HIST-338 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Erectile Dysfunction, Miscegenation
21 Nov 2020
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Document Summary
Medieval society had complicated attitudes about prostitution; they hardly approved of the practice from a moral point of view, their moral view had little to do with the notion of sex. What they feared above all about prostitution, apart from the spread of certain diseases, was its likelihood to result in miscegenation the mixing of the races. The children borne by prostitutes had unknown fathers, so it was impossible to know for certain the ethnicity of anyone. As prostitution flourished in the cities, the problem grew apace. This question of paternity is why cities tried hard to regulate prostitution: Some, for example, established separate prostitution houses for the use of different ethnic, religious, and social groups. As a public health measure, there were always separate prostitution houses for lepers. In the countryside, absolute chastity prior to marriage was not the norm. Thus peasant couples commonly lived together for years before marrying and the children they produced were considered legitimate.
