The History of Prostitution Part 13

Some of these were sumptuary, and merely prohibited the wearing of fas.h.i.+onable attire. Others directed particular costumes as a badge of the prost.i.tute's calling, and to distinguish them in public from well-conducted women. At Mantua, prost.i.tutes, 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 prost.i.tute, 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 prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution 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 pa.s.sed driving prost.i.tutes out of the city.

In endeavoring to investigate the condition of prost.i.tution 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 pa.s.sions and prejudices, or so flippantly careless and inaccurate, that we must peruse them with constant suspicion. At the same time, official doc.u.ments 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, prost.i.tution is tolerated, though not legally permitted. There are no statistics from which the number of prost.i.tutes 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 prost.i.tutes 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 s.e.xes, 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 inst.i.tution 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 inst.i.tution 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 amus.e.m.e.nts, capable of impressions and pa.s.sions 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 _n.o.bil 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, canva.s.sed, 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 n.o.ble 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 unchast.i.ty or immorality may be made against the Italians, they are generally to be laid at the door of the aristocracy and upper cla.s.ses. 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 inst.i.tutions. 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 cla.s.s of society the infants belong. Meanwhile, although there is no ground for a.s.suming a larger proportion of illegitimate children than in northern climates, on the other hand, the publicly displayed prost.i.tution 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 unchast.i.ty 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 Prost.i.tution.--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 Inst.i.tutions at Barcelona.--Prost.i.tution 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 prost.i.tution, 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 cla.s.sified:

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 prost.i.tutes, which prost.i.tutes, 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 prost.i.tution or dishonor of their wives: these were liable to capital punishment.

5. A cla.s.s of persons styled Ruffiani (whence the modern word ruffian).

These latter were a.n.a.logous 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, pa.s.sed against the Ruffiani, as preceding edicts had fallen into desuetude, and their presence and traffic was encouraged by the prost.i.tutes. 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 pa.s.sed against the Ruffiani. They were styled a highly objectionable cla.s.s, 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 _fete_, 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 emba.s.sador, 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 n.o.ble rank and irreproachable character.

These examples of corruption influenced alike the people and the clergy.

The middle cla.s.s 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 a.s.siduously 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 a.s.saulted 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 coa.r.s.est and most unmanly terms, and finally refused to have any farther intercourse with her.[237]