring to corrupt innocent females was punished, like an
adulteress, by mutilation of her nose. The mother who prostituted
her daughter suffered this punishment until King Frederick absolved
such women as trafficked with their children from the pressure of
want. The same prince, however, decreed against all who were
found guilty of preparing drugs or inflammatory liquors to aid in their
designs upon virtuous females, death in case of injuries resulting
from their acts, and imprisonment when no serious harm was
effected. These laws proved insufficient for their purpose, and
toward the end of the fifteenth century profligacy ran riot in Naples.
Ruffiani multiplied in its streets, procuring by force or corruption
multitudes of victims to fill the taverns and brothels of the city.
Penalties of extreme severity were proclaimed against them. The
Ruffiani were ordered to quit the kingdom, and prostitutes were
prohibited from harboring such persons among them. Any woman
who disobeyed was condemned to be burned in the forehead with
an iron, whipped in the most humiliating manner, and exiled.
Under King Roger a charge of seduction was never taken, but
William, the successor of that prince, punished with death the crime
of rape. The victim, however, was required to prove that she had
shrieked aloud, and that she had preferred her complaint within
eight days, or that she had been detained by force. When once a
woman had prostituted herself, she had no right to refuse to yield
her person to any one.
In Naples, prostitutes, in spite of the law passed to confine brothels
to particular quarters, established themselves in the most beautiful
streets of the city in palatial buildings, and there, with incessant
clamor, congregated a horde of thieves, profligates, and vagabonds
of every kind, until the chief quarter became uninhabitable. In 1577
they were ordered to quit the street of Catalana within eight days,
under pain of the scourge for the women, the galleys for such of the
proprietors as were commoners, while simple banishment was
declared against the nobles.
One example of good legislation was the pragmatic law of 1470, to
protect unfortunate women against the cupidity, the extortions, and
the frauds of tavern-keepers and others. Men were in the habit of
going into places of amusement with single girls, contracting a heavy
debt, and then leaving their victims to pay. These were then given
the choice of a disgraceful whipping or an engagement in the house.
They often consented, and spent the remainder of their days in
dependence on their creditors, without ability to liberate themselves.
By the new law, masters of taverns were forbidden to give credit to
prostitutes for more than a certain sum, and this only to supply them
with food and clothing absolutely necessary. If they exceeded this
amount they had no means of legal recovery.
The most remarkable feature in Neapolitan legislation on this subject
was the establishment at an unknown, but early date, of the Court
of Prostitutes. This tribunal, which sat at Naples, had its peculiar
constitution, and had jurisdiction over all cases connected with
prostitution, blasphemy, and some other infamous offenses. Toward
the end of the sixteenth century it had risen to extraordinary power,
and was prolific of abuses. It practiced all kinds of exaction and
violence, every species of partiality and injustice, and even
presumed to promulgate edicts of its own. The judges flung into
prison numbers of young girls, whom they compelled to buy their
liberty with money, and sometimes even dared to seize women who,
though of lax conduct, could not be included in the professional
class. This was discovered, and led to a reform of the court in 1589.
Its powers were strictly defined, and its form of procedure placed
under regulation, while the avenues to corruption were narrowed.
The institution existed for nearly a hundred years after this.
In Rome, in the eleventh century, a brothel and a church stood side
by side, and five hundred years after, under the pontificate of Paul
II., prostitutes were numerous. Statutes were enacted, and many
precautions taken, which prove the grossness of manners at that
epoch. One convicted of selling a girl to infamy was heavily fined,
and if he did not pay within ten days had one foot cut off. The
nobility and common people alike indulged habitually in all kinds of
excess. Tortures, floggings, brandings, banishment, were inflicted on
some to terrify others, but with very incomplete success. To carry off
and detain a prostitute against her will was punished by amputation
of the right hand, imprisonment, flogging, or exile. The rich,
however, invariably bought immunity for themselves.
Among the most extraordinary acts of legislation on this subject was
the bull of Clement II., who desired to endow the Church with the
surplus gains of the brothel. Every person guilty of prostitution was
forced, when disposing of her property, either at death or during life,
to assign half of it to a convent. This regulation was easily eluded,
and proved utterly inefficacious. A tribunal was also established
having jurisdiction over brothels, upon which a tax was laid,
continuing in existence until the middle of the sixteenth century.
Efforts were made to confine this class of dwellings to a particular
quarter, but without success.
In some of the Italian states, as in Lombardy, men were forbidden to
give prostitutes an asylum. They were prohibited from appearing
among honest citizens, and were prevented from purchasing clothes
or food, and from borrowing money by the hire of their persons.
After a time, however, a system of licensed brothels, in imitation of
the institutions founded at Toulouse and Montpellier, was introduced
into parts of Italy, and the brothels became very numerous. There
was one at Mantua, and Venice was a very sink of prostitution. In
1421, the government enlisted women in this service to guard the
virtue of the other classes. A matron was placed over them, who
governed them, received their gains, and made a monthly division of
profit. The names of several women, the most notorious and
beautiful of the Venetian courtesans, are preserved by Nicolo
Daglioni. A very small sum was paid them by their patrons.
The laws regulating prostitution and prostitutes seem to have had a
wonderful similarity throughout Europe. Among other enactments
were those regulating clothing, which were at one time promulgated
in every state. Some of these were sumptuary, and merely
prohibited the wearing of fashionable attire. Others directed
particular costumes as a badge of the prostitute’s calling, and to
distinguish them in public from well-conducted women. At Mantua,
prostitutes, when they appeared in the streets, were ordered to
cover the rest of their clothes with a short white cloak, and wear a
badge on their breast. At Bergamo the cloak was yellow; in Parma,
white; in Milan, at first black woolen cloth, and then black silk. If
disobedient, they might be fined; and in case of a second offense,
whipped; and any one might strip off the garment of a girl illegally
attired.
In the Duchy of Asola, in Piedmont, a regulation was established
that a mother could disinherit her daughter for leading a vicious life,
but she lost this privilege if it was proved that she had connived at
her immorality. The father had equal authority, but with one curious
limitation. When, says the law, a father has sought to marry his
daughter, and has endowed her sufficiently, if she refuses to marry
and becomes a prostitute, he may cut her off; but if he have
opposed her marriage until she has reached the age of twenty-five,
and she then become a libertine, he can not refuse to bequeath her
his property; and the woman, on every opportunity to marry, is
bound to present herself before her father and demand his consent.
If he refused it, he was not allowed to punish her in cases where, at
the age of thirty, she became a harlot.
The efforts to root out prostitution from houses and neighborhoods
in Italy had, as elsewhere, the result of driving loose women to
places of public resort. The baths were regularly frequented in every
city in the Peninsula (hence the use of the word bagnio, as
expressive of a disreputable place), so that there was scarcely a
bath-keeper who was not also a brothel-keeper.
In Avignon, which, in consequence of the schism of the popes, may
be considered a second Rome, a statute of the Church, in 1441,
interdicted to the priests and clergy the use of certain baths,
notorious as brothels. The license of prostitution was soon taken
away in Avignon. The residence of the popes in that city had
attracted a concourse of strangers from all parts of the globe, and
brothels sprung up at the doors of the churches, and close to the
papal residence and bishops’ palaces. They brought so much scandal
on the community that an edict was passed driving prostitutes out of
the city.
In endeavoring to investigate the condition of prostitution in modern
Italy, our inquiries and researches have been almost profitless, from
the dearth of reliable statistical information as to any part of that
most interesting country. In the fine arts, and in certain departments
of abstract science, the republic of letters can show numerous
records of Italy’s state and progress. In all that tells of the people,
their condition, their relations to each other, and their rulers, the
statements of writers, both native and foreign, are so contradictory,
so imbued with party passions and prejudices, or so flippantly
careless and inaccurate, that we must peruse them with constant
suspicion. At the same time, official documents are so sparingly
given to the world that it is hopeless to fall back upon them.[225]
It is customary to think and speak of Italy, like Germany, as a whole.
In reality, however, a wide difference prevails among the inhabitants
of Piedmont, Tuscany, and Austrian Italy, the Papal States, and
Naples. Rome, though not the political capital of Italy, must be
considered the capital, in virtue of her papal court, her past
traditions, and her large concourse of foreigners. But even her
manners scarcely give the tone to the remainder of the country.
In Rome, prostitution is tolerated, though not legally permitted.
There are no statistics from which the number of prostitutes can be
calculated. At one time there were said to be five thousand of these
unfortunates in the city; but this estimate is only another sample of
the carelessness which is to be observed in writers on this subject.
Under Paul IV. there were only fifty thousand inhabitants; forty years
after they had increased to one hundred thousand. Public prostitutes
are now as rarely seen in the streets of Rome as in those of other
Italian cities. It is said, also, that there are scarcely any public
brothels.[226] There is a law that a woman guilty of adultery shall be
imprisoned for three months, but Italian usages are averse to legal
proceedings; the scandal is offensive to society; besides, the courts
require positive proof of the offense. With regard to seduction, the
laws are equally stringent; but such cases, when brought to notice,
are usually compromised by permission of the authorities, either by
payment of a sum of money, or by marriage. Syphilis is always of
considerable extent in Rome, and the venereal ward in San Jacomo
is always full.[227] After the siege of Rome by the French in 1849, the
disease was frightfully prevalent.
In 1798 there were thirty thousand poor, or about one fifth of the
population of Rome, upon the lists of the curates of the several
parishes. Under the administration of the French, up to 1814, the
proportion had been diminished to one ninth. Since that period it has
been on the increase.
There are in Rome nineteen hospitals for the treatment of the sick.
In eight public hospitals the average number of patients daily is
about fourteen hundred, who cost nineteen cents each per day.
There are fourteen semi-convents where young girls are gratuitously
received and educated, receiving a small dowry when they leave to
marry or become nuns. The Hospital of St. Roch is for pregnant
women.[228]
The Albergo dei Poveri at Naples is the finest poor-house in Italy. It
accommodates upward of three thousand paupers of both sexes,
and is provided with workshops and schools, so as to afford suitable
employment and instruction. Notwithstanding this model
establishment, and numerous others, whose annual revenues
amount to nearly two millions and a half of dollars, Naples is
infested with a large mendicant population in addition to the
numbers accommodated in the poor-houses. The Lazaroni are a
class peculiar to the place. Many of them utterly refuse to work, and
prefer to subsist on the smallest coin of the kingdom which they can
gain by begging. They bask in the sun all day, sleep on the ground
or on the steps at night, and starve with the utmost complacency.
An Epicurean might find in this abnegation of the cares of life a
sound practical philosophy. That such a class is in the highest degree
obnoxious to society must be apparent to every one. In the famous
rising of Cardinal Ruffo, at the time of the French occupation in
1805, the Lazaroni perpetrated the most frightful excesses, and are
said to have been relied on by the imbecile Bourbon government as
their chief friends and supporters against the dangers of French
Republicanism. Modern progress has drawn even Naples and the
Lazaroni within its magic circle, and an accomplished traveler
expresses doubts of their alleged unconquerable laziness, for he has
seen them work, wear clothes, sleep at home, earn money when
they had a chance, and conduct themselves very much like other
people.[229] Perhaps, as with the Irish, a want of fair remuneration
may be at the root of their idleness.
A singular institution of Italian society is the Cicisbeo, or Cavaliere
Servente. This is a distant male relative, or friend, who invariably
attends a married lady on all occasions of her appearance in public.
He pays her all conceivable attentions, and performs even the most
servile offices; carries her fan, her parasol, or her lapdog. We are
not aware that any foreigner has been able to settle this anomaly of
social life to his satisfaction. The Italians themselves sometimes
maintain that there is no immorality or impropriety in the
arrangement—that it is a matter of etiquette, in which the heart is in
no way concerned. The husband is perfectly cognizant of it, and the
appearance of the cicisbeo with the lady is more de regle than that
of her husband. Originally, there can be very little question that the
institution was of an amorous character, and the parties met
privately at the Casini, where certain apartments were specially
dedicated to the use of the ladies and their cavalieri.[230] With the
French occupation of 1800 the custom became the subject of
immoderate raillery and satire, and there is reason to believe it has
been but partially revived.
In place, however, of the cicisbeo or cavaliere servente, whose
services and attentions were a form of society, it is, we fear,
undeniable that more intimate though less avowed relations exist
between many Italian ladies and other men than their husbands.
That there are numerous and admirable exceptions to the rule, if it
be a rule, we freely admit; but, unless the concurrent testimony of
all writers and travelers in Italy be absolutely false, and either basely
slanderous or culpably careless, the marriage vow can only be
regarded as a cloak for a license that is inadmissible to the
unmarried woman.
The testimony of a profligate man is rarely to be taken against
women; and though the witness be a lord and a poet, we do not
know that this should make a difference were the case one of mere
abuse. Coupled, however, as the inculpation is with extenuatory
remarks, we think Lord Byron’s observations valuable. In a letter to
Mr. Murray, the celebrated London publisher (February 21, 1820), he
says:
“You ask me for a volume of manners in Italy. Perhaps I am in the
case to know more of them than most Englishmen. * * * * * I have
lived in their houses, and in the heart of their families, sometimes
merely as Amico di Casa, and sometimes as Amico di Cuore of the
Dama, and in neither case do I feel justified in making a book of
them. Their moral is not your moral; their life is not your life; you
would not understand it; it is not English, nor French, nor German,
which you would all understand. * * * * * I know not how to make
you comprehend a people who are at once temperate and profligate,
serious in their characters and buffoons in their amusements,
capable of impressions and passions which are at once sudden and
durable. * * * * * I should know something of the matter, having
had a pretty general experience among their women, from the
fisherman’s wife up to the Nobil Dama whom I serve. * * * * * They
are extremely tenacious, and jealous as furies, not permitting their
lovers even to marry if they can help it, and keeping them always to
them in public as in private. * * * * * The reason is, that they marry
for their parents and love for themselves. They exact fidelity from a
lover as a debt of honor, while they pay the husband as a
tradesman. You hear a person’s character, male or female,
canvassed, not as depending on their conduct to their husbands or
wives, but to their mistress or lover. If I wrote a quarto I don’t know
that I could do more than amplify what I have here noted. It is to be
observed, that while they do all this, the greatest outward respect is
to be paid to the husbands, not only by the ladies, but by their
serventi, particularly if the husband serve no one himself (which is
not often the case, however), so that you would often suppose them
relations, the servente making the figure of one adopted in the
family. Sometimes the ladies run a little restive, and elope, or divide,
or make a scene, but this is at the starting, generally when they
know no better, or when they fall in love with a foreigner, or some
such anomaly, and is always reckoned unnecessary and
extravagant.”
As a counterpoise to these opinions of Lord Byron, it is but fair to
give that of M. Valery, a traveler whose personal opportunities may
have been less than in the case of the noble poet: “The morals of
the Italian cities, which we still judge of from the commonplace
reports of travelers of the last century, are now neither better nor
worse than those of other capitals; perhaps at Naples they are even
better.”
The Countess Pepoli, a lady of patriotic and literary family, has
written an able educational manual, in which she claims
consideration for the number of “good and virtuous women” in Italy,
whose existence is ignored by the prejudiced writers of extravagant
diatribes. But we are afraid that the very exception, and the pains
she takes to prove the temptations to which the married woman is
exposed, only affirm the truth of the general charge.
Whatever allegations of veracious or exaggerated unchastity or
immorality may be made against the Italians, they are generally to
be laid at the door of the aristocracy and upper classes. Among the
humbler Italians, the peasantry and the country poor, there is no
ground for ascribing to them either greater idleness or worse morals
than are to be found in other parts of Europe.
Foundling hospitals are to be met with in most great cities of
Continental Europe. Among Protestants, a strong prejudice exists
against these institutions. That they prevent infanticide is self-
evident. Their operation as an encouragement of illicit intercourse
can not be estimated without some minute inquiries into the
illegitimacy of places which encourage them, and of others which are
without them.
The proportion of children in the foundling hospitals of Italy is
certainly large, but it is believed, on good grounds, that a
considerable number of them are legitimate, and are abandoned by
their parents on account of their poverty. Of the really illegitimate,
there are no means of saying with accuracy (nor, as far as we know,
have any attempts been made to do so) to what class of society the
infants belong. Meanwhile, although there is no ground for assuming
a larger proportion of illegitimate children than in northern climates,
on the other hand, the publicly displayed prostitution of Italy is
infinitely less.
Naples has a population of about four hundred thousand. Of fifteen
thousand births there are two thousand foundlings; we can not say
illegitimates, for, owing to the reasons already specified, there are no
means of ascertaining the facts.
In Tuscany, in 1834, there were twelve thousand foundlings received
into the various hospitals.
The Hospital of the Santo Spirito at Rome is a foundling asylum with
a revenue of about fifty thousand dollars per annum.
About one in sixteen of these children is claimed by its parents; the
majority are cared for, during infancy and childhood, either in the
hospitals or with the neighboring peasantry, with whom they are
boarded at a small stipend. When of sufficient age they are
dismissed to work for themselves; but in many of the hospitals they
have some claim in after-life on occasions of sickness or distress.
We have already alluded to the wide differences of national
character in the various political divisions of Italy. The vices of
laziness, mendicancy, and their kindred failings of licentiousness and
unchastity are chiefly confined to the towns, large and small.[231]
The peasantry of Naples and of the Papal States are industrious,
temperate; and the peasant women, even those who, from the
vicinity of Rome, frequent the studios of the artists as models, are
generally of unexceptionable character.[232] The mountaineers of the
Abruzzi, long infamous as banditti (a stigma affixed by the French or
other dominant powers on those who resisted their rule), in harvest-
time brave the deadly malaria of the Campagna to earn a few liri
honestly for their starving children, although in so doing the many
that never return to their mountain homes show the risks that all
have run. The corn, wine, and oil raised in Italy, the well-supplied
markets of Rome and other cities, are evidence that the peasantry
do not all eat the bread of idleness. The Papal States contain some
of the finest, richest, and best cultivated provinces in Italy.[233] It is
in the towns we must look for the worst results of misgovernment
and bad example.
CHAPTER XII.
SPAIN.
 Resemblance between Spanish and Roman Laws on
Prostitution.—Code of Alphonse IX.—Result of Draconian
Legislation.—Ruffiani.—Court Morals.—Brothels.—Valencia.
—Laws for the Regulation of Vice.—Concubines legally
recognized.—Syphilis.—Cortejo.—Reformatory Institutions
at Barcelona.—Prostitution in Spain at the Present Day.—
Madrid Foundling Hospital.
Between the ancient Spaniards and the Romans a most intimate connection subsisted from an early
period of the Roman republic, and the laws and customs of the former bore the closest resemblance to
those of the latter. This affinity continued so long as the Roman empire had a name, and after the
establishment of Christianity as the state religion, the ties of kindred and dependence were drawn still
closer, for the Spanish kingdom has ever been the favored heritage, and its rulers the most obedient
sons of Rome. Thus the maxims of the Roman civil law were early incorporated into the political system,
and they still remain the chief pillars of Spanish jurisprudence. Accordingly, we find, in their legislation
on prostitution, that the Spaniards, together with the general theories, adopted the specific enactments
of other Latin nations.
By the code of Alphonse IX., in the twelfth century, procurers were to be condemned to “civil death.”
Such offenders were thus classified:
1. Men who trafficked in debauchery; these were to be banished.
2. Keepers of houses of accommodation, who were to be fined, and their houses confiscated.
3. Brothel-keepers who hired out prostitutes, which prostitutes, if slaves, were to be manumitted; if
free, were to be dowried at the cost of the offenders, so that they might have a chance of marriage.
4. Husbands conniving at the prostitution or dishonor of their wives: these were liable to capital
punishment.
5. A class of persons styled Ruffiani (whence the modern word ruffian).
These latter were analogous to the pimp and bully of the present day, and, from the repeated and very
severe laws against them, seem to have given great trouble to the authorities. They were banished,
flogged, imprisoned; in short, got rid of on any terms. Girls who supported them were publicly whipped,
and the general laws upon the matter were similar to those noted in the previous chapter on Italy.
In Spain, the profligacy of public morals attained a pitch beyond all precedent, possibly owing, in some
measure, to Draconian legislation. Further laws were, from time to time, passed against the Ruffiani, as
preceding edicts had fallen into desuetude, and their presence and traffic was encouraged by the
prostitutes. These latter were forbidden to harbor the men, and on breach of this prohibition were to be
branded, publicly whipped, and banished the kingdom. Procurers, procuresses, and adulteresses were
punished by mutilation of the nose. Mothers who trafficked in their children’s virtue, except under
pressure of extreme want, were also liable to this barbarous punishment.
In 1552 and 1566, edicts were again passed against the Ruffiani. They were styled a highly
objectionable class, dangerous to public order. On the first conviction as a ruffiano, the offender was
sentenced to ten years at the galleys; for a second conviction, he received two hundred blows or
stripes, and was sent to the galleys for life.
Up to this time the court of Spain seems to have been almost as strongly tinctured with licentiousness
as those of other nations. About the middle of the fifteenth century, Henry IV. divorced his wife, Blanche
of Aragon, after a union of twelve years, the marriage being publicly declared void by the Bishop of
Segovia, whose sentence was confirmed by the Archbishop of Toledo, “por impotencia respectiva, owing
to some malign influence.” Henry subsequently espoused Joanna, sister of Alphonse V., King of Portugal.
The bride was accompanied by a brilliant train of maidens, and her entrance into Castile was greeted by
the festivities and military pageants which belonged to the age of chivalry. In her own country Joanna
had been ardently beloved; in the land of her adoption her light and lively manners gave occasion to the
grossest suspicions. Scandal named the Cavalier Beltran de la Cueva as her most favored lover. He was
one of the handsomest men in the kingdom. At a tournament near Madrid he maintained the superior
beauty of his mistress against all comers, and displayed so much prowess in the presence of the king as
induced Henry to commemorate the event by the erection of a monastery dedicated to St. John.[234] It
does not appear, however, whom Beltran de la Cueva indicated as the lady of his love on this occasion.
Two anecdotes may be mentioned as characteristic of the gallantry of the times. The Archbishop of
Seville concluded a superb fête, given in honor of the royal nuptials, by introducing on the table two
vases filled with rings garnished with precious stones, to be distributed among his female guests. At a
ball given on another occasion, the young queen having condescended to dance with the French
embassador, the latter made a solemn vow, in commemoration of so distinguished an honor, never to
dance with any other woman.
While the queen’s levity laid her open to suspicion, the licentiousness of her husband was undisguised.
One of Joanna’s maids of honor acquired an ascendency over Henry which he did not attempt to
conceal, and after the exhibition of some disgraceful scenes, the palace became divided by the factions
of the hostile fair ones. The Archbishop of Seville did not blush to espouse the cause of the paramour,
who maintained a magnificence of state which rivaled royalty itself. The public were still more
scandalized by Henry’s sacrilegious intrusion of another of his mistresses into the post of abbess of a
convent in Toledo, after the expulsion of her predecessor, a lady of noble rank and irreproachable
character.
These examples of corruption influenced alike the people and the clergy. The middle class imitated their
superiors, and indulged in an excess of luxury equally demoralizing and ruinous. The Archbishop of St.
James was hunted from his see by the indignant populace in consequence of an outrage attempted on a
youthful bride as she was returning from church after the performance of the nuptial ceremony.[235]
Under the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella a total change was effected. “They both exhibited a practical
wisdom in their own personal relations which always commands respect, and which, however it may
have savored of worldly policy in Ferdinand, was in his consort founded on the purest and most exalted
principles. Under such a sovereign, the court, which had been little better than a brothel in the
preceding reign, became the nursery of virtue and generous ambition. Isabella watched assiduously
over the nurture of the high-born damsels of the court, whom she received into the royal palace,
causing them to be educated under her own eye, and endowing them with liberal portions on their
marriage.”[236]
Joanna, the second daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, was unfortunate in her marriage to Philip, son
of the Archduke Maximilian, and sovereign—in right of his mother—of the Low Countries. The couple
embarked for Flanders in the year 1504, and soon after their arrival the inconstancy of the husband and
the ungovernable sensibility of the wife occasioned some scandalous scenes. Philip was openly
enamored of one of the ladies in her suite, and his injured wife, in a paroxysm of jealousy, personally
assaulted her rival, and caused the beautiful locks which had excited the admiration of her fickle
husband to be shorn from her head. This outrage so affected Philip that he vented his indignation
against Joanna in the coarsest and most unmanly terms, and finally refused to have any farther
intercourse with her.[237]
Public brothels were established in Spain, as in other countries of Europe, one of great extent being in
existence in Valencia in the fifteenth century. It constituted a complete suburb in itself, similar to the
Ghetto, or Jews’ suburb of most capital cities. Indeed, from its description, it is doubtful if it was not a
rogue’s sanctuary, similar to the well known Alsatia in London. It was surrounded by a wall with one
gate only, at which a warder was stationed. He was a public city officer, and one of his duties was to
warn all comers of the risk their property ran in visiting such a place. If they wished to leave valuables
in his care they could do so, and receive them on their exit. There were some hundreds of girls resident
in this vast den of iniquity. To add to the disgrace of the locality, the place of public execution was at its
gate.
In 1486, the rents, profits and emoluments of the public brothels of Seville were assigned to Alonzo
Fajardo, the master of the royal table.
In 1559, there is an enactment in Granada fixing the rents to be paid by the women for their rooms and
accommodation in public brothels, and also detailing the furniture and food with which they were to be
provided in return. This is similar to the minute legislation of the German cities. This public provision
having been made, no person was allowed to lend these women bed-linen.
The authorities of various cities might not permit a prostitute to reside in the town without previous
examination by a duly licensed physician, who was to declare, upon oath, whether the woman then was
or had recently been diseased.
By some of the Spanish laws, varraganas (kept mistresses or concubines) seem to have been a legal
institution, for men of rank were forbidden to take slave-dancers, tavern-servants, procuresses, or
prostitutes as concubines. This breach of the ordinary institutions of Christianity may probably have
been a compromise of Moorish and Christian usages and morals. Before the final deadly struggle which
ended in the expulsion of the Moors, intermarriages were not uncommon among the two peoples.
Interchange of friendship and close intimacy existed between the races, and a mutual tolerance of each
other’s laws and customs was maintained, except by the enthusiasts of either religion.
The Spanish jurists distinctly recognized the woman’s right to recover the wages of her infamy. The
scholiasts struck out various fine distinctions, for which the monkish dialecticians were so deservedly
ridiculed by the free-thinkers of the eighteenth century, and these were debated and discussed with the
utmost eagerness.[238] One question was whether, if the man paid beforehand, and the woman refused
to complete the contract, he could compel her? The weight of opinion seemed to be that, as he
contemplated an immorality, he could neither recover the money nor enforce the agreement. Another
equally important point was the use to which the gains of prostitution might be lawfully applied. The
legality of their gains would seem to have overridden the mode of their expenditure, but casuists
thought otherwise, and, by a royal edict of Alphonse IX., it was decided that priests could not receive
funds obtained from such impure sources.
By the old Spanish law prostitutes were subjected to various disabilities in matters of inheritance or
testamentary disposition. As mentioned in the review of the old German customs, the Church
considered it a meritorious act to marry a harlot, on the assumption that thereby a brand was saved
from the burning.[239] It is related of a young man that, while being led to the scaffold, a courtesan,
struck by his manly beauty and bearing, offered to marry him, whereby, in virtue of a law or usage, his
life would be saved. He rejected her proposition, as existence was not worth redemption at such a
price. It is added that his life was nevertheless spared, in consideration of his spirit and courage.
In 1570, by order of Philip II., the regulations in force in the principal towns of Andalusia were extended
to those of Castile. By these it was enacted that a woman became a prostitute of her own free will, and
that no one could compel her to continue such, even though she had incurred debts. A surgeon was
directed to pay her a weekly visit at her house, and report to the deputies of the Consistory those who
were diseased, in order that they might be removed to hospital. The keeper of a brothel could not
receive into his house any one who had not been previously examined, nor allow any one who was
diseased to remain there, under a fine of a thousand maravedis, with thirty days’ imprisonment. Each
room was to contain certain furniture, and the house was to be closed on holidays, during Lent, Ember
Week, and on all fast days, under a punishment of a hundred stripes to each woman who received
visitors, as well as to the keeper of the house. These and other orders were to be hung upon different
parts of the house, under a fine (about six dollars) and eight days’ imprisonment.
The subject of venereal disease in Spain has acquired some interest from a generally received opinion
that its appearance was made in that country, whence it was disseminated throughout Europe.
Columbus and his crew were reported to have introduced it from America, but later investigations have
proved that syphilis was not known on this side of the Atlantic until imported by Europeans. Facts have
been advanced in preceding pages showing its almost simultaneous appearance in Italy and Spain, and
we recur to the subject now merely with reference to the theory of its American origin. A late work,
Lettere sulla Storia de Mali Venerei, di Domenice Thiene, Venezia, 1823, enumerates some proofs on the
question. The main points are: 1. That neither Columbus nor his son allude, in any way, to such a
disease in the New World. 2. Among frequent notices of the disease in the twenty-five years following
the discovery of America, there is no mention of its originating there, but, on the contrary, a uniform
derivation of it from some other source is assigned. 3. That the disorder was known and described
before the siege of Naples, and therefore could not be introduced by the Spaniards at that time. 4. That
it was known in a variety of countries in 1493 and the early part of 1494; a rapidity of diffusion
irreconcilable with its importation by Columbus in 1493. 5. That the first work professing to trace its
origin in America was not published till 1517, and was the production, not of a Spaniard, but a foreigner.
The question of its origin is more definitely settled by a letter of Peter Martyr, noticing the symptoms in
the most unequivocal manner, and dated April 5, 1488, about five years before the return of Columbus.
Some doubts have been thrown upon the accuracy of this letter, but they do not invalidate it.[240]
In Madrid, in 1522, a special hospital for venereal patients was founded by Antoine Martin, of the order
of St. Jean de Dieu. In 1575 the Spaniards passed an ordinance that no female domestics under forty
years of age should be taken to service by unmarried men. The tenor of this law bespeaks the evil
intended to be remedied.
In the present day, little is done in Spain in reference to prostitution by legislation on the subject. In his
memoir on the subject to the Brussels Congress, Ramon de la Segra tells us that the old edicts have
gradually become obsolete, and that neither the municipal authorities or general government take any
farther interest in the question than an occasional enforcement of the catholic laws against immorality
and women of ill fame. It is said that in Seville first-class houses of prostitution have a custom of
retaining the services of a physician at their own expense, whose office is to attend and make
examinations of the women. Cadiz is notorious for its attractive climate and its dissipations.[241]
In the last century a tone of manners prevailed in the Spanish peninsula which was materially changed
by the French occupation sweeping away many of the laxities of the age. In 1780 the Italian system of
an attendant upon married ladies was adopted in Spain. These were termed Cortejos, and it is stated
that in the cities they were principally military men, but in the country the monks performed the duty.
The fidelity and affection of the women were directed to their gallants, and it even was thought
discreditable, without very sufficient reason, to be guilty of fickleness in this particular. Married men
were even the cortejos of other men’s wives, neglecting their own, or leaving them to follow the bent of
their private inclinations. No husband was jealous, but it was etiquette for Spanish ladies to keep up an
external decorum, and to abstain from marked attentions to a cortejo in the husband’s presence,
although he might be perfectly aware of his wife’s infidelity, and of her lover’s presence in the house.
[242] A curious illustration of this extraordinary state of public manners is given in an incident that
occurred in Carthagena. A gentleman one morning remarked to a friend, “Before I go to rest this night
the whole city will be thrown into confusion.” He occasioned this public disorder by going home an hour
sooner than his usual time, whereby his wife’s cortejo was compelled to beat a precipitate retreat. The
cortejo’s arrival at his own house produced a similar effect, which was multiplied through polite society
all round the town.
By the Spanish laws, which were in many provinces especially favorable to women, they could make ex
parte cases against their husbands of ill treatment, and if they had beaten them the punishment might
be made very severe. These laws were, as may be supposed, the frequent means of flagrant injustice.
In Barcelona there was a Magdalen institution, having the double object of reforming prostitutes and of
correcting women who failed in the marriage vow, or who neglected or disgraced their families. The
former department was called the Casa de Galera; the latter, the Casa de Correccion. The prostitutes
were partially supported at the public cost, their extra food, beyond bread and meat, being provided by
their own labor, to which they were obliged to devote themselves all day. The lady culprits were
supported by their relations. They were imprisoned by the sentence of a particular court, on the
complaint of a member of their family, and they, as well as the prostitutes, were required to work. When
deemed necessary, these offenders received personal correction. Drunkenness was one of the grounds
of incarceration. The precise offenses are not mentioned by our author,[243] but the fashions and
customs of nations are so distinct, that indiscretion, or even familiarity in one, might be immorality in
another. A leading principle in Spanish manners is not to give offense. People may be as vicious as they
please; it may be even notorious that they are so, but their manners must be outwardly correct. There
is little doubt the violation of this maxim was the principal cause of imprisonment.
In Barcelona there was also, in 1780, a foundling hospital liberally supported. A curious custom was
observed in reference to the girls. They were led in procession when of marriageable age, and any one
who took a fancy to a young woman might ask her hand, indicating his choice by throwing a
handkerchief on her in public.
In the Asturias certain forms of disease appeared with excessive virulence, and were very common.
Syphilis was prevalent. There was a hospital at Oviedo for its cure, but patients had considerable
reluctance to apply to it. Whether incident to this prevalence of syphilis or not, we have no means of
ascertaining, but leprosy was very general, and there were twenty or more large houses for its cure in
the Asturias. The common itch in a highly aggravated form was also general, and often productive of
parasitical vermin.
The present state of Spanish society is the subject of the usual discrepancies between travelers, owing
to their different prejudices, means of information, or opportunities of making observations. No country
of Europe retains more of its original peculiarities and national habits than Spain. Under the fervid sun
of Andalusia, the same rigorous observance of proprieties is hardly to be found as in the northern
climate of Biscay, whose hardy sons have ever been the defenders of their rights and political privileges.
Madrid, as the capital, might be thought a fair illustration of the habits and manners of the great bulk of
the city populations, whose peculiarities of race have not been smoothed away by intercommunication,
the traveling facilities of Spain being yet among the worst in Europe. The descendants of the Goth and
the Moor are still distinct in character. A general prejudice exists as to the morality of Southern nations
in Europe, and the Spanish women are by no means exempt from a full share of this unfortunate
opinion. Nevertheless, a recent writer says:
“I speak my sincere opinion when I say that, with the exception of a few fashionable persons, whose
lives do indeed seem to pass in one constant round of dissipations, whose time is spent in driving on
the Prado, attending the theatre, the opera, or the ball-room, precisely as their compeers do in every
other great city, the Spanish women are the most domestic in the world, the most devoted to the care
of their children, the most truly pious, and the best ménagères. This latter circumstance may arise from
the fact that their fortunes are rarely equal to their rank, and that a lavish expenditure would soon bring
ruin upon the possessors of the most ancient names and most splendid palaces in Madrid.”[244]
This opinion is confined solely to the higher classes of the city of Madrid. It expresses nothing as to the
great bulk of the population, and, however gratifying the record of worth may be, we fear the eulogy
must be taken cum grano salis.
Of the education of Spanish women, Mrs. Donn Piatt states that, by reason of the small fortunes of the
nobility, the daughters of an ancient house must be made useful before they are accomplished; that the
first consideration, however, is their religious education, to which, and to the preparation for
confirmation—the great juvenile rite of Catholic countries—the utmost care and attention are devoted.
Next after their religious tuition, the greatest pains are taken to make them accomplished
housekeepers. They are taught to make their own clothes, to keep accounts, to regulate their
expenditure, and to attend to the most minute details of the family economy. The advantages of a good
solid education are not neglected; their natural capacity and innate taste for the arts, especially as
musicians and painters, rapidly develop themselves, under very moderate tuition, to acquirements of a
superior character, and the productions of young women of high station are spoken of with much
admiration. One trait of Spanish character that speaks loudly in favor of the women is the devotion,
respect, and obedience paid by sons to their mothers long after age has relieved them from maternal
tutelage.
In Madrid there is a hospital for foundlings, which are said to amount to about four thousand annually.
These are actual foundlings, exposed publicly to the compassion of the charitable. It is principally
served by the Sisters of Charity. The infants are intrusted to nurses, and at the age of seven they are
transferred to the Desamparados (unprotected) college, where they receive instruction in the simpler
rudiments of education, and their religious and moral training is cared for. There is also an asylum to
which others are drafted to learn some practical handicraft, such as glove-making, straw-hat making,
embroidery, etc., and which seems, in a great measure, a self-supporting institution.
There are three Magdalen Hospitals: St. Nicholas de Barr, founded in 1691 for women of the better
class, who are banished for misconduct from the homes of their husbands and fathers; that of the
Arrepentidos, for penitents; and that of the Recogidos, founded in 1637, for the correction of women
sent there by their families, in order that they may be induced to return to the paths of virtue.
 CHAPTER XIII.
PORTUGAL.
Conventual Life in 1780.—Depravity of Women.—Laws against
Adultery and Rape.—Venereal Disease.—Illegitimacy.—
Foundling Hospitals of Lisbon and Oporto.—Singular
Institutions for Wives.
A writer on Portugal, in the year 1780, complains of the scandalous licentiousness of the monks and
nuns, of whom there were no less than two hundred and fifty thousand in a population of two millions.
It is said that the convent Odivelas, the harem of the monarch John V., contained three hundred
women, accounted the most beautiful and accomplished courtesans in the kingdom. The great Marquis
de Pombal suppressed many of these convents, and was the general reformer of the religious orders.
Of the effect of such an example from such quarters on the population at that time, sunk, as they were,
in the most imbecile ignorance, little need be said. The women of Portugal were reputed to surpass all
European females in gallantry, and their attractions were such that only one interview was necessary to
complete the conquest. To this condition of common immorality, the rigor of their husbands and male
relations may have contributed not a little. They are said to have been outrageously jealous, and to
have made no scruple of murdering any stranger who gave them even the weakest grounds of
suspicion.
In the fundamental laws of Portugal, promulgated in 1143, it is enacted that, “if a married woman
commit adultery, and the husband complain to the judge, and the judge is the king, the adulterer and
adulteress shall be condemned to the flames; but if the husband retain the wife, neither party shall be
punished.”
In the case of a rape perpetrated on the person of a lady of rank, all the property of the ravisher went
to the lady; and in case the female were not noble, the man, without regard to his rank, was obliged to
marry her.
The writer whom we have already quoted[245] speaks of the venereal disease as being, at the time he
wrote (1770-1780), habitual in Portugal, and that the Portuguese not knowing how to cure it, its
malignity had become so intensified that, in some cases, individuals who had contracted a peculiar form
of the malady had died in a few hours, as though struck down by an active and deadly poison. This is
most probably the exaggeration of popular opinion on the subject. More recent writers are chary of
information, and avoid the mention of matters so offensive to ears polite.
The manners and morals of the higher ranks of society must have undergone a material change for the
better in the present century, for an English nobleman (Lord Porchester, since Earl of Caernarvon)
speaks in very favorable terms of the propriety, amiability, and excellence of the Portuguese ladies,
which, excepting in the matter of intellectual education, left them in no wise behind the worthy of their
sex in other countries of Europe.
Among the lower classes, however, it would not seem that the tone of morals had been very much
amended, whether we consider their regard for female virtue, or their cultivation of the maternal
tenderness and solicitude natural to all created beings.
In the neighborhood of Oporto, country women may be met conveying little babies to the Foundling
Hospital, four or five together, in a basket. These helpless creatures are the illegitimate children of
peasant girls, openly deserted in the villages, and thus forwarded by the authorities to the care of those
pious strangers who undertake their nurture and preservation.[246]
In these cases, says Mr. Kingston, the females are not treated by their parents with any harshness or
rigor. They are rather compassionated for their misfortune, and are only sent away from home when
found obstinately persistent in a course of evil.
As may be supposed, the foundling hospitals have abundant claims on their funds. The Real Casapia, at
Belem, near Lisbon, and another hospital in Lisbon attached to the Casa de Misericordia, receive
together nearly three thousand children, who are brought up to different callings, and otherwise
prepared for active life, as is usual in such institutions. There is a similar asylum, equally frequented, in
Oporto. In this city there is also an asylum in which husbands may place their wives during their own
absence from home. It often happens that ladies, on such occasions, enter the asylum of their own
accord.
There is also in Oporto an establishment in the nature of a Penitentiary, in which husbands may immure
their faithless wives, or even those who give grounds of suspicion. It is presumed that in the nineteenth
century, even in Portugal, this must be done under color of some legal authority.
 CHAPTER XIV.
ALGERIA.
Prostitution in Algiers before the Conquest.—Mezonar.—
Unnatural Vices.—Tax on Prostitutes.—Decree of 1837.—
Corruption.—Number of Prostitutes and Population.—
Nationality of Prostitutes.—Causes of Prostitution.—
Brothels.—Clandestine Prostitution.—Baths.—Dispensary.
—Syphilis.—Punishment of Prostitutes.
A pamphlet has lately appeared in France on the subject of Prostitution in Algiers. Its author, Dr. E. A.
Duchesne, has rendered service by collecting a large number of important facts and statistical data.[247]
When the French conquered Algiers in 1830, they found prostitution established there, and prevailing to
a large extent. So far as we are able to ascertain, it had always been a leading feature of Algerian
society; travelers had noticed it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1830 it was estimated
that, with a population of thirty thousand, Algiers contained three thousand prostitutes. We have
already had occasion to notice the unreliable character of similar estimates in general, but there is no
doubt that the number of lewd women at Algiers under Arab rule was inordinately large. They were
mainly Moors, Arabs, and negresses. All were under the control of the chief of the native police—the
Mezonar. He kept a list of them, and laid a tax amounting to about two dollars per month on each. As
he paid a fixed sum to the government for the privilege of collecting this tax, it was to his interest to
increase the number of prostitutes as much as possible, and he appears to have done so. He kept in his
employ a number of spies, who watched women suspected of immoral habits, and denounced them
whenever they were detected, in which event they were inscribed on the Mezonar’s list, and became
prostitutes for life. He was empowered to compel every prostitute to discharge the duties of her calling,
and was frequently applied to by strangers to supply them with women. He was not allowed, however,
to lease women to Christians or Jews. Twice a year the Mezonar gave a public fête, to which all the
male inhabitants of Algiers were invited; the prostitutes formed the female portion of the assemblage,
and the public officer profited by the increased patronage they obtained during the festivities, as well as
by the sale of tickets for the entertainment.[248]
It is right also to add that the French found that other feature of Oriental manners, unnatural habits,
largely developed at Algiers. The cafés, the streets, the baths, the public places were full of boys of
remarkable beauty, who more than shared with the women the favor of the wealthier natives. Owing to
a criminal negligence on the part of the French authorities, no systematic endeavor has ever been made
to eradicate this shameful vice, which appears still to prevail to an alarming extent.
The influx of population, mainly soldiery, into a city thus steeped in immorality, produced natural results.
A few weeks after the invasion, the French general was compelled to establish a Dispensary, and to
decree that all dissolute women must undergo an examination there once a week. A tax of five francs
per month was laid upon prostitutes to defray the expenses of the establishment. Within less than a
year, such grave abuses had crept into the collection of this tax that it was resolved to farm it out, and it
was adjudged at auction to a man who agreed to pay 1860 francs per month for its proceeds. In 1832
the monthly tax was raised successively to seven 44⁄100, and nine francs per girl, and on these rates it
was farmed to one Balré, who paid 166680⁄100 for the privilege of collecting it. He was also entitled to
levy and retain the amount of all fines imposed by the police on prostitutes, and to charge women ten
francs each time they went to a fête outside the city, and five francs if the fête were within the limits.
The profits of the farm were so great that in 1835 Balré was able to pay the government 2250 francs
(four hundred and fifty dollars) per month.[249]
Under this system the gravest inconveniences occurred, and became so troublesome that in November,
1835, the governor promulgated a decree remodeling the regulations in force on the subject. It appears
the farm system was then abandoned, and the government agents who were intrusted with the
collection of the tax robbed both the prostitutes and the state shamefully.
Hence, in December, 1837, a new decree was issued by the governor, repealing all former laws and
regulations, and placing the whole subject under the control of the Commissary of Police. The leading
provisions of that decree were as follows:
“Every public woman who desires to prostitute herself must declare her intention beforehand to the
Comptroller of Public Women, who shall enter her name in his register, and present her with a pass-
book which he shall sign.”
“Every girl inscribed on the register shall place in the hands of the treasurer of the Dispensary, monthly,
a sum of twenty francs if she be a kept woman, and ten francs if she be not kept. The treasurer shall
give her a receipt for the same, and record it in his account-book.”
“The mayor shall be authorized to remit this monthly due, as well as any fines that may have been
incurred, when the girl owing the same can prove by a certificate from the comptroller, the treasurer,
and the physician that she is indigent.”
“Every girl who shall not have paid her monthly due, as well as her fines, within ten days after the visit
to the Dispensary, shall undergo an imprisonment of not less than five days and not more than three
months, unless she establish her indigence as aforesaid.”
“Girls detained in prison shall, on the first symptoms of syphilis, be transferred to the Dispensary for
treatment, after which they shall be remanded to prison to serve the remainder of the time.”
“The physician of the Dispensary shall not only treat patients in that establishment, but shall pay
periodical, accidental, and all necessary visits to the prostitutes, who are hereby subjected to such
visits. He shall visit the Dispensary twice a day, from 7 to 9 A.M. and from 3 to 4 P.M. He shall enter
upon his memorandum-book, and upon the pass-book of the girl, the result of all accidental or
necessary visits. He shall receive a salary of two thousand francs.”[250]
This law is in force at the present time, and is said to have led to great inconvenience. Police agents are
accused of levying black mail on the prostitutes to an enormous extent, in the shape of fines, dues for
going to balls, hush-money for escaping the visit to the Dispensary, presents to the policeman on the
birth of his children, etc. The product of the tax is inordinately large, amounting, independently of fines,
to one hundred and twenty francs, or twenty-four dollars per annum for each girl. Several
administrators have recommended its diminution or total suppression, but it is still retained.[251]
In the year 1838, when the present law was passed, the number of women inscribed on the police
register was 320, the total population of Algiers being 34,882, of whom two thirds were Africans and
one third Europeans; but the mayor of the city gave it as his opinion that this figure (320) was in reality
far below the truth. In 1846 measures were taken for enforcing the police regulations more strictly than
before, and some care was used to procure correct statistics of population and prostitution.[252] We
compile the following table from several given by Dr. Duchesne:

Registered POPULATION.
Year. Prostitutes African
European. Total.
(average). (estimated).
1847 442 25,000 42,113 67,113
1848 387 25,000 37,572 62,572
1849 395 25,000 37,572 63,072
1850 479 26,000 29,392 55,392
1851 342 .... .... 55,392
To these figures, some of which are only approximative, must be added the number of French soldiers
in the garrison at Algiers. At times the effective force has been as large as twelve or fifteen thousand
men.
Another point of interest is the nationality of the prostitutes of Algiers. It is known that the native
women are loose in their morals. In many parts of the interior it is common for fathers or brothers to let
out their daughters or sisters by the night or the week to strangers, and the young women themselves
are only too willing to ratify a bargain which promises to gratify their unbounded sensuality. The
following table gives the nationality of the registered prostitutes during the period 1846-1851.[253]

EUROPEANS. AFRICA
Arabs
Years. Great
France. Mahon. Italy. Germany. Spain. Holland. and Jewesses. Mulatto
Britain.
Moors.
1847 107 14 6 11 4 58 2 203 26 6
1848 78 10 5 10 3 49 ... 181 28 7
1849 82 8 2 17 3 60 ... 183 22 7
1850 113 8 2 20 2 57 ... 248 19 7
1851 81 4 5 9 2 37 ... 170 12 3

On inquiring for the causes of prostitution at Algiers, Dr. Duchesne found that they might be summed
up under three heads: 1st. Poverty, mainly due to the French conquest and the wars which followed. To
the present day it appears that it is not unusual for an Arab chief to relieve his wants by sending his
prettiest daughter to Algiers to perform a campaign as a prostitute. 2d. The idleness in which all Arab
and Moorish women are trained. It was proved that, while all the European women were capable of
working at some calling or other, and did work during their stay in the hospital, not one of the native
women had any idea of manual employment. A few could sing, and had at one time gained a livelihood
as street-singers, but the immense majority were absolutely incapable of doing any thing for a
livelihood. 3d. The Oriental idea that the woman is a chattel, to be sold or hired out by her legitimate
owner, father, brother, or husband. This idea, which prevails in many savage nations, among others,
many of our own Indian tribes, is, of course, the best of all entering wedges for prostitution.[254]
There are fourteen houses of prostitution at Algiers, all kept, it seems, by Europeans, and the greater
part by retired prostitutes. The natives object to living under the control of a brothel-keeper. They live
alone in their own rooms. Sometimes three or four of them club together and form a partnership. Their
rooms are generally shabby and ill furnished.[255]
Arab prostitutes seldom appear in the streets, and when they do, they are veiled and dressed like
modest women. They may be seen at their windows of an evening, peeping through small holes
contrived for the purpose, and smoking cigarettes. Their customers are procured by means of runners,
who are mostly small boys.
As may be inferred from the amount of the tax on prostitutes, clandestine prostitution is very
extensively practiced at Algiers. We have no details or even approximate estimates of the number of
clandestine prostitutes, but it doubtless exceeds that of the registered women. Many of them are
attached to the garrison, and are handed from regiment to regiment, shielded from the police by being
claimed as wives by some of the soldiers. Others in like manner prevail upon some colonist to afford
them a temporary home, and so elude the visit of the physician. Dr. Duchesne had reason to believe
that syphilis prevailed to an alarming extent among the secret prostitutes, and that, until the tax was
removed, and they were encouraged to register themselves on the police roll, it would continue to be
general and virulent.[256]
Formerly the baths were the great haunts of clandestine prostitutes. It is known that in most eastern
countries the bath is not only a sanitary necessity, but a common ally of sensuality. At Algiers, before
the conquest, men and women are said to have bathed promiscuously, and frightful scenes of
debauchery occurred daily. Under French rule this has been reformed. Men may not bathe from 6 A.M.
to 6 P.M.; but Dr. Duchesne was led to believe that it was quite common for men to introduce women
into the baths at night, with the connivance of the bath officials. Indeed, some of the latter appear to fill
the same office to the Algerine bathers as the Roman bath servants did to the dissolute men of that
day.[257]
It now remains to speak of the Dispensary at Algiers. It was established, as has been stated, within a
few days after the capture of the place. For nearly ten years it was a scandal to the faculty and the
authorities. The wards were too small; there were not beds enough for the women; every thing was
either deficient in quantity or objectionable in quality. In 1839, orders were given for the establishment
of a proper and commodious Dispensary. Three old Moorish houses were hired and divided into wards.
They contain at present thirteen wards, with beds for seventy-seven patients; a bath-room, containing
six baths; a hall for the visits of prostitutes; and the necessary offices, etc. The staff of the Dispensary
consists of a director, treasurer (econome), physician, apothecary, clerk, cook, assistant apothecary,
porter, five laborers, and four police agents. All the washing is done in the establishment. The
commissariat is on the amplest scale; meat, soup, vegetables of all kinds, rice, eggs, fruit, etc., being
supplied in abundance to the patients.[258]
Every morning at seven o’clock the women are visited by the physician, assisted by the apothecary.
Those who are able to walk are examined in the salle de visite, the others in their beds. The average
number of patients during the year appears to be from five hundred and fifty to six hundred. The
average duration of the treatment is from twenty-four to thirty-four days. The cost to the Dispensary
averages from one and a half to one and three quarters franc per day for each girl (about thirty or
thirty-five cents).[259]
The Dispensary physician reported to Dr. Duchesne that, so far as his observation went, syphilis was
more severe on the sea-coast than in the interior; and in the months of September, October, November,
and December, than at any other period of the year.[260]
Prostitutes are punished for being more than twenty-four hours behind time in visiting the Dispensary;
for leaving it during treatment; for insulting the physician or other authorities; for continuing to exercise
their calling after being attacked by disease. The penalty is imprisonment, either in the ordinary prison
or in the solitary cell. Formerly, the tread-mill was used, and in bad cases a girl’s hair was cut off, and
her nose slit; but these savage relics of Moorish legislation were long since abandoned. Solitary
confinement is found to answer every useful purpose.[261]
 CHAPTER XV.
BELGIUM.
Hospitals and Charitable Institutions.—Foundlings.—Estimate
of the Marriage Ceremony.—Regulations as to
Prostitution.—Brothels.—Sanitary Ordinances.
Belgium takes a more prominent position in Europe than its mere extent would warrant. This influence
is derived from the vigorous and effective stand made in behalf of rational freedom, and from the
manner in which free institutions have been originated and maintained.
The hospitals and other eleemosynary institutions of Belgium are of a magnificent character, supported
at an annual expenditure of nearly two hundred thousand dollars. Almost every town, and many of the
larger villages, have hospitals for the sick, sometimes maintained at corporation expense, sometimes by
private endowments. In 318 hospitals, during the four years from 1831 to 1834 (inclusive), no less than
22,180 persons were treated.[262]
Foundling hospitals are a marked feature of these charitable establishments. The turning table, which
was formerly in use in all such institutions, has lately been abandoned in most of them, but still remains
in use at those of Brussels and Antwerp. The total number of children annually abandoned in Belgium is
estimated to exceed eight thousand out of one hundred and forty-four thousand births, a ratio of about
one in eighteen. The average expense attendant upon the maintenance of each infant is about seventy-
two francs.
Marriage in Belgium is, by law, simply a civil contract, requiring fifteen days’ notice posted in front of
the Hôtel de Ville. Notwithstanding the simplicity of this ceremonial, it is affirmed that an enormous
extent of immorality and illegitimacy is to be met with, and that a virtuous servant-girl is altogether
exceptional, there being scarcely one of them who has not an illegitimate child, while they maintain with
the most unyielding confidence that, so long as the father is a bon ami (sweetheart), there is no moral
turpitude in the case.
Belgium is remarkable for its regulations with respect to prostitution and the spread of venereal disease.
The perfections of the latter arrangements are shown in the fact that, out of an army of thirty thousand
men, there were less than two hundred cases of syphilis in the year 1855.
The brothels of Brussels are of two kinds: les maisons de debauché and les maisons de passe; these are
visited by les filles éparses, who keep their appointments there. The two classes of houses are
distinguished by different-colored lanterns hung over the doors.
All classes of prostitutes are required to be examined twice a week; those who live in brothels of the
first and second class are visited by the physicians, while the very poor women of the third class, and all
those who do not reside in brothels, are obliged to attend at the Dispensary. If they are punctual in
their visits for four weeks in succession they are exempt from all tax; but if, on the contrary, their
attendance is irregular, they can be imprisoned from one to five days. Any woman who does not live in
a brothel can be examined at her own residence, provided that she pays at the Dispensary a sum
amounting to about eighty-five cents. For this she receives four visits, and the physicians will continue
to call upon her as long as the payments are made in advance. Thus the denizens of the aristocratic
brothels are saved the inconvenience of attending at the Dispensary, as also that portion living in private
lodgings who can afford to pay the fee to release themselves from going to the office as common
prostitutes, while the half-starved, ill-dressed pauper of the third class must wait at the Dispensary until
examined, and then return to her squalid home, where none but her companions and the police-officers
are ever seen.
The medical staff of the Dispensary is composed of a superintending inspector, whose duty is to be
present in the Dispensary when examinations are being made, and to visit the houses once a fortnight
at least; of two medical inspectors, who, during alternate months, examine, one the women in the
brothels, the other those who attend at the Dispensary. The date and result of every examination are
marked on a card belonging to each woman, in the registers kept at the brothels, and in the records of
the Dispensary. If a woman be found affected with syphilis or any other infectious disease, the owner of
the brothel must send her immediately, in a car, to the hospital, and as soon as her cure is complete her
card is handed to her, and she is at liberty to resume her calling.
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

ebookname.com